Catching Up

Catching Up

Where we wish we were now

Where we wish we were now

I have been told that there are people in the world that enjoy getting home after a vacation. I am not one of them. Nothing says “Welcome Home” like rainy weather, heaps of laundry, and a busy week at work. We’ve got some great stories and plans from vacation to share in the next few weeks, but those will have to wait until I can shake the drowsiness caused by no sunlight. For today we have a little business to catch up on.

First of all, congratulations again to our book winner Dyce! Dyce is currently from Wisconsin and sails a Pearson Ensign on Lake Michigan at home. He is planning to go cruising in the future, but is still in the early stages of the preparation. Best of luck to you Dyce and we hope to meet you someday on the open ocean.

Secondly, you may have noticed that the site has undergone a fairly major transformation. We recently decided to upgrade our WordPress theme with a product called Elegant Themes, which we think looks a little cleaner and works better on tablets and cell phones. Dan also brushed off his graphic design hat and designed a new logo for us which I absolutely love, but I may be a little biased. We hope you like it too.

Here is a sampling of our lengthy design process.

Here is a sampling of our lengthy design process.

Finally on a more personal note, today is our 5th wedding anniversary. Some days those 5 years feel like they’ve flown by and other days I can’t believe it’s only been 5 (though to be fair we have been inseparable for more like 9), but everyday I feel truly blessed to be part of the beautiful relationship that we have worked so hard to foster and grow. I look forward to many more years of this amazing adventure with the one who holds my heart. Happy Anniversary, Honey!

Book Review: Once Upon a Gypsy Moon

Book Review: Once Upon a Gypsy Moon

onceuponagypsymoonOnce Upon a Gypsy Moon is not so much a sea-tale as it is a man’s introspective journey into his own motivations, actions, and dreams. While Gypsy Moon (his 32-foot sloop) carried Michael from Annapolis to Nassau and beyond physically, the time he spent single-handing her over that distance carried him much farther emotionally and spiritually. He started his journey lost and lonely after an ugly divorce and ended it as a man with hope for the future.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

The world has a way of working itself out, in my experience. There are things unseen. Life is not always easy or pleasant, and it is often unfair, but it seems to unfold according to some plan of which we are only peripherally aware – like a dream, the details of which are vivid only when we are sleeping. We cannot remember- much less comprehend- that dreamworld with the powers of a rational mind.

Sailing has been a love of mine for almost as long as I can remember, and that love endures…But over the years, the idea of sailing long distances over oceans, unobliged to return, became for me less about adventure than escape- a kind of trapdoor beneath the uncertain footing of a marriage and a personal and professional life that seemed at various times to teeter on the brink of collapse… With no escape hatch, we have to face life head-on, admit our weakness, rely on our relationships, and trust others to catch us when we fall.

The insight in the book was compelling, though at times it did get a little dry. The boat journey was somewhat less exciting than the cover lead me to believe as it was mostly individual legs of a trip broken up by repair stops on his old boat rather than a continuous time line. The final chapter entitled “The Loss of the Gypsy Moon” was certainly the most thrilling of the book as *Spoiler Alert* Michael did eventually have to abandon ship during bad weather after a nasty knock-down and subsequent rescue by the US Coast Guard. Maybe someday she will be found and resuscitated but it seemed a fitting end to the tale of a man who no longer needed his escape hatch.

 

We would like to pass the book on to one of our readers in our first giveway! If you would like the chance to read Once Upon a Gypsy Moon yourself, there are four ways you can earn entries to the giveway:

  1. Subscribe to this blog via email (look for “Receive updates by email” in the right sidebar)
  2. Leave a comment on this post
  3. Follow us on Twitter @sv_horizon
  4. Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FollowTheHorizon

Each way gets you 1 entry into the drawing, for a maximum of 4 entries. We’ll do the drawing next Tuesday evening and announce the winner on the blog next week! Hope to see your name!

 (In March, we were contacted by Center Street book publishers to do a review on a new memoir that they released on April 16 called Once Upon a Gypsy Moon by Michael Hurley. We agreed, so they sent us a pre-release copy of the book that for some reason we didn’t receive until a couple of weeks ago. This is the first time that we have been contacted to do a review so we’re pretty excited that we are starting to pop up on the radar of the sailing blog world.)