Half Moon Cay Bahamas _Sea Horses
The Elixir · Half Moon Cay · Final Call
My Mane Concern
After six consecutive cruises aboard Noordam, one final stop before Fort Lauderdale: white sand, vivid blue water, wonderful horses—and a brain permanently rewired by ships.
The Cavalry Is Coming
Last Stop Before Land
I sign off the Noordam tomorrow after six consecutive cruises. This is the last stop before Fort Lauderdale—Half Moon Cay. White powder-sand beaches, vivid blue water and these wonderful horses.
I used to think working on cruise ships was bad, but I stopped thinking. I guess I have ship for brains.
The need to break free and sail away is ancient, enduring and incessant. Voyages trigger a concept called psychological distance. Something about leaving your place creates a shock and awe—a pathway into a new perspective that floods the brain with ideas.
For me, this shift begins as soon as I am on a cruise ship. Ships are weirdly the most lucid part of my life. Every cruise I take somehow changes my life in some way.
Psychological Distance
The Cruise Lasts Longer Than the Cruise
The actual cruise might be four days or a week. The anticipation of a Norwegian Fjords cruise can last for months, and the memory may last for years—or forever. There is the joy of anticipating it, the joy of doing it and the joy of remembering it.
Travel is an art and a science. It alters perception and personality and may even rewire the brain. That is what I mean by ship for brains. Novelty and one-of-a-kind experiences drive optimism, energy, curiosity and creativity.
My brain made me travel.
Freedom Without Restraint
White Sand, Turquoise Water, Check Please
Caribbean white-sand and coral beaches. Clear, warm turquoise water away from the masses of tourists. Palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze. Okay, I am sold.
Check please.
Golden Thread · Single Source of Truth
The Asymmetric Equation
Every year is evidence. Every retrospective extracts the law beneath the itinerary. The destinations change; the equation keeps the archive coherent.
A Decade Plus Calendar of Hindsight
Six Bearings From the Wake
The Half Moon Cay departure becomes more legible beside the years that followed: voyage, language, passage, mirror, wake and endurance.
2011 · The Long Way Around
365 Days × 8, 7 Seas, 1 Story
Los Angeles to London, 23 ports and a world cruise preserved one shore day at a time.
Distance + Duration + Attention = A World SeenOpen 20112012 · Write? Right!
Happy Last Year
The moving map became a written world: 364 days travelling, more than 130 posts and six continents.
Experience + Language = A Journey Made VisibleOpen 20122013 · Between Two Oceans
The Map Became the Story
Panama, Alaska, the Caribbean, Arabia and an accidental sailor learning to live forward.
Passage + Perspective = StoryOpen 20132014 · Reeling in the Year
The Map Became a Mirror
Desert light, cathedral silence, Caribbean water, North Sea weather and a Pacific return.
Distance + Reflection = MirrorOpen 20142015 · The Wake
The World Became a Wake
Ninety-plus days at sea, 97 dispatches and one year that refused to stay still.
Motion + Memory = WakeOpen 20152020 · Before Covid
The Stiff Upper Lip
Pandemic time reframed London, Ireland, uncertainty and the desire to gather again.
Uncertainty + Endurance = PerspectiveOpen 2020Featured Podcast · Fifteen Years of Backward Bearings
Finding Meaning Through Backward Bearings
Fifteen annual retrospectives become one navigational chart. The destinations matter, but the deeper story is how distance, work, weather, risk, companionship and reinvention reveal their meaning only when viewed from the wake.
Continue the Voyage
Three Companion Routes
The Other Bahamian Stopover
Castaway Cay
Disney Magic and the year the world stopped sailing.
Read Castaway CayThe Operating Lesson
LeaderSHIP
The bridge, the crew and the practice of leadership at sea.
Read LeaderSHIPThe Grand Voyage
The First Segment
A 28-day opening leg that belongs to the wider map of sea years.
Read the Grand VoyageThe Elixir
The View From the Wake
Anticipation + Experience + Memory = A Voyage That Outlives Its ItineraryThe horse ride ends. The ship signs off. The island falls behind. But distance has already done its work: it has changed the traveller who returns.