On a recent job i was subjected to spending several months on a tropical island in the Caribbean. The Horror!  And it wasnt the tropical island that I live on most of the time, which is Key West

Recently I found some video and sort of threw together a couple of bits. I promise that everyday wasnt like this one... the rest of the time it was al science and exploration under the sea.

​hope you like it.

Robotics and undersea exploration are great aspects of my current gig here in Key West, but some times I need a break to get back to nature and the simple things in life, like sailing the little dinghy that my father built for me years ago. I hope you enjoy this video of Sailing a small boat in the Florida Keys.

For a long time I've been trying to figure out what this blog is about. What's my theme? What take-away message  would would I like to share? Until recently its been a mash-up. Like after a melon-cart collision in an Egyptian street market, there were seeds strewn all over the place.

But during my recent weeks at sea, while looking for ancient shipwrecks in the shadow of the space program, something jelled. All  my liquid-y catch phrases and effervescent talking points reduced an off-gassed down to one single sentence au jus. Here is my gravy Statement:

Exploration isn't Out There...(points to world outside the window of comfortable place) "Its in Here. (points to head where brain is)

You can go to the wildest parts of the planet, but if your eyes aren't open, if you aren't sniffing at the air and listening acutely with equal parts curiosity, amazement, and fear, then you could easily miss out on the discovery that lays right in front of you.

And at the same time you could be right at home, surrounded by your community and peers who are stepping over another discovery and not seeing it because of complacency, and with your explorers mind switched on..., you know...Bingo!

Its not out there,...its in here (points to your head)

This long, hot summer we've been at sea, looking for a shipwreck, and will continue until either we find it, or a hurricane or the coming of winter shuts us down.

We are on the North Atlantic, far out of sight of land and the interruptions of  phones and internet access. for a week or two at a time, till we come to port briefly for food and fuel and correspondence. That might sound...

Arthur Killl, Kill Van Kull, Gowanus, Red Hook, North River, East River, and the Buttermilk,these are some of the waterways of New York that I've been traversing over the last two months as a Research Vessel Captain for Aqua Survey, Inc.

Several years of my  youth were misspent (allegedly) on the working waterfront of Key West Florida, an island surrounded by reefs that had menaced shipping for the last 500 years. Over the years I managed to work my way into the Shipwreck Salvage and Tugboat community, and the following is a story I wrote  about my  voyage from scruffy young deck hand and diver to Tug Boat Captain during that time. 


I recently came across the draft of the story on a back-up and thought Id put them on a post on this blog (a previous version, spell checked and edited, was published in Solaris Hill Magazine). The scene opens at the Schooner Wharf Bar...

Are you one of those people asking me why I call myself a sailor, and write so little about spending time at sea?

Having recently updated my logbooks for the year, I am forced to report that I logged over 100 days under way  in 2013, either offshore or near. So where are the florid posts springing from the salt in my veins, written during these many contemplative days for from land? 

While my logbooks  are a testimony to my sea-time, the entries I'm reading are pretty much  a collection of  facts, coordinates, and navigational notes with little romantic insight into the reason I was at sea. Most of  that sea-time was spent  as captain of one of Aqua Survey’s small research vessel like the RV Stan Waterman,  but there is also the 50-odd days on the Caspian Sea, (and peculiar and hard to categorize  time driving an inflatable around an Andean Lake).

The reason that I don't write about many of these projects  is usually that they are just run of the mill marine survey that might be hard to find an entertaining story in, and that  contain at least some level of expectation of confidentiality, or at least discretion. So I don’t photograph them, and I don't post about them.

That being said, here is a random, ambiguous, nonspecific photo of my life down by the sea in boats.

Returning from the Caspian Sea, I dove strait into a survey on the Atlantic East Coast with this noble little ship. 30 years old and out of fashion, undersized for the mission and with room on board for only a minimalism-inspired crew,  the RV Stan Waterman is quite a switch from the ship ( featuring a crew of 18 including chef and steward)  I was aboard just a month ago.

Our first trips out the inlet were tentative, with all gear lashed hard in anticipation of waves coming over the house, which they did.  But the real Stan Waterman wasn't one to go week kneed at the first bit of seaweed in the antennae, and this touch little vessel lived up to the name, 

You know the game "How Many Countries have you been to?", and how  everyone you are playing with seems to have their own rules on what counts and doesnt count as a "legitimate" visit?

The 'Airport Clause" is a classic bone of contention.

56 days ago I cleared customs in Kazakhstan at 5 in the morning, and then drove through the darkness to the tiny seaport town where I got on a ship in the Caspian Sea.

For the next 56 days  (with the exception of a 4 hr meeting at the seaport, during which time I took this portrait of a camel, inexplicably lounging outside someones house) I was aboard  ship, out of sight of the land for the vast majority of the time, dealing with a diversity of nationals  including some from  the 5 nations that touch the Caspian.

At the end of this voyage of scientific exploration I got my passport back and drove again through the darkened desert to the airport to make my 4am departure.

It was a great adventure, and I look forward to posting some of the notes and photos that I took, but my first question to you is this;

Can I really say Ive been to Kazakhstan?