10% Inspiration and 90% Determination

I don't know just when I caught the cruising bug but I'm pretty sure that I wasn't very old.  I grew up on a small farm on Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.  I was very fortunate that I had a skilled dad who, along with a good friend of his, built a simple holiday home on the beautiful limestone coastline.  It's still in our family. It's really only a single room, with particle board partitions and curtains for doors.  We love it and we call it our "shack".

Our family would stay down at the shack for several weeks every summer, sometimes I'd stay a couple of weeks by myself, and my shack neighbor Steven and I would spend our days playing on the water in one of many vessels we cajoled from parents, borrowed from neighbors and later built.

These vessels ranged from wooden and aluminum dinghies, to a very heavy sailing canoe made from sheet galvanized iron to an International Cadet sailing dinghy and once, before our parents made us dismantle it, even a hideously dangerous contraption made from a tractor tyre inner tube with a plank lashed to it and fitted with a 1.5 hp Seagull outboard motor.  When I think back on those days its a wonder we didn't kill ourselves with that outboard.  Fortune smiled and we weren't killed but instead those early experiences built primarily the ability to make our own fun but also a sense of independence and capability that was probably not deserved but grew with us none-the-less.

I think my first cruising voyage might have been the day when, at about 13 y.o., my friend Steven and I rigged a 10ft dinghy with a canopy made from a tarpaulin propped up with broomsticks and oars, and packed spearfishing gear, fishing hand lines, water, food and fuel, and took off maybe 10 miles around Point Soutter for a day of spearfishing, diving for scallops and fishing for "Tommy Ruffs" (a type of herring native to the south coast of Australia).

It was a very modest cruise and as the seabreeze picked up when the days hot sun baked the limestone coast, causing the heated air to rise, drawing in the cooler sea air to replace it, we headed back to the safety and comfort of our simple shack, to eat my Mum's delicious, simple meals of fried fish and salad and to sit outdoors of an evening and listen to the adults tell stories of their days of pioneer diving back in the '50s when they would head down to the pristine, rocky coast around Cape Spencer on Norton and Aerial motorcycles and dive those waters, often for the first time ever.

I certainly didnt know it at the time, but this wonderful, childhood experience was to start a largely unfulfilled itch to live an independent life of exploration aboard a sailing vessel.  Over the years, I've made some pretty major attempts of realising that lifestyle, the greatest being a 6 year project to fit out an Adams 45 steel cutter

on my folks farm near Minlaton, South Australia in the '90's.  I launched that yacht and cruised it a little around Sth. Australia but, having immigrated to the US with my American (then) wife, ultimately had to sell it to a family who did cruise it throughout the western Pacific, South East Asia and Indian Ocean.  That adventurous family worked hard to live out the same dream that I, too, still carry with me.

Ever since those days, to walk the trodden path has never had lasting appeal.  I'd rather live in a room connected to the workshop of the small business that I founded, as I do, and be happy and independent, then follow the mainstream and watch my one life eack away, day by uninspired day, in a conventionally comfortable suburban life.

At 48, my race is not yet run and it is my hope and will that, over the next few years, I'll reach that goal of living an independent life afloat while finding balance with my rich life and family ashore as I fit out and sail my 1984 Liberty 458 cutter rigged sloop; Australis.

This blog is intended to be a documentation of my ongoing effort to experience the richness of life that cannot be bought but comes with the development of skills and the eschewing of the protections and burdens of civilization while striking out on a vessel which I have prepared, and which, if I do my work well, will provide a safe and sturdy home in locations and situations traveled by individuals of a similar temperament and desire for independance.

My experience along this trail has, to date, been one of constant learning. It's my hope that some of what I experience along the way might be of help to others and should anybody ever read this, maybe you can offer me some advice to help me along my journey.