Miles and miles that wave traveled! Boooommm… it exploded on the breakwater and then another. A singular moment. Claudia and I were sitting by the rocks. The group of fisherman were repairing their lines that had suffered with the struggle of their heavy catch. Jokes and more jokes, a little village gossip here and there. Life and handcraft wisdom flowed thru the words of the more experienced ones. The younger ones were listening, just like they were participating on the gossip and jokes. My ability as a sea captain was questioned with irony and humor. Everyone included myself laughed. I looked at Claudia’s eyes and then and there we knew we were part of that circle. No secret society going or anything like it! Just life happening on the sea side, like it does everyday on that island. A unique and extraordinary moment thru our eyes. Being laughed at is part of the entertainment and everyone on the circle would have its turn. But the fact that it happened to me in an natural way was the clue that had led my eyes to Claudia. We had bonded with the group. We were part of what was going on, whatever it was. 

We took our cameras and the audio equipment out of the bag, slowly and consciously not to interrupt the scene. There was a lion sleeping and any brusque movement would wake him up. The lion in site was the spontaneity of the moment. The magic in the air. Just like we wished, we managed not to wake him and not crush the instant with our cameras as we started filming. Thats it! I thought. Thats how we like it! The sun went down on the horizon and we packed our cameras and the fisherman packed their gear. Everyone went on their way. No goodbyes, no handshakes. If the universe allows, tomorrow we will be together again…

The passage above described happens with regularity on our travels. It is quite a job and we are slowly getting the hang of it. From our point of view, there is no trick to it. Spontaneity can not be tricked! But we find that there is a way. There is a manner of photographing or filming people as to arrive with images that capture their roots. The subtleties imprinted on their eyes by their sentiments. I am not the one to say that we are doing that! But that is what we aim! And the more we travel the more we see it is the way to do it for us, to allow ourselves a lot of time on the places we arrive. The time with the people and their sentiments, the time with the scenery and its vastness that we wish to grasp. 

It is curious thing. When we arrive somewhere and we rush with our cameras what we usually get from people is silent looks expressing their no or posed faces expressing something that they are not. After a week or two or maybe five or more we and our images get invited. In a natural way, like friends inviting friends to do something together. Actually, not “like” friends. We became friends.

More and more we see that this is how we want to do it and we strive to learn and remind ourselves about it. Chronicle the world and its people, slowly traveling and spending time in a particular region instead of ticking a list of various places and getting snapshots of faces that we do not understand. Claudia and I share the same feeling, the feeling that we do not just want to travel somewhere, we want that somewhere to travel in us. Molding ourselves!

The woman on the portrait of this post was gardening at her home at Fajazinha (on the island of Flores). While we were walking on the streets, we saw her working and we went over to talk. She was a great storyteller and after a long conversation and a few stops for portraits, I asked if I could film her talking. She asked me not to! She said, that when she watches television, she does not understand how can people do that! How can people pretend in front of a camera….

Tassio.

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It was not the first time I heard it. There he was, another soul saying the same phrase: “What we are doing here is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less without that missing drop.” 

This quote is usually attributed to Mother Theresa but the idea behind it fits many shoes.

 Last week, Claudia and I participated on a “public” action here on the island of Flores. In a cafe on the village, we found a poster calling all those who were interested to gather on a sunday and plant endemic tree species. 

 Claudia and I arrived early, the baby trees were waiting at the foot of a hill. When everyone arrived, we armed ourselves with shovels and buckets full of trees. Up the hill we went, following an old trail made from stones amidst a well establish forest. After the arrival on the chosen spot, water bottles were passed around and we caught our breaths siting on rocks and admiring the astonishing view. Many waterfalls dropping into one lake where the reflection from the water chutes could be seen. 

 The person that organized this action is a native of the island and his job is to “manage” the natural reserves and parks of Flores. 

He thanked everyone that came and started explaining to us what we would be doing there and why. It was then that I found out that the well established forest I could see all around me was mainly composed by invading species. 

 The Azores islands is a refugee for ships since its early days. Captains from all flags call here on their way from point A to B. The island offers a unique climate and rich soil that allows a variety of species from a varieties of places to grow. The ships from far away coming to rest and provision in the Azores along with the ones that came to settle here brought their foreigner plants to “populate” the island. 

Today very little of the native vegetation can be seen. The invading plants prospered leaving almost no room for the original green. 

Weather you agree or not with the concept of calling a plant (or any living organism) a “invader” and another being endemic is a polemic that I wish to leave aside to be taken by those who care to do so.  

It is the action that interests me! Hands together, people laughing and trees being planted. 

What we are doing here is just a drop in the ocean, said the park manager. His words resonate on my skull. To create little “bags” of native species is just a side thing, I thought. To be able to gather people to do something in which profit is not one of the goals (it comes as a consequence) is the main point of this meeting. At least for me. To unite humans to create drops in the ocean is tendency that I see grow more and more thru out the globe. Maybe there is a void that needs to be filled. Maybe I miss being close to others who also think that together we can achieve substantial things. Maybe the void that needs to be filled is the sense of community, a feeling of fellowship with others . Maybe I do not need to be thinking so much. I will just attend to more and more meetings like this one we attended. With the hands on the soil and hearing the jokes around I felt content and it came naturally. 

Tassio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We just uploaded a bunch of pics of our last year travel on our Facebook page. Join us here, if you want!

 

We keep walking and allowing this island to walk within us. We will stay here a little longer…

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Lao Tzu

Claudia & Tassio.

 Calm it was, but the spirits were high. With the boat not moving it was time to look at that leak. Lets start from the inside, I said (I did not fancy a swim). The supposedly dripless system I had installed on the stuffing box, should not drip after the initial adjustments were done. But dripping it was, even with the engine off and with the propeller not spinning. I tied all the bolts again and we gave it a try. The engine went on and started doing it’s thing. Sahara dry! HA! How simple it was I thought, should not complicate things. It just needed some tightening. Netzah started making way thru the olive oil seas. Slowly but surely. We kept a eye on the leak and it kept working fine. 

 After the initial “excitement” of the the first two days and nights onboard. And with no wind, my mind started going: Thats to early to have a calm! The forecast said we should have wind! What if a hurricane is forming and is sucking all the wind. When is the wind coming back? I hope there is not too much wind when it does come back! Is the mast straight? Maybe I should tight a bit more the back stay turnbuckle! And on and on it went… Ocean crossing and long periods at sea were not a new thing for me. But this time it was different! Very different! I can say it was so different that it was my first time. This was the first time I was the captain of my own boat on an ocean crossing. The woman that I love and share my life with was inside. Nobody else! All my material “belongs” were there. Every screw and bolt that needed to be tighten and each little corner of this travel machine had been revised and worked on by our hands. When I did this before, there was always some other “professional” sitting by the helm while I was drawling on my pillow below decks, taking a short but comfortable sleep before my next watch started. Somebody else had done most of the maintenance of the boats in which I traveled before. If something broke or was not working, I (and the crew) would just mend the thing in a good enough way to get to port. Don’t get me wrong. I loved and respected the boats in which I sailed before. But now there was no one to blame for anything (not that blaming helps, but it can falsely take some weight out of someone’s back). Now it was me and Claudia and Netzah on the big blue! I had to face it BIG TIME or I would soon go nuts. The responsibility was sitting right there on my lap and I can tell you it was a bit overweight. I do not remember if it was day or night but I did have my spark moment. Jedi kind of thing! Breathing the fresh ocean air, with the eyes curving around the horizon, aware of the body and the elements around me. I realized. I did not think! I realized! The only thing available for me and the only thing I could trust on was the moment I was living. Not one second ahead and not one second behind. Live the present and be here now kind of stuff. Stick with me. I know it is cliche and you heard it a thousand times before! But I am saying that, that  moment, saved my sanity for the rest of the passage. I am sure you experienced it before and you know what I am talking about. Total awareness and joy of the present moment. Things could happen a minute later but I would be there to deal with it. Don’t think I attained Nirvana and now there are lotus flowers around Netzah here in the marina! My mind tried many times to go on and on again after that (especially when we got into the depressions) but I could easily remember to breath, look and feel around me and let the “what ifs” pass through like cumulus clouds on the blue sky.

 The wind slowly came back. On the beam of Netzah. What a joy! Calm seas with perfect breeze and the full sails flying. We laid on deck, following the shade of the sails and making sure the salt or the anti slip on deck did not grind our naked bodies. Good life. Tranquilo… A white spot raised on the horizon. Another sailboat! VHF went on:

- Sailboat on the horizon, sailboat on the horizon, this is Netzah, Netzah, over.

- Hi Netzah this is Seven Seas.

S/V Seven Seas had left Antigua on the same time as we left from St. Martin. The solo sailor was heading to Horta and it felt very cool to talk with someone doing the “same” path as us. Another big bonus was that seven seas was downloading Grib files for the forecast. Our only mean of having a forecast onboard Netzah is to call a friend (thank you Julio!) using the satellite phone (apart of course from the barometer). But using the sat phone to chat costs quite a bit and we would quickly judge the call as “unnecessary” even thou our fingers were itching to dial the numbers. The bonus of meeting Seven Seas was that he told us that according to the forecast he had, we could make more easting than we were planning. We got pumped by the talk on the VHF and we trimmed the sails the best we could and quickly left Seven Seas behind (don’t get too impressed by our sailing skills. We are two onboard Netzah and our boat is 5 feet longer than Seven Seas). 

 The wind decreased. But it kept coming on a nice angle. On the beam and sometimes a little forward. Even thou it was not the ideal angle to use our spinnaker we decided to give it a try. We got it out and prepared the lines improvising a bit. As soon as the sail went up we saw that it needed some adjustments and we did so trying out some different weird “configurations” of line angles. Some old salt or some racer out there would have laughed at us pretty hard seeing how we managed to get that sail going and our whole set up. But hey, the “ballon” was full of wind, flying her colors beautifully and the boat was doing 4 to 5 knots of speed. Claudia got the hammock out. Dolphins came to our bow to confirm that happiness was doing its thing on that part of the ocean. 

 We continued like that for almost the whole day and when the night came the wind increased and its was time to lower our kite. It was not long and we had two reefs on the main sail. The boat was going fast! Real fast! The “vibe” onboard is always strongly influenced by what the skies are giving to us out there. I couldn’t sleep. I was almost like I wanted to see where my boat was going so fast. 

 That lack of sleep followed me thru out the whole passage. I would lay on bed and rest awake most of the times. It was only after I had long periods without sleeping that I was able to lay down and fade out straight away. Even then I had the curious feeling of being wide awake thru my dreams. I did not find this lack of sleep good or bad. It was just what it was and I accepted it. On the other hand, Claudia did not seem to have a problem with it at all! She got to be called “the sleeping beauty” many times. The sleeping bug that had bitten her on the first day, left the effect during all the 23 days of the passage. We were doing 3 hours watch each. And during many days she did not waste one minute of her time “off” with being awake. I asked her many times if she was planning a metamorphose into a blanket or a bed sheet. She was involved in the “blanket project” as we would say…

…more of it tomorrow…

 Tassio.

 p.s. This series might became a bit longer than 3 parts. We will see.

Yesterday was the beach clean up that we organized here in the french part of St-Martin. We took part of something bigger, the ocean hour, that I already talked about in the last posts. It was about 30 people that gathered  for one hour and a half to collect trash from the beach and the mangrove, on a total of 47 big plastic bags full. Cruisers came by dinghy and we had 3 young ones and their father to welcome them in with a red flag and show them the pass to get to the sand without hurting the coral. Others came by foot and cars. It was under a bright sun and with a strong breeze that we spent our saturday morning together, enjoying the moment  and meeting great people. I was told by the owner of the Layla’s,  the beach restaurant  where we threw the meeting point, that this beach is particularly vulnerable to trash because of the current that comes in, and every time there is a weather with some strong wind, it pushes what’s in the water to that specific beach. So today, the beach is clean because of the work done together yesterday but soon enough apparently the current will draw some more. It doesn’t make this hour and a half less worth it, with almost one ton of debris collected, it for sure, somehow, made a little difference. At the end of the hour clean up, when we were all having a little chat, I took a moment to look at this pile that we had collected and i found beautiful what a few hands together can achieve in so little time. May this weekly ocean hour live long and be famous.

Claudia

It’s coming soon, 2 days before the launch of the international weekly beach clean up, ocean hour. As said earlier, we are gladly particpating to it, and will be working in the French part of the island of St-Martin.

But we have changed the beach, it is not anymore at La belle créole, it will be Nettle Bay, on the sea side and the meeting point is the beach restaurant Layla’s at 9am.  

I walked on that beach yesterday and there is far enough trash to collect, so we need hands at work, join us.Not to forget that we will have fresh croissant for the 50 first people that show up, a way to start in force we thought. These buttery croissants are provided upon the generosity of the journalist I met this morning that decided to contribute not only by talking about the event in the news but also by providing croissant . Yeah! and thank you! 

I am amazed by the help of the radio stations and newspapers of St-Martin/Sint-Marteen that accepted to cover the event and are helping us to spread the word in the community. BIG THANK YOU!

Special people are  also getting involved with us on the organization of it, three kids and their parents living on the catamaran SUENO are now preparing some papers to distribute to the boats anchored in Marigot Bay and invite them to join the beach clean up. A big thumb up to Maxime, Guillaume, Noémie, Nathalie and David that make this small event travel further and further.

Claudia

P.S. Check out our facebook page for more pics and news!

Our friends at Mother Ocean just launched a great event that we think it is well worth talking about it here on the blog. Ocean Hour, the first international weekly beach clean up. They invite people from around the globe to head to a near beach, lake or waterway on saturdays between 9 am to 10 am and collect trash and debris for one hour.  The event is officially starting on april 28th but it is on all year long on saturdays.

It can be after a surf or kite surf session or even gathering a bunch of friends together and share a lunch or a tranquillo coffee afterwards. It will be going on worldwide, we each do our part on our little piece of land, nice! If possible, take pics of the trash collected. Their way to make everyone bind and relate to each other is to invite people to share the pics on their facebook page.  Another way to help is by spreading the word around us as much as possible.

We will be heading to Nettle Bay, by la belle créole, french side of St-Martin, to inaugurate this premiere on the 28th april at 9 am, filling our trash bags of what doesn’t belong to this lovely beach. If you are around this area and feel like joining us, please do. Let us know if  you come and we’ll have some fresh french croissant for the afterward chilling moment in the sun.

Thumb up for Mother Ocean from Terra D’Agua and we wish long life to Ocean hour.

Claudia&Tassio

In 1984, a brazilian named Amyr Klink had an idea for a trip. A simple one. Get inside a rowing boat in Africa and go to Brazil. Crossing an ocean could hardly get any simpler. As he said “all the problems had a human scale”. He prepared himself and his boat the way that for him was best and left. When asked why he was doing it? He said he “felt in love with the idea”. No “firsts”, no record breaking effort or intention and no presumption that what he was doing was something extraordinary. He wrote a book, about that trip. Beautifully written, with simple words and titled “100 days between the sky and the sea”. I never met him. He has 5 books written about some of the trips he made. If I had counted I would know how many times I read them.


The travel stories that enchant me most, were always very humble ones with no extraordinary pursuits or triumphs and no glamour/glitter. I figured that if someone wants to be somewhere outside, be it skiing to the south pole or hiking in the park, for me it always sounds as the same pursuit. That person made a choice (maybe a series of them) so that person will have to assume the consequences of it. Someone can be surprised, understanding what their limits are and what might need to be pushed.

I know we could go on and on here discussing probability of risks and dangers involved in one thing or the other. But I am not talking about that. I know risks exists and I am not the fearless macho dude here and I appreciate the efforts of any traveler. The thing is that on a voyage a traveler can choose to enjoy the moment he has been gifted with. He can prepare himself the best he can and the rest he will deal with it. No time for negativity dwelling. If the frontiers got to be pushed for the voyager he can benefit from the experience. With that in mind, I don’t believe that the achievement of the south pole skier is any greater than the hiker in the park. If their limits had to be pushed they will grow from it. The experience is what counts.

This idea is what I connect with while reading Amyr Klink’s books and many others. No inflated tales. He simply dreamt of a trip, prepared himself and set out to experience it. Thru Amyr Klink’s books I got to know about other authors like Gérard Janichon who together with Jérôme Poncett did an amazing 5 years circumnavigation of the globe on the 10m Damien. The twenty something years old dudes share stories off far away places with the eyes of the observer walking in the park. Amyr Klink also pointed me to “Le Grand Hiver”, a book written by Sally Poncet (wife of the Jerome mentioned above) when the couple took their Damien II to the Antartic (the furthest south they could get) to winter over there with the ice. Again no heroic sagas. No “chic” happenings. No one is complaining how miserable the weather is or saying how adventurous or out of the normal they are for being there. It is their life and pursuing their dreams is what makes them happy. They did what they wanted with what they had. Not focusing on recognition for their acts other than their own fulfillment to be living their choices.

It seems that for these travelers, the environment and the elements they are on, is their playground other than a thing to be conquered. On Amyr Klink’s words: “The sea is not an obstacle, it’s a path.”

If anything that I wrote made any sense to you :-D and you know of some other “travel” stories that are related to this, I would be glad to hear, If you wish to do so.

May your travels be honest wherever they take you,

Tassio.

 

 In 2005 I visited India and Nepal. I stayed 7 months in India and 1 month in Nepal. To write about India/Nepal travels deserves a whole blog for itself. So this is not the idea that I have today. I just want to share with you, a period of time where I spent in a community on the southeast of India called Auroville. 

 It’s crazy this blogging thing. The way it allow us to jump from present to future or back to the past in anytime with our writing and images! It might sound a bit out the subject here, to write about things that happened to me 7 years ago, when I was not traveling by sailboat, I hadn’t met Claudia yet and this project was not started. But I was talking to Claudia last night and we thought that writing about our past is a great way to better understand ourselves and to pass to our readers, what brought us here today. After all, there is luggage of experience lived before, which I can choose to carry with me (and there might be some which I did not choose to carry but there are still with me).

By the way our stories are now in categories. You can check over there —> on our sidebar and browse to the ones you want. 

 Auroville on their words is: 

 “Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.”

 Nut so thing that not so many people know about what has been going on over there. Solutions to many problems that we face now days have been lived and practiced by this community for a very long time (more than 35 years). Auroville is a human experiment. I am not telling you that they are all enlightened over there and their bodies levitate when they walk. No, I have been there. The same human relationship problems that we find in other cities, communities or inside our boat is there as well. But they are trying hard, not to let their “negative” human phycological tendencies influence on their bigger plan. You might get the image that this is a little community full of hippies in a remote corner of the globe. But no, Auroville is a city. It has grown so much that today, they incorporated the villages that used to surround them into their “city on the making”. They have schools, press, labs, libraries, hospitals, their own currency and much more. There are today more than 2000 Aurovillians. They are not a sect and all this people living there do not all believe in the same thing. The larger community is composed by very diverse little ones. There is the buddhist, the permaculture, the economists, the yoga, the builders, the self sufficient, the vegans, the philosophers, the medicine practitioners groups and so on… They been using their diversity of thought and practice as a strength. Finding consensus on their decisions as a group.

 

 

 Some of their amazing achievements are: They were given an arid piece of land to start their community, so they planted (and keep planting) more than 1 million trees and irrigated them by hand, sometimes caring jars of water on their heads for long distances. The result is bodies of water that were long gone, came back to life, the soil rehabilitated , they have shade from the torrid sun that shinny on that area and all the benefits that trees bring to us. They use “alternative” energy resources everywhere and have created some initiatives of their own. Like the “Solar kitchen”. Where more than 300 meals are served daily with the simple and old concept of using sunlight to cook.

The list of amazing achievements could go on and on. But that is not my point here. I don’t want to get technical and discuss environmental concepts. I also do not think that me or you have to start planting trees or cooking with the sun. I just want to expose what some people are doing with their lives. This is also a reminder for myself. Sometimes I try to “reinvent the wheel” and come up with some mind blowing idea that is going to change this world or myself. So I remember that many of the solutions for the issues of human kind are already here on this planet. The big question is whether I am ready or willing to get out of my comfort zone and start putting this solutions into practice. The responsibility is squarely on my lap. No, I am not the savior of this world, I just don’t believe that pointing a finger to what somebody else is doing “wrong”, will change anything. Its a big process in which I need to let go of some of my comforts in order to help the bigger picture. Solutions are already out there, do I choose to embrace it or not? What is the “cost” for me to embrace it? How can I apply someone else’s practices into my daily life? 

Needless to say, Auroville is on the list for future stops with our sailboat. But they are not alone with their experiences! So if you are close to the sea (this journey is basically powered by the wind and on the ocean) and wish to share with us and the readers of this blog what you, your group, your company or your community is doing to make this world better place for us all, we will be glad to hear from you!

 On a intent to make some of my memories useful for something,

 Tassio.

 

VS

 Ok. It is not a big secret, for the past 2 weeks, we have been here at the marina. I’m not complaining, i would be lying to you guys if I said that I don’t enjoy it. Why is it enjoyable? 

- The shower, yep, this thing that I just turn a little handle and suddenly the water starts running. And if I’m lucky, it is even possible to regulate the temperature of this beautiful fountain of water that doesn’t leave a kilo of salt in my hair.

- The supermarket two steps away. Wow, that really means that I can step out of the boat and go get what  i feel like eating for dinner without undertaking a journey in the dinghy. Or else, when I’m sailing, I better have thought about what and how much I’m going to eat because I can forget about the idea of quickly grabbing the-little-something-missing.

- The electricity. Really, I can treat as many photos as I want even if its not sunny or windy out there. ( When not at the dock most of the electricity is made of our wind generator and solar panels, cool aye! ) Or I can have a movie night without the battery running out  at the most tense moment of the film. 

- Vacuum cleaning. This goes in the last category but it is worth a bullet of its own. Don’t get me wrong, I love the broom concept but have you ever tried to broom the bilges of a boat (this is the part between the floorboards and the hull of the boat, where we keep food and loads of other stuff.) So yes, me, i tried to broom the bilges and it seems like it only makes it worse. So big thumb up for the small vacuum cleaner and clean bilges!

- An espresso coffee. This is a precious moment for me in a day, coffee time. Believe it or not, I haven’t managed to make one good coffee in the sailboat. It seems like there is always a weird taste coming in the mouth and I tried many ways. My last try was with a reusable filter that Tassio’s mom kindly brought for us, the old style I guess. It is not bad but it is nothing compared to the real dark coffee slowly coming out of the machine with the beige crema floating on top. So at the dock, we have this luxury…

- A full night sleep (for me, at least) without waking up when the wind starts whistling to pop my head out of the boat to make sure that our, or someone else’s anchor, is not dragging. Tassio, even at the dock, still wakes up as soon as he hears an unusual noise and have a look around. I don’t. What would I do without such an alert captain? 

- Being able to stretch properly in the morning. Blissful! So ok, I like early mornings, and while at the dock, I get out and go in a remote place on the quay and set up my yoga mattress and stretch (don’t know if the marina is aware of that?). It becomes interesting in the sense that the floor is not constantly moving, so I can actually hold a position for more than one second and it also allows me to stretch without having my foot touching the oven and my hand to be on the dinning table ;-) so i enjoy it. It is though really doable on the sailboat but it just needs a little time to develop the right method and it practices a lot the equilibrium.

- Last but not least it is to go for a walk without having the question running into my head: Is the boat ok? Did I forget to turn off the gaz of the stove? Will our beautiful ship still be anchored where we left her? To understand this feeling, just imagine that your home could move. Imagine that when you come back from your day at work, you could find your home to be two blocks away from where you left it in the morning or could have sunk in the near river. Scary, no?

 Yes, all that I guess, can be resumed in one simple word: COMFORT! and it really is enjoyable. But there is also this big voice inside me screaming: Go back on the blue road!  Because there are beautiful moments out there and here are some of them:

 - Jumping in the water early in the morning to freshen up. Can fill me up on energy as much as a good yoga session.

- Drinking my awful coffee looking at the endless blue horizon, it almost makes me forget the taste of it and it is quality moment spent outside.

- Traveling with my little home from one place to another. So I wake up with a different scenery, from a little cove to a buzzing bay, from no one around to loads of neighbors. Endless possibilities.

- Being as self sufficient as I can. Collecting rain water, this will always be available. Generating our own electricity with our wind generator and solar panel ( as long as they work, we are good),  they provide us on enough energy. It makes me more aware of my consumption and it feels good to me. 

- Makes me think twice and three times before I go buy some stuff on the shop. There is loads of stuff that i drop because I couldn’t be bothered to go through the process of going to shore on the dinghy. This is out of laziness you might say, and this is probably right but end of the story, it is positive. Consume less. This is without saying that there is limited space on the boat, so the stuff that comes in better be really really useful.

- But above all the joy, the sea. Nothing that I have experienced before in my life equals this. And I hope one day that I will be able to put it into words, but for now, it is one of these really few things just impossible to describe. I haven’t been out there for so long, I started sailing only 1 year ago and we are now preparing my first long passage on the ocean. So I am not one of these old salty dogs that went around the world a few times and have seen the worst storms and fought with pirates. No, but with the little I have experienced so far, it is enough to say that the first thing that comes into my mind when I look at the sea is respect. Respect these waters that carry such power and strength. I feel so small when I’m out there and so grateful to the sea to have allowed so far our little ship to dance with her and travel. So now, to whoever spirit reigns over the sea, I say thank you for having letting me feel this that I cannot yet put into words.

 So life goes with the ups and downs of being tied at the quay. It can sound like I miss the shore when I am at sea and that I miss the sea when I am at the shore. The truth is that both are really enjoyable. Celebrate every day moment, even the most little and simple ones.

Claudia

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