Giddyup! ‘Back to Nature’ adventure revisited…
Lost in the stars, I lay huddled on the port side of the cockpit in my sleeping bag. The eastern horizon hinted the coming twilight, but my gaze was fixed skyward. Swell’s soft rhythmic lurch through the small upwind chop, told me I could relax. I didn’t want to jinx myself, but intuitively I anticipated […]
Lubed gears and New frontiers
I’m healing up and almost like new…so I figured I’d go back before neck breaks or speaking tours…to fill in where we left off after hat-making! I sat scooping papaya into my mouth in the cockpit, wondering if the package would arrive today. A moment later my phone rang. It was Isrin calling to tell […]
Bait for Breakfast
Back in the islands, the cyclone season dwindled to a thankfully uneventful close. Swell had sprouted sea ‘roots’ after nearly 2 months in the same rolly bay. Algae swayed on Swell’s waterline, while resident bait fish circled below. Mornings would begin with the sound of thrashing water near the hull–a tuna or the likes–chasing the […]
Finding Sea Rhythm… … … …
After rising to our great challenge, the sea rewarded us with smooth sailing through the afternoon until the wind dropped off entirely and we motored on into the calmest, starriest night I could ever remember in this wind-worn belt of the Pacific. Rotating on 3-hour watches, I relieved Crystal just after 3 am. Swell plowed […]
All Part of the Miracle
And then one afternoon, when my faith in the male gender had plummeted to an abysmal low, I turned in and saw Bali talking to a guy on the inside. He was the best surfer in the water. He took his waves but wasn’t greedy. He looked at me as he paddled by and said, […]
Limited Resources and the Human Predicament
At some point during the last few years of empty or mannered line-ups and my endless surf blessings, I’d lost the drive to fight this type of crowd. It ruins surfing for me. Here we were in this drop-dead gorgeous place where dreams linger on after you open your eyes”¦ where the giving spirit of […]
“The Test Never Ends”-Bali Strickland
Bali Strickland arrived from Oz smiling and in full form, ready for anything Swell and I could throw at him. As chance would have it the surf was up, the anchorage was a sandy 25 feet, and the sun was shining between puffy white clouds that burst with rainbows over the stunning black-green backdrop of […]
Reef Smooch
To my own disbelief, I had correctly wired in the wind generator and watched with glee the next morning as the ammeter on the board showed amps coming in with each gust! Without further celebration, I got back to work to remount and rewire the solar panels. My ‘albatross’, arrived in timely fashion with my […]
K.O. In Round Two
Round two started off all wrong. I mistimed the paddle out, taking 3 or four in the impact zone and found myself way down at the ‘first crack’. I caught a fat, walled right and then paddled against the current down to the reef. Only just arriving to the peak, my arms already burned. I […]
