Maiden voyage: Launching Starboard Manifest

The Strawberry Moon rises May 31, 2026.

The Strawberry Moon

The Strawberry Moon is the first full moon of summer, named for the brief window when strawberries ripen. Pay attention or you miss it. This year it's also a Blue Moon, the second full moon in May. 

In Starboard's calendar, it's the first full moon after launch. 

A good moon to begin the maiden voyage.

Founder's Story

I tried every vision board app I could find.

One sent me notifications about finding love. The app had decided, without asking, what I should want, and gave me no way to change it. The thought of my partner glancing at my phone and finding an unsolicited invitation to dream about a new romance was not ideal. 

Another had branding that looked stale from the 2010s, flat, bland, and generic. I wanted to incorporate a habit building practice into my daily routine and looking at Freepik corporate icons everyday did not feel inspiring.

I did find one that I liked, but it was utterly untransferable and when I switched phones I lost all my hard work arranging images and crafting affirmations.

And yet another one simply didn't work. 

But the problem that finally tipped me over the edge was more structural. Building a vision board needs two different modes, the creation mode where you are gathering images from various sources and devices and building your world, and the daily nudge element that needs to reach you reliably on a schedule. These are two distinct acts that belong to the same practice. Every app I tried treated them as the same thing, or just ignored one of them entirely.

So I built my own. I have some history with website development and have been keeping up with the Jones' with AI. I saw the social media posts saying how everyone out there is vibe coding and that you can build apps now in a flash, and figured this should take a few weeks.

It took considerably longer.

I am, by nature, someone who approaches everything from every possible angle before moving, and then can't stop until it's right. Long nights. Features that flatly refused to cooperate. Design decisions that haunted my dreams. I knew exactly how it should feel, but didn't quite know how to get there.

But something unexpected happened as I built. The app and branding started looking to reflect my personality and interests in ways I hadn't planned.

Nick Cave came in first. "Come Sail Your Ships" is a song I've always used to remind me who I am at my core. The lyric are even tattooed on me, and suddenly it was the whole metaphor. Then the logo: a star built from the iconography of Bowie's Black Star, some references live in you so deeply that they are woven into you. And then crow imagery, appearing at the edges of everything, as my guardian. 

Do Vision Boards Work?

At some point, this experiment of a project became such a full brand story and something I wanted to fully share with people. I had to stop and ask myself: what do I actually believe about manifestation?

Honestly, I'm still working that out. I believe in magic, and I also believe the old adage is true that "failing to plan is planning to fail".

The habit of returning to something daily, this alone can help the brain rewire itself, that's not woo it's real science. The daily practice of keeping the vision visible so it doesn't slip below the surface is something I needed. I have too many things I want to be, too many directions I want to sail, and if I can't see them they drift out of reach. Out of sight is, genuinely, out of mind for me.

Visions of future you is a flame that needs to be tended.

During the age of sail, a lanthorn (an archaic spelling of lantern) was a vital tool for navigation and daily life at sea.

The term originated in the 16th century, as early lanterns were often constructed with sides or reflectors made of thin, translucent sheets of animal horn.

It had to be tended. In fact, letting it go out at night was highly taboo, viewed by superstitious sailors as a harbinger of doom. 

Because these flames were the vessel’s only defense against pitch-black collisions, a flame going out signaled imminent danger or even the presence of ghosts

So we don't want that! None of those old ghosts finding their way in because the flame wasn't tended.

That's Starboard. The lanthorn you carry. The vision kept visible because you chose to keep it alight, daily, on purpose. 

I built it because nothing else would hold the flame the way I needed it held.

I suspect I'm not alone in that.

Welcome aboard, Sailor.

Vision Board of the Month: Ripening

The Strawberry Moon is the moon of sweetness arrived. Not anticipated. Here.

This month's board is for what is already shaping in your life, whether you've noticed it or not. Not the future you're building toward. The actual present that is ready, right now, asking to be acknowledged.

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