“I know the whole truth there is horrible,
It’s better if you take a little at a time.
Too much and you are not portable,
Not enough and you’ll be making happy rhyme.”
—The Gypsy Life, John Gorka

Days after Colleen died I found myself alone, by choice, going through her things. Partly because it was something to do to stay busy, partly because I wanted some of the memories gone, partly because I was looking for something—anything—to feel closer to her. Weeks later, my therapist would help me see the ambivalence I felt as a positive to my recovery.

I donated most of her clothes to Wayside House and sought out female friends who wore a size 9 shoe. They got Colleen’s beloved boots. From time-to-time I get text pictures from them showing Colleen’s boots out and about, treading this earth as they should.

Then got to Colleen’s journals. They were really more exercises than journals. Exercises from her therapist and from residential treatment centers that tried so hard and did help her. As I looked at the journals—before opening them—I thought there are probably two schools of thought. One would say that these are deeply personal and she would never want them read, especially by me. Another would hold that she’s dead, never coming back and her writings should be open to the world and walk this earth. I thought about those two roads diverging for a long time and opted for the latter. The swing vote in the supreme court of my mind was the search for something—anything to feel closer to her.

Reading her journals was like trying to stand under a high mountain waterfall of human emotion: anger at those who had taken things deeply personal to her, remorse for how I could have been better for her, sadness for how she felt stuck in a vicious cycle of addiction while others moved forward with their lives, joy for her good days and victories, hope that she would reemerge into sunlight.

In going through her writings I found a letter entitled “Dear Addiction”—it was conspicuous in the care she took to color every square inch of it. She wrote it January 2017, when she was in-residence at her second treatment center. In thinking about the opening quote to this post, while I’ve shared this letter with immediate family and close friends, I hadn’t felt ready to do so more broadly. It felt like too much, too soon; I think it’s time now.

Please draw your own conclusions, but the first thing I saw was the beauty of her prose, metaphors and allusions, and her unfailing first-rate intellect. It also struck me that she seemed to have it all together and had a clear-eyed view of her addiction and what she needed to do. I cry when I think about everything she went through after she wrote this, let alone before she wrote it. Finally, I hope Colleen’s firsthand perspective is helpful for anyone struggling with addiction or trying to help a loved one.

Original images of Colleen’s letter in all it’s glory and artwork are below my transcription. As Colleen’s close, childhood friend Kristine said so well, “Col’s handwriting was epic.”

Dear Addiction,
My friend, my partner, you have always been there for me. Steadfast but not so true. You have been my rock, jagged and sharp, you are, though I did not notice at first. Early on, I found you to be smooth and shiny. You have been the friend in whom I sought solace. Then you began to crack; you began to mirror me. The reflection was distorted though. One I could not see clearly. I have found glasses now. In wiping your surface clean, I have found that I no longer need the weight of your density around my neck. The security I thought you gave me was false. Oh the fun we have had, the memories sharp and often pain filled. Your friendship was a weight, a burden, that separated me from those I loved, that masked my true self. I know now that my love was not true. You did not bring me strength and peace, but a false gravity that weighed me down. You were the tool with which I used to hide.

I am finding lightness and peace with you gone. Sadness, happiness, anger and joy. Dear addiction, I will remember your effort, your cunning, your false wisdom, and what it has meant to me. I am beginning to rise without the gravity of your weight, so I must say farewell, and I too shall fare well in lightness, hope, and strength.

Whatever it takes.

When I shared this with Colleen’s ever-astute brother Kevin, he replied:

Lung cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s are some powerful villains too but they never pal around as your friend for part of the journey. Battle lines are drawn early. But addiction is that Judas level of betrayal. Prince Joffrey to young Sansa.

While I still almost hesitate putting such a deeply personal letter out there so broadly, I think about Colleen. What she liked to do more than anything was to give people things and to help others. I don’t want to take that from her in death. Please consider this letter from her to be a gift to you. I hope it is helpful understanding and facing challenges that you or your loved ones may be having.

“There are two kinds of sailors, those that have run aground and those that haven’t yet run aground.”
—Old nautical proverb

My 15 mile journey over the Devil’s Backbone was an awesome experience. Thanks in large part to Bruno Underwood, the pilot I hired to guide us over this potentially treacherous piece of water. You can click on this link to learn more about the geography or just check-out my GPS’s track below. North is up and where the thick black line starts on the left is the Spanish Wells Yacht Haven (where we started). The line ends at Harbor Island Bay and the boat icon is our location as I write this. The little pink boxes with plus signs in them indicate coral heads and danger.

I got Bruno’s name and card from one of the dock hands at the Yacht Haven. I talked to Bruno the day before and he was available to take me midday on Wednesday, February 5th. At 11:45 Bruno showed up in his 16 foot skiff (flat bottom, shallow draft outboard boat). I backed HJ out of her slip, we tied his skiff behind and Bruno climbed aboard.

For a boat like HJ that draws 5 feet (she can float in five feet of water), the problem isn’t that the Devil’s Backbone is “shallow”—12 feet is the ultimate, maximum draft for a vessel in the Backbone—it’s that the Backbone is narrow with intricate channels. You just can’t “hop” from waypoint to waypoint on the GPS. In addition, if you’re going to hit bottom in the Devil’s Backbone, you’re likely going to hit coral that will cause significant damage. I’ve bumped HJ’s bottom several times before on sand and it’s disconcerting enough (Sarah and Mike can attest).

Bruno was born and raised in Spanish Wells so knew the water like the back of his hand. With him at the helm (steering Hazel James) and his expert eyes, I could work on my skills of reading the water. I’m OK at it, but practice in big-league water with Bruno as a safety net was precious. The goal of reading the water is to determine what’s under the water and how deep it is, and therefore your best course over shallow stretches of water.

You see light and dark in these crystal clear waters. The first thing to net-out is the effect of the sun and passing cumulus clouds. A cloud throws a moving shadow over the water that needs to be ignored. The light patches are generally sand, the more brilliant white, the shallower. However, at-times light patches can be rock. Dark patches are either coral or “grass” (brownish sea grass). Again, the hues of the dark patches give a hint as to their depth.

While HJ and I carry detailed electronic and paper charts, coral grows and sands shift with storms, currents and dredging. Also, GPS positioning is not 100% accurate all the time. Many a mariner has run aground staring at their GPS screen that told them all clear. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience with automobile GPS.

Once we reached the safe waters of Harbor Island Bay, I settled-up with Bruno and we said our goodbyes. He climbed in his skiff and headed to his next job.

A logical question to ask is, “If Devil’s Backbone is so treacherous, why even do it?” Besides seeing things that you never would see if you didn’t do it, it’s a shortcut. Instead of the 15 miles of protected water (albeit “protected” by coral heads), going the long way around would entail 40+ miles of motoring and sailing around the north end of the Eleutheran archipelago and then south in the Atlantic. Even then the Harbour Mouth inlet from the Atlantic into Harbour Island bay I’ve heard is a bit dicey—especially inbound from the Atlantic.

At the moment I’m anchored-up just west of Harbour Island in 10 feet of water (25 degrees 30 minutes North, 76 degrees 39 minutes West). Today (Friday 2/7) it’s blowing a bit (gusting >20 knots) and predicted to veer from south to west leaving Hazel James a bit exposed. Therefore I’ve elected to stay with her today rather than kayak into town as I have the past two days. While I dove on my anchor yesterday to make sure it is well set in the sand, if her anchor were to drag in this shifting wind, she’d be on the rocks of Harbour Island in 5 minutes. She’ll probably hold fine in this wind but I’m playing it safe. I have a drag alarm set up on my GPS so if we drift more than 120 feet, I’ll get notified. I’m also enjoying the day alone with a wonderful view of Dunmore Town on Harbour Island. Here’s the view from my writing desk.

Per forecasts, I’m here the next several days waiting for a good weather system with winds out of the south, west and north (anything but east) to help me make my initial easting into the Atlantic for my next leg.

Check-out my updated About page. I’ve got a new picture of HJ up there and a really cool watercolor that a fellow cruiser and friend did while we were talking. Thanks for following along.

My four nights in the Spanish Wells Yacht Haven were delightful. For $2.50 per foot per night ($78 per night for HJ’s 31 feet), I had hot showers, a pool and easy access to the village to do some re-provisioning. In addition, my neighbors in the slip next to me are my newest friends.

In a future post, I’ll write about the rather minimalist approach I’m taking with cruising on Hazel James. At 31 feet, she’s on the small side compared to other monohull and catamaran sailboats cruising the Bahamas. However, Dana and Pat aboard the 26 foot “Sun Kissed” took it to a whole new level. It’s funny because while Hazel James and Sun Kissed occupied some very nice slips (places to tie up our boats), several slips away was a 120 foot “luxury” power yacht that appeared to be deserted save for a couple of crew swabbing decks and polishing stainless. I’m of the current mindset that pretty soon you stop owning things and they start owning you. Needless to say, I was a lot more interested in Pat and Dana’s gig.

Sun Kissed was built in the 70s and her beautiful sunset-orange hull was probably inspired by the avocado green and burnt orange kitchen appliances popular in the day. Besides her color and size, I noticed her hailing port “Kasilof, AK”. Like most, when I first read it I thought, “Oh how cute, they’re from Arkansas.” Then, I did the letter-math in my head and remembered that Arkansas is AR—so AK had to be Alaska. It was sort of like when Colleen, Jack, Emma and l were living in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon in the early 2000s and we decided to move to India. Jack announced at school one day that he was moving to India. One Jack’s friends told his mom the news after school, and she replied, “Oh honey, you mean Indiana.”

While Pat and Dana didn’t sail all the way from Alaska to the Bahamas, they did acquire Sun Kissed in Detroit several years ago and she’s gotten them this far with plenty of adventures and a few misadventures. According to Pat the acquisition in Detroit, “…was a Craigslist thing”. Both Dana and Pat work in civil engineering and road construction. As you might imagine, not a whole lot of that happens in the winter in Alaska so they decided to head south for the winters and sail.

In Pat’s first year with Sun Kissed, before Dana joined him, he and a friend sailed her across Lake Erie and entered the Erie Canal in Buffalo. According to Pat, he was the only school child to have never been taught the “Low bridge, everybody down” lyrics to the eponymous folk song. They then motored across the state of New York on Sun Kissed’s one cylinder, eight horsepower diesel auxiliary engine and exited the Erie Canal and entered the Hudson River near Albany. Given the minimum bridge height in the Erie Canal of 15 feet, in Buffalo they had to unstep the mast (take it down) and build a cradle to hold it horizontally on Sun Kissed’s deck for the voyage across New York.

Pat had never been to New York City before and he had some funny stories about pulling-up to the public marina in Manhattan, tying-up and walking the city. At one point he’s holding a tourist map and, like a good sailor, scanning the horizon trying to find the Empire State Building. He finally realizes that he needs to look straight up because he’s standing under it. Pat and friend then continued south across New Jersey both “on the inside” (motoring in the Intracoastal Waterway) and “on the outside” (sailing on the ocean), depending on the weather. Continuing on their tour of great canals, they took the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal from the Delaware River to the northern tip of the Chesapeake Bay. I think it was about that point that Pat had to get back to work as the ground was thawing in Alaska so they stored Sun Kissed for the season.

The next year, Dana joined him and they continued south, reaching Key West and the Dry Tortugas before launching over to the Bahamas.

On my last day in the Spanish Wells Yacht Haven I bought a nice piece of hogfish at the market and invited them over for dinner. We had hogfish chowder in Hazel James’ cozy saloon (cabin) and Dana brought some iced beer (and ginger beer). We shared these and other stories, and talked about boats and dreams.

“A person’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of the things about them.”
—Fredrick Douglas

Whenever I read a quote from the past that refers to the masculine, I like to think that—today—the person would have phrased the quote more gender-neutral. I hope Fredrick Douglas won’t mind my substitutions.

I’m thinking that perhaps his observation is as true for collections of people and villages as it is for individuals. The colors that Spanish Wells’ residents paint their houses reflect the hues of the sea that surrounds them.

It’s a beautiful and prosperous village. The fact that fishing makes up such a large part of its economy gives it a much less touristy feel. It also helps that we’re in the eastern Bahamas—more “out island” than a Bimini that is a lot closer to the US. While Spanish Wells is the village name, it’s located on St. George’s Cay. However, since the village takes up most of the cay, the names are synonymous at this point.

I walked on the beach above yesterday and then later kayaked around it. If you’re looking for a peaceful island get away not too far from the US mainland, I’d recommend looking at the cottages for rent that are right on this north beach. It would be a wonderful place to spend a quiet week and features an excellent “kid beach”. It’s got a quarter to half-mile of knee deep water right off the beach. While you’re not going to surf here, young kids could explore in safety for hours.

Here are some pictures of the town…

Many of you know that, among many other things, my son is a commercial fisherman. His target species is swordfish. I’m proud to say that I first took him walleye fishing in Chautauqua Lake when he was 3 or 4 and he never looked back.

As such, he and I are great connoisseurs of fishing fleets. The way others might revel in the nuance and subtlety of wine or coffee, we do for working boats. The local fisherman take the same pride in their vessels as they do in their residences.

These vessels are set-up for spiny lobster fishing. When they go out, they tow 3-5 small outboard skiffs and anchor-up offshore. The crew dons scuba gear and venture out in the skiffs and dive and spear lobsters. 75% of the exported lobsters from the Bahamas are offloaded from the Spanish Wells fleet.

These are steel hulls without a spec of visible rust. That takes work, and pride.

At noon today, I am embarking and leaving Spanish Wells for Harbour Island and Dunmore Town. To get from here to there, I’ll need to transit the Devil’s Backbone. As it’s name suggests, it’s no place for a newbie captain to the area like me to be alone. Thus, I’ve hired a “pilot” to guide me. In nautical parlance, a pilot is a capitan with local experience and knowledge. If you’ve ever been on a cruise and seen a small, stout boat dropping-off someone on a cruise ship before it enters port, or picking-up someone off the cruise ship after it’s exited the port and is in safe and deep water, that would have been a “harbor pilot” doing the same job on a much bigger scale.

Thanks as always for support and updates to come from Dunmore Town. Hazel James out.

In my introductory comments to this site, I suggested that it’s actually not a small world and time doesn’t fly. I added that I want to earn my distance, not just hop a plane and be deposited somewhere. The other night my wish was granted by the Northeast Providence Channel. It roughly separates the northern and southern Bahamas.

We started in the eastern Berry Islands, on the Great Bahama Bank. Our destination was the Eleuthera Islands, also on the Great Bahama Bank. Our rumb line course (intended overall direction of travel) would be just a bit south of east, about 115 degrees on the compass. Although both island chains are on the same bank and separated by only 55 miles, I’d be transiting the Northeast Providence Channel. In retrospect, talking to my son (Capitan Jack) a couple days later he said the Northeast Providence Channel is known for kicking-up quickly. The way the seabed is configured, I’d be crossing water that is 8,000-9,000 feet deep—talk about unfathomable.

As a quick aside, I’m writing this from Hazel James’s cockpit at sunrise anchored in Royal Island Harbour, Eleuthera. A half-mile separates me from any other yacht. It’s amazingly tranquil without a breath of wind. Two things occur to me. First, the stark differences the sea can show a person in such a short period of time, from near-raging to a pussy cat. Second, I’m only 150-200 miles from home. Lots of adventure can be had in your backyard.

Beginning with the end in mind and working backwards, it’s a very bad idea to enter a new harbor, anchorage or any shallow water at night. This is especially true in islands like the Bahamas where channels are not so nearly well marked. So far I’ve found in the Bahamas, if a chart shows a marker-light or pole or bouy, there’s a less than 50/50 chance it actually will be there. Given that, coupled with the 55 miles that I needed to put under the keel and HJ’s anticipated 4-6 knot speed given the forecasted lighter wind, my plan was to weigh anchor and set out around sunset on Wednesday, January 29, sail through the night and arrive around sunrise on Thursday (a “knot” being a nautical mile per hour, about 1.15 MPH). The forecasts I had pulled down via satellite and my on-deck observations indicated the overnight weather would be south to southwest winds of 10 knots with seas of 2 to 4 feet. Bottom-line very manageable with a full press of canvas (all sails up) and a good wind direction relative to the direction I wanted to travel. In retrospect on-average both the wind speed and wind direction forecasts were right. However, as with a lot of things in life, averages don’t mean a lot. There’s the story of the statistician with their head in an oven and feet in a bucket of ice water and they say, “On average, the temperature is fine.” In retrospect, I could have done more to prepare for a blow. Oh well; I’m here and valuable lessons were learned.

The night started off benign, the wind was well below 10 knots and out of the southeast. Not enough to really get Hazel’s 15,000 pound hull going and the wind direction was too much on the nose (the wind being too close to my intended direction of travel). We continued on though making as much progress as possible, hopeful that the wind would eventually increase just a bit and also veer more to the south and west. These conditions continued until midnight. During that time I was busy keeping track of a lot of nearby ship traffic. It was amazing the amount of cruise ships in that part of the ocean. My course intersected the lane between Nassau and the South Florida ports of Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. If you’ve ever been on a cruise with those ports-of-call, we’ve been over the same water. My main tools of collision avoidance are my eyes, binoculars with bearing compass, my Automatic Information System (AIS) and—to triple-check when things are close—radar. In addition, I could always try to hail another ship on the radio and ask their intentions and verify they see me. Compared to freighters, cruise ships are so much better lit and more attentive to their piloting. No cruise line wants the publicity that they ran-down a private sailing yacht. Still, you don’t want to take unnecessary chances. Although technically a sailing vessel has the right-of-way over a vessel under power, it’s wise to stand-down early with a cruise ship or freighter. They’re big and they’ve got jobs to do. The closest cruise ship passed within a mile of me, no worries. When they passed, I could clearly see the big-screen jumbotron on the top deck. It looked like a rager was going on up there and funny to think of them and us (us being Hazel and me). Thousands of passengers, hundreds of crew and all the trappings. Us, sailing along and operating on 12 volts of stored solar energy.

After midnight and six hours of slow going, things changed. The wind veered to the southwest, as expected. Unexpectedly, the wind slowly increased from 10 knots to well over 20 knots. For a time, it was exhilarating. HJ loved the power under full sail and threw herself forward into the blackness. Thankfully, the cruise ships had cleared out and there wasn’t another boat for 20 miles. Over time, the wind continued to build and I decided I needed to get some sail down. Three reasons: first, safety—there’s no use breaking things, especially at night; second, efficiency, HJ was getting over-powered and she’d be happier with less sail; thirdly, to slow her down a bit. Given our increased speed in the increased wind, the GPS and my manual calculations of our time to make landfall in Eleuthera had decreased. If we pressed on at this speed, we’d be in shallow water well before sunrise and we didn’t want that.

Many higher-tech sailing yachts have all sorts of sail handling gadgets that allow a lot to be done from the cockpit without having to roam the deck. HJ is old-school that way. Eventually, I may “upgrade” her but I’m going with old-school for now. While the newer, higher-tech stuff is great when it works. When it doesn’t, you’re left in a bad spot with few options. Besides, I grew-up a small-boat sailor and I like sail handling with my own two hands.

At this point, say 1:00 AM Thursday morning, I’d been sailing for 6 hours and taken several 20 minute catnaps. The wind was consistently above 20 knots and with some periods blowing in the high-20s and up to 30. The seas had built from the projected 2-4 feet to 6-8. There was rain and electricity in the air. That all may not sound like a lot but given my experience in those situations at night and single-handed, it was plenty. I donned my foul weather gear, flipped-on the foredeck light that illuminates HJ’s deck, clipped-in to my harness and tether system and started forward from the cockpit to get some sail down. I first put one, then two reefs in the mainsail. As the wind continued to build and our speed didn’t diminish, I decided to get my yankee down. The mainsail, as it’s name suggests, is the main sail on a traditional boat. It’s the classic sail that children draw when asked to draw a sailboat. It runs up the mast (the big vertical pole in the center of the boat) and runs along the boom (the horizontal pole that sits low behind the mast). “Reefing the main” entails lowering part of the mainsail to reduce sail area. In front of the mast, HJ is rigged as a “cutter”. While a sloop, the most common rigging of a sailboat, has one sail in front of the mast, a modern cutter carries two sails ahead of the mast. Compared to a sloop, a cutter “cuts” the sloop’s one sail ahead of the mast in half making it into two sails. While there are some tradeoffs with a cutter, having more but smaller sails makes for easier sail handling and provides more options. Both sails forward of the mast on a cutter-rigged boat are, collectively, the headsails. The one furthest forward is the “yankee”, the smaller—between the yankee and mast—is the staysail.

Back to the story, with two reefs in the main, full headsails and the wind continuing to build, I decided we needed to get the yankee down (the furthest forward headsail). While I could haul the yankee down from the cockpit, which I did, I needed to venture up front to tie it down on the foredeck so it wouldn’t flap around or—worse—get loose. It’s a bit intimidating to be sitting alone in the front-end of a 31 foot boat on a pitching deck in the middle of the night taking a lot of spray getting a sail under control. Some of it might sound insane and you may be right. It must have been a good sight if anyone was nearby with the foredeck lit-up in the blackness like a stage, and a single person sitting on the bow wedged-in as best as possible wrestling with and unruly sail in 25-30 knots of wind and 6-8 foot seas.

Relatively speaking, there is a lot of safety involved. First, let’s remember that engineers design cars with air bags and ABS and collision detection. Then, we drive those cars over a hundred feet per second and while staring down at our laps and sending text messages. On a boat, the same as a car, the first and most important safety item is your mind and mindset. I read from a mentor that it’s important to look over the side of the boat and imagine a 500 foot crevasse with broken rocks at the bottom. While the fall off the boat would only be four or five feet into water, the ultimate results of a fall would likely be the same. More-tangible safety gear includes HJ’s lifelines, two stainless steel cables that run the perimeter of the deck, the highest a little below the waist when standing on the deck. In addition, whenever on deck I’m wearing a combination harness and auto-inflating PFD (personal flotation device, a.k.a. life jacket). If I were to fall in the water the PFD would automatically release a small carbon dioxide cylinder inflating a horseshoe collar around my chest and neck. Still you’d have the problem of HJ sailing off at 6 or 7 knots. Diana Nyad or Michael Phelps wouldn’t stand a chance of catching her, and for sure I wouldn’t either. Attached to my harness/PFD I have a PLB, personal locator beacon. It’s about the size of a large cell phone. If floating alone in the ocean, I could activate the PLB and it would transmit a distress call with my latitude and longitude coordinates and, in theory, I’d be rescued before I became hypothermic (eternal hats off to the US Coast Guard and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force—may I never need them). Still, that’s not a good situation to be in.

As you’ve guessed, it’s much better to do whatever you can to not fall and stay with the boat. Therefore, I’ve spent a bit of time building a tether system on HJ. While I tested it in mild coastal sailing, I’m happy to say that it’s working great. Now that I have it, I’d never sail without it. My harness/PFD has a strong ring in the front of it, slightly above my belly button. Whenever I’m on-deck, or even in the cockpit, on open water and underway the goal is to be clipped-in to one of the six tethers strategically located around HJ’s 31 foot length and 10 foot beam (width). While none of it’s perfect and—as Bilbo Baggins said, “It’s a dangerous business going out your front door.” —it’s a lot and a lot of redundancy. When working on-deck in unfavorable conditions it’s also important to resist the temptation to get a sketchy situation over with quickly and move fast. It’s critical to move slow, take the time to unclip and clip from tether to tether and do your best to keep one hand on something solid.. Still, as climbers say, “At times, you just need to know when to not fall.”

With main double-reefed and yankee down and secured on deck, we sailed on toward our destination under much better control.

Sailing southeast and about 5:00 AM Thursday morning we began to see color in the sky. It felt good to know the sun would soon be up. We made landfall in Eleuthera about 7:30 AM. When we reached our waypoint in 30 feet of water, I started HJ’s 27 horsepower, 3 cylinder diesel auxiliary engine, dropped sail and motored several miles to Royal Island Harbor (25 degrees 31 minutes North, and 76 degrees 51 minutes). I anchored HJ in 13 feet of water, secured a few things on deck, cooked a nice breakfast and took a long, well-deserved nap.

Is there a moral to the story? Probably several hidden in there somewhere. What sticks with me is being on-deck organizing some sails and lines in rough the middle of the night after the diciest was over. In that moment, I thought about Colleen. What I thought about was that I hadn’t thought about her for several hours. The intensity demanded complete focus.

Thanks for reading and thanks for following along with me. While I love the solitude, it’s comforting to know that I have friends and family. I think about all of you so much and often imagine you’re with me.

I’m reading Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”. While I’d never compare his writing to mine, I find this quote of his inspirational:

\“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closed, but unused.”

“She was a rare thing, fine as a beeswing.
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away.
She was a lost child, she was running wild.
She said, ‘so long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay.’
And you wouldn’t want me any other way.”
—Richard Thompson, Beeswing

It’s 11:00 PM and I’m anchored up in 13 feet of water just west of Soldier Cay in the Berry Islands of the Bahamas (25 degrees 40 minutes North, 77 degrees 46 minutes West). It’s a beautiful night with the wind blowing 10 knots out of the northeast and Soldiers Cay protecting Hazel James and me from the open-water swell. The light from Arcturus, some 37 light years away, will be rising in the east soon. The mnemonic to remember is, “Follow the arc to Arcturus”—if you follow the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle, you’ll find the bright reddish star Arcturus. The light I’ll be seeing was generated 37 years ago, before Colleen and I met. Since that time, it’s been traveling at 186,000 miles per second. At the other end of the distance spectrum, Soldier Cay is less than half a mile long and a quarter mile wide at its widest. It’s uninhabited and a beautiful place to walk.

55 nautical miles east of us, across the Northeast Providence Channel lies Eleuthera. I hope to be sailing there through the night tomorrow night to arrive in the daylight with good visibility for costal piloting.

I’m listening to two songs and having a bit of a cry. “If We Were Vampires” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, and “Beeswing” by Richard Thompson. Although I quoted Dr. Seuss in an earlier post: ”Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”—that advice works some of the time, maybe a little bit more each day, but it doesn’t work all the time.

Colleen and I married young. On our August, 1990 wedding day she was 21 and I, 25. Funny coincidence, 1990 is also the year that Hazel James was built—we’ve all put some miles under the keel since then. Neither Colleen nor I pictured ourselves as marrying young but it just happened. It was so right and so perfect, and it seemed like we should just do it. We could then get on with our life together. We married after Colleen finished her undergraduate studies and I was a staff consultant at Arthur Andersen. At work I was borderline miserable, in life I was directionless. Colleen and I would talk for hours about just taking-off and disappearing—backpacking or cycling and camping, and hitting whatever Grateful Dead shows we could find.

Then one day—thankfully after we were married—she was, or perhaps we were, pregnant. If people plan and God laughs, this was God chuckling. As it turned out, it was the best thing that ever could have happened to us. In addition to a wonderful child and the drive to have a sibling for that child, it gave us both a sense of purpose and direction. By definition, any work becomes a lot more meaningful when you’re playing for keeps and have others depending on you. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Still, as I think about taking-off on this sailing voyage, I’m taken back to those early days of Colleen and me and our dreams of taking-off together. While there were a lot of bumps these last five years, since she’s gone I think less of the recent years and more about the past, when things were so much more carefree and seemingly with fewer consequences. I loved her and I wouldn’t want her any other way.

Wonderful dinner a couple nights ago at Brown’s Garden in the Berry Islands. Ronnie Brown is the rightfully proud proprietor. Featured dishes are conch and spiny lobster. I had the conch and it was out of this world.

When I had this dinner, I was in the marina so cycled to Ronnie’s on a marina bike (pictured in first photo).

Tonight I’m anchored up I the bay in front of Ronnie’s so I kayaked in for tonight’s dinner. I’m trying the lobster tonight.

The day looks good so I’ll be checking-out of the marina shortly and anchoring up outside. I’ve heard there’s a cool plane wreck to check out via kayak and snorkling, as well as a blue hole nearby. I think this is the plane incident (posted for all my pilot friends, you know who you are!). I’ve never seen a blue hole but am looking forward to it.

Given the weather and my routing, I probably won’t have wi-fi access until later next week. If I make any big moves, I’ll try to have my son Jack make a post. My plan is to be able to post again in Spanish Wells (we’ll see how that plan develops).

In the meantime, I’m excited about living off the grid on solar power, food and water onboard, and hopefully some fresh fish or conch.

Hazel James out.

Note: Bahamian wi-fi appears to be on “island time”so I can’t upload pictures. Thus, you’ll be getting 1,000 words with this post 😉

Spoiler alert…we made it! Hazel James and I made the passage from Florida to the Bahamas, and are now in the Berry Islands of the Bahamas. While I know that pride is one of the 7 deadly sins, it’s a pretty cool feeling to have successfully sailed from one country to another.

Building on my previous post (The Shakedown), I departed home on Saturday morning (1/18). The wind was out of the east at 20-25 knots (nautical miles per hour, 23-29 MPH). While the closest inlet to my house is Hillsboro Inlet, it’s small and shallow, and wind-driven ocean swells really stack up at the transition from inlet to ocean making it nasty to transit in a good blow. Thus, I opted to motor south in the Intracoastal Waterway for about 10 miles and enter the Atlantic at Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale. It’s full-fledged port that freighters and cruise ships use (if you’ve taken a cruise out of “Ft. Lauderdale” you’ve transited Port Everglades). Where Hillsboro Inlet can be as little as 5 feet deep, Port Everglades has a depth of at least 45 feet. When waves “feel the bottom”, they start to break—that’s bad.

After topping off my diesel tanks and getting out into the Atlantic, I had a spirited sail due south for 30 nautical miles to Biscayne Bay, just south of Miami, where I anchored up for the night. The reason I went south when I eventually wanted to go east, is the Gulf Stream. The Stream is moving northward at 2-4 knots off South Florida. Given Hazel James’ likely sailing speed of 4-6 knots, I wanted to start as far south as possible. Imagine swimming across a swiftly flowing river. If you try to swim perpendicular to the current, you’ll work really hard. If you walk upstream a ways and then do it, it’s a lot easier…same principle. After anchoring-up in 13 feet of water and sorting out some anchor and anchor chain issues, I heated up a can of chili in HJ’s galley on her propane stove and got a good sleep.

The next morning (Sunday 1/19), HJ and I headed east across The Stream. It was slow but peaceful going as the wind never came up to really drive HJ through the current. We were carried north about 30 nautical miles by the Gulf Stream as we were sailing east. All in all the passage was about 61 nautical miles from Biscayne Bay to a waypoint just north of the Great Isaac Cay Lighthouse. We reached the waypoint about 11:00 PM after 14 hours of sailing. HJ and I then entered the Northwest Providence Channel in the Bahamas and set a new waypoint for Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands of the Bahamas (“Cay” is pronounced “Key” and has the same meaning).

After midnight (MLK Day, Monday 1/20) the breeze picked up and shifted favorably making it a fast sail (>6 knots) for the 70 nautical miles from Great Isaac to Great Harbor Cay. Incidentally, just north of Great Harbor Cay are the two Stirrup Cays, Great Stirrup Cay and Little Stirrup Cay. Little Stirrup Cay was bought or leased by Royal Caribbean and dubbed “CocoCay”. I guess a marketing whiz determined that CocoCay sounds sexier than Little Stirrup Cay. I understand it’s been made into a “destination island” complete with swim-up bars and water parks. I gave that a wide berth.

On Monday morning I reached Great Harbour Cay and radioed Great Harbor Cay Marina to arrange for clearing customs and immigration (in many ways similar to doing so at an airport). When a vessel enters foreign waters, she’s to hoist a yellow “quarantine” flag in her starboard (right-side) rigging. This indicates that she and her crew and passengers have not yet cleared customs and immigration. Thus when I rounded the Great Isaac light some 70 nautical miles back, I had hoisted my quarantine flag. As I neared Great Harbor Cay, I dropped sails and motored into Great Harbor.

After clearing customs and immigration, per regulations, I lowered my yellow quarantine flag and hoisted the Bahamian flag in HJ’s starboard rigging. Since Hazel James is a U.S. vessel, we fly the stars and stripes off the stern (back of the boat). This configuration of flags (U.S. off stern and Bahamian in starboard rigging) indicates to all that HJ is a U.S. flag-state vessel who has been cleared to cruise Bahamian waters.

The last couple days I’ve been staying in the marina, enjoying a pot-luck dinner/party with marina staff and other cruisers, fixing and adjusting some things on HJ, exploring around the island on a borrowed bike, and waiting out some moderate gale-force winds.

Likely tomorrow (Thursday 1/23) I’ll depart from the marina and anchor-up outside the harbor for a couple days. It’s forecast to be light easterly winds through the weekend so hoping to find a nice, protected anchorage and do some snorkeling and exploring on my inflatable kayak. I’ll be waiting for some favorable winds (north, south or west) to make my next intended destination, the Eleuthera Islands and the village of Spanish Wells.

All-in-all a beautiful crossing. While I had some mechanical and other issues, so many things went right and all came together. More importantly, I had the tools and wherewithal to work-around, address and eventually fix the things that didn’t work or broke. Self-sufficiency is key and feels good.

Yesterday (1/21) was both my daughter Emma’s birthday and the 5-month anniversary of Colleen’s death—birth and death all wrapped in one. My son Jack is back in Florida and I was talking to him on the phone yesterday and he said, “Mom would be really happy you are doing this.” I’ve thought about that a lot and think he’s right.

Thanks for reading and following-along. Hazel James out.