We have a boat!
August 10, 2026
I’ve been gone for weeks. No updates. Radio silence. Here’s what happened.
A boat came in and everything stopped.
We have a boat.
Meet Me Va
I dropped what I was doing in Wyoming, loaded up Teal’c, packed tools and whatever else I thought I might need, and drove to Gulf Shores, Alabama to take possession of a 1985 Ocean Alexander 43′ Flush Aft Deck trawler named Me Va.
Here are her specs: twin Ford Lehman 135 diesel engines with approximately 1,370 hours. A 3’6″ draft—well within our loop requirements. 500-gallon fuel capacity. And she came with a 13-foot Boston Whaler tender with a brand new Suzuki 25 horsepower outboard. She was updated with new nav equipment before she was handed over. She is a real working trawler yacht and she has everything this expedition needs.
Me Va came to us through the generosity of someone who believes in this mission. We have a press release in the works—as soon as that’s cleared, I’ll share the full story. What I can say right now is that we are beyond grateful.
The Honest Truth About Learning a 40-Year-Old Boat (or any large vessel for that matter)
I’m going to be completely honest with you, because that’s what this show is about. Me Va is not without her quirks. She’d been sitting for a while and there are systems to work through. I’ve been learning a tremendous amount in three weeks, some of it the hard way.
The DC accessories weren’t working unless the engines were running. The water heater had strong opinions about air pockets—the intake hose popped off unbeknownst to me while I was filling the water tanks, the pump ran continuously, and the bilge filled up. Like, over the metal plates in the engine room. None of the bilge pumps came on. That was a moment.
The macerator pump for the blackwater system isn’t running. Gelcoat crazing on the deck is normal for an older boat—we’ll beautify her as we go. And there’s teak. So much teak in need of attention.
But here’s what I also know: the engines fire right up and run beautifully. We took her out on the bay twice—once for a couple of hours, once for five or six hours—and everything performed. The bilge is dry. The water tanks are full. Hot water as of this morning. Every system I’ve worked through has taught me something I needed to know before October 10th.
There were lots of moments of self doubt but – I’ve got this. I can find the dead fuses. I can reprime the pump. I can clamp a hose. I can do this.
The Teak Story
Here’s something I haven’t shared publicly: I worked on the waterfront at Eckerd College for four years. I was on the EC-SAR search and rescue team—trained hand-in-hand with the Coast Guard—and somewhere along the way I became the teak person. If anyone needed teak work done, it was always ‘get Terry, she’s amazing.’
Seeing all of this teak in disarray on Me Va is genuinely exciting to me. I’m already thinking about how to capture the dust and shavings without letting them fall into the water when we sand and scrape. I’ll probably video that process as it goes.
Brandon, the move, the cleaning…
A new friend named Brandon—who works for NOAA Fisheries and is currently waiting for orders for his next ship—showed up (honestly because of my other new friend, Amy Todd) and needed boat therapy while he waits to get back to work. He and Amy both want to do the loop in the near future and they helped me move Me VA to Dog River Marina, get her tucked into her slip, and then, Brandon came back and scrubbed Me Va bow to stern. Toothbrush level detail. Everything that was green or red is now white and shiny. That level of generosity from folks I just met still blows me away.
Dog River Marina—Darlene and the Covered Slip
We moved Me Va from Legacy Marina in Gulf Shores further up into Mobile Bay to Dog River Marina, which actually helps with insurance—insurers aren’t thrilled about boats sitting exposed during hurricane season. When we arrived, our initial slip assignment had docks too short to step off the boat.
Darlene at Dog River Marina gave us our new slip assignment, an upgrade to a covered slip. In Alabama summer heat, with two months of work ahead of us, a covered slip is nothing short of a miracle. There’s a constant breeze, shade all day, and we can work in the afternoon without baking. We cannot thank Darlene and the Dog River Marina team enough. They are fantastic folks to work with, helpful and accommodating!
Teal’c on Boat Life
Teal’c is adjusting. He has a potty mat on the bow and he is using it—which, based on what I hear from other liveaboard dog owners, is not a given. At high tide he stays aboard. When the tide is out and the boat sits low enough, he jumps to the dock and we take long walks along the bay. He got his ball accidentally rolled into the engine room while I was troubleshooting—there’s a short up on YouTube about that. Very cute. Very Teal’c.
Ambassador Kits—Jessi James-Barry Next week
I’m meeting Jessi James-Barry, Gulf Coast Regional Coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program, on Monday in Mobile. She has 30 ambassador kits consolidated at her office. I’m picking up 10 of them—once I see how much space they take aboard Me Va, I’ll know how many we can realistically carry. The rest will be distributed along our route: some in the Chesapeake Bay area, some in the Great Lakes. We’ll resupply as we go.
I’ll walk through those kits on camera the same way I walked through the PMN water quality kit a few episodes back. Stay tuned.
Ambassador Program—Almost There
I know. I promised this in late July. And then a boat happened. The systems are being built, the program is real, and the announcement is coming very soon. I need to make sure the sign-up form is working properly before I put the link out into the world. Get on the mailing list now at cultivatingcurrents.org so you’re first to know.
→ Join the mailing list: cultivatingcurrents.org
Water is Place—Evolving
The series I started filming in Laramie—about how the water from landlocked Wyoming flows to the Gulf and what it picks up along the way—is evolving now that I’m actually on that water. I’m going back to Laramie soon to wrap up some projects and properly pack for a year and a half on the boat. I may film one more episode there. But the series is going to grow into something bigger—and the content coming out of it is going to become core training material in our online environmental science learning community. More on that soon.
59 Days.
When I filmed this episode, we had 59 days to October 10th. By the time you’re reading this it’s probably closer to 56. We have a boat. We have a marina. We have systems to work through and a whole lot to build before launch day. We are going to document every bit of it.
If you’ve been following since June—from the landlocked command center in Wyoming to this—thank you. Subscribe and follow along. This is where it gets real.