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.
Having some time on my hands for another couple of weeks, I thought I would share with everyone what the Cruising Costs have been for Dauntless, a 42 foot Kadey Krogen Motor yacht over the last two years.
I’ve broken out the numbers, so for instance, if you only go to a marina 10% of the time, you can adjust the numbers accordingly.
If you have any specific questions, I will be glad to answer them, but please email me vice PM.
May Thru October 2016 My approximate route. Most of the little black dots are stops
The number don’t add up to 100% because there are some personal travel expenses, which I track but are not pertinent to the story.
Also, the significant difference is that in 2016 I was able to buy 900 gallons of fuel in Ireland for very reasonable prices (far less than UK “red” diesel).
In 2015 because Dauntless range under such conditions, I had to refuel with very expensive fuel in Finland, Sweden and Norway, arriving back in Ireland with almost empty tanks.
Marina costs were significantly higher in 2016 because Portugal, southern Spain, Atlantic France are significantly more expensive than many Baltic and North Sea marinas.
2015 Baltic and North Sea Cruise
Food costs are pretty much for a couple.
In the next weeks, I will update the latter half of 2016, the trip from Rota Spain to Gibraltar, Morocco, the Canaries and Martinique.
2017 update will be from Martinique to Panama Canal, Costa Rica and up to Mexico for the winter.
Yes, it was on Paramount Vietnam this afternoon and while I have not seen it that much, I do recognize that it’s an iconic film of the 1980’s in middle America.
There are seemingly people who having thought the world started sometime in the late 20th century and then having “matured” around 2010 if ever, they now think that every movie about kids cutting high school should have cars blowing up and kids vandalizing everything they can touch.
The fact that only in Hollywood do we see such antics. Even today, when kids cut school, they don’t spend their time destroying stuff. No, they simply do things that are more interesting, because school and classes simply have too many adults who should not be doing what they are doing.
From Power & Motoryacht. No, I did not crash into Brazil, but I still like it anyway.
Just today I remembered that I have never seen the piece that was written about Dauntless and I and our travels in the May issue of Power & Motoryacht.
Nicely done. Sometimes it’s nice to see what other people write. In some ways, it is even more insightful.
There are a few typos or possibly I did not explain well enough. Near the end when I talk about fuel getting into the fuel tank via the fuel vent, it’s not the “bilge” as written. One of the sharp readers commented on that, but I don’t do Facebook, so I could not thank her.
Also, Kodiak in July 2018. Ha, I’ll be lucky to get to San Diego by then. Since I did this interview for the article just after I arrived in Martinique in January, I am surprised I still thought I could get to Kodiak so quickly. Ok well.
I’m having a wonderful time in Vietnam. The longer I am here, the more comfortable I’ve become. Having a motorbike and not having killed myself yet, is a bigger accomplishment than crossing the Atlantic, twice.
But I am missing D so much too. I want to be back on the water. I promise to never complain how hot it is anymore. Even if my eyeballs are baking, I’ll repeat the desert southwest mantra, It’s a dry heat.
So, when I get back in early July, with my new Coast Guard Document clutched in my sweaty little hand, it will be all hands-on deck to get moving north.
All two, hands that is.
Having Micah on board for so many months, clearly spoiled me. I don’t even remember that person who crossed a third of the Atlantic alone. I haven’t been alone since the Stockholm to Waterford run of September 2015. That was eons ago.
The table below is my tentative cruising program. So, for example, it shows I’ll spend about three weeks in Costa Rica, with the last stop around Santa Elena before heading to Mexico.
I’ve made the difficult decision to bypass Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. El Salvador ends up being a casualty, in that it’s too hard to stop there and avoid the other places. Some of my friends say I’m being ridiculous and too much of a gringo frady cat, but, I am a gringo frady cat.
I know and understand the ocean; people are harder.
I use sites like No onsite and Active Captain, to point out problem areas and then I avoid them. No matter how beautiful a place is, it’s simply not worth it for me, if I have to worry about the safety of my friends & crew, me for the boat.
Here is what the trip looks like so far. The stops listed are the primary overnight or multiple day stops, with there being no overnights except for those with the “P” in the second column. Other than the initial Santa Elena to Mexico, all the others are open to stopping:
Summer 2017
Because of my delay in getting back, I am a bit more pressed for time than I would have liked, but it’s still a third less than I’ve done in the past.
I have friends joining me from mid-August until the end of September (I think J).
My July people are not answering my calls. Ummm, I think I need to find replacements.
So, I feel bad that I have neglected both my blogs so badly.
My Apartment
Today I finally realized why: I’m simply overwhelmed with all the new information and I want to write about it, show pictures of it in some coherent manner.
So, I’m waiting for perfection.
Well, that’s a long wait, so I thought it would be better just to write about what’s on my mind now, show what pictures relate and move on.
I’m also conscious of not having people who read this judge it and the people on our standards. It’s what we know, but we don’t know everything.
Who’d had think that I can live without hot running water? And I could get an electric on demand water heater for all of $75, but it’s good for me to be a little less “empfindlich”, a good German description of a cross between sensitive and picky (as in too picky).
This is a little video of my little 2-bedroom apartment in HCMC. It’s in Dam Sen, about 5 miles west of downtown (the main business center).
I love the people, the life, but it’s hot and humid and I do miss Dauntless.
It made me envious; I know, that’s ridiculous, but still.
Dauntless has come so far
Dauntless spent two and a half years in Northern Europe because I knew we would like it. The weather, the people, the cultures all, the food, fit my number one criteria of staying off the beaten track and living well as I did so.
I Loved the Baltic, Sweden, Norway, Scotland & Ireland
That was expected. All the lands of coastal Northern Europe have a real seafaring culture. Every boat waves at you, especially fisherman. From Galicia in northwest Spain to the far eastern Baltic, it was a wonderful experience with minimal bureaucracy.
In those 2+ years, 20+ countries, 100+ stops, mostly in towns and cities, I probably spent less than 120 minutes on the formalities of checking in (Passports, boats documents, crew lists) and checking out.
No wait, there was no checking out.
The peoples, the lands, met and greatly exceeded my expectations.
Then, we headed south. 90% of all boats are south, mostly in the Mediterranean, you know, Italy, Greece, Turkey and southern France and Spain. Everyone wants to go there, so that’s a big Do Not Enter sign for me.
So, we headed south with low expectations. Little did I realize they were not low enough.
Prices trebled, temperatures doubled and bureaucracy was like a pig is slop. The first two stops in Portugal took the same amount of time as the last 100 stops of the previous two years.
And then it got worse.
In virtually every stop, 5 to 10 pieces of paper to sign to check-in; make sure you return tomorrow to fill out and sign the same papers to check-out. Don’t even mention the expense.
But you have read all of this before. Turns out Martinique was the high point of the entire Caribbean. It’s almost weird to say that they were the least bureaucratic. In fact, they were just like northern France. But that was certainly the exception.
So now, having endured all of that and more to get Dauntless a quarter of the way back around the world, I sit here with envy of Dirona.
But I realize it’s not Dirona I’m envious of, it’s being in the middle of the ocean.
I’m a traveler, so when I’m not, I’ll always be envious of those who are.
I kept complaining about my motorbike seat, as I kept sliding forward into an uncomfortable position.
The family rests inside the seat place. Fabrics are on the far right. Foam shells are handing
Trinh constantly reminded me that:
I was bigger than most Vietnamese
It is a 6 million Dong bike (US$ 287) and therefore don’t complain.
But if anything, I don’t have much tolerance for things that don’t work as they should.
So, when I mentioned the possibility of a new seat, I expected push-back, because if Trinh has learned, I do buy a lot of things I really don’t need. But this time, she agreed we’d stop and look.
Oh Boy, it was like Christmas. Though she had no idea how much a new seat would cost.
She gets right to work on replacing my seat. Some of the completed examples are hanging. But pretty much everything they do is custom.
After our little ice cream stop, we stopped at a seat place.
Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City at least, is full of little shops, store fronts, that specialize in one thing. In this case motorbike seats.
Thankfully, the lady running the place was dismissive of my current seat as soon as she saw it. That softened up Trinh right away so that it wasn’t just me wasting money.
Turned out the big discussion centered around color. Everyone assumed I wanted black, the standard color. But I had two goals in mind:
A better, more comfortable seat
A more distinctive seat, something different, since in the parking garage in my building, even knowing right where I left the bike, I have walked past it numerous times. So, I wanted something that stood out. A red bike, I was thinking red seat.
But that was not to be. They had many shades of red in different materials, but Trinh, ever practical, pointed out that if I make
My New Seat
the bike stand out, it will be a target of police.
Now since it is not still not clear to me if I can legally drive a motorbike with my NYS motorcycle license, I figured I better compromise here.
Thus, we ended up mostly black with a red front and back.
And it’s really comfortable.
This operation took about 20 minutes. They cut the fabric and sewed it to the new form core. Like almost everything I have seen in Vietnam, I was really impressed. I got a handmade, custom seat for 360,000 dong, (that’s US$15).
Yes, I am really happy. If only Dauntless was here, but then that’s another story.
Yes, there are rules and I for one, find them quite logical.
But then I grew up in New York City riding a bike as soon as I could everyplace. And like real New Yorkers there reason we rode bikes was because there were no rules, beyond the obvious: Don’t hit anything and don’t get hit.
Why would anyone wait for light if there is no traffic? Going against traffic on a one way or even a two-way street, of course, it’s easier to see traffic, especially for younger kids!
Ride on sidewalks? In NYC that’s where we learned.
So rewind the clock. Before the war 1960’s to 1975, Saigon was a place of bicycles, being so flat, like Holland. What has evolved is a bicycle culture using bikes that have motors. Even now, there are many stores that sell both bicycles and motorbikes.
So as soon as you put the context of the traffic in terms of bicycles, then everything that happens makes sense. Even today, watch how cyclists ride in NY and you will see the same behaviors here, only magnified by about a 10 million.
I got my little motorbike last week. It has transformed by experience in that this is not a walking town. Walking around this town is as rare as seeing an Ostrich walking down the street. The sidewalks are full of holes, but worse are the parked motorbikes all over the place.
So I joined in.
Having been a passenger on Trinh’s motorbike for the last month, I was often terrified.
But as soon as I was driving all alone, my bicycle instincts kicked in and it was easier and is even fun.
Now, if this is the last post I ever make because I was killed, then you will get the last laugh. But don’t mourn for me because I won’t know the difference.
So, as you watch my videos (sorry no GoPro, as I left them on Dauntless), all taken while a passenger by the way (I may die, but I’m not suicidal), try to put what you are seeing in the contact of riding a bicycle.
While traffic laws are seemingly ignored for motorbikes. There are rules that are enforced. Helmut’s, fastened, all the time. Trinh admonished me after I got my bike that I must keep both hand on handle bars at all times. You cannot ride with kick-stand down. I seem to forget that, but even if Trinh is not around to point it out, someone else always does!
More importantly, cars get the left lane, and they do stay out of the right lane, even to the extent that most will turn right from the left lane. Which is always exciting as motorbikes will be whizzing by constantly. Buses will sometimes stop with enough room for a motorbike to get by on the right, so exiting passengers must always be cognizant of the motorbikes.
Police are not everywhere, but they are around. Never in cars, always standing on corners or along the edge of the street. They will stop you if they see any of the no-noes mentioned above (helmets, kickstand, driving too fast).
Speaking of speed. It’s really not a problem. With little traffic, motorbikes seem to settle in the 35 to 45 km/hr. or 20 to 30 mph. With traffic, everyone is going half of that. Even more importantly, the few cars, buses, trucks and other things, that are out there, are going the same speeds. So, unlike in USA or Europe, where there are massive speed differentials, here there is very little. And no matter what you have been told, speed does not kill, speed differential kills.
Which then brings me to the carnage on the roads or lack thereof.
Having read the Expat forums before arriving. I expected to see blood flowing down the streets. Instead, in the last two months, I have seen three “accidents”. The first was two bikes getting tangled together cause one to drop. But since they were in this big traffic scrum that was moving like at 5 mph, once they got untangled everyone gets underway again. The second was more serious and it happened right next to me.
I was left of a little box truck and all of a sudden I see this motorbike lock his front brake as the truck slowed. He then hit the truck. Now since we were all initially going only about 20 mph, he probably only hit the truck at 10 and since the truck was going 5, the speed differential was only about 5 mph.
He picked himself and the bike up and drove to the side of the road. His mirror was broken and while he seemed a bit shaken, nothing was seriously wrong.
The third, just a few days again, as I was having my Ca Phi, I looked up to see the motorbike on the ground as a truck had turned right and the motorbike was inside of that. The truck driver got out immediately to see if she was OK. He and some bystanders, then helped the lady get her motorbike upright. At that point, I saw the driver ask if everything was OK. She said yes, and they both got on their way again.
This motobike tried to turn at same time as truck;
I must emphasize that the average speeds here are very low, in this case both truck and motorbike were going about 5 mph and moderate traffic pretty much stays in the 15 to 20 range.
That’s it for the carnage.
I will say that if you are a foreigner and expect to come to Vietnam, in the biggest city, and learn how to both navigate a new traffic culture and learn how to drive a two-wheeled motorized vehicle. Well, good luck with that. I learned to drive a motorcycle in California with no one around. I can’t imagine doing it in real traffic.
Oh, another observation I made in my first days in trying to understand how everyone could be so willy-nilly and yet not have endless accidents, was that each driver is responsible for not hitting what’s in front of him/her.
Sounds simple and it is. It means you must be prepared for driver in front to stop, turn or whatever, all with no signals. Now, many people do signal, but you can NOT count on it.
Speaking of lights. Motobikes are NOT allowed to have headlight on in day (Italy used to have this rule for all motor vehicles before the advent of Daytime running lights). And at night, as soon as I enter garage, light must be turned off.
Horn honking. Cars, buses, trucks are expected to do it routinely. It sorts of means, “hey, look out, I am big not that minerally so don’t do stupid stuff in front of me”.
When I’ve been a passenger in a bus or a few times in Uber car, I thought the honking was a bit excessive.
But now after the first week of driving my own bike, I see some more rationale. It’s like this. When a bunch of birds are flying together, as one turns they all turn. When you are in a pack of two wheeled vehicles, motorbikes and bicycles, there is some synchrony to the movement Everyone must move over one foot to make room for the “thing” near the curb. We just all do it.
But I realized that cars are more out of touch. Without the wind in your face, it is a different environment, so they honk more, like saying, “hey, watch out, I’m sort of oblivious here, so beware”
Better words were never said.
Which also get us back to why there is no carnage. For anybody who has ever driven a motorcycle, it’s quite apparent that in any kid of accident, no matter who is at fault, it will be painful.
So it is here. And in a city of millions of motorbikes, everyone is keenly aware that it doesn’t matter how stupid the driver is in front of them, they must simply drive like their life depended on it.
And they do.
Meanwhile in the USA, while our cars become safer and safer every day, drivers are losing what little skills they may have once possessed. Accident, no problem; insurance pays and I go on.
Riding a motorbike in Vietnam that may have cost you a year’s salary to buy and being a vulnerable as you are, you drive with a totally different sense. It may not seem obvious to a stranger, but it’s as real, as real can be.
Lastly, in all this, I have yet to see any anger. I have seen some strange things. I have seen some stupid car drivers here too, but everyone just seems to accept what is. No significant horn honks in anger, motorcyclists never yell or say anything for that matter. Certainly, nothing bad. Though once when I was leaving with my kick-stand down, someone pointed it out to me immediately.
Should I have stayed in northern Europe for another year?
The route I ended up taking between Galicia in the Northwest corner of Spain and the Canaries.
First the additional year. I love Ireland, the people, even the weather (you never got bored). But Ireland itself is not really cruising country. Getting up and down the coasts can be a bitch, at best. I did love A Coruna though. Why not there? That was Plan B after all.
Then Schengen reared its ugly head. For those of you who still don’t know what “Schengen” is, it was the city in Luxembourg in which almost all the countries of Europe (nothing to do with E.U.) decided to have open borders in 1989. Open borders meant just that. Prior to 1991 or whenever it went into effect, one had to stop at each and every frontier and show passport. On my many drives from the Netherlands to Italy, that meant 3 border crossings. But they were pretty quick (nothing like the USA-Canada boondoggle). They never even stamped your passport. While the rule was, you were allowed in 90 days in each country, no one cared and as I said, no one stamped passports other than at airports and not even then many times.
But with Schengen and the open borders, they decided they still had to control immigration. Therefore non E.U. people could only stay 90 days out of every 180 days. So, before you could move from country to country every 90 days a stay within the rules, now, you had to leave the continent or go to the U.K. or Ireland. That’s why Dauntless was in Waterford.
Ultimately, I realized that to keep Dauntless in A Coruna for the winter would not be feasible, since I could no longer go to NYC for 3 months and then return.
By the way. So, Schengen was written to keep people from overstaying, yet today the E.U. gets about 200,000 people a month from Africa and the Middle East.
But they got Dauntless out so all is OOOKKK.
And another aside. While those morons in Washington debate who to let in. NO ONE, Dems or Republicans, talks about we have no system to track who leaves. Wouldn’t you think if we really cared, the first thing would be using one of the billion computers the government has to track people as they leave and compare that list to who came in. What a clown show!
Now, sorry for the diatribe. My route which took me down the coast of Portugal and around the corner to Gibraltar. I didn’t even see the Gibraltar Apes.
I suppose the real issue here is that we were really beaten up almost the entire trip from Porto, Portugal all the way to the Canaries. By stopping in Gibraltar, I added about another 360 miles to our trip.
I actually had a sailor in France tell me that I should go direct to the Canaries from Vigo in NW Spain. But I wanted to see Portugal and I am glad I did.
The route I should have taken
But southern Spain and Morocco, ended up being exactly what I expected, hot, dry and dry and hot.
I could have spent those weeks in the Canaries. The Canaries reminded me of everything I liked about Galicia. Great people, food and a boating culture.
Looking for something else, I came across my 2015 Post Mortem of my First Atlantic Passage. It’s fascinating. Makes me feel I should write another one for this passage. I will, but also think I would like to do a compare & contrast, a great teacher’s tool.
But this is not that. This is more about the how and why I went the way we went. In thinking about this post, I’ve been thinking a lot about this in the past couple weeks. But even now, I go back and forth, would I or would I? That is the question.
Rainbow of Ho Chi Minh City
Not my usual rainbow and sunset picture, but appropriate none the less. Being in Saigon gives me the opportunity to think, reflect and plan for the future.
Being away from Dauntless, longer than originally planned, but in fact, it’s worked out for the best. When I am on Dauntless, short term takes precedence.
As I have reflected on the events of 2016. I found myself racing through some places I really loved, like Galicia; while staying months in places I really didn’t, like Southern Spain, Morocco.
It was a tumultuous year, in every aspect. The year started with Dauntless was in the capable hands of the Kehoe Boys in New Ross, Ireland, another place I miss very much. I, in the meantime, was in NY and then Julie and I took a trip to Galicia in mid-February to see if we could keep Dauntless in A Coruna or Vigo, for the winter 2016-17. We both loved Galicia as much as we thought we would. Thus, Plan A to return to North America became Plan B.
Plan B: Ireland, Scotland for the summer, then France in August and Galicia by mid-September for the winter. Now, the Schengen three-month rule really puts a crimp on spending time (and money) in Europe for non-E.U. cruisers, but I’d spend the off times in NY and USA.
Then Life Happened and the Plan Changed, again.
Even before leaving NYC at the end of March I found myself going back to Plan A, getting Dauntless back to the New World.
So far, so good. Plan A would get me to Asia sooner rather than later. But I did not think about how much I liked the cruising in Ireland, Scotland, Atlantic France (Brittany) and Spain (Galicia).
The route from Ireland to Panama is dictated by climate and currents. Not a lot of options, but I’m not sure I really thought about the choices I did have well enough.
Initially to an Outsider, it certainly looks like mayhem. Motorbikes and bicycles going every which way, against traffic, on the sidewalks and driving right inside buildings!
In any new situation, I try to watch as an observer and withhold judgement until I have some data.
Watching as an observer, not biased by the framework you know, but looking for patterns and understanding of the system in front of you, then the picture will become ever clearer.
“car seat”
My first couple weeks, riding as a passenger on Trinh’s Honda Air Blade, one of the most numerous motorbikes. (In this blog, I call all these very small engine (50 to150cc) bikes, motorbikes. This includes was we in USA call scooters).
So, sitting behind Trinh in the first weeks, I was ??Nervous. I quickly realized in many situations it was best to just close my eyes! Yes, that was amazingly effective.
Leaving the hotel, if we had to go west, just make a U-turn in the middle of the block. Traffic too heavy for the U-turn, go around the block, are you kidding, go against traffic at a 45° angle until we are on the right side of the road. Sorry, I have no video of some of the most outrageous hijinks, because I either had my eyes closed or I was awestruck.
In the first days, I derived their first rule of the road, don’t hit what you can see.
Now a simple rule like this can be amazing effective. It certainly seems to work. Let me say now that after 6 weeks, I have seen all of two accidents, which were not so much accidents, as unintended touching, causing one or both of the motorbikes to fall down. And seeing how the traffic is all low speed, between 6 and 25 miles per hour (mph) or 10 to 40 km/hr., these incidents don’t incur significant injuries. (In fact, now that I think of it, I have only seen an ambulance racing down the street once. Contrast that with NYC where it’s a few times per hour).
When you develop and rule, a theory, you then test it against the data. So, I looked at everything with that in mind, don’t hit what you can see. What I saw was that while less than half the bikes (the roads are 90% motorbikes, 10% human powered bikes) signal their intentions, for turns, the bikes behind seem to anticipate this.
Which is why I being currently in Vietnam, Sai Gon or Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), to be exact.
Why here? Why now? Why not:
I have a friend here.
I needed a vacation from Dauntless.
She needed a rest from me.
I needed to be in New York for a bit, so it’s almost on the way.
It’s incredibly cheap, with wonderful food.
The people are so very friendly, nice and welcoming
And I do like women in uniform.
After this post, my writings about my other, non-Dauntless related, travels will be underDispatches From the Orient
I can write gobs and gobs about HCMC so far. Let me suffice to say in this little introduction that it is a true working city full of really nice, friendly people, with incredibly good food at even more incredibly inexpensive prices.
Today I did a little exploration of a new section of town, took four buses that cost me a total of $1.00, that’s 25 cents each.
My DInner that Cost $0.90The image on her fight is some kind of missile sitting on a stand on a table. This show was about various weapons systems, as I saw some US and Russian made stuff.
Here is a little video I took on my first days.
I found it best to just close my eyes often.
Error
This video doesn’t exist
And if you think the motobikes are numerous, think of the alternative like Bejing, where cars sit in endless traffic jams and the pollution is so bad it’s hard to go out!
Yes, it was on Paramount Vietnam this afternoon and while I have not seen it that much, I do recognize that it’s an iconic film of the 1980’s in middle America.
driving right inside buildings!
will become ever clearer.
speed, between 6 and 25 miles per hour (mph) or 10 to 40 km/hr., these incidents don’t incur significant injuries. (In fact, now that I think of it, I have only seen an ambulance racing down the street once. Contrast that with NYC where it’s a few times per hour).
Dauntless at Sea 