wrack

vagabond. sea-dweller. diarist. wreck.

"...a life plotted between imprecise waypoints, episodes of misadventure, and random, short epistles."

https://ccohanlon.tumblr.com/about

Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil
but if some god shakes your house
ruin arrives
ruin does not leave
it comes tolling over the generations
it comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floor
and all your thrashed coasts groan

– Anne Carson

[from Antigonick, 2015]

#nobots

gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home

Public Key

npub1vhcmj5mkhv6g84pvs9pxcuczqq7s8qs4y233h483shrucawyxstq4gdlzx

NIP-05 Address

ccohanlon_at_merveilles.town@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxtude2dmtkdyr6skgzsnvwvpqq0grsg2j9gcm6ncct37vwhzrg9spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dswsxkkg

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1vhcmj5mkhv6g84pvs9pxcuczqq7s8qs4y233h483shrucawyxstq4gdlzx

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Last Notes

2026-03-22 19:16:02 UTC

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NO. I will be 80 when you turn 50 😆. I'm 71.

2026-03-22 17:52:58 UTC

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Happy 40th and I look forward to hearing that you manage 50 pull-ups for your 50th...I'll be 81 if I make it that long but I'll still be envious of your youth. [hugs]

2026-03-20 10:22:02 UTC

If you're thinking about what to do with your summer, my friend, the Swedish artist and surfer, Peter Stridh, is offering berths aboard his engineless 10-metre sailboat/home on a series of daytrips and longer passages off the coast of Sardinia, between April and October.
Apart from sailing experiences (and lessons if you want), there are opportunities to learn about off-grid living, art-making, and healthier life choices (Peter is also a fine cook, using only fresh, organic local products) or simply to pursue 'la dolce far' niente' at anchor on crystalline turquoise waters.
https://pinoseed.com/
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/116/260/987/946/367/038/original/72f51a43b32c9171.jpeg
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/116/260/988/304/303/014/original/b28ae6ec680095da.jpeg

2026-03-19 22:09:12 UTC

Photo by Dave Lyon
[from London Camera Exchange's Photographer of the Year Awards, 2026]
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/116/258/115/432/505/707/original/c1b927693ba8ea36.png

2026-03-18 19:08:23 UTC

Sicily is cold and wet and I have a brutal head cold.
"So what do you think of it so far?" my wife asks. We've been in Palermo seven hours.

2026-03-17 17:56:30 UTC

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Imminent alimony — he probably needs to pump his income up again.

2026-03-17 17:43:49 UTC

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It's just Gaiman that aged badly.

2026-02-28 21:42:30 UTC

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'whose' not 'who's'..."whose collection"
[hug]

2026-02-12 19:58:10 UTC

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Done.

2026-02-12 19:45:07 UTC

My account here is being 'bridged' to Bluesky. How do I stop that?

2026-02-02 10:09:02 UTC

"The time has come to stop, to stay in one place — if not a home, then at least a long-term refuge or bolt-hole — and shape a different sort of life, no longer peripatetic but persistently still."
https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home
My wife: 'We need somewhere to start again.' At our age, that might be the biggest challenge of all.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/116/000/473/701/210/244/original/1143e7d819747175.jpg

2026-01-20 16:22:19 UTC

When I'm ill, my advancing years weigh heavier on me. I become aware of my increasing invisibility, my irrelevance, and it sucks the life out of me, out of any inclination to try to stem the slow but inevitable decay. I'm gripped, instead, by an urgent desire to accelerate the process, to erase myself.
I'm already being erased by others. Today I discovered that I'm no longer included on lists of 'interesting' reading or resources by a handful of younger people whom I admire and who once saw some value in my observations and experiences. I understand it, but it still hurts.

2026-01-17 04:49:32 UTC

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'Sewing', not 'sowing'. (Sorry.)

2026-01-08 06:21:54 UTC

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Yeah, never leave gold on the floor.

2026-01-01 09:07:27 UTC

And so another bloody year begins.

2025-12-19 20:06:50 UTC

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As I wrote, I didn't think we had options. It has been a marginal existence, a matter of old age and geographical displacement, and our health has had a significant impact, particularly in the past 18 months, but I love being back on the water and *that* has been restorative, inspring, and challenging (the longer passages). I am, by nature a sea-dweller, a waterman (hell, eight of my paternal and maternal great great grandparents sailed on square-riggers to Australia from England, Ireland, and Newfoundland in the 1830s) as much as I am a traveller. I'm never quite as 'whole' when settled, especially ashore.
Despite Wrack's age and sea-worn condition, I suspect we've had less problems than those you've described aboard Pino (although Wrack is nowhere near as pretty). Her hull and decks are heavy lay-ups, the keel fully encased. She needs a solid force four to sail well but she's a reliable and surprisingly dry beast when the sea is up. Her rig is low profile, modest and over-supported. Her sails are old but well-maintained. The engine had a 'moment' at the end of the long passage to Sardinia from the Alboran Sea but we've serviced her attentively and by and large, she's been trouble-free.
She'll probably need a major refit at the end of next season but by then, probably, so will we.
Our biggest problems, with the boat and our lives, in the past few years, are rooted in our poverty and lack of social support (public health, pension, etc.) and adequate income. We're doing our best to change that.

2025-12-19 12:08:37 UTC

Why did my wife and I move aboard Wrack in old age?
Being homeless and out of options was part of it but I was also haunted by my own words in this 2021 interview for Anna Iltnere's When I Grow Up project, in which I described myself as a 'castaway'.
https://beachbooks.blog/2021/10/20/kids-sea-library-castaway-c-c-ohanlon/
There's also this, @npub1z2c…laft and @npub1z8r…mrq6:
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/115/746/141/569/968/571/original/471b5b4901048544.png

2025-12-17 23:10:52 UTC

Anti-fascist activists and poets, Mary and George Oppen, aboard the small yacht that was their refuge (and means of escape) during late 1920s/early 1930s, sailing from Detroit, across Lake Erie to the Erie Canal, then down the Hudson River to New York City.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/115/737/427/403/940/294/original/7ee9e484e1e82313.jpg
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/115/737/428/175/310/302/original/be248aa2c7c2e2d9.jpeg

2025-12-10 21:12:22 UTC

We finally got Wrack's 25-year-old Volvo Penta 20hp diesel back online this afternoon.
My wife, as the engine started and idled without a hitch: "The African Queen is BACK!"
Next up, some troublesome electrical issues — a rat's nest of old wiring behind an antique switch panel, an inaccurate, legacy wiring plan, batteries set up in three different spaces, a half dozen, dead, unmarked terminals — but hey, at least our alternator is charging again.

2025-12-10 12:57:44 UTC

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His felt a lot harder and vulnerable. (You might remember, my father is quoted at the top of the first chapter.)

2025-12-06 17:44:59 UTC

I am ill — serious flank pain, fever and nausea, blood pressure up to 160/88.
Given wants me to go to a hospital but I can't be arsed so I'm curled up on my bunk reading a biography of Lancelot Capability Brown.

2025-12-04 13:50:36 UTC

A painting (acrylic on canvas) by Lee Madgwick.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/115/661/608/587/534/235/original/3f45f3076d4bb770.jpeg

2025-11-30 21:45:42 UTC

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Usually the front desk will oblige...if they have one manned 24 hours.

2025-11-29 07:18:46 UTC

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No, they did. They just won't admit they did.

2025-11-29 00:31:05 UTC

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Most who watched it back in 1965, when it came out, are likely dead. Or maybe it's like Australians and 'Crocodile Dundee' — noone wants to admit it.

2025-11-17 19:58:05 UTC

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I might appear to be the last guy who should offer critical (if somewhat glib) advice like this, but I was once CEO of a couple of well-known, hip companies and the burn-out crippled me and damaged my family so badly I chose to live a broke-ass dirtbag life rather than to put any of us through it again.

2025-11-17 18:59:37 UTC

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Quit.

2025-11-08 12:50:36 UTC

My wife and I are sometimes asked why we named our boat Wrack.
When we bought her she bore the name Endymion, after my least favourite of John Keats' poems ("A thing of beauty is a joy for ever..."). For a while, I thought about changing it to Ibn Majid, after Ahmed Bin Majid, a legendary fifteenth century Arab mu’allim (navigator) and poet. But I liked the hardness and lack of sentimentality of 'wrack', as well as its visual and aural proximity to 'wreck'.
Wrack is a seaweed, usually one of the brown seaweeds of the Fucaceae family, that is uprooted by storm seas or strong currents and eventually washed up on beaches or entangled with tidal reefs. Wrack is also the scattered debris of a shipwreck.
Wrack is defined by having been broken somehow and cast upon a shore.
Our Wrack is a hard-worn, scarred, old vessel, but sea-kindly and sound. The name isn't a reflection of its history but rather that of its crew. Before finding refuge aboard, we had washed up several times in unlikely corners of the world, clinging to the wreckage of previous lives.
Which is to say, we are wrack.

2025-11-05 11:12:43 UTC

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I agree.

2025-10-15 22:13:11 UTC

This evening: lightning and torrential rain over Cagliari, where we and our old sailboat, Wrack, are berthed for the autumn.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/115/380/475/716/134/822/original/7d45bdad2bec877a.jpeg

2025-09-30 13:42:28 UTC

A phone conversation with an officer of the Polizia della Frontiera to see whether I might claim ‘force majeure’ if my health keeps me in port (and within the Schengen zone) for longer than 90 days. Their response was positive and sympathetic: “Your situation is a definition of ‘force majeure’. No need to come to our offices. Show your hospital papers when you’re at passport control, leaving the country. Until then, rest and recover.”

2025-09-28 23:49:45 UTC

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Very possibly. I’m so old, all my clothing choices look like some kind of askew cosplay. I was going for Captains Courageous, the 1937 version with Spencer Tracy, but the Crocs spoil it.

2025-09-28 16:57:52 UTC

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oh, for a disposable camera…

2025-09-28 16:34:26 UTC

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Oh, no. Nothing so sporty and waterproof. An ankle-length, oiled canvas, brown Dri-Z-Bone Australian stockman’s coat with a fleece-lined hood. Fleece-lined grey Crocs, no socks. Beneath, flannel pyjama pants over fleece-lined track suit bottoms and silk long-johns by Ermenegildo Zegna (a gift from my late mother). On top, a knitted, Irish oiled woolen jumper over a Portlandia-like lumberjack shirt and a long-sleeved t-shirt. My style guru was the late Vito Dumas of Lehg II fame, who wore a similar long oilskin coat and wrapped his body with old newspapers for insulation.

2025-09-28 10:10:04 UTC

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My mix ‘n’ match foul weather gear makes me look like a discount rack in a thrift store.

2025-09-22 17:05:36 UTC

"Since Hasan and his team of reporters don’t own or use computers, the newspaper is handwritten and then photocopied. But they also believe writing stories by hand...makes the paper feel more intimate and brings their community closer.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/8/30/our-story-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-handwritten-newspaper-in-bangladesh

2025-09-21 16:08:27 UTC

“Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.”
- Henry David Thoreau

2025-08-25 22:15:30 UTC

Because of our engine issues (and a consequent lack of money), we’ve missed a narrow weather window to sail to Rome. We’ll lurk around the Gulf of Cagliari until the weekend, then head into Tyrrhenian Sea.

2025-08-10 05:34:38 UTC

Full moon setting, as we weigh anchor this morning for a 20-mile leg up the east coast of Ibiza.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/115/002/835/366/039/749/original/32814bc42b9539ca.jpeg

2025-08-07 10:24:47 UTC

Ibiza, finally.
Landfall at dawn, today.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/986/982/150/070/344/original/e24b2fef89a2ff8c.jpeg

2025-07-04 03:13:42 UTC

This time last year: leaving l’Aberwrac’h, in northern Brittany, aboard Wrack at dawn.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/792/766/559/659/868/original/3cc109a704e438a0.mp4

2025-07-03 08:15:48 UTC

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9.00am, and it’s 30°C.

2025-07-03 07:51:07 UTC

Aquaman: our Swedish dock neighbour Peter checking the growth below the waterline of his 10-metre sailing boat.
As hot as it is here, only the foolhardy (and Swedes) brave the Black Lagoon-like waters of Almerimar marina.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/788/197/657/151/161/original/54ba1bddc9768ed0.jpeg

2025-06-02 20:16:04 UTC

"is there a german word for 'absolutely worn out with contempt'?"
– @npub1a7f…w4vs

2025-05-27 21:50:05 UTC

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It works fine. And if you look at the total volume of water aboard for a week to ten days sailing (across Western Med), there's a large reserve.
When I first sailed long distances it was aboard a small volume 24-foot boat. 2 litres a day was all I could carry for 4-6 weeks at sea. Even on the dock here, in 26ºC and harsh sun, we use less than 10 litres a day (we shower ashore so that's not included) and it feels profligate.

2025-05-27 21:37:02 UTC

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Just read about your water management aboard Pino: 10 litres per person a day? I presume that's on the dock? When Wrack's at sea, we limit ourselves to 2 to 2.5 litres a day each for ALL purposes (cooking, hygiene, drinking). To cross the Med from west to east, we'll have 100 litres in jerry cans — 5 x 5 litre, and 4 x 20 litres plus 50+ litres in 1.5 litre bottles.

2025-05-27 19:20:09 UTC

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Nah. We have an ice box. We buy three bags from a convenience store, store perishable foods for three days on it, and then use the last of the ice for our iced coffees.
We don't even have hot or cold running water, or a water tank. We have food-safe jerry cans all through the boat (plus bottled water).

2025-05-27 17:52:55 UTC

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We're into the days of iced café lattes, taken below, out of the sun (not even June and it's already 26-27º in the late afternoon). No wind. Balmy sub-tropical nights.

2025-04-13 21:52:24 UTC

A reminder that a former chairman of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, once dismissed the idea that we should have access to water as a basic right as "extreme" and argued that all water should be privatised and access to it controlled by corporations.

2025-04-08 16:06:15 UTC

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And learn how to use them so you can be there for others.

2025-04-03 11:28:44 UTC

Rhino, Namibia, from the series Land of Nothingness, 2016.
Photo by Maroesjka Lavigne.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/273/791/494/602/197/original/7fb47805b2c42d8d.jpg

2025-04-03 03:34:59 UTC

“We’re all assholes, more or less, otherwise the world would be in much better shape.”
– Bernard Moitessier

2025-03-25 16:25:40 UTC

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When are you going to reveal where Pino is heading?

2025-03-25 16:24:55 UTC

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April/May before the fierece Meltemi (northerly) of the summer months sets in. We would sail via southen Sicily, then up the Aegean — few stops. Given would come because there are plenty of ports with good hospitals and anchorages (if needed, for rest) en route. We already have a free mooring in Istanbul (miracle!) as well as in Marmaris.
My son is quite well known as a video director there (he divides his time between Istanbul and Rome) and he loves the place. He has also found a lot of work as well as opportunities to publish, exhibit, and connect. We would live with him in a rented place but spend spring, summer and early autumn sailing. The Turks would give us residence, health care (Turkish nedical and dental is pretty good) and other social benefits as part of my son's residency. I don't expect I'll live long enough to find America as welcoming or as inspiring as I did in my youth and that saddens me. I do love North Africa, the Eastern Med, and I was raised in southern Italy. The Med' is about as good a home as I could wish for.

2025-03-25 15:38:59 UTC

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Both voyages are long — but the trans-Atlantic, if we have to do it, would probably begin in October with a couple of legs (along the coast of Morocco to Essaouira, then on to the Cabo Verdes) then a wait to cross to the Caribbean in early December. In the meanntime, we'd loiter around the Western Med and try to live mostly on the hook.
It's a couple of thousand miles to Turkey but there are literally thousands of anchorages for rest and shelter for us both.
As for the preparation, Wrack is a very minimal boat: strong, basic gear, primitive electrics, ok sails, but she lacks self steering (I got rid of the ancient, unreliable Aries) and solar power and both will be essential for what would likely be a singlehanded Atlantic crossing (Given would have to fly ahead — her heart is now too unreliable for a long passage).

2025-03-25 14:48:48 UTC

A flurry of activity along our dock: the westerly gales have subsided, for now, and an Atlantic high has brought clear skies and light winds for the first time this month. Everyone is readying their boat for sea.
Some are departing as early as tomorrow — our young neighbour, a Swedish singlehander, is loading aboard stores, bricks of beer and bottled water, and cooking gas before he heads north-east to Ibiza in the morning — others, we among them, are finishing repairs and refits with an eye to departures in late April.
We are working on two voyage plans: one across two thirds of the Mediterranean and all of the Aegean to Turkey, which depends on the outcome of the current upheavals there, the other south west across the Atlantic. Both have a terminus in a home and legal residence ashore (and consistent medical care for Given) but there are some bloody hard months — and thousands of sea miles — between that and where we are now.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/223/601/705/764/909/original/d4e4be0354f2ddcf.png

2025-03-23 08:56:46 UTC

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"I have made an art out of the indefinite. When I was young, if you asked me what I did for a living, I might try to discourage your curiosity by telling you I was a a deckhand on a fishing boat or a small-time criminal, a standover man or a fence. And I might actually have been, then. Nowadays, I am retired. No-one is interested in what old people do."

2025-03-23 08:43:00 UTC

"The drift is not for everyone. Uncertainty is pervasive. If you need to know where you are and what you’re doing there, you are probably in the wrong place. And yet it isn’t about self-negation but rather an imaginative form of self-reliance, an embrace of the uncharted and the relentless unexpected."
[for @npub15l5…uqg8]
https://ccohanlon.tumblr.com/post/675902122938744832/notes-on-being-a-life-artist

2025-03-22 18:19:37 UTC

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"Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, 'Que pasa, baby?'"
– Jim Harrison, author
Warmest wishes from Given and me — our hopes for many, many more years of inspired creativity and adventure.
[hugs]

2025-03-19 20:07:01 UTC

“I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.”
– Bernard Moitessier
[from his book, The Long Way, 1974]
#theLibrary
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/190/865/679/426/346/original/0e110dc17faf22c8.jpeg

2025-03-15 22:27:24 UTC

“The problem is not to find the answer, it's to face the answer.”
– Terence McKenna

2025-03-14 18:58:21 UTC

A huge squall looms at dusk (over Puerto Almerimar, thirty minutes ago).
Light rain and violent sou'westerly gusts for a few minutes, then...nothing.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/162/304/896/532/030/original/b171776a67f149f8.jpeg

2025-03-08 10:04:18 UTC

"When you want to build a boat, do not start gathering wood, cutting planks and distributing work, but awaken within men a longing for the wide immensity of the sea."
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

2025-03-06 13:31:09 UTC

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Our sea-bound life is precarious and often physically challenging, but it still offers us more than we had ashore, including shelter, community, and mobility. And while we're striving to achieve a modest self-sufficiency and stability, we survive now thanks to the support of others.

2025-03-06 13:30:32 UTC

Two years ago, my wife of 37 years and I escaped homelessness aboard a sea-worn, half-century-old sailboat named Wrack.
Still untethered and adrift, our slow voyage has been plotted between imprecise waypoints, episodes of misadventure, and random, short epistles here.
We are currently at the north-eastern edge of the Alboran Sea.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home
#introduction
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/112/268/667/644/035/original/b958b9d195241f16.jpg

2025-03-02 00:56:16 UTC

"People have been asking me lately about countries that fell into an authoritarian abyss. They want to know when the tipping point will come....What are the effective ways to resist?"
An unsettling essay by Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.
https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/heroic-work-from-ordinary-people

2025-02-26 15:26:39 UTC

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Me please.

2025-02-19 17:04:46 UTC

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Oh. Please don't give my wife ideas.

2025-02-19 15:28:55 UTC

My wife began the day with a project to rid Wrack's lockers in the saloon and galley of mould. By mid-afternoon, she'd demolished 1.5 metres of rotten plywood shelving and cut out large scraps of mildewed vinyl lining.
Wrack's cockpit looks like a builder's skip, filled with debris.

2025-02-16 19:12:04 UTC

I don't like writers.
I grew up among them. My father was a successful novelist and no matter where 'home' happened to be, the presence of other writers (and editors and publishers and agents) was everyday. Half a century on, I have scores of acquaintances who describe themselves as writers but I think of only a couple of them as 'friends'.
I don't trust them. I learned at an early age that there was an unsettling disconnect between what writers say and what they set down in words. Joan Didion once wrote, "Writers are always selling someone out", especially if it enables them tell a better story. The world in which my
father lived most happily was in his own head, not the messy, unplotted happenstance of real life,
Writers are rarely as good company as they like to imagine. Maybe because they tend to be alone and cloistered when they work, they're unsteady in social interactions. They're either awkward or overbearing. With booze and a bit of attention, they can be hard to shut up. Plus you're never quite sure if their conversation isn't just a rough draft of some other dialogue, or a chance to try out fragments of unrefined prose, to get a sense of how it ‘plays’ with an audience.
My father was always alert to the effect of words, his own and others'. Like a stand-up comic, he'd sometimes hit on a seam of new material as he talked and immediately start re-working it with showy erudition. A lot of writers do this. The trouble is, too many mistake their facility with words, mere inventive vocabulary, for real understanding of, or insight into, well, anything.
I suspect this is why there are so many writers' conferences and festivals. Of all the arts, literature is the one that most likes to talk about itself, even if, too often, it feels like it's talking to itself.
I can't explain why I still love books. They're important to me, an essential presence in my life. I suspect it's down to my father, again. He taught me, by example rather than explicit instruction, that if I was after the truth, books, not people, were the best place to look for it.

2025-02-15 16:27:50 UTC

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Exactly.

2025-02-15 16:15:29 UTC

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In the first six weeks of ownership, we removed 500 kilos of rubbish, broken and/or redundant gear that the previous owners left aboard. We also reduced our personal luggage from five expedition duffels to two. It took a further 12 weeks to work out how best (and most conveniently/drily) to stow what remained.

2025-02-15 11:40:11 UTC

@npub1z2c…laft @npub1z8r…mrq6 A reminder of my first day aboard Wrack...
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/114/007/708/539/792/273/original/3863cc20da9d5090.jpeg

2025-02-14 20:10:28 UTC

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May there be 9 years more, all as adventurous, productive and inspiring (to yourselves and to the rest of us — @npub1z2c…laft's writings were the midwife of our two years and counting aboard Wrack ) as these past 9 have been.

2025-02-10 01:52:20 UTC

2.35am: too restless to sleep, reading @npub1z2c…laft's 'log' at https://kokorobot.ca/ . And I've just come across not one but two mentions of the GoFundMe set up on our behalf that I've somehow missed on previous scans of the log. And now I'm deeply embarrassed because I should've/would've thanked her. Especially as her words were gentle, understanding, and kind and both my wife and I really need all three right now. So thank you, @npub1z2c…laft, from the bottom of our hearts. You are a rare and inspirational soul.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home

2025-01-18 17:48:39 UTC

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I am so not a high latitudes sailor anymore, as much as I'm enchanted by the *idea* of the PNW — these days, I embrace my sub-tropical upbringing (plus my wife's half Polynesian). I don't even own foul weather gear.

2025-01-18 17:20:01 UTC

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I bitch about the cold — and keep a heater running below decks when the sun sets — but the daytime temperature is usually around 15ºC. Of all Spanish cities, Almerimar boasts the most hours of unclouded sunlight a year.
I still feel bloody cold.

2025-01-18 17:06:05 UTC

Dusk as seen from Wrack's deck, Almerimar marina, Spain.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/113/850/440/178/552/543/original/dca1e7b95cc9389a.jpeg

2025-01-09 15:10:21 UTC

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So am I! I've always wanted one.

2025-01-09 09:36:36 UTC

@npub1z8r…mrq6 Envious of your Voigtlander 35mm rangefinder (via #izzzzi).

2025-01-01 16:45:53 UTC

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The latest we could even leave by early December (from Tangier).

2025-01-01 16:33:07 UTC

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An idea...you join us/me aboard Wrack in late October and we sail to the Caribbean, maybe up to the States, via Morocco, Canaries and maybe Cap Verde Isands. (Seriously).

2025-01-01 16:23:50 UTC

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If only...

2025-01-01 14:36:24 UTC

A new year, a new #introduction
I live with my wife of 37 years aboard a half-century-old sailing vessel.
Old, untethered, sometimes adrift, we navigate between ill-defined waypoints, close to nature, on a slow voyage traced by episodes of misadventure, vague marks on hand-wrought maps, and random, short epistles from everywhere/nowhere.
We are currently wintering afloat at the north-eastern edge of the Alboran Sea.

2025-01-01 12:58:23 UTC

Ugh.
A glaring error in my post to izzzzi.net today: yes, I do know how to spell 'artisanal'.
[sigh]

2024-12-31 22:19:50 UTC

We are ‘celebrating’ New Years Eve ashore, in a hospital in Ejido, just north of Almerimar. My wife’s heart went into atrial fibrillation late this afternoon and she had to be taken ashore by an ambulance crew. She’ll undergo cardio-version to re-start her heart in the next hour or so.

2024-12-30 21:13:27 UTC

Sunset, Almerimar, southern Spain, this evening.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/113/743/832/481/261/500/original/6acb034527e1252d.jpeg

2024-12-25 09:16:46 UTC

"Let's keep all the hatches shut, get cosy, eat a lot, and watch Christmas movies."
– my wife, this morning
Happy holidays, everyone.

2024-12-20 15:19:31 UTC

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Sorry, I was sure I saw your byline this morning but no, I can see no post at all.

2024-12-16 19:04:34 UTC

I rarely pay any attention to sailing's so-called influencers on YouTube — @npub1z8r…mrq6 and @npub1z2c…laft's Pacific dispatches were a rare exception — but I have nothing but admiration for Chris (a.k.a mysto) and Ke’ili (a.k.a ‘ili’ili), the Ethnomads. With a friend (and fellow Hawaiian), the young couple sailed their minimally equipped, 26-foot, Wharram-designed, open-decked Pahi double canoe — a very small vessel — 2,600 nautical miles across the Pacific, from Newport, California, to O'ahu, Hawaii.
To quote famed Hawaiian navigator, Nainoa Thompson: “Itʻs in the blackness, itʻs in the cloudiness, itʻs in the times that arenʻt easy that you grow, that you become the best.”
https://ethnomads.substack.com?r=17xh2f
A raw seven-part video about the voyage conveys just how tough it was:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO8VxWZxHJLLw7lv0OVbuVRxD07YV2AC7
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/113/664/150/610/338/165/original/013d2beabf05e596.webp

2024-12-12 08:03:27 UTC

A stray impulse:
I just joined izzzzi.net as 'tidalpunk'. If you're there too, let me know and I'll follow.

2024-12-08 11:41:30 UTC

A reminder in these weird times: principles of adult behaviour, from the late John Perry Barlow (1977)
1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, never blame. Say nothing behind another’s back you’d be unwilling to say, in exactly the same tone and language, to his face.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you yourself can deliver.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than whom is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Do not endanger it frivolously. And never endanger the life of another.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason.
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Never let your errors pass without admission.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Forgive.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.

2024-12-07 10:05:05 UTC

Sunset beyond the breakwater at Adra.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/113/610/969/720/808/268/original/e43a1496fb968366.jpeg

2024-12-05 18:37:53 UTC

This afternoon, sailed 25 nautical miles along 'el mar de plastico' in southern Spain, a coast covered by thousands of acres of plastic polytunnels fast-growing thousands of tons of fruit and veg for Europe's (and North Africa's) supermarket chains.
https://assets.merveilles.town/media_attachments/files/113/601/651/961/232/543/original/1a69f5d0e6777b8d.jpeg

2024-11-30 18:32:53 UTC

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Too late to worry about it now.

2024-11-30 17:46:19 UTC

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Yeah. I feel the same about writing (and I've written and published so much). I am pretty much persuaded that seven decades of wandering are my only authentic form of self-expression 🙃 .

2024-11-30 17:36:45 UTC

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I came to regret it. It was utterly without use or purpose. I WISH it had changed me.

2024-11-30 15:01:35 UTC

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It used to be that I documented my days obsessively: daybooks, photographs, video, scraps of super8 film, and even hand-wrought maps on which my wayward courses were meticulously traced in ink. Embarrassed by their meaninglessness, I incinerated the lot in a skip in sou'west France a decade ago.

2024-11-30 15:01:11 UTC

Years ago, someone — a friend, no longer a friend — used to tell me that if anything I did was art, it was 'transience': this unrooted, unreliable life-in-motion that has persisted for 70 years and yet, apart from random wreckage strewn along its serpentine path, has never had any real substance.

2024-11-30 08:17:29 UTC

There are days, more frequent in recent months, when our homelessness and lack of purpose weigh down on my wife and me and we begin to unravel — just sixty nautical miles from Tangier but a long way from anywhere we want to be, missing our kids, our boat in need of repair, this was one.