Downsizing from a tiny studio in the heart of the East Village to a 39 foot sailing vessel aiming for the Bay Islands of Honduras is definitely going to be a challenging cultural transition to say the least. We’re going from the capital of excess, where you can literally get anything delivered to your apartment door at any time of day or night — to a place where scarcity is not just a term in an economics textbook but rather a way of life — where delivery to our floating home simply will not be possible.

Forget the convenience and selection of Fresh Direct or the one-click comfort of Amazon Prime, those will become things of past, affectations of a more decadent era. Instead, we'll be able to eat what’s local, affordable, and plentiful. With our water maker and solar cells we should be covered for hydration and wifi — two things modern people simply cannot live without. We’ll need to learn how to fish and more importantly, practice how to clean fish properly so we don’t end up wasting the fish we do end up catching.

We’ll be able to provision ourselves at large supermarkets with supplies — pretty much anything we need that you would find at a supermarket here we can find there ... in more colorful packaging. What we can’t find down there easily we’ll have to get in Florida before we go down into the Caribbean -- so if any of you have any suggestions on essential items to bring from the States -- hit us up in the comments below or shoot us an email!

Sure, I’ll miss the many museums, the movie premieres, film festivals, the cultural events, the live music events happening everywhere, the myriad of food from all cultures at your fingertips, but I won’t miss the crush of people around at all times. No matter where you are in NYC, even if you’re just sitting in you down apartment, there is someone who wants to be in your exact space at that exact moment.
There are far too many people in New York City and there is not nearly enough space. This is a fact any commuter at rush hour will tell you whether they are taking the train, the subway, the bus or an automobile. The system just doesn’t work at this kind of capacity and people just keep moving here. They keep building larger residential towers and condominiums adding more hungry people into the mix. The numbers keep going up, the strain on the systems just keep increasing and nothing is being done to shore up the sagging infrastructure.

I’ve been really lucky the past few years, being able to walk and bike share to work has been amazing, allowing me to become almost intimately aware of the complex rhythms of the best big city in the world.

They call it the city that never sleeps -- but it certainly does rest, it has a circadian beat that’s only ever really quiet in the early morning hours after the bars close and before the early workers rise. The rest of the time the pace is frenetic.
I see hundreds, if not thousands of people on a daily commuting basis as I cruise at a more than a block-a-minute pace through throngs of tourists in Manhattan -- around the Flatiron building, clogging up the outdoor spaces and sidewalks around Madison Square Park and Union Square Park. I’ve no idea how tourists see NYC, I’ve lived lived here long enough that it’s become my home and will be my home in many ways no matter where we end up.
From the admittedly awesome view from the roof of our building, we can see into thousands of apartments, into the lives of countless numbers of other New Yorkers. This pano below just doesn't do it justice.

Over time, I’ve found there’s a psychological weight,a burden of expectation from all those eyes — from all those other desperate people out there — many of them struggling much more than I ever have simply to survive in this incredibly competitive marketplace. Many of them are more gifted, more bright, more energetic and funny than I’ll ever be. Like the song says, if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.

I want to wake up surrounded on all sides by the ocean with no other eyes or people anywhere nearby, just us alone in the middle of the sea ... simply the City Dogs pack, Andrea, Steve, Fozzie Bear & Mischa cradled in the bosom of our Beneteau Oceanic 393.
