the new girl
/she floats. she sails. and she’s charming in oh so many ways.
gracie
where will you go? after all the places you've seen, where will you move to? settle down for a bit, you know, after nyc gets old. . .
hah. to buy a boat that’s where.
we didn’t come to brooklin looking for a boat, in fact we weren’t really looking for anything except a place to camp that last day of may in 2016 after a good few weeks on the road. and we’re still going, we have many more places to see, to move to, settle in for a night or two, or thirty; and nyc will never get old, we miss it every day.
we like to say brooklin found us, but we all know towns don’t look for people, but what is a place without its people, or its energy or animals… so maybe people take in people, like wolves, or horses, or they don’t. places make it perfectly clear when you are not welcome. thanks memphis.
we talked about buying a sailboat for years. in nyc. long island. the carolinas. we slept in nova at boat shows in downtown newport and annapolis. we looked at classifieds. i was going to tend bar for another year. bank. save. buy. insert covid. though we never stopped dreaming. we stopped looking. and of course, timing aside there she was on a warm day in august - a nameless 28’ irwin on a mooring in the harbor just down the street from home.
grace, technically means gods favor. ask me when my bank account is empty and again when i’m jumping off the bow in july, the sun warm and golden, if i think anyone (all gods aside here, did me a favor).
then again, grace also translates to charm of movement, seemingly effortless beauty, elegance, goodwill. to be gracious is to be generous, compassionate. she's not just a boat, she's a dream, she’s an evolution, the beginning (and middle) of a gradual process, (she needs work, that’s almost comical to say, she needs a ton of work), but more importantly for us, it’s not only the sailboat that needs work per se, who will change and quite possibly,
become a more complex or better form…
so, here’s to the new girl, here’s to brooklin. whoever found who, whoever took the other one in, with compassion, with grace, with the light of the stars and the flick of the wind. so much more to come. please follow along as we refit gracie.
get.drunk.bear.down
revolution.evolution
hug.your.dog