Cocos Keeling Is Calling

One of the personal reasons I’m so happy—excited even—about using oil pastels for celestial scenes is that these days optical, computer and communications technologies are so advanced that if you toss in a Pacific Seacraft 34 I could do everything I love doing while making blue water passage for, say, Cocos Keeling.

The one thing you really can’t do at all from a boat is astrophotography.

Miles off-shore you get the clearest skies imaginable. You can do visual astronomy. Every good boat has a good pair of binoculars. I also would get a simple Astroscan, but I would use it to get experience before putting together a very fast 6 or 8 inch telescope of similar design.

But astrophotography is right out.

(I’d have a full GPS system, too, but you know my boat will have a sextant and I’ll steer by the stars!)

So it’s always bugged me that if I ever got financial resources together I’d have to put aside thoughts of astro-imaging.

Living the blue water life—nowadays—I could still write, of course. And satellite communications lets sailors remain part of the modern world via the internet. I could still talk to all the people I talk to every day on the net.

Now that I’ve discovered how pleasant it is to do oil pastel impressionistic renderings, I could do astro-imaging on a boat as well.

Almost all of the little pieces of my life are ready for me to make the change to a cruising life, to transition to blue water living. I’m hoping that with this one nagging glitch taken care of, the full powers of my unconscious can work unfettered and finish pushing through whatever needs to be pushed through to make the financial resources necessary for the change available to me.

I am ready to go!

Astronomy And Impressionism

Mars Almost In The Beehive