Ah, the joys and mysteries of the unpredictable ocean that I discussed in my last post, Motives and Motivation. Let me set the stage by saying that I’d urged the owner to first go for sea trials before kicking it for Portland … no time, he said. And given the amount of other necessary work…

I generally work to avoid ascribing motives, good or bad, to other people for a simple reason. I’m rarely certain of my own motives … so how could I know anyone else’s motives? This question has arisen because I’m about to put to sea again. I’m first mate on another boat delivery, this time from…

After I wrote my last piece about my trip to Fiji, things have just been moving too fast to write. I’ll just take up where I left off, at Janice’s Skinny Bean Cafe in Pacific Harbour. It’s in a large complex of shops and apartments called “Arts Village”. I used to live in one of…

This year I skipped Easter. I boarded my plane on Not-So-Good Saturday, the day before Easter, flew across the International Dateline and landed in Fiji on the Monday after Easter. Go figure. I got off the plane, cleared customs, rented a car, and started down the Coral Coast. Stopped at Natadola, but they’ve changed the…

“We’re waxing down our surfboards, We can’t wait for June.” SOURCE: The Beach Boys, “Surfin’ USA” I’ve been getting my gear ready to go surf Frigates Passage in Fiji. Ten years ago I swore to surf Frigates at 70, so now I gotta go do it. Hate it when that happens. Frigates is a natural…

The picture is one I took of some Solomon Islands kids playing in a tiny canoe in the ocean. And autobiographene? It’s like a real autobiography, only much thinner. In this case, I’ve put a series of stories of curious things I’ve done in my life up on a page that’s separate from the blog. There’s a…

Well, I’ve mentioned this before, but it is newly relevant for reasons that will become apparent. It’s about a curious realization I had one time in Africa. In my thirties I worked as a consultant for the US Peace Corps. In passing let me say that the Peace Corps is one of the finest foreign…