Over 23 years of blogging and still adrift beneath an unfamiliar sky.
My name is Alex Dorsey. Welcome to Project BlueSphere.
I started blogging in 2003 and largely stepped away in 2016. Now I’m returning, older and with a different perspective, because I feel there’s room for an honest conversation about travel, freedom, and the strange business of being alive in the world today.
A great deal happened during my years away from writing. The war in Ukraine, friends and family passing, and a beautiful marriage ended. I went through a very dark period of my life. The future I had imagined changed. Some experiences take time to find words for, and longer still to understand.
As I write this, I’ve been sober for nearly a year, finding life once again. It is a strange time in history to be sober. Looking at the world without that familiar escape leaves plenty to consider. I’m coming back to this blog with questions I want to explore, and with a renewed desire to share what I see and more importantly feel.
Neil Young sang, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” There’s something in that line that speaks to my return. The desire to remain involved in life, to make something, to care enough to put words on a page again. I still have things to say, places to go, and much to learn, even now in my early 60s.
After decades of traveling, I remain a student. Experience has given me practical knowledge and stories worth sharing, but it has also made me more aware of the limits of my understanding. I can offer my perspectivem, however I expect it to keep changing.
Project BlueSphere will follow that process through writing, photographs, and new videos. I’ll share life aboard my sailboat (Eleanor), journeys overland, practical projects, and reflections that sometimes have very little to do with travel. My two feature-length sailing films are also available to watch.
My departure began long before I cast off.
I had worked in Hollywood and later built a second career as a stockbroker and financial adviser. I understood money, yet found its pursuit increasingly unrewarding. Credit, bills, traffic, and expectations occupied too much of my life. I wanted more say in how I spent my time in this simulation.
“Ask not how much you can get, but how little you need.”
That thought gave me a way to begin. Reducing what I needed made a different life possible.
In 2002, I sold my Jeep and bought Namaste, a 28-foot Westsail, with the last of my money: $20,000. After a year of working on her, I sailed south from Mystic, Connecticut, in early 2003 with a very small income.
My travels took me through the Bahamas, Jamaica, Colombia, and Panama, then to the Galápagos islands and across the Pacific. There were the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Tahiti, Bora Bora, the Cook Islands, Tonga, and many other places I had once known only as dreams on a chart.
After sailing halfway around the world, completing a circumnavigation ceased to be the point. I wanted to continue living this way. The voyage had become open-ended with no destination in sight.
In 2007, I sold Namaste in Brisbane, Australia, and returned to the United States. I bought Splendid, a 1973 40-foot Cheoy Lee Midshipman ketch, for $15,000. She needed extensive work. I spent a couple of years restoring her and scrounging parts before leaving Florida again.
Splendid was my home for seven years. I later sold her and bought Eleanor, the boat I have now. I also built an overland vehicle so I could explore farther inland. My sailboat remains my home base, while the road offers another way to see what lies beyond the familiar.
The minimalist traveler has little, wants little, thinks small, and dreams big.
I still feel close to that idea. Aboard a boat, the demands of possessions are difficult to ignore. Every object occupies space. Equipment needs maintenance. Water and electricity must be accounted for. You learn to consider what earns its place.
Over the years, I’ve made bread, pasta, cheese, yogurt, beer, and wine. I’ve caught fish, gathered fruit where it was available, grown herbs aboard, and relied on solar power. Learning to provide more for myself has helped me live on less money and given me greater independence.
There is satisfaction in those ordinary tasks. There is frustration, too. Boats break, weather changes plans, and a repair can reveal how little you knew when you began it. I want the writing and videos here to include those parts. The beautiful anchorage is only part of the story.
I believe travel with modest means is possible for more people than imagine it. Money matters, and so do health, family, and responsibilities. Our circumstances differ. Still, a useful skill, a smaller debt, or a reconsidered necessity can begin to change what seems possible.
My choices have brought me extraordinary experiences. They have also left me with questions that another ocean crossing won’t necessarily answer. Freedom has consequences. Love can change the course of a life, and its loss can do the same. We carry ourselves into every new place.
That is the perspective I’m returning with. I have no finished philosophy to hand you. I have a life underway, a boat to look after, and a willingness to keep paying attention.
I hope you’ll find something here worth your time: a useful idea, a story that stays with you, or a question you recognize as your own.
Peace.
Sail far and live slowly.
Alex Dorsey