I’m in a familiar state that I’ve known many times over the past 23 years of intermittent adventure: Post-Nomadic Stress Disorder. After the frenetic build-up to departure, the almost surreal month of exploration, and the gradual crystallization of a set of designs that now must be overlaid on the ship, it is almost overwhelming to…

Hello from Salt Spring Island! The inaugural voyage of Nomadness is now nearing the 500-mile mark, and I’m within a day or so of zipping across the Strait to check in at Point Roberts and then find my way to the end tie that awaits in Blaine. It seems utterly surreal. I’m currently in one…

Yarrhhh… I remember this feeling from the bicycling epoch: adventures stack up, accumulating in my brain so fast that they merge into generalities if I don’t hit the PAUSE button and do some writing. “Had an amazing time over the past week” is hardly sufficient commentary when the reality consisted of a close call involving…

It suddenly struck me in the last day or so that this is what I’ve been missing: a pace of life that is unhurried, driven only by “whim, women, and weather” as I used to quip during my bicycle epoch. Small craft advisory in the Strait? A new friend in the Harbour? A little boat…

“Microship on Steroids” August 13, 2006 Hello from Pender Harbour… I finally made the 34-mile run across the Strait from Nanaimo after the wind moderated a bit earlier this week. Today, north toward Lund (although Environment Canada predicts 15-25 knots on the nose early this evening… hence this quick update so I can get moving!)…

This is just a quickie; I’m on a 1-hour clock in the local library. The trip is going beautifully… since the last post I have made the passage through the San Juan channel then west to Tsehum Harbor at Sidney BC (to check in with Canadian customs), then on to Cowichan Bay. The next day…

Hello from Fisherman Bay on Lopez Island, the Lats & Atts cruiser party! I’m on a solo adventure to get to know my new magic carpet, and today was the first day out… starting on the north end of Camano Island where Nomadness has been moored for the past few days. Packing for three weeks…

There is a kind of buzzing energy that comes from an abrupt course change… the apparent wind clocks around, the waves lap a whole new song on the hull, and the view off the bow is all different. That’s more or less what happened on the scale of my life over the past week. It…

Yarrrrrh, what is it about these salty vessels that maketh us to take leave of our senses, overlook obvious incompatibilities, and spend days in frenetic and impassioned research? Yup, I did it again: got myself seduced by a ship with character, style, superb construction, solid design, and a level of WQ (Weirdness Quotient) somewhere way…