We are sitting on a bench in Madison Square Park in the Flatiron District. Buildings encircle this urban oasis, framed by a blue New York sky. It is our last day in the city, and we have been walking all morning. Small dogs in fancy coats trot by us with their owners. The din of the city is somehow a comfort, like ocean surf. The temperature hovers around 30 degrees Fahrenheit, yet I feel warm in the sunlight, layered as I am in cold weather gear. Lisa sits beside me, taking it all in.
“Would you ever think of moving here permanently?” I ask. It’s a common question we pose when we travel.
“Oh, yeah,” she says without any hesitation. “I’ve always been a city girl.” Her face glows in the chilly air.
When we retired four years ago in our mid-50s, it seemed as if we had life by the tail. We sold the house and moved aboard our 43’ ocean-going trawler, set on exploring the world at a sedate six miles an hour. I’ve always loved the water, and getting this chance to cast off the bowlines was a lifelong dream. We built a home in Arizona in a 55+ retirement community as a mere precaution, a refuge from the soggy Pacific Northwest winters. Snowbirds, or maybe seagulls, might have better described us.
But a family tragedy dashed those plans. Crushed and grief-stricken, we sold the boat and stayed put in Arizona these past three years. We made friends and enjoyed the newness and comforts of a planned community that sprouted from nothing in the desert. Mostly, we worked on finding meaning in an unthinkable loss. …
I passed my third anniversary of giving up alcohol today. I thought I would share some background on this milestone and why I decided to stop drinking.
I have a long history with alcohol. Maybe it’s the genetics mapped deep in my Irish blood or an inheritance from longstanding tradition, but alcoholism runs in the family, near and far. I can’t think of a time in my life that wasn’t steeped in the rituals of drinking.
I met the love of my life in a dive bar. Most of my proudest accomplishments and favorite moments were punctuated with a celebration beer or glass of wine. An early love of Hemingway surely contributed to an interweaving of my very identity with alcohol. If I closed my eyes and pictured my true self in my natural element, it was cozied up to a dimly lit bar with a whiskey on the rocks in a brown, brown study.
Grieving the loss of a child is a journey through wastelands you never expected to cross. Unlike every other challenge you’ve ever faced, there is no easy way through a loss like this. You stumble and fall. You curse. You are hobbled and bloody. You are not sure of the way. You might be going in circles.
The truth is everyone suffers in this life. It’s our lot to take the awful with the beautiful. We all must face it. In a perfect world, your mom wouldn’t forget you in the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease. You wouldn’t lose a dear friend to cancer in the prime of her life. Your son wouldn’t die in a motorcycle accident before his twenty-first birthday.
In the months before we lost Connor, we crossed a high wire of reinvention. We retired from our careers. We sold our long-time family home and said goodbye to a lifetime of friends on Vashon Island. We bought a winter home in Arizona with the half-sane plan of living a life split between the summer sea and the winter desert. For half the year, home was where we’d drop the anchor.
Reinvention might come easier for some. I felt like a reluctant hermit crab who knows he must shift to a new shell to survive but dreads the transfer. The plans were years in the making. And just at that vulnerable juncture between one shell and the other, that final letting go of the safety and security of the familiar for the heady promise of a new life, a tsunami upends everything, stranding this naked, scared crab, its tiny claws raised as if to fight the wind and water and waves.
After five years of amazing adventures aboard our Nordhavn trawler MV Indiscretion, we’ve decided it’s time for a change. We are coming off the water.
We didn’t plan on this. We dreamed for decades to be at this very spot in our lives — casting off the bowlines to explore the world under our own keel at the unhurried pace of seven knots. But life doesn’t always work out like you hoped.
On September 27th, 2022, our son Connor was killed in a motorcycle accident in Colorado Springs. A car pulled out in front of him on a busy street a half mile from his apartment. He was just twenty years old.
After Connor’s death, reeling with loss, we took what would be our final cruise aboard Indiscretion. We were in shock and did not know what else to do. If any solace were possible for our crushed family, we thought it must be found in the harbors and bays of our beloved San Juan Islands. Our daughter accompanied us, and her partner joined a week later. We met up with dear friends from MV Fortitude and MV Equinox who helped distract us from our misery with companionship and love. Still, every anchorage, every island hike, every trip ashore in the tender, every sunset and moonrise — all of it reminded us of Connor’s absence. We found peace but agony too, as this new reality sunk in.
Connor and Lisa
We put the boat away in November and headed south to our new winter home here in Arizona. We’ve spent these past months wondering how we move forward after such a tragedy.
Each time we discussed our return in the spring, we both felt despondent. Our plans to cruise to Alaska this summer felt empty and joyless. Despite our love for the pristine cruising grounds of the Salish Sea and our wonderful boat friends we’ve met along the way, we just couldn’t imagine resuming our life afloat.
Connor spent his youth sailing and boating with us, and the reminder of the memories we made together is simply too painful. In this new grief-stricken world, returning to the familiar and comfortable fills us with dread; we need to invent a new life that won’t constantly remind us of our loss. And maybe, in the process, allow us to accept what feels unacceptable.
These precious moments …
Here’s a lesson for us all. Despite our best wishes and plans, life is incredibly uncertain. We don’t know what the future may bring. No one does. We insist on having it all figured out before acting on our dreams. But sometimes, before the plan is perfected, the unthinkable changes everything. If there’s one bit of advice I could offer, it’s this: don’t wait. Go sooner. Better yet, go now. Right now is all we have. You may not get another chance.
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. — Seneca
We aren’t saying goodbye to adventure. That’s the last thing Connor would have wanted. Instead, we’ve decided to pivot in a direction that will honor his memory and allow us the chance to heal without the constant reminder of our loss. In the last two years of his life, he developed a passion for off-roading in his Jeep. He and his friends would take old forest service roads deep into the Colorado mountains, looking for challenging routes that might tax the 4×4’s crawling capabilities. The battered underside of his Jeep proves he pushed that vehicle to its limits. We treasure the selfies he sent us from the summits of his off-road adventures, the vivid blue sky and Rocky Mountain vistas framing his smiling delight.
Connor and his Jeep
In that spirit, we bought an off-road capable RV, more akin to a camper van than a plush motorhome, that we’ll use to explore the deserts and mountains that Connor grew to love in the last years of his life. We’ve never been a fan of crowded RV parks, so we chose a rig that can take us far off the beaten path — boondocking as it’s known in RV vernacular — the boating equivalent of dropping the hook in a secluded anchorage. On some trips, we’ll tow Connor’s old Jeep to seek out the otherwise unreachable places he would have loved to see. It comforts us that we’ll follow a path our son would have taken had he lived.
New adventures.
As we close this chapter, we are grateful for the adventures and friendships we enjoyed during our five years of trawler life. Joining the Nordhavn family, even aboard one of the smallest vessels in the fleet, was both a privilege and a joy. I learned so much from the many experienced captains and marine experts who freely shared their wisdom with me time and again. I felt like I was getting to the point where my growing skills and talents could be paid forward to the newest crop of skippers. And oh, will we miss the friends we met along the way. I have to trust that our paths will somehow cross again in the future.
We are incredibly grateful to Devin Zwick of Nordhavn Northwest. In all my years of boating, I’ve rarely encountered a more capable, knowledgeable and compassionate yacht professional. Devin personally skippered the boat from her slip in Seattle to Anacortes, oversaw her annual haul-out, worked with me remotely to iron out the logistics and terms of the sale, and found a terrific new owner for Indiscretion — all in the course of a few short weeks. They say the happiest days in a skipper’s life are when he buys and sells a boat. This is surely not the case with Indiscretion. We dearly love this trawler. But Devin worked extremely hard to make the process as seamless for us as possible. For most people, there’s an “oh shit, what have I done” moment before you sign the papers to buy a boat, particularly one as expensive as a Nordhavn trawler. Our story should lessen the uneasiness for those about to make this plunge. Believe me, that spreadsheet you keep studying won’t help you. Go for it. You only pass this way once.
I kept this blog as a way to share my amazement and good fortune at having the chance to operate and cruise aboard a little ship like Indiscretion. Many nights I sat in the darkened pilothouse when everyone was already asleep, listening to the sounds of the wind, watching the moonlight on the water and the spin of the lights on shore as we circled our anchor, feeling utterly incredulous at my luck. I hope these posts have been informative and inspiring to others who also feel drawn to the wildness and tranquility of the ocean.
And who knows? I’ve skippered a boat for most of my adult life. We might find our way back to the shore one day when the pull of the saltwater in our veins overtakes the grief in our hearts. In a world where nothing is certain, anything is possible.
This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever written. I’m sharing this partly because I hope that releasing these words will provide some catharsis from the excruciating pain I have carried around these last months. Perhaps the sentiments I’ve conveyed here can be a small comfort to someone who has experienced a similar tragedy. I also know that people are worried about us, about me. Consider this an abbreviated journal of our past one hundred days. Unlike anything else I’ve written, this one contains no epiphany, enlightenment, or happy ending. This one is mired in the messy middle of heartbreak and loss.
On the night of September 27th, our son Connor died in a motorcycle accident in Colorado Springs. A car pulled out in front of him on a busy street a half mile from his apartment. He was killed instantly in the crash. He was riding a motorcycle he had owned for just one day. He was twenty years old.
I mentally replay the call we received from the coroner’s office in the wee hours of September 28th over and over and over again, my mind trying to push this all away, to wake up from the darkest, longest nightmare of my life.
If the first half of life is about growing and accumulating, then the second half must see us disbursing, letting go. Life is full of cycles — like the seasons, or perhaps more dear to me, the flooding and ebbing of tides.
In the past few years, I’ve let go of my aging parents, my career and a lifetime of associates and colleagues, a dear friend, and this past year I watched my two kids leave home to start their own lives of growth and accumulation.
At its best, letting go brings an emotional release, a lightness, a feeling of immense relief, like putting down a heavy weight you’ve been carrying around for too long. At its worst, it brings a paralyzing sense of irretrievable loss. I’ve been thinking about these two very different outcomes as we navigate our next phase of letting go.
As I walked through the throng of travelers at LAX recently on my way to a flight that would be canceled the minute I got to the gate, I reflected on how change is the only real constant in life. In less than a week, I found myself hurrying through crowded airports in Seattle, Denver and Los Angeles (fun fact: these three airports accounted for 60% of all holiday flight cancelations). From Denver, I drove 1,200 miles to Los Angeles in a Jeep with Connor and his ten-month-old puppy, listening to baseball podcasts (yes, that’s a thing) through Colorado and New Mexico. The music changed to hip hop in Arizona, and I felt nostalgic for the podcasts. I paid nearly $7 per gallon for gas in California and felt nostalgic for Arizona. We survived freeway driving in the rain as we neared Los Angeles with Connor relying on his 19-year-old reflexes — or the Force — to weave in and out of 80-mph traffic. …
In my office, I keep an old photograph of the Buckaroo Tavern in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont. The photo truly captured the character of the place: two chrome-festooned Harley Davidson motorcycles parked up on the sidewalk out front, bright orbs from the lights hung over the pool tables, and an outstretched arm and pool cue of a patron poised in mid-shot. I spent many nights at this dive bar as a young man. My eyes burned from the cigarette smoke, and the rough-looking biker crowd that congregated at the bar would often chuckle over their beers at this clean-cut accountant toting a pool cue case, but I loved the place. I had the photograph framed when we first moved to Vashon Island. It hangs between a picture of Mark Twain standing before a pool table considering his next shot and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey in his famous boxing stance. But, it’s the tavern picture that has caught my attention lately as I think back on that long ago life before kids. …
When we purchased our Nordhavn 43 trawler a little over two years ago, we had big plans for the fall of 2020. We’d leave our newly emptied home and sail off to far away destinations — a longtime dream come true.
In fact, we did cast off, but not like we expected. …
I’m told I say it every year, but today was certainly the best Father’s Day ever. Being spoiled by my two children, and seeing how they’ve become wonderful adults has put me in a thankful, reflective mood. I’m sure every generation thinks this, but I believe what it means to be a father has changed a lot over the past thirty years. I had the benefit of having two dads as I grew up, first one and then the other. I loved them both, but I looked for other role models when I became a father myself. …
So many worries. Our future unknown and uncertain. Quarantine and isolation. And yet … these are the days we’ll remember for a generation: those dark times when we persevered and grew stronger as a person, as a family, and as a community. We made sacrifices, experienced heartfelt loss, and yet took comfort in the small things: our family suddenly reassembled from far-flung places, a dog’s warmth by our side, and maybe the music we played for each other to cheer and inspire …
Listen to this performance by Yo-Yo Ma with your eyes closed and really, really hear it. To think such beautiful sound and feeling could come from just one soul, alone on a darkened stage. Ancient music retold centuries later; a musical message that we can and will get through this together.
Most captains pay close attention to weather forecasts and will postpone departures to protect the comfort and safety of the ship and its passengers. But what if the skipper has a track record of being too cautious? And what if the ship is an ocean-capable Nordhavn trawler?
I’m the first to admit it: I’m a cautious skipper. Even with decades of sailing experience across a half-dozen vessels, my nerves still rattle when the wind pipes up. Unlike a car, maneuvering a boat has an inherent wildness to it, an out of control feeling more akin to riding an elephant than the surety of a stick-shift, particularly in close quarters around docks and other boats. …
I stood mostly naked near the bow of the boat in the early hours of a Thursday morning. The sun hadn’t risen, and it was damp and chilly in my underwear. I hoped other boats anchored nearby wouldn’t witness this act of indignity. Desperate times require desperate measures, I told myself, as I contemplated the orange traffic cone standing before me atop a square yard of fake grass.
I’m writing this tonight from the settee of Indiscretion’s wheelhouse — one hell of a place to put down words. It’s just past twilight now, and I’ve turned on the red courtesy lights that provide just enough glow to see my surroundings, but not enough to spoil vision while voyaging at night. Ahead of me lie the helm chair, the ship’s wheel and the wrap-around pilothouse windows that look out over the bow and Quartermaster Marina. …
When we purchased Indiscretion late last summer, we knew we needed help in getting to know our new vessel, the systems on board, and in particular, maneuvering her 60,000 pounds around docks and other boats. Coming from a smaller and lighter sailboat, operating this trawler was a whole new experience for us. …
I spent last weekend in Las Vegas to attend my niece’s Little White Chapel wedding on the Strip. Frequent flier miles paid for our tickets, placing us in the far back of the plane. On the way home to Seattle, my family took the whole row on the port side of the aircraft, while I settled into the opposite aisle seat. A couple soon appeared and clambered into the seats next to mine. They had flown down for the weekend to see Billy Idol perform and were on their way back home. …
Lisa and I have celebrated 22 wedding anniversaries. For at least the past dozen years, we haven’t exchanged gifts beyond small tokens like flowers or chocolates. Instead, we go out to dinner, just the two of us, to celebrate the occasion. This year we celebrated at May’s Kitchen, a Thai restaurant on Vashon that is so good, it is worthy of special occasions like anniversaries. As we were heading out the door on our way to the restaurant, Lisa surprised me with a package.
“Wait, what’s this?” I asked with apprehension. She was breaking tradition. “I didn’t buy you a gift.”
“Don’t worry. It’s for both of us. It’s a marriage saver,” she replied with a cryptic smile. …
After two decades of sailing, we have crossed over to the dark side.
A few weeks ago we bought a powerboat, a Nordhavn 43 trawler, that we’ve named Indiscretion. She isn’t a typical go-fast stinkpot kind of powerboat. Her cruising speed of 7 knots isn’t far off from sailing. We won’t win any races. But she’s a stout little ship, with the displacement and hull design to withstand open ocean conditions, and an engine and fuel supply to take us from Seattle to Hawaii on a single tank of diesel. A sistership circumnavigated the world a few years ago. We don’t expect to cross oceans, but we do have plans to go places that require blue water passages, up to Alaska or down to Mexico, and going there in a boat that can handle just about anything provides real peace of mind. …
When I was starting out in public accounting, nearly thirty years ago, I got the chance to work for a new partner who had just joined our firm. His name was Joe Sambataro, an Italian-American from New Jersey, full of blunt honesty and character, and we hit it off right away. He became an important mentor and eventually recruited me to join a small staffing firm in Tacoma as a financial analyst when he joined as CFO. He would later retire, then come back as CEO. Joe is now the Chairman of the Board of this multi-billion publicly traded staffing firm.
Back when I first began working for Joe, he shared three wishes for me: Marriage, Mortgage, and a Boat. In that order. He figured that an employee with a spouse and a mortgage would stick around longer than a single guy with no ties to anything. The boat, he said, was just for fun. Joe liked boating and especially fishing off a boat.
I took Joe’s advice and in short order got married to my beautiful wife Lisa, and signed a mortgage on our Vashon Island home. I soon began looking for a sailboat. …
I’ve taken over 6,000 ferry rides since moving to Vashon Island. Most of these were uneventful passages to work and back. But everyone once in a while, say 1% off the time, or 60 sailings, I’ve been the very first car on the ferry.
Being the first car on the ferry has some unique benefits. Unless an ambulance or police car has priority loading, the first car loads into the first spot of the center lane, perched out on the bow of the boat. The view from this vantage point is unencumbered and fantastic. On summer days, you can roll down the windows and open the sunroof and take in the glory of sun and sea. In winter, you feel the rollers and spray even with the windows up. No reason to go up on deck when you have such a wonderful ringside seat. I almost always put down my book or laptop on these journeys and soak in the raw beauty of the waves usually lost on me back in the bowels of the car deck on other sailings.
But being the first car on the ferry also has its downsides. Earning this spot means you missed the sailing of the previous boat by just one car. You were the lonely vehicle left on the loading dock while all the cars in front of you sailed off, the ferry worker dolefully shaking his head as the traffic divider bar slowly descends, dooming your fate. You’l wait about an hour stewing on this before you get to enjoy your prime viewing position.
In the probability analysis all commuters calculate every morning and night, wondering when is the last possible minute you can leave and still get on the ferry, being this first car is tangible proof that you blew it. That pause over a last sip of coffee in the morning, that last small talk at the elevator at day’s end, the missed traffic light, all these you think about as you wait.
New York commuters rushing to their trains have a distinct advantage. All they have to consider is travel time and a fixed departure. With ferries, you have to also estimate the volume of other commuters, dump trucks, tourists, and delivery vans that fill up the ferry sometimes well before the sailing time. If only it were so easy to plan on time alone.
This is why ferry commuters usually have a diversion with them: a book, a journal, a musical instrument to while away the time. I’ve filled many journal pages with private thoughts over the years during these unplanned delays.
After over twenty years of ferry commuting, I now see this as just another part of life. Normal. Simply driving straight to work with no waiting, no surge of the sea as you make the crossing, no unplanned hour of waiting to read or think, or maybe write… without that, my life would feel diminished. Incomplete. So, I’ll keep this up, practicing my daily probability analysis, and while I’m sure I’ll be frustrated, I’ll deep down relish my perch on the bow of the ferry when I find myself there once again.
