The 4th

What A Long, Strange Trip it’s Been

July 9, 2016 Comments (0) journal

Enter Sea Dart

“An adventure is a voyage into the unfamiliar. If you know what you’re doing, it isn’t an adventure. An adventure is a baring of your soul, not your wallet, an agreement to trust your wits rather than your digital homing advice.”

Robert Leonard Reid
Mountains of the Great Blue Dream

Yvon Chouinard says that an adventure doesn’t begin until things start to go wrong. True enough, if a little pessimistic. (Of course, pessimism is an important survival technique in many circumstances, where the ability to plan for the worst is what often gets you through the toughest situations.) Still, I appreciate the back-of-the-napkin definition from Mr. Reid, an acknowledgement that, even if you don’t know how it’s going to turn out, you owe it to yourself to move forward anyway.seadart

In related news, I bought a boat. Not just any boat: Sea Dart was once the property of legendary mariner/author Tristan Jones. In his book, The Incredible Voyage, Jones relates the tales of westering this 21-foot sailboat up the coast of Colombia, through the Panama Canal, down the coast of South America to Peru, and then up and over the Andes on a flatbed to sail Lake Titicaca, at 12,500 feet, the world’s highest navigable body of water. (Jones was known to embellish his stories wildly and although everything he wrote needs a generous shake of salt, the stories are gold.) Beyond these epic tales, Sea Dart’s biography has made it to print as well, the story of a boat whose life is, hopefully, far from over.

I don’t know how Sea Dart will fit – or even if she’ll fit – into the story of the Ikkatsu Project. But I have some ideas. And, regardless, it is sure to be an adventure.