About Project BlueSphere

Over 23 years of blogging and still adrift beneath an unfamiliar sky.

My name is Alex Dorsey. Welcome to Project BlueSphere.

I began blogging in 2003, documenting a life at sea, exploring the world under sail, and discovering what it means to live with less. I largely stepped away from writing in 2016. Now, in my early 60s, I’m returning with a few more miles beneath my keel, a different perspective on life, and plenty of stories left to tell.

Project BlueSphere has always been about travel, freedom, self-reliance, and the pursuit of a simpler life. But it has also been about something more difficult to define: finding our place in the world, questioning what we’ve been taught to value, and discovering how little we actually need to be happy.

The minimalist traveler has little, wants little, thinks small, and dreams big.

That philosophy has guided much of my adult life.

How It All Began

Before becoming a full-time sailor, I worked in Hollywood and later built a second career as a stockbroker and financial adviser. I understood money and how to make it, but increasingly questioned what I was doing with my life.

Credit, bills, traffic, possessions, and expectations consumed my time. I was working to maintain a lifestyle that no longer made me happy.

Eventually, I began asking myself a simple question:

“Ask not how much you can get, but how little you need.”

That question changed everything.

In 2002, I sold my Jeep and spent the last of my money, $20,000, on Namaste, a 28-foot Westsail sailboat. After a year of preparing her, I sailed south from Mystic, Connecticut, in early 2003 with little income, a great deal to learn, and no particular desire to return to the life I’d left behind.

My travels carried me through the Bahamas, Jamaica, Colombia, and Panama, then west to the Galápagos and across the Pacific Ocean. I explored the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Bora Bora, the Cook Islands, Tonga, and countless other places that had once existed only as dreams on a chart.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped caring about completing a circumnavigation. After sailing halfway around the world, I realized that arriving somewhere wasn’t the point.

The voyage had become my life, not something I was trying to finish.

In 2007, I sold Namaste in Brisbane, Australia, and returned to the United States, where I purchased Splendid, a 1973 40-foot Cheoy Lee Midshipman ketch, for $15,000. She needed extensive work, and I spent a couple of years restoring her before heading back to sea and eventually establishing a home base in Panama.

Splendid was my home for seven years. Eventually, I sold her and purchased Eleanor, my current sailboat and home.

Along the way, I also built an overland vehicle to explore places I couldn’t reach by sea. Today, my travels continue by both land and water, with Eleanor remaining my home base.

The Philosophy of the Minimalist Sailor

I believe freedom begins when we learn to take responsibility for our own lives and reduce our dependence on things we don’t really need.

My philosophy is simple:

1. Only have aboard what you are capable of taking responsibility for.

A sailor should understand their boat. Learn to repair your sails, maintain your rigging, service your engine, and work on your electrical, plumbing, and mechanical systems.

Learn how your boat is built and how to repair it.

A few inexpensive tools, combined with knowledge and experience, can provide more security than thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment you don’t understand.

This doesn’t mean living without refrigeration, watermakers, electronics, or other modern conveniences. It means understanding what you own and being capable of maintaining it.

I sailed more than halfway around the world without refrigeration. I learned to catch and preserve fish, dry fruits and vegetables, can meats, make cheese, salt butter, and provide for myself in ways I had never imagined.

Today, I enjoy refrigeration aboard Eleanor. But I also know how to live without it and how to repair it when it breaks.

That’s the difference between depending on technology and choosing to use it.

2. Find joy in only what you need.

Modern society encourages us to work harder, earn more, buy more, and surround ourselves with things that promise to make life easier.

But every possession comes with a cost, often measured in something far more valuable than money: time.

Time spent earning, maintaining, insuring, repairing, and eventually replacing things.

I’ve found more satisfaction in learning practical skills, making my own food, repairing my boat, reading a good book, or rowing ashore than I ever found in accumulating possessions.

The less I need, the less money I must earn. The less money I must earn, the more control I have over my time.

And time, to me, is the greatest luxury of all, perhaps the only commodity worth placing any real value on.

3. Start small, learn as you go, and let your dreams grow.

You don’t need a million-dollar yacht to sail around the world. You don’t need every piece of equipment advertised in a marine catalog.

Start with a seaworthy, manageable boat, learn the necessary skills, and improve your knowledge and equipment as you travel.

A good sailor with a simple boat is far better prepared than an inexperienced sailor surrounded by expensive technology.

Practical skills also travel well. Rigging, sail repair, carpentry, mechanics, welding, and electrical work can help you support yourself as you explore the world.

Minimalism isn’t about deprivation. It’s about choosing what matters and becoming less dependent on everything else.

Life Beyond the Horizon

For more than two decades, I’ve lived much of my life outside the conventions of modern society.

I’ve made bread, pasta, cheese, yogurt, beer, and wine. I’ve fished for dinner, gathered fruit, grown herbs aboard, and relied on the sun for electricity.

I’ve experienced extraordinary kindness from strangers, found friendships in remote anchorages, and discovered that people with very little can sometimes be the most generous.

But I don’t want to romanticize this lifestyle.

Boats break. Money runs short. Weather destroys plans. Solitude can be beautiful, but it can also be difficult. And no matter how far we travel, we carry ourselves and our problems with us.

A great deal happened during my years away from blogging.

The war in Ukraine, the loss of friends and family, and the end of a beautiful marriage changed my life in ways I never anticipated. I went through a dark period, struggled with alcohol and substance abuse, and eventually recognized that I needed to change if I wanted to survive.

As I write this in late 2026, I’ve been sober for nearly a year.

Sobriety has brought its own challenges, but also a renewed curiosity about life and the world around me. At 61, I’m still trying to understand many of the same things I questioned when I first sailed away.

Freedom, love, loss, happiness, society, and what it means to live a meaningful life.

Experience has taught me a great deal, but perhaps its most valuable lesson is how much I still don’t know.

What You’ll Find on Project BlueSphere

Project BlueSphere is returning as a place for honest writing, photography, and filmmaking.

I’ll share my life aboard Eleanor, sailing adventures, overland journeys, practical boat projects, and the skills that make independent travel possible.

You’ll also find my two feature-length sailing films, along with new videos and stories from the road and sea.

And I’ll write about things that have little to do with sailing.

Alcohol, relationships, politics, society, aging, personal freedom, and the strange business of being alive in the modern world.

I don’t intend to present a perfect life, sell an impossible dream, or pretend that every sunset comes with some profound revelation.

There will be beautiful places, difficult days, mistakes, repairs, and probably a few opinions that not everyone agrees with.

I’ve never believed that travel makes someone wiser simply because they’ve covered a lot of miles. But it does expose us to different ways of living, and sometimes those experiences challenge everything we thought we knew.

I still believe that a life of travel and independence is possible for more people than realize it. Circumstances differ, and money, health, and family responsibilities are real considerations. But learning a useful skill, reducing unnecessary expenses, and questioning what we truly need can open doors that once seemed closed.

Neil Young sang, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

I still have places to go, stories to tell, films to make, and a great deal to learn.

After all these years, I haven’t found all the answers. I’ve simply become more interested in the questions.

If something here inspires you to learn a skill, reconsider what you need, cast off your dock lines, or look at the world a little differently, then Project BlueSphere is doing what I hoped it would.

A Note About Supporting Project BlueSphere

Everything I write here is free to read, and I intend to keep it that way.

For those who would like to participate in the conversation, leave comments, and communicate with me directly, I’m asking for a modest subscription of $5 per month.

After a lifetime spent choosing freedom over financial security, I’ve had to become creative about financing my retirement. Your support helps me continue writing, filming, traveling, and sharing these experiences while keeping the stories available to everyone.

Peace.

Sail far and live slowly.

Alex Dorsey
Project BlueSphere — Est. 2003