Cruisers Net publishes Loose Cannon articles with Captain Swanson’s permission in hopes that mariners with saltwater in their veins will subscribe. $7 per month or $56 for the year; you may cancel at any time.
Dawn breaks on broken boats, six months after double-yolked hurricanes Irma and Maria. (Photo by Genevieve Jacobs, Nanny Cay, Tortola BVI, March 2018.)
The author is a longtime professor of Psychology and Communications. She landed in Vermont in 1987 after a decade of cruising under sail. She is a regular Loose Cannon contributor.
As if rising sea levels and ever more fierce, frequent, and freakish weather weren’t enough to worry about, there’s an underlying nightmare scenario of particular concern to sailors.
The Atlantic Meridonial Overturning Circulation (AMOC for short) is the northernmost feeder of the Gulf Stream, which flows like a warm salty oceanic river north along the Eastern Seaboard and then transatlantic to Europe before circling back around. This thermohaline circulation is the engine of our concept of seasons and the relative stability of sailing directions for both wind and water.
Sailors have fond feelings for the Gulf Stream when getting a nice boost north along the coastal USA, although anybody who has made that course while beating against contrary winds might not be so fond of the Stream’s infamous square waves, as the current’s set of up to three knots battles against the occasional Northerly blow.
AMOC is the part of the great conveyor belt located near Greenland, where such a rapid acceleration of glacial melt is occurring that the influx of fresh, cold water causes the thermohaline current to weaken, which may lead to wavering or even stalling of the Gulf Stream.
The feedback loop of the conveyor belt is a function of relative water density: both temperature and salinity. Colder, fresher water sinks; while warmer, saltier water rises. Cooler fresher heavy waters dive below, running in a direction opposite the warmer, saltier surface current. This complex dynamic interplay is what keeps the whole system in motion.
The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt – The dark blue line represents the deep, cold, and saltier water current. The red line indices shallower and warmer current. This illustration comes from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration—NOAA for short.
Cold fresh water rapidly injected in great quantities into the AMOC from the melting polar regions is a serious threat to the dance. A few summers ago, an ominous “cold spot” of ocean water, which would normally join into the flow, was observed sitting stagnant in the North Atlantic. Superstorm Sandy was able to profit from the slowing down of AMOC, with it’s concurrent heating up of the waters along the East Coast, to barrel into New York at hurricane force.
The 2017 summer waters off Africa, where hurricanes breed, were unusually warm and covered an abnormally large area, several weeks before the spawning of Irma and Maria devastated the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
These horrific storms were quickly followed by a hurricane that deviated so radically from any previously recorded storm tracks that NOAA’s graphics didn’t serve: the hurricane headed straight North from the African coastal waters for Western Europe and quickly went, quite literally, “off the charts” as it bowled for the U.K.
It may be cold comfort, but Mother Earth has been here before, the last time AMOC ran amuck, during the last interglacial period 118,000 years ago. Dr. James Hansen, who directed NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies from 1981 to 2013, is a true Cassandra. The dire climate predictions he’s made since 1981 have essentially panned out.
Hansen considers the recent data and warns a “shutdown or substantial slowdown of the AMOC…will cause a more general increase of severe weather stronger than any seen in modern times.” He explains that the lower latitudes of the Atlantic will gather excessive heat which will drive superstorms of the magnitude which launched massive boulders onto the islands of the Caribbean so long ago.
The Moorings charter company “hurricane hole” was left a mess by Hurricane Irma in 2017.
If our CO2 fossil fuel emissions (now exceeding 400 ppm) could be cut back to 350 ppm we might be able to forestall the worst outcomes of this runaway “global weirding,” scientists say.
As for this year, hurricane gurus at Colorado State University anticipate that the 2026 Atlantic basin hurricane season will have somewhat below-normal activity due to a moderate or strong El Niño. NOAA will issue its outlook for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season during a news conference on Thursday at the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida.
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Sometimes he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
There is always plenty to do around Charlotte Harbor. While berthed at Fishermen’s Village Marina, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, you are certain to enjoy visiting Western Florida’s beautiful Charlotte Harbor/Peace River.
Cruisers Net publishes Loose Cannon articles with Captain Swanson’s permission in hopes that mariners with saltwater in their veins will subscribe. $7 per month or $56 for the year; you may cancel at any time.
(Photos by the author, and if you don’t like cat photos, it’s time to move on to another story)
The author is a writer, Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and a novelist. His work includes Essays from the Himalayas on dharma, sacred objects, Madhyamaka philosophy and AI governance. This story was first published on the Robert DeVito Subtack on May 14, 2026 and is reprinted here with permission.
Captain Boo was a Maine Coon tuxedo rescue who held the dockmaster post on D Dock at the Key West Marina for 17 years. He treated yacht captains and homeless guys in rusty dinghies the same. He let the green herons fish next to the boat without bothering them. He calibrated his position to the line of shade coming off the dock pilings like a sundial running in reverse.
The captain had a Facebook page, a campaign mailbox, and write-in votes in the last mayoral election under the slogan Don’t Give a Shit.
He died Tuesday at 8:40 p.m. Eastern Time, after watching the cruise boats come in one last time.
The Florida Keys SPCA had found him a home with my friends Gary and Bobbie. Gary’s father was John Ek, the military knife maker whose blades sat on the desks of American presidents and went to war with the men who carried them. Gary retired to a houseboat on D Dock with Bobbie and a rescue cat from a litter at the local shelter. The houseboat had its own gravity. The cat became its center.
He was a big one even by Maine Coon standards. The ruff went all the way around. The white starburst on the chest, the white paws, the long thick tail he carried like a small flag. The eyes were yellow with the slight green that came up in certain light. He had a tag on the collar that said Captain Boo in case anyone needed proof. They rarely did. Everyone at the marina knew him by sight and most knew him by name.
He worked the dock. People think cats sit. He sat, but the sitting was the work. He had figured out the dock the way a fisherman figures out a piece of water. He knew where the shade went and he moved with it. The pilings made narrow shadow lines that traveled across the planks as the sun crossed, and he used them. In summer he tucked his head into the cool stripe and let the rest of him heat in the gold. In winter he sat in the open and took the whole sun. He had been on it long enough to know.
He coexisted with the green herons. Any other cat would have lunged or stalked. He watched them fish from a few feet away and the herons got used to him. The dock was his territory but the birds were welcome on it. He had reached some kind of arrangement with them that did not require negotiation.
Tourists came back year after year. They would walk down D Dock specifically to find him. He would let them pet him. He would slow-blink them. He would acknowledge them and then go back to whatever he had been doing. He did not fawn and he did not withdraw. He registered that the human was real and worth a moment, and the moment was enough. Most people do not get acknowledged like that, even by other people. He gave it to everyone who came down the dock.
I have known a lot of cats in sixty years. I owned several. I was friends with many more. None of them were like Captain Boo.
After my last divorce, when I moved back to Key West for the second or third time, I was living rough. Gary and Bobbie’s houseboat was an oasis. They are the kind of friends who let you come without questions. Their dock was where I went in the mornings to breathe before the day started.
The captain was always there. He would be in his spot. He would scoot over slightly so I could sit next to him. We would sit. The boats would come and go. The herons would work the water beside us. The sun would do what the sun does on D Dock in the early hours, which is to fill the marina with that particular Key West light that makes the whole place feel like it is being remembered while it is still happening.
I had been studying Buddhism by then for more than 30 years. I had read the texts. I had sat with teachers. I knew the technical name for what the cat was doing on the dock. The traditions I had been reading called it equanimity, the steady non-discriminating attention that meets each being and each moment with the same quality of presence. The texts said it was one of the higher attainments and that most practitioners spend lifetimes trying to develop it.
The cat had it by default. He had nothing in the way of it. He sat with me through some of the worst mornings of my life and never once needed me to be anything other than what I was. He sat the same way for everyone else. Who is to say he was not the better meditator of the two of us. Some mornings I left the dock feeling like I had received a teaching I could not name and did not need to.
Gallery
Years later, I was wearing a Tibetan shirt and the captain was outside the houseboat banging on the glass demanding to come in for the air conditioning. I took a photograph through the door. When I looked at it later, I saw that the reflection of the syllable HUNG from my shirt had landed on his forehead in the exact iconographic position where Tibetan thangka painters place the seed syllable of the wisdom mind on a deity image.
HUNG is the syllable that closes the Vajra Guru mantra. It is the syllable that seals Padmasambhava practices. It is the syllable I have been working with for years and that the monk on the street in the town I am writing this from taught me to use in the Seven Line Prayer not three weeks ago.
I am not going to tell you what the photograph means. I have it. I am sitting with it. Make of it what you will.
Captain Boo sat on D Dock for 17 years and watched boats come in and boats go out and the sun cross and the tide rise and fall and the herons work the shallows and the tourists arrive and leave and the regulars age alongside him. He watched the fifty-million-dollar yacht owner and he watched the homeless guy from Christmas Tree Island heading back to his tent in a dinghy held together by hope. He gave them the same look. He let them pet him with the same patience. He did not adjust the quality of his attention based on who was approaching.
This is not a metaphor. This is a thing he did, every day, for 17 years, in the same spot.
He had been slowing down this year. He still came out for sunset. He was always going to come out for sunset. Tuesday evening he went to his spot. The cruise boats were coming in. The sky was doing what the sky does in Key West in the last hour.
He died there at 8:40 p.m. Eastern with no drama and no pain, on the planks he had held for seventeen years, in the gold light he had calibrated his whole adult life to use correctly.
He was unapologetically a cat. He yawned and showed his teeth. He napped through hurricane warnings. He inspected unfamiliar bicycles with the appropriate dockmaster suspicion. He demanded air conditioning by banging on the glass. He hunted small things in his younger years before he made his arrangement with the herons. He was cat all the way down. The Maine Coon in him explained some of what he was. The rest was just him.
He was also one of the great teachers I have known. I am putting that in print because it is true and because the people who knew him will recognize it the moment they read it and the people who did not will have to take my word for it. I have known a lot of cats. None of them were like the captain. Period point blank.
Rest easy, Captain Boo. The dock is yours. The boats are still coming in.
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Sometimes he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
Cruisers Net publishes Loose Cannon articles with Captain Swanson’s permission in hopes that mariners with saltwater in their veins will subscribe. $7 per month or $56 for the year; you may cancel at any time.
Forecasters with NOAA’s National Weather Service are predicting a below-normal hurricane season for the Atlantic basin this year. NOAA’s outlook for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30, predicts a 35 percent chance of a near-normal season, a 10 percent chance of an above-normal season, and a 55 percent chance of a below-normal season.
The agency is forecasting a total of 8-14 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, 3-6 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 1-3 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5 with winds of 111 mph or higher). NOAA has a 70% confidence in these ranges. An average season has 14 named storms with seven hurricanes, including three major hurricanes.
“NOAA’s rapid integration of advanced technology, including AI-based weather models, drones, and next-generation satellite data will deliver actionable science to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of the American people,” said NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs, Ph.D. “These new capabilities, combined with the unmatched expertise of our National Weather Service forecasters, will produce the most accurate forecasts possible to protect communities in harm’s way.”
A summary infographic showing hurricane season probability and numbers of named storms predicted from NOAA’s 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook. (Image credit: NOAA)
Key Factors
The Atlantic season is expected to be below-normal due to competing factors. El Niño is expected to develop and intensify during the hurricane season, while ocean temperatures in the Atlantic are expected to be slightly warmer than normal and trade winds are likely weaker than average. El Niño conditions tend to support less tropical storms and hurricanes, while warmer ocean temperatures and low winds support a more active year.
“Although El Niño’s impact in the Atlantic Basin can often suppress hurricane development, there is still uncertainty in how each season will unfold,” said NOAA’s National Weather Service Director Ken Graham. “That is why it’s essential to review your hurricane preparedness plan now. It only takes one storm to make for a very bad season.”
NOAA’s outlook is for overall seasonal activity based on large-scale weather and climate patterns. It does not indicate where or when any storms may affect land as that is determined by short-term and variable weather patterns. The outlook is not a landfall forecast.
“Preparing now for hurricane season — and not waiting for a storm to threaten — is essential for staying ahead of any storm. Visit weather.gov/safety and Ready.gov for important preparedness information,” added Graham.
A summary graphic showing an alphabetical list of the 2026 Atlantic tropical cyclone names as selected by the World Meteorological Organization: Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, Isaias, Josephine, Kyle, Leah, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paulette, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky, and Wilfred. The official start of the Atlantic hurricane season is June 1 and runs through November 30. (Image credit: NOAA)
Fred Pickhardt’s Substack is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Fred Pickhardt’s Substack that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
The Atlantic Hurricane Season begins in June, bringing a historically low but serious early-season risk to mariners and Gulf Coast residents. While a named tropical cyclone only forms in June about once every 6 to 10 years, the highest risk area sits directly over the central Gulf of Mexico.
If a June storm does develop, historical patterns show the most likely track moves from the northwestern Caribbean northwest over the Gulf. This leaves a 50/50 chance for the system to curve north, then northeast toward Florida.
Click here for a look at the prospects for the upcoming 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season.
As a new boat dweller (Cruisers, we are called) I quickly became accustomed to surreal seasons of stunning, clear-water, creature-filled swims, new vistas, deserted islands, and a humbling, fortifying existence far different than I had ever known. It’s not a particularly straightforward life; constantly SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE takes wily stamina, but the highlights make it worthwhile. I’ve missed it.
After two years on this one solid piece of ground with many WTF-could-possibly-happen-next moments, the circle of friends here are my lifelines. A Marine Industry guru described me this way and shared my May 10th Publication:
Fortunate is the “amateur” (in the true and best sense of the word) boatbuilder who finds ways to live a parallel life concomitantly with a seemingly never-ending restoration project. For it is that boatbuilder who will find the fortitude and the balance not to be ground down by the project.
— Phil FriedmanFor Yacht Builders, Buyers and Owners
While carrying a tremendous amount of respect for Phil’s resume I’m not certain that fortunate is the word with which I would describe myself throughout the ‘seemingly never-ending restoration project’. Spending a fortune? Most certainly! Fortunate? Well, perhaps. Respected subscriber and frequent commenter Switter believes I am because of the acquired wisdom he eludes to, and the fortitude magnified.
SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE came to be when a LOOSE CANNON contacted me in the way-south out-islands of the Bahamas because World’s Worst Homing Pigeon landed (and decided to stay) on my classic wooden sailing yacht; that journalist encouraged me to start my own publication. Two years later I offer lessons, ironies and correlations that most hard-working, adventure-loving, nature-worshipping folks can relate to no matter their origins. Most importantly, it gives me a creative outlet and a way to connect with humanity in a time when it’s not all that easy.
Writing is simply what I am wired to do, a constant underlying wave of words and titles run through my brain, giving my life the balance that Phil aptly describes. People tell me they savor how I meld assorted elements together; many are distinctly surprised that even though they are NOT self-described “readers”, they look for my weekly commentary. I have never, could never, imagine a better compliment than that. You know who you are and my life would be less happy if you had not shared how you felt! Let’s all do that more often, eh? Give someone an easy compliment. Make them feel like what they do matters. It’s not hard.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, IF I MAY, here’s what I have for you. May, for a quarter-century or so, has weighed down this heart. I wanted to share because our Secret Sparring Society is a tight-knit group and growing in numbers. On May 1, I celebrated my mother’s birthday. She would have been eighty-seven, created five years after my floating home just miles apart on opposite shores of the western end of Long Island, New York. Born Martha Ann Graves she became Marti Graves Wheeler, Home Economics and Third Grade Teacher, a parent who nurtured my first life all over Upstate New York. The second life she visited, in the deserts of Arizona and Montana, the third and longest, Colorado, appealed in its stark differences to all she had ever known and beckoned. On a snowy Memorial Day weekend my brother moved her out to me, where she built a wonderful world of her own. Diagnosed that same summer, Marti was a five-year Breast Cancer survivor until a second primary, Peritoneal Cancer, took her in a span of three spinning, impossible weeks on an assortment of hospital floors; we never left her side. Wedding invitations to a smart, smitten man never got sent. We lost her twenty-four years ago today at only sixty-three. As I approach that age, I am more and more aware of how lives fly by and how much like her I have become. It’s hard to believe I’m the age I am.
Here, she is 53, I am 48 in my final year as a Colorado Chef & organic farmer.
My mom could not have even remotely imagined what my fourth reinvented life would bring, the one where I am a writer/liveaboard sailor/boat maintenance apprentice. She would be pleased beyond belief that I had finally given in to my desire to write (and write and write).
I believe, strongly, that she’s watching me, and I don’t say that lightly. I was embarrassed, sometimes, at her mom-in-the-bleachers cheering, rueful now because I thought her too enthusiastic, too devoted. Today I thoroughly understand there is no such thing as too devoted, I love that expressive passion. On a few things we were polar opposites but if she was disappointed, it showed only when I was grounded for the entire summer of my 16th year, or when, in her unflagging honesty, she divulged opinions I had no interested in hearing. Marti blessed me with a love of delicious food and beaches along with the ethic to stay in touch with friends no matter how one-sided that may be.
Myriads of characters and creatures, some remarkably memorable and others best forgotten, contributed to who I am but she was the most predominant for the thirty-two years I had her; my best friend, companion and confidant during her time out west. One of our loyal readers from Down Under penned a comment I’m sharing because I’d love to share it with her but you who surround me are an excellent substitute:
……What I think is most distinctive about *Sparring with Mother Nature* is that it doesn’t set out to be memoir, even though it draws from observation and memory. You curate and present inspirational impressions. That’s its own craft. When I first talked about your work with fellow writers (outside of Substack), I compared it to a Robert Pirsig *Chautauqua* or reflective educational narrative drawn from adventurous experience. Not everyone adventures; not everyone reflects. Not everyone can do what you do regularly and fluently. Ruv Draba
Thank you for staying aboard— there’s lots of space at the end to share whatever you want, too. Until next week, when we re-explore STEADFAST’s Bronze Age…
~J the accidental boatbuilder
I have long not believed in coincidence, so do with it what you will. This is the bottle of wine I popped open to accompany dinner as I finished this up. Cheers.
Whether you partake or not, sometimes these things are a kind of, well, weirdness that I rather believe in. Regardless, I would truly appreciate you ‘liking’ (that dang heart icon we’re so familiar with) & ‘restacking’ this work. The impersonal algorithms of Substack only pay attention to those, not the quality of the words nor the nature of the audience. So, it just takes a sec, affects you not at all and means that people who discover us may just help me make a living doing what I love. Wouldn’t that be grand?
When you comment, I always both appreciate and respond to those thoughts. So take another sip of that coffee and type away. Thank you.
OH WAIT!! THERE’S MORE! I just uploaded a YouTube video from last weekend’s BOOK DEBUT! Don’t resist this, it’s worth three minutes of your life, and then, buy the man’s memoir. Seriously.
Fred Pickhardt’s Substack is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Fred Pickhardt’s Substack that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
Be the first to comment!