Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

I was reading June’s Cruising World and there’s an article about the Gunboat 66 Gazelle. Herb McCormick, who wrote the article, describes a photo of the forward cockpit as a “signature, centrally located forward cockpit”.

Too bad he didn’t do his research… Gunboat stole the idea from the Chris White-designed Atlantic Catamarans, which had the “signature” forward cockpit, located just aft of the mast and with all the lines led to it in 1983. I really don’t think of the Gunboat as having the forward cockpit as its signature, when it was copied from another boat design. I wish McCormick would give credit where it is due.

The Atlantic series of catamarans originated the idea of having a pilothouse and the forward cockpit that the Gunboats copied. Here is Chris White’s original Atlantic 42 Catamaran, which was designed in 1983.

Chris White-designed Atlantic 42 catamaran

This is the Melvin & Morelli-designed Gunboat 62 catamaran. It features a very similar pilothouse and forward cockpit first seen on the Atlantic series of catamarans.

Melvin & Morelli Gunboat 62 Catamaran

The major difference between the Gunboat and the Atlantic is pilothouse is wider on the Gunboat, but that is very similar to the larger Atlantic series catamarans, which followed the original Atlantic 42. The later Atlantic catamarans also had an aft deck, which was missing on the 42.

There’s another excellent post over at the Crying Out Now blog. It really addresses the idea that recovering from alcoholism and addiction are not one time events but a life-long process. There is no such thing as a cured alcoholic or drug addict—only alcoholics and drug addicts in recovery. Here is the post:

It has been 40 months since I took my last drink. Over 1,200 days. Nights and weekends. So am I cured?
I’m afraid not. I had a scare just last week, twice I justified taking pain pills when they were not exactly necessary and not for the pain they were prescribed for. As I was sitting at the ball park, texting a friend, I shared that I had just recently gotten the pills back after giving them to my sponsor to hold on to during a rough patch. I was bemoaning my lack of willpower and she offered to hold on to them for me.

She said, but if you give them to me I’m not giving them back.

I said no thank you. I wanted to keep the pills. Even though both times I took them my attitude got worse. My irritation with myself grew exponentially. I was not more patient with my children. And I am not even sure my hip pain lessened. So why hang on to them?

Why was I holding on so tightly to something that really wasn’t working for me?

Because I am an addict. My counselor explained it to me in this way: a part of my brain is looking for the euphoric feeling I had once or twice with the pills. Nevermind that it doesn’t happen anymore; somewhere, somehow, my brain thinks it can get it again. Which is why I took two instead of one on Saturday.

And my counselor also told me that it is not a character defect that causes me to want the pills, there is legitimate brain chemistry at work. Though I think it WOULD be a character defect if I didn’t recognize my behaviors and do something about them. Especially dangerous behaviors that have the possibility of hurting myself or others. And taking pain pills falls into that catagory.

So I changed my mind. The next morning I left my prescription bottles and a short note on my friend’s desk. And I feel so free. I am not having to fight myself to take or not take the pills. I am not thinking all the time about the pains in my hips and if they hurt ‘that badly’ or not.

Sheesh…..at some point I am praying this gets easier. But if it doesn’t, I have faith that He will give me strength…..one day at a time.

and there IS hope.

I don’t blame Ellie for her illness any more than I blamed Gee for her cancer. I don’t hold the things her addictions have made her do against her, but I do believe if she wants me back in her life, she will need to make amends for the damage she has done. I hope she realizes that she has an illness and that she needs help to get on her road to recovery.

I hope she realizes that if she makes her amends, shows me that she has made a place for me beside her, and that she wants me there and is willing to fight to keep me there, she does not have to walk that long road alone. This is what I have promised the amazing woman I love. This is part of the life-long commitment I would like to keep to her when I asked her to marry me last June.

It is up to her. I can not do anything for her until she makes her amends and shows me she wants my help. She must choose to get better. She must choose to be something better than the drug-addicted alcoholic she has been since last June. I love her, but there is nothing I can do until she learns to love herself enough to want better for herself.

I hope she doesn’t give up on herself and let her addictions win. I hope the woman I love still survives and is still fighting her addictions. I know the woman I love is strong enough, smart enough and stubborn enough to beat her addictions. I haven’t given up on her and will still help her if she makes her amends and asks me to.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

S/V Pretty Gee tied at Moby Dick Marina after being launched for the 2012 season.

Today is the official start of the 2012 sailing season for me and s/v Pretty Gee. I launched s/v Pretty Gee with the help of Dale and Merry.

When I got down to the boat this morning, I loaded the mainsail, the bimini, some PFDs, the flares I bought yesterday, and a couple other boxes of boat gear for current and upcoming projects.

I had brought the bimini frame down last week and mounted it on the cockpit rails. I put the bimini itself on the frame and tensioned it. This year, I’ve reversed the frame orientation to bring the bimini a bit further forward, as this will give the forward end of the cockpit a bit better coverage and leave the mainsheet a bit more clearance to move.

I also re-attached the tiller–which I still need to refinish. I am debating whether to use the tiller off of a Columbia 26 instead of refinishing the original tiller for the Telstar 28. The original tiller is a 43″ long laminated wood tiller, but needs to be varnished every couple of years. I also have a 36″ long, laminated wood tiller which was introduced on the later sister ships of s/v Pretty Gee.

The Columbia 26 tiller I got from a Columbia 26 that was totaled, and it is an aluminum i-beam tiller, and doesn’t require varnishing. It isn’t as pretty, but it does eliminate some maintenance. I hate refinishing wood because I basically suck at it.

Dale and Merry got to the marina about 12:30 and we had a few small tasks to do before we could launch s/v Pretty Gee. One task was inflating the fenders. I asked Dale to pickup an inflator needle for the fenders. I had one on the boat, but it has since disappeared–probably when I pulled almost everything off the boat this winter.

While Merry was getting the fenders inflated, I lubed the seacocks. Lubing the seacocks is a semi-annual ritual. If you don’t do this for Marelon seacocks, they can seize up and then break–which, as it sounds, is a bad thing.

Every year, I expect something to go wrong with the launch. Mr. Murphy always shows up. This year was no exception. I probably jinxed myself when I told Merry that this was the first year I hadn’t had to go wading to free something up on the trailer. I should have known better.

Switching the ama locking cables from stainless steel to 5/16″ Amsteel helps avoid a lot of the issues where the cables would snag on the trailer. The original stainless steel cables weren’t flexible enough for me to retract them out of the way when the amas were retracted, which I can do with the replacement Amsteel lines. The Amsteel lines don’t corrode and are actually stronger than the stainless steel cables were.

When I checked the bilge, I noticed we were taking on water. While I had secured the two head seacocks, which I had greased this morning–I forgot the raw water feed for the galley sink faucet–which was left wide open with no hose on it. I had been working on it over the winter and had greased it over the winter.

Fortunately, my plan on how the new cabin sole lockers would work was spot on and the aft-most locker functioned as a standpipe for the bilge and limited the amount of water that entered the boat. I do love when a plan works the way it is supposed.

This unexpected test also proved that the forward two lockers are indeed watertight to the shower sump and the aft-most locker–as they remained bone dry. Again, I love when things work the way they’re supposed to. As I don’t really have any bilge pumps setup on s/v Pretty Gee at the moment–they’re on the list, but with her being a trimaran, it is not a very high priority–I used the inverter to run the wet/dry shop vac to drain the bilge.

It is amazing at how much water can get into the boat, when the only spaces that fill are the area beneath the head, the shower sump, the aft-most cabin sole locker and the locker under the companionway ladder. I’ll have to pour more water into the bilge with some bilge cleaner or bleach this week, since the water from the Acushnet River is kind of nasty.

While Dale was dealing with the bilge situation, we motored out into New Bedford harbor so I could extend the amas on the Pretty Gee. The boat is far happier and handles better when they’re out. I do have some fiberglass work to do on the ama support boxes, but I can do that with the boat on the mooring.

We motored back to the marina and tied up to the dock. Initially, I wanted to back into the slip, but the bow of the boat kept being blown off by the strong southwest winds, so I finally took the hint and pulled in bow first. Technically, I’m not in a slip, but tied up to the main pier, along the space for the first three slips. The marina took the finger piers off to do some work on them this past winter.

Tomorrow, I am painting the bottom of the dinghy. Monday, I’m planning on getting the oars and servicing the dinghy outboard, as well as mounting the two 130 watt solar panels. That will allow me to run the refrigerator with the boat on the mooring. On Tuesday morning, I’ll row out to the mooring and attach the mooring pendant and put the boat on the mooring.

I hope that Ellie is still reading this blog and sees this post.

Don't give up what you want most for what you want now

I have to ask Ellie:

• Does she really have any idea what she is giving up for the drugs and alcohol her addictions crave?
• Does she realize that her addictions are destroying her health, her future, her mind and her hopes, dreams and goals?
• Does she want to lose all the hopes, dreams and goals she used to tell me about?

I used to know about her hopes, dreams and goals because they were some of the things she and I used to talk about late into the night. We shared our hopes, dreams and goals with each other–and those long conversations-where she told me her ambitions, hopes, goals and dreams–are a small part of why I love Ellie.

If she looks at what has been going on in her life with the complete honesty she is capable of, she would see:

• Her addictions are why she nearly lost her scholarship last semester and why she did so poorly in all of her classes.
• Her addictions are why she couldn’t make Dean’s List taking only four courses last semester, when she was able to make it quite easily both semesters while taking five courses each her freshman year.
• Her addictions are why she has lied about people she loves and has cared about all of her life.
• Her addictions are why she has pushed away people that love her and care about her.

I hope she realizes that she has a serious problem with drugs and alcohol and gets help before she destroys her future, and her addictions prevent her from making her dreams, goals and hopes come true.

I honestly hope that Ellie loves me as much as she said back in June. I hope that she wants the future with the Asians with freckles that she said she adored–which our children would be–more than she wants to remain a drug-addicted alcoholic. This is just one of the few things her addictions are making her give up.

While I love Ellie, I can’t wait for her forever. I know that Ellie would want me to move on if she has become a victim of her addictions. I know she would want that because she loves me. I also believe the reason she has pushed me away is because she is ashamed of what her addictions have made her do and made her become and doesn’t want the man she loves, me, to see what has happened to her.

I hope she doesn’t give up on herself and let her addictions win. I hope the woman I love still survives and is still fighting her addictions. I haven’t given up on her and will still help her if she makes her amends and asks me to.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

There is a great post on the Crosswalk.com website by Mary Southerland. While it was written for Christian women by a woman, I think a lot of what it says is applicable to everyone.

I am re-posting the entire article here for Ellie, who was a devout Catholic woman before her illness overwhelmed her.

Today’s Truth

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever (Psalm 23:6, NIV).

Friend to Friend

Life is a marathon – not a fifty yard dash. When the psalmist says, “I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever,” he is reminding us that we were created for eternity. But instead of focusing on eternal things, we waste precious emotional energy and priceless spiritual power by fixing our gaze on the here and now. I am not saying that we need to ignore what God gives us to do today because the truth is that each step on each day’s path is filled with God ordained opportunities. What I am saying is that much of our stress comes when we measure life and hold it up against the wrong backdrop.

When our son was a little boy, he was photogenic and a full-fledged ham in front of just about any camera. I will never forget the day that a simple photo session turned into a holy moment for me.

Christmas was just around the corner which meant that it was time for new pictures. It seemed like everyone was having a special – you know the ones I’m talking about – where you get a ridiculous number of pictures for $2.99. When we arrived for our appointment, I was amazed to find that we were the only ones in the studio. The photographer took one look at the blue outfit Jered was wearing, and began to move props, pull down a different backdrop and rapidly snap pictures. Jered laughed, called out to the audience of shoppers strolling by and in general, put on quite a show. I was so proud!

When the session was done, the photographer asked if he could take some extra shots for his studio walls. Now I ask you, what mother is going to refuse that offer? Certainly not this one! For over an hour, Jered was framed against different colored backdrops as the photographer worked his magic. I began to notice a pattern. The blue backdrop made Jered’s bright blue eyes dance while the red backdrop heightened his jet black hair. With every backdrop, Jered’s appearance changed slightly. In was then that God quietly unveiled an extraordinary truth in an ordinary moment.

We must be very careful to choose the right backdrop against which we live our lives. Our backdrop is eternity – not the tyranny of urgent demands made by a relentless world. Our backdrop is an old rugged cross and an empty tomb – not the temporary trials or painful circumstances we face in this very fleeting life. We are “forever” people. Like the old song says, “This world is not my home. I’m just passing through.”

My favorite words in the Bible are “but God.” Those two words create an eternal backdrop that changes everything. Everything looks different when He comes. Everything is made different by His presence. To survive and succeed in life, we must stop and take the long look, refusing to fix our gaze on the “little things” that are meant to divert God’s plan. If we want to live a life of victory, our glance must be on the circumstances and ourgaze must be on Him.

A beekeeper once told pastor and evangelist, F.B. Meyer, how young bees are nurtured to ensure their healthy development. The queen lays each egg in a six-sided cell which is filled with enough pollen and honey to nourish the egg until it reaches a certain stage of maturity. The top is then sealed with a capsule of wax. When the food is gone, it is time for the tiny creature to be released. However, the wax is so hard to penetrate that the bee can only make a very narrow opening. In fact, the opening is so narrow that in the agony of exit, the bee rubs off the membrane that encases its wings. When the bee finally does emerge, its wings are strong enough to fly. The beekeeper said that a moth once got into the hive and devoured the wax capsules. The young bees easily escaped the capsule but they could not fly.

Choosing an eternal perspective is a spiritual discipline that makes stress yield to God’s peace. Does that mean we will float through each day without facing trials, defeats, enemies or impossibilities? No – but it does mean that the backdrop against which we view those dark moments will be replaced with the truth that there is an eternal purpose in every pain and that is through the struggle out of that darkness that we gain the strength to fly and become all God created us to be – now and forever.

Let’s Pray

Father, thank You for the eternal life I have in You. Forgive me when I get so caught up in the things of this world that I forget who I am and where I am going. I am Your child. I am Your daughter and my home is in Heaven with You. Praise God!

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

Now It’s Your Turn

Does your life reflect the truth that you were made for Heaven?

Against what backdrop are you living your life?

Read Philippians 3:20. “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control; will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (NIV).

Where is your eternal citizenship?

I would ask that Ellie read this and think about the points it makes. I want her to think about what background is she living her life against right now and consider the following questions:

• Is what she has been doing—lying, committing felonies, destroying her body, health and mind—what God intended for her life?

• Is it really God’s Will for her to be a drug-addicted alcoholic? If it is not God’s Will, then whose Will is it?

• Was it God’s Plan for her to hurt the man she said she loves and wants to have children with—to lie about him and push him away?

I hope that the adversity and difficulties of the past year are enough for Ellie to develop her wings and learn to fly—like the bees in the article. I pray that Ellie finds the strength, courage and will to fight her addictions and has the wisdom to see that they are the real problem she is facing right now.

I would point out that the commitment I made to Ellie last June was meant to be a life-long one. I asked her to marry me and the week we spent talking about religion, having children, when we would get married, and such, are the reasons I made and have a commitment to Ellie. I also believe that Ellie would have accepted my proposal had she not fallen ill.

I love Ellie. I have loved her all of her love in some fashion. I always will love her. I hope she finds the strength to return to my life—so that we can begin sharing our lives as we had talked about last June.

Ellie knows that I don’t bluff. She knows, from knowing me all of her life, that I play for keeps. Ellie should know what it means when I made my commitment to her and that if she finally realizes she is ill and wants help—I will walk beside her on her long road to recovery as I have promised her and her mother so many times.

If she asks me to—I will catch her when she stumbles; pick her up when she falls; guide her when she is lost or confused; protect her when she is scared or feels threatened; give her strength when she feels like she can’t go on; and above all else, love her always—more each and every day. This is what I have promised her.

But, her illness has made her do things that she needs to make amends for. She needs to tell the truth—especially about us. She needs to show me that she wants me by her side. She needs to show me that she has made a place for me there and is as committed to keeping me beside her as I have been to her her whole life.

I want to be the one who wipes her tears and holds her when she cries, listens to her doubts and reassures her, to always be there for her for better or worse, to cherish her and adore her, to love her more each and every day, and to love her always.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Sunday, I helped Dale and his sister-in-law Merry move S/V Hilarity from Fairhaven to Bourne. Dale bought S/V Hilarity at the end of last season and needed to move her from my marina, where she wintered, over to his mooring in Bourne, about 15 nm as the crow flies (shown on the image by the two flags).

Overview of the trip area

However, the trip by boat is much longer, since we’d have to head south out of the harbor and clear Sconticut Neck before turning to the northeast for Bourne. Dale asked me to crew on the trip because he’s fairly new to sailing and this is his first boat.

Detail of the New Bedford-Fairhaven Harbor approach

Dale and Merry met me at my marina after dropping Merry’s car off in Bourne so we’d have ground transportation when we got there. I had packed a bag with my handheld VHF, my Steiner 8×30 binoculars, two handheld SOLAS flares, two SOLAS parachute flares, a horn, a roll of rescue tape, a fleece shirt and fleece jacket, a knit/fleece watch cap, some other gear and some chocolate. The idea is that if you have safety gear, generally you won’t need it–it is a corollary derived to Murphy’s Law–where the only thing that you will need is something you don’t have.

Dale and Merry were packing a cooler full of food and drinks for the trip and had stopped by Dunkin Donuts to get breakfast for all three of us. They brought me two Ellie-style iced coffees for the trip as well. We had a lot of food and drinks and were well provisioned for the daysail over to Bourne.

We unpacked the new anchor rope (150′), shackle and 30′ of chain that Dale had purchased. The 1/2″ nylon portion of the rode is a bit light for a boat the size of Dale’s Irwin 30, but it would do for now. The anchor on the boat was a 12 lb. or so Danforth style fluke anchor. While it isn’t the best anchor in the world, I felt it was necessary to at least have an anchor with a decent length of rode aboard the boat for the trip. I had Merry feed the new anchor rode down the chain pipe into the anchor locker and lead it out the bow pulpit and hung the anchor on the anchor bracket on the starboard side of the bow pulpit.

An anchor is one of the most important pieces of safety gear on a boat in my opinion. In many emergencies, the anchor can give you something that is very precious–time. It can do this by stopping the boat and preventing a problem like a dead engine from becoming even worse. Many boaters, especially powerboaters, don’t seem to realize this and have very undersized ground tackle on their boats. It amazes me that they might have spent $200,000 on the boat, yet don’t see the value in spending $1000 on a good anchor and anchor rode setup for their boat. It is one of the least expensive pieces of insurance you can have aboard the way I see it.

We departed the marina at 0830 to make the 0900 Fairhaven-New Bedford Swing Bridge opening–a necessity for a sailboat starting out north of Pope’s Island. Because of Saturday’s “Super Moon”, the low tide was exceptionally low, and we decided to leave around mid-tide to make sure we’d have enough water to get out of the marina. Many of the marinas on the Acushnet River are in dire need of dredging–which is complicated by the fact that the Acushnet River’s bottom is contaminated from years of industrial pollution with PCBs and needs special permits to allow any dredging.

The weather started out partly cloudy with winds out of the North and the wind was forecast to be 5-10 knots out of the North to Northeast most of the day. Unfortunately, with the winds out of the North-to-Northeast, it was going to be a long day of beating to windward to get to Bourne. The more typical Southwest winds, which usually grace Buzzards Bay, would have made it a far shorter and easier trip. The winds ended up being a bit stronger than forecast and made for some very good sailing, especially later in the day after I had taken care of some of the rigging issues.

Sailflow wind observations from the West Island station for 2012 May 06.

We passed through the swing bridge and headed out the New Bedford Hurricane Barrier and south past the Butler Flats light when the first issues came up. The engine’s raw water cooling system had a hose pull free. I think the reason the hose pulled free is because the engine’s vibration moves the two pieces that the hose connected and causes the hose to “creep” and work its way off of the one of the two pipes. Hose clamps aren’t really designed to keep hoses from resisting tension forces inline with the hose. It didn’t help that the hose was very old and in need of replacement as we found out later in the day.

As the cooling system was spewing hot water and exhaust into the cabin, since the leak was after the heat exchanger but before the waterlift muffler, we hoisted the main sail and got underway under sail so we could shut down the engine. We knew we could run the engine if we really had to, as we did later in the day, but knew it would fill the cabin with exhaust fumes and the bilge with hot seawater.

Apparently, when Dale was re-commissioning the boat this spring, he forgot to check quite a few of the systems thoroughly and one of the things that was missing were the genoa fairlead blocks. The tracks and fairlead cars were there, but the blocks were clearly missing in action.

Without the fairlead blocks, the genny sheets couldn’t be used on the winches, since the lead angle would be too high and it would guarantee that the sheets would cause overriding loops on the winch drums and jam up. To fix this for the trip to Bourne, I asked Dale for a couple short pieces of line. He gave me about six feet of 3/8″ doublebraid. I cut two 15″ sections and rigged makeshift fairleads from the line by passing the line through the padeye on the fairlead cars three times and tying them off with a zeppelin bend. This gave me a three-loop fairlead that I passed the genoa sheet through and allowed it to lead fair to the genoa sheet winches. While the makeshift fairleads created a fair bit of friction and chafe–they did allow us to sail instead of having to call TowBoat US.

The furling system for the genny was jamming, probably due to the line on the drum being improperly tensioned when unfurling or furling the drum previously, and causing an over-ride–so we were limited to about an 80% jib initially. As the day progressed and we worked with the furler, we managed to free up the over riding loops and eventually were sailing on almost the complete genny–which looked like a 140% genoa or so.

In any case, we were able to sail, but the boat was having trouble pointing. I think it was because the standing rigging was not tensioned properly, as was later confirmed…but we’ll get to that. The broad reach out of the New Bedford harbor approach and turning to a close reach across Buzzards Bay towards Nashuon Island was the first long leg of the trip to windward.

When we tacked to make northwards progress off of Nashuon Island, I noticed the boat was having trouble pointing higher than 55-60 degrees apparent. This was going to really hamper our progress towards Bourne and make for a much longer trip. We sailed for about four hours and decided to try and motor sail for a while. We double checked the hoses and tightened up on the hose clamps and fired up the iron genny… only to have to cooling system spring leaks due to the host rupturing. I tried to patch the hose with Rescue Tape.

Rescue Tape is a brand of silicone self-fusing temperature and pressure resistant tape that every sailor should have aboard the boat. On a friend’s boat, during his annual summer cruise two years ago, I used it to seal the engine’s freshwater cooling system where a tapcock had disintegrated due to old age. I filled the hole the tapcock valve was supposed to be in with a cut-down piece of pencil and then lashed it into place with a few turns of Rescue Tape. This reduced the coolant leak to a few drips per second and allowed us to use the engine to motor into Milford Harbor after we sailed up to the harbor entrance.

On Dale’s boat, I used the tape to seal the rupture in the hose…but the repair was foiled when the hose burst in another location. The hose was so old that it began to rot out and had burst in four or five places before the end of the trip. Well, the engine is an auxiliary and the primary propulsion is the sails…so we sailed.

We had lunch. Lunch, at least for me and Merry, was really delicious lobster rolls that Dale had picked up the night before. Dale had one of the sandwiches that Merry had made up for the trip. Apparently, Dale’s not a huge lobster fan…that’s okay, Merry and I made up for that.

After lunch, Merry went down below to try and take a nap. While we were sailing I noticed that the port lower shroud was now loose, even though we were on port tack, so I went forward to check what was going on. It was worrying because it hadn’t been loose earlier in the day. I found that there were no cotter pins in the turnbuckle and the turnbuckle had slowly been working its way loose as the day progressed.

Unfortunately, Dale didn’t have any cotter pins aboard. Fortunately, last week, Dale had asked me to go out and put together a tool kit for his boat, and we went shopping at Sears Hardware and picked up a fairly comprehensive set of tools to keep on the boat. So, I tightened up the port lower shroud. I remembered that we had a piece of residential Romex cable aboard that Dale had been using to fish wires with. I went down below and cut a few inches of the Romex free and used it to secure the turnbuckle.

I decided to check the rest of the standing rigging to see what was going on with it and found two other shrouds that were not secured with cotter pins or cotter rings. I used some more Romex to lock them down after tightening the shrouds. I was tensioning the rigging based on feel, and Dale shouted that we we had gained speed over ground as I had been tightening the rigging and that we were now able to point much higher–about 15 degrees higher on each tack.

After adjusting the rigging, we were able to get Hilarity up to six knots for almost half-an-hour before we had to tack and made our way up to the approach to the Cape Cod Canal. Phinneys Harbor, where the Monument Beach Marina is located, is tucked up just to the east of the Cape Cod Canal channel and is the last harbor on the eastern shore before you get to the canal entrance.

Detail of the northeast end of Buzzards Bay with Phinneys Harbor and the channel leading to the Cape Cod Canal

When we got to just south of Mashnee Island, which is the western edge of Phinneys Harbor, we decided to fire up the engine and motor the last half mile or so to the docks. We knew doing is meant that the cabin would fill with exhaust and the bilge would get a fair amount of hot seawater from the heat exchanger dumped into it, but the bilge pump was up to the task of keeping the water levels manageable, and it was only for a few minutes.

We tied up to a slip and Dale went off to get the dinghy and bring it over to Hilarity. We also unloaded the boat and put the stuff in the car rather than having to ferry it in the dinghy. This turned out to be a very good idea, as Dale forgot the drain plug for the dinghy and we had about two inches of water in the bottom of the dinghy for the trip back from the boat.

Merry Flynn and Dale Shadbegian alongside s/v Hilarity at Monument Beach Marina in Bourne, Mass.

Once we had the dinghy tied up to the stern of Hilarity, we fired up the engine one last time and went off to find Dale’s mooring. The mooring was fairly easy to find despite the mooring balls only being marked in one spot with their number. You’d think that they’d put the number on both sides or better mark it three times with the number, but that was not the case. The mooring ball had two really nasty, slimy, barnacled pendants hanging off of it, which we used to secure S/V Hilarity to her summer home. The pendants really need to have a buoy attached to make retrieving them simpler.

Dale and I had just enough light to get out to the mooring and back before twilight set in. The sunset was amazing and was the perfect thing to top off of pretty good day of sailing. Even with the issues we had during the trip from Fairhaven, the sailing itself was just amazing. S/V Hilarity handled herself quite well and the 10-15 knots of wind and 1-2′ seas were very pleasant conditions for making the voyage, though it would have been nice if the wind had clocked around to the west and helped us out–but you can’t have everything.

Sunset from the Monument Beach Marina looking west, across Phinneys Harbor.

A few observations about S/V Hilarity and this trip.

I really should have done a pre-trip inspection with Dale and gone over the boat with a fine-toothed comb. My Boat Inspection Trip Tips checklist would have helped enormously and would probably have caught the issues with the rigging and the engine hose.

Dale had told me the boat had been surveyed, and these are issues that the surveyor should have caught. However, the mast apparently was unstepped at some point after the purchase and re-stepped by the sounds of what Dale had said, and whoever stepped the mast didn’t really know enough about sailboats to handle the very basic rigging issues that were left unaddressed.

Also, I should have known that the engine hoses were going to be an issue based on what I saw the day we splashed S/V Hilarity.

On the day Hilarity was put in the water, the bilge was filling with water because the engine’s cooling system raw water seacock was left open and the hose wasn’t connected to the engine. When we used the bilge pump to drain the bilge after closing the seacock and connecting the hose, I noticed the bilge pump was really a mickey-mouse setup. The pump wasn’t wired to a switch and needed to be connected to the batteries directly in order to be used. The wiring on the bilge pump was basically twisted together–not taped, or butt spliced or even wire-nutted, but just twisted and left bare.

To top it off, the hose from the bilge pump runs into another hose and is not connected to the discharge through hull. The slightly larger hose the hose coming from the bilge pump was run into is connected to the through-hull. The previous owner didn’t even bother to tape where the smaller hose runs into the larger one, so about half the water the bilge pump was pumping up out of the bilge would just flow back into the bilge.

I would say that at a minimum, Dale needs to replace all of the wiring on the boat and all of the hoses on the boat and have someone go over the rigging with a fine-tooth comb and tune it. Aside from the cooling system issues, which is really just due to neglect and old-age, the engine seems to run very nicely and the boat sails very well. Considering what Dale bought the boat for, he’s got some good solid bones to work with. The boat just needs some tender loving care and refurbishing to become a pretty decent place for Dale and his family to spend the summer on.

Replacing the engine hoses, the head hoses–which are badly permeated, the head LBA, re-wiring the boat and tuning the rigging and replacing the running rigging, the boat should be in very good shape. He also needs a sailmaker to take a look at the sails. They may be okay, but given their apparent age, I would say he might want to buy new sails for the boat rather than invest in repairing the ones he has.

I’ll also be putting together a checklist for Dale to use for when he gets to the boat and when he’s about to leave the boat.

S/V Hilarity is an Irwin 30. She is powered by an Atomic 4, four-cylinder gasoline inboard.

One of my major projects from this past winter was adding some additional stowage to the main cabin of s/v Pretty Gee. Stowage is very scarce on most trailerable trimarans and the Telstar 28 is no exception. My aim was to make the boat more comfortable, safer and more seaworthy while also giving the boat some much needed stowage.

The main hull of the Telstar 28 is quite narrow, and has no real bilge to speak of. The bilge inspection hatch opens into a space that is only about an inch-and-a-half deep at the maximum. The hull flares out to create room for the settees and this means the settees are actually quite high. As a result, when you were seated on the settee, you had only a two-inch wide ledge on which to rest your feet on the starboard side. This is not the case on the port side, since the fresh water tank is built into that side against the centerboard trunk.

My idea was to raise the cabin sole along the centerboard trunk, on the starboard side, to match the elevated section on the port side. This would give me a set of lockers six feet long and about 15″ wide on average and about a foot high—or seven cubic feet of stowage. The location is ideal for heavy supplies and gear like tools, since it is down low and central to the boat. Loading the lockers with heavy tools and such would also help trim the boat better—which is a bit port-heavy as designed.

This would also make the cabin a bit safer, since the flat deck of the new lockers would be less slippery than the partially sloped original cabin sole. Since this new locker is located primarily where the cabin’s salon table is, losing the foot or so of headroom wasn’t a huge issue, since most of the time people would be seated and move along the settee in that area.

Another safety advantage this would give s/v Pretty Gee is if the main hull is breached but the cabin liner remains intact, the aft-most of the cabin sole lockers would effectively act as a standpipe for the breached bilge, and limit the amount of water that could enter the main hull. While water could still enter the companionway locker and the area under the head and around the holding tank, the main cabin would stay dry for the most part. That would greatly improve the boat’s performance and seaworthiness after such an incident and make it far more likely to be useable after a collision—especially combined with the bow crash compartment I added two years ago.

The first part of making the lockers was to epoxy the vertical dividers that would make up the three locker compartments into place. You can see the white PVC dividers and cleats. If you look closely, you can see the curvature of the cabin sole along the outboard side.

Vertical dividers and cleats for the new Cabin Sole Lockers

I took extra care to make sure the aft-most dividers were completely sealed to make the aft-most compartment water-tight as required for the safety/seaworthiness aspects of this project. I also epoxied cleats to the centerboard trunk to support the in-board edge of the cabin sole locker’s top deck. The cleats and the dividers were made of 5/8″ thick PVC board I had leftover from another project. The epoxy sticks quite well to the sanded PVC board and it is lighter than plywood would have been. Another advantage is that it is completely rot resistant. In hindsight, I probably should have used it for the top deck of the lockers as well, but didn’t have enough so went with 1/2″ marine plywood instead.

The cleats were set to be the same height as the two-inch wide ledge that was at the base of the settee. I didn’t use cleats on the outboard side, because the two-inch wide ledge made an excellent support for the top deck. Getting the height of the cleats was a bit tricky since the cabin sole is slightly sloped.

The epoxy I used for most of this project is thickened with a kevlar compound and is a 1:1 epoxy putty sold by Progressive Epoxy Products in New Hampshire. It has a decent working time, is very tough and has a good viscosity for filleting and such. I like to keep some of it aboard because it is one of the epoxy putties that can be used for structural repairs and will stick and set underwater in an emergency.

The top deck was made of two pieces of 1/2″ marine plywood. Each piece was three feet long, and one of the hatch openings was basically centered on the joint of the two pieces. I made sure the joint was well supported by a cleat on the in-board side. I pre-fiberglassed the top deck’s underside, so that when I put a bead of thickened epoxy along the cleats, dividers and outboard ledge, I could just press the top deck down and know the surface was protected from abrasion and water intrusion. This is a lesson I learned from the bridgedeck several years ago, which wasn’t pre-fiberglassed and fiberglassing it after assembling it was far more complicated.

I cut the top deck to be about a half-inch shy of the outboard side of the hull and filled the resulting gap with high-density closed cell foam insulation that was epoxied into place. This allowed me to make up a fiberglass fillet that extended up the hull without creating a hard spot where the hull laminate might flex and fatigue.

I also pre-cut the openings for the three hatches in the two deck pieces before epoxying them into place. This was far easier and simpler than trying to cut them after the fact. The two larger hatches were originally from s/v Pretty Gee’s amas. These hatches leaked a bit too much and I replaced them with a different design last season. The last hatch was special ordered for this project. The two aft-most compartments are larger than the forward-most one.

The photo is from when I dry-fitted the locker deck into place, prior to the third hatch arriving. You can also see the inspection hatch to the bilge in the aft-most compartment.

The top deck of the cabin sole lockers dry-fitted into place.

I then placed the hatches down and drilled holes for all the fasteners for all three hatches. The holes for these fasteners were all drilled oversized and then filled with thickened epoxy putty. I fiberglassed over the filled holes and glassed the edges of the top deck to the dividers, the centerboard trunk and the starboard side of the main hull. This should allow me to re-drill the holes for the fasteners and not have any exposed plywood.

I painted the entire top deck with Interdeck non-skid deck paint. While this really wasn’t a necessity, I did need to protect the epoxy from UV and by using the Interdeck, I’ve created a good non-slip surface around the hatches. The hatches themselves are non-skid textured. After two coats of Interdeck, I re-drilled the fastener holes and bedded the three hatches using butyl tape. I chose butyl tape because it is a very good sealant for this purpose and will make the locker hatches watertight. The hatches will be through-bolted with fender washers on the underside.

The new cabin sole lockers with the top deck painted and the hatches in place.

This gives me three water-tight, fairly well sealed lockers that provide about seven cubic feet of stowage total. The new cabin sole locker top deck acts provides very good, non-skid, flat surface to move along as well as a place to rest your feet when seated. There is still six feet of standing headroom aft—between the galley and navigation console forward of the companionway, as well as forward of the centerboard trunk. The new locker’s forward end also acts as a shower dam, in case I want to add the ability to take a shower to the head on s/v Pretty Gee.

One reason having the lockers be fairly well sealed and water-tight is important is so that I can store tools and parts in the first two lockers and keep desiccant and corrosion inhibitors in the two lockers to help keep the parts and tools in good shape. The aft-most locker will likely be used for food and galley supply stowage, with things that can withstand getting wet stowed in that particular compartment—since it does have the bilge access panel. Galley goods that need to remain dry will be stowed in the bridgedeck locker, aft of the companionway ladder, which is my next project.

During the last winter, I pulled the holding tank from my boat, s/v Pretty Gee. The tank had difficult to trace leak that turned out to be due to a couple of cracks in the side of the tank. When I pulled the tank, I noticed that there is a fairly large space in front of the tank that is unused. I decided to glass this section in and add a small round inspection plate to effectively create a crash compartment at the bow of the boat.

As I was toying with the design of the crash compartment, I realized this would be the ideal time to extend the anchor locker as well, making the top of the crash compartment the bottom of the extended anchor locker. This would allow the rode to fall in to the locker much more cleanly, and leave the aft end of the chain locker for docklines and fenders. This would also shift the weight of the rode aft and far lower than it is currently, reducing how bow-heavy the boat is. Keeping the bows light on a multi-hull is a good idea as it helps prevent the bows from burying.

I glassed in a 3/4″ piece that is sloped at about a 45˚ angle from the hull-deck join at the bow to the stringer that runs along the forepeak. This will be the bottom of the new chain locker. A second 3/4″ piece will be glassed in at 90˚ to that to form the new aft end of the chain locker.

I added 1/4″ UHMWPE as a liner for the chain locker, and it was added to the bottom, sides and rear of the chain locker to help the rode slide down and protect the fiberglass from abrasion and damage from the chain. A drain hole and through-hull was added to the port side at the lowest point of the chain locker. I’m am planning on adding a solar vent fan to the hatch to improve air flow through the anchor locker and reduce corrosion of the rode. It will pull air up through the anchor locker drain and out the top of the foredeck hatch.

A short horizontal piece of 1/2″ was glassed in against the base of the first two pieces to complete the top deck of the new crash compartment. The last piece to be added will be a vertical 3/4″ piece that will form the aft wall of the “crash compartment”. This vertical piece has a 6″ diameter round inspection port in it. This will allow me to get a wrench into the back of the bow eye, should that ever need to be removed or modified. This will also allow me to inspect the “crash compartment”.

This modification gets the weight of the anchor rode down lower, and allows it to self-stow more cleanly when retrieving the rode. It increases the seaworthiness of the boat by isolating the forward-most section of the boat, which is most likely to be damaged in an impact.

The holding tank is now in the section that is in-between the new crash compartment and the head. I’m glassing the aft bulkhead in this section to completely isolate the holding tank area from the bilge. I’m also adding a second vent to the holding tank to improve air flow through the tank. It has been re-plumbed with new Trident 101 hose. All exposed plywood has been epoxy-coated or glassed over to protect the wood.

Salon.com has a really great article on scars, imperfections and differences… My favorite part is the concluding paragraph where it says:

“I know life for Abigail – and Natalie and Johan and Frank and everybody else wounded or scarred or born different — is more complicated than that. The things that make us stand out in the crowd define us in a million little ways. They can remind us of the most dramatic, heroic moments of our lives, and of every small indignity and cruelty that has happened since. But what Bea and Abigail got to in the span of one recess period was that life isn’t about seeing past each other’s imperfections. It’s about being unafraid to look at them directly. Because that’s where the love is — in the cracks and the sufferings and the challenges. Life isn’t flawless. But it can be very, very beautiful. That day at recess, Bea told me, she had kissed Abigail, right on the place where her arm stops at the wrist. And they played together until the bell rang, and it was time to go back to class.”

I understand this article very well for so many reasons.

First, my father was burned fairly seriously when I was a child. He had horrific scars on both of his legs for many years. He was caught in an oil fire while working and had second and third degree burns over a good deal of his legs. Those scars have faded over the years, and he has gained new ones in their place–like the scars from his heart surgery in 2001.

Second, one of my favorite people in the world and one of my best friends was born with cerebral palsy and, when I first met him, used crutches to walk. As he’s gotten older, he’s uses a wheelchair more and more, because it provides him with some conveniences and capabilities he’d not have using his crutches–like the ability to carry his adorable daughter. I was honored when, at my wedding to Gee, he, as the best man, offered a toast and told our friends and family that I was the first person he had ever met that never saw his crutches.

In the over two decades I have been friends with Brad, I have been horrified and shocked when people took his physical disability and assumed that it meant he was mentally disabled as well. There were so many times when people would speak to me, instead of him, probably in large part due to his disability. People would often underestimate him based on his physical limitations…usually a bad mistake in my opinion.

Fortunately, Brad’s always had a good sense of humor about it–something I think he learned from his mother. He told me how when people would ask her what he wanted at restaurants as a child, obviously assuming that Brad wouldn’t understand them, she would grunt at him and he’d grunt back, and then she’d place his order for him. Never mind that Brad is one of the most talented writers I know, or that he has a Master’s of Social Work from Simmons, which is considered one of the top social work programs in the country.

In fact, I’ve never really seen Brad let his physical disability get in the way of anything he wanted to do. That’s one reason he’s someone I admire and respect. He doesn’t make excuses, except about his writing ability, but that’s another story entirely. We met because Brad was a skier, and the editor of the New England Handicapped Sportsmen’s Association’s newsletter. He needed a photographer who could ski, and I needed free lift tickets.

Somewhere, I’ve got a photo of Brad crossing Halibut Point’s beach. In the photo, Brad is standing on his crutches, surrounded by Volkswagen-sized granite boulders as far as the eye can see, since Halibut Point’s beach is not made of sand, but slabs and boulders of New England granite. It was Brad’s idea to walk down the beach from one trailhead to the other.

Third, Gee had a truly impressive scar left from her Whipple procedure–the operation that gave us the better part of a year together that we probably wouldn’t have had if she hadn’t had the surgery. The Whipple procedure, or pancreaticoduodenectomy, is one of the most complex and difficult surgeries in the world. It is such a complex surgery that the mortality rate at smaller hospitals or by less experienced surgeons can be over 15%.

To me, Gee’s scar was beautiful. It was a reminder of how strong and amazing the woman I love was. It was a reminder that she was a survivor. It was a reminder that our love for each other was one of the reasons she was able to make it through all that she had. It isn’t that I wanted her to have that scar, because, if I had had my choice, she would have no scars, no cancer, no need for surgery. But, she did have that scar, she did have cancer, and she did need the surgery–so I chose to see it as a reminder of her strength, our love and her survival.

In fact, the day after her Whipple procedure, an operation that lasted almost 11 hours, Gee wanted to get out of her hospital bed and walk for a bit. The nurse asked me if I was going to try and stop her, and I replied, “Hell no, she can beat me up…” At first the nurse thought I was joking, but then looked at my face and said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?” I replied, “Lady, I’ve got a 75 lb. weight advantage over her and I still lose 40% of the wrestling matches against her. She’s stronger than she looks, faster than a scalded cat, and doesn’t understand what it means to give up. Yes, I’m serious.” That’s part of why I love Gee so damn much, even today.

In so many ways, neither Gee nor I was perfect. But, somehow, we were perfect for each other. Just as I saw the scars Gee had and loved her even more because of them, she saw the ones I had–even though most of the ones I had, like those from my twin’s death at the hands of a drunken driver, were not physical or visible. I think she planned our engagement to be on the anniversary of my twin’s death specifically in order to help balance out the sorrow of that day with the joy of her saying yes. She was like that.

In fact, in the short time Gee and I were together, she did everything she could to heal the scars she saw on me. The only scars she really couldn’t heal were the ones caused by her death. I still count every day I had with Gee as a blessing–a gift. I know I was the one she was meant to love forever. It was why we met and went through what we did together.

But, I have also come to realize that, even as much as I love Gee, she isn’t the one I was meant to love for the rest of my life, nor would she want me to. That is why she made me promise to get married again if I should meet someone I love after she was gone. I think I know who Gee meant when she asked me to promise this to her, and if that person ever returns to my life, I will have to face the scars her addictions have left behind. I know I love her enough to do that.

Today’s Mega Millions jackpot is at a record-breaking $640,000,000 as I write this. I have to wonder how many of my readers bought a ticket for tonight’s drawing, and if they did, what would they do if they won?

I bought a couple tickets, but not because I want the money for myself, but because of what I could do with the money to help society, my friends and family as a whole. This is something that I learned from Gee and my family growing up.

I know exactly what I’d do if I won… I’d take the one-time cash payout, which is probably a bit over $400,000,000 at this point…and put almost all of it into Gee’s foundation. I’d keep just enough of it to pay some bills and take care of my friends and family.

Some of my friends and family would get some help, because some of them are very deserving of it and been dealt a less than fair hand in my opinion. Then there are people that are important to me that I would make sure got taken care of–mainly by doing things like making sure my nieces and nephews would be able to go to whatever college they wanted without getting saddled with thousands of dollars of debt in the process–regardless of their parents’ ability to provide for them.

The money wouldn’t go to them directly, but would be setup in trusts for them and subject to some very strict conditions for them to be able to take advantage of it. I don’t believe in giving even my favorite nieces or nephews a free ride or carte blanche–I’d do something fairly similar to what “Red” did in the movie “The Ultiimate Gift.” I want them to learn the value of hard work, health, friendship, family, love, possessions and money, and what is truly important, at least the way I think of things. Money is probably the least important of them all.

After making sure all of that was taken care of, I’d leave to go cruising and sail off like Gee and I dreamed of doing so many years ago. I know who I’d want to go with me, but she isn’t likely to be around to go. I am pretty sure she is lost to her addictions, but hope, love and faith remain. As always, I close this post with a prayer for one of the women I love.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

It is a sad thing that the Million Hoodie March is necessary. The march is a protest to raise awareness of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year old black latino youth. He was killed by an older white man, George Zimmerman, who was captain of the local neighborhood watch.

The basic facts of the story are that Trayvon Martin—who was dressed in a hoodie-type sweatshirt—was buying snacks at a convenience store when he was profiled by Zimmerman. Zimmerman later stalked and then shot and killed Martin, allegedly in self-defense. The local authorities have avoided arresting Zimmerman because of his claims of self-defense and a very liberal self-defense law that exists in Florida.

However, witnesses and 911 calls all seem to contradict Mr. Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense and the events in question. Zimmerman called police and told them about a suspicious individual and was told, very specifically, that he should not confront said individual. Yet, Zimmerman stalked, confronted and then shot and killed the unarmed teen.

If the roles had been reversed and teen had been white and Zimmerman had been an African American—I seriously doubt that the gunman would still be free, regardless of any claims of self-defense or not.

I do not see how the authorities can justify not arresting Zimmerman—when it is pretty clear from witnesses and 911 calls that he was the aggressor.

Zimmerman profiled Trayvon as a suspicious person—most likely based on his ethnicity. He then stalked Trayvon Martin, even though the police told him not to confront the “suspicious” individual. From the conversation overheard by Trayvon’s friend—it is pretty clear that Zimmerman followed and then confronted Trayvon Martin and the end result was a dead 17-year-old unarmed youth.

Given Martin’s attempts to avoid any confrontation and his obvious fear at being followed—how do the local authorities justify Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense realistically. Martin was unarmed. It is pretty likely that he was smaller than Zimmerman, given his youth. He was pretty clearly trying to avoid any confrontation with Zimmerman—who had to chase Martin down. Exactly how was Trayvon being a threat.

It will be interesting to see if justice actually prevails in Trayvon Martin’s case. Zimmerman should have been arrested and charged with first-degree murder. He should also be charged with a hate crime.

Damn… two good ones sailed off for Fiddler’s Green.

My friends Paul and John, both passed away yesterday. I knew the two of them through the sailing forums.

Even though Paul switched to powerboats after he got an LVAD implanted, he was always a sailor at heart. I guess his heart finally gave out on him. He was cranky old man, but you could always rely on him and he was a straight shooter, which is pretty hard to find now-a-days.

John was a multihull sailor and battling cancer. His signature line on the sailing forums really said it all:

“20 MPH ain’t fast unless, you do it in a 1000 sq. ft. house on 10-foot waves”

Both were always good at giving sound advice, sharing their wisdom and good friends.

They will both be badly missed for their advice, wisdom, sense of humor and friendship. I know my beloved Gee and my twin will greet them with open arms when they get to Fiddler’s Green.

This week I’ll be starting the winter projects on s/v Pretty Gee. The two big projects are the new cabin sole lockers on the starboard side of the cabin and the new cabin overhead.

Cabin Sole Locker

The centerboard trunk on s/v Pretty Gee is offset slightly to the port side. As designed by the factory, along the port side of the centerboard trunk is the fresh water tank. It raises the sole about a foot compared to the starboard side of the cabin sole. My plan is to glass in the area alongside the starboard side of the centerboard trunk to match. This area really doesn’t require full standing headroom, especially since this same area is where the cabin table is normally located.

The cabin would still have six feet of standing headroom forward of the centerboard trunk/mast support post and aft of the centerboard trunk by the galley and nav console. This should allow enough room to change in and out of foul weather gear, as well as allow standing room when cooking in the galley.

Raising the cabin sole on the starboard side of the cabin alongside the centerboard trunk will give me nearly five more cubic feet of stowage in the cabin—centrally located down low. By storing heavy items, like tools and equipment, in the new locker will help keep the boat trim and balanced.

I plan to break the space up into three lockers, one of which will have the existing access into the bilge in it. The three lockers will be watertight, and will effectively convert the internal hull liner and aft-most locker into a crash bulkhead of sorts. If the main hull is holed, but the interior pan liner is not, the aft-most locker and hull liner pan will prevent water from filling the cabin—limiting it to the bilge and the third locker itself.

In normal use, the lockers should keep the contents dry and prevent them from moving in the case of a capsize.

While I am doing this, I will also be adding a partition across the entrance to the head compartment. This will convert the sole of the head into a suitable shower sump and allow me to setup a shower aboard s/v Pretty Gee in the head compartment. The drain for the shower is already plumbed, as I had requested the factory do this when the boat was built.

I will also be glassing in a protective housing for the knotmeter transducer, which is currently not protected from impact and installed through the cabin sole forward of the mast support post and water tank on the port side of the cabin, aft of the head compartment.

New Cabin Overhead

When I installed the new hardware to lead the halyards and other control lines aft to the cockpit, I had to cut away much of the vinyl cabin overhead liner. Instead of replacing it with the same material, I plan on glassing some furring strips to the cabin overhead. The furring strips will allow me to attach 1/8″ plywood panels to the cabin overhead. The plywood will be epoxy coated and then painted white and attached to t-nuts embedded in the furring strips by socket head screws.

In the space between the furring strips will be 3/8″ foam insulation and conduits for wiring. Along with large panels covering most of the cabin overhead, there will be smaller panels that will allow access to the deck hardware, which would be much more difficult to do with the vinyl type overhead. This will improve access to deck hardware for maintenance and repairs, increase the comfort of the cabin by adding insulation and make running wiring much simpler. There will also be several panels which cabin lighting will be mounted to.

I was working on a boat recently, and I found that someone had installed the anchor windlass control relay inside the anchor locker.  Now, I really have to wonder why anyone would do something this stupid.  It leaves the anchor windlass system completely vulnerable to corrosion, and the chances that the relay will fail is almost 100%, given the exposure the relay has to salt water spray on an ocean-bound sailboat.

A better idea would have been to install the relay on the inside of the forward cabin, and run just the power wires for the windlass out to the locker.  The connector for the windlass switch could have also been mounted through the bulkhead with minimal additional work, and it would leave the wiring safely inside the boat’s forward cabin.  This would have increased the reliability of the anchor windlass with very little effort.

Unfortunately, the small amount of effort it would take to avoid such lousy installations decisions seems to be beyond most of the people doing work on boats. Some generally good ideas are:

Electrical equipment should not be in exposed locations unless absolutely necessary.

For instance, the windlass needs to be in the locker, but there’s absolutely no good reason to have the control relay there. Terminal blocks and such should be covered to prevent accidental electrical shorts.

Equipment should be as accessible as possible.

The more often the piece needs to be used, the more accessible it should be.  Burying the seacock for the engine cooling intake under the engine, where you have to have three joints in your arm to reach it isn’t a great idea, especially if you want to close the seacock every time you leave the boat. Now, there are some constraints imposed by the design of the boat, the need to have hoses run reasonably short and straight, and things like that, but in most cases, access can usually be improved.

Label equipment, wires, hoses, and switches as clearly as possible.

You’d be amazed at how many boats have almost no labeling of any sort on anything.  So troubleshooting the systems become a real task.  A few minutes with a roll of white electrical tape and an ultra-fine tip Sharpie marker goes a long way to making troubleshooting and maintenance much simpler.

Using color-coded cable ties can also make tracing wiring a lot simpler.  They’re now available in a wide variety of colors, and getting a bulk pack of a few different colors can make things a lot easier for you in an emergency.

Use as few connections as possible in wiring runs and installations.

On one boat I saw a few months ago, I don’t think a single circuit had fewer than five or six connections in it.  If you can minimize the number of connections used in wiring a boat, the wiring will be both more reliable and simpler to troubleshoot.  This is also true of plumbing connections.

Eliminate color changes in wiring if at all possible as well.

On the boat I previously mentioned, in some cases, the wiring changed colors at the connections and there was no real rhyme or reason to the changes in color.  If you keep the wiring the same color throughout the circuit, it makes troubleshooting it far simpler.  I would also recommend using YELLOW for the 12 VDC ground wires rather than BLACK.  BLACK  is also used for 110 VAC hot wiring, and it is far safer to work on a boat if the 12 VDC ground wires can not be mistaken for 110 VAC hot wires.

Leave yourself some slack in hoses/wires/lines for future changes.

If you cut everything exactly to length, you can often run into problems if you have to make a small change in the future.  Leaving a foot or so of extra wire on each end can make small modifications or repairing broken connections much simpler in the future.  This goes for plumbing as well.  It can also apply to lines used on a sailboat, but not as often.

Try to group things logically.

For instance, don’t run 110 AC wiring with the 12 VDC wiring (this is also against ABYC code IIRC).

Run hoses and wires as directly as possible, given the constraints of the boat’s build and interior.

This can save money and reduce weight, since shorter runs of wire can result is weight savings, since the shorter a wire is, the smaller diameter it generally can be.

Use the right equipment for the job.

For example, don’t install ball valves onto through-hulls, where there will be a thread mismatch.  Use a proper flanged seacock and backing plate instead.  It will be more reliable, easier to repair, and safer generally speaking. This is true of most things.  It is also generally less expensive in the long run to do it properly and once, rather than having to go back and repeat efforts and waste time to repair something that wasn’t done properly to begin with.

I hope this helps you avoid some problems when doing work on your own boats.

“Courage means to keep working a relationship, to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems, and to stay focused during stressful periods.”

~Denis Waitley

I used to think that Ellie was one of the most courageous and brave women I knew… but I have begun to realize that she is a coward, or more accurately, whatever her addictions have turned her into is a coward. She doesn’t have the strength or courage to face the truth. That is why she hides behind the drugs and alcohol as she has done for the last year.

“Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.”

~James Freeman Clarke

She used to follow her conscience and was one of the most honest and good people I knew. She was a devout Catholic and believed in God and doing what was right. Clearly, her addictions have caused all that to be abandoned. She has lied about people she loves. She has prostituted herself for drugs and alcohol—trading sex for the things her addictions crave. She has given up caring about the people she loves.

I really do not know who she is anymore, but she is clearly not the woman I love or the woman that loves me. I do not know who the drug-addicted alcoholic that occupies her body is—and nor do I care to ever learn who they are.

I have followed my conscience and done everything I could to try and help the amazing woman I love get help. It has cost me—physically, emotionally, financially and socially. But, if I had to do it all over again, I would because I love her and it is what was necessary because of that love.

“What you hear repeatedly you will eventually believe.”

~Mike Murdock

I think this is especially true of lies. If Ellie persists in telling the lies she started telling last summer after I confronted her about her drinking, eventually she will believe them. In some ways, I think that would really truly destroy the amazing woman I love more completely than anything else. If her addictions can force her to lie to herself and destroy the core of honesty that was so integral to who Ellie was, then there truly is nothing left of her.

I still believe that my beloved Ellie is there, hidden under her addictions. I believe this because she has never lied to me directly. While she has told her family, her friends, the people she works with and goes to school with the lies she has been saying—she has never said them to me. Instead, she has refused to speak to me, write me or communicate with me directly in any way since June 29th last summer. I think part of her needs to be able to say that she has never broken faith with me or lied to me because she loves me and knows I am the one person she can trust above all others.

Neither has she ever denied what I have written. She has never said I have lied about what I have said—on this blog, on social networking media websites or to her friends and family. She has even admitted that much, if not all, of what I’ve said it true. But, she still can’t admit that she has a problem with drugs and alcohol.

“Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.”

~Julian S. Huxley

Of course, Ellie’s addictions and lies have led her to give up her morals and effectively prostitute herself for much of the last half of 2011. She was dating Jarrod, who was supplying her with drugs and alcohol in exchange for sex. Jarrod was using her and had no commitment to Ellie, regardless of what Ellie’s addictions convinced her was the case. As soon as he tired of her, he threw her away like trash.

She deserves better, but has brought such treatment on herself because she has chosen to be with people who will treat her that way. If she really cared about herself, she would have heeded my advice and surrounded herself with people who make her want to be a better person than she would be without them in her life. Instead, she has done the exact opposite and surrounded herself with people who encourage her addictions and make her so much less than she should be.

She has been driving drunk or high for much of the last year. She has been committing felonies by using her two fake IDs to purchase alcohol. She has been buying and using marijuana. All of this is wrong, and I am sure that deep inside, where my Ellie is fighting to survive, she knows it.

I think the shame of her behavior is yet one more reason she hides behind and tries to lose herself in drugs and alcohol. If she had the strength and courage to stop drinking, smoking weed, and doing the other base things her addictions make her do, she would have so much less to be ashamed of.

“You don’t develop courage by being in happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”

~Barbara de Angelis

Maybe what she is going through is what she needs to develop the courage she has to have to fight her addictions. She has never really ever faced true adversity and difficult times that I know of. I just pray that she gains the courage she needs to fight her addictions before the experiences and adversities she will face in the process can destroy her.

“It doesn’t matter what we do until we accept ourselves. Once we accept ourselves, it doesn’t matter what we do.”

~Charly Heavenrich

I think she has to learn to love herself before anything she does will really mean anything to her. Right now, she is too insecure and has too many self-doubts to love and accept herself for who she is. She is allowing those insecurities and self-doubts feed her addictions and give them the strength they need to break down the amazing woman I love.

If she loved herself and accepted herself for who she is supposed to be, she would have the strength and the courage to fight her addictions.

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

She has lost trust in herself. Her insecurities and self-doubts will not let her trust herself or love herself. She doesn’t realize what an amazing person she truly is. I wish she could see herself through my eyes for a day—I think she would realize that her self-doubts and insecurities are baseless demons caused by how her father, Ian, Jarrod and other people in her life have treated her. They never loved her the way I do—nor did they have any reason to.

“Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.”

~Buddha

It is no wonder she is miserable… she is destroying her health, thinking that drugs and alcohol can give her happiness and being unfaithful to herself and the person she loves most. Even her most recent photos pretty clearly show this.

“The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they are still alive.”

~Orlando A. Battista

I’ve told Ellie how much I love her and continue to do so regularly. I do not know whether she is still reading what I write, but if she is, there should be no doubts about what she means to me and how much I care for her.

Ellie wants to major in business management, so this quote by Andrew Carnegie is rather fitting.

“There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself.”

~Andrew Carnegie

This is especially for drug addicts and alcoholics, like Ellie. Until they realize have a problem and seek help for themselves, nothing can be done for them. This is where Ellie has been for the last eleven months. She started drinking and smoking marijuana heavily at the end of last May and it has affected her very badly, even if she isn’t willing to admit it to herself.

“Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.”

~Jim Rohn

By Jim Rohn’s definition, Ellie is a failure. I would have to agree. If she continues on the path she is currently on, she will find out the hard way how big a failure she can become. The woman I love is ambitious and had set goals and dreams for herself. Most of those goals and dreams will wither and perish if she remains the drug-addicted alcoholic she has become.

“Man’s power of choice enables him to think like an angel or a devil, a king or a slave. Whatever he chooses, mind will create and manifest.”

~Frederick Bailes

One thing I think Ellie has forgotten is that God gave Man free will and true free will can be a curse. Free will allow her to choose to go where God’s Grace can not protect her, since it was not God’s Will that got her there.

Right now, she has chosen to remain the drug-addicted alcoholic shadow of who God meant her to be. I seriously doubt that she will succeed in all the dreams, hopes and goals that she used to tell me about during the conversations we had long through the night while she is a drug-addicted alcoholic. I doubt she will really ever know the success she is capable of unless she chooses to become more than the drug-addicted alcoholic she has been for most of the past year.

I am speaking from experience, as I let years pass by me after my twin brother’s death—where I was alive, but not living life. It took good friends, like Hyoshin, Adrienne, and Brad to help me realize that. I do not think that Ellie has any such good friends in her life as most of the “friends” she has right now are part of her problems.

“The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty and love. They do not require coupons.”

~George T. Hewitt

I have never stinted on these, especially for Ellie and her family. I have been there for Ellie’s parents for 30 years and for Ellie all of her life. I still am whether they are willing to recognize that fact or not—despite the horrific things that she and her family have done.

Years ago, her parents, particularly Ellie’s mother, asked me to become Ellie’s friend, confidante, mentor and protector. I promised them I would, and I still hold to that promise I made them.

“What we can do for another is the test of powers. What we can suffer for is the test of love.”

~Bishop Westcott

I think I have passed both tests this past year. I have done all I can for my beloved Irish rose. I can do nothing else for her but pray, and I do that daily. I have suffered for my beloved Ellie because I love her enough to fight for her—even when she herself is not willing to fight for herself. So, I walked away from her nearly four months ago.

I keep writing to her on this blog and some of the social media websites, hoping that she is still reading what I have written. I want her to know that even though I have walked away from her I have not given up on her—I still love her and believe in her. If she should realize she has a problem with alcohol and drugs and start on her long road to recovery—I will walk it with her—if she makes her amends; asks me to be there; and shows me that she is as committed to having me there as I have been to her this last year.

After all, it was Ellie who once wrote me and said:

i definitly still want to be friends Danny! please please pleeease never think otherwise despite what my actions have been saying. sorry im a shitzophrenic mess but im really just tryimg to sort thigs out. please understand.

I have always understood this and never given up on her. I have been faithful and loyal to my friend who became the woman I love most. I have not listened to what her addictions have said—only to what she herself has said. I hope she realizes this and comes back to her true self and to my life—the one she wanted to share last June when she talked of the Asians with freckles that she adores.

All endings are also beginnings, even if we don’t know it at the time.

If this is true, and there is a new beginning here, I hope that it is with an Ellie that is whole and healthy. If it is not with Ellie and the new beginning means that Ellie will no longer be a part of my life ever again—then I hope the door that opens now is one with something worth all the pain and sorrow I have been through with Ellie.

In any case, I pray that she finally realizes that she is ill and seeks help. I hope that she returns to being who God meant her to be. I will continue to pray for my beautiful Irish rose Ellie, as I have been doing for most of the past year.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Wherever Ellie is, I hope that she is safe, I hope she gets well, and most of all, I hope she finally remembers how much I truly love her.

Good relationships don’t just happen. They take time, patience, and two people willing to face any obstacle thrown their way.

It doesn’t matter whether the relationship is a friendship or something more—all relationships are hard work and require both people to be committed to working at the relationship. I’ve tried to tell her this so many times before.

I am committed to her and I thought she was committed to me at one point, before her addictions took over your life. If she wasn’t committed to me, why did she talk about adoring Asians with freckles and having children with me? Why did we spend a week talking about marriage, having children and starting a life together?

She should know how committed I am to the women I love—if not from what I have been through with her this past year, then with what I went through with Gee 11 years ago. She should be smart enough to know what that kind of commitment is worth and how rare it is.

I don’t think she will be able to invest the work and make the commitment it takes to really love someone until she starts to love herself enough to want to be more than the drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for much of the last year. Until she puts herself ahead of alcohol and drugs, there is no chance that she will be able to love anyone or truly accept love from anyone—no matter how much they love her.

The most beautiful people I know are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen!

~ Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

I think that Ellie still has to go through this process to realize how beautiful she really is capable of being. She is not yet there, since she has not yet found her way out of the depths her addictions have taken her to. She still has much of her struggles, suffering, loss and defeats still ahead of her. I really do not know if she will make it.

Lies usually don’t end relationships. The truth usually does.

This is usually true when one person starts lying. All she has done since I confronted her about her drinking on June 29th is lie. But somehow, she has never lied to me directly.

I have never lied to her. I have only told her the truth about her illness—something that her family and friends won’t tell her.

Her father and brother are both alcoholics in denial and her mother and sister are terrified of her father—so no one is willing to tell her the truth but me. Most of her friends are part of her problem—they are the ones drinking and doing drugs with her.

Unless Ellie can finally face the truth—her fear of the truth is what will end the relationship we have had for most of her life. I have known her since she was born, and I have been her friend, her protector, her confidante and biggest supporter for most of her life. I have loved her, cared for her and protected her all of her life. She has been a part of my family all of her life—until she chose to leave.

It’s your road and yours alone… Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.

Some roads are much more difficult to walk than others…and the road to recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction is a very tough one. I’ve volunteered to accompany her on her long road to recovery, but she has to tell me that she wants me there with them. I know the road to recovery will be long and difficult and fraught with dangers she can’t imagine. As I have said before so many times, she does not need to walk that road alone.

If she just asks me to, I will walk the long road to recovery with her. I will catch her when she stumbles, pick her up when she falls, guide her when she is lost or confused, protect her when she is scared or feels threatened, give her strength when she feels like she can’t go on, and above all else, love her always.

Letting go doesn’t mean we don’t care. Letting go doesn’t mean we shut down. Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are, for the moment. It mean we stop trying to do the impossible—controlling that which we can not and instead, focus on what is possible which usually means taking care of ourselves. And we dot his in gentleness, kindness and love, as much as possible.

~ Melody Beattie

At some point I have learned that some people will remain in my heart forever, but not in my life. I think that Ellie is one of these people—as much I wish it was otherwise. The only thing harder than letting her go is moving on. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her—I still do.

I have known Ellie all her life–I have seen the worst that she is capable of, and in spite of it all, I still love her for being herself. I have trusted her with my secrets and dreams, and she has trusted me to keep her secrets and dreams. I do not think she is perfect, but I think she is perfect for me and I love Ellie perfectly.

I know Ellie loves me. I know she cares for me. I know she probably regrets the things her addictions and her father have made her do and say this summer. I know she has a lot to learn about herself and will need time and space to fully realize who she is. I am willing to give her the time and space she will need. I have always been there for her, and still am, in spite of all she has done this year.

This is all I can offer Ellie—to be the one who wipes her tears and holds her when she cries, listens to her doubts and reassures her, to always be there for her for better or worse, to cherish her and adore her, to love her more each and every day, and to love her always.

I am not perfect, I am not wealthy, and many people would think I am too old for Ellie, but I am completely and utterly devoted to her and love her and care for her like no other. Ellie has known me all her life. She should know from the 20 years that she has known me that I keep my commitments. I hope she knows I love her and am committed to her, as I have proven this past year. If that isn’t enough, then nothing ever will be.

I did not make the commitment I have to her lightly, and as I promised Ellie and her mother, I will be here for her. But, I can not help her until she begins to help herself. I am here—waiting for her to ask me for my help—but she must make her amends before I can help her.

If she makes her amends, shows me that she wants me back in her life and is committed to keeping me there and asks for my help—I will help her—as I have promised Ellie and her mother. I will not wait forever. It isn’t what Ellie, the woman who loves me, would want for me. If she has fallen to her addictions, I think she would want me to move on…and I am beginning to do so. The door on her is closing, and if she wants my help, she must ask me before that door closes.

I pray that she finally realizes that she is ill and seeks help. I hope that she returns to being who God meant her to be. I will continue to pray for my beautiful Irish rose Ellie, as I have been doing for most of the past year.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Be safe, get well, and most of all, try to remember how much I truly love you, Ellie.

There’s another amazingly powerful post on the Crying Out Now blog called “Gestating Elephants.”

The article gets its title from the fact that it takes about 18 months of sobriety for a person in recovery to feel somewhat solid in their recovery and that 18 months is how long elephants gestate for.

In the post, the woman talks about a story told her by an Ojibway medicine woman.

Years ago I heard the following story from an Ojibway medicine woman.

She spoke of once seeing a well respected Navajo medicine man for some health problems. She had anticipated this session with great anxiety and earnestness to “be a good patient.” After he made the initial preparations, he told her he needed her to do one thing or the healing wouldn’t work. She waited to hear her instructions, anticipating something terribly demanding, determined to deliver. After nodding her head, he gently said:

“I need you to sit beautifully.”

She erupted into tears at this, as did I when she said it.

I don’t even know what this means exactly or why it makes me cry. But I have been remembering this story a lot lately.

Such simple and yet incredibly profound instructions for healing. There is so much permission to be beautiful, to let go of shame – pointing to some regal avenue to heal.

She needed to feel her worth to heal. He couldn’t do it for her. He needed her to sit beautifully – with grace, self-love, compassion, power.

Sobriety has allowed me to realize my beauty, my grace, and my power.

I hope my Ellie learns to “sit beautifully” as the woman describes. I hope she finally realizes how beautiful I see her to be–a woman full of grace, strength, love, spirit, power and intelligence. I hope she finally realizes that she is the amazing woman I see her to be–the woman I love–the woman that loves me.

Like the Ojibway woman, Ellie needs to feel her worth–needs to learn to love herself–in order to heal. No one can do this for her--it is something that she must learn to do for herself.

I’d emphasize what this woman said: “Sobriety has allowed me to realize my beauty, my grace, and my power.”

Her addictions have stolen Ellie’s beauty, her grace, and her power. They have made her so much less than she should be. I hope she learns to “sit beautifully” soon, before her addictions steal her health, her looks, her intelligence and her future from her permanently.

There was a recent article in US News and World Report about grandparents towing their granddaughter behind their SUV in a toy car. The two grandparents were drunk, both were long-time alcoholics, and had put their seven-year-old granddaughter in harm’s way. This is a photo of them:

They’re only 47 and 49 respectively, but appear to be far older in my opinion. That is often what being a long-term alcoholic can do to you.

Is this how Ellie wants to end up? If she doesn’t change her life, it could well be where she ends up. I want her to have the life she deserves–to be the person God meant her to be–not the drug-addicted alcoholic she has been for most of the past year.

It is her choice. Only Ellie can decide to be more than the drug-addicted alcoholic she has been for the past 11 months. She has to choose, but more importantly, she has to live with the consequences of her choices.

If she starts now, she will be comfortable in her sobriety and recovery by the time she graduates from college. If not, it may take decades for her to realize she has a problem and I doubt anyone will be there to help her given her actions thus far.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Some people care too much... I think it's called love. --Winnie the Pooh

When people care too much,
When anything you do affects them,
When they look forward to what you will say to certain things,
When they wait for the next day to arrive only so they can talk to you again,
When they find a way to put you in every context of their everyday talk,
When anything becomes special only because you are there,
When they count seconds when you are together…
It’s nothing else but LOVE…
Cherish such people,keep them close to your heart…
They deserve to be loved in the same way,never to part

I think it is very tragic that some people I know think that you can care too much for someone. I have to wonder what their lives are really like if they can not understand the very basic fact that if you have loved and cared for someone for almost 20 years–abandoning them because they have fallen ill is not really an option. Yet, that is the advice many of them have given me and do not understand why it has taken me so long to make the decision to walk away.

Maybe, it is because people who truly love have become far and few between in this modern age.

Maybe, it is because making a commitment to someone, especially if it costs you emotionally, physically, financially and socially to do so, has become something almost unheard of.

Maybe, it is because caring about people, instead of possessions, has fallen by the wayside in our overly materialistic society.

Yet, in my heart, I know caring for the amazing young woman I asked to marry me last summer is the right thing to do. Right now, her illness–and probably her family and friends–prevent her from acknowledging what our relationship truly is or how she truly cares for me.

I do not believe that she and I would have spent a week talking about all the things we did last June, unless she loved me the way I love her and wanted to marry me. I do not think that she would tell me she loves me in two different languages unless she truly did.

Even though she has not been a part of my life since last July, I still worry about her. I still hold to the vows, promises and commitments I made to her then. Unlike most people today, I do not make promises, vows and commitments with the expectation of dishonoring them. I have cared for her, protected her, loved her and been her friend for all of her life. Even if she does not recognize it, I still care for her, love her and am her friend.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her addictions and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Just added this to my cellphone’s music collection.

Hey ole friend, thanks for callin’
Its good to know somebody cares
And yeah, she’s gone, But I don’t feel like talkin’

Might be just too much to bear
To hear somebody say I’ll stop hurting
To hear somebody say she ain’t worth it

You don’t know her like I do
You’ll never understand
You don’t know what we’ve been through
That girl’s my best friend
And there’s no way you’re gonna help me
She’s the only one who can
No, you don’t know how much I’ve got to lose
You don’t know her like I do

I can’t forget, I’m drownin’ in these memories
It fills my soul with all the little things
And I can’t cope, it’s like a death inside the family
It’s like she stole my way to breathe
So don’t try to tell me I’ll stop hurting
And don’t try to tell me, she ain’t worth it

Cause you don’t know her like I do
You’ll never understand
And you don’t know what we’ve been through
That girl’s my best friend
There’s no way you’re going to help me,
She’s the only one who can

You don’t know her like I do
You’ll never understand
You don’t know what we’ve been through
That girl’s my best friend
There’s no way you’re gonna help me
She’s the only one who can
No, you don’t know how much I’ve got to lose
You don’t know her like I do

Adrian Tan spoke at the convocation of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in 2008. His speech was titled: Don’t Work, Be Hated, Love Someone. I found his speech on a blog post that was recommended to me by a friend.

I am quoting some of his speech, as I believe it is important.

“Be Hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.”

It is easy to be popular, but it also means that you’ve never taken a stand or stood up to any one.

Last summer, I stood up to Ellie’s family, because I care about Ellie and love her–after all, I did ask Ellie to marry me. In the course of trying to get her parents to help Ellie, I confronted her father about his own drinking problem, and he has done everything within his power to isolate me from his family, including Ellie, because of it. That does not change the fact that he is an alcoholic in denial. It does not change the fact that Ellie has a problem with drugs and alcohol.

Even in spite of all that has happened, I believe that Ellie’s mother understands how I truly feel about Ellie and her whole family, even if she is not brave enough to show it. Her last text message to me was:

“Dan, I know you will always be there for us.”

If she believed the lies that Ellie and Ellie’s father have been telling since last June, why would she send me that message. Deep in her heart, she knows that all I have done I have done out of my love for Ellie and her entire family–people I have considered part of my family for almost 30 years, and still do–whether they choose to recognize that fact or not.

“fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.”

I don’t believe that Adrian Tan intended for loving someone and being hated to be part of the same situation. For most people, the two things would not be related at all. That isn’t the case for me. If I didn’t love Ellie, I probably wouldn’t be hated by her family. It is only because I love Ellie that I took a stand and tried to help her.

I love Ellie completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. That is just how I feel about Ellie. I have known her all of her life and love her for who she is–warts and all. I have seen the worst she can be, and still love her despite it all. Even after all she has done these last nine months, I still love her and care for her. Though she is not a part of my life any longer, I hope she knows if she wants me back in her life, makes her amends and shows me that she wants me back, I will be there for her as I have promised her.

I love Ellie more than I love Gee, my late wife. As my friend Brad pointed out, that is likely because I have known Ellie all of her life and loved her in some way for all of it. First, it was as the adorable, if bratty and selfish, daughter of two of my good friends–people I have considered friends and family for almost 30 years. Then it was as my friend in her own right–unlike many people, I always accepted her and her siblings as friends of mine on their own, outside of my relationship with their parents–after all, her parents are friends of my parents. Finally, it was as the woman I love–the woman that loves me and discussed all that being a couple meant for that week after I told her how my feelings for her had grown.

Ellie–the woman that said she loves me–does inspire me. She drives me to try and be a better person than I would be without her, much as Gee did and still does. That is one reason I love her so very much. The fact that Ellie is gone–lost to her addictions and no longer a part of my life–really doesn’t matter that much. That, at least for that short week, Ellie did love me and it was pretty clearly that she was at least considering accepting my proposal before I confronted her about her drinking is what is important. I do not believe she would have asked me about religion, told me what she wanted to name two of our children, or learned to say “Sarangheyo” unless she loved me. She was far too honest a person for that–she didn’t believe in playing games or lying.

Unfortunately, her drinking and drug addictions have been slowly destroying her brain and her heart, spirit and personality. I really do not know who the drug-addicted alcoholic that is inhabiting her body is, nor do I want to. As Adrian says, I do love her completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. I have done what I have to try and help her because of the deep and abiding love I have for Ellie.

I can do no more for her. Until Ellie realizes she has a problem, there is nothing any one can do for her. Until Ellie learns to love herself, she can not love anybody or accept anyone loving her. I believe that somewhere, buried deep under the hungers and tragedy of her addictions, the woman that said “Sarangheyo” to me and told me how she adored Asians with freckles still survives. I hope that Ellie will fight her addictions and come back to being who God meant her to be soon.

I grieve for my beautiful Irish rose, mourn her loss, and celebrate the time we had together, both as friends and as something possibly more.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her addictions and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Today is Easter Sunday. In the Christian faith, it is a day of celebration, for Jesus Christ was resurrected from death on this day. The season of Lent is one of prayer, penance, death and resurrection. It is a season of hope, renewal and faith. Even though Easter holds some sad memories for me, I still have hope and faith and celebrate the season of Lent.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher once said,

“Love is not consolation. It is light.”

It is my hope that my love for Ellie will be the light that guides her out of the darkness she has become lost in. I hope that her knowing that I love her will act as her guiding star when she finally realizes that she has lost her way and wants to come back home. In many ways, this season of Lent, I have been praying for Ellie to make her penance and be resurrected from her addictions, which have surely destroyed the woman I love as much as death could have.

I doubt this will happen, but I have a lot of faith in the amazing, beautiful, strong, smart and stubborn woman I love. While I can’t be sure that she even still exists, I know that if she does, she will eventually come to her senses and fight her addictions and try to find her true self once again. One reason I have such faith in her is because I know she is one of the smartest, stubbornest, strongest and beautiful women I have ever met. I just can not believe that her addictions could truly destroy her–that some part of her must survive beneath her addictions–still fighting to return to who she really is.

I hope that with time, experience and the maturity that comes with age, she will eventually realize that what I have said was not to hurt her, but because I love her and care about her. I hope she will eventually realize that all I have done I have done out of my deep and abiding love for her. I hope that she will see that I am the only one who cared enough about her this past summer to see what she was doing to herself—the only one who cared enough to risk everything to try and get her the help I believe part of her was crying out for. I am the only one who loved her enough to try to get her to see what she was doing to herself.

I hope that she will learn to love herself enough to realize that she deserves better than to be the drug-addicted alcoholic she has been for the past nine months. Until she learns this, she will never be able to truly love anyone, or really accept anyone’s love for her. I hope that she will finally realize she deserves someone who loves her as I do–rather than someone who would cheat on her as Ian did or use her and dispose of her the way Jarrod did. I hope that she will finally understand that the way her father treats her mother and her is not right, nor is it the way it should be.

God be with her, my beloved Ellie. I do not know if any part of Ellie still survives her addictions. I will pray for her still. I hope that she finds the strength, the courage, the will and the love for herself that she will need to fight her addictions and become who I believe God truly meant her to be. I mourn and grieve for her loss–her death and destruction at the hands of her addictions.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her addictions and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Today is a very special day, since three of the people I care about most were born today. I want to wish my nephew Nick, my adopted big brother Brian and most of all, Ellie–the woman I love most of all–a very happy birthday.

I hope that today finds brings them health, happiness and a fantastic year to come.

Nick, my oldest nephew, was born today, in 2001, and is, in many ways, the only good thing that came out of that horrific year.

Brian was someone I met through work back in the summer of 1999. I met some of the most important people in my life that summer, including Gee. He was a temp, filling in for one of the first-line support engineers that were contracted to help with service desk calls at the Washington, DC bureau of Reuters. He only worked there for the one day from what I remember, but we hit it off really well and became friends.

To give you an idea of how close a friend Brian is to me, he was a groomsman at my wedding to Gee the following year, and one of Gee’s pallbearers the next year. I haven’t seen him since he, Katy and their children moved back to California. I wish they lived closer.

Most of all, I really wish I could have spent today with Ellie. But that is not possible because of her illness and the changes it has wrought in her and her life. Her addictions make it impossible for me to be with her, and make it so that I don’t want to be with her. In many ways, there is nothing left of the woman I love as far as I can see.

So, I’ll mourn her and grieve for her, and celebrate the time we did have together, both as friends and as something more. That’s all I really can do at this point. Even though it has been over nine months since I last saw her, I pray for her every day, and hope that her knowing that at least one person loves her may make the difference in whether she is able to beat her addictions.

I hope she is doing well academically, since it is likely that if she does as poorly as she did last semester that she would lose her scholarship and be forced to drop out of the college of her choice, as her brother had to do two years ago.

I hope her counselor has helped her see that she does have a problem with drugs and alcohol, regardless of what her friends and family think. I hope whomever she is seeing for counseling is able to get her to admit she is an addict and to seek help for herself. The longer she is an active alcoholic and drug-addict, the harder it will be for her to break free of her addictions and the less likely any treatment she gets will succeed. The longer she is drinking and smoking marijuana, the more damage she will do the her mind, body, and health.

The longer she lives with the lies she has been telling herself, the more likely she is to begin to believe them. I pray that God gives her the strength, the courage, and the will to fight her addictions. I hope she remembers that God can not help her if she chooses to refuse His help. I also hope she realizes that it is very unlikely that God has planned for her to become a drug-addicted alcoholic–that she chose that path for herself, and only she can choose to change where her life is headed.

The truth of who Ellie and I were to each other is pretty clear in this photo, taken two years ago today, at her birthday dinner–one she texted me a half-dozen times to make sure I would be there, whether she remembers or admits it or not.

Ellie giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her addictions and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

The people in our lives who love us are a gift to us. We don’t know how long we will have them for, and we should always make sure that they know how much they mean to us. In some cases, we lose them very suddenly, like I did my twin when he was killed by a drunk driver. In others, the loss is expected, but no less painful—as it was with Ellie and Gee.

These people are not us—they were not given to us, nor are they really taken from us. As long as we remember them and honor their memories, they will always be with us. In that way, they will never really be gone from our lives. If we remember the lessons that they taught us, by being part of our lives, then, they will live on through us in many ways—still touching our lives long after they have departed.

Some of them will have mostly good memories associated with them. Others, because of their choices and actions or the events of our lives, will have both good and bad memories associated with them. My advice is to forgive the bad memories and concentrate on the good ones. Keep the joy and happiness they brought into your life alive, and let the rest go.

That is what I have done for Ellie. I choose not to remember her as the drug-addicted alcoholic she has become, but as the beautiful, strong, smart and stubborn woman that loved me, and as the amazing young woman that was my good friend before that. I will always remember the joy and happiness that the time I spent with Ellie brought me.

This includes all the time I spent with her when she was younger because I was asked to be her friend, mentor, guardian and confidante—those days will always be important to me. The months I spent teaching her how to drive—given my love of driving—will always be cherished. Taking her out for her birthday—like the first time she ever went to Cracker Barrel—was something I loved to do—because she has always been special to me.

Remembering how Ellie would steal my polar fleece and then curl up, like an adorable ginger-haired cat, on the companionway of s/v Pretty Gee and fall asleep in the sun—smarter than the rest of my crew—knowing she would not get splashed while curled up in that warm, sunny and dry location is something I will think back upon and smile about. She was my friend back then with no doubts about how beautiful, smart, strong or capable she was—those all came later.

Remembering the smile on her face when I woke her in the mornings last summer with a treat of my snack sized cheesecakes or her favorite iced coffee is something that I will always love. It was one of the things I did because of how happy I knew it made her—and because I loved to see her happy. Remembering how she laughed when she was cleaning the green slime out of her family’s swimming pool and asking me to not let her fall in makes me smile. All I’ve ever really wanted for my beautiful Ellie is for her is to see her smile and want her to be happy, loved, safe and successful.

Most of all, the brief week she and I talked about our future together—where she told me she loved me and said “Sarangheyo” to me, and she told me how she adored Asians with freckles—will always be some of the happiest moments of my life. I would still marry Ellie, as I asked her last summer, but I am fairly sure she is lost to her addictions—and that the woman who loved me no longer exists.

Likewise, I will remember the times I spent with Gee—doing the mundane, daily life things like cooking for her or listening to her talk about her music. I would rather remember these simple memories rather than the last days of her life—with her in the hospital and stuck with needles, tubes and machines that were there to try and keep her barely alive. Her sense of humor, her quick wit, her sense of compassion and grace will always be there, whenever I think of my beloved wife Gee.

The memories of our first long cross-country road trip, when I moved Gee to Seattle so she could attend grad school out there are forever etched in the bedrock of my mind. In many ways, it was that long trip, spending so much time with each other, where Gee and I really learned that we loved each other and it was on that trip that we got engaged.

Looking back and remembering how Gee would row the little dinghy that she bought me as a Valentine’s Day gift in giant circles on Lake Burke and Lake Accotink will always bring a laugh to my lips.

I will miss them all…but they will always be a part of my life, because I choose to honor them and remember them. And, I will still pray for Ellie every day, as I have for the past nine months. Unlike the others, Ellie might still yet live. Part of me hopes that my beautiful Ellie still survives, somewhere beneath her addictions—mainly because I can not really believe that someone so smart, stubborn, strong, brave and beautiful could succumb to her addictions. She, like Gee, David, Shelley and the others I have lost over the years, is someone I love very much and always will.

May God watch over my beloved Ellie. God bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

and I have to wonder if you miss me.

I have loved you in some form for all of your life, and I will always love you. I hope you are getting help and getting better. God bless you and watch over you.

Ellie—

and

I hope you’ve gotten help for your addictions and are getting better. I hope you’re studying hard and getting good grades, so you don’t lose your scholarship. If you want my help, all you need to do is make your amends and ask me. I am pretty sure you know how much I love you, even if you aren’t willing to admit it to yourself. I know you love me—or did when you told me “Sarangheyo” last summer. I hope you still do.

Spring break and your birthday are both fast approaching, and I really wish I could spend them with you. Remember when we talked about going down to the Caribbean for your spring break. I’d still take you, if you want to go—but only if you’re healthy or getting there. I love you, but not the drug-addicted alcoholic you’ve been for the last eight months.

I miss you. I have your Christmas gift, your Valentine’s Day gift, and most of all, your claddagh ring all sitting in the safe. I have had them all since last summer, but I doubt you’ll ever see them. I still want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you ever get better.

In any case, know that I love you. God be with you. May He watch over you, the woman I love and protect you, even from yourself. May He give you the courage, strength and will to fight your addictions. May He show you the path back to your true self—to being the incredible, beautiful, smart and strong woman I love. May He shower you with His Grace.

Wishing all my blog readers a Happy Valentine’s Day.

More importantly, I want to remember the beautiful woman I married on what would have been her birthday. To me, today will always be first and foremost Gee’s birthday, and then Valentine’s Day.

Remembering Gee’s birthday was always easy—since Madison Avenue makes sure I have six weeks of reminders starting January 2nd. I only got to celebrate her birthday with her twice, but February 14th will never be just Valentine’s Day to me ever again.

Gee was born in Niagara Falls, New York, on this day and claimed she was the ultimate 1960s love child. I can’t disagree. She is the most gracious person I have ever known. The way she cared for other people always amazed me, even when she was going through some of the worst life has ever dealt a person.

One event that sticks out in my mind is when she was in the hospital, a week before she died. My friend Brad had flown down to Virginia to visit us, knowing Gee didn’t have much time left. It was Monday, June 4th. I went to the airport to pick Brad up and then drove back to the hospital, where I had basically been living for the previous week.

When Brad walked into Gee’s hospital room, she greeted him by saying, “Brad, how was your flight? You look tired.”

Now, to understand how significant this was, you have to imagine that you’ve been in the hospital for over a week now; have died twice and somehow managed to come back to the man you love; you’ve got four central lines in; are on two IV infusion pumps, an oxygen cannula and and a feeding tube. You’re on enough narcotics to down a rogue elephant, but are still in pain, and you know you are dying. This is what Gee was going through when Brad walked into her hospital room.

Even in spite of all this, Gee’s first concern was for our friend Brad and how his flight was. That was who my Gee was. That was one reason I love her so much.

She came home that Thursday for the final time. She said one reason she had fought so hard to get better in the hospital, despite the massive bleed outs she had experienced that left her technically dead twice, was because she wanted to say goodbye to me at the home she had made for us both. As I carried her into the house, what she said to me was bittersweet. She said, “I’m sorry Dan, it isn’t the cancer that’s killing me, but all the complications. I wish I could keep the promise I made to you when we got engaged, but I don’t know if I can.”

The next morning, Friday morning, Brad was flying back to Boston. We knew it was the last time he would see Gee. She called him into the bedroom where she was setup in a medical recliner and an oxygen generator. She said to him, “Brad, I’m sorry I haven’t been a better hostess. I hope you have a safe flight back to Boston. Take care of yourself.”

Brad walked out to the my Explorer and got in. He started to cry as I loaded his luggage into the back. We drove to the airport where I dropped him off for his flight. As he got out, he said to me, “There are days you realize what a lousy human being you truly are…” I know he was referring to how high Gee set the bar and what kind of person the woman I married was.

I gave him a hug and wished him a safe flight back to Boston. I thanked him for coming down to see us and being there for us. I wished him an early Happy Birthday, for Saturday was his birthday.

Three days later, Monday, June 11, 2001, at 11:00, just seven months and seven days from when our wedding started, the beautiful and gracious woman I loved from the first time I heard her beautiful voice was gone.

Rest in peace my beloved Gee. Know that you will always be in my heart and thoughts. Thank you for watching over me and my friends and being my personal weather goddess. I love you, Gee. I always will, for love is eternal. The light and love you brought into my life will remain with me for the rest of my days.

I miss you every day, and I try to be the man you love everyday. I hope that before I die, I can be one-tenth as gracious, even in the worst of circumstances, as you were. Thus far, I have failed.

Gee, I want you to know that I believe I have found the woman you asked me to seek out just before you died. I truly believe Ellie is the one you meant for me to find. Like all the women I have loved, she is smart, stubborn, feisty-tempered and beautiful.—I think you would have liked her, at least when she is healthy. I would ask that you watch over her and protect her, even from herself, because she is someone I love. Last summer I asked her to marry me, and still want to spend the rest of my life with her. Please help her find her way back to me.

P.S. Look out for Paul, John and Lois. Paul and John are friends of mine and newly arrived, while Lois is the twin to my friend Mez, and she and Mez share your birthday.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”

The Little Prince

The Little Prince and his rose

Ellie is my beloved Irish rose. She has thorns and I hope they are enough to protect her, since I am not there to do so myself. I have loved her in some fashion for all of her life. I have protected her and cared for her all of her life. I have seen the worst she can be, the best she can be and everything in-between and love her unconditionally, despite it all.

There are many things I want for Ellie—things I hope for, things I wish for and things I pray for…

I hope she has finally realized that the alcohol and drugs are no good for her. I hope she has gotten help for her problems with alcohol and drugs. I hope she has realized how the drugs and alcohol have been damaging her body, her brain, her mind and her spirit.

I hope she realizes how close she has come to losing the bright future she had before her last summer and all of her hopes and dreams. I hope she has re-focused her priorities on her studies and grades once again and takes pride in being a good student and the intelligent woman she is once more.

I hope she believes in herself again—and realizes how strong, beautiful and smart she is. I wish she could see herself through my eyes and see what an incredible person I see when I look at her—beautiful, strong, funny, smart, wise, lovable, confident, sweet and so much more.

I wish she would remember that I love her and did all that I did because I love her. I wish she knew what I meant when I said I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I hope she still wants the Asians with freckles that she adores. I hope that she will make her amends and come back to me.

I pray that God watches over her and protects her, even from herself. I pray that she finds the strength, the courage, and most of all, the will to fight her addictions. I pray that she realizes how much I love her and still want to marry her. I pray for her everyday.

In any case, I hope she has a Happy Valentine’s Day…a day I wish we could have spent together.

Ellie, no matter where you are, I love you—I have loved you all your life, and always will.

There are times when you make decisions and the results make you ask “What if?” Those “What Ifs?” can drive you crazy.

One such decision for me happened nearly 25 years ago, when my twin left on a drive back to San Diego, headed back to school. This is the first time I am writing about his death to any real degree.

I was supposed to go with him. I had a bag packed and sitting in his car, and airline tickets waiting for me in San Diego, to fly back. It took him an hour to convince me not to go. It was a Friday morning. Little did I know it was the last time I was ever going to see my identical twin—that less than 24 hour later he would be dead—killed by a drunk driver.

Dave’s argument was pretty simple—I had been out of college on a medical leave of absence, having had to go through months of physical therapy and learn how to walk again for the second time. It had been almost nine months and this weekend would be the first quarter I could register for classes and return to college myself. If I went on the trip to San Diego, I’d have to put off returning to school for another three months. He wanted me to get back to school and get on with college—and this would be the first chance I’d have to do that. I couldn’t argue with him—he was right.

The medical leave of absence was pretty simple—I couldn’t walk any more. The muscles in my left leg and hip had atrophied and weakened to the point where walking, even with crutches was just not reasonable. All this was the result of a car-bicycle accident six years earlier, where a 1976 Granada turned me into a bumper sticker and left my bicycle 150′ down the road from me one day on my way home from school. I had done months of physical therapy starting not long after the car accident for the exact same problem twice before—about seven months every two years. This was the third time I had to go back for physical therapy.

So, I bowed to my brother’s request and let him drive off without me. It was the first time that he was going on a cross-country drive without me. We had driven from San Diego, to Los Angeles, and then to Las Vegas and continued onto Colorado, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and finally to Boston earlier that summer in his 1969 Mach I Mustang. I grabbed my bag out of his car and saw him drive off. He had promised to call me when he got to San Diego—a phone call I am still waiting for.

Dan and David with their paternal grandmother.

Early Saturday morning, I woke up from a nightmare, screaming, drenched in sweat, and knew that my twin had been killed. The dream was at the exact time of his accident and was probably very close to what he would have seen in his final moments of life. I couldn’t get back to sleep. This was before the age of cellphones, so there was no way for me to contact him and see if he was okay. I knew he was gone because the little voice that I had always had in the back of my head that told me how he was and what he was doing had gone silent.

About three hours later, I heard my father come up the stairs and he entered my bedroom. As he turned on the light, I said, “What happened to Dave?” He never understood how I could know something had happened to my twin over the more than a thousand miles he had traveled since that morning. It’s a twin thing I guess. He told me that my twin had been in a bad car accident and was in the hospital, in surgery, and they didn’t know anything more than that yet.

One of my friends, Lisa, was starting at school at the same university I was returning to. I had promised to help Lisa move into her dormitory the previous day, since I wasn’t going to be going to California. I called Lisa and her mother early Saturday morning and told them what had happened, and her mother told me to come over. I’ll always be grateful to Lisa’s mother for being there for me that weekend. We packed up Lisa’s stuff and drove over to the dormitory and started moving her in for the school year.

I’d point out that I was friends with Lisa and her mother mainly because of my twin. Lisa was one of his adopted little sisters, and I only really knew her because she was friends with my twin brother first. Around 11:00 that morning, a campus police officer came to Lisa’s dorm room looking for me. My father had called the campus police with news that my twin had died on the operating table. I had already known he was dead hours earlier. What had been on that operating table hadn’t been my twin, just his body.

The accident was a pretty common one. My brother’s car had a problem—exactly what we will never know—and it had broken down on his way back to California just west of Nashville, Tennessee. While he was looking under the hood of the car, trying fix whatever had gone wrong, his car was hit by another doing over 70 miles an hour. The impact was so hard that it crushed the bumper of his 1969 Mach 1 Mustang in past the rear wheel, pushed the car up and rolled it twice—with my brother’s upper body and head trapped in the engine compartment by the engine hood—which had slammed down on him at the time of impact.

The driver of the other car was mostly uninjured. He was drunk. He was under-aged. This was his third major offense if I recall correctly. I took the Nashville police department over five years to arrest the man. In the intervening years, the police department had lost the results of the blood alcohol test and the eyewitness, a hitchhiker that my brother had been giving a ride to from what I read in the accident report. The drunk driver that killed my brother got 90 days suspended for killing him.

For years, I agonized over my decision not to go with him the previous morning. I told myself that he might still be alive if I had been there. I told myself that I might have been able to warn him in time for him to get clear of the car before the drunk drive hit it. I told myself that I might have been able to fix whatever was wrong with his car or spotted the problem before it had gotten bad enough to make the car stop.

I also blamed my father for many years. Now, I have to explain that my father is one of the most knowledgeable automotive engineers in the country. He is a former section chair of the Society of Automotive Engineers and on their board nominating committee. The fact that my brother hated him and moved 3000 miles way to get as far away from him as possible and wouldn’t let my father anywhere near his car has always haunted me.

I will always wonder if my twin and father weren’t so bitter and angry at each other—whether my father would have spotted whatever was wrong before my twin left on his trip. For most of that summer, most of what I did was keep peace between my twin and my father. That was the best I was able to get from the two of them.

The “what ifs?” surrounding my twin’s death nearly cost me my life. I owe my life to my second fiancée, Su, who saved me. Ellie’s father introduced me to Su about a month before my twin was killed—August 14 to be exact. She was one of the few friends I had when Dave died that wasn’t devastated by his death. It took me nearly seven years to recover from his death in so many ways.

Flash forward 14 years. I’m now living in Northern Virginia, and working for a major news company in Washington, DC.

Two years earlier, I had gotten engaged to the incredibly beautiful and gracious Korean woman I had met on a blind date. We had gotten engaged on the twelveth anniversary of my twin brother’s death—something I am sure she had planned. Just before we got engaged, I had moved Gee to Seattle, Washington, so she could attend the graduate school she had been planning on going to before we met.

Six months after we had gotten engaged, right after Gee moved back to Northern Virginia because she didn’t want to be apart from me any longer, she was diagnosed with stage four metastatic pancreatic cancer, on Easter Sunday. She had her Whipple operation at Johns Hopkins that May and went through her first round of chemotherapy over the summer leading up to our wedding. Seven months and one week to the hour after our wedding started, she lost her battle with cancer and died. Most of our story is found in the Life With Gee pages of my website.

Gee and Dan at Gee’s new apartment in Seattle.

For months following her death, I asked myself what I did wrong? Should we have used a different chemo drug? Should we have tired a different treatment center? Should we have tried to get Gee onto an experimental trial? These were all more “What Ifs” that made me wonder if there were anything I could have done to save the woman I love.

Fast forward to this past summer, June 2011. I realized that I have known the woman Gee asked me to look for just before she died for almost 20 years. Ellie is someone I’ve known and loved in some form since she was born. She is much younger than me, but I am certain that she is the woman Gee meant for me to find.

On June 22, 2011, I asked Ellie to marry me. She didn’t answer my proposal, but responded by telling me four things.

The first was a question: “Would Gee be angry at either of us if we got married, if I got re-married to her?” I explained to Ellie that the last promise I had to keep to my late wife was the one that I would re-marry if I met the right person. I told Ellie that she was the right person, and that I was certain that she was woman Gee had asked me to seek out over ten years earlier.

The second thing Ellie said was that she wished she could have met Gee. I have talked about Gee and her impact on me and my life for many hours with Ellie, often in response to some of the questions about love and life that Ellie had asked me. I wasn’t really surprised that Ellie wished she could have met Gee.

The third thing Elie said was that she regretted never having had a chance to meet Gee. This is something that many of my blog/website readers have told me in comments and e-mails.

The fourth thing and final thing Ellie told me before we left the restaurant was “I love you”. This was a very simple and clear declaration of her feelings for me. Given the circumstances, I believe she meant that she loved me much the same way I love her—as two people who want to share their lives love each other.

Ellie giving me bunny ears at Fire & Ice on her 18th birthday

For a week, we talked about every issue that might touch upon our starting a future together and getting married. She started that afternoon by telling me she adored “Asians with freckles” and what she wanted to name our first two children. We talked about postponing any wedding until after she had graduated from college. We talked about religion and she was surprised to hear that I was planning on converting to the Catholic faith as part of marrying her. It really wasn’t a surprise to me, given how important her religion is to her and her family—something I have learned over my 30 years of friendship with her family.

We talked about the gold claddagh ring I had bought for her and how it would be replaced by a platinum one that I was designing for her wedding ring. We talked about how the gold one would go to our eldest daughter. On June 28th, six days after I asked her to marry me, she asked to see the claddagh ring. I told her I would bring it over the next time I was supposed to see her. I never got the chance.

The following day, June 29th, she posted something about going down to Cape Cod and going there to drink. I asked her not to drink or use the fake IDs she had shown me the previous day. She and I haven’t spoken since I confronted her about her drinking. At the time I did not realize she was a drug addict and an alcoholic. No one did—not even her family.

For the past seven months, I’ve tried to get her the help I believe she has been asking for and that she needs to no avail. For much of the last three months I have been asking myself if there were anything I could do differently. I have been wondering if there were anything I could have done to prevent the rift between us from forming or prevented her descent into her addictions.

Finally, I have realized that there probably was nothing I could have done that would have prevented all that has come to pass. I have also realized that I need to walk away from my beloved Ellie because I can not stay and watch her addictions destroy everything I love about her.

I have finally realized that the “What ifs” provide no comfort and no answers. They only force us to doubt ourselves and our actions—even when we have done all we can for the people we love. In some cases, changing anything would have just resulting in more death or tragedy. I am pretty certain, from a perspective of almost a quarter century’s hindsight, that probably would have been the case with my twin. If I had gone with him, I’d likely be dead as well. But even knowing this—human nature still makes us ask “what if…” as I have about Gee and Ellie both.

With Gee, we had gotten the best surgeon in the country for the Whipple procedure, possibly the best in the world, to operate on her. We had gone with doctors that were experienced in treating pancreatic cancer—in fact our primary oncologist’s father had the same illness Gee had. We had taken the best care of Gee that was possible—otherwise how was it possible that she went from 88 lbs. to 103 lbs. while undergoing chemotherapy leading up to the wedding. Her father, a pediatrician, had trusted me to make the right medical decisions for Gee and later told me that no one could have taken better care of his daughter than I did—something I consider a great honor.

With Ellie, I have done everything I could possibly do without help from her family. I put together the documentation of her illness ask her mother asked me. I have tried to get that documentation to her mother, and given it several others that I hoped might be able to help Ellie get the treatment she needs. I have tried for seven months to get Ellie to realize how she is destroying her health, her future and everything I love about her. I have lost her and her family to the illness that consumes her, her brother and father. So, I have finally walked away—not because I don’t care about Ellie—not because I don’t honor the vows and commitments I have made to Ellie—but because I can do nothing further until Ellie herself asks for help.

I have no regrets about my decisions with respect to David, Gee or Ellie. I have done all I could, given the circumstances and the information I had at the time. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would do much the same as I have had, even knowing how things would turn out. These three, along with Shelley and my grandmother are the five people I love most in my life. I will always love them, and I miss them every day. I don’t have these regrets or doubts about Shelley or my grandmother because I had no part in making decisions for their care—I was merely someone who loved them and lost them.

I hope someday, the pain of losing Ellie will fade as much as the pain of losing David or Gee has. It has taken almost 25 years for the pain of my twin’s loss to be as bearable as it is, and over a decade for Gee’s loss—both of whom I think of and miss every day. Right now, it is too soon to know if that will ever be the case with Ellie. I mourn her and grieve for Ellie and the loss of our future—the Asians with freckles that our children would have been—and the amazing young woman that said “Sarangheyo” to me this past summer.

“Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes…It is the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important…People have forgotten this truth. But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you have tamed. You’re responsible for your rose….” said the fox.

I will miss my beautiful Irish rose and hope her thorns are enough to protect her, for I am not there to do so. I am responsible for her and I have done all I could for her. I have no regrets about making the decision to move on. Just because I am moving on, it does not mean I have broken my vow to her or the promises I made her—if she should ever return to being the person I made those vows and commitments to, I will keep them. If she should want me back in her life or need my help—she knows where and how to find me and what she needs to do.

May God watch over her, bless her and protect her, even from herself. May God grant her the strength, courage, and will to fight her illness and return to being her true self. May God grant her the wisdom to see the truth—both about her illness and about us.

Etta James, probably best known for her song At Last, just passed away. It’s sad to hear for me because Etta and At Last were what Gee and I picked for our wedding 12 years ago. We didn’t even have to discuss it…it was the first choice for both of us.

Even today, over a decade later, I still get the occasional compliment on what a perfect wedding we had—how storybook perfect it was—even though there was a lot of chaos behind the scenes, like losing track of the wedding license in the confusion and running around of the very busy day. I was so proud of Gee because she was so strong and beautiful that day. Her gown was almost 40 lbs. of matte satin silk and freshwater pearls, but she carried it off. Most guests didn’t even realize that she had just recovered from her first round of chemotherapy earlier that fall. It was the happiest day of my life so far.

Gee and Dan dancing at their wedding reception, November 2000

My real thanks go to my sister-in-law, Michelle, who had been living with us since that August. She was one of the real reasons I was able to keep my promise to Gee and why Gee was so healthy and strong that day.

I miss Gee everyday, but I know that my weather goddess is watching over me. I see her hand in the weather and hear her laughter and voice in the wind; feel her tears in the rain; and see her beautiful smile in the sunshine. She is one of my two guardian angels, and I know she is watching over Ellie as well, for no other reason than I love Ellie too.

I wish Ellie could see herself as I see her. She doesn’t see what I see when I look at her and I wish she could. When I look at Ellie, I see one of the most incredible women I have ever met. I have been very fortunate to know some amazing women, including the one I married. Ellie is at least as intelligent, beautiful, compassionate and strong as any of them. In fact, I know she is better than at least one of them on all counts.

Ellie is strong-willed, feisty-spirited and fiery-tempered—all traits that I expected given her beautiful red hair, incredible hazel eyes and Irish heritage. She is funny and makes me laugh like few people ever could. She is proud of herself and all she has accomplished. She is a conscientious student and takes pride in all she does. She cares about other people and cares what they think of her. She is gracious and graceful. She is sexy and athletic. I just wish she could see just how sexy, bright, beautiful and proud the woman I love so very much is.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that woman since late June. She hasn’t been visible in any of the photos I have seen of Ellie since late June either. I have to wonder whose advice it was to push me away the way she has. I have to wonder what her friends have told her she should do and why. The person she considers her best friend is probably Chelsey. Chelsey is likely the person who introduced her to Jarrod and pimped her out to Jarrod as far as I am concerned. Chelsey did nothing when Jarrod got tired of Ellie and threw her away like yesterday’s trash. Ellie certainly deserves to have better people around her, but for some reason she chooses not to.

This is so true. I would love to wait around for Ellie to finally realize that she is sick. I would love to see her to ask for help in getting better—for help in beating her addictions and to be here to help her get better. Unfortunately, it seems pretty clear to me that she has no interest in getting better. She doesn’t seem to be reading these posts, or if she is, she doesn’t recognize that she pretty clearly has a problem with alcohol and marijuana.

I love Ellie. I love Ellie more than I love even my late wife Gee. I do not think she even realizes the significance of this fact. Of course, I have known Ellie almost 20 years, and I have loved her in some fashion for all of that time—where I only knew Gee 23 months and a day. I have always cared about her; always been her friend; and always considered her a part of my extended family in many ways. I have been one of her closest friends and confidantes. I have protected her; guided her; supported her dreams and goals; and cared for her for years—as her parents asked me to.

Even as difficult as things have been since I confronted her about her drinking back on June 29th, 2011, if I had to do it all again, I would go through it all again just to try and help the beautiful woman I love. To me, the pain—both emotional and physical—and the costs—financial, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical—are all worthwhile if it helps Ellie realize she has a problem even one day earlier than she would without what I have gone through. She doesn’t seem to understand what she means to me or how much I care about her.

Like one of my good friends whose first fiancée was an alcoholic—walking away from Ellie and giving up on Ellie may be the only option I have left. Ellie may never realize she has a problem with alcohol or drugs. She may not realize it until it results in her being injured or killed, or her injuring or killing someone else. Her addictions may cost her any chance she has at the bright future she had seven months ago—and in many ways have already started to do so given her grades and how she did last semester. Her illness and its effects on her may cost her the scholarship she needs to stay at the college she was so determined and proud of attending. I really can not stay and watch her destroy herself—I love her far too much and it is far too painful.

Ellie, the woman I love, told me of all the dreams and goals she had for herself. She wants to go to law school. She wants to be successful and be her own boss. She wants to own her own business. She wants to have children and get married. She said she loves me—and I believe her. Of course, I do not believe she would have told me she loved me in two different languages as she did unless she did. I do not think she would have talked about things like when we would get married, what she wanted to name our children or any of the dozens of other subjects we had talked about the week following my asking her to marry me.

Being an alcoholic or a drug addict was never among the plans, hopes or dreams of the woman I love. She would hate not being in full control of herself. Ellie would hate to see herself destroying her hopes and dreams; sacrificing her health and beauty; all for no real gain. She would be horrified at the way she has treated me—the man she loves. She would be mortified by the lies she has told about me to her family and friends—lies she told to push me away and tear a rift between us. Elle would be ashamed at the way her father used her lies to hurt me. She would cringe at seeing how she has hurt me; and at knowing the pain and suffering I have been through because of her.

Ellie would apologize and make amends for what her addictions have made her say and do. She would try to heal the rift she has created between us. She would try to honor the friendship we have always had—and restore the love, caring, devotion and loyalty we had shown each other over the years. She would do this because she is a good woman, an honest woman and one that believes in right and wrong. She would know what her addictions have made her do is wrong. She would do this because she loves me.

The drug-addicted alcoholic that she has been for the past six months doesn’t seem to understand any of this or care about any of this. I do not know who the drug-addicted alcoholic is, but she is pretty clearly not my Ellie. I know this because the drug-addicted alcoholic doesn’t care about Ellie’s dreams or goals; she doesn’t want to be successful; she doesn’t want to be her own boss or own her own company; she doesn’t want to get married or have the Asian with freckles children she and I had talked about; and she doesn’t love me. She is not the woman I love. All she truly cares about is getting high and getting drunk. She will even put her own life and the lives of the innocent people around her at risk by driving drunk or high from what I can see.

What Ellie is doing right now—binge drinking regularly and smoking marijuana regularly, often just to get to sleep—is affecting her body. It is destroying her physical beauty—looks that she prided herself on. It is destroying her intelligence—the quick mind that I love so much. It is affecting her memory and her ability to learn—something that would horrify the woman I love who prided herself on being smart, being an excellent student and on getting good grades. It is damaging her brain, liver, lungs, kidneys, heart, digestive tract, and putting her at increased risk for cancer, heart disease, liver disease and prematurely aging her—something that is contrary to everything Ellie believed about taking care of her body and health.

Ellie may not be able to see the damage, but it is happening, and by the time she realizes how much damage she has done to herself, it may be too late. Much of the damage alcohol and marijuana can do is progressive, cumulative and permanent. The sooner she stops, the more likely she is to recover. Both alcoholism and addiction are progressive diseases—the longer she leaves them untreated the less likely she will seek treatment and the more difficult it will be to recover.

I know my Ellie once knew she was beautiful and was confident in the fact that other people thought she was beautiful. She once cared about her health—which was one reason she became a vegetarian seven years ago. She once cared about how she looked and what people thought of her. She was a very good person. She cared about other people too—why would she ask me whether Gee would be angry if we got married—if I got remarried, if she did not care about people, including a woman she never met who had been dead for over ten years at the time.

Now, her insecurities and self-doubts have allowed her addictions to run rampant. I believe she is self-medicating much like her brother was two years ago when he was hospitalized for chronic depression and drug and alcohol abuse. She no longer seems to care what other people think of her. She certainly doesn’t care about other people the way she once did. She certainly doesn’t care about her health—just about her outward appearance, and not even that as much as she once did. I believe that as long as she can appear fairly healthy and keep up her outward appearances, she will continue to deny she has any sort of drug or alcohol problem—after all, she doesn’t look like a drug addict or alcoholic is supposed to look, right?

Growing up with an emotionally distant and emotionally abusive father, who is also an alcoholic in denial, certainly didn’t help her. His treatment of her mother certainly didn’t give her a good example of what a loving relationship is supposed to be like. The control and rage issues her father has certainly didn’t give her a good idea of what it is to be truly loved. I understand that these problems are pretty common to the children of alcoholics.

Her father’s constant criticism of her mother and herself probably didn’t allow her to really have a good sense of who she was or what an amazing young woman she has grown into. If you tell someone they aren’t good enough often enough—eventually they begin to believe it.

It probably didn’t help her confidence or self-esteem that first really serious boyfriend cheated on her—and not with a beautiful girl—but a rather plain looking one, certainly not as pretty or beautiful as Ellie herself. I guess Ellie doesn’t realize how beautiful she truly is. She doesn’t seem to understand how intelligent, sexy, stubborn, or capable she is. If she did, she wouldn’t let her addictions ruin her health or control her behavior as she has for the last seven months. She wouldn’t have let people like Jarrod take advantage of her the way she has.

I really believe that her time is running out. I really worry what will happen to her this semester. The courses she has chosen are going to be far more difficult that the ones she had last semester. If she is still drinking and doing drugs the way she has been for the past seven months, I think it is very likely that she will fail. Even if she doesn’t fail, it is almost guaranteed that she will do so poorly that she loses her merit-based scholarship. If this happens, I do not believe she will be able to afford to stay at the college she is at. I believe she will be forced to go to a state school, much like her brother has been doing since he flunked out of Bentley two years ago.

Given her sense of pride in being a good student and how well she did her freshman year, when she was taking five courses per semester instead of the four she has been taking this year—I think that losing her scholarship and having to go to a state school would be a huge blow to her self-esteem. I worry about what she will do after such a blow—that her drinking and drug use will escalate even more than it has this past seven months. If that is the case, it is likely that she will not be able to stay in school at all—and that would further damage her self-esteem and feed her insecurities and self-doubts.

If that comes to pass, I think she will spiral out of control and hit the hard, ugly, cold rock-bottom that most alcoholics and drug addicts have to hit before they realize they need help. That will likely require her to end up in jail, in the hospital or living on the street. She may get seriously injured or even killed before that happens. She may injure or kill someone else before that happens. She may get sick or damage her health seriously before she hits rock bottom. Hitting rock bottom may take years. In any event, she will likely have destroyed almost any chance she had at the bright future she started this academic year off with. She will likely kill any possibility of achieving her goals and dreams.

I truly hope this does not come to pass. It would destroy the woman I love, if she still exists. She would become something that she would loathe and despise. I hope she realizes that she has an illness, and that it can be treated, especially if she seeks help sooner rather than later. I hope she can remember how much I love her.

I hope she knows that no matter what, if she makes her amends for the lies she has told and asks me for help, I will be here to help her. If I see that my Ellie is trying to get better—that she is fighting to be herself once again—there is nothing I wouldn’t do to help her, except enable her addictions. I have never loved anyone as much as I love my Ellie. I have never loved anyone for as long as I have loved my Ellie. If she hasn’t understood that by now—from what I have done; what I have been through; and what I have written—then she never will.

I know she loves me. That is why I have been steadfast in my vows to her—that is why I have the commitment I do to her. I still want to marry Ellie. I still want to spend the rest of my life with Ellie—even if it is helping her walk the long road to recovery that she has in front of her.

If she asks me to, I will happily do that—to guide her when she feels lost or confused; to support her when she stumbles or falls; to carry her when her strength fails her; to protect her when she feels threatened or scared; and most of all—to love her—more, each and every day. This is what I promised her back on June 22nd, when I first told her I wanted to marry her and how my feelings for her had grown. She is mi querencia. She is mo chuisle mo chroi. She is my home and haven. She is my partner and better half. I can not abandon her. I will not abandon her. This I promised her and her mother. But I need to know she still exists. I need to see that she wants what I have to offer her and is willing to fight for herself—fight to get better. I need her to decide she wants me in her life once again.

Most of all, I need to see this happen soon—before I truly believe she is lost—a casualty of her addictions and give up and walk away. The deadline I have set is January 18th. That is when the Spring Semester classes start. I do not believe that my beautiful Ellie will survive if she loses her scholarship. I do not see how she can do well enough to keep her scholarship if she is still drinking and smoking marijuana when she starts back to classes this semester.If she hasn’t asked for help, started treatment and gotten a support plan into place by then, I don’t see Ellie ever returning to be the amazing woman I love. If that is the case, I will have no choice but to walk away—I can not watch her destroy all that I love about her.