So, to me, what the Deepwater Horizon oil spill proves is that, as a country, America is screaming NIMBY. I guess this oil spill proves that Americans only have the cajones to inflict this sort of pollution in Nigeria and other places on the globe with fewer restrictions and securely out of sight and out of mind.

Do we want oil and energy independence or not?  It is time to be honest with ourselves?  The collapse of industry and production in the United States has been a godsend for environmentalists as rivers, lands, lakes, food, and water tables are not spontaneously combusting like they did in the 70s and 80s. However, what is the cost?

Sure, import oil is cheaper and we get to use up everyone else’s reserves and leave ours intact; however, isn’t it also nice for us to be able to deny the fact that cheap oil, like cheap sneakers and polo shirts, comes often with a terrible price: slave wages and labor, no oversight or government environmental restrictions, and no concern for the short or long-term health or safety of anyone besides ourselves.

Well, that’s OK because it’s Not In My Country (NIMC) or Not in My Country’s Back Yard (NIMCBY) — heck, it’s easier to just say it’s Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY).  Leave it at that.

To me, there is more concern over the Gulf proper than in what desperate and risky oil drilling and production mean for the entire planet and for people around the world and their habitats.

I am not making any excuses for what happened — it was mismanagement and corruption, pure and simple.  Very literally the day when Russian Roulette stopped being exciting, profitable, and a winner’s game.  That said, the spill in the Gulf of Mexico is only the largest spill in American history and not in world history.

Also, I am looking into my crystal ball and seeing this happening again and again into our future.  We want that oil — and the economy and profits surrounding oil and minerals — much more than we want happy shrimpers and downy waterfowl, much the same way we want the economy and profit surrounding war more than we want happy, in-tact, sane, and innocent 18-24-year old service men and women.

More on this later.

This photo is what will represent me at borders for the next decade, until I am 50! Off to Mexico City at the end of the month — 22nd July — for a wedding and my passport expired on 09 August 2010 so I am expediting the renewal process. San Francisco is such a convenient rock star city.

I am so drawn to the aesthetic of the design concrete-rich Habita Hotel in Monterrey, Mexico — this will surely influence my next apartment, that’s for sure! Via the Contemporist: Habita Monterrey Hotel by Landa Architects and Joseph Dirand

The Habita Hotel in Monterrey, Mexico, opened in 2008, and was designed by Landa Architects with interiors designed by Joseph Dirand. Via the Contemporist

I have always had a terrible time keeping my space clean and organized. Everyone knows that who knows me. Although I can keep myself and my work orderly, I find myself overwhelmed with clutter. I finally have the kind of solution I can live with, and its come to my attention as a direct result of my seven-week trip last month.

Sailing from Acapulco to Los Angeles on a forty-two-foot sailing catamaran, Kinship II, required keeping my world simple and minimal.  The only personal things I owned fit into my orange Ortlieb messenger bag and a Domke camera bag.

When I got home I realized that in order to live cleanly and have my apartment – my vessel – remain ship-shape every day, I would need to bring some of the esprit de corps I was able to habituate during my journey back with me to 14^th Street, SE.

So I have been doing a very aggressive and therapeutic purge – a pogrom if you will – of the stuff in the apartment that is non-essential. By non-essential, I mean almost anything and everything that I have not at least enjoyed from afar within the last six months.

I have been getting rid of so much stuff and the place looks markedly better.  So much better, in fact, that when Wendy came over last night, she was bowled over.  See, Wendy hates the Hill and really dislikes the Grotto.  The Grotto is no place for the light of heart.  I don’t own a TV, I don’t have very many comfortable chairs, and all the surfaces are made of red tile.  The Grotto is underground and oftentimes can be a little damp; other times, the Grotto is completely soggy.

But for now, its my home and I am completely happy to be here with the exception of when it becomes a pig sty.  My mind became so clear while traveling and I have come up with an incredible insight into how to make my designer-class pad into the minimalist haven of cool that it is often perceived to be during the famed and heralded Grotto parties.

The best way to make sure I continue to keep my ship in shape is to separate my stuff into two classifications: private stuff and public stuff.  Private stuff is as simple as the possessions I carried with me to Mexico.  In my bags and pockets. The public stuff include the cleaning supplies, the workstation I leave online and up, the kitchen wares, the books in the shelves, and all the towels and rolls of TP that allow this house to run smoothly.  And when any of the private things clutter the public space, including the second bedroom, the living room, and the second bathroom, then its my responsibility to make sure that that space is suitably sterilized.

And if I can do this, then I can sustain a very minimal and clean space, a space lacking both clutter but also a space that is always inviting to both guests and friends, a space that won’t require hours upon hours of scrubbing and rushing about in order to entertain.  I have tried to accomplish this kind of essential living through inflicting upon myself a great amount of self-discipline; unfortunately, I don’t have the discipline required to keep this kind of  plan over so much stuff current and contained.  The only solution which would allow me to contain clutter, keep order, maintain minimalism, and live simply while still keeping all public spaces sterile and inviting is to get rid of anything and everything that I don’t absolutely and completely need.  If I have not used it or thought of it; if I know that I won’t regret it, then it needs to go.  It needs to be disposed of my way of eBay, Riverby books, a garage sale, or the dump.  Most everything finds its way to the dump, and although there might be better ways of assuring that my stuff keeps on bringing joy to others, sometimes its really not worth the extra energy.  So it goes.

I still support the rent of a storage space and that is my next goal: I don’t want to maintain a storage space.  Do I really need all of my college stuff?  Will there be any regret in my heart if I were to get rid of stuff?  Do I long to explore my father or mother’s legacy in stuff?  The answer is for the most part, no.  And so it goes.  And so it goes.  It has, it is, and it shall.

And my sanity will most assuredly be assured.

Mark and I sailed Kinship II from Cabo – the last place from which I reported – to a small fishing village named Bahía Tortuga, or Turtle Bay.

Turtle Bay was a reluctant stop. We wanted to come in, fuel up, and then head out. Charlie’s Charts recommended Jorge, and he was the first person to zip up the Kinship in his outboard.

We decided to come to shore, to get our clothes washed, and by the time we knew it, we needed to stay over a couple days. When we wanted to go anywhere from the ship, we needed to reassemble a dinghy. Our dinghies are collapsible like origami, so once we gracefully unfold it and put it together and then mount the outboard, we are probably going to stay a couple days anyway.

Turtle Bay was nothing much. A dusty town with a couple hustlers and a single generous soul, Jorge. Jorge is an amazing fellow and although he now works for tips in aid of the Cruisers coming in and out of the bay, he was once the area’s heroic figure. He is mythologized for his prowess in catching Abalone.

Supposedly, he was able to single-handedly catch so many that it was worth his while to wildly overfish and then to be fined because the kind of profits he would make off his catch could easily be paid without hurting profits. Until a decade ago, Jorge was making well over $100,000 USD and his exploits are the stuff of legend. That was, until the abalone were fished out. The grand industry of he area, culminating in an abalone-canning factory, suffered a sudden and devastating death.

As we took that extra day, we also lost the weather. We began to get to know the local cruisers and found out that there was a sudden storm that was buffeting Tijuana and mangling the weather for San Diego – our goal – and the sailing up the coast of Baja California. We stayed for a few days until we heard that the coast was clear, but it seemed like it took forever. It felt like it. The town was unpaved; the only Internet was expensive, dial-up, and often broken. I missed Wendy and we were so close to being back in the US.

Luckily, we really hit it off with Jorge and his family. From that moment on it was truly amazing.

As they do, Kinship’s twin diesels were leaking oil and we were running low. Mark decided at the last moment that we should grab some oil before leaving town – just to be safe (Mark’s rally cry the entire time). Jorge was the obvious person to ask. We dropped by and met Jorge’s lovely life, Irma. She really took to us and before we knew it, we were watching local coverage of the war, chatting about the battles and the coverage, discussing the politics of the US as it relates to the rest of the world, namely Mexico. Namely, Irma’s living room. As we waited to see if Jorge could get us the oil, Irma fed us something she calls “Abalone Cream” which is quite a famous and rare local dish and Irma’s specialty. She served it with crackers and what it amounted to was an abalone pâté. It was amazing, but nothing compared to the dinner and evening together.

I plead ignorant now because although I sort of knew that eating in Latin America is quite different than it is in the US, I forgot since we never really ate with Mexicans. When we came to dinner with three six packs of Dos Equis beer at around seven, we were the only ones there. Our dinner was waiting for us, and it was simple fried fish with rice and a salad garnished with the most delicious tortillas I have ever tasted, but we were alone.

Irma told us that Mexicans have a huge feast of the day at around noon and that in the evening there was really no required meal aside from snacks.

So, we ate alone for a while until the posse returned to the house. Apparently, Jesus was visiting after ten long years away and it was time to feast later that night. Lucky for us because along with the crowd came a huge web bag full of live, fresh, and local oysters.

For the rest of the night, I feasted, I glommed, I slurped, and I gorged on fresh Pacific oysters on the half shell. At first I tried not to be selfish; I tried to appreciate how expensive these oysters would be in DC, but it was all irrelevant, now wasn’t it? There were honestly more oysters than anybody there could consider eating.

I started by being a purist. I slurped the live fleshy bottom feeders without anything more then their brine. Fresh, salty, and a little tinny. Then, when I moved past the fear of limited supply, I began to enjoy the oysters as the locals do: a large splash of hot sauce and a pinch of sea salt, downed with a nice draught of beer.

Jesus’ feast. Well, this Jesus was from Ventura, CA, and worked as a cable guy. He wore black t-shirts and he and his Enseñada wife (he had another one in Ventura) and their loads of kids were very excited to hang out with us. He spoke English faster than a New Yorker and insisted on speaking to us in English, even though it wasn’t necessary. He buzzed around and never stopped moving. He was so incongruous with the scene: the sleepy dusty rural former cannery perched on the edge of the tranquil turtle bay and this LA Mexicano blur blur blurring, bragging his success in the US, and driving us around in his Toyota SUV, around town, showing us where he suggests we invest in real estate, where he wants to invest. Jesus wants to make Turtle Bay into the next Cabo San Lucas, to be sure.

When the night was over, I was a little drunk, thoroughly well-fed, and probably way too potent – after all those oysters – to be living such an ascetic life for such a long time so far away from such a wonderful woman.

Come morning, we buzzed back in, gave Irma a hug, discovered Irma loves cashew nuts which we will send her by post, and then said goodbye to Jorge and his enormous and lovely extended family. Supposedly, there are only two families in Turtle Bay.

I prepped the boat, folded up the dink, secured all the fuel, brought up the anchor, and we were off like a heard of elephants – the next stop San Diego. We buddy sailed for about forty-five minutes until we realized that we were not able to keep up with our buddy boat. Afterwards, we left all the other boats behind as they were waiting waiting waiting for more perfect weather. Since Mark and I don’t get sea sick, and since the time went tick tick tick, we took to the sea and bashed bashed bashed all the way back under the mantle of the frustrating motor sailing.

My spiritual experience of sailing during Lent during my Jesus year birthday of 33 and all the important lessons and experience I have been lucky to have as a result.

Although I am a member of the Vestry of Saint James’ and its currently both the most exciting time and my favorite time on the Church calendar, Lent, I responded to the call of my best friend Mark when he asked me to come to Mexico to help him complete his sail from Charleston, SC, to Los Angeles, CA. I joined the sail on March 1, spent my birthday on the boat, and find myself stuck in Cabo San Lucas over a month later. What I have realized is that sailing allows one to better understand the nature of God‘s grace in my life. Little did I know that it would be as much help to me as it has been to him.

I have been following Mark’s journey from his former home in Charleston and living vicariously. We have been best friends since we met at University during my first year at GWU. We were both on the crew team and have been best friends ever since — more like brothers than mere college chums. I have never sailed with Mark, even though he lives and works from the deck and cabin of a gorgeous yacht catamaran named Kinship II. I have never been much of a sailor and so much of my sailing enjoyment has been vicarious. It just never interested me and Mark never really pressed the issue.

A little over a month ago, Mark called me and told me that the crew of six he started with in South Carolina had started abandoning the vessel beginning at the first stop after a grueling trek from the Keys all the way to Central America, through the Panama Canal, and back up the Pacific coast of Mexico. The faithful remnant left in Acapulco because their money had run out and the time schedule had slipped and slipped and slipped, as sailing schedules are wont to do.

So, when Mark suggested that he would pay for me to fly to Acapulco to join the crew – him – I took this as one of those veiled manly calls for help which never really show either fear or desperation. When you spend time with men’s men, you have to read between the lines. I was in Acapulco within five days. I might have hurt a relation with a client and leaned on my lovely friend Sarah a little too much, to say nothing of the strain on my new and wondrous relationship with Wendy, but it was Mark! The brother I never had.

We burnt two weeks moored off of the Club de Yates de Acapulco as most of the beatings that Kinship II had suffered on the long passage through the Gulf, along Central America, through the Panama Canal, and up along the Pacific coast were being healed by our angel, Gabriel, who took the time and the pride to get us up to ship shape.

I have been officially sailing the Pacific sea since the first day of Lent, 5 March. An equal time has been spent stuck in port and harbor as it has been sailing miles offshore; some of it has been gentle and awe-inspiring while other parts have been punishing and trying. Although I have not officially given up anything for Lent save my job, I have been able to use the time to become more essential.

Things have been very difficult for me over the last year or so, at least since 9-11, but including the technology crash. Technology and the internet is the basket I had been placing all of my eggs and I had been compensated very well for it. During the last six months, I have be grasping at straws, asking myself what I want to do with the rest of my life. Become a lawyer? Go to business school? Pursue a PhD?

I was stuck in a myopic infinite loop. My priorities, my goals, my desires, and my true wants and needs were befuddled and unclear. Sadly, I have unintentionally hurt people as they were caught in my personal panic as I desperately searched for my equilibrium while not giving myself either the time or the slack with which to find it.

On 8 March, in addition to everything else, I became 33, which to everyone I have spoken to at Saint James´ and elsewhere is my “Jesus year.” The age Jesus the Christ died for our sins, allegedly. Lord knows this was renting space in my mind as the date approached. Lord knows that there was no way I could even remotely find the time or the money to be able to take this time to both help my friend and save myself. But there it was, and I am still sailing with a lot of help from my friends.

Sailing takes time, and it takes its own time which has nothing to do with either my desire or the requirements of society. The moment one becomes willful enough to disrespect the nature of the sea is the day something breaks. Its as simple as that and is kind of spooky at first. Easy as she goes. Cliché sentiment seem to reverberate on the sea. The 96-hour passages blur one into the other into one long day, and when the limits of my tolerance were reached I was rewarded with a pod of a hundred dolphins dancing in and out of my wake. Or a field of basking green sea turtles in the middle of the sea. Or a dense morning fog clearing to a double rainbow.

God can be very remedial in his lessons when you are sailing. He also protects fools and drunks and I am most certainly a fool at the very least. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and Karma is direct, reciprocity is king on the sea. When I am tempted to be willful and push myself past either my abilities or my energy, I always either hurt myself or break something onboard. This is not a joke. It seems gentle — the sea always does — but it is life or death.

The lesson I have learned thus far is that there is a definite rhythm I have been blind to, within which everything works beautifully.

As a striking example, last week we were on route from Manzanillo to Cabo San Lucas and it was to be a milk run. Easily enough diesel to motor from where we were anchored at the Las Hadas Resort to where we were to moor in Cabo San Lucas. First impossibility: we ran out of diesel prematurely because the engine was detuned and was drinking the fuel quickly. So we ran out with just enough to bring us in to port when we finally made it to port, which was still 150 miles away. That’s okay, we have a sailing catamaran. We sail easily in 5 knot winds. During the second day, the main sail halyard snaps at the block, at the top of the mast. That’s okay, we have a redundant halyard — which snaps four hours later! We string up the Genoa line and limp the rest of the way. Impossible, but normal I guess.

Things like this happen a lot. When we arrived at Cabo San Lucas, we could not find anyone who would climb the mast, until we ran into Sebastian and his family, from Vancouver, BC. He shimmied up the mast for free and we were back on schedule. We ran into many people like Seb along the way and the Cruiser community around the world is amazing generous.

Sartre was wrong, hell is not other people: grace is other people.

Every day of this trip has humbled me; every day has given me confidence. Not once have I felt humiliation and every day has been a celebration. The confidence not to fear what will happen next, to remain present and observant, to remain vigilant but not aggressive. And I have been thriving and I am strong and worthy of supporting Captain Mark as his only crew and of protecting the delicate fiberglass exoskeleton Kinship II so that she is seaworthy and makes her voyage to Los Angeles on one pristine piece.

On the sea, nothing needs to be forced, nothing needs to be rushed; in fact, there are very few things that can be rushed. I have had to turn on the hourly chime on my wristwatch because I have experienced a couple of these 96-hour days. Time shrinks and expands. Being on watch exacerbates this experience. Time is relative in a practical sense as it can stretch or compress, and some nights I have been on a watch for what feels like an hour starting at 0100 and then the sky lightens and turns pink and the morning comes. Other times, I fight for wakefulness and after making a go of trying, I wake Mark and ask him to take the watch instead so that I can catch some sleep for a little while. This is too much to risk, too much to lose, if I were to try any harder and fall deep into an exhausted sleep leaving no one at all to keep an eye out for cruise ships or super liners.

What’s on the line is the safety of the boat — a quarter-million-dollar investment – and the safety of the crew. There is only one person, usually sleepy and bored, who takes watch and single-handedly keeps the fragile and absurdly delicate vessel going 8 knots out of the way of container ships moving at 25 knots. There is a feeling of trust, the kind of confidence-building experience that can easily undo damage done in the workaday world of corporate America, can rebuild the confidence and self-love that might have blossomed in simpler times. I know they did for me. On the sea, either alone or with a crew, one can renew one’s faith in oneself and others.

Post Enron, dot-com, 9-11, and Clinton, my world changed in significant ways. I am a pretty technologically-savvy fellow and when I graduated from GW in 1993, during a low point in employment and jobs, I became an internet and web developer in addition to photography and writing. Although a student of literature at University, I didn’t choose graduate school right away but instead became part of the great excitement of the dot-com explosion. I have been using the internet since a bet version of Mosaic; since I played with MacWeb, when I noodled with lynx. I am pre-internet and as a teen I was part of the BBS culture. It was natural for me to join the excitement and during the 90s I didn’t explore graduate school or law school, but rather put all my eggs into the internet economy. And I was rewarded for a time.

Recently, times have become tough and I have lost much of my confidence in my choices, what I have to offer, and in myself. Luckily, I have never lost my Faith.

While on Kinship II, Mark and I went over my life because I needed distance and clarity. I was able to note the five things that are most important to be in my life, and I am proud to say that I have four out of five of them in spades: A partner, my family, my friends, my spiritual life, and money.

I am told that there are so many rich Americans who suffer from a true lack in their lives. So many Americans who might have money and a partner, but lack friends, family, and spirit. Or have money and nothing else. I am reminded every day that in a conscious, present, spiritual life, money is the easiest to secure for many of us as it is the most valued. Surely, it can feel that way. There are days when I lose sight of all the things in my life for which I am amazingly grateful and focus on only the things I lack, in this case money. And then it is often a downward spiral, where lack begets lack and before I knew it, I find myself feeling not only like a loser but like the worse kind: the fellow who failed to live up to his potential. In these times, I lose sight that I have had money before and that I will have money again. Its easy when one lives in a small world — or a world, shrunk — to find oneself skewed: both in perspective and proportion.

But on the sea, its different. As a geek, I liken it to rebooting my desktop computer. Rebooting the PC is the secret we techies have for fixing most of the problems wrong with most desktop PCs. Most of the time, these slowdowns occur because there are too many things going on on the PC that the user is no longer aware of: memory leaks, infinite loops, crashed software. These things cannot fix themselves and most users cannot truly sense this chaos in any way short of system slowdown. Not all problems result in the blue screen of death, some just send the computer into a morass. A skilled technician can fix some of the problems from the keyboard or by using a piece of software as an elixir, but the simplest thing one can do to set everything right is to turn the machine off, wait a minute and then turn it back on. Reboot.

So as I sit in an internet cafe in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico, wondering if I am spending Lent the way I should. Mexico is a traditionally catholic country, truly religious. I have not given up coffee, chocolate, or even beer; I am not attending church and I am three thousand miles away from my pew in my parish, Saint James’ Episcopal Church, Capitol Hill.

Yes, I am spending Lent better than I could have ever imagined, in my opinion. For all the fears, stresses, and anxieties I have been suffering under, I have had my head truly buzzing so that I couldn’t hear myself think clearly, to say nothing of the soft voice of my Faith.

On the boat, I have had time to think. At first, way too much time! I felt guilt and boredom; I felt like I needed to do something, needed to get back to the office to make sure everything was all right. After two weeks — yes, I buzzed for a fortnight — I started to relax. I felt my heart, my face, by body, and then my mind become more tranquil. On the boat, I have been getting a good lesson in Faith, in trust, and in moving with the flow as opposed to opposing it, striking against it. To force it makes it break; to avoid it doesn’t make it go away; to fear it doesn’t help. Whatever it is. To be completely honest, I have not felt so good about myself and what I have to offer in ten years. I feel like a tiger!

So I have done the most irresponsible thing imaginable in dropping everything and flying three thousand miles to help a friend by replacing his crew and becoming a sailor for what will be over six weeks. It would never have happened had the request come in any other form than what I perceived as a mayday, an SOS. But it did and I am here and I am changed. Does this mean that I will be doing this irresponsible thing again and again? Will I need to do this again in the same way, taking an unscheduled, selfish, and fool hardy escape again? Probably not I have learned so many things and the next time I become overwhelmed or lose faith in myself or my life experience and am myopic and suffused with fear, all I need to do is remember; or, be reminded. Quite possibly this very writing will be enough; if not, then Mark, my friends, my parish family, or you.

Instead of being changed into a bum, a drop out, or a vagabond, am becoming more clear that I want the life I have, that I can handle the life choices I make, that I make fine life choices. I have had an amazing growing up, brilliant parents, a world-class education, and have many friends, and a fine girlfriend. When I make a life choice there is a good chance that my decision is a result of a very fine coming up and I should not worry too much. My choices will probably — based on a thirty-three year track record — be moral and kind.

I have been spending the last three years attending Saint James’ Holy Week religiously. Saint James’ offers one of the most spiritually rich Holy Week and Easter I could ever have imagined. From Maundy Thursday through Easter Eve, the Spirit is palpable and the presence of God is undeniable; similarly, I have a profound personal and spiritual experience while sailing. As arcane and transcendent and as undeniable as what I experienced in Church. To be sure, I am grateful to have had spent a truly blessed experience.

The next time I wish someone Godspeed, in my mind and heart that will forever be between 2.9 and 8 knots.

Image via Wikipedia

My spiritual experience of sailing during Lent during my Jesus year birthday of 33 and all the important lessons and experience I have been lucky to have as a result.

Although I am a member of the Vestry of Saint James’ and its currently both the most exciting time and my favorite time on the Church calendar, Lent, I responded to the call of my best friend Mark when he asked me to come to Mexico to help him complete his sail from Charleston, SC, to Los Angeles, CA. I joined the sail on March 1, spent my birthday on the boat, and find myself stuck in Cabo San Lucas over a month later. What I have realized is that sailing allows one to better understand the nature of God‘s grace in my life. Little did I know that it would be as much help to me as it has been to him.

I have been following Mark’s journey from his former home in Charleston and living vicariously. We have been best friends since we met at University during my first year at GWU. We were both on the crew team and have been best friends ever since — more like brothers than mere college chums. I have never sailed with Mark, even though he lives and works from the deck and cabin of a gorgeous yacht catamaran named Kinship II. I have never been much of a sailor and so much of my sailing enjoyment has been vicarious. It just never interested me and Mark never really pressed the issue.

A little over a month ago, Mark called me and told me that the crew of six he started with in South Carolina had started abandoning the vessel beginning at the first stop after a grueling trek from the Keys all the way to Central America, through the Panama Canal, and back up the Pacific coast of Mexico. The faithful remnant left in Acapulco because their money had run out and the time schedule had slipped and slipped and slipped, as sailing schedules are wont to do.

So, when Mark suggested that he would pay for me to fly to Acapulco to join the crew – him – I took this as one of those veiled manly calls for help which never really show either fear or desperation. When you spend time with men’s men, you have to read between the lines. I was in Acapulco within five days. I might have hurt a relation with a client and leaned on my lovely friend Sarah a little too much, to say nothing of the strain on my new and wondrous relationship with Wendy, but it was Mark! The brother I never had.

We burnt two weeks moored off of the Club de Yates de Acapulco as most of the beatings that Kinship II had suffered on the long passage through the Gulf, along Central America, through the Panama Canal, and up along the Pacific coast were being healed by our angel, Gabriel, who took the time and the pride to get us up to ship shape.

I have been officially sailing the Pacific sea since the first day of Lent, 5 March. An equal time has been spent stuck in port and harbor as it has been sailing miles offshore; some of it has been gentle and awe-inspiring while other parts have been punishing and trying. Although I have not officially given up anything for Lent save my job, I have been able to use the time to become more essential.

Things have been very difficult for me over the last year or so, at least since 9-11, but including the technology crash. Technology and the internet is the basket I had been placing all of my eggs and I had been compensated very well for it. During the last six months, I have be grasping at straws, asking myself what I want to do with the rest of my life. Become a lawyer? Go to business school? Pursue a PhD?

I was stuck in a myopic infinite loop. My priorities, my goals, my desires, and my true wants and needs were befuddled and unclear. Sadly, I have unintentionally hurt people as they were caught in my personal panic as I desperately searched for my equilibrium while not giving myself either the time or the slack with which to find it.

On 8 March, in addition to everything else, I became 33, which to everyone I have spoken to at Saint James´ and elsewhere is my “Jesus year.” The age Jesus the Christ died for our sins, allegedly. Lord knows this was renting space in my mind as the date approached. Lord knows that there was no way I could even remotely find the time or the money to be able to take this time to both help my friend and save myself. But there it was, and I am still sailing with a lot of help from my friends.

Sailing takes time, and it takes its own time which has nothing to do with either my desire or the requirements of society. The moment one becomes willful enough to disrespect the nature of the sea is the day something breaks. Its as simple as that and is kind of spooky at first. Easy as she goes. Cliché sentiment seem to reverberate on the sea. The 96-hour passages blur one into the other into one long day, and when the limits of my tolerance were reached I was rewarded with a pod of a hundred dolphins dancing in and out of my wake. Or a field of basking green sea turtles in the middle of the sea. Or a dense morning fog clearing to a double rainbow.

God can be very remedial in his lessons when you are sailing. He also protects fools and drunks and I am most certainly a fool at the very least. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and Karma is direct, reciprocity is king on the sea. When I am tempted to be willful and push myself past either my abilities or my energy, I always either hurt myself or break something onboard. This is not a joke. It seems gentle — the sea always does — but it is life or death.

The lesson I have learned thus far is that there is a definite rhythm I have been blind to, within which everything works beautifully.

As a striking example, last week we were on route from Manzanillo to Cabo San Lucas and it was to be a milk run. Easily enough diesel to motor from where we were anchored at the Las Hadas Resort to where we were to moor in Cabo San Lucas. First impossibility: we ran out of diesel prematurely because the engine was detuned and was drinking the fuel quickly. So we ran out with just enough to bring us in to port. That’s okay, we have a sailing catamaran. We sail easily in 5 knot winds. During the second day, the main sail halyard snaps at the block, at the top of the mast. That’s okay, we have a redundant halyard — which snaps four hours later! We string up the Genoa line and limp the rest of the way. Impossible, but normal I guess.

Things like this happen a lot. When we arrived at Cabo San Lucas, we could not find anyone who would climb the mast, until we ran into Sebastian and his family, from Vancouver, BC. He shimmied up the mast for free and we were back on schedule. We ran into many people like Seb along the way and the Cruiser community around the world is amazing generous.

Sartre was wrong, hell is not other people: grace is other people.

Every day of this trip has humbled me; every day has given me confidence. Not once have I felt humiliation and every day has been a celebration. The confidence not to fear what will happen next, to remain present and observant, to remain vigilant but not aggressive. And I have been thriving and I am strong and worthy of supporting Captain Mark as his only crew and of protecting the delicate fiberglass exoskeleton Kinship II so that she is seaworthy and makes her voyage to Los Angeles on one pristine piece.

On the sea, nothing needs to be forced, nothing needs to be rushed; in fact, there are very few things that can be rushed. I have had to turn on the hourly chime on my wristwatch because I have experienced a couple of these 96-hour days. Time shrinks and expands. Being on watch exacerbates this experience. Time is relative in a practical sense as it can stretch or compress, and some nights I have been on a watch for what feels like an hour starting at 0100 and then the sky lightens and turns pink and the morning comes. Other times, I fight for wakefulness and after making a go of trying, I wake Mark and ask him to take the watch instead so that I can catch some sleep for a little while. This is too much to risk, too much to lose, if I were to try any harder and fall deep into an exhausted sleep leaving no one at all to keep an eye out for cruise ships or super liners.

What’s on the line is the safety of the boat — a quarter-million-dollar investment – and the safety of the crew. There is only one person, usually sleepy and bored, who takes watch and single-handedly keeps the fragile and absurdly delicate vessel going 8 knots out of the way of container ships moving at 25 knots. There is a feeling of trust, the kind of confidence-building experience that can easily undo damage done in the workaday world of corporate America, can rebuild the confidence and self-love that might have blossomed in simpler times. I know they did for me. On the sea, either alone or with a crew, one can renew one’s faith in oneself and others.

Post Enron, dot-com, 9-11, and Clinton, my world changed in significant ways. I am a pretty technologically-savvy fellow and when I graduated from GW in 1993, during a low point in employment and jobs, I became an internet and web developer in addition to photography and writing. Although a student of literature at University, I didn’t choose graduate school right away but instead became part of the great excitement of the dot-com explosion. I have been using the internet since a bet version of Mosaic; since I played with MacWeb, when I noodled with lynx. I am pre-internet and as a teen I was part of the BBS culture. It was natural for me to join the excitement and during the 90s I didn’t explore graduate school or law school, but rather put all my eggs into the internet economy. And I was rewarded for a time.

Recently, times have become tough and I have lost much of my confidence in my choices, what I have to offer, and in myself. Luckily, I have never lost my Faith.

While on Kinship II, Mark and I went over my life because I needed distance and clarity. I was able to note the five things that are most important to be in my life, and I am proud to say that I have four out of five of them in spades: A partner, my family, my friends, my spiritual life, and money.

I am told that there are so many rich Americans who suffer from a true lack in their lives. So many Americans who might have money and a partner, but lack friends, family, and spirit. Or have money and nothing else. I am reminded every day that in a conscious, present, spiritual life, money is the easiest to secure for many of us as it is the most valued. Surely, it can feel that way. There are days when I lose sight of all the things in my life for which I am amazingly grateful and focus on only the things I lack, in this case money. And then it is often a downward spiral, where lack begets lack and before I knew it, I find myself feeling not only like a loser but like the worse kind: the fellow who failed to live up to his potential. In these times, I lose sight that I have had money before and that I will have money again. Its easy when one lives in a small world — or a world, shrunk — to find oneself skewed: both in perspective and proportion.

But on the sea, its different. As a geek, I liken it to rebooting my desktop computer. Rebooting the PC is the secret we techies have for fixing most of the problems wrong with most desktop PCs. Most of the time, these slowdowns occur because there are too many things going on on the PC that the user is no longer aware of: memory leaks, infinite loops, crashed software. These things cannot fix themselves and most users cannot truly sense this chaos in any way short of system slowdown. Not all problems result in the blue screen of death, some just send the computer into a morass. A skilled technician can fix some of the problems from the keyboard or by using a piece of software as an elixir, but the simplest thing one can do to set everything right is to turn the machine off, wait a minute and then turn it back on. Reboot.

So as I sit in an internet cafe in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico, wondering if I am spending Lent the way I should. Mexico is a traditionally catholic country, truly religious. I have not given up coffee, chocolate, or even beer; I am not attending church and I am three thousand miles away from my pew in my parish, Saint James’ Episcopal Church, Capitol Hill.

Yes, I am spending Lent better than I could have ever imagined, in my opinion. For all the fears, stresses, and anxieties I have been suffering under, I have had my head truly buzzing so that I couldn’t hear myself think clearly, to say nothing of the soft voice of my Faith.

On the boat, I have had time to think. At first, way too much time! I felt guilt and boredom; I felt like I needed to do something, needed to get back to the office to make sure everything was all right. After two weeks — yes, I buzzed for a fortnight — I started to relax. I felt my heart, my face, by body, and then my mind become more tranquil. On the boat, I have been getting a good lesson in Faith, in trust, and in moving with the flow as opposed to opposing it, striking against it. To force it makes it break; to avoid it doesn’t make it go away; to fear it doesn’t help. Whatever it is. To be completely honest, I have not felt so good about myself and what I have to offer in ten years. I feel like a tiger!

So I have done the most irresponsible thing imaginable in dropping everything and flying three thousand miles to help a friend by replacing his crew and becoming a sailor for what will be over six weeks. It would never have happened had the request come in any other form than what I perceived as a mayday, an SOS. But it did and I am here and I am changed. Does this mean that I will be doing this irresponsible thing again and again? Will I need to do this again in the same way, taking an unscheduled, selfish, and fool hardy escape again? Probably not I have learned so many things and the next time I become overwhelmed or lose faith in myself or my life experience and am myopic and suffused with fear, all I need to do is remember; or, be reminded. Quite possibly this very writing will be enough; if not, then Mark, my friends, my parish family, or you.

Instead of being changed into a bum, a drop out, or a vagabond, am becoming more clear that I want the life I have, that I can handle the life choices I make, that I make fine life choices. I have had an amazing growing up, brilliant parents, a world-class education, and have many friends, and a fine girlfriend. When I make a life choice there is a good chance that my decision is a result of a very fine coming up and I should not worry too much. My choices will probably — based on a thirty-three year track record — be moral and kind.

I have been spending the last three years attending Saint James’ Holy Week religiously. Saint James’ offers one of the most spiritually rich Holy Week and Easter I could ever have imagined. From Maundy Thursday through Easter Eve, the Spirit is palpable and the presence of God is undeniable; similarly, I have a profound personal and spiritual experience while sailing. As arcane and transcendent and as undeniable as what I experienced in Church. To be sure, I am grateful to have had spent a truly blessed experience.

The next time I wish someone Godspeed, in my mind and heart that will forever be between 2.9 and 8 knots.

Original Article

Mark Harrison has never done it and neither of us is the type, but either the people we have met in Cabo are pulling major magic or we forgot to weigh anchor because we left Cabo San Lucas and then came right back. It was 12 hours of being on a stationary bike at sea: lots of peddling but we weren´t going anywhere.

Mark and I made a run to escape Cabo San Lucas because it really is quite beautiful, the set up that we have down here. Every morning, we wake to barking sea lions. Absurd manta rays flopping around like flapjacks on the water. Noble pelicans skimming the tranquil shallows. The bay is surrounded by cragged cliffs and rocks fronts. Although skidoos buzz like gadflies, the water is calm and safe and its possible for a boat to anchor very close offshore. With the Wade family (Seb and Deb) sharing their cute little kids (Alex, Ben, and Dom) with us (and sometimes too much of a good thing!), with Bruce keeping is rife with fresh fish, and with the gang from Italian Coffee Company hooking me up with Espresso Dobles and Mark up with diesel and Cabo tips, its is quite comfy here.

So, we left yesterday at the crack of noon. Mark, being a Virgo (that´s his excuse not mine), requires us to always make sure that Kinship II is completely tip-top shape each and every time we ship out, which means we burn the morning. I am a very fine crew so this is no big deal, especially since we get to spend just a little more time in Cabo as a result, but by the time we departed after saying our goodbyes to the Wades and to Bruce in a sort of fly by, we hit a load of awful weather.

From storm clouds to lightning, from current to big seas, we couldn’t catch a break. We were able to motorsail past Cabo Falso, which took us around 2-4 miles offshore, but then we fought for 12-hours and couldn’t make any ground.

From noon until midnight, under full power and sail, we stayed still. We used both the engines and still, after twelve hours of motorsailing out, it took us only 3 hours to return. Yes, Captain Mark aborted and we came back to moor at 3am and touched our way in like a blind man. Using our memory and a spot, we were able to find a mooring and fell to sleep in our cabins exhausted at four in the morning. This is the very first time in the years that Mark has sailed that he has ever aborted a sail. The only other options we have under this problem is to tack to Hawaii and then back to LA; alternately, since I want Wendy to continue dating me, we can load up the deck with jerry cans of diesel and fight it out, using much more fuel than we can currently carry.

So, tomorrow, Mark and I are driving out with Alexandro Junior from the Italian Coffee Company to find diesel jerry cans so that we can carry enough to take us through. We have been getting loads of diving in as well. We have been compulsively scrubbing the hulls in the hope that we can squeak even as little as a quarter of a knot out of the hydrodynamics of sweet Kinship II, our beloved 42-foot French catamaran made by Jeaneau.

As I always like to say about our boat: Better the sailboat Jeaneau than the sailboat you don´t.

Image via Wikipedia

Wherever we go on this trip, Mark Harrison and I seem to be taken underwing. In this case, we were allowed to become Cabo San Lucas socialites for a day: High tea and fashion show; fashion show, and then an evening espresso. Top drawer!

We had only been in Cabo San Lucas for one day and we were already on our way towards becoming Baja Socialites, Mark Harrison and me. We had gone tramping around because we have come to expect broadband internet cafes on the cheap and some of the places we were stopping near the Marina were bilking people out of one peso-per-minutes. We had been getting our internet at fifteen pesos-per-hour and we knew that we would benefit from leaving the main tourist traffic. Cabo is expensive, even by US standards. By Mexican standards, its highway robbery. And since we have become spoiled and have normalized on these pricing structures, we were willing to do a little bit of traveling. The cheap places are always full of gamers and local kids. And I am in such a place right now and Mark and I were on our way out of another cheap place when Mark spied a very attractive blonde who was walking from table to table in a café down the road. I recognized this from back in Hawaii. Every now and then, a throng of local models invade a café or a pastry place and entertain and sell locally-designed resort wear table-to-table. What I new as I walked towards the café is that this gorgeous woman was married, as one of the diners — a woman — had asked. Before we had made it through the 25 feet of tables and chairs, Mark — a real sucker for what he calls a generic blonde — chatted this beauty up. In seconds, we met the owner, a petite and exotic woman from Singapore, and were seated in a two-top. It was high tea and presumably we were there to enjoy the afternoon, the fashion show, finger sandwiches, pastries, and cup after cup of tea.  The cafe is called The Swiss Pastry, and its very lovely and would stand its own in any urban center.

Rightfully, the blonde kept out of reach. In no time, we met one of her fellow models. Lovely Coral is a local girl who is half Mexican on her dad’s side and Canadian on her mother’s side. She stood there chatting with us for a good twenty minutes. She was preparing to attend university in Calgary, she would not model in Canada, she was originally from Acapulco, and her mum was there as well. Before we knew it, we were sitting with Coral, her mum Corey, and Coral’s friend Yasmin. Hours past, we burned through all of our delicate sandwiches and the sweets. I was insatiable, tea wise, and before I knew it, they were closing the doors. And off we went.

Mark and I headed down to the water. In the back of my head I remembered two things. One was that there was to be a fashion show that night in the space adjacent to The Italian Coffee Company. Mark needed to speak to the owner, Alexandro, about Kinship II’s diesel problems so we headed to visit to see what Cabo society had going on for it. When we arrived, it was filling with very beautiful people, to be sure. Also, very rich-looking. They were also taking invites. I was caffeined-out so I didn’t order one of their delicious espresso doble’s, but it didn’t matter. In seconds, Alexandro had sheparded us out to the entrance and before we knew it, we were sitting in fine seats, awaiting the beginning. It wasn’t until yesterday that I discovered that Cabo is an hour behind Manzanillo, so I have been moving around the entire time we have been here an hour early. From the waking up on. Mark and I were there at least a half-hour early. And for either one of us to be anywhere early or even on time — even a bikini, undies, and resort wear — is absolutely fantastic! Pure disinformation! It can’t be true! Maybe I need to keep my watch set to an hour later — somewhere in the Atlantic east of the coast. It just might work!

Don’t fashion shows end with the bikini and underwear bits? This show began the program with it before transitioning to banal resort wear, golfing shorts, polo tops, zoris, canvas bags — all in pastel.

The finale came into the room with the boom and thunder of a couple Harley-Davidsons. There is an H-D boutique here in Cabo and they dressed the sweet girls in leather halters and told them to act rough and tumble, but they continued to look really cute, sun kissed, and lovely.

We left right after the finale and rushed over to grab some joe at The Italian Coffee Company. I was really keen on seeing the crowd let up. Over an espresso doble, we watched the glitterati of Los Cabos. These socialites are like the socialites from anywhere else save NYC. Families of affluent mothers and their girls and even some of the sons.

Just like everywhere else, the same wildly gorgeous selection of the wealthy and healthy. The same people did the same thing while I was growing up in Hawaii, but in the day, our resident model was Willow Change and it was Tedd and the HK Boys and the Kahala and Hawaii Kai families who’s children went to HSG and Punahou who were in this timespace speaking Spanish and going off to do this or that: see a film, grab some coffee, get some desert or grab a late dinner.

And that is how Mark Harrison and Chris Abraham enjoyed becoming Cabo San Lucas society for a day.

Luckily, there had not been a single day during the entire month when we have not met some really amazing people. Neither Mark nor I are shy in any way around people, and it certainly aids in the gentle sweet production of memories. None of this trip has had anything even remotely to do with the place, it always has to do with the people, in my opinion.

We are off first thing in the morning. This morning we took lessons from Sebastian on how to have a sustainable, happy, and sexual long-term marriage while growing a beautiful family on a 35-foot sailboat. If he can make it work, then we all should be able to. Great kids; great couple; awesome marriage! We spent our day refilling the diesel and water tanks. Alexandro, in addition to being the owner of the Cabo Italian Coffee Company, was an jet and airplane engineer, his specialty being diesel engines.

So, we had him and his family over to enjoy some crazy bay wildlife behavior and Alexandro helped us totally and completely fix our diesels so that they stop leaking. While talking to Alexandro’s son, Alexandro, it came out that I can speak pretty good Spanish. Sadly, with any language besides English, I am too embarrassed to actually speak! So, after two hours on the cat’s tramp, Alexandro looked completely frightened that this silent English speaker who has been coming to the café can in fact speak passable Spanish. Funny that, even I didn’t know I could any more. Its good to know.

(But of course its not even remotely true — I can barely speak English fluently!)

Funny animal behavior? Mantas jump two or three feet out of the water! Even better, when they do they flip head over teakettle as if they were thrown into the air like a horseshoe. Then they splash into the water in whichever direction they happen to hit. This has been going on all day. It happens all the time here and Cabo is known for it. There are also loads of Sea Lions here, and they move in packs and are funny and lovely and truly look more like the animals called by the Germans “sea dog.” They truly look like pups with flippers. Innumerable pelicans, frigates, gulls. As we remain moored, the pelicans become more and more emboldened. Soon, Kinship II will be enshrouded with a feathery toupee of what I believe are direct descendants of the pterodactyl. And their generous donation of fertile guano! Want to see Mark happiest? Cover his boat with poop! He loves that. So, alas, we leave tomorrow. Cabo has treated me very well!

Adios y hasta luego!