Dauntless is that little Green boat in the far bottom right corner. The red route is my currently planned idea. The Black route is just a gauge for me to look at the Great Circle routes easily. The fact that it is so close to the actual route means that it’s a pretty efficient route. The hard to see white routes past Korea are various ideas.
As I mentioned before, if you are not living in the moment, you are reflecting on the past or planning the future.
At night, as I drift off to sleep, I am usually always thinking of the future. I hate surprises. For me, there is no such thing as a “good” surprise. Unless of course, I get notified that a non-existent relative left a large sum of money in Nigeria for me. What could go wrong with that?
Exactly my point. A surprise meant I did not anticipate well enough. As many of you reading this will understand, it helps if you do read. To know and have experienced everything, I would have to be as old as the Universe itself. I’m not that old and as most of us figure out in our formative years, we will never catch up to that second-grade teacher we are in love with.
Reading and writing allowed our civilization to grow on the experience of those who came before us.
Reading allows us to experience without doing. While not the same as doing, brain studies have shown that it’s remarkedly effective. Two pianists given the same piece of music to play, one actually plays it, while the other only “plays” it in their mind. After a given set of time, there is remarkedly little difference between the two, when they actually perform it on a piano.
So, developing a mental picture is critical to my planning process. I also always have an idea of best and worst conditions. I simply never want to be surprised.
Now that the Pacific chapter of this story has started, my vision has shifted to the west, Asia in particular. Even though Asia is still years away, once I get north of Mexico, there is not much of the coast I have not seen. When I was on Shemya in the Aleutians, 30 years ago, I never envisioned returning on my own bottom.
So, the eastern and even northern portions of the Pacific, I have well imagined for a long time. So now it’s time to learn the western periphery, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
At the same time, I’m starting to think again about what is beyond that. The Indian Ocean, getting around Africa and even, once back in the Atlantic, then what?
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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2 thoughts on “What Keeps Me Awake at Night”
Hello Richard, loving your blog sir! Looks as though we shared the experience of Shemya (Canadian P-3 late 90s). My wife and I are looking to do beginning Battle Harbor Labrador to Alaska through Panama in two years. Your blog has just become my “operators manual” for the trip. Looking forward to the education.
Kind regards
Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You definitely know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something informative to read?
Dauntless at Sea 
Hello Richard, loving your blog sir! Looks as though we shared the experience of Shemya (Canadian P-3 late 90s). My wife and I are looking to do beginning Battle Harbor Labrador to Alaska through Panama in two years. Your blog has just become my “operators manual” for the trip. Looking forward to the education.
Kind regards
Jim & Cavell
HiTime
Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You definitely know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something informative to read?