Welcome to our year-long journey on Journey. We are inspired by a young couple and their two children (you know who you are) who made the intra coastal passage and kept family and friends informed of their whereabouts and adventures through a blog.

Boats have logs, daily entries of position, weather, speed, course and other items - the bread crumbs of the voyage. Wikipedia defines a blog as "a portmanteau of web log." So this blog like a log will contain entries in chronological order, a diary of our trip and whatever else seems worth posting. Is a blog on a boat a bog?

Journey is a Mason 33, built in 1985 by a US Company called Pacific Asian Enterprises based in San Diego that now builds Nordhaven power yachts. She is 33’9” long and her beam is 10’ 10”. She is a heavy, about 9 tons displacement, blue water cruising boat.

Casting off

Last summer our group TCSA, Teel Cove Sailing Association (a.k.a. Trinity Church Sailing Association) of people who are passionate about faith and sailing gathered here for a rendezvous. We voyaged together to a nearby Island where George Weymouth landed in 1605 on the day of Pentecost. We shared the Eucharist around a cross marking the spot where it was believed that the first Anglican Communion was held. They named the spot Pentecost Harbor, in celebration and recognition of the date of their arrival. Some excerpts of the reflections offered that day set the stage for our casting off this Sunday in Journey.

“We like Waymouth when we sail need to be alert. Waymouth had to use all of his senses to read the environment for every clue it would offer to give safe passage or to approach a shore including this Island. He had to miss the ledges that are submerged from mid-tide on, then find bottom in this harbor that would hold.

"Sailing demands we live in the moment. It blocks the mind dwelling on past mistakes or worries of the future. And it is in the acute, vivid sense of the abundance of the moment that we sense the Holy Spirit.

What a great name, Pentecost Harbor. What a great thing to bring the acuity we must have in sailing to full awareness of the people and places wherever we are. In that seeing the now of life is the place of Pentecost, face to face with the glorious presence of, as Sam (our former Rector) would say, the Love Behind The Universe.

"We like Waymouth take a risk when embarking on a journey to a new place. It is casting off what is known and seemingly secure. In sailing we cast off again and again to journeying on through the uncertainties, beauty and danger of the sea.

"We are often on voyages of recreation better said as 're-creation' to refresh …to find something new in ourselves, to find a new way of being. The elixir of this sport is that at sea there is no room for pretentiousness. We cast off in sailing and in life into a humble state where truth about ourselves and lives prevail, the state of being where we embrace and are embraced by God.

"We like Waymouth in our journeys seek a boon for our odysseys. Waymouth and his backers sought land, food, and materials for possession and gain. What reward do we seek from our voyages at sea and in life? Good things like relaxation, adventure, deep appreciation of nature.

"But I offer that we reflect on this recreation as a potent teacher and passage way to ever deeper faith. To use its experiences, its wonderful terms, all the metaphors and realities of voyaging as a stimulus for transformation to the joy of living fully in the now of life, to the joy of casting off what holds us from full awareness and service, to the joy of humility that is life lived in all of the pain and glory of truth. Sailing is a place for our personal pentecosts.”