Excitedly bobbing toward that first sandy beach of the trip in your dinghy…. super excited as you leave the mother ship for the first time (this trip) to walk the “remote beaches of the world”… You can see it with your own eyeballs! That special place you dreamed of, where it’s easy to imagine being the first human to ever set foot on this particular patch of sand! The anticipation of pure unspoiled remoteness is tweaking your senses. Your mind is thick with anticipation and the achievement of it all… and then it comes to you “This is why we spend Hundreds of thousands of dollars on a boat, and put up with wind and waves, the boat brokers and the nay-saying relatives.. all of it to get RIGHT here…. and it’s about to pay off! We are here!
After years of beachcombing, after exploring wildly remote sandy shores from our Seawind catamaran SYL, I have found one absolute certainty. You WILL find shoes. There are always shoes, the more remote the beach…. the more shoes you find scattered along the high wash line. Now, I’m not talking about the simple “out of the way” beach here… I’m talking ocean side / rugged remote shores of uninhabited islands. A place where you can easily imagine stumbling across shipwreck remains and cannon balls half buried in the sand…. that illusive “message in a bottle”…. or glittering ghost ship gold strewn out in the rippling sand…. The beaches even the majority of cruisers don’t go to… Why are there are always shoes!?!
I’m not sharing this shoe story to throw cold water on the perfect dream… far from it! Seeing a half buried shoe next to an amazing artifact that has spent hundreds of years bobbing on the open ocean, then untold years baking in the sun doesn’t degrade the euphoria one little bit for a hard core beach comber, it’s just puzzling to me… but why shoes?
I cultivated that “walking the beaches of the world” dream with several good friends of mine (you know who you are) and it kinda stuck. Fortunately I married a wonderful woman that had the same dream later in life when we could afford it, and we made it happen. When our last kid graduated college, we left on an extended cruise that very week! For several years we enjoyed the lee side – picture post card beaches that everyone else (that has a blue water capable boat) enjoys. But after 15 years of so of lazy beachcombing… I had a desire to find the remotest of the remote, especially when my son Jono was on the boat. We didn’t just “walk on the beach” we worked hard at finding the hard ones. I always heard the more effort you put into something, the better the reward. Linda and I found bliss pulling up to and enjoying beautiful the beaches on the easy side of the island, but Jono and I went on the wild side, the ocean side, where most never dream of going. We did what I call “Man Stuff” both efforts, front side and back side beaches have their unique reward. But the “wild side” of beachcombing is where you find the cool stuff . 
Have you ever taken a big cruise ship and paid extra for the “excursion” where they take you off the ship that has 1500 tourists on it and go to a neat place with only 100 or so other people? Yea what we did is like that except where we went the only people you met had their own boat. A self guided “excursion” every day that lasted for 6 months. The food wasn’t as plentiful on our little catamaran… but the word “excursion” truly isn’t the right word to use, it was living a life apart from all that luxury and the “herds”.
Few have ever felt the placid calm of a beach so remote that it even becomes a little scary. By scary I mean so disconnected from humanity it challenges your previous mental paradigm of living on a populated planet. I have felt that excitement several times. I am sure with all my adventures, I have put my foot where no other human has ever tread… on purpose.
Shoes: I can easily imagine flip flops blowing off the deck of a cruise ship, I’ve even found ping pong balls with cruise liner logos on them, so I get that scenario… wind blown lost articles will wash up from the open ocean and some of them off big ships. But most of the shoes I saw are full leather, or tennis shoes. It’s a mystery to me but I guarantee you every Bahamas beach combing cruiser knows that what I’m saying is true.
I’d love to know why there are always.. shoes ….. Rusty & Linda sv “Sea Yawl Later !!”