A Hard Day

Forgot to turn on tracking at 5AM

You can follow along here.

We motored across the Bay of Bangkok yesterday, straight into the wind and the swells for 12 hours. My crew said it was a relatively calm sea, but watching the bow swing up and down with the swells made me seasick, so I spent most of the day laying on the sofa with my eyes closed. Had I known what we were in for, I would have put a scopolamine patch on. Many lessons learned like:

• If we are going to motor for a long time, turn on the generator first thing to keep the batteries topped up. Don’t discharge the batteries and then turn on the generator – it can not catch up.
• I gotta load shed system to protect my batteries – good to have, but I had no idea how to manually take control of the charging and we wound up discharging the 12V house battery to 19%. The guy that did my electrics, Malcolm, is terrific, and I spent an hour on the phone with him this AM. Now I know how to manually control battery charging.

We are now in Pran Buri, much more comfortable and pleasant than Pattaya – a village on a river surrounded by jungle versus a big concrete city. I had a tasty dinner of stir fried veggies and rice last night for $1.21USD. The traffic on the road was a couple of scooters and tuk tuks going 15mph. The marina here, Racer Marina, feels much more comfortable than Ocean Marina and it is half the price. Ocean Marina has super yachts. Racer Marina has colorful, picturesque Thai fishing boats. I’ll get pics – I was too seasick yesterday to operate my phone.

I am really happy with my crew, two young Frenchmen, Victor and Vincent. Victor is my captain and Vincent is my instructor. I am learning by doing, and by making mistakes. I’ll never drop the main sail again without tightening the topping lift. It is refreshing to hang out with young people; their energy and enthusiasm, their optimism. I’m not sure when I became so anxious and fearful, it was a gradual change, but these guys are reminding me that life is better lived open and receptive rather than hunkered down, worried about everything bad that could happen.

We’ve been listening to some groovy music that companions my spiritual journey – The Wailin’ Jennys Bird Song, Xavier Rudd Follow the Sun, … The other day Tracy Chapman’s Talkin Bout a Revolution came on and I thought, What a great song that represents my ideals, and then the irony struck me: Me sitting on my luxury yacht, listening to a protest anthem about the privileged dismissing the struggles of the proletariat. I am the liberal elite the MAGA folks hate, an uncomfortable realization, but in the words of Fritz Pearls, “Awareness in and of itself is curative.”

Another wise quote, this one from Carl Spackler: “So I got that goin for me, which is nice.” Shout out to my buddy John Heck. Miss you brother. I wish you had stuck around to share in this adventure.