Some days ago a friend sent me a note of support about my recently released podcast, First Mate’s Log. Within this kindness was a word that struck a chord: quotidian. Sometime last year I began creating the podcast with an intention, but one I did not name for myself. And I realized upon reading myContinue reading “The Journey Quotidian”
Tag Archives: philosophy
Final Blog: SV Maggie May
Two years may seem a strange amount of time to pass before writing a “final” blog about life on SV Maggie May. But it has taken me this long to begin to emerge from the tunnel I entered when we docked on the Chesapeake Bay in late June 2023. When we stepped off the boat and moved back into our house, and into lives that seemed no longer our own.
Si Dios Quiere
Most people in the rural areas here don’t have air conditioning or televisions or even electricity necessarily, yet there is an energy and an air of contentment I have seen nowhere else in the world, certainly not in my own country. There are dark sides of course. There are always dark sides. To all of us and everywhere. And we have been here long enough to see some of those too. But what I take with me is laughter, generosity, self reliance, wildness, commitment, beauty, and for me a deeply inquisitive drive to better understand the nature of contentment. The world turns on this ethereal phenomenon. The Dominican Republic knows something important.
Off Soundings
I think about that moment when our depth sounder goes from 290 feet to – – -. That’s somewhere beyond 300 feet, how much beyond is practically irrelevant. This passage the depth will fall to almost 10,000 feet. The sounder will read – – -, off soundings.
Boiling, Guadeloupe
About midway down the western edge of Guadeloupe there is a small bay where the town of Bouillante nestles within the foothills of towering green peaks. Here most of the population speaks French, the air smells strongly of sulfur, and every day, for most of the daylight hours and long into the night, the communityContinue reading “Boiling, Guadeloupe”
THE BOAT LAB: Crash Diet for Freeeedom
A conscious approach to consumption becomes critical to sustainable life on a sailboat.
When Time Sleeps
It was that type of rare and wondrous morning. Easy. Gentle. Light and lightening. When long-held burdens of the soul lift and time seems to stretch out and relax, lounge about easily as if it means to stay a while. Just here.
Harry Potter and the Pistol of Shrimps
These moments with nature’s magic have led me to think a lot about the idea of human-made mediated magic, and of its presence, or rather omnipresence, in our modern world.
Donuts in the Desert
ST. MARY’S RIVER, 11-5-2020 — Yesterday afternoon we sailed up the St. Mary’s River on a light wind from the southeast. This river, which we have returned to several times over the past months, runs southward from its headwaters to its mouth at the lower stretches of the Potomac. Along the way it twists andContinue reading “Donuts in the Desert”
Into the Abyss, and other fun things
One of the hardest things about this journey—beyond the heat and cold, the financial stress, fear and self doubt, the trying to live in a confined space with another (albeit lovable) human being, the banging my head on the bulkhead every damn time I go to the aft cabin—has been the absence of a mission.Continue reading “Into the Abyss, and other fun things”
At Home With the Gods of the Chesapeake
We made it. After 15 years of planning, 7 years of working on the boat, 2 months of pandemic lockdown, we are finally moving aboard Maggie May. Bill and I have spent the past few days carting carloads of stuff from our home basement and our friend Dave’s home, (where we were staying for theContinue reading “At Home With the Gods of the Chesapeake”
KRISTA SCHLYER 