How easy to fashion an identity from our own created threads of existence. How painful to learn that such a thread has frayed. Education, position, occupation, family, or any other what we do provides only a shallow glimpse into who we are. When what we do fails, the trap is laid to find identity in failure.

I write on many topics, none of which I claim a great deal of knowledge; but here in the field of losing identity through failure, I am an expert. The nausea, the self-medication (and isn’t that a pleasant phrase), the whole hearing-through-the-grapevine of what others are saying, or entertaining imaginations of what others are saying because that’s probably what I’d think about someone else in the same circumstances. Tough up, Gregg–move on. Persevere.

You’ve seen them, those inspirational billboards along the freeways showing some impossibility overcome with the catchphrases: Knowledge, Discipline, and Leadership. The catchphrase I hold close, fearing yet another failure, is Perseverance–my personal inspirational billboard–perseverance; a wonderful excuse to stay put, where I comfortably avoid another painful change. Not pride, not stubbornness, certainly not laziness (I work more than anybody I know to push the same water up the same slope)–perseverance.

I grew up in a loving family. Dad and his brothers built a very successful family business, and I allowed their business to become a part of my identity. I just knew this is what I was created for. Life brought changes and I lost my identity. Tough up, Gregg–move on. Persevere.

College did not come easy for me the first time around. Actually, college would have been overcome had it not been for the mix of immaturity with the distractions of college life. My education took to the sidelines until I returned in my thirties and completed not only a bachelor’s degree, but a master’s degree. While the education plays a part in my composition and ability to compose, I never used either degree professionally, and over time, feel that part of my identity slipping from my grasp. Really, what employer would give a hoot about those pieces of paper now? Tough-up, Gregg–move on. Persevere.

I have managed to occupy a broad spectrum of position and occupations, and with every move in these areas over the past twenty years or so, I watch another hand-crafted identity die. Tough-up, Gregg–move on. Persevere.

The notion of world travel, on a sailboat no less, came bearing gifts of grandiose outcomes–outcomes unrealized yet capable of forming a basis for identity. The successful completion of that journey around the world became personified in a possession–Sailing Vessel Faith. The story I possess creates in me yet another identity–that of author and public speaker.

Then, in the midst of grooming these remaining what I do identities toward maturity, orders of my book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, grew fewer and fewer, the calls for speaking come less frequently, and the call from the marina that Faith was sinking-on-shore came. Tough-up, Gregg. Persevere. So I work to Repower Faith in Deltaville, Virginia, and I work to repower faith in me, and I work and I work and I work in vain. Why? Because every element of identity listed so far is how the world wants us to define identity–what I do or have done, what I have, what family I come from, my whiteness or blackness or in-betweenness or ‘other’. None of this is who I am.

Who I am is a husband of going on 28 years, a lover for a year or so longer, the head of a somewhat relationally healthy household; I am a father of three children who love each other and love their mother and me, three children who rely on their mother and me to fix their hurts when we are able, but who rely on God for healing–this last point being a tremendous source of comfort.

I have heard that whenever he starts a meeting, one co-founder of Amway begins with, “Hello, my name is Richard Devos; I am a sinner saved by grace.”

Yes, I’m scared of another career change; writing is one career choice where failure is accepted expected. But that’s not who I am, that is what I do. I’m not too proud to steal the most important who I am from Mr. Devos.

My name is Gregg Granger; I am a sinner saved by grace. This year, in the New Year, through all the other changes, I am a sinner saved by grace.

Every choice in life has consequences, yet decisions must be made with incomplete knowledge of what those consequences might be. Heck, my life is an encyclopedia of ignorant decisions causing unintended consequences.

So far, the career choice of becoming a writer and public speaker is turning into a rather large entry in that encyclopedia, following a life if similar career choices. I console myself in the knowledge that career choices are extraneous, they effect what I do and how much money I make, but they comprise very little of who I am.

-Who I am is one man created in the image of God.

-Who I am is a sinner, saved by God’s grace through accepting the promise of his son who took my sins to the cross.

-Who I am is a husband and a father, the head of very close family and household for which I am truly grateful.

-Who I am is one in receipt of various gifts from which to define what I am and what I do.

What I am and what I do are subsidiary to who I am, and neither define my personhood, nor hold lasting value. The fact that we choose to elevate the status of work to biblical proportions, and to define our personhood as economic beings does not simply make it so.

To say, I am a carpenter or I am a writer or I am a global circumnavigator on a sailboat, all of which I am, or, I am a lawyer or I am a doctor, neither of which I am, says absolutely nothing about who I am. It’s simply a statement about what I am from the what-is-my-occupation perspective. We all like small talk, and other than the weather, no talk is smaller than these comfortable conversation starters and enders. (I must admit that being a global circumnavigator has yet to end a conversation.)

I wonder what the response would be if somebody asked me, “So, what do you do?” and I answered, “I spend most of my time trying to fix things that I’ve managed to screw up in my life.” Think about it, what a way to begin a conversation that might lead to some significant relationship building dialogue!

Anyway, that’s an honest recap of what I do. I make bad decisions and spend what seems like an eternity trying to fix them. Hindsight, being always viewed through the best lens and being always in focus–of course it’s in focus, because I’m now armed with having the blanks filled-in on the imperfect knowledge I had when I made the original decision–creates in me a longing for a second chance. What I wouldn’t give for a Do-Over, a clean slate, so to speak.

The flood of destruction on sailing vessel Faith is forcing me to reflect on my own destructive behaviors and choices. The work in Faith’s engine room is extremely tedious and there seems no end in sight. The work on Gregg is considerably more difficult and will take a bit longer. Both are in the process of a Do-Over.

Front Cover

And that is the end of the post. The rest is Advertisement to help me not regret my latest career decision. Help by sharing my blog posts, Tell your friends I’m just, well, not quite normal, but a decent guy with a sometimes good message. And help by writing a review of Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home on Amazon, or help even more by giving Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home to your friends, relatives, and business associates for Christmas this year.

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A cold rainy Fall day in the Deltaville Boatyard

Of the cruisers in Deltaville this Fall, three distinct classes exist: those readying their boats for winter storage following their summer of life on the boat. those readying their boats for the cruise south–the Bahamas or Caribbean or Florida–for the winter, and me. I’m a bit of an anomaly, but feel much less the fish out of water in Deltaville than I do at home. And, I am not the only circumnavigator among the Fall Deltaville crowd–another couple had circumnavigated in the early nineties.

My first true working visit was in September and a great number of people were working on and living on their boats. Following two days of working on Faith and eating out alone in overpriced restaurants both evenings, I complained to my neighbor about the dinner company I was keeping . He said everybody there generally took food to the marina’s picnic area and cooked on the marina’s bar-b-ques. Until this last visit, I had eaten alone for the last time.

Over the course of my next few visits to Deltaville, I began to look forward to this evening ritual, but as the summer weather of early Fall succumbed to the bluster of a more mature Fall, those setting sail for the south were launching, and those setting up for storage were going home, wherever home was. All the while, boats were stopping here at the mouth of Jackson Creek for Deltaville Boatyard to perform this or that service as they passed from points north as they navigated their way south.

A took up residency , alongside me. Deltaville is 766 miles from my home and family in Michigan, and I longed for home long before my new roommate–an uneasiness disguised as a dread–joined me in Faith’s engine room. I soon began to understand this dread to be only the first symptom of what matured into a full-blown loneliness. Here Faith was growing colder and colder on each visit, like she’d lost her heart instead of her engine and generator, and I found myself losing all my acquaintances at the same time.

On my most recent visit I found myself to be not only the sole occupant of Faith, but the sole occupant of Deltaville Marina and Shipyard. I buried myself next to my dread, deep inside Faith’s engine room for the working hours, but when I surfaced in the late afternoon–darkness was now falling at about 4:30–I was greeted by a crushing sense of gloom. Salvation came when I walked into one of those previously mentioned overpriced restaurants, which no longer seemed overpriced, and ordered the soft-shelled crabs, a beer, and a table in the midst of the chatter of others.

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What used to be Faith's engine and generator, loaded and enroute to their final resting place

My next trip to Deltaville found my poor little Volkswagon Jetta pick-up truck burdened with all manner of materials handling equipment and implements of destruction. I had filled the list I made during my previous visit:

• 2-sawhorses–I had a couple of fold up ones in the garage
• Portable band saw
• Skilsaw
• 1/2” plywood–cut to certain dimensions. (the nice young man at Lowes cut this for no additional charge.)
• Shop vacuum
• Furniture carts (for generator and I presumed engine, but as it turned out, the engine was simply to cumbersome)
• 4-bottle jacks
• mall
• clamps
• 3-8’0” long beams (it turns out that 7’9” was all my VW would take from the dashboard to the trunk with the rear seats down, and instead of beams I used 3”x1-1/2”x1/4” C-channels)
• beam trolley
• 3-cable winches
• My normal collection of hand tools, which by most people’s standards, isn’t normal at all. I have a lot of tools.

Since using my little car for this purpose on this trip, and since my last trip home when the sails accompanied me, the rear tires spin closer to the fenders than the front tires. NIght driving has become less fatiguing, and I’m not sure why, but I see more owls than before. People seem friendlier too, judging from the greetings we exchange as they flash their brights at me.

Faith’s engine room can be accessed through a large door from the corridor between the galley and the aft stateroom. Understand that Faith is a boat, and a large door means any door that can be squeezed through without turning sideways. Directly inside of this door was an assembly of copper and cast iron and rubber and plastic that at one time served as Faith’s generator. (To demonstrate how little I knew of what I was getting into, I told the shipyard operator when he was onboard to assess things, “I can just take this apart and toss the parts over.” Following a day in this endeavor, I learned that by removing 200 pounds from a 400 pound generator, you have 600 pounds remaining.)

My plan on arrival was to bolt two of the C-channels back-to-back, bear one end on the far side of the generator, and the other end on the freezer opposite the corridor from the large door, use the trolley to roll this monstrosity out into the corridor and gingerly set her down on one of the furniture carts. To the amazement of all present–I was working alone–it worked, and I wheeled the cart merrily down the corridor and into a position in the saloon where it could be a constant source of banged-up shins every time I tried to walk around it.

I then set to work on the engine. Faith weighs-in at around 30 tons, so I knew the first thing I should do was to fill the fresh water tanks. Removing the engine might just allow her to drift-off without sufficient weight to glue her to the earth’s surface once the engine was removed. Further, Faith’s engine was designed to be installed and removed through a sphincter and not the ‘large door.’ Just think of Jesus’ story about the rich man getting into heaven. You know, the camel, the eye of a needle thing.

So I found myself before anything else shaving that camel–taking everything off that might prevent that engine from passing. Then, I used my little I-beam and the come-alongs to hoist the engine off the mounts. I set it down on some bottle jacks long enough to dismantle the I-beam back into the C-channels, and placed the forward end of the C-channels on the jack stands on the plywood protection in the saloon and the aft end on bottle jacks in the engine room and proceeded to use come-alongs to slide the whole cribbing thing out from under the engine, which stubbornly stayed stationary. Noticing that the jack-stands and bottle jacks were precariously close to tipping over, and that the engine was precariously close to dropping and blasting itself through Faith’s hull (which is exactly where I wanted it, but not in this fashion), I took another come-along from the mast to the jack-stands to situate them back into their original position, and again began the process of sliding it out of the tiny opening. This time, after much hemming and hawing, I managed to get the engine to a point where the shipyard’s crane could come and hoist it up through the companionway.

Having a boat in Virginia and a home and family in Michigan seriously impairs productivity, and this was as far as I got on that visit in early October. On the next trip, the shipyard brought the crane to Faith and removed both the engine and the generator.

Like any great project, the biggest challenge has been to determine a point at which to stop. I’ve heard it said that working on a boat is much like peeling off the layers of an onion–every time one thing is removed, it only uncovers another thing worthy of attention.

Stingray Point is the eastern terminus of General Puller Highway. A small community lies here on the easternmost part of the landform separating the tidal mouth of the Piankatank River from that of the Rappahannock River. Deltaville, Virginia is the municipality bounded by these waters as they deposit their alluvium into the Chesapeake Bay–itself a fascinating geography created by the intense flooding in the melt-off following the Pleistocene Epoch (Ice-Age).

A futile battle raged this past summer between man and nature, a dredging operation to remove the deposited silts threatening to hinder navigation between the Piankatank River and Jackson Creek. Deltaville Marina and Boatyard, located on Jackson Creek, provided a natural site for the spoils of the dredging to be off-loaded from barges onto trucks to be carried to the headwater regions. After ten months, or ten thousand years, the containment system to house these spoils will be breached and these sediments will again make the merry muddy ride to the sea.

In Deltaville, one is assured that every person one meets is tied in some fashion to a boat, or to boats. The crab-men, the oyster-men, those who maintain boats, the owners, the captains, those who live on boats, or those who sell meats and produce and liquor and hardware–fittings,paints,and parts–to those who live on or work on or own a boat. It is a rare occurrence when a letter or parcel passes through the Deltaville Post Office addressed neither to nor from someone intimately tied to boats.

Several acres of tall pines hiding large-lotted homes in the bed of their needles are bordered on one side by Jackson Creek, and on another by a narrow gravel lane that the school bus travels to collect and deposit the children of those homes. The afternoon sun chases shadows of pines across the lane, then into and past a small drainage ditch, then through the mown grass of the right-of-way strewn with hoses and extension cords from power and water supplies to the yachts that line the opposite side of the street. Faith’s bow is among the first of these yachts to feel the relief or chill of this shade, depending on the season.

It  was June of 2008 when Faith arrived in Deltaville, and the boatyard blocked her up in a prominent position near the water. We had just returned from four years and a half of life on Faith the boat through faith in God, the Creator of the universe. To the shipyard, I’m sure Faith appeared a profitable prospect, but after several months of inactivity on our part–who can blame them–Faith was relocated to the back part of the yard reserved for orphans whose owners chose to not use the shipyard to care for their boats.

The call to tell me of Faith’s condition came in February, 2011, and I made a couple of sorrow-filled trips to Deltaville in the following months, mostly for the purpose of getting my arms around the scope of the damage before the act of living became an obstacle to the care of Faith.

Six weeks in late Spring found me in Thailand in search of medical services. Summer commitments with my son’s baseball team and my daughter’s departure for a semester in Beijing provided no window for me to visit Faith until September, at which time I loaded my tools into a ten-year-old Volkswagon Jetta Diesel, and made the 760 mile drive to Deltaville.

My first four-day visit was spent cleaning up and unburdening Faith of all manner of things. (I learned while returning to Michigan that a ten-year-old Volkswagon Jetta was not designed to carry 2,500 square feet of sails–my headlights on dim lit the lower branches of the trees lining the road.)

When a crisis of faith occurs, this is often the first step. Faith had a lot of baggage. A lot of good intentions, like the sails, were only going to get in the way as I peered into Faith’s heart and my own to determine just what parts required disposal–though a plan of destruction–before new life could be injected into her.

Regarding the physical labor to repower Faith, three options presented themselves: hire the shipyard on a time-and-materials basis–their labor rate is a not-unfair $75 per hour, pay the shipyard to provide me a fixed estimate–again a fair proposition as an estimate would take several hours to prepare, or to perform the work on Faith myself.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the current economic outlook isn’t all that rosy, and I haven’t found anybody lining up to pay me $75 per hour. I made the decision to perform Faith’s work myself. I mentioned previously of being blessed with the gift of faith; another gift given me is an ability to figure out how things work, figure out why things don’t work, and to us my hands to bridge that gap.

I’ve been addressing how I chose to bring new life to Faith and, pay attention here, this is where my metaphor breaks down. God doesn’t require eradication of badness before His grace can start filing voids. He just keeps on creating a newness in me in spite of all the baggage and bad decisions I make. I’m sure if He so chose, he could create a new engine room on Faith without blinking an eye. So far, He hasn’t chosen to do so. While His love is great enough to fill voids in me that I never knew existed, He also allows the painful consequences of my choices play out.

Note: while writing this, I received the following in a blog I subscribe to: “Truly being delivered—being restored—is a process you have to go through, not something you can run from or detour around.” Halfway to Normal by Kristin Tennant.

Faith n., …being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  Hebrews 11:1

s/v Faith – 56′ (17.07m) sailing vessel, fiberglas hull, USCG Documented 1134647, Taswell, built in Taiwan – this vessel was our family home for four and a half years, a story shared in Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home.

In the course of the past eight months, I have learned the definitions of two terms, both unpleasant – sinking-on-shore, and repowering.

In February, John from Deltaville Boatyard called to determine my plans for Faith, as they were trying to put together their launch schedule for the Spring. ”Sure,” I said, “run out and take a look at her to let me know everything’s alright.” I have developed over the years a certain knack for believing, until information is provided to the contrary, that everything’s alright. Life is easier and most stressors disappear that way.

Some years ago, my wife Lorrie and I signed up for a spiritual giftedness class at church. The objective of the class was to identify which spiritual gifts one was given in order to use those gifts to best serve as Christians. My most prevalent spiritual gift was determined through this class to be faith. Oh, there’s a trace of teaching, and a dab of discernment, but faith trumped the others in me. Somewhere tucked into my belief system, a battle rages between faith as the belief in that which is hoped for and neglect.

The time since my previous visit to Faith spanned about a year and a half. The time before that, about nine months. That nine months included the Winter chills, the Spring rains, and the Summer heat of Deltaville, Virginia. My naive outlook told me that since nothing had happened in those nine months, there’s probably nothing to worry about leaving Faith sit lonely longer.

Sometimes, when I did think about her, fleeting feelings of dread entered my being, but I’m a guy, and have this guy-type ability to force those unfounded feelings into a nice, tidy box and then to tuck that box somewhere outside of my consciousness. That little box of dread resurfaced when John prefaced his next call with: “Mr. Granger, there are some phone calls I just hate to make…” My attention became aroused, as did the attention of nearly every organ in my cardiovascular and gastroenterological systems. No, tell me anything but…that! not yet comprehending what that might be.

So here I am in life, cruising along with a high degree of giftedness in the faith department–a dollop of naivety and a dash of stupidity thrown in for good measure–when all of a sudden, that Faith was not merely dampened, but doused as a flood of badness and doubt filled the core of her being.

“I don’t know where it came from, Mr. Granger, but you have a lot of water in your boat…a lot of water.” John then agreed to send me photos of what he discovered. I instructed him to have her pumped out. (Wouldn’t that be the ticket? If we could fix it all by being pumped out?)

The term used to describe what happened to Faith is sinking on shore–a series of failures in sealants and systems, leading to the destructive penetration of water into a presumably safe vessel laid-up on shore.

A wave a nausea entered the room I occupied, forcing me deep into a nearby chair.

Properly placed in the perspective of human events, Faith is a possession, a material construct created by men (and women and hopefully not too many children) to carry out a material function for men (and women and children). During the time of my most severe suffering, a friend whom I had grown up with lost her son-in-law to cancer at the age of thirty-one, only four months after his own son had been born tiny with respiratory and cardiovascular difficulties. The little guy’s now nearly ten months old and weighs-in on the shy side of nineteen pounds.

The pain and suffering caused by Faith’s condition pales when examined next to the humanity of life and death. To capitalize on my own sense of loss, I was forced to view my sorry world in a vacuum. As it turns out, even that’s not possible; call it the Facebook generation, call it social networking, whatever, this woman continued to post prayer requests that, by all measures, convicted me of the selfishness of my own grief.

Sad and selfish defined me during this crisis of Faith. I mustered the time to drive to Deltaville, Virginia, to check out the damage Faith suffered. Amanda, my then nineteen-year-old daughter, rode with me, probably to protect me from doing something stupid; that was a good thing.

We found a hull creaking in the agony and ugliness of neglect. Then, we boarded Faith and found that she too was in need of a great deal of work. We examined our Faith and found buried beneath mounds of algae and scum and neglect a pretty tough vessel. With exception, Faith’s systems operated. The electronics, the plumbing, the lights, everything but the windlass–that motor used to raise and lower the anchor–worked.

The engine room told a different story. The generator had been maintained and kept running by me during our journey with the application of various band-aids (Speaking of spiritual matters, it’s truly a miracle that the generator functioned as long as it did). The engine, had it not been flooded, could have provided some degree of continued service. Just how much? I don’t know. I’ve heard that one should expect 10,000 hours of service from a marine engine, and Faith’s Yanmar diesel had rung up 8,500 hours in the twenty years since her production. Both pieces of equipment treated us well during our voyage–they safely propelled us around the world. While we might have squeezed more service from the engine, it really didn’t owe us anything–at least that’s the lie I’m going with to further soften the harsh edges of this reality.

Repowering is the term used to describe the removal and replacement of the engine and generator on a boat.

Repowering Faith.

Next Post: A Plan of Destruction