Transmissions
Here's something I could have gone my whole life without knowing: The transmission on a 1974 Perkins diesel engine has a "breather" the prevents pressure from building up and blowing out the front gasket. But I do know that now and there's really only one way I would: It happened. [...]
Coping with the Noatic Experience
Earlier in the year, I wrote a story about our dearly departed cat Saint Squeakus, in which I suggested that he and his brother Dante diverged over the matter of pacifism. […]
State of the Shanti, November 2019
Not too long ago, while rummaging through old journals in our storage unit, I found the exact page in November 2016 when I wrote down a hare-brained idea to move aboard a boat. […]
Steerage
I’d never given much thought to how a boat is steered, you know, mechanically. Turns out it’s basically a big Rube Goldberg machine: I turn the wheel, a drunken ferret craps in the corner of an alternate reality, and the rudder turns. The Sea Shanti has a mechanical system - [...]
Pinetop
I’m always surprised when people don’t understand that sailboats have engines. I guess I see why they’d think that, but still… The Sea Shanti has a 40 hp Perkins Diesel engine that we named Pinetop after the boogie woogie pianist Pinetop Perkins cause we’re cool like that. We carry 60 [...]
Time Travel
It recently occurred to me that we are, in some ways, time travelers. Beyond the fact that the Sea Shanti was built in 1974, making it around the same age as Autumn and I, the way we live seems split between three eras. […]
Money, Money, Money
Money is an almost universal worry of modern life, and we’re no different (for now). […]
Captain Jack and Quartermaster Autumn
Boatswain Fain
The Sea Shanti
