If you skip the months of planning and dreaming, our story began in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, in the Windward Islands of the Caribbean. Six weeks sailing a partial thread of the Coconut Highway. I’ve taken three sailing classes, we bought two scuba tanks, we had T-shirts printed, and we’re being joined by a handful of adventurous and brave crew (brave for the lifestyle of sailing, not the safety of the sail). We’re sometimes as few as three and for one night as many as nine.

We’re on a Bavaria 46-foot monohull named Albaran, with four cabins, two heads (bathrooms), a small galley (kitchen), and a lounge. We are living a camping lifestyle, conserving freshwater by rarely showering and rinsing dishes in saltwater before they get a spot of dish soap on a sponge and finally a trickle of water. We won’t quite be able to keep food frozen, but we do have a freezer box and a fridge that we power some of the time and supplement with ice when we’re able to get it.

We will have saltwater-soaked and wind-blown hair, and we will jump up to close hatches in the night when squalls move through (and then when it gets too stuffy we’ll be up again to open them). We carry trash and recycling to shore, store up on drinking water every time we find a store, and ice every time we find a store that sells it. We’ve loaded up many hours of music, including, of course, Christopher Cross and plenty of other required sailing tunes. We will have epic sails, dives, and hikes, and we will have days to clean and maintain the boat, find wifi and ATMs. We will have engine trouble (knowledge gained through my experiential learning).

We’ll typically scrounge for breakfast and lunch, and often find a restaurant in the town where we’re moored. Other nights, we’ll be eating a lot of pasta. We have stuff in every corner of the boat—the engine is under the stairs, the gas tank is under one of the aft cabins. Water tanks, batteries, scuba gear, food, luggage, lines, pots and pans, fenders—it’s all underneath where we sit and where we sleep.

Our sails last from between a few hours and more than 12, going around 80 miles for a longer sail. We hope to motor as little as possible. If it’s a clear day, we’ll probably always be in sight of land (though often just a hazy bump in the distance). Sometimes we will moor (tying off to a line that reaches down to a huge concrete block), and sometimes we’ll be anchoring. We hope for steady winds from the east and dolphins on the bow. We’re using Eastern Caribbean dollars, U.S. dollars, and Euros, depending on the island, and alternating between English and French.

Right before our trip I finished a week of instructing at the Institute for Creative Teaching in Denver, and I worked with Jo Fitsell, a visual artist. The first task she gave the teachers was to find a tree and have it tell them a story. Along our adventure I hope to learn the stories of waves and sunsets, of clouds and islands. I love learning about the making of a place—not just the human stories, but the geology. And what could be more interesting than a string of volcanic islands? I’m excited to discover the story of our trip.

I’m behind getting a blog out, as I’ve been without a computer since my fifth day on the boat—my first blog was lost, so I’m catching up, abbreviating, and letting go of lots of revising in hopes that I can post at least a few times throughout the trip. The story on the computer loss is to follow, as well as the story of a brave rescue of a cute skirt that I thought was forever sacrificed to Neptune, the god of the sea.

Still working on photos, but those will follow as well.