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 Boston Harbor October 25, 1978 Early Dawn “Ahoy, mates, hands off your cocks and on your socks!” This raunchy charge is the rude awakening delivered by our ever-ebullient skipper. Although not an entirely appropriate command because women make up half the crew, we all leap from our bunks, infused with the captain’s enthusiasm. This morning we go to sea. Casting off from Boston’s tired old Lincoln Wharf and its relative comforts and securities, we will sever our ties to our past and to any certain future. The United States will drop away in our wake as we leave behind everything familiar. In a most profound sense today we are leaving home. During the rare moments of calm that invade the manic atmosphere of readying the ship for departure, it occurs to me to marvel at what we are undertaking.The dank, metallic gray of a late autumn New England dawn lies heavily over the harbor; it is the kind of gray you can feel in your teeth. An impatient North Atlantic sucks and drags at our ship’s massive hull, trying to draw her out. The proud sixty-year-old, 123-foot, threemasted gaff-topsail schooner Sofia answers the sea with an almost palpable yearning as she groans against her moorings, leaning her topmasts toward c h a p t e r 1 Joining the Sofia for Her Second Circumnavigation Floating in Boston One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. —andre gide 11 open water. She has been a long time in port, a thorough and extensive refit. According to those most knowledgeable, the Sofia is strong and seaworthy . The ship is ready. I wonder, “Am I?” and how is it that I am here? Introduction The early spring of 1978 found me living a blissfully landlubbing existence, hunkered down in my cabin atop an unbridled meadow on the property for which I was caretaker. As resident naturalist for forty acres of a 180acre nature and wildlife preserve in northern California, my daily preoccupations concerned controlling the prolific growth of scotch broom and gorse, appeasing loggers, coexisting with farmers, and struggling to ensure that the property could support itself financially. From my lofty crib atop a curiously lush and fertile million-year-old sand dune, the landscape ambled down a lazy, terrestrial staircase to the sea five miles below. Great stands of ancient redwoods shuffled between layers of pygmy forest as the earth wound its way down to meet the retreating ocean. Because the income generated by classes and tours proved insufficient, the land’s stewards implored me to figure out how to bring in more money. I wrote a grant proposal for an outdoor education program that would target the youth of local schools who were struggling in a traditional classroom setting. And in fact we got the grant, under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA). Teachers throughout the area began to identify students who would be good candidates for the classes, while I busily began setting up shop on the property. However, California abruptly and systematically started shutting down its government-funded programs, and those funded by CETA grants were among the first to go. No grant, no money, no preserve. I would soon be homeless and unemployed. Foundering and in need of a new direction, I was leafing halfheartedly through the current edition of an alternative lifestyle publication entitled Co-Evolution Quarterly when I found one. Being in my late twenties during the late 1970s provided me with plenty of opportunity for radical change. Here’s what jumped out from the classifieds: “Tall ship Sofia, cooperatively owned and operated 60-year-old schooner, returns to America to enlist crew for her second circumnavigation .” According to the ad, $2,800 would ensure part ownership and afford a vehicle by which one could endlessly travel the great oceans of the world. My resolve to become a part of the capricious history and evolving odyssey of the Sofia would ultimately prove to be one of the most profound and 12 Floating in Boston precipitous of my life. I adhere to this certainty today despite what happened , or, more accurately, because of it.  February 23, 1982 1:30 A.M. Tasman Sea Off the North Cape of New Zealand Soaked, shivering, inert, I lie inside my body immersed in fatigue. Like the broken lens...

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