My brother had a globe of the world in his room when I was growing up and when he wasn't home I would sneak into his sacred space, knowing he would kick my ass if he ever found out, and I would locate my home near San Francisco then spin the globe, stop it randomly and wish I was there.

Right where it stopped I'd find myself in another world within a world. Mongolia, Russia, Argentina, Java would stop below my pointed finger and more often my finger pointed to the middle of some ocean or sea. I understood the globe was covered mostly with water but what fascinated me was what was it like in the middle of the ocean. And it fascinates me today and probably will till I die.

I've never been more than a 125 miles offshore, out of sight of land. So, I have a pretty good idea of what it literally looks like, but the thought of being thousands of miles from any point of land feels like freedom. Not the comfortable, familiar freedom that one feels when leaving work or going to recess at school, but the insecure uncertain scary freedom that maybe a child feels when learning to swim when they push off the wall into the deep end for the first time. That's a freedom most of us forget about. The "fuck it, here I go" freedom. 

I will cross an ocean to get to the other side because I want to grow up.

I don't want to play in the shallow end anymore.

I want to be a grown up without a job, responsibilities or dependents.

A selfish man on a quest to find himself in the middle of the ocean like some foolish aquatic astronaut looking into the vast open space, using celestial bodies to guide him away and toward a shore faraway. 

I will arrive tired and weary.

I will sleep and dream in this foreign place. I will be an alien of a different skin color.

I will speak another language and they will ask where I'm from and I will point to the sea. 

They will understand. 

Remains

The time traveled spectrum of a spent life runs ragged and true

The end is where memories are left for those who remain

If they wish to remember...the remainders

What remains will you leave behind?

Colors of a distinct life which can be scratched and sniffed and peeled away to get to the flavor...

or white washed walls all bland and tasteless

Maybe you wish to remain anonymous to sink to the bottom of the sea of a life well lived

An ocean of happiness

All that remains are thoughts of the heart and never your name

An immortal existence within the spirit of the living, all cozy and nameless

Yes!...That is how I wish to be forgotten

I'll leave my name and body for someone else to use and my soul will be mine

Secrets in the Mirror

Dear Son,
I'm sorry I kept secrets from you. I'm sorry that I kept secrets...period. I'm sad and I will show you how I'm sad and why I'm sad. I'm scared and I will show you why I'm scared and how I get scared. After that I'll be glad and you can be mad. I know what it's like to be mad...very mad.
I was mad after my father beat me. I would run from him after I pissed off my mother for some forgotten reason. It doesn't really matter why. I just remember he would say, "...come here you  little shit!" before the slap across the face, the back, then the face again. It stung red like shame, indignity and hate. That was a good day. He missed my ear. The worst was when he hit my ear. It would ring and I would hear voices that whispered. They whispered shameful things yet they weren't words I could understand, but they were definitely words.
I learned not to run from him that just made him even more mad. I took it standing and afterward I would look in the mirror to see the welts, the redness and tears. The tears from the pain had gone and the tears of shame remained.
I got really fucking mad one time after a beating and tore my room apart. My dad had to replace all the dry wall on one wall and rehang the shelves.
There were times my mom had to pull my dad off of me. One time I heard her say, "...you're gonna kill him. Stop!"
The worst was watching my brother get beat. I would watch and cry for him. Afterward I would check on him in his room. He was checking his face in the mirror. He would look at me and say, "I'm okay." Of course he wasn't. The mirror didn't lie.

The Zen of Crawling Under the House

Don my coveralls and I will move through time upon my belly

Spiders are my friends and they will not mind that I destroy their webby nests, but welcome the challenge to create. I am their teacher.

The rabid racoon only exists in the dark, damp space of the mind and not within the crawl space of real time... and if it is so, my Mag Lite will light the way and crush the bandits skull into oblivion

The seismic condition of the earth will hold my life in the palm of its hand and show mercy

I shall be immune to the claustrophobic confines of my fears and the Hantavirus which has just been liberated from its dead mouse fecal tomb I just disrupted with my hand and inhaled deeply its dust

I am one with the dark musty universe and abandoned wiring that lay across my back

I will go forth brave and undeterred to repair that which needs be and return a holy man baptized by dust, dirt, and crawly things unimaginable and parasitic

I am...

66 Days At Sea On A Capsized Pearson Alberg 35...Yeah , Right!

The media must have this info wrong. I can believe this guy survives 66 days on a upright Alberg 35 looking like he does, but no way did he sit on an "overturned " boat for 64 days (he claimed his boat capsized 2 days into his trip) and come away looking that good. If it is all true, then this dude is a fucking specimen. More than likely the media misreported that the sailboat was "overturned" when he was rescued. A narrow beamed, heavily ballasted, full keel Alberg 35 is going to right itself quickly or sink after being capsized.
Here's a link to a post that I thought explained it very well: http://wavetrain.net/news-a-views/659-louis-jordan-in-the-gulf-stream-rescued-after-66-days-adrift-on-an-alberg-35
Update:
I'm feeling better now that the corporate news networks are correcting their initial reports on this incident to reflect something more believable (i.e. the boat righted itself after being demasted).

What if There Was a God But Not Anymore?... and Other Bullshit and Maybe Some Manic Ice Cream

I often ask myself  would it matter if there was a "God", and the answer I come up with is No! Would it change anything in my life that has already occurred or waiting to occur? No!

Free will, as the Bible suggest, was given to us by "God"  and it is a funny thing to consider when what humans have chosen to do as a whole with that free will may result in the ultimate extinction of all life as we know it. For what purpose has the experiment of the human race by a supreme being been for? Amusement? Knowledge? Maybe "God" thought it entertaining to watch what "It" created destroyed. Maybe "God" is actually a four year old who likes to watch the tower of blocks he built tumble and crash to floor. He likes the noise it makes, the mess. The idea He can create and destroy something is pretty cool. Humans like that too. It's also mentioned in the Bible that "God" created us in His own image. That explains a lot. It's no mystery anymore to me. If there is a "God", He has forgotten about his children or simply doesn't care. After all there comes a point when Father has to let go. Let's be honest. How long, as a parent, would you enable your children to behave like assholes before you cut the proverbial umbilical cord? Well that's a question with many answers because I've seen plenty of parents enable bad behavior for lifetimes, so I guess the answer for some would be till I die. Maybe "God" is dead and what remains is nothing more than an imagination created and perpetually existing in a universe built to hold all His things, His stuff, His toys and children that will never grow up. 

It's a depressing thought. I know. I try not to think about such things often and I rarely talk about such things because I notice people eventually stop talking to me. I only talk about such things with fellow lunatics and we sit around and wonder what it's all for. Whether "God" is dead or gone, one thing for sure is, we know how to behave. We know how to care for one another including other living things. We know how to take action and create, destroy and love. 

1 John chapter 4 verse 8 states, Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 
We have known "God", although many of us have forgotten. It's just that free will kinda fucks it all up. I don't know. I suppose for those of us who have the capacity and the will to love are obligated to do so. The rest who choose not to or just don't have the capacity (because let's face it, there are people who are born without that capacity and those abused beyond hope to love)...well there gonna be an obstacle and a challenge to work around. So, I guess it comes down to you choosing to love or being a fucking obstacle. 
I know it's really hard...well impossible to love everything , everybody all the time and I don't recommend it even if you could because you'll just enable all the assholes. But I do recommend that during those times that you're feeling like watching the world burn, eat some ice cream. It's really good and may restore your faith in humanity. 
I love the fucker who invented ice cream. That dude who made the first ice cream was really feeling the love that day. Can you imagine a world without ice cream. Holy Shit! And ice cream has been around since 200BC. That's right...since before Jesus Christ and there were poems written about it in China. But, do we know about the dude who invented "ice cheese", as it was referred to in China? No! We know about Jesus. 
Jesus was a cool guy and would probably love ice cream or "ice cheese" if it was available to him and it would probably have been served at the last supper and all, because he was all about the love. Can you imagine how Christianity would have taken off if it served ice cream as the body of Christ instead of bread at its Eucharist? Talk about love baby! Make mine a Sundae and pour some more of that raspberry sauce (blood of Christ of course) on mine. Sundae, Sunday...that's funny. I digress.
If I could give ice cream to every person on the face of the earth right now, I would...even the lactose intolerant ones. They could just eat it and deal with the cramping and diarrhea afterward, because it's all about the love and it's the thought that counts. Seriously, if I knew someone was lactose intolerant, I wouldn't give them ice cream. I would give them a hug instead and tell them I'm so sorry you can't eat ice cream you poor son of a bitch.
And that's  what it comes down to. Feeling the love. What's your intention? Because when it comes to ice cream, I think the intentions are pretty good. So is a hug, unless you're some creepy dude just trying feel the breast of some hot MILF pressed up against your body. That's when a hug is just creepy and most of us know who you are...
I forget where I was going with this. Oh yeah, be clear on your intention before you take action and if glory is your goal then go start your own religion where you are the one and only Deity to be worshipped by weak, close minded followers who can be controlled, exploited and cast away into a fiery pit of hell forever if they don't agree with you.

New manual windlass

In my effort to get our Tashiba 31 as self sufficient as possible, I installed a manual windlass made by Lofrans. It is of good quality and a quarter of the cost of a replacement for the Muir Cougar windlass that was originally installed on Oriana, plus it's powered by good old fashioned muscle instead of electricity which can fail. Originally I had taken apart the old windlass which is powered  basically by a starter motor in hopes to fix it only to find the stators completely corroded.  In fact one of them turned to dust in my hands. That's what 30 years of a marine environment can do when things aren't properly maintained. Anyway, I replaced the old with the new. And in order to use the existing mounting holes, I fabricated a mount out of 1/4" stainless steel plate which I drilled holes in that matched the original windlass. Then I bolted the Lofrans on to the steel plate and through bolted the plate through the bowsprit and deck. Here are the results:

The Lofrans Royal manual windlass Installed. Notice how it lines up with the hawse pipe. Works very nicely by the way.