I’m returning to Dauntless in a few days. I have spent my time in NYC getting the final pieces for the heater installation, but I’m leaving with a little cloud over me.
180 st. Depot in the Bronx
Why? A number of reasons:
It started with my visit to our roof top apartment in Manhattan. It’s been rented since August and the renter has been great, but the plants did far more poorly this winter than the winter before, which was just as cold, if not even worse. I think it was that the plants suffered last summer, and therefore did not start the winter in the condition they should have.
Then it was on to the next project, the upgrade of our home computer.
Well, I could cross the Atlantic, but even after a week of trying, I still have not been able to get my 7 year old desktop computer to run Windows 7. It had been running XP. I spent three days trying to get it to run XP again. No luck. Then finally, yesterday, I bowed to the inevitable and put Vista on it.
Yes, I got Vista to work, but at the cost of having to reinstall all my old programs, etc.
The Courtyard of Our Apartment Building in the Bronx. They do take care of it.
Stupid. I should have left it alone and in another year or two replaced it.
I also would like to start our summer cruise in three weeks, yet there seems so much to still do.
Lastly, I would have liked to see a few more friends while here; but it was not to be, hopefully in the fall.
So, I’m left with this sense of not having accomplished much of what I had wanted for this trip. Like having a pebble in your shoe; irritating, but not deadly.
I’m an eclectic person, who grew up in New York, lived overseas for many years and have a boat, Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen trawler yacht. Dauntless enables me to not only live in many different parts of the world, but to do it in a way that is interesting, affordable, with the added spice of a challenge.
Dauntless also allows me to be in touch with nature. As the boat glides through the ocean, you have a sense of being part of a living organism. When dolphins come to frolic, they stay longer if you are out there talking to them, watching them. Birds come by, sometimes looking for a handout; sometimes grateful to find a respite from their long journey.
I grew up on the New York waterfront, in the West Village, when everything west of Hudson St. was related to shipping and cargo from around the world. For a kid, it was an exciting place of warehouses, trucks, and working boats of all kinds: tugs and the barges and ships, cargo and passenger, they were pushing around.
My father was an electrical engineer, my mother an intellectual, I fell in between.
I have always been attracted to Earth’s natural processes, the physical sciences. I was in 8th grade when I decided to be a Meteorologist.
After my career in meteorology, my natural interest in earth sciences: geology, astronomy, geography, earth history, made it a natural for me to become a science teacher in New York City, when I moved back to the Big Apple. Teaching led to becoming a high school principal to have the power to truly help kids learn and to be successful not only in school but in life.
Dauntless is in western Europe now. In May and June, I will be wrapping up the last two years in northern Europe, heading south to spend the rest of the year in Spain & Portugal.
Long term, I’m planning on returning to North American in the fall of 2017 and from there continuing to head west until we’re in Northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, where we will settle for a bit.
But now, my future lies not in NY or even Europe, but back to the water, where at night, when the winds die down, there is no noise, only the silence of the universe. I feel like I am at home, finally.
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Dauntless at Sea 