Someone asked me when my first ocean passage was. I remember sailing around Lake Ponchetrain (by New Orleans) before the age of eight, but I don't think that counts as a passage. I told them that it was when I was about 11 on West Wind with my dad and his friend Wolfgang from Marina Del Re to Catalina. It was really an awesome trip with just us guys on the ocean and suddenly being aware that one could actually live on a boat instead of just sail around for an afternoon!

I few days later I realized that I had made a much more significant ocean passage earlier than that, from Germany to New Orleans on a Lykes Line freighter when I was three. The only thing I really remember was when we had to do a life boat drill. We put on big orange life vests and went out and stood around one of the life boats. I couldn't understand why we didn't just get in the life boat and launch it. At the very least I wanted to jump into the ocean and see how my snazzy orange life vest worked...

I found these old pictures of the Lykes line ship that we did our crossing on, including a cabin shot and a shot of the deck amenities. I love the travel brochure caption, 'Travel in Informal Comfort'. A style of travel I embrace to this day!

But technically that may not be my first ocean passage either. My parents can neither confirm or deny that I may have been conceived on (or near) a boat in the North Sea. On their honeymoon they went sailing along the Danish coast and I was born exactly nine months later...