Odda Sea - Life Aboard An Allied Princess Sailing Yacht

Wrestling sailcloth into position. Check out my awesome farmer’s tan!

Ahh, the Florida Keys. To most folks, the Keys speak of tropical breezes, miles of imported sandy beaches, and inevitably Key West’s famous Duval street. Of course the reality is somewhat different, with a lackluster economy heavily biased towards seasonal tourism, the Keys are inhabited by a relatively small year-round population (disproportionately representing the midwestern US in origin) who do their best to make ends meet any way they can in the doldrums between tourism peaks. I’ve had the privilege to meet a number of these folks who are truly wonderful people, many of them even brilliantly talented in one or more diverse subjects or skills. And of course there are those for whom the Keys represent the easy slide to the bottom of life, living bottle to bottle or high to high. Those in between these two are usually college students or recent graduates working in the service industry in order to stick around and enjoy the coast, the fishing, or the island lifestyle for a while before moving on. Some of them get stuck, some of them don’t.

Having been to the Keys a few times, my first impression was that they are tremendously depressing, with a lot of rundown infrastructure and people with very broken lives. The major entertainment around here is to go to a bar and drink. So coming here this time I decided to make my experience different, deliberately. Of course like most folks I enjoy a good beer with friends, and I always enjoy meeting new people and making new friends. But I was determined to find the scene that lay under the surface here - people worth knowing, and to put effort into creating or finding experiences that would be worthwhile.

So far, I can report this new effort has been a rousing success. I’ve had a crowd of folks over on the boat, jamming on guitars and cooking kebabs in the cockpit. I’ve met the aforementioned lovely people, too many to say hello to by name here. Some of them are Parole Officers with kind hearts and wise counsel, foreign affairs advisors to high government officials, congressional advisors who really Get It, tremendously talented tattoo artists and musicians, National Geological Service cartographers, and more pilots, divers, surfers, and paratroopers than I can count. Of course it’s not what your chosen profession is but who you are that counts, and there are many folks who defy easy description that are in the list of people I’m glad to have met as well. Some are passing through, some are staying and contributing to the community. It’s been really wonderful meeting these folks and through their networks finding more groups of like-minded individuals. It’s the community within the community, and it’s worth finding wherever you are; even in the most low-down, beaten-up, forgotten side-road towns there are people who Think Different, as the ad said.

When I haven’t been the social butterfly, I’ve been keeping myself busy with repairs to Aletheia, as she has needed some major work and I’ve had a mind to change a few things during the trip. Thus, I am attending to a short list of priorities on that front as well. The biggest items on the list so far are:

- Finish making the new Jib
- Install the replacement wind generator
- Pull and re-bed the starboard cap shroud chainplate as it seems it is leaking slightly (this worries me big time)
- Thoroughly inspect all of the standing rigging, re-tension the shrouds, and check everything for proper torque or chafe issues.
- Replace all brass hanks on the primary sails (jib, drifter, storm, and maybe the 110 genoa) with either soft shackles (most often used sails) or Wichard snap hooks (which I already own, and will put on sails I use less often).

The jib is coming along swimmingly. I’ve been working on it for only two days and I have all of the patches sewn in place (head, tack, clew, reef tack, reef clew, reef pennants) and all of the panels sewn together. At 10 feet away it looks wonderful! Of course my sewing leaves much to be desired in terms of precision, as this is my first major project with a machine, let alone my first sail. But I am learning and the stitches are solid if not perfectly aligned. The nice thing about making your own sail is that you can add reinforcements where you know your boat likes to chafe the sail, or extra stitching where you feel it is needed. A big shout out to Sailrite for the excellent kit, and to Tom Allen who helped me get it all sorted. Tom had to leave for the Bahamas and left me with some wisdom about how to get this sail assembled and so far his advice has been spot on. Sailrite really knows how to put together a heavy air sail and did not skimp on patches, cloth, or hardware. I’m very impressed and will do business with them again in the future.



It almost looks like a sail!


Which one is the clew again?

The other projects shouldn’t be hard, per se, as much as they’ll require a bit of time. Making all of the soft shackles will definitely require some time, as it currently takes me about 20 minutes a shackle, most of which is working the diamond knot tight. I’m a bit concerned about the leaking chainplate, as I rebedded it extremely well, but hey, it’s leaking so I couldn’t have bedded it perfectly or it wouldn’t be leaking. So… that’s about a day gone right there, but that’s how it goes.

One day at a time, though. And in the meantime I’m really enjoying myself so it’s part work, part play and that’s a good thing.

I also got myself a fun new item for the galley, check it out!

More soon!


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This little guy hung out with me for a while when I was about 250 miles offshore. I have no idea how he got out there so far - maybe hopping tankers and oil rigs? Unfortunately I woke up one morning to find him dead on the deck a few days later. Poor thing.



Sometimes after a storm blows through, you get some pretty amazing skies. Here, a cargo ship passes through a small storm cell on the horizon.

More soon.


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Image: Flying the Mizzen Staysail Across the Gulf

Contrary to the common work ethic being propagated by the upper class of the US, a lifetime of hard labor — be it physical, mental, or just excessively time-consuming — is not indicative of virtue. In other words, how hard or much you work is not necessarily related to how happy and well off you are.

Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the cruising community. Sure, most of us think twice before ordering a beer instead of a water. We can’t always spring for the latest chart plotter - even if we wanted it, which most of us don’t. But we make ends meet working part time or less, wake up every day on the water (often with a view that others pay thousands a night to see), lack for very little, and to be honest it is a standard of living that exceeds that of most shore-stuck folks sweating 60-80 hour weeks. You see, we’ve learned something that makes the difference: laziness is a virtue.

When I say laziness, I’m not talking about sloth. You know, the folks who sit in front of the boob tube huffing bud light and chicken wings 16 hours a day breaking only to sleep and start again. No, I mean the folks who spend the time up front to avoid having to work hard in the future. The people who say “this activity sucks, so I’ll find a way to minimize or eliminate it”. They are the ones who invented the yuloh, the stitch and glue construction method, the soft shackle, the composting marine head. The ones who realized that boat maintenance is less work in general than house maintenance, that owning a car is inferior to living in a community where cars aren’t necessary, that being mobile allows one to take advantage of seasonal changes rather than having to fight them.

A wise friend recently mentioned to me that laziness is also the secret to safety at sea, especially for a short handed crew. Reefing early, thinking about the pain points of sail handling and finding solutions for them, slowing down at night, things like that remove or reduce crisis situations and hard work. As he said, it’s far easier to put the reef in before the squall hits. Sound advice for pretty much anything in life.

Expanding that concept, there’s a practical reason for discussing this subject. As a solo sailor, there’s only so much of me to go around. The lazier I am in terms of conserving energy, reducing tasks by preparing and thinking ahead of time, and easing loads through smarter equipment setup, the safer and more effective I am as a sailor and captain. This directly translates to fewer mistakes, a more enjoyable trip, and reduced equipment damage, all of which feed back into the system to reduce costs and repair time, as well as increase my enjoyment of the next port. Laziness is definitely a virtue in my case.

On the societal side, I once read a study which concluded that if we all shared the benefits of industrial technology evenly among everyone in the world we could - the entire planet - live in first world comfort (not luxury, but comfort: clean running water, affordable healthy food, quality shelter, organized society) with no one human ever having to work more than two hours a day on ANYTHING. Think about that for a second.

So rather than embrace the Victorian inspired, upper class mandated, servile mentality of a lifetime of hard work for someone else being a virtue, I’d much rather put in my couple hours every day and have the rest of the time to enjoy each and every day as I get it. You can keep those 80 hour work weeks if you want.


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Oh yeah… check out THIS A-list release coming soon:





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The last week has been a blur…

Shortly after the halfway point I was beset by a fairly significant squall, with winds in definite excess of 40 knots and gusting to what I would estimate was over 50 for about 4 hours, abating to 35 knots for another 2-3 hours. In the first few minutes of the squall hitting my 100% heavy working jib was torn to shreds and subsequently lost overboard when I tried to take it off the forestay. My wind generator burned itself out and even started smoking (fortunately I had it in full shutoff mode so the batteries were not damaged). My radar doesn’t work anymore (I believe the intense racking of the antenna module slamming from side to side in the gimbal probably damaged the antenna or something inside it), and, foolish me, I left the spare oars for the dinghy lashed on the cabintop and they were washed away. Alas.

Fortunately, the boat took the pounding quite well, though I was left shaken, and in the aftermath I have given a lot of thought to the situation and have hopefully learned some valuable lessons as well as gained some valuable experience.

After that, I was “gifted” with a perfect beam reach for two days, letting me cover some serious mileage.

The approach up the Straits of Florida to the Keys though was challenging, with variable winds on the nose against the current, sometimes raising a hellacious choppy swell, sometimes making tacking angles frustrating. But overall I was able to work my way upwind and made landfall yesterday night in about 1-2 knots of wind, barely enough to eek my way into a close anchorage. I’m now enjoying the keys lifestyle, taking it easy and recuperating. I’ll start repairs on the damaged items before too long, but for now I’m just grateful to have made it across the Gulf.

I’ll post some photos from the trip in the next couple days, but I need to send my laptop in for service and I’m not sure how long the turnaround is going to be so if I’m late on posting, that’s likely why.

My friends who were supporting me through the trip with encouragement and advice were hugely helpful, so a big thanks to each of you who sent support, personal anecdotes, wisdom, weather, and love.

It was a hard trip, and long, but I can truly and honestly say, yes, absolutely, it was worth it.

Much more to come, my friends. We’re just getting started!


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