🌊 The Legacy of the Sea, The Seekers, and the Journey Home

From: The Journeyman Project SunTurtle Studios

Nov 10, 2025

by Timothy Bernard Cooney

Intro: The Seekers
Across centuries, the sea has called my family’s name, beginning with my 7th-generation great-grandfather, Peter Grant’s voyage from Scotland in 1807. Many years later, in 1982, I took to sea like he did, sailing into the Atlantic chasing my dreams, and searching for something I could not see or name. In 2025, with my 22-year-old son, Grant, named after that Scot, we took to the sea again. Each journey has carried not only the thrill of adventure but the hope of healing. Each generation courageously expressing its own vision, its own courage through storms, through loss, through love, trying to find its way home.

Peter Grant was the first in our line to hear the sea’s calling, to look upon the horizon and trust that freedom was worth the risk, and the courage he demonstrated has never left us. It lives on in me and my children, my son’s name, our blood. We are seekers — men and women, who chase truth through changing tides, winds, and waves, and through our deepest thoughts and expressions.

Peter Grant immigrated to Nova Scotia from Scotland in 1807 at age 21—my 7th-generation great-grandfather.

The Soul Search

I grew up one of eight children, poor and in perpetual chaos. Still, I survived that tumultuous beginning, left that life behind, and, through patience, persistence, and perseverance, I built enough wealth to never worry about working or being poor again. And by my mother’s example, I’ve learned to be spiritually present and a seeker of the soul. The sea also taught me that lesson. It reminded me that you can chart every course in life, yet still drift without purpose if your compass isn’t set to find love, give love, and be loved.

When I was building my businesses, I never worked on Fridays. Not because I lacked ambition, but because I refused to trade wonder for wages. While others chased the next deal, and recognition for their accomplishments, I was focused on nourishing my soul by nurturing the souls of my children, dropping them off and picking them up each day from school, preparing their lunches, working with them on their passions in the studio I built for them, kneeling beside them at night, praying for love to guide our lives, and teaching them how to sail and master the language of the sea. But the biggest lesson was that the best measure of wealth is time spent with the ones you love

Top: Tim and son Grant Aboard the “Won For Us” 2025 Bottom: Captain Tom McNulty, Mates Tim and Grant Cooney and Grace Cooney at the Brooklyn Marina, Nov 2025

⚓ The First Journey — September 22, 1982

In 1982, when I was twenty-one, I took my first real leap into the unknown. I joined a friend, Captain Chris Black, a kindred spirit and born adventurer, on a small sailboat bound down the Atlantic Coast, offshore, and by the Intracoastal Waterway. Chris had a gift; he didn’t just sail; he believed. He believed in the sea, in fate, and in the wild beauty of a dream.

Chris’s belief filled the sails of that tiny boat, and he taught me to chase the horizon even when I couldn’t yet imagine what waited beyond it. To this day, I carry the rhythm of that voyage. I learned how to weather brutal storms and to interpret the sound of the wind blowing against the canvas and the waves crashing against the hull as the first song of my life as a seeker.

During the long, quiet hours between tides, I read a book that became my inspiration: Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World, the true story of a Nova Scotian mariner who immigrated to America and lived in Bristol County, Massachusetts, where I also grew up. In 1895, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe alone, an actual lone wolf. Slocum proved that solitude could be sacred, that one soul, guided by faith and curiosity, could find peace at the edge of the world.

Forty years later, in 2022, by fate or happy accident, I discovered another seeker at the Jack London State Park near where I currently live. I found myself at Wolf House, the mansion Jack London built that burned to the ground before he had a chance to see his dream become reality. He built it as a retreat for artists and dreamers, but the dreams would die in the flames that consumed it. I read his Biography, An American Life by Earle Labor, the biography of the restless adventurer who rose from poverty and began writing as he lived: fiercely, honestly, and courageously through personal trauma and near bankruptcy.

London wrote through desperation and with purpose. He transformed struggle into story, work into art, and survival into reinvention, and I saw myself in the pages of his story, a reflection of my own experiences. After reading his biography, I was compelled to tell my own story. It was at that moment that The Journeyman was born, not as a book, but as a way of realizing that so much of life’s education comes through storms, through surrender, and through finally embracing the person you were born to be.

The lone sailor and storyteller, Joshua Slocum, sailed to find his true spirit. Jack London wrote to find his voice and claim his soul. I have learned from both men that art, born from love, loss, and faith, is the only compass that always points home. And I, like them, learned that the journey is not about escape, but about return. Return to truth. Return to love. Return home.

Slocum taught me endurance, and London taught me expression. They both taught me that the real journey is within, and the journey home is love itself.

Pictures from the first Journey, 1982.

From the Top: Captain Chris Black, Helmsman Tim Cooney, The Sailing Vessel, Amy, Captain Chris, and Seasoned Seaman Tim Cooney Arriving in Ft. Lauderdale, November 1982.

🚤 The Second Journey — 2025

In 2025, more than forty years after that first voyage, the sea called again, not through a whisper but from within, but through the voice of family. My brother-in-law, Captain Tom McNulty, reached out and invited me and my son Grant to join him on a passage from Harwich to Hilton Head. The timing could not have been coincidental; it seemed to me the winds of fate were blowing once again. Tom is one of those rare captains whose authority comes not from command, but from compassion. He has weathered storms no man or sailor should ever face, yet he emerged wiser and steadier, his heart tempered by loss and strengthened by love.

Sailing with him was a privilege. His calm at the helm, his quiet humor, his ability to read both tides and the risks that come at sea. All of it reminded me that the sea respects those who endure and who respect the sea as a teacher. He led with grace, and through him, I understood what true seamanship really looks like.

He demonstrated faith on his journey, using his compass to find love again with my sister Terre and, through her, to find his way home, not to a harbor but to a family that cherishes him. His grace at the helm reminded me that endurance is not just surviving the storm; it’s learning how to steer through it with your heart still open and thriving in the face of life’s challenges.

Sailing beside Tom and Grant felt like the sea itself was welcoming us home. As the three of us traced the same course I’d once traveled as a young man, I saw my son at the helm, calm, capable, curious, the living continuation of our family’s extended relationship with the sea.

He didn’t need me to teach him what to feel. The sea was doing that already.
Some wisdom is spoken through waves, not words.

From Top: Map of our route, Captain Tom and mate Grant, Captain Tom and First Mate Tim Cooney, The “Won For Us”, Why we do it video.

The Healing Elixir of Art, Music, and Love

The sea gives and it takes, but it always leaves behind wisdom for those willing to listen.

For me, that wisdom became The Journeyman, a vessel not of wood, but of words and music. My art, my writing, my songs, they are all attempts to bottle that healing elixir, the transformation that comes when you surrender to truth and let your pain become your teacher.

That same elixir lives in my grandson Mason, the child of my son Ben, the living continuation of our story. Although his parents are absent from his life, Mason’s love and laughter fill our hearts as we all wait for their healthy return. He is proof that love can rebuild what fear and addiction have destroyed, and through the love of his maternal grandmother and me, his Papa, and his extended families, he is embraced as the light he truly is.

And then, like a light rising over still waters, there is Cindy, the love I lost and found again after thirty-eight years. She saw me before I knew who I was, and she saw me again when I had finally become the man I was meant to be. Ours is not just a love story; it’s a resurrection.

To love her again required courage, to break the cycle of codependency, to release the need to rescue, to stand in our truth. That act of letting go, of loving without fear, became its own form of art, a living song of reinvention.

She is my safe harbor. My calm after decades of sailing through rough waters. My reminder that when love returns, it brings everything we thought we’d lost with it. Ours is a love that transcends time, not built on need, but on recognition. She is the still water after a storm. I never stopped sailing toward her, and the proof that what’s meant for us will wait until we’re ready to receive it.

To love her again required breaking old cycles. It took courage, honesty, and surrender. But the reward was freedom, not just for me, but for everyone watching. My children. My grandson. My readers.

Because love, when reclaimed in truth, becomes medicine. The very elixir that turns storms into art and pain into peace.

From Top: Tim and Cindy, Santa Barbara, 2023, The Good Ship, 2015, Sailing The Nantucket out of Edgartown, MV, 2015, by Tim Cooney, Newfound Lake by George Donohue, My grandfather Circa, 195?

🧭 Children of the Sea

As the crew of the “Won For Us” followed that familiar path down the Atlantic coast this fall, through Mystic, Brooklyn, Cape May, and Annapolis, we met up with my daughter, Grace, in Brooklyn, a gifted designer and artist now leading a team at Calvin Klein, courageously living her dream on her own terms while navigating the concrete canyons of New York City, living her destiny just like Peter Grant, our ancestor who bravely dared to follow his dreams.

There was poetry in that symmetry: a father and his twins charting the same course that so many before had traveled, each searching in his or her own way for something still unknown. Grant listened more than he spoke, as he held tightly to the helm and the waves crashed over the bow, absorbing not just the blows, but the stories I told of my past adventures, and the rhythm of the waves themselves.

They were learning what I had learned decades before: that courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the willingness to keep moving through it.

And while at safe harbor, in the quiet moments, and the still waters between tides, I thought of my oldest son, Ben. He is still at sea, caught in the long, merciless currents and brutal storms of addiction. But I hold faith that one day he’ll find his bearings, raise his own sail, look to his compass, and begin the long journey home. The sea has always called our family back to itself, and I want to believe it will one day call him home again, too.

From Top: Tim and Cindy in Santa Barbara, 2023, Our Family Santa Monica Yacht Center, 2023, Our Kids’ Grant, Grace, Nick, and Dan, Los Angeles, 2023

⚓ The Legacy

From Peter Grant’s first crossing in 1807, to my own at twenty-one in 1982, to the voyage in 2025 with my son and brother-in-law, the same current carries us: the enduring faith that the sea can transform us if we let it. Joshua Slocum showed that solitude can become a sanctuary and sailed alone to find his soul. Jack London proved that struggle could become a story and wrote to redeem his. And my journeys have taught me that art born of love, loss, and faith is the only compass that always points home, and I, like them, learned that the journey is not about escape but about finding your home.

The real journey is within.
The journey home is love itself.

Leaving Charleston Harbor aboard the “Won For US” on November 5, 2025

🌅 Reflection & Conversation

Every generation must take its turn at the helm.
Some are called to chart new waters; others are called to make it home.
But all of us, in our own way, are sailors — learning to trust the wind even when we can’t see the shore.

Who helped you find your way through the storm?
Whose light still guides you home?

Share your reflections below.
This is a space for seekers, artists, and soul travelers — those learning to live by their own tide, one honest wave at a time.

💬 Share your thoughts in the comments — I read every one.
💌 If this piece resonated, restack or forward it to someone who might need it.

The Journeyman Project

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