Quantity, distance, speed, depth, wind — aboard a boat the list of things to be measured, accounted and considered is long, if not innumerable. The goal, almost always, is to have just enough. My Rule of Just Enough is to never lack but certainly not to have an excess. Read more

How could Jellyfish, the Nobel Prize, a step toward a cure for cancer and your five bucks have be connected? They converge with Douglas Prasher.

Jellyfish — Not everyone has seen a jellyfish, so I need to share my limited experiences with them.
The fist time I saw this gelatinous invertebrate was not in their natural habitat, the ocean, but on the beach on Galveston Island. After a string of tropical storms pounded the island my family drove under the still gray wagging tail-end of a near hurricane to get a look at the Gulf, churning in the aftermath of the severe weather. On the beach we found jellyfish strewn like soap bubbles across the hard, flat sand. They had been swept ashore in such great numbers it was hard to imagine a single creature of their kind was left in the sea. I was unaware they were poisonous until a beachcomber with a metal detector warned me to watch myself and my then very young son. I certainly did not know that jellies were bioluminescent — containing a glow-in-the dark protein. Then I had little inkling just how curious these delicate animals were but the scene of their death and decay left me wanting to discover more. Read more

I jerk awake as adrenaline squirts into my veins. Have we hit something? A whale, a container, a crate of shoes? No. The thump is on the sole, not the hull. I take a long breath. Has something fallen? No. The boat is neither pitching nor yawing nearly enough to toss some heavy load onto the floor. I peek around my lee cloth to see the dark figure of the First Mate Eleanor pulling on her shoes, illuminated by her red flashlight. She has launched herself from the bunk above me to prepare for the change of watch, her third watch in 24 hours. She is covering for a mate stricken with seasickness. Read more

23:40

The closeness of the water around us is not to be easily dismissed. Where I lay to find the comfort of sleep is most certainly below the waterline with only a thin metal shell dividing my repose from the deep watery world spreading beyond the curve of the earth.

There are seventeen souls aboard the schooner. Four of us; myself, two other women sailors and Ed my husband, berth in the focsle — sleeping, reading, resting or seeking solitude behind powder blue lee cloths. The space is about the size of a mini-van. Read more

cont. from (Women Sailing the Pink Sea)

I have contemplated my question for six weeks now and can now answer, “It just happened.”

“How could this happen?” is as unanswerable as, “Why am I here?” when not asked in reference to a senior moment. Why someone gets breast cancer is complicated beyond anyone’s understanding let alone mine and probably has many answers, none of them nearly telling the full story. The fact remains, it happens and it happens to women, and men too. It happens everyday. Breast cancer just happens, just like shit happens. Read more

This is my first entry in the Sailing the Pink Sea blog. When the blogmaster (Hummm? Is “blogmaster”
a valid blogosphere term?) asked what my purpose was for the blog, I had to honestly answer, “Uh, gee
I don’t know.”

Now I have given it some thought and I can say, I have been encouraged to share but have no grand purpose. I certainly do not expect to profoundly sway, educate or enlighten anyone with my meager postings. I confess that I could have waited until I had the perfect purpose and wise words to offer up but I realized that would never happen. So here I go, yet another cancer survivor, not unlike the millions of other survivors, or as my husband likes to point out, I am unique, just like everyone else. I have no special training or skills to make me an expert on breast cancer or for that matter sailing. I only try to be honest and brave when I touch on either subject and write what is the truth for me and hope it is of some value to you.

And for the sailing — what you may ask is the connection to breast cancer? For an answer, I would urge you to consider reading the free chapter of Sailing the Pink Sea to make that discovery for yourself.

I define myself both as a breast cancer survivor and a woman sailor and in this blog I will write about them both.

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