Sovereign Nations

…Last night, while enjoying the last of my days off I watched the Downtown Sailing Centers Thursday night Beer-Can races from the dock.

…In December of 1999 only moments after Dena and I put the lettering on the transom of our ship S/V Sovereign Nation I said to her, If I was ever going to get a tattoo with any kind of spelled out message in it, it would be this, and I pointed at the most beautiful transom I’d ever seen on a sailboat, the one we had just completed (above)…

…Then, in 2003 Dena and I actually got serious about the idea and printed out the design, tapped it up on my back, shot some pics, posted a web page for Gypsy Jill, Dena’s friend and Tattoo Artist, to see and make her drawings from.  After putting the lettering on my back I fantasized about what kinds of things I could add to the lettering to enhance the story value. I thought of adding chain down my arms that ultimately attached to a pair of anchors that would be buried in both of my arms. Later that year, for reasons I don’t really need to go into, I wasn’t able to get the design applied to my skin so the whole project was put on the furthest back burner and all but forgotten.

…Well, yesterday after nearly 12 years since the original lettering was put on that transom and 8 since I back-burner-ed the entire project , I finally did something about getting some kind of permanent  artwork on my body that would somehow represent the story that IS my life, I got that tattoo.

I was in that chair for five hours…

…And the artist, Mick Beasley of Dragon Moon Tattoo, Dena and I talked all day about what it was that I was doing, not only to my body but to the very story of my life.

…We talked about the beauty of life and art and how as living artists it is our responsibility to live our dreams and tell our stories any way we can.

…Overall my procedure was incredible! Mick was the quintessential professional and our explorations into the varied philosophies of the mortification of our flesh was one of the most amazing bonding experiences that I have ever shared with Dena, who was there pretty much all day, and another person!

We got all the initial lettering done in the main body of the words…

…And now, the chains will wrap their way down my arms to terminate on two anchors that will be buried in my forearms.

…So now here I am, another tattooed human with a story tell and a whole hell-of-a-lot of skin to do it it on,

Bring It!

All Photos above are by Dena Hankins.

P.S. Thanks Mick, you’re incredible!

…Sometimes revolution can be so beautiful. Thank you Egypt for having, so far, the sexiest uprising of the 21st century…

…Are a hand picked batch of very special photographs from our travels over the past decade or so. I think these pictures are as close to the emotional center of our adventures as we can show you, or rather, these are the quintessential moments. All of the images across the top of the screen are presented in a very strange and challenging medium, one that is cropped at an extreme horizontal (1200 X 270 mp) and exhibited randomly. As of today there are 57 such images, so, if you want to see them all, click the “home” icon (above right-very top) and that will reload this page and present another photo… Give it a try, It’s just another venue for the exhibition of our art, but one we really love and enjoy!

Itinerant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An itinerant is a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home.[1] The term comes from late 16th century: from late Latin itinerant (travelling), from the verb itinerari, from Latin iter, itiner (journey, road).[2]

Types of itinerants

* Drifters (rogues, rovers, vagabonds, vagrants)
* Perpetual travelers, including illegal aliens (migrants)
* Nomads, including hunter-gatherers and gypsies
* Hobos, including tramps, bums, derelicts
* Refugees and displaced persons
* Street people (street children, paupers, squatters, waifs, schnorrers)
* World citizens

Itinerants throughout history and today

* Freight Train Riders of America (freighthoppers in United States)
* Romani people
* Various indigenous peoples (indigenous peoples, including uncontacted peoples)

* Afar people in Horn of Africa
* Bajau of Philippines
* Banjara of India
* Bedouin (nomadic Arab people of the desert)
* Beja people in North Africa
* Bushmen of Southern Africa
* Dom people in North Africa and Southwest Asia
* Eurasian nomads of Eurasian Steppe
* Ghilzai in South-Central Asia
* Indigenous Australians
* Indigenous Norwegian Travellers
* Indigenous peoples of the Americas
* Irish Travellers
* Kuchi people of Afghanistan
* Nomads of India
* Pygmy peoples in Equatorial Africa and parts of Southeast Asia
* Quinqui in northeren half of Spain)
* Scottish Travellers
* Yeniche people in Europe
* Carnies (travelling show-people)
* Hippies, including New Age travellers and Rainbow Travellers
* Jossers (circus artists)
* Kobzari (musicians of Ukraine)
* Lightermen (bargees in England)
* Peredvizhniki (realist artists of Russia)
* Swagmen (homelessness transients in Australia and New Zealand)
* Circuit riders and Gyrovagues (Christian ministers and monks)
* Bhikkhus (Buddhist monks)
* Mendicants (beggars of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism and Buddhism)
* Pilgrims (religious travellers)
* Sadhus (Jain monks)
*Global Circumnavigaters

* Christopher McCandless
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
* Paul Erdős
* Gautama Buddha
* Historical Jesus

See also

* Anarcho-primitivism
* Human migration
* Illegal immigration
* Multiculturalism
* Simple living
* Travel
References

1. ^ Itinerant Synonyms, Itinerant Antonyms at Thesaurus.com
2. ^ Definition of itinerant from Oxford Dictionaries Online

Further reading

* George Orwell (1933). Down and Out in Paris and London. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-15-626224-X.
* Jack Kerouac (1957). On the Road. Viking Press. ISBN 0-14-118267-9.
* Rolf Potts (2002). Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. Villard Books. ISBN 0-81-299218-0.
* Sean A. Mulvihill, Larry Kurnarsky (2007). “Living Luminaries – The Serious Business of Happiness” (documentary). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0447431/. “Life is a journey.”

The best of a 30-shot photo-freak-out.

… And enjoying the lightshow.

Our boat is 49 years old and this year for her birthday, we got her a Haul-Out!

We’ve spent the last three days Hauling her out of the water,

putting in two new through-hull’s! One in the Galley…

…And one in the Head.

The thru-hulls turned out to be easy, no really(!)

…So we could take our sweet time on the bottom and get it done right.

Day one and two were picture perfect best-case-scenario, haul-out days. The weather was cool and clear on the first day and cool and damp on the second day making for comfortable working conditions both days.

This is our first go-round with the Trinidad S.R., the most pricey of West Marine’s bottom pain offerings, so doing the job right was a luxury we could afford on this haul-out. The first step was to chip-n-scrape every square inch of the bottom of the boat to make sure none of those pesky Chesapeake Bay Critters survived the power washing. Next, we griddle bricked from stem to stern using griddle cleaning pumice bricks to wet-sand every single part of the boat that makes constant contact with the water. It was indeed a back-breaking job that coated us both in a thick black goop made up of YEARS of local crustacean life from here to Key West, FL…

Day Two was also spent buffing out the top-sides with 3M buffing compound and that made the boat look incredible!

After that we prepped her bottom for a serious Petit, Trinidad SR bottom-painting. Interlux 216 is a special solvent that leveled the paint on the bottom.  It gives it a smoother look and helps the new paint adhere better.

On day three we gussied-up in our best bottom-painting gear and put a new thick coat of bright red bottom paint on our beautiful home…

…The last job was a fresh coat of wax on the top-sides to keep her looking fresh through-out the coming winter months, T’da!!!

It’s been by far the most relaxing haul-out of the 7 Dena and I have done together and that’s not from a lack of huge projects on this one, I believe we can attribute our good fortune this time around directly to patience, experience and a love for the work that can only show through a job well done.