The Blue Monk

In 1983, when I was 18-years old, I encountered a community of eccentric sailors who lived in a secret anchorage on the far side of the spoil islands a quarter-mile from Miami City Hall. What I found there inspired me and challenged me to expand my perspectives. Though the Dinner Key Anchorage was often dismissed as a community of "derelicts, bums, winos and thieves," I found instead a group of articulate, capable, innovative, educated, and highly skilled people who took me in and literally 'taught me the ropes.' Many of them traveled the world, depending on little but good fortune and determination. At 23, while working on a jazz guitar degree, I bought an old 26-foot sailboat and named her The Blue Monk after the tune by pianist, Thelonious Monk. Six months after graduating, I took off with $30 in my pocket for a series of adventures that took me through the Bahamas and eventually across the Atlantic to Gibraltar. On the surface, The Blue Monk is a memoir that recounts how I came to love sailing, joined a unique community of misunderstood people, and sailed away to enjoy a life of adventure. The book also provides an account of a special slice of Miami history that would otherwise remain unrecorded. But The Blue Monk is not really about me; who wants to read a book by an author who can write about himself for hundreds of pages? The Blue Monk is about something much larger; I am but the narrator. My experiences sailing alone on a small boat were beautiful and sometimes terrifying. Often, they were an odd combination of both. The Blue Monk tells of an encounter with a remarkable world that lies just beyond the horizon and deep within each of us. The Blue Monk is rich life experience translated into prose, a vehicle that transports the reader there and then.