Final Posting for Now

Dear Family and Friends:

We’ve come to the end of this sailing season.  It was long (seven months) this year because we wanted extra time to learn this boat and how best to sail it, to understand its various systems and how best to take care of it.  Mission accomplished.

Those of you who have been reading along know that we’ve had great moments and challenging ones.  And we’re so glad that many of you have taken a moment to respond to one or more of the 70+ entries.  Thank you.  You’re important to our life’s journeys.

* * * * *

We want to recognize and say thanks to some new folks, whom we would not have met without this time here in the islands.  We’re grateful for their welcome, interest, encouragement, help.  Among them:

Belongers

Tim Penn, owner of Penn’s Landing

Verna Penn-Moll – Tim’s sister, retired librarian, author, and an active leader in the Methodist Church

Shirley Chalwell – owner of the Laundromat and active in the Methodist Church

Eddie Wheatley – owner of Emile’s sports lounge and pizza parlor

Mohamed Yonnas – boat yard manager who oversaw the replacement of the keel

the good folks at East End Methodist Church

Zane of Zane’s Taxi Service

Islanders

Clive Allen, boat broker who helped us find Azure Wind

Helen and Jeanty Maurose, clergy couple pastors of East End Methodist Church

Geoffrey Williams, boat surveyor

John & Gwen Pitman, managers of the Green Iguana Hotel in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas

and the crew at Penns Landing Marina:  Justin Smit, Clay Rutledge, Duane Strawn, Rick Charron, Michel Picot & Linda Babin, Kalel James

Cruisers

Griff and Carol Williams (Syracuse NY)

Ray and Sandy McCoy (Pittsburgh, PA)
Jim and Deanna Chesson (Edenton, NC)

Jim and Carol Pehl (Boston, MA)

Anne Arey (Maine)

As Well As Our Guests

Bill and Cindy Davidson  (Dallas, Texas & Taos)

Mike and Deb Mahoney  (Tampa, Florida & Taos)

Peter and Donna Sword  (Greenville, North Carolina)

Ted and Rosy Walkenhorst  (Philadelphia, PA)

Wilson and Pam Gunn  (Washington, DC)

Pete Sr. and Pete Jr. (aka Re-Pete) Chamberlain  (Rockport and Dallas, TX)

Stephen and Beth Moll  (Houston, TX)

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Through poems and short essays, we’ve been sharing bits of our experiences and reflecting on God’s lessons.  We have much more reflecting to do, but as we leave, here are a couple of thoughts:

Living on the water is so different from living on land.  Ten feet past your back door is water, everywhere.  You get used to the nearly constant movement under your feet.  So you learn to re-think what is solid and reliable: it’s not the ground under your feet but the boat on which you ride. 

Nature’s rhythms seem to be more easily followed, especially in comparison to the city: the sun comes up, you wake up; the sun goes down, time to sleep.

Living on the water means simple living: less stuff, less space, less food, less storage, fewer choices, just less.

And it’s learning to live slowly.  It takes longer to accomplish one thing (almost any “one” thing) from doing the laundry, to replacing a light bulb, to waxing the hull.  And, you move more slowly as you get in and out of the dinghy, or walk on the moving deck.  This is a big part of “island time” living. 

There is a dance that goes on between wind, water and land.  Sometimes it’s a ballet, other times it’s the Twist (my, that shows my age!).

The shoreline has been a wonderful place to witness God’s unfolding creation.   The shoreline changes, grows, shrinks, expands, recedes all the time.  It reminds us that God’s not done with forming this world we know and neither is our role in helping this marvelous undertaking.

Water is an amazing substance.  Not only for its life-sustaining gifts.  But just for its physics.  There’s the surface of the water and then there’s the movement below.  You can be sitting in a calm anchorage, boats are secured, no one is moving, and suddenly the boats begin to roll.  Then you remember: it must have been that ferry boat passing by ten minutes earlier and a mile or two away that caused the underwater waves to surface and roll your way.

God’s aquarium along the reefs is utterly amazing.  What a way to ponder this world’s beauty and diversity, and learn to roll with the tides and look at the creatures underneath!    

More will surely follow as the memories linger.

* * * * *

And among our best memories this season:

a Super Bowl Sunday Sail from Peter Island to Virgin Gorda Sound on one tack

a November Sail (downwind) from Gorda Sound to Fat Hogs Bay (home base) that was sheer joy

Learning to paddleboard in Benure’s Bay

Snorkeling, especially at Waterlemon Cay, and at the Caves on Norman Island

Living without a car, and subsequently hitchhiking and learning the bus system

In the USVI, Francis and Maho Bays on St. John (“Tahiti”)

In the BVI, Great Harbour on Peter Island

New friends and Methodist Pastor, Helen and Jeanty Maurose

The hammock on the bow

Replacing the keel on schedule!

Becoming a solid sailing team and still married!

Writing more poetry  (Marney)

Reading more books  (both)

Taking more pictures  (Dave)

Sharing these islands with our visiting friends

Losing about 20 pounds  (Dave)

Being welcomed by the Methodists and being introduced to some terrific people

* * * * *

Finally, it’s hard to explain why I was called to the water like this:

There was the joy I experienced with tastes of a slower pace (lake sailing in the 1990's: 6 miles an hour at the end-of-a-60 mile an hour work day).  I wanted to experience an extended period of this slower pace (although it certainly had its rushed moments).

There was the fascination of how a boat could be built with enough integrity to stay afloat and contain so many intricate and interconnected systems to keep it moving (sails, lines, rigging, electricity, electronics, plumbing, etc).

Then there was the opportunity to see nature, meet people, learn a new culture, etc. that living on a boat offered. 

And there was the hunch that the institution I served (the church) might benefit from a different perspective - thinking about its life with a view from the water.  I served in a time when the church was in need of some significant adjusting; its traditions were not connecting to the people.  In such a time, you don’t keep answering the same old questions, but you learn to ask new questions – questions that come from having a different perspective.  I have a hunch the same thing could be said about other institutions (from banking to medicine to education).  Those currently in power won’t see it that way, but those on the fringes are more open to a different perspective.

Thank you.

Fair Winds

Calm Seas

Dave and Marney

It isn’t that life ashore is distasteful to me.  But life at sea is better.  (Sir Francis Drake, 1540-1596, Vice-Admiral, English Sea Captain, Privateer, Navigator, Politician of the Elizabethan Era)

Any damn fool can navigate the world sober.  It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk.

(Sir Francis Chichester, 1901-1972, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for becoming the first person to sail single-handed around the world by clipper route, and fastest (nine months and one day)

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.  (William A Ward, 1921-1994, author and poet, published in a wide range of periodicals from Upper Room to Reader’s Digest, and regular contributor to the Ft. Worth Star Telegram’s “Pertinent Proverbs”)

Ideals are like stars: we never reach them, but like the mariners of the sea, we chart our course by them.  (Carl Schurz, 1829-1906, German revolutionary, American statesman, Civil War Union Army General, author, and first German-born American elected to the US Senate)

A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.  (Grace Hopper, 1906-1992, US Navy Rear Admiral, computer scientist, assigned to program the Mark I computer during WW II, and afterwards helped to write the COBOL language)

At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.  (Robin Lee Graham, b. 1949, sailed around the world alone in 1965 as a teenager, author of Dove detailing his journey)