The Image
Catamaran Dan's Shield Maiden.
She wasn't imagined simply as a beautiful woman. She was imagined from the life of Catamaran Dan himself — his history, personality, adventures, contradictions, ambitions, and the life he is still determined to live.
Dan served in the U.S. Navy aboard submarines. He spent decades in technology and project management, earned graduate degrees, taught sailing, held a Coast Guard captain's license, became an advanced diver, traveled, explored, and somehow never lost his fascination with what might exist beyond the next horizon.
And now there is Rim Run 5. Rather than settling quietly into a conventional retirement, Dan is preparing to take a 17-foot Hobie Getaway beach catamaran on a multiyear sailing expedition through the Caribbean and beyond — living close to the water, exploring different cultures, meeting people, making music, and discovering whatever waits around the next point of land.
There is also a touch of Viking mythology running through his world. The Nevado Raiders. Huginn and Muninn, the legendary ravens. Shield Maidens. Explorers. Sailors. Warriors. People willing to leave familiar shores without knowing exactly what they will find.
So the woman sitting on that catamaran couldn't simply be beautiful. She had to look as though she belonged there.
She needed strength without sacrificing femininity or sensuality. She needed the face of someone who had actually lived. Someone comfortable with sunshine on her face, wind tearing through her hair, saltwater on her skin and an unknown coastline somewhere beyond the horizon.
That is why her long silver-blonde hair is partly braided and partly surrendered to the wind. Her appearance is athletic, feminine and unmistakably human. There is experience in her face. She looks like a woman who has accumulated stories rather than spent her life trying to erase the evidence that she has lived one.
The Nordic tattoos, jewelry and shield connect her to the Viking spirit, but she isn't covered in fantasy armor. Heavy armor has little place aboard a Hobie Getaway sailing through tropical waters. Instead, she is something between Shield Maiden, sailor, adventurer and free spirit.
Her shield is important. It represents strength, but she isn't hiding behind it. She doesn't appear frightened. She doesn't look as though she needs rescuing. And she certainly doesn't look like she's waiting for somebody else to decide where her life is going.
She simply sits on the hull of the Getaway, looking toward the horizon. And perhaps that is the most important part of the entire image.
The woman who could truly share Catamaran Dan's world probably wouldn't stand on the beach asking, "Why would you want to do that?" She would already be sitting on the other hull asking, "When do we leave?"
That is Catamaran Dan's Shield Maiden. She wasn't created from a description of his perfect woman. She was created from a description of the man himself — and the life he has chosen to keep living.
