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.