BECAUSE I CAN

While blow-drying my panties in a hotel room in Moorehead City one morning (everything got drenched in the storm-tossed transfer from the research boat to the Coast Guard vessel) I pondered how, as a boating writer (I do prefer the snappier European term “yachting journo”) I’ve had the opportunity to experience so many amazing things:

Climbing aboard countless research vessels – large and small, including one large leaky ship in the midst of an Atlantic storm;  meeting fascinating sailors (the Russian gentleman who finally invited me below decks in the drowning rain, and showed me his route – on a tiny globe-shaped pencil sharpener - stands out); banging up the coast in a Volvo 60; camping out in the rain at a Hobie regatta; backing a 65’ twin screw into its skinny slip; hiking through the Baja desert in (failed) search of beer; jostling for space among the entire Italian media when Giovanni Solidini delivered Isabel Autissier to port, after rescuing her in the Southern Ocean;  getting t-boned in a go-cart in Montevideo by Brad Van Liew; and oh belting out a song or two on the table tops in Cape Town, South Africa and fishing boat in Honolulu; skinny dipping beneath the stars in St. Maarten; and dirty dancing at an underground bar in La Rochelle, France …

But most interestingly, I’ve embarked on many of these trips and adventures not exactly because they’re on my personal “bucket list” but because -- as a journalist -- I should, and because I can.

I can swing onto an oil platform. I can bob in the Bay of Biscay with the French version of the Three Stooges, in the sloppy black darkness, and await the arrival of race boats; and I can jump in water soupy with chum, and await the arrival of sharks. I can spend three nights off Anacapa Island counting tiny endangered sea birds, and feed injured sea lions … and clean up their pooey cages. I can film on a One - Design 48 even though the crew is not so secretly hoping the cameragirl falls overboard (I don’t). I can be in charge of the life raft on a risky helicopter shoot off the north side of Molokai. I can spend the night shivering on a chase boat off Diamond Head, wrapped in fishy burlap bags. I can learn Dutch drinking songs while tuna blood spews on my new shirt. I can grind a sail in for the 20^th time in four minutes, only to blow the sheet as we suddenly jibe around again. I can climb on sinking ships, troll for a dead body, don a bulletproof vest for a nighttime ride-along with the Harbor Cop, and endure endless barfy days and nights on boats of all sizes, with all sorts of characters, who speak various languages that I do not; because I can.

Despite hip surgery, back surgery, and abdominal surgery (not even a year ago); despite numbing fears, impropriety, despite silly superstitions …  my life seems to hold endless unexpected opportunities; a regal red carpet rolled out to lead me to my next adventure. I step on, and begin my next, again … because I can!