Decompressing after closing out a series of readings online tonight to launch Dark Mountain's latest anthology, Dark Ocean: exceptional ideas — in prose, poetry, and imagery — from around the world.

Thank you so much @neauoire, @rek and @chainik for your support.

You can order the book here:

https://dark-mountain.net/product/dark-mountain-issue-26-dark-ocean/

This Friday, 18th October, Dark Mountain is launching its latest anthology, Dark Ocean, with online readings by some of its contributors (I'll be among them).

The event starts at 7.30pm UK time and is free, although you do need to register via Eventbrite.

https://dark-mountain.net/events/a-dark-ocean-launching-do-join-us/

"I'm sometimes asked why I'm having to plead for crowd-funding. How have I failed so badly at life?"

My latest update to Liz Cullinane's Go Fund Me appeal for us. And yes, I have noticed that these are (maybe) getting a little weirder.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home

The appeal closes at the end of this month.

Issues that water-based travelling communities face:

No permanent local address
Access to healthcare/awareness of services available
No benefits/living in poverty
Unhealthy/unsafe living conditions
Discrimination

– Sam Worrall, Criminal Justice Policy Officer at Friends, Families & Travellers.

https://www.gypsy-traveller.org/blog/sam-worrall-inequality-on-the-cut/

Thank you, again, to everyone who has supported our appeal. You have been incredibly caring and generous.

Our boat, with everything we own aboard it, is in Tangier, finally. But we still need funds to get back to the boat from the UK. In a few days, we’ll have nowhere to live/nothing to live on. Our straits will then be dire.

We have no other choice but to plead for a little more help to make it the rest of the way.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home

The latest update to the appeal launched for us by Irish artist, Liz Cullinane:

"Our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have supported this appeal. Your generosity and care has taken us three-quarters of the way towards this appeal's goal of £12,000. More importantly, it has kept my wife and me safe..."

If you're able, please help end our long drift.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home

Photos by Evgenia Arbugaeva.

[from her monograph Weather Man, 2014]

Something out of left field:

Our 32-foot sailboat, Wrack, will be in the western Med' within a couple of weeks. I'm toying with the idea that artists, scientists and others might utilise her next year as a mobile, floating platform for creative/research projects or as a retreat.

Any interest?

I'd remain aboard as skipper to navigate and maintain the boat, as well as mentor occasionally. There would be accommodation for 2-3 guests.

Still desperately looking for somewhere, anywhere, to stay outside the EU's Schengen zone (UK, Ireland, USA, Tangier), from the last week of July.

We're looking for a cheap room/sublet for a couple of weeks this month in the UK.

If you know of anything, please let me know.

Thank you.

Galway Blazer II, an unconventional junk-rigged schooner designed by English naval architect Angus Primrose and built at Souter’s, in Cowes, Isle of Wight, in 1967, for a much-decorated wartime submarine commander, Bill King, who intended to sail her alone around the world.

A modern take on the traditional Chinese trading junk: the 48.5-foot K’ung Fu-Tse, designed by the late Thomas Colvin and built of aluminium.

Colvin lived aboard the junk with his family and from 1973 to 1989, sailed her more than 75.000 sea miles.

Wandering activists and poets, George and Mary Oppen, aboard the small boat they lived on in the 1930s.

(Re)reading Mary Oppen's Meaning A Life at the moment.

"Their slow voyage southwards along the Atlantic coast of Europe in search of somewhere to settle has become a kind of performance art, expressed in the poetic, diaristic prose and photos that turn up daily on social media."

– Liz Cullinane

https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-voyage-in-search-of-home

The Māori King and other Indigenous leaders have signed a treaty recognizing whales as legal persons.The document is rooted in the Māori worldview, in which whales are regarded as ancestors.

[from A Descendant’s Call For Whale Legal Personhood by Mere Tokoko, via Atmos, 2024]

https://atmos.earth/a-descendants-call-for-whale-legal-personhood/

I'm looking for crew for Wrack's voyage south to the Mediterranean, departing in early May from Cherbourg, in France. Sail-handling and watch-keeping experience are essential.

For further details: https://crewbay.com/job/12098

Or reach out to me here.

Another tiny, ocean-going sailboat: Shrimpy, a tiny, 5.5 metre (18’ 6”), plywood Caprice Mark I, designed by Robert Tucker,

In 1972, Englishman Shane Acton, aged 25, bought her second-hand for £400 and almost immediately, with minimal equipment and no experience, set off on a voyage around the world. A Swiss woman, Iris Derungs, joined him along the way.

He returned to England eight years later, wrote a book, then sailed to Central America, settled ashore, and wrote another.

Our daughter, India, disappeared twelve days ago in San Diego, California. It is believed she might still be in the City Heights area of the city. If you've seen her in the past week, please contact the Missing Persons Unit of San Diego County Sheriff Department: +1 619 531 2277

#Missing #Alert #MissingPerson #SanDiego #California #Police

My daughter’s name is India Delilah O’Hanlon. An Australian-American by birth, she has lived and worked in San Diego for the past two years. She is 25 years old. Eleven days ago, she disappeared, leaving behind her clothes, make-up, computer, and even her social security card and credit cards. Her parents were probably the last to see her, on 16 January, at 07.56pm, via a video call in which she seemed distracted, high, and agitated by the arrival of an unseen male.