ON THE HARD AGAIN

I’m on the hard again. My boat looks gorgeous on the water and on land, so I took a photo of her with some begonias in the foreground. A man came up to me and asked, ā€œWhat are you capturing?ā€ I said, ā€œSee that boat right there? She’s beautiful, and she’s mine, and she’s more...

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Saint Helena, Here I don’t come

They say that sailors write their plans in the sand at low tide. There are plenty of reasons for that. It's because we are bound by the wind. It's because one minute Mother Nature has the face of God and in a flash she's got the grin of the grim reaper. It's because sometimes we...

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SAILING TO SALDANA

There is polar air blowing up from Antarctica and straight into my bones. It is a deep glacial chill that slips in through every crack and is amplified by the water. My whole body responds, quivering, shaking, shivering. It is midday. I departed Hout Bay an hour ago on the rising tide. I am long...

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WHERE NOTHING IS TAME

I can't move without bumping into something wild in this country. It's like make-believe. Imagine walking along the beach and seeing this creature called a dassie, something that looks like a large rat but is most closely related to an elephant. The dassie is sitting there and then another one comes up and they just...

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GHOST SHIPS & DRAGON SEALS

Hout Bay is drop-dead gorgeous. A little seaside fishing town surrounded by green and pink mountains on all sides. It reminds me of Colorado without the snow. It’s summer here, but at night I sleep beneath five wool blankets. The locals say, ā€œthe wind was made in Hout Bay.ā€ I have not met the mountain...

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THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

The moon is new. I sleep hard and long and sail slow into the night. Celtic. Star Calypso. Dominator. Cape Sunrise. Golden Karoo. All traveling beside me. I rise before the day turns to gold. There is still an hour before sunrise and 17 NM until I'm at the Cape of Good Hope, or Cape...

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