Offshore Explorer Stories

Passion is that barely containable emotion. It is that scintilla of uncontrollable fury so perfectly focused as to be defined as either religious possession or modified by words to describe its path, like deeply, profoundly, but always colored with a degree of suffering. Passion is an actor being. Becoming a sailor, traveler, and writer is intertwined with the experience of passion.

The real fear is having no passion. My fear was I would be "normal." "Teenage angst," I was told by my father. "It will pass." He was hardly a paragon of psychological insight. He was probably the anti-insight. This was the reason I called him father rather than dad. The formality seemed to set up a proper buffer between his orderly world and my raging hormonal 15-year-old boy/man supernova. I had a voracious appetite for living and adventure sparked by my reading and movie watching. The problem was there was nothing in the cupboard to feast on, until the "decision" appeared out of the mist.

The spring of 1967, the Vietnam war played on our RCA color television with the mahogany cabinet. Race riots, fashion changed, protesters marched for civil rights. The Beatles released Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Cool Hand Luke spoke directly to my evolving tastes. It seemed like the world was going through what I was feeling and there was no escape.

Where there is ebullience there is darkness. It seemed like "there was a failure to communicate" in every aspect of my life. I understood that Paul Newman was not failing to communicate in Cool Hand Luke. He was communicating just fine. I on the other hand longed for freedom from "normal." My freedom came on two fronts. First, my aunt, you know who she is, we all have one, she is smart, reads, has different ideas, and rubs your parents the wrong way. That aunt! My aunt bought me a subscription to the New Yorker Magazine. My life changed. I was reading the best writers in the English language; Norman Mailer, Phillip Roth, Gloria Steinem, Jack Wolf, and many many more. I was stunned. I couldn't get enough. And the magazine came once a week! Music other than top 40, Jazz, Blues, the theater, philosophy, it was a mental smorgasbord and I was hungry. I studied every announcement, club, reading, movie review, (I discovered French Cinema). Passion was everywhere and in everything.

The second decision literally came out of the mist while I was standing on a shaky wooden dock with my grandfather looking out into Egg Harbor, New Jersey. A 21 foot, Hershone designed sail boat made of mahogany and teak ghosted toward the dock. The price was $800 bucks. My grandfather told me he would lend me the money to buy her. It was either the boat or a car. And for a 15-and-1/2-year-old, this was a big decision. Before the toe rail kissed the dock, I made the decision. I bought the boat. I named her Steppenwolf after the Herman Hesse book. The theme song in my head while on the boat was "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles.

"Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

It's based on a novel by a man named Lear,

And I need a job."

My passion for sailing combined with my passion to see the world spurred on by my reading laid before me like a rhumb line on the chart of life. I owned a sail boat. I was not in danger of being normal. I was in danger of alienating everyone around me because I had passion, but that gave me license. I had a plan. I was going to sail around the world. The path was described and understood in the deepest recesses of my mind, the spark of passion glowed brightly. What came next was learning to suffer or becoming an adult in a turbulent world. To put it mildly, I was caught up against a lee shore and my passion would be severely tested. I should have listened and stayed true to what I was feeling and thinking; instead I tried to fix the "failure to communicate" by letting "it" pass. By trying to control my passion. This decision would haunt me for fifteen years and cause deep heart ache and tears. Passion is uncontrollable and can't be cheated, suppressed, bought, sold, left out in the dark, or put in a closet. Like the characters in novels and movies, passion must be lived out; only then will your angst find its place.