You’d think after 20,000+ nautical miles of ocean sailing I’d be beyond the point of feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing out on the water. However—as a halcyon-days-of-yore friend of mine was fond of saying—“You’re only young once, but immaturity can last a lifetime.” (Jimmy, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re as immature as the day we first got into trouble together.)
Although I always have some jitters going into a cruising season, this time it’s different (I swear). The last several years we’ve been operating on roughly six-month cycles: a half year on the boat and sailing, and a half year off. However, with all of our north-south sailing last year we gained (or, depending on your perspective, lost) a sailing season. I suppose it’s the nautical equivalent to gaining or losing time on a long east-west flight. At 500 miles per hour, jet travel puts-and-takes are measured in hours; sailing at 5 miles per hour, it’s measured in seasons. I essentially closed out the Mediterranean, Northern Hemisphere summer cruising season and sailed into the Caribbean winter cruising season.
All of that meant that when I and my neph-crew Max arrived in Grenada January 2025, Rhett and I had a decision to make. We could have immediately continued our voyaging and enjoyed the 2025 Caribbean sailing season (and stopped our sailing around the June 1, 2025, the start of the North Atlantic hurricane season). Or, we could have laid Hazel up on the hard for the remainder of the Caribbean winter and through the summer. We chose the latter and I’m happy we did as our first grandchild was expected in late-February 2025.
February came and went with no grandchild and Rhett and I waited anxiously. Perhaps having a baby is something like sailing—they’re both long lessons in patience. On the evening of March 3rd, we were summoned to the hospital to see our healthy grandson for the first time. As I held little Cameron Coate and admired his unfathomably smooth skin, the first random sailing thought was, How do baby dolphins do it?
To understand my question, first consider a newborn fawn and compare it to a human infant: The former are born in a field and have to be able to walk in minutes or hours (before the next coyote comes along). On the other end of the spectrum, humans have far more intelligence to develop but take a dozen years to be anywhere close to self-sufficient. OK, those are both miracles in their own right—but, then turn to the marine mammals that ride Hazel’s bow wake on magical days of sailing. Somehow these porpoise-ey progeny manage to do both. Their intelligence rivals ours but they also need to swim immediately after birth…as it’s a big and dangerous ocean in which they swim. And—oh, by the way—to-boot, they are air-breathing and they’re born underwater. That first breath must be a doozy.
Much of the rest of 2025 was a balancing act of helping the new parents with child care, and with their seafaring business venture—both satisfying in their own rights. As for being a grandparent, I’m not sure which I enjoyed more: being “Papa” to Cameron or watching “Mimi” (Rhett) be a grandmother. In addition to all going on in Jackson and Jessica’s household, Jack had the opportunity to add a third boat to his commercial fishing fleet. While the design and general layout of the well-used 39-foot hull was solid—the boat was set-up for inshore snapper-grouper bottom fishing, needed a bit of work, and the previous owner was clearly a hoarder. During the inital clean-out of the cabin and sleeping quarters we could have filmed a a reality-TV pilot for a mash-up of American Pickers meets Wicked Tuna. Although I consider myself “retired,” I didn’t much feel retired this summer as all-day every weekday was spent on the new boat outfitting her for offshore swordfishing. After several months of work, Jack rechristened her Jessie Lin in honor of Jessica and the vessel has performed admirably in the Gulf Stream as swordfish begin their annual southward migration. For me, what could be better than helping my kids—either with child care or rolling-up-the-sleeves in the bilge. However, as the “dock days” of summer clicked by, my mind often wandered to Hazel’s dry summer on Grenada and to us getting wet again.
Speaking of Max, if you were a digital stowaway with us in 2024 and 2025 you’ll know that after I sailed from the Canary to the Cabo Verde Islands, my nephew Max joined Hazel and me as crew and together we sailed the 2,000+ nautical miles to Grenada. It was 16 or 18 days of nonstop sailing and quite an accomplishment for him given his (formerly) limited seagoing experience.
(If you missed any of our shenanigans in the Canaries or Cabo Verdes, or need a refresher, see these blog posts. If you missed our daily micro-posts from the middle of the Atlantic on our crossing, visit Hazel’s home page and pinch the chart to zoom out. From there you can click on any of the gray circles with the text icons to see what was rolling around in our waterlogged heads at any point in the voyage.)
Today, I’m happy to share that Max is serving as engineer’s apprentice and deckhand on a 200-foot day-cruise ship, sailing from Brunswick, Georgia (200 feet is 6 1/2 Hazel’s end to end). I like to think that what he learned crossing the Atlantic helped set him up for his current success.
How is that for a year’s worth of personal and professional growth?
As an aside (and from a small-world perspective), Max’s current hailing port of Brunswick, Georgia—just north of Jacksonville, Florida—is where I found Hazel James in 2017 when I acquired her.
In writing this post and thinking about Max and his growth, I ran into this pair of videos that I took of him on our crossing. The first is of him flying the spinnaker, the second is his dousing of the ‘chute. Hopefully the vids give non-sailors a sense of what it’s like out there and sailors can see a bit of our “big sail” technique.
Fair winds and following seas Max, I’m proud of what you are doing.
Today is Sunday, January 4th and I’m finishing this post from our home in Delray Beach, Florida. On Tuesday I’ll fly from Miami to Grenada. After giving Hazel a big keel-hug, I’ll assess how she fared over the hot Caribbean summer and start the recommissioning process. Current plans are for us to launch this coming Friday. Rhett and Sunny are planning to fly into Grenada about a week later and—fingers crossed—we’ll start our cruising season.
I started writing this post about a week ago, when I was in the trough of my self-doubt (time is not always your friend). Now that I’m just 48-hours from “wheels in the well,” it’s good to feel my imposter’s syndrome easing and excitement building. (Wheels-in-the-well being the position of an aircraft’s landing gear when it is retracted into the wheel-well after takeoff, indicating that the plane is airborne and the landing gear is safely stowed.)
Just the other day, when I was beginning to sense this inner-tectonic shift from trepidation to excitement, I also happened to listen to an interview with the author and Buddhist monk Stephen Batchelor. Coincidentally he and the interviewee wandered to the subject of mediating with a “beginner’s mind” and being able to sit with doubt. In the discussion he introduced me to the Buddhist aphorism:
Great doubt, great awakening.
Little doubt, little awakening.
No doubt, no awakening.
The adage caught my attention and I paused the interview and rewound it 30 seconds to hear it again. As the words soaked into my desiccated sailor’s spirit, I gazed out the window and smiled. 1,400 miles to the southeast, Hazel was waiting patiently for us. With her 36 years of life, I’m sure she prefers a captain with a healthy dose of doubt as opposed to the alternative.
Fair winds and following seas. Expect my next transmission to come from Grenada, WI (West Indies).