SAILING KOKORO

Today we arrived in The Balearic Islands . After a nearly 22 hour sail from Cartagena, our last port, I am pretty sure we can say we are getting better at this non-stop sailing through day and night thing. I am certain that I am more of a night person because the daytime sunlight hours are simply too hard for me to survive, I don't have the hypothalamus for it! I would never have clocked myself for a night person, because when I worked the restaurant, early rising was the only thing that allowed me to get everything done, and going to bed on time, most times prior to 10pm, was the only thing that kept me sane. I still go to bed around 10pm, but I allow myself an hours grace period in which to truly make a concerted effort to fall asleep. Sleep is important, especially as you age and your hormones fluctuate. You don't want to be on the bad side of sleep because, as I have learned quite recently, every kind of hormonal imbalance gets worse and every kind of inflammation flares u...

Today's blog will take you through the last few ports we've been to, all the way up to where we are headed. I will start this journey with Faro, Portugal... As we motored in towards Faro, I was already in awe of how stunning and unique this port is compared to the last several ports we encountered in The Algarve. Our last port of call was Portimão which was a great anchorage, stable, but there was a lot of partying tourists around and the thumping bass of dance music would be carried across the water late into the night.  The other bummer, and genuinely, a real danger, is that you get many speed boats that decide to tie up not far from anchored sailboats, without an anchor, about four of them side by side, everyone drinking their beers like there is no tomorrow and then hopping on to their Jet Skis that they brought along!  Not sure what it is about people who ride jet skis but they sure seem to crave an audience! They swerve closer and closer to anchored sailboats, while the ...

  "One of the metaphors for ego is a cocoon. We stay in our cocoon because we're afraid - we're afraid of our feelings and the reactions that life is going to trigger in us. We're afraid of what might come at us...There are many ways to discuss ego, but in essence...it's the experience of never being present. There is a deep-seated tendency, its almost a compulsion, to distract ourselves, even when we're not consciously feeling uncomfortable. Everybody feels a little bit of an itch all the time. There's a background hum of edginess, boredom, restlessness.  ...The Buddhist explanation is that we feel this uneasiness because we're always trying to get ground under our feet and it never quite works. We're always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn't exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing - fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we'd like it to be. This is not actually bad news, but ...