Quoting the ancient Romans: Audentes Fortuna iuvat. Being in the right place at the right time is useless if you do not grasp your Fortuna and build upon it. In this article, I expound on the milestones of my multiform research career, which over more than 40 years brought me from Venice to California to MIT; from the Venice problem to highly nonlinear, coherent structures in the ocean and atmosphere; and from the mare nostrum (the Mediterranean Sea), a laboratory for global processes, to the tropical ocean-atmosphere systems and regional coupled climate models of the Maritime Continent. The climate system, with its daunting complexity, is arguably the greatest challenge for, and the future of, the entirety of the earth sciences. Finally, living in and working for Venice has been the privilege and Fortuna of my life.
Keywords: autobiography; coherent structures; regional climate models; semienclosed seas; tropical oceans.