EXECUTIVE TEAM

We met on Hinge, bonding over hating oysters and loving Idles; I somehow said yes to my first blind date … my first online date … and, for reasons I still don’t understand, my first Monday-night date. I almost didn’t go. But then he stood up at the bar (tall, gap-toothed, grinning) and one beer became two. Which, on a voyage, you always hope doesn’t happen too often. Crews drunk at sea don’t tend to last long.

Love is like that: two people shoving off into the unknown, never sure if they’ll find calm seas or no wind at all. Mutiny or shipwreck. But Sky is my navigator: reading stars, clouds, and wind, reminding me that mornings always come, horizons are wide. And no matter how far I drift, he always knows how to navigate me home. I am the ocean. Not the sparkly surface Instagram filters would like you to believe in, but the real thing: deep, restless, full of shadows and strange creatures, equal parts terrifying and magnificent. I remind him that beneath every ship lies an entire world of mystery & meaning, that darkness can cradle as much as it can swallow.

And yes, I still laugh: a small, cynical East Coast girl marrying a tall, blue-eyed Californian literally named Sky. The irony, of course, is that I get terribly seasick. But from that very first kiss, I knew this voyage was worth it.