Fired from my own company. Wanted by the mob. Over 1,000 days sober. Writing from a sailboat on the East Coast.
I grew up on the docks of Long Island. Not metaphorically — literally on the docks. Fishing families. Salt air before school. The smell of diesel and a good catch mixed together in a way that tells you exactly where you belong. I thought I knew where I was going.
I've built companies nobody had built before, been fired from one of them, moved to Grenada to fix a broken seafood supply chain and walked directly into government corruption, and gotten sober on a boat in a harbor I couldn't always find on a map.
On my 1,000th day sober, lightning struck my boat in Annapolis. Direct hit. Every instrument on board: dead. Nine days later — with the insurance claim filed, the boat on the hard — I matched with someone on a dating app who was heading down to Nicaragua. I did the math: best case, I meet someone great. Worst case, I get some good waves. I grabbed my boards and booked the flight.
Got some barrels. Met some great people. The date was ok. I came back. Now I'm sailing north toward my kids on a 42-year-old Mason 43 called Lost and Found, on Day — of sobriety, writing about all of it.
Six years of liveaboard sailing — what it actually costs, what it actually teaches, and why the boat is cheaper than the therapy it replaces.
Alcoholism in a world built around rum sunsets and dock bars. What sobriety looks like when the culture you live in runs on drinking.
Two of my four children have autism. I'm working on it every day. I write about what that actually looks like — no redemption arc, just effort.
I've built seafood exchanges, Caribbean development funds, and had front-row seats to corruption in government and industry. I have stories. I'm starting to tell them.
Multiple companies, one fired-from-my-own-business exit, and a career still intact anyway. What "unsuccessful entrepreneur" really means, and why I wouldn't trade it.
What the ocean teaches you when you have no choice but to listen. Philosophy from a man who doesn't call himself a philosopher.
I want to be clear upfront: I was not in the mob. I was not a made man. I was not connected. I was a 21-year-old kid from Long Island with a truck, a fishing route, and a deeply misplaced sense of inv…
If you want to know someone's story, look at what they've named their boats. Some names tell you everything you need to know about a person in two words. Not always in a good way.
It began the first time I rode a wave. The feeling. The rush. The high. I didn't know it then — I was a kid, Long Island, summer, the world was uncomplicated — but something got switched on that day t…
It happens so fast that the strike itself isn't really the thing. The crack. The freeze. The blank screens where your instruments used to be. That's it. You're not dead. You don't scream. You just sto…
They tell you it's brave. They tell you it's the hardest day. They tell you the rest gets easier. What they don't tell you is that for most people, Day 1 doesn't feel like a beginning. It feels like t…
I wrote something on my fortieth birthday that I never showed anyone.
No algorithm. No ads. Honest dispatches from the water, sent when there is something worth saying.