Several times I've started an entry like this, to try and explain what's going on, but never finished it; Often, it gets caught up in the background details and ends up looking like whining or ranting. So how about I tell you what's happening, and only drop a hint or two as to why. If you don't get it (and I'm guessing many will not), 5 paragraphs of ranting won't help.
It's no secret that my life changed greatly in mid-2008 when we abandoned the mainland for the island life; The rate of that change has built since then, slowly at first, and becomes now such a force as can hardly be adequately chronicled. It will be hard to nail down the exact day that I stopped being a computer person who played with boats, and started being a boat person who played with computers, but I am relatively certain that centerline was crossed this year. Beyond this, it is also true that the lives of Grace and myself continue to tumble away from the traditional American rat race of debt-fueled consumption that compels work.
I aggressively pursue all available recreational boating hours, with the intention of logging these towards the experiential requirement of a USCG 100-ton Master license, preferably with a sail endorsement. Yes, sail, I sail too. We'll get to that. Also, we ditched the unfortunate inboard/outboard propelled bowrider by way of Craigslist (and an enterprising fellow from Miami who was all too eager to pick it up) and replaced it with this:
It's a late-1990s 17-foot Angler, with a (2-stroke) Johnson 88 Special outboard engine, and a nice Garmin chart plotter with depth transducer. A foot shorter than the bowrider, and a few hundred pounds lighter, but easily twice the boat. Also the only boat we ever trailered and launched. It's shown here sitting in about a foot of water on the sandbar south of Lois Key.
Shortly after getting and launching this boat, Grace and I were married at the Marathon courthouse by an assistant clerk, on our sixth anniversary. Married life has been incredibly happy, and I've no doubts whatsoever that it was the right choice. I have a wife who loves the sea, maybe even more than me.
Shortly after this, I joined the Key West Community Sailing Center and began taking regular lessons. Here's a shot I took as I worked the starboard jib sheet on an Oday 19 (next week, I start singlehanding). These photos are somewhat rare, as being a sailing student demands attention, and more often than not, electronics are left at the clubhouse and not taken aboard. You may imagine I'm a very eager student, reading all the books I possibly can, and sailing as often as I possibly can.
But since sailing lessons only happen on weekends, and I still have to build sea time, this means we fire up the powerboat often. Since the Angler is a relatively skinny-water boat, it can even go into the backcountry at lowest-low tide (the bowrider could only go on a relatively high tide). So my new wife and I often find ourselves scouting around Johnston Key Channel, Pumpkin Key, and so forth. Pictured above is a baby blacktip shark off our port bow.
All this learning also requires playtime, and for that, there are our friends The Yankee Freedom, whose amazing catamaran ferry takes us to Dry Tortugas National Park. We were here last week, and despite the presence of numerous moon jellies, we snorkeled for hours around the pilings near the northern beach on Garden Key, and saw enormous brain coral, mangrove snapper, parrotfish, angelfish, crabs, and who knows what else. We gotta get an underwater camera to show you this stuff. We didn't know until we got home, that the area is marked 'advanced snorkelers', which is not a term we'd generally applied to ourselves.
Nice shark cloud, eh? Well anyway, there's also the things you can't photograph. We don't have cable television. Careful management of air conditioning and computers has resulted in a nearly-$50 savings on our power bill (and we are still scheming for another $50). Driving the car isn't something we do very often, due to the expense of gasoline. Preparation of three vegetarian meals per day by Grace is the rule, not the exception. I quit my job of nearly 12 years and rely solely on a single consulting gig, whose hours of operation I enforce strictly. I no longer read websites pertaining to world news, politics, or finance (why keep punishing yourself with depressing news when there's an ocean to deal with?). Positive changes like these are occurring monthly. Weekly. Daily.
I don't know what we've become anymore, but I like it much more than what we were. All of our precious animals (who get walked, played with, and petted now more than ever) do too.
This is what we have been up to in 2011. But it also is not these things, it is a gestalt, a psychological pattern greater than the sum of these parts. If you get it, I'm glad. If you don't, that's cool too. You can't find it on television.