The little engine that could...

Yesterday Dan and I fired up the little Westerbeke generator that came off the boat. He had just painted it the day before and it looks beautiful. Runs beautiful too. If not for Dan, I'd still be standing there with a blank stare on my face trying to figure out how to get it started. Well, not only did he get it started, he wired it, put new oil in it, painted it and hooked up the muffler. He ran it for a couple hours the day he painted it. Last night I listed it on Craig's List...pretty sure she'll sell quickly.

During these cold winter months I've been trying to stay motivated and focused on getting boat work done every weekend. If not up on the boat, working in Dan's garage on engines or writing copy for promoting the programs I'd like to offer. There's plenty of other work to be done other than standing up on the boat in the freezing cold.

The other good news from the weekend was that the Redskins gave the Cowboys the best ass-whuppin they've ever given. 35-7...

Keeping Christmas...

You’d think I would have learned by now. You’d think I’d know not to get my hopes up. But something about this time of year, something about the anticipation of home during Christmastime always snares my heart. As it should I suppose. There is something unchanging about Christmastime at my house. My mother has decked the house with Christmas regalia, which is always a surprising mix of old and new. I’m not sure when or where she seems to come up with these things, but they always seem to fit and seem as if they’ve belonged there from the beginning.

There’s a small die-cast Santa piggy bank I made in 8th grade shop that I search for every year, which looks more like an elf, hidden amongst the dozen other store bought Santas standing like sentinels atop the mantel. I wonder if anyone’s ever dropped a coin down the slot in his back. There’s a puny little red fedora with a green ribbon that’s been around since my dad was a child which my sister and I used to hide every year and my father would pretend it was lost forever, only to show up in the nick of time high on the Christmas tree while his back was turned. The famous red hat being second only of course to the quilted angel who always looks so uncomfortable crammed on top of the highest bough. I wonder what it’s like for an angel, who makes her home in the heavens, to have to bow her head down just to fit under the ceiling. I guess at least this way she gets to watch all the goings on beneath her station.

The chill air pushes it’s way down the chimney and through the leaky flu and fills the house with the smells of every fire that’s ever been burned in that fireplace. When there is a fire, which is most days, we sit on the raised brick hearth and cook our backs until we can’t take it any more, complaining that the fire really just sucks all the warm air that was left in the house right out the chimney into the night.

So I wonder why then, for all this tradition and warmth, all this wonder and anticipation, Christmas times have been some of the most lonely and sad in my life. Save of all the normal family drama played out year after year which is itself enough to drive most of us mad, why is Christmas, the embodiment of hope for things to come, so often only a painful reminder of things that have yet to come? When Christmas begins to fade, as it does so early in those dark December days, all the lights and candles that just the day before evoked such anticipation seem sadly dim, as if only a memorial that cannot possibly sustain hope until next year.

I remember being in the basement of my house in Virginia one Christmas night as the light had long since faded and most of my family had already gone off to bed. My new switch-track electric race cars whirred and clicked as lap after lap I watched the sparks fly in the dark and listened to the last of the Christmas music from a small transistor radio that somehow ended up in my stocking that morning. I remember being so sad that the day had ended and there I was, in the dark, by myself and nothing had really changed. Surely nothing so great as the anticipation of that day would suggest.

We’re in a tight spot, you and I, stuck between celebrating the birth of our hope for things to come and waiting in darkness for that same Christ to come yet again. For God’s sake please come again. With such little tolerance for waiting and such distaste for the nonchalance of miracle, it seems we’ve traded in celebrating a glimmer of hope as foolish as a baby in a manger for something much much bigger…A machine so powerful, so defiant as to drive darkness completely from the land. To wipe out all evidence that we must wait. We turn Christmas on its head because we can’t bare anything else. We turn Christmas on its head because to face Christmas would mean to smell the dung and feel the chill of the dark night of our lives, which is precisely what we don’t want to do.

Fire in the Belly...

I may have found two things I can't live without...

Well, even as I type that I realize the hyperbolic tone I've set. Perhaps for effect, perhaps for fun, perhaps because I have experienced these two things in the span of about 12 hours and am still feelin' it.

While one could argue the purely biologic necessities of O2,H2O, and maybe a little food here and there - I'll argue that I think I may perhaps prefer to starve to death or die of thirst before I have to die of starvation from people, from love, from community.

Which actually is closer to the reality that we all of us (to borrow a little riff from one of my literary heros Frederick Buechner) must suffer from time to time. At our most elemental level, our deepest core, I think what we most fear is pure isolation. Why then would some seem to choose it? Why do some seek out isolation? Why do I sometimes seek it out? Why do we all sometimes seem to want it? Well, something about choosing to be alone seems to relieve the pain of our unmet desire to NOT be alone. If we can kill the desire, the dissapointment won't hurt so much.

All that to say I think I may want to live out the rest of my days eating breakfast bagel sandwiches and drinking a fine Bourbon from time to time. Both I believe are made to be enjoyed once an occasion - but both leave you wanting another the instant the first has been finished.

The Bagel sandwich comes from my favorite little coffee shop downtown right near my office. An everything bagel, eggs, cheese, and some bacon all cooked up right in front of me.

The Bourbon is a relatively new thing for me really. While certainly I've had it before, I've recently had a friend introduce me to the enjoyment of it as a fine spirit. I've tried several different kinds recently and find I have a taste for some of the higher-end small batch varieties. Basil Hayden, Booker Noe, Maker's Mark, Knob Creek. But truth be told, much of the enjoyment as of late has come with the sharing of these with friends.

Fire in the belly - love in my soul

John and Kathy in the mix...

My parents were out for Thanksgiving this year and were able to come see the boat and help get her cleaned up a bit. We spent several hours organizing, vaccuming, sweeping, etc.. The boat is now ready for winter and ready for more work. It was so great to get my parents up there to see the progress. I continue to become more confident in the project and it's potential. Still a very long way to go, but I can see so much better these days.

Also, Dan and I got the generator (which we're planning on selling) fired up this weekend. She runs like a top. Hope to get some good cash for that beauty.

I've not had time to really think much about life the last few days, so for now it's not much more than a news report. Maybe later I'll have more to offer.

Peace Out

Stalk your calling...

I just read Dillard's Living Like Weasels again. Sometimes I swear she lives in a different plane of existence than the rest of us...thank God she comes down from time to time and gifts us with her visions. Below is the last paragraph or two from Weasels. It has sent me off on a little scavenger hunt, a stalking, if you will, for that which is utter necessity. Not that which I choose because it seems easiest, but that which I choose because it has chosen me and will not let me go.

"We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles."

Living Like Weasels...

Annie Dillard, one of my favorite writers, has a book called Teaching a Stone to Talk where she writes an essay on what she imagines it must be like to live like a weasel. It's been a while since I read it, but the gist of it is that a weasel will attach itself to the neck of a bird of prey and never let go, even after it's been devoured by the bird. The jaw bone will remain intact, even well after the bird itself has deceased. Reckless, passionate abandon with no fear of death or consequence of living a life so vital, so tenacious, so necessarily violent. I'm probably killing the essay here, so I'd recommend finding it yourself.

But, I've been thinking about weasels lately. Thinking about where tenacity comes from. My friend Sky has Thyroid Cancer and has a tenacious grip on life that I've rarely seen - especially in people who DONT have a life threatening illness. I think Sky's gonna be okay. I think Sky lives like a weasel.

I had my parents here for Thanksgiving this year and we spent the week on a beautiful yacht owned by a dear friend of mine. We feasted with family down in Olympia on Turkey Day (I recommend Steelhead as an option) and retreated aboard the yacht the rest of the week. And just for good measure, we put in two days work on the sailboat formerly named Tin Tin. My parents could not have been more helpful in getting her ready for the winter, and more inside work. She's inspiring.

Maybe I'll call her the "Weasel" 'cause she's so reckklessly tenacious.

There's a Cape Horn for Every Man...

Writes Melville, an ancient mariner and Horn rounder in his own right. Cape Horn, or "Cape Stiff" so named by the sailors who dared round during the days of sail, is the southern most tip of South America which lies in the Southern Ocean below about fifty degrees south latitude. The southern dividing line between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Home to the worst weather and seas in the world. In the old days, your chances of surviving a rounding of the Horn were slim at best. Yet, for many reasons, men continued to risk everything. Commerce, trade, war, and colonization drove men around and left many lost, frozen, and drowned never to be heard from again. There are bones of ships and men scattered around the Horn like a warning to all who might try.

The Horn remains an archetype of the ancient struggle between man and the sea. Both his desire and ambition and his nightmare and nemesis played out for hundreds of years. It makes me wonder, perhaps somewhat rhetorically, what drives men towards such peril. It also makes me wonder about a life lived purely for safety, security, and predictability. While such things are certainly nice to count on, I think they have a tendency to hollow a man's soul. I also think no matter how cautious one is, life will eventually deal you a blow that will test your mettle, leave you scapmering up the ratlines and clinging to the spar for dear life as your ship absorbes rogue waves that threaten to bring her down.

I think perhaps I rounded my own Horn this year. All things considered, a very fast passage and I dare say even in today's age, I came out far better than I would have if I was a sailor in the 19th or even early 20th Century. But I'm really still rounding. Perhaps I've crossed the line, but like a sailor in the Southern Ocean, I'm prepared to be driven back again by the squalls of life.

I'm just waiting for the "all hands lay aloft" call.

All the roots grow deeper when it's dry

I took this picture today, with my new camera, while I worked alone. Sometimes when I'm up there alone, I feel such relief, such contentment. Mostly I think it's because for so many months I've been so overwhelmed by this whole thing. But now, when I can climb the ladder and actually get to work and see change, I feel like I'm settled into the rythym of the project. This is what I committed to, this is what I thought it would be like. Just not so damn cold.

I've been thinking alot about what it means to commit to something so much bigger than I am. It takes such sacrifice, such willingness to suffer for what I love. I'm finally getting used to it. The risk is there, and I've already paid so dearly, given so much. But I think for some reason we're made to live like this...to love like this. This boat is more than a boat for me to go sailing on. This boat is a metaphor for my life. I'm only now begining to see the picture. It will take months and years to see the rest of it but for now I see one thing clearly. To love without risk is foolish and impossible.

Bird By Bird...

Lately I've been coming to grips with the reality of this project. But I'm feeling surprisingly more at rest with it. When I first went to San Diego in February to prep the boat for transport by truck, I was so overwhelmed and anxious I literally didn't sleep for two straight nights. During the day I worked like a crazed madman. It's surprising I didn't fall off the boat then. I was by myself, sick with anxiety, and so full of adrenaline I worked for hours without sleep, food, or even water. Climbed all over the boat like a monkey and yanked more hardware off the boat than I ever imagined possible.

Well now, as I'm actually able to see and affect progress, I'm gaining a much more "Bird by Bird"-like approach. You just have to break daunting things like this down into manageable bites. Given our pace, we're really making great progress. The decks, as you can see, are completely filled, faired, and sealed with a high-build epoxy. The house, cockpits, and trunk cabin are nearly prepped for painting and hatch replacement.

We've been removing some of the poorly designed and useless systems and glassing over them so you'll never know they were there. This boat is going to be very clean and simple with an aesthetic that will match her sexy lines and ingenious rig. Our priority is to finish off the decks, house, hatches and portlights, drop the engine in, and paint the hull and bottom. Then pop her in the water to finish the interior and rigging.

By my math, we'll be done in a couple weeks.

The Age of Sail::.

This term has so many meanings for me this year. One, today is my 35th birthday. I have entered the 36th year of my life, mostly by miracle, certainly by love, perhaps by luck, and definitely by the skill and care of an excellent hospital. I truly love Harborview Medical Center and often go back to 4West, the rehab floor where I spent two weeks, to visit the team of people who worked with me. In fact in two days, I return to 4West to undergo an extensive Neuropsych Evaluation to determine if there are any lingering or permanent deficits in my functioning. While I don't really notice anything, I'm nervous about what they will find that I don't want to be true.

As friend of mine said to me, "Seems you've had many "birthdays" over the past year. When you spoke your first words after the fall. When you were released from the hospital. When you had your final surgery. When you re-started your practice."

This is a monumental year for me that feels very much like a first year. Truly a birth day. God only knows where it will go from here, but I know that this boat will come with me.

Here's to this year.

On A Day When the Wind is Perfect...

This poem by Rumi has me transfixed. While I like poetry and how it speaks so uniquely to the heart, I've not often been transfixed by it. Mostly because I don't spend time with it. This poem, however hit me right where it counts.

On a day when the wind is perfect,
The sail just needs to open
and the world is full of beauty.

Today is such a day.
There's a breeze that can enter your soul.
This love that I know plays the drum

Arms move around me.
Who can contain their self before this beauty?

On a day when the wind is perfect,
The sail just needs to open and the love begins.

Today is such a day.
Today is such a day.

The Way of A Ship

I've been reading "The Way of A Ship" by Derek Lundy lately. It is both beautiful and daunting.. His great grandfather, Benjamin Lundy, was a crewman in the Fo'c'sle' of the Beara Head, one of the last great sqaure riggers to work in the last days of the age of sail. Derek is truly the son of a son of a sailor and masterfully weaves both the story of his great grandfather's journey around the Horn (southern most tip of South America) aboard the Beara Head and the decline of the age of sail as it gave way to the steam ships of the industrial revolution.

This book is particularily compelling to me during this boat project because it only heightens the romance of ships and the sea and the men that sail them. However, it also sheds light on the often gruesome picture of life aboard a ship in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lundy frequently references the work of Conrad, Melville and Dana - all of whom spent considerable time "before the mast" in the age of sail. Conrad being the most accomplished of the three actually finished his sailing career as a captain, only quitting the life at sea to start a writing career.

Lundy, himself a sailor, lives in the San Juans and actually sailed the same route his great grandfather took on the Beara Head before he wrote this book. He's also written a book called "Godforsaken Sea" which I've yet to read but it's clearly on my list.

If you are drawn to the sea and ships that sail, you should definitely read this book. it will open up your eyes to the history of sail.

It's a Long Way Down...

this is the actual spot where the steel stanchion (these hold lifelines up) broke when I was trying to straighten it. The green tarp about 17' below is where I landed.

Sometimes it looks far enough to do some damage, but not far enough to right oneself and land feet first. I guess I'm like a cat only in that I seem to have several lives, given this isn't the first near miss I've ever had. Well, I guess I wouldn't call this a miss, but a direct hit...on my head. Also, if I'd landed on my feet, I'd probably have broken a leg or ankle or two. I guess I have that to be thankful for.

Queen of the Slipstream

Van Morrison sings a song called "Queen of the Slipstream" that I just love. I'm thinking of naming my boat Queen of the Slipstream - but it's quite long for the stern of a boat, even if it's a big boat. Thoughts?

I was explaining what a slipstream was to a friend of mine back in March, when I was recovering back in Virginia. Chances are you've experienced one before. It's what cyclists or race car drivers experience when they get behind aother cycle or car and "draft" them. In this case, it's a powerful and highly sought after force that uses the other to both block wind ahead and use the "slipstream" to pull you ahead using much less energy.

In nautical terms its virtually the opposite. See, ususally being in the "slipstream" of another sailboat will only disrupt the very wind you are trying to capture and harness for your benefit. In racing terms it's called catching somebody's "dirty air". Not good.

There are times when the slipstream is all you want and times when it's the last thing you want. We were talking about my dream of getting this boat and what it ended up costing me. It seems that if we are to live with passion, for our dreams, we must be willing for them to cost us our lives. In so many ways, they always do. Perhaps not always literally, but certainly in essence. To follow a dream that is bigger than we are. That calls us to more than we think we can manage is always a recipie for suffering and sometimes even dying. This by no means implies that every person who lives for a dream is choosing a foolish dream - like taking a barrel over Niagra Falls - but that people who choose to live a life of passion and dreams are willing to open themselves up to suffering for that dream.

So much of our culture, even our Western Christian culture which happens to own the most dramatic example of suffering for passion, dreams, and love, seems hell bent on the avoidacne of pain and suffering. Clearly, nobody in their right mind would choose to suffer just for the fun of it, but it seems a life well worth living will encounter suffering at some level. In fact, a life lived only to avoid suffering seems rather dull, empty and miserable anyway.

Not sure why I'm pontificating about this all because of a Van Morrison song. Really, I think it just may be a love song anyway. "You have crossed many waters to be here". Who ever said that to love another wouldn't cost dearly and maybe even your life?

Ships are Safe at Harbor

But that's not what ships are for.....

That's a song by Michael Lilly that wrecks me. I usually play it for anybody I can and most definitely play it for participants on my boat trips.

While this blog is mostly dedicated to the life of this rebuild project, I'm sure it's going to veer into other areas of my life. In fact, this boat project is about much more than just a boat project. This is about my life. This is about my choice to throw my hat over the proverbial wall. So I think there will be some updates on the details of the rebuild project, but mostly my thoughts on what this means for my life. What the wind and water mean to all of life.

To sail you must allow the natural to happen. You must allow for the mystery of life to take over. To truly be alive to sailing one must be alive to the mystery of life. The uncertain and unknown. We must give ourselves to the fluid world of wind and water and sky. If you are determined to know, to control where you begin and end, you will be miserable to the flux of the wind water and sky.

While it may be possible to harness the wind and take it where we want to go, or have it take us where we want to go, it is always lucky. A gift. Like men who climb the world’s highest mountains, we must enter the world of water and wind with reverence and awe. With a sense that we’ve been gifted with exactly what we need to get where we’re going. With the knowledge that the sea can turn on a dime and kill you. That the wind can do a 180 and send you off in any direction as long as it’s not where you want to go.

Could it be true that just about any voyage on a sailboat should be celebrated upon safe return to the dock? Even if it’s just a short little sail on a short little boat.

Being open to the flux and thankful for the coming home seems vital.

the birth of a dream...

It's a strange phenomenon to depend on somebody else to recount your life to you, to borrow memory. Or rather, to have somebody tell you without even asking them. That's about how it happened to me back in March when I had folks filling me in on the events of the previous two weeks of my life. Which, outside of being born, turned out to be the two most epic and precarious weeks of my existence on this earth.....more on that later.

Let me back up, while I can, and tell you how I got to that point. For years I have loved to sail. I'll tell the story of how I started sailing later, but for now I'll just say that the wind and the water, experienced from a sailing vessel has a grip on my soul that just wont let go.

Mix that with the grip of being a therapist, experiencing first hand the stories, drama, tragedy, and wonder of "the other" and I have a recipie for the events of this year. A couple years ago my dear friend Doug Shirley and I decided to combine our interests in experiential, relationally based counseling weekends and offer mens sailing weekends on Augusta, Dan Blanchard's beautiful 4o' yacht. The wild success of these weekends led me to start dreaming about getting a boat of my own (something I've always wanted anyway) to offer these experiences to people.

In November of 2004 Dan tipped me off to an opportuinty to acquire a 55' beauty (Tin Tin) for the cost of trucking it up to Seattle. We flew down to San Diego in December to have a look at this delapitated beauty. It turned out that she wasn't really delapitated, just taken apart and needing to be put back together. Having Dan, who's been around boats forever and could forget more than I'll ever know about boats, to look at her was so important. Needless to say, when I looked at it, I said, "I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin".

Well, after perhaps one of the most tumultuous decision making processes of my life, I decided to go for it and follow the dream. To get this boat and restore her back to her glory so I could take people out and provide potentially live changing experiences was the dream.

On February 18th of 2005, the boat showed up after a 4 day journey up the coast. She stood about 15' on the trailer so the route the trucking company had to take was rather circuitous and required pilot cars the whole way. Dan, Clinton and I went to meet her in Everett and share the excitement of Tin Tin's arrival and the begining of the project.

February 19th, 2005 - a date that will never be forgotten for many. Clinton, Eric and I met to build a rain cover for the boat to keep her dry during the winter. Luckily, it was a beautiful day so we could get lots done. After a trip to Lowes and lunch at a little Mexican restaurant, we climbed up on the boat to get to work. This is where my memory stops and doesn't start until around March 4th.

While inspecting the deck on the port side near the bow, I apparently bent down and began to yank on a stanchion that had been bent down for delivery. I must have been pulling quite hard because the steel broke (it was weakened by the crimp from bending it) and I launched forward, which was outboard, over the side. With an "oh shit!!!" I fell 16' down to the hard gravel yard on to my head. The detailed account of the month I spent in the hospital can be found at www.fogblog.net .

The summary is that I was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center where they performed an emergency Crainiectomy to remove nearly half of the right side of my skull to allow for my injured brain to swell without killing me and to minimize the permanent brain damage - usually a forgone conclusion in cases like this.

My skull was stored in a freezer for three months while I recovered and I got put back together on May 2oth. Now I have my head back together and am as close to 100% as I can tell. Needless to say the recovery has been nothing short of a miracle. see the above mentioned blog to read more....

So here I am, alive and well and working on the boat that nearly cost me my life to restore her and my dream to glory. This blog is dedicated to chronicling that journey.

She Will Sail Again One Day....

This the original brochure picture of Tin Tin. She was built by Cheoy Lee Shipyards in 1986. There were only two Pedrick 55's built and the boat formerly known as Tin Tin eagerly awaits to feel the wind and ply the waters. Many more photos of her in her current condition will follow.

Resurfacing

This will be a place to follow the progress of the Cheoy Lee Pedrick 55 formerly named Tin Tin, the musings and mania of her owner(s) and the spiritual birth and rebirth of anybody that chooses to love such a dream.

Who knew such a windfall could cost so much?