About Me

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and though I wasn't raised in a particularly marine oriented family, I spent a lot of my youth in and around the water.  My early summers were spent on the Washington coast, learning about and then braving cold water surf.  Later, as a young teen, I found the magic of boats through a sailing course taught on the calm waters of the southern Puget Sound. After a summer or two of sailing Laser 1's, I became involved with a group that organized week-long rowing trips in wooden dories.  You can see some of the reverberations from that experience at another blog of mine, Send Them North, which chronicles some of my recent boat building activities.

I left Washington to attend college in Oregon, where after four years of rigorous study, I was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics. The completion of my B.A. was capped by a month long trip to a South American country called Guyana, where I participated in linguistic fieldwork and had some of the most affirming and powerful personal experiences of my life.

With Linguistics degree in hand, I moved to San Francisco where I found work in a linguistic archive.  To supplement my income I found a job working as a deckhand on a passenger vessel in the San Francisco Bay.  Over time, that one maritime job multiplied into many.  When the time came to leave behind the linguistic archive, I had a full blown maritime career waiting. I was working on passenger ferries, high-speed jet boats, tractor and conventional tugs, crew boats, even delivering supplies to oil tankers anchored in the bay.  Every day was a learning experience.  It was fun, the weather was good (particularly coming from rainy Washington), and the pay kept me afloat.

Now I find myself back in Washington, sitting out the winter slow season with my beautiful girlfriend, and contemplating my next move.  I have a 100 ton master's license with about 10 days operating under its authority under my belt.  In another month I'll have my AB-Special.  At this point, I've got time to think, time to ponder. What's next? What do I really want? This blog is my record of that conversation.

Washington.  February, 2010.