5º 27.181s 129º 41.639w
Fri May 03 2019
Dad
died in 2016, just a few weeks from his 92nd birthday. Mom died in January,
just a few weeks after her 91st. They’re gone now, partly just dust in the wind
as each wanted some of their ashes spread around their childhood environs, the
rest buried together in a veterans cemetary. It won’t be too long before a
small headstone and a few fading photographs may be the only physical reminder
of their existence.
I
bailed from a 30+ year engineering career back in 2014. Worked hurricane seasons
with a Pittsburgh robotics startup in 2015 and 2016. Sold them a week each in
2017 and 2018. Probably done with that.
Preparing
for this Pacific passage consumed us for the past 12 months. Between that and
being there for aging or dying parents, we haven’t had a lot of time of our
own, time to just be still and think.
In
the land of 24 hour news cycles, Alexa and Siri and Netflix and the race to
collect more “stuff”, there’s just no time to be still and think. The noise
level is so high the signal gets buried.
The
decision to sell out and move onto JollyDogs full time was the first step in
clearing out the physical clutter and detritus accumulated during those years
of working and home ownership. Surprisingly, launching across the Pacific has
been the catalyst to just slow down and think. There’s finally time to think.
The signal to noise ratio has dramatically improved. There’s no breaking news.
No twitter. No Facebook. No internet.
Our
only connection to the outside world is email over a 2400 baud satellite data
link. I can’t even get the SSB to work; chock it up to a lack of sunspot
activity? So there’s no stranger’s voice at the other end of the radio set,
nobody to talk to except my lovely wife Isabel and our dear friend and
excellent crewman Thad.
I
don’t miss Alexa or Siri, and I damn sure don’t miss the 24 hour news cycle
with all the shrill voices competing for attention and advertising dollars.
It’s
been nice having the time to be introspective, to ponder my navel, to consider
where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and to appreciate what shaped my attitudes and
beliefs. Great friends made, great friends lost, respectable work
accomplishments, hopefully some positive impact on other’s lives.
Enough
of that. It’s time to look forward, and there’s not a moment to lose. No doubt
more than half my life is already behind me.
Today
the sky is clear, the air smells clean, and the water is blue. Soon we’ll smell
land before we can even see it, and we’re all out of fruit cake, Behan.
Richard
Ward of Seawind told us back in 2005, “go crusing for 10 years, you’ll come
back 10 years younger”. Time to find out if he’s right.
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