Thank you Grandma Mike!
Some of you may know that it was the wish of my Grandma Mike that I get a bigger better boat to sail to the South Pacific.  She knew it has been my dream for most of my life to make this trip.  So when she passed and left me some money, I bought Avatar.  I think about her often, but today she jumped up into my memory banks.  I have been going through the boxes of my stuff that came out of my desk.  Lots of things have been stored there for the last 8 years.  I came across a type written page she had given me with her handwriting on the back "for Shelly" with a little heart drawn next to it.
The printing said:

In Passing

from "Wanderer"

by Sterling Hayden

1916 to 1986

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine transverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea -"cruising", it is called.  Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in.  If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change.  Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

"I've always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can't afford it".  What these people can't afford is not to go.  They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security".  And in the worship of security, we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a person need - really need?  A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment.  That is all - in the material sense, and we know it.  But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by.  The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in the dust on the shelves of patience.  Before we know it the tomb is sealed.

dated 8/31/2007

I distinctly remember the last time I took her sailing on Eros, when she came to visit in Mazatlan in 2008.  We took her twice that trip.  On the night of the second sail, she was crying and crying.  I asked her what was the matter, and she said that some how she knew it would be the last time she would go sailing.  And it turned out, she was right.

I sure miss her friendship, love and emotional support.  I guess I only have her to blame anyway, she is the one who taught me how to sail when I was only 8  years old.  She stuck that salt water needle in deep right from the beginning!!

Thanks for sending me the reminder today Grandma!

Here we are in our youthful days, around 1992