Good morning everyone!

I have been looking at this site for a while now and find you all utterly fascinating, and the amount of information you have amassed here to be quite stunning.
Hence I have joined the site.
My experience with these things is strange and happened quite some time ago, what I would have to say is a long story and one that is somehow creeping its way back into my life.
I not very good at talking about my self, I mostly make things such as tutorials and other teaching stuff.... Its hard to explain, but I do a lot of stuff with 3D software.
Anyhow the subject of "me" doesn't fascinate me so I will try to keep this short.

I live on my boat in various parts of what most people consider the middle of nowhere. Somehow, despite the isolation, I keep bumping into things and occasionally people that remind me of my curiosity about various plants, fungi and the like. This has been increasing recently to the point of near insistence. Having coincidence turn into subtle hint and having subtle hint turn into roaring demand is rather perplexing. I like to be objective about what I experience but this got ridiculous so I joined the site and plan on trying a few things.
Im not the sort of person to say this normally, but its like the plants are demanding that I pay attention and are getting cranky the longer I resist.
So much for rational objectivity huh?

Anyhow, thats it for now, thank you all for this site, your amazing contributions to my education, and most of all for yourselves.


Cheers!
Mealea

Hi and cheers =)

How did you get into sailing / learning to fix boats? My interest in the subject has increased steadily over the last few years, as your interest in plants has you might say.

Hi!

Um....
well...
You know that icon of yours?
Look at the contentedness of that lovely mans face as it comes in contact with that perfect soft curve, certain boats have curves like that too, and somehow they seem in many ways just as soft, though this is perhaps a different sense than most people would tend to get from them. Falling in love with boats is like waking up still breathing to me, and since I live on mine being able to fix things is sort of necessary and highly useful, on top of being very satisfying. I don't want always to fix other peoples boats, it just happens and helps with things like the internet bill which is not insignificant. I fix them because I can and sometimes I get paid because I am lucky.
Sailing a boat is also very much going to cause the same sort of reaction as that happy man in your icon is having. Why this is is complicated, but basically its like being part of something (potentially) huge. In a powerboat you fiddle with a throttle and steer (there is somewhat more to it than that but thats about it mostly) in a sailboat you are part of the boat, part of the water and part of the air and that is one hell of a thing and it goes both ways.... like resting ones head on a perfectly round ass but with the ability to store all sorts of things in it that a nice butt should never be required to store.
How interested in this are you?
Boats of all sorts are a vast subject....

Thymamai you have gotten me thinking. This is something that can be amusing to watch, I consider myself to be more than a bit of an airhead and as anyone who has ever done it can tell you watching an airhead try to think can be hilarious.
It occurred to me after hitting send that I may have not given you the information you want and this was reinforced when I read some stuff in your profile.
So I will say this:
Sailing is the one thing that makes me happy no matter what is going on.
Even when its utterly terrifying it is amazing... sometimes after the fact but still all an experience is is what we think of it.
I have been stuck a few times in the middle of a calm with blazing sun and no wind whatsoever hiding under anything that will make enough shade to keep the sun off me and the blisters at a minimum sometimes for days when suddenly there is the faintest hint of a breeze, the exhilaration when this happens is tremendous and can bring me to tears. Other times its the opposite, being forced to sail in horrid conditions and sleep at the tiller, this becomes a totally new state of mind each time it happens, one can sail and function while asleep, something I find amazing.
Assuming you have never sailed before I recommend two things:
Learn to sail by sailing, dont take classes and get hung up on terminology.
Start with a small boat, there are four that spring to mind as perfect:

The Victoria 18
The ComPac 16
The Cape Dory Typhoon
The Westerly 22

There are many others but these I know to be excellent boats. the Victoria is the lightest and should be considered strictly a day sailor, the other three will survive just about anything, The typhoon and Westerly especially.
I have sailed a ComPac in 60+ knot wind thinking that the boat and I would soon be very dead and neither happened. When the wind dropped to 40 knots I put the main back up and took off like a cannon shot surfing down waves that I didn't have time to think about trying to measure. The ComPac is the lightest of the three offshore boats, the Westerly the most solid, and made for the North Sea.
Oh, there is also the Flica 20 but I have never been on one, they are fantastic boats that will go around the world.
All this is not to say that you can't learn on something else, but if you can sail a small boat you can sail a big, and I mean BIG boat. Someone who can sail any of these can sail a clippership if they had to, its just a matter of learning where things are.
I chose those four because they all have tillers (this is very important to me, wheel steering is impersonal and indirect and has too many moving parts in my opinion) they have cabins, this means you can bring stuff and go places (and have somewhere to sleep) and they all have keels and will right themselves if knocked over (the westerly has 3 keels and will stand up on them if the tide goes out from under you).
To learn to sail you need to learn where wind is coming from, this you can learn without a boat. Just stick your face into the wind till it feels even on both sides of your face, you are now looking right INTO the wind, a very important thing to be able to do, and also very easy unless its very light.

Its funny to be talking about this in here, but to me its oddly appropriate, sailing is a state of mind unlike any other that I have experienced.


Cheers!
Mealea

Welcome, friend. It appears that like many on this mysterious path, you've been volunteered, pay heed to the universe.

Thanks for the welcome Null 24!

I suspect that volunteered is a great way of putting it. Sometimes things are so out of context they must have the attention they demand, this seems to be one of those things.

Cheers, and thanks again!
Mealea

Welcome to the Nexus, MealeaYing! It sounds like you have found yourself on a very interesting path. I would like to hear more about what it is like living on the water... Is this full-time, as in you spend every single night all year long living on your boat? Boat life sounds fascinating!

Thank you!!!

This is funny, people asking about boats I mean.
Living on my boat I can live anywhere that has a coastline, to me this is perfect since I like to spend more of my time underwater than above it. I am on my boat year round, and yes, every day and night. There are things that cause me to go to land, tools, parts, food and stuff like that, but I keep it as seldom as possible unless I am somewhere uninhabited (by people), I like uninhabited places a lot.
Living on the water is in some ways not all that different from living on land, the normal stuff happens:
wake up
guzzle espresso
go to the bathroom
take a shower
eat something
guzzle espresso again
do maintenance and other fiddly bits of stuff....
eat more stuff
And so on....
That's at anchor...
Underway is very different and more variable.... a lot more.

The difference from land is that everything is always moving, you have to pay attention to everything at all times and there is much less noise (storms are loud) and smog. People don't realize how much smog there is, I can smell Florida for example from over a hundred miles away, it smells like car exhaust and garbage and fire. It used to smell of flowers.
Another big difference is impulse, if I have an impulse to go see what the middle of the everglades is like I go and find out (its amazing beyond belief).
Some things are harder or more dangerous, sometimes walking is out of the question, and when crawling becomes difficult slithering and clinging becomes necessary, this is rare.... mostly. Imagine making espresso when you are bouncing over large waves on a gimbaled stove that attempts to stay level when everything around it is going nuts, visually the stove can be rather hypnotic and the espresso pot becomes an object of fear and desire, you want what's in it, you just don't want it on you. Other normal things become challenging as well, some are funny. Think of your bathroom for a moment, then try to imagine climbing up its floor, or trying not to slide down. You get the idea there right? I am not going to elaborate.
Look at it like this: you have everything you need and you wake up in a nice little harbor somewhere that struck your fancy and you suddenly want to see some island that you can see on google earth or read about in National Geographic. You look at your charts, If you have a GPS you look at that too and set waypoints while drinking coffee, you eat a little bit of food, you check out everything on the boat (important) and put everything away (I do mean everything, in bad weather a pencil can become a lawn dart). Up goes the anchor, up go the sails and off you go. Eat some thing else and realize you forgot to bring your coffee out into the cockpit. There are far worse problems in the world than that right?

I have been looking in the sustainable living section of this site a lot, there is some fascinating stuff there. I know some people who have a houseboat that has a huge hydroponic garden on it and while that is not something I could do it has been giving me a lot of ideas. My boat is fairly small and there isn't much room for things like gardens but I am completely energy independent and I put out almost zero pollution, mostly just a bit of packaging from stuff from land, almost everything comes in plastic.

Ok... now Im babbling..... its a big subject!

Mealea, thanks so much for the response. I like the analogies, and my face a big grin reading your description of life on a boat, particularly at the word uninhabited. That sounds lovely. and so also does impulse. Without so many landlubber obligations to greet each morn and so many crazy people to handle and maneuver like explosive materials through the day, you're free from belief free from doubt, free to grow and swell to full mass. To navigate tremendous stretches of your full potential with utter clarity.

A boat garden must look strange. How to keep everything intact during a storm, or when the sail tips heavily almost to capsize? It would have to be a very big ship. Though some plants you can hang, like tomatoes. Or cactus possibly, although then ones face would be in danger of swaying cacti in rough water.

How much, roughly, did your boat cost?

That is so cool! Honestly, my first though was "people really do that?". Now I'm considering how awesome it would be to spend some portion of my life on the water...

Here's a couple questions that are not about boat life :

How experienced are you with psychedelics? How many times, what psychedelics have you tried and which have you liked/disliked? What (if anything) do you feel you have gained from your psychedelic experiences?

OK just a couple more boat questions...

Do you plan to continue this lifestyle for the rest of your days?

Also, do you just constantly sing/whistle/hum this song to yourself all day?

I think I probably would...

@Thymamai:
Im very glad that you liked that, I thought it would make sense!
The garden I was talking about is on a houseboat, its like a house that floats, my boat is totally different, shes a sailboat and not suitable for something like that. They have this houseboat in a harbor so its nice and safe for the most part. I do have some plants, but just because I am fond of them, not because they provide food (which they don't).
Life is lovely, that is about the best way to describe it. It is exactly how you describe it with one exception, its a lot of hard work. Thankfully I love that part too!
I got my boat very very cheap, she was in terrible condition so basicly I paid off the boatyard she was in (about $1,000 usd) and began restoration. Now shes (in my opinion) gorgeous and better looking than just about anything under the sun.
I think my opinion is fact in this case, but I am deeply biased I suppose!

@Entheogenerator:
THAT SONG IS MONSTROUS!
And now its stuck in my head thanks to you!
This I think is a more appropriate song for sticking into someones head:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
To answer your question however, I have no intention or even the slightest desire to ever live on land again, my boat is home to me and that is all I need. So yes, I plan on staying on her for the rest of my life.
To me, looking at places like the east coast of the united states for example, all I see are building and people. The few tiny areas where people are not allowed to build they pollute and I can't stop them. The only thing I can do is go where they can't get to with ease. I know places where there are hundreds and hundreds of miles of beach and the only trace of people is the garbage that washes ashore.... there is plenty of that but still, its nice to not see smokestacks.
Dont get me wrong here, I dont hate people, I just prefer far less of them than most and do not admire a lot of the things we make and do.

Now...
I think I am going to listen to THIS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWpSbTdNMjk
to get that horrible song of yours out of my head.

@Entheogenerator:
I missed one of your questions, that hidious song is to blame.
You asked about experience:


Somewhat.... thats hard to answer as until recently I didn't have much to compare to. This site is changing my ideas of what is going on it the world.


Many times, I don't know the total. Some more than others, some a great many times in various places and situations.

AET:
Very very powerful, simply amazing, and I think something that should be having serious clinical trials. I would compare this to MDMA in the way it feels but say also that it can condition (meaning train it to think in new ways) a mind in one session. I believe it to be a legitimate cure for depression (I have seen it do this myself) and I think its something to be VERY VERY careful with.
This and MDMA are the closest I have come to understanding religion and having used scientific methods to back up what I have seen.

DMT:
This is the most direct and intrusive thing I have ever done to my self, it totally incapacitated me, I curled into a ball each time and was utterly without connection to anything I have ever been familiar with. It ended my experimentation for a long time, not because it was bad but because I was done for the time being.

LSD:
I have done this quite a bit, I find it amazing and extremely important to how I continue to see the world. Without this all belief and hope in, and for, humanity's future would have left me long ago. LSD changed more than the generation who discovered it, it changed the path of humanity from industrial oblivion and eventual extinction to something with the possibility of astonishing greatness. I have done tiny amounts to see if it could replace things like coffee, and stupendous amounts by accident.

MDA:
I did this once (because I have never found it again), I would do it again though I think it has potential for being dangerous, or at least making me dangerous. If a drug can bring clarity this is like standing inside of an enormous bell and having someone hit the outside of the bell with a sledge hammer. My abilities to perceive right and wrong became directly attached to my ability to do something about it, and this in turn gave me remarkable control of my body.
This is a story in and of itself, and sort of a long one, or rather its a short story with a LOT of details.

MDMA:
Oh my. I dont care how many times, not many but not enough either, I am offended that this has been so abused by drug dealers and that so many people have not seen the real thing. MDMA is something that should be taught in school. Things that enhance empathy to the point where it inspires empathy in others not under the influence of anything whatsoever should be explored.

Mescaline in various forms, both synthetic and Peyote:
The synthetic version is what I tried first, I found out I had been lied to for my whole life with the exception of things a few people that others labeled hippies told me. The instant it took effect I knew I had a new way of looking at the world.
I grew Peyote for years and years and became so fond of them that I couldn't eat them. They are alive and well at a friends house and are now very old and quite large and healthy.

Mushrooms (Psilocybin):
Oh my wondrous little friends!
These little beasties have taken me on such outrageous adventures in so many totally different places its hard to think of them all at once.
I have no way of describing mushrooms.



I would be lying to say that I know how to answer this in the way I want to.
I guess that the one single most important thing is that I didn't lose my childhood sense of amazement. At my age, still thinking of my peers as "grownups" is something I consider a privilege.

have a look at this:
http://earth.nullschool....graphic=-73.43,18.98,415

MealeaYing, You lead an amazingly interesting life, I envy you. This is what true freedom is like!

Now you got me wanting to live on a boat for some amount of time, maybe a year or more? I'd love to travel the world and see the sights. I've always said I want to see as much of the world as I can before I die, and I see no better way of doing that. I'd miss certain aspects of land life though.

How are you not a full member yet? lol

Excellent answers, my friend! And you definitely got me with the YouTube link ahaha

I have to agree that I feel a tiny bit of envy creeping up as I read more and more about your aquatic lifestyle. I really appreciate you taking the time to detail your daily life and experience for us naive and inquisitive landlubbers! I have to say, I appreciate almost every new member that I meet on this forum to some extent, but I can say with emphasis that I am very pleased to have you around and I eagerly anticipate the discussions to come. I think you will make a valuable contribution to our little online community. Much love and safe travels, brother

MealeaYing,

I wanted to take a minute and welcome you to the forum.

Your style of writing is very easy and enjoyable to read. I also look forward to seeing more of your posts and insights in the future.

It was my brother's dream to live on a sailboat and travel the world until he got a nasty benzo/opiate addiction and just about destroyed his life. I went out with him a few times and I've got say, being that far out on the water with no land in sight is a very intimidating feeling. Being out on the ocean has a way of making you feel very small and insignificant.

The sunsets on the ocean are by far the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed. The full 360 degree panorama of colors is truly magnificent.

I wish you luck in all of your travels and future endeavors. I also look forward to viewing any 3d art you're willing to share with us.

Much Love and Many Blessings!

MC

Mealea, thanks for the response. Reading this has been inspiring. And again, welcome!

@Legit:

I am not a full member yet I think because I am still very new, I am only one week and a day old! Its funny, for some reason being so young you would think I would not need coffee to wake up!
I think traveling the world as much as possible is a good thing for anybody. Its a VERY BIG and truly amazing place and having a boat is an splendid way to go about it.
Land life as you called it is just life, same as boat life, it just moves around less at least if you aren't in california.
Heres another way to see the world that I am looking into:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragliding
I have some ideas about this and solar power....
I think being able to sail to places that I can fly around in would be exquisite.


@Entheogenerator:
About the video, you got me good with that, IT IS stuck in my head now its quite maddening!
The second one I sent you is much better though and I use it to remove that one of yours when it rears its ugly head!
Dont be envious, its not something you cannot do, this does not mean that you will do what I am doing or even a small portion of it, but it is something anyone can do, I know this because I did and am doing it!
Thank you for being so kind and for giving me such a lovely welcome, you are a fantastic representation of what this site is.
I'M ON A BOAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh no.... not that song again!


@MelCat:
Thank you for the welcome and for liking my writing, I always worry that its hard to read.
Im sorry about your brother. I am guessing that since you said "almost destroyed" that he's gotten things together again? Is he ok now, and does he still have his boat?
You are right about the sunsets, sunrise too.... honestly midnight is amazing!
One of the things I love the most is knowing that there is no land nearby, its safer that way. Being near land is dangerous, it is bristling with things that poke holes in sailboats. Open ocean is wonderful and, in theory, devoid of things that can damage your hull.
Coastal hopping is great, you go from place to place, usually attempting to leave early and arrive somewhere safe before the sun goes down. This can get interesting however, I have been forced to sail for days at a time in places where there was no safe place to stop, I learned to sail while sleeping. Have you ever slept with your eyes open and all of your senses on full blast? Its like and yet very unlike various drugs.
You noticed that I do 3D stuff, its one of my obsessions, I am enthralled with digital sculpting, its tremendous fun and a lot less messy than working in clay or stone.
Im working on a banner for this sites collection, but I keep getting sidetracked, but heres a huge render of something I have been experimenting on, its SERIOUSLY large, so zooming in might be necessary:
https://dl.dropboxuserco...eredAtOutlandishSize.jpg
Its ugly and raw and way too big but it was an interesting test and I now have an idea of what I can do while working with text, something I almost never do.
Thank you very much for the welcome!


@Thymamai:
I am thrilled that its inspiring! Thank you for that and the splendid welcome!!!!

The worry is unjustified from what I've read so far. What is your native language?



Thank you and yes, he's finally starting to get his life back on track but it cost him and family a great deal in the process. Unfortunately, the boat didn't survive the ordeal. Lack of maintenance led to a dead battery which failed to activate the bilge pump and it ended up on the bottom of the river after a hurricane. Luckily no one was on board when it happened but it ended up costing thousands more to have it removed.



I was always fast asleep by midnight! I didn't go out too often but each time I did, it took quite a bit out of me. The gentle rocking of the waves and the peaceful bliss puts me to sleep every time.



That's the kind of stuff that scares me about delving into the lifestyle. I guess I just don't have enough self confidence/esteem to believe I could push through some of those tricky situations. The ocean can be very unforgiving to the most experienced but especially the inexperienced. It's fascinating but oh so spooky!



You should definitely check out the Music/Art/Literature fora and especially the Art Bin thread and Member Art Galleries if you haven't already.

There are so many amazing artists but our resident guard dog, Uncle Knucles is by far the best digital sculpture I'm aware of in our community. I also haven't been very active on the forum lately so I'm sure there are some artists I've missed recently.



The detail is amazing! I really like where it's headed but I'm afraid that most of the detail will be lost by the time it gets shrunk down to banner proportions. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this ends up!

MelCat!
Those links are GREAT!!!!!
Thank you!



Im going to try something...
I hope it works:



EDIT:
It worked!
Its much smaller but if you right click on it you can see the full sized version by opening it in a new tab....