Where Has the Cruising Counter-Culture Gone - Is It Too Late?

[tager]

Monoculture.

[Ahnlaashock]

People are all different.
I am much like the Jeremiah Johnson movie character. I have seen a city.
I don't drink a drop of alcohol because I am likely to be found on the warpath trying to scalp someone if I do. I was that way in my youth, and I see no reason to find out if it is still true today.
In reading something like the Bumfuzzle logs, the amount of motoring, diesel consumption, along with restaurant and bar visits, was amazing. I have not eaten in a restaurant in several months, and I am on land surrounded by them. I walk thru the woods, not drive through the woods.
Part of what draws me to sailing is the potential to go off grid away from others for long periods of time. To make it without burning diesel, closer to God's creation than I can get in the din, in a challenge to myself, that does not need witnesses.
My way has always been to go to the wild places, alone, and to survive there. The Cabin is 4 miles from the nearest blacktop, up a woods road that needs a truck if it has been raining. A week in the woods, alone, learning things like how to repair your moccasins sitting tucked against a leaning tree, waiting out the afternoon rainstorm, completely at home, with no need to get back to the cabin until I do, is as close to heaven as I know.
A lot of folks will not understand that, anymore than I understand looking for people deliberately.
I don't really call that counter culture, but maybe it is.
Not too long ago, my daughter's car was stolen. I spent a week looking for it, and along the way, I crawled through a dozen meth hell communities. I have worn long hair pretty much all my life until then. I came home after the experience, and donated my hair to charity. Not because I had changed, but because I did not want to look like those poor lost souls anymore.
I kind of have it on my mind that a sailboat is a mobile cabin in the woods. Lots of drunk people would make me go back to town!

[sageofsalem]

It's all good. When you are out on a boat it is wonderful. If it's a little boat then you tack around the harbor or the cay, if it's a big boat, you can "step out" and enjoy a "long range" view of your destiny, making it up as you go along. This is the best kind of living and we all need to encourage adventure in the hearts of our fellow sailors.

After all, remember when you took that first leap on that first passage? This is the very meaning of life itself-being comfortable with uncertainty and going ahead anyway.

You might die (though the chance is vanishingly small) but the fulfillment is such a powerful tonic for the soul...

[captain58sailin]

Something that is a surety, we all die, one day, no one knows when that day will be. How we spend the time given us between now and the time we die is the only thing we can control. What One chooses to spend their time doing, tells volumes about who they are.