Nomadness blog

A lot has happened since my last posting, in which I had reluctantly concluded that the trimaran was for sale. Among other things, she has indeed been sold… and just completed an inaugural voyage with her new Canadian owner (ironically, right back to Desolation Sound via Cowichan Bay, Pender Harbour, and Nanaimo). I write now…

Long-time readers of this blog know why I haven’t posted in a while… it’s annoying to archive months of hand-wringing and analysis over what to next. I’ve spent a few months juggling the trade-offs of a variety of facilities including a row of shipping containers, modified semi-trailers, a thorough revamping of my moldy lab in…

I was just sitting here thinking of some kind of simple logging application to help provide an objective external record of my progress toward nomadness, when it dawned on me (duh) that it’s already right here. I have historically viewed blogs as a sort of upgraded tool for publishing static content, but it will be…

It is astounding, how long one can spend in the strategic planning stages of a complex undertaking, gathering goodies, fleshing out ambitious documents, and researching… all while managing to avoid actually venturing out in the cold and clambering painfully across slippery fiberglass. But first, a general comment. Once every year or so, I get a…

A huge transition has just occurred… Nomadness is now perched on her new FE trailer in my front yard, quite dwarfing NEWT, the truck that hauled her all the way from the harbor in Blaine. The mast is the same length as my house. The next step is to find someone to do a bit…

I sure can make things more complicated than they need to be; it’s a tendency I have to fight constantly. It just almost bit me again. I think it’s a malady shared by many geeks, and is why some of us need managers: the combination of a vivid imagination and enough technical knowledge to construct…

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…