Letters from sea: What am I doing?
Hello darkness my old friend
Letters from sea is a new series for paid subscribers where I share more personal stories, updates from my life, and all that is top of mind for me as I travel the world by sailboat. To upgrade your subscription (and support this project), head here.
January brought a whirlwind of changes. Or maybe only a couple, but they’ve felt substantial, disruptive, challenging — fresh moments of difficulty that have rekindled my oldest, most familiar doubts.
The time had come to leave our beloved Sea of Cortez — a body of water protected from the wild open ocean waves and swell, water that’s home to the richest collection of sea life on the planet, water with striking clarity that gives way to stark and pristine desert landscapes, water that held and carried our home for over a year.
We were leaving terrain that had become familiar, friendly, cherished, knowing that it would be many months and thousands of nautical miles and surely countless difficult moments until we might find a place that we would have the privilege of getting to know in this way, again. We’d be on the move down the open and rugged coast of pacific Mexico, making longer and bigger jumps along the safe harbors that become fewer and farther in between, but first we had to get there — making a 3 night and 4 day passage from Baja south to the mainland: our first open ocean, multi-day, and overnight sailing since 2021.
This departure coincided with my decision to launch this very substack that you’re reading, which perhaps from the outside looking in is no big deal. I’ve been publishing work of various formats on the internet for ten years now so how or why would this be any different? But it feels different. More personal, more vulnerable, more nuanced and raw and confused and honest. More me.
So here I am. Surfing down a wave in my tiny keeled home, days away from land, two miles of ocean stretching out beneath me, another long and dark night ahead, completely alone except for whatever creatures lurk below the inch of fiberglass that contains my life, my two dogs patiently enduring the constant jerking motion as we roll from side to side, my husband patiently enduring my constant fear of it all, and I am overtaken: what the fuck am I doing?