A New Direction for Capt Chris- The Oceanus Intitiative

When I started CCB in 2007, I did so in response to the elitest nature of Connecticut's position to the waters of Long Island Sound and boating. Only the wealthy had unfettered access to the waters of Long Island Sound and I found that infuriating. You had to have this zip code or that job or come from that family. If you talked the right way, looked the part and had the cash, boating was by default part of your lexicon. If not, you were part of the 99% of the rest of us who only on the rarest occasion had a chance to go down to the sea in boats.

Oh sure, everyone has their sea story of when their brother's cousin's sister threw up while blue fishing in 1968. As a boating guy, it is my job to listen everybody's story of how they used to have a boat and loved it but for any number of reasons no longer have one and miss it terribly. But why are there so many people that "used to go boating" or "used to have a boat" but no longer do? And why do they find that acceptable?

CCB was designed to bring everyone back to boating in Connecticut regardless of income, residency or social standing.  I thought that idea would sell itself and was so motivated by it in fact I invested my inheritance in it by founding CCB. What I didn't realize is that most people in Connecticut, didn't WANT to go boating.

Dont get me wrong when I say that, EVERYONE wants to go boating. Its just that no one  WANTs to PAY for boating. The idea of taking the tiller and sailing is a romantic notion filled with ascots, money and success. And everyone wants that. But when you scrape away the romance, throw the champagne overboard and get the bill, boating loses its aura.

Boats are dirty, smelly, expensive, make you puke, and in constant need of repair. When someone wants to go for a ride its great, but when you have to be the one to provide the ride, its not so much fun. The guys of the Principessa would tell you that anyway.

On Tuesday morning at 5AM, a crew of CCBers and I set out for New Jersey's Atlantic Highlands to bring  the 35' Viking named "Principessa" back to Connecticut. Built in 1975, she is the Cadillac of power boats, complete with gas-guzzling twin inboards. She rolled on her side in Hurricane Sandy and so was bought for a song from the salvage company who was responsible for liquidating the damaged fleet of boats. For the last three weeks, The CCB Crew and I have been struggling to bring that old girl back to life. By Tuesday at 11AM she was set to be launched and we were going to head up across Raritan Bay into the East River and up to Long Island Sound.

While the fog was rolling in, and the mechanic was feverishly trying to get the port motor to run properly with spit and chewing gum, the vessel was launched.

We half expected it to sink on the spot, but when that didn't happen, our spirits were buoyed. When the starboard motor rolled over and great big puff of grey smoke belched out, that was the first time in weeks we all felt a sense of weight leave our shoulders- the old girl was running.

We backed out of the slip with a little help from a kind gentlemen in a tow boat, took a short stop on a mooring to get the port motor put back together and running and then motored the two and half miles south to Bahr's Landing in the Shrewsbury River for fuel and a test run to see if we could hope to make it up the East River to Connecticut. With nerves running hot, but the motors purring nicely, we felt our way through pea soup fog to the landing, took on 125 gallons of gas and set for home by 1PM.

By the time we reached half way across the Bay, the fog was lifting and the Statue of Liberty was clearly visible. I couldn't help but think of my Great Grandmother Apollonian Stoffan who steamed these very same waters aboard the Carpathia in 1905. We veered right at the Battery, let the current grab our boat and shoot us right up the East River at 18 knots. Passing the Throggs Neck Bridge and feeling the steady bounce of east bound waves kick in, we knew we had entered Long Island Sound. By the time the sun set and we rolled up into our first stop over in Bridgeport, a feeling of elation set in. The Viking ran, the course was made and we had just finished another epic journey under the CCB flag.

Unfortunately, that elation evaporated late Wednesday. As we were doing a final test run out of East End Yacht Club, the port motor caught fire and shorted out the whole electrical system. A quick squirt of a fire extinguisher and a long tow back to the Boat Basin by our trusty old work horse Sally, and the high of the day before turned into dread about what was to come.

But that's boating. Even on your best days of sailing, someone is throwing up, someone else is turning an unresponsive key and still someone else is causing $1000 of gel coat damage at the fuel dock. BOAT stands for Break Out Another Thousand and that's the truth of it. But CCB was meant to try and reverse that course.

The Viking has a cadre of talented men with wrenches who have taken a turn at making her run, and still a dozen more men will volunteer to help before its all done. We drive down the cost of boating at CCB by working together as a community for the enjoyment of all, but its still expensive.  And even if we get kicked out of Bridgeport, fail at funding the Mystic and have our entire fleet confiscated by CEDF or the Harbor Commission, that wont change. There will always be a need for friends on boats who work together for the success and enjoyment of the whole group. And it will always be expensive.

The wheels have been set in motion for CCB to go on forever. As long as people are willing to work together to make it work, CCB will work. But it requires work and money.  The good news is that will never change, and the bad news is, that will never change.

But that trip in the Viking opened my eyes to a lot more than just the expense and hassle of boating. It was great to see so many people working together to make it happen and see community boating do what it was supposed to do. But somewhere in between the Narrows and Execution Rocks, a light turned on for me.

We were following the historic migration path of millions of boats over the years and trillions of birds, fish and other marine life on their way from the Atlantic Ocean to Long Island Sound. That path way, scarred from Hurricane Sandy, pock marked from decades of development and feared by generations, was so worn by sails and plowed over by propellers that I realized, I had already been there.

Maybe I never had the helm driving under the Brooklyn Bridge before, but in every other respect I had been there and knew what to expect. I had the linkage to the Ocean in my soul already. I was already part of Oceanus, the Greek term for the Atlantic Ocean, but also a term referring to the oneness of an ancient world wide inter-linked river system thought to encircle the globe and presided over by the Poseidon. That was part of me already, but for so many others it was so far off despite being mere feet from their apartments, sidewalks and homes.

And that's when it occurred to me, the link to the sea is what I was striving for by starting CCB, the culture of an oceanic people. I wanted to share that culture with everyone. Every kid needed to take the helm, every man needed to feel the power of the sea and every child needs to feel the sameness of the kinship she has with her mother as she has with the Ocean. It is all one, it is all the same- it is all part of each of us. The Ocean is in our blood, in our lungs and in our minds. Taste your own perspiration and you will taste the Sea. Put your ear to any shell and you will hear the sea. Close your eyes and spin and you can feel the sea. It is all around us and inside us all the time- The Ocean is part of us even if we have no obvious connection to it today, but it is part of us always.

Sailing and Boating is a means to an end- a mode of transportation. Its critical to get to the Atlantic but still and all, its just a vessel not the end goal. The key to boating is where your going and where you will be when you get there. For too long I have concerned myself with advocating for the means of entry to the sea and not concerned myself with the end product, being on the sea.

By getting out on Long Island Sound, you are becoming part of a greater picture, the global system of waters. And it is not just how you get there that matters, but the fact that your there in the first place. Being on the sea is so much more worth while than what manner of boat you drive or sail or how well you sail it. How much it costs you or what your neighbors think of you and your boat.

And that's where I went wrong with CCB- I focused on the method and not on the meaning. CCB is about getting access to the water- a task that is a bigger battle than I can afford here in Connecticut. But my goals for CCB were more than just getting access to the Sound, it was getting out to the Ocean, physically, metaphorically, spiritually and mentally. It was getting the hearts and minds of Connecticut's people invested in their personal connection to the Sea. Why? Because its good!!

As John Madden was driving north through New York City on Tuesday and we drove along its shores, I realized I had done him a disservice. John needed to be at the helm and see the world from the perspective of the Sea. He needed sea therapy to unburden his mind, his soul and his heart and I was instead reaping the benefits. That is a mistake I wont soon forget and hope to never make again.

A view of NYC's One World Trade Center taken this morning from
Jersey City, N.J., by NBC News' Anne Thompson.

Latest on the installation of the final pieces of the spire:http://on.today.com/18y9hDG

But that's when I realized John was one of the millions who needed to be on that boat Tuesday. Needed to feel the current launch their vessel up the East River, see the Freedom Tower from Raritan Bay and the rumble of the Veranzano Bridge. He needed to feel the thrill of testing your metal against Hell's Gate and the ghosts of Execution Rocks. And the final relief entering the safety and openness of Long Island Sound.

You're not gonna do it in a Hunter 140 out of Bridgeport, but there is no reason why you cant do it in a Hunter 27 out of  Bridgeport or for that matter, a 35' Viking, or a 171- schooner, or  a 261'- Dive Barge or a 230'- Research Vessel. Its not the boat that's important, but the journey and the eventual destination that matters when opening the hearts and minds of the worn, weary and downtrodden.

The Crew of the "Principessa"

I have decided that CCB will live on its own, and if the forces at work in Connecticut want to try to kill it, so be it. You cant kill something that refuses to die. Much the same way, you cant hold water in your hands, you cant keep people from going to the water. Unless you kill their desire to do so.

So I have decided, I will create a new organization. One that fosters a connection between people and the Atlantic Ocean.  I wont try to fix the whole world, just our little part of it here in the Eastern United States. My aim is to take the poor, the disenfranchised and the dissatisfied out on the Sea in an effort to develop a cultural and spiritual link to the Atlantic Ocean. I want to give everyone the experience of following the paths of migratory birds and diadromous fish. I want people to see that the Atlantic Ocean is part of us and we are part of it as East Coast Residents and that if we are to evolve as a people in the face of climate change, sea level rise and a global sea change, we must re-link to the water we all at one time crossed to come here but for too long have turned our backs on.

This organization will rise from the ashes of CCB and will go where we could not with our limited focus and provincial thinking in Connecticut. It will take people from New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Dover, Baltimore, Raleigh, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Oklahoma City and every where in between near and far out to the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to make them cultural stakeholders preparing for a future that is interwoven with Atlantic on the Eastern Seaboard. And while we will start with the east and west passages out to the Atlantic from Long Island Sound aboard the mighty Mystic if we can win her, we will continue by creating a fleet of vessels up and and down the Eastern Seaboard that dock in places like Hampton Roads, Philadelphia, New York City, Annapolis, on down to Currituck Sound, Charleston and Miami.

Yes it will be expensive I know that. But how much more expensive would it be for us to continue to have events like Sandy and be forced to relearn the lessons of hubris disconnection to the Atlantic? We must learn to bend with the winds, rather than brace against them if we are to thrive with 30 foot storm surges, incremental sea rises and melting ice caps. The mighty Atlantic is growing, every day, a centimeter at a time. Our children will live closer to the water than our parents ever did and if we do not learn to live with it, it will claim us.

Its not that we do not love the wilds, but that the wilds are being advocated
for in lieu of people. The Oceanus Initiative will work to provide human access
to natural habitat the way some advocate for piping plover. 

By creating a future generation of stakeholders who understand their connection to the Sea in more than just than just the passive way provided by the internet and TV, we will work to awaken the same internal rythms in people that call those animals who live with the water to the sea. I don't want to save the piping plover, I want to save the people. I don't want to give people boat rides, but give them the tools to follow the migratory paths to the Ocean. I want people to understand the natural link they have and the intrinsic understanding of how it works because not only will it enrich their lives, it may also save them.

A common bunker needs no lesson on how to make it from Bermuda to Bridgeport and behaves no different in either port. They are one with the sea and are just as fragile and mortal as we are. Their journey is fraught with danger and most will not live to share the tale of their journey with their offspring. They can die from Oxygen deprivation,  be eviscerated by a predator or impaled by a hook. And they behave the same regardless.

Herring like Bunker run the courses from Sea to shore yearly
without lessons or direction. We too should have an innate sense
of our way to the open water 

We must teach our children to have the same resilience against the sea and the natural world if we are to prepare them to live with the global sea change that is coming towards us as East Coast residents. They must learn to navigate their way to and from the Atlantic, have the tools to feed themselves from the Sea, live on it and with it, become global stewards of it. They need to see what plastic pollution is doing, carbon emissions are doing, and sea-level rise is doing. They need to learn where the Petrel goes when the winds blow and how the Otter lives in where there is not a drop to drink. They need to learn how the Vikings made it to shores of the Labrador Coast and the natives harvested the seas to earn a living and feed their families. They need to understand why and how there great and great great grandparents crossed an angry sea to make a new life in the new world on the shores of the mighty North Atlantic.

And I will call this new organization The Oceanus Initiative- I think- What do you think?