A Prefrontal Storm, FOMO and a do-over

Disclaimer: A personal blog entry with more self-help than boaty business. (took me a couple extra weeks to wrap my head around writing this).

In October of 2020 immediately following my first bout with the virus I decided to quit alcohol. 223 days later as the boat hit the water I promptly tossed that ideology aside in favor of a typical summer full of libations and the usual boat-life shenanigans. In that experiment the road to restraint was paved with distraction and simple avoidance, but no real change.

I see a Thai massage friend when I can (Thai Massage in Vermont). We got to talking one day, and the conversation ran from social media to sobriety to meditation and the internal noise that links those topics. She simply said “oh yes I call it the Pre-Frontal Storm” I immediately fell in love with the use of the term as the best way to summarize the dizzying cacophony of digital and mental distractive noise in my day to day. In considering the challenges of removing alcohol from my life I realized that the failure point in 2020 was largely due to the ‘prefrontal storm’ associated with approaching something from a stance of avoidance and distraction.

Want to confront your own prefrontal storm? Start with meditation. This is it’s own very long blog post so I won’t go into it here, but I highly recommend Dan Harris’ book 10% Happier. The tag line is “How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works: A True Story. Its an easy read and it may well change your life.

Changing behavior in today’s world is exponentially more difficult than it ever has been. With ‘social’ media, AI, streaming entertainment and all manner of news media at our fingertips, the availability of distraction and avoidance activities permeates and infiltrates every corner of our existence.

I have long wrestled with my relationship with alcohol (spoiler alert: I recently quit). In researching sober practices I came across the concept of High-Bottom vs High Functioning drinkers. Those that have not had what most would consider a rock bottom event… YET (Here’s a great podcast on the topic). Not that I am one for labels but this is where I placed myself, with grand emphasis on the ‘yet’ part.

FOMO

I am a sailor. I am a drinker. They go hand in hand in my world. So the concept of quitting alcohol was met with some serious FOMO - Fear of Missing Out. Missing parties on the dock, missing the uninhibited conversations, missing being the life of the party, missing the ease of socializing, and and and…. Since 2020 my perspective on FOMO has shifted. I no longer focus on what I might miss while drinking… I focus on what I will certainly miss if I didn’t stop drinking… Tame the FOMO I say… in today’s dopamine driven society - this may well be the first true step towards real change.

Lets get physical

If you have been following this blog in it’s limited existence you’d know that we converted a boat from diesel to electric over this past winter. Shortly before delivery of the new motor and installation I began to ask questions about the physics of the new motor - propeller size, torque specs, RPM’s etc. Answers were slow to roll in if they came at all. This gave me some pause but I was too far down the rabbit hole after a major modification to the boat to alter course at that point… at least so I thought. If I had to draw an ‘on-topic-correlation’ - the road to progress here was paved with distraction and avoidance. This time in the form of my obsession with the engineering and art of the installation leaving me largely avoiding the physics.

A Do Over

As it turns out the fancy electric motor we installed in Blue has turned out to be 100% the wrong device and rendered the boat rather unsafe in anything but dead calm conditions. Next week’s post will have all the details, but Blue is currently out of the water with the motor removed and crated being shipped back to the manufacturer for refund (we are fortunate for their support). Let’s just call it a do-over.

In a similar vane (as best put by a sober friend of mine), I spent the last 20 or so years drinking generally too much, let’s spend the next 20 (love me some lofty goals) doing all the things I likely missed while on that path… Let’s just call it a do-over.

Gandhi, a 9 year old and the moment of truth

Gandhi walked barefoot or in tattered sandals for (best I can figure) vast amounts of time, and I can only imagine the toughened feet he must have had. I’m guessing that he was a rather frail fellow as well given his propensity towards fasting, and even though in many ways he is a household name, what he accomplished remains such a mystery to me. The obscure part of my brain even wonders about the realities of fasting and living such a spartan life… how do you find time for the basics - things like brushing your teeth or other mundane tasks we take for granted. Did he have bad breath? Maybe…. If I had to guess I would say he was probably a:

Super Callused Fragile Mystic Hexed By Halitosis….

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Dad Jokes

This past Saturday was opening day. 0830 was our first charter and right out of the gates we were handed a sparky 9 year old who was down for some knock knock action. When the dad jokes started to roll so did the eyes … of the 9 year old… and just like that - charter season has officially begun!

So today’s post ( which was supposed to be yesterday’s post) will be short on words and long on video with the final video in our 3 part series of converting Blue to electric. It is in fact the moment of truth when she touches the water and sends us silently on our way! Enjoy the wrap up of the tech side and I’ll report from the field in future posts!

Yours in the magic of electrons…

like a 4 year old at a parade - give us a big wave!

Kicking off today’s post with a little unedited video I took back in 2009 - AFTER the storm. This was what was left after the second substantial low had gone over our head. (waves had calmed to about 1/2 of what they were at their peak). I remembered holding the camera still on the stern rail so the sense of motion-in-the-ocean would translate. Anyone get seasick watching?? :)

happy birthday

Last week I crossed the 1/2 century mark. Easily a ‘waves of emotion’ type of day… if that were my thing. I think I’m more contemplative than that or maybe my stoic male ego won’t let me admit that it’s an emotional event (my wife is nodding her head while reading that line)… but I digress. In posting this video realize that the video was from 2009 (13 years ago for the math challenged) I remember the experience like it was yesterday. Posting it near to my milestone birthday triggers an overused quote of mine: ‘The older I get the greater I was’ which inevitably tap dances on my psyche - wave of emotion? Perhaps…

The gang at Gaines Marina in Rouses Point are pretty awesome. They know I am a charter boat and they always put me in the storage shed last and take me out nearly first. This year they outdid themselves and I was the first in the water. I got an email on my actual birthday that Red was in the water! WAIT - FAAAACK!! The plug was not in the boat!!! What plug?? yah - the one that keeps the lake out! Turns out the boat was in the slings about to be launched and I got a call from the yard guy asking where the plug was and it was installed without event. Whew - crisis narrowly averted but seriously - WAVE of panic - Happy Birthday.

compliment(ary)

In a completely different incident (warning: purposeful detail omission coming up), I was given one of the nicest compliments I have ever received. In wake of the milestone birthday, it is very easy for me to have the type of reflection that can leave me questioning my relevance in the world. For me such personal inquisition comes in waves as I move about my day to day. It’s not pervasive but it can be penetrating and is always provocative. I try to let it settle and pass… I’m not always successful,

In this case it was poignant relative to my time spent trying to avoid rock … on this rock (aka sailing). Getting a few simple words that validated half my life’s journey so far… kinda washed over me in a wave of goodness that is generally difficult for me to articulate. Being handed a sense of relevance is pretty awesome. I am inspired to pay that forward - here’s my invite for you to do the same.

We are now into May. It’s crunch time in the boating industry in Vermont. Red is in the water and Blue is set to splash next week. Red rests at her temporary berth up north, and Blue will be launched some 7 hours further south. In less than 2 weeks time they will head towards each other to meet in Burlington for the sailing season. Our next post will have the conclusion of electric conversion project for your enjoyment. In the meantime be on the lookout next Friday the 12th for Red and Blue - southbound and northbound respectively tracking along the coast of Lake Champlain. Even if only in ceremony … go ahead and:

like a 4 year old at a parade - give us a big wave!

Finally - if you haven’t had enough blatant wavery (couldn’t resist making up at least 1 word per blog), please meet our new mascot vehicle! Cool as a cucumber and ready to give and receive all the waves a wanting public can muster! The Sail Vermont(mobile) will be banging around town for the rest of the season - give us a wave (we promise to wave back - and smile!)

I may have been faking it this whole time

Sometime in 2006 I was in the middle of building my first house. The girl I was dating at the time was a sailor of sorts. At some point in that very brief (but apparently pivotal) relationship, we were having a conversation about big boat sailing and working on boats. She made an off-hand comment “Hey we should go do that” (captain mate team sort of thing). Honestly, I didn’t even know what that meant.

I was ankle deep standing on my head in the middle of a dung pile called overwhelm. (aka the DIY house building process) The thought and reality of captaining a boat seemed light years away (I don’t know what a light-year is, but I’ve heard it quite a long time). Clearly the thing to do was research and schedule a captains course in the St Martin! (I blame the girl, but it seems to have worked out so I’ll let it go.)

I was living in the house I was building so I scheduled the sheetrockers during the 3 week trip to the Caribbean since I would have needed to vacate anyway. I attended Maritime School of the West Indies and it was a 3 week very intensive set of courses - We did our suited fire training on one of the old work boats used in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the exam included a 7 day practical on a Beneteau 50. I was the only one able to pick up a mooring under sail, get thrown a double man overboard, and navigate us around the island at night, under sail, with no instruments.

in particular… err …I’m particular

Sorry for the apparent braggery (is that a word?), but it is for a point… In those moments of training and exam taking I began to formulate what type of captain I wanted to be: detailed, and incredibly particular about how things are done on a boat. Both for safety and the sheer joy of complex processes going smoothly. I think the instructor picked up on that and took pleasure in piling on the challenges.

what’s next?

Fast forward to running a charter business and passing on that passion for detail to captains I am training. I produce training videos for them, and am incredibly explicit in how and why we do things. I have a droning catch phrase when dealing with line handling “Everything we do with a line, should set us up for the next thing we will do with it”. (want a sample? check out our training videos here).

As I prepare to produce the next video: How to Flake and Heave a Line I revisit how many hundreds of times I have flaked a line on the rail or on the deck in preparation for having it run freely. It is probably the ultimate embodiment of the concept that “Everything we do with a line, should set us up for the next thing we will do with it”.

Well… as it turns out, in historical nautical terminology flaking a line so it can run free may actually be called faking or faking down a line! - Here’s a good article on it if you don’t believe me.

If you saw the last blog and watched Tim Minchin’s video you would have picked up his assertion that while opinions are like A**holes in one way, they differ significantly in another way; “They should be regularly and thoroughly examined.”

I am detailed and very particular. So in the effort of teaching, it is easy to get caught up in feeling like I actually know things. (philosophy warning). , I am reminded that it is all opinion and maybe maybe there’s a metaphor/philosophy for life in this process, and here it is: Be careful what you think you know. Teach from experience but be open to new or even new-old information. A week ago I was ready to start recording my line flaking video with my usual emphatic confidence, because I knew how to flake a line, but as it turns out…

I may have been faking it this whole time.

5 weeks in 3 minutes with goethe and tim minchin

It’s no big secret that we are a little obsessed with the electric conversion of our Swan 43 - Blue this winter. In sitting to write this week, I found that so much of what I was saying had to do with the project it felt redundant when paired with the video at the end of the blog (part 2 of 3 of our conversion series).

So I am going to take a detour onto Inspiration Avenue (made it up) and share with you a couple of nuggets I’ve come across in my life that help keep me motivated when I am executing a long project, or when I need a healthy dose of philosophy to keep things in perspective. If that doesn’t seem like your jam… feel free to scroll to the end!

Commence (ment)

I am a fan of off-beat and irreverent off-color humor. Generally the darker the better. Tim Minchin is an Australian musical comedian that I find brilliant and entertaining. Opposite his typical genre, in 2019 he delivered a commencement address called: 9 Life Lessons at his alma mater. It is nothing short of brilliant. I believe you should spend 10 minutes of your day and watch it. Relevence? Exercise, Opinions, Luck, Teaching and the concept of Micro Ambition aka the passionate pursuit of short term goals. All pieces of the crazy little organization called Sail Vermont and covered in poignant, articulate, inspiring, and humorous detail in this 12 minutes of genius. (you’re welcome in advance).

commit (ment)

Now we’re going to go a little broader. I want to share a piece of writing (not my writing) and personal philosophy that has had a deep impact on my life and business. I’ve had the good fortune of building several houses, sailing across oceans, touring the Caribbean and Europe by sailboat, racing Ironmans, and most recently starting a sailing charter company, that is working feverishly to become zero emissions. In all endeavors worth doing there is a level of commitment required that at times makes no sense. Except that it does make sense, and here is why…

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So here is the progress report on our latest micro ambition, as I relish how far we have come from that moment I first took the grinder to the engine mount! (commitment aka point-of-no-return).

See you on the water soon! (quietly)

5 weeks in 3 minutes

The Veg-O-Matic, The Alchemist, and a boat called Blue

I’m going to disclaimer this (long) post right out of the gates… if you’re under 40 you’re going to miss lots of these references, but we’re going there anyway (use the links if you want to catch up) - so welcome to the time machine - buckle in.

It was last February that I got a wild hair and decided to expand Sail Vermont. After much discussion, it was decided that pontoon boat rentals would be the way to go… wait what!? I know - you’re thinking ‘about as useful as The Smokeless Ashtray for a sailor, but alas there I was...

How much would you expect to pay for that?

Probably piece of my soul…  but fortunately after that very brief, aneurysm’esque, total lapse in judgment, I acquired a Swan 36 called Nora instead. She was a beautiful local boat. I was excited in February since it was done - the decision made and executed.

Set it and forget it.

In early March I began the process of creating advertising and the sales angle for that beautiful little boat, but something kept eating at me… it wasn’t a Swan 43. However, the reality was that there weren’t many, if any, Swan 43’s out there for sale. Previous searches had only revealed one other Swan 43 within 2000 miles of me. After all, they only made 67 of them and they haven’t been in production since the introduction of the Veg-O-Matic… “The greatest kitchen appliance ever made” almost 50 years ago.

March in Vermont being what it is… with lots of fidgety and depressing gray days leading to lots of click-bait inspired research (read shopping), the wonders of Google presented me with a Palmer Johnson 43 for sale on an obscure website. (Sidebar: some Swan 43s were sold in the US under the name Palmer Johnson 43). The ad was nearly 2 years old so I dismissed it as those ad’s never yield anything since they are never removed once put up there. And besides - I already had 2 boats…

Lunch with Dano

Some time later, as oft was the case that early spring, Dan (check out his bio here) and I were at the corporate headquarters (The Spot), and were brainstorming and dreaming about the upcoming season and next steps. We were covering all manner of topics with our typical optimism that would rival that of a GLH#9 user. Soon enough we danced across the debate of the merits of a Swan 36 vs a Swan 43. It was at this time he made mention of a blue Swan 43 for sale on some website he couldn’t remember the name of and the conversation trailed off from there.

Like a Mr Microphone…

My thoughts were feeding back to me as if being played out the radio on my drive home that day about the merits of the Swan 43 vs the Swan 36, and Dano’s reference to ‘the one he’d seen but couldn’t remember where’ were on repeat… See where this is going? (it’s all Dan’s fault) Dan texted me a short time after lunch the word ‘blue’ and a link to the website… that he had promptly gone home and found. It was at that moment I had to inform him that I was actually on the phone with the seller as his text pinged in (not joking),

The seller espoused the merits of the years of work he had put into the boat and the unfortunate story of having it being worked on for so long but never having sailed it. He shared about the dream and vision of restoring a classic Swan and sailing it with his wife but mentioned that he had been at the refit for so long he wasn’t sure single-handing a 43 footer was in the cards any more as the years had gone on. Add to it much of the stainless steel parts of the boat had been stolen out of the yard, COVID hit, and the primary worker for the boat died thus virtually shutting down the marina’s service area. These events led to the seller becoming rather disheartened by the project and he quipped something like:  ‘just wanted to be sailing my Swan’  Well… I said - “I happen to have a really nice one that is ready to go… wanna swap?” After some back and forth… We worked it out to swap Swans - huh?

Yada yada

I just yada yada’d a substantial swath of the story and took some poetic license with the details to get to this little nugget that the seller emphatically shared with me; the original owner of the boat was the serial inventor and infomercial superstar… Ron Popeil. “It slices it dices…” and “Set and forget it…” were a few of his coined phrases still popular today. He had found this in historical coast guard docs and a reference or two to Ron’s yacht racing days in the Chicago area when the boat was named Aspenglow. I am not a name dropper per se so it was little more than an interesting tidbit to me.

“But wait there’s more…”

So we got going on shipping Nora to Cleveland and Blue (ex Free Spirit) to Vermont. Scanning, signing, and emailing documents and finally, details were all wrapped up, then I got a call… The seller called me with a ‘tone’ in his voice. And you know that heart in your throat feeling like don’t really know what’s coming next? My mind was there. I didn’t know the seller well but I knew the tone was not his usual tone.  At this point he said to me that he had looked over the coast guard paperwork for Nora and asked me: “Did you see who the original owner of Nora was?” - Me: “No” …. Him: “Ron Popeil.” Well isn’t THAT something.

For me, it has very little to do with name-dropping and more to do with serendipity or as in The Alchemist:  Omens. In the Alchemist omens offer the main character Santiago guidance on his journey and reassure him that the Soul of the World has endorsed his journey. He is told that ‘omens make up part of the Universal Language of the World’ as Paulo Coelho so aptly illustrated. In this case, if I needed a sign that the pontoon boat, turned Swan 36, turned Swan 43 was the right choice… this silly little connection was it. I believe the tone in the seller’s voice may well have been a certain satisfaction and peace that following this omen was the right path for him and thus eliminating any lingering lament at letting go of the renovation project of the 43 he had undertaken for all those years… and that thought made me happy.

There’s still more…

If you want to read all about Ron Popeil click here. He was/is most likely the most televised human being on the planet, producing countless infomercials and selling millions in crazy inventions and of course, owning at least 2 super cool sailboats! In the interest of channeling our own inner Ron Popeil - Sail Vermont will be launching it’s merch store in the next 2 weeks!!! Check back for that and here’s a preview page of some of the mockups!

I should have bought a dog, and the path to zero emissions.

Winters in Vermont are a special kind of love/hate - heaven/hell thing for me. I am a languishing caribbean sailor that dreams of days lazing in the Caribbean sun with not a care in the world (ignoring the worklist on my boat of course). At the same time I relish the moments of not being able to do anything else but work on the boat and business of boating between plowing sessions and trips to Folinos or Farmhouse (seriously check them out).

said it once … and I’ll say it again

I am fortunate to be surrounded by a group of really amazing people that have a passion for sailing, this program, crazy projects, or just soaking up the sailing vibe. That being said, when I can cram it in, I like to pay it forward and help other people  (especially the people helping me) with their projects. This past summer one of our dedicated staff acquired his first boat. I was thrilled to get asked to help him bring his passion to reality. Inspections, shakedowns, questions, purchase, learning, haul out, rebedding, troubleshooting leaks, and finally pulling the mast in preparation for late fall/early spring projects. All the norm for me, but for a new boat owner in the throws of managing school, work, and a brand new boat in the seasons of vermont - he simply quipped “I should have bought a dog”.

It still makes me laugh - “I should have bought a dog” uttered amidst the dance of fall breakdown. Picture the mast coming out of your first boat with a long, optimism inspired, owner adrenaline assured, to-do list … then that moment of overwhelm that makes you ponder the meaning of life in the split second of standing on your boat questioning every decision in your life leading to this moment as if you just peed on and electric fence but ostensibly refuse to stop because if you do it will sting. Welcome to the club Butterfingers! (meet him here).

Rewind four years and Sail Vermont’s first winter in Vermont. Our single boat Red made her way to Rouses Point NY for indoor heated winter storage. The commute to work on her proved too much for my delicate sensibilities (I’m very delicate… err stubborn) so the following year ‘we dug a pit’ (probably another blog post on that at some point). We built our own workshop for boats at my house. (Much to my wife’s chagrin) and with the help of my longest time supporter, my father aka Dad (check out his bio here).

Now it’s 2023 and bringing a boat (or boats) ‘home’ is the norm. Armed with a heated workshop outside my door, the annual discussion is: What is on the work list? My answer in November is akin an Ikea instruction manual:  It’s in the trash if we need it. Then scope creep, imagination and the illusion of endless time takes over and monster projects get started. Suddenly it is the end of February and I am ankle deep standing on my head in a project that clearly we had time to do, and I find myself muttering ‘I should have bought a dog’.

To that end - here is part 1 of 3 of our Swan 43; Blue’s conversion to electric auxiliary propulsion. In this episode: The old engine comes out, LOTS of grinding, some fabrication, the old engine gets sold, packed, and shipped and a little bit of glassing in the new stringers. Oh and in case that wasn’t enough I took up video editing and blog posting too… because it’s winter and there’s lots of time … right? 71 days till opening day…

post #0

A word about blog writing; I love writing, and I certainly don’t do enough of it. Sadly the majority of my writing is mundane emails or rather pejorative musings about social media, which ultimately is fun for no one I’m afraid. So today I turn that around and welcome you to Tuesday Tides! as I break writing silence to loop in our many supporters and followers as to the goings on of Sail Vermont! In all honesty my favorite thing to write is abstract poetry, if you’re dying to know what that’s about, here is a lob from a 2004 trip to Cape of Good Hope to ease you into that genre. While we may someday get to more of that here, for now I’ll…

just stick to boats.

The last time I was inspired to write about boat’y stuff was on my blog in 2009 as part of my transatlantic as captain. It’s archaic architecture remains on the interwebs and can be perused here. The boat was a 2003 CNB 64 called One Two Many (pictured left or above device dependent) and I spent almost 5 years as her captain and caretaker. More stories from those days sure to leak into this forum over time, so here I’ll just stay on topic.

things are different

Now I am the owner and the dreamer (and one of the many workers) of this little organization called Sail Vermont. I am fortunate to be surrounded by an amazing group of passionate people.  They are known to show up early, leave late, participate in the crap jobs and never ask for anything but sailing… they make this whole thing possible (wanna join?). So… what is ‘this whole thing’?

Sail Vermont began in 2019 when I brought our first Swan 43; Red, here from Newburyport Mass. What started as a hobby/passion project has grown into a business of two Swan 43 sail yachts, a floating luxury waterfront platform (Party of Four - coming summer 2023), and a goal of being 100% zero emissions by 2024 (shhh top secret; also bringing an electric power yacht to the docks in 2024!).

easy for you to say

I do say all of that in a rather matter of fact way, but truth be told, there are about a million hours of relentless work going on behind the scenes to make any one of those pieces happen. Tuesday Tides will be the place for you to keep up with where we came from, where we are going and how we are doing it… as well as the musings of a wannabe author and sometimes poet.

Tuesday Tides will post ever other Tuesday in hopes to keep you all better updated, so please comment and share!! Here is a…

preview of what’s coming

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