Just a few short weeks ago I took off to deliver Ohana from Daytona Beach down to Nassau in preparation for our family Christmas. Again solo and a lot of time to think over all the years of doing this "life", the "Why".

I've been at this since I was about ten years old and at 52 can look at my father's nautical library and see the hand the guided. They say the son lives out the unfulfilled dreams of the father. That seems to be the case for me.

My dad loved boats. He loved to read and he took those steps, a Catalina 22, joined the local club, took the Coast Guard course (with his 12 year old son in tow for the junior version), and read. We would go to the New York Boat show each year, I would be given the plastic bag with the task to collect every brochure possible. There are almost too many stories from that time in our lives. I still have on my desk today the little Panasonic RF-1060 that has a "public service band". I would play with that for hours.

Summers racing on the Hudson River, the annual "sea scout cruise" to Long Island Sound, four years in the Coast Guard, yacht broker, captain, unlikely investor, cruising the Caribbean and eventually crossing the Pacific and living in New Zealand, ferry captain and then back to basics on a little basic Hunter, of all boats, bopping up and down the east coast with our daughters.

After all of it I sit in his library, he's gone now, and look over all the books he loved so much. I sit in the chair he would read in, recall the short wave receiver he would listen for us on. It's quiet and good.

Why? It's like anything else I guess, it's in me........a gift of adventure from a father to a son.

Enjoy yours as well and have a blessed day.