Almost all of you, even if you are not residents of the USA or football fans, know that the New England Patriots lost to the Tennessee Titans in the first round of the NFL playoffs Saturday evening. The loss was front page and national TV news because the game might have been the last for Tom Brady, the New England quarterback. Brady is now 42 years old. He will be 43 before the next NFL season begins. He is not what he used to be, and I find myself wondering, as do many, if he has stayed too long.
I do not have an opinion about Tom Brady, but I have wondered the same thing about myself. I, too, am not what I used to be. A friend, half jokingly (I hope), has called me “an old sailor who is a mere shadow of his former self.” It is absolutely true. As you may have noticed there are no 78 year old active players in the NFL or the English Premier League or any other sport.
However what I do does not require that level of athletic ability, though it does require some. You may recall my advice to make yourself as strong as possible and sailing your boat as easy as possible. And some of you may recall my writing during GANNET’s passage from San Diego to Hawaii, ‘Use yourself up, old man. Use yourself up.’ That was in 2014 and while I am five years more frayed by time and sometimes wonder if I am deluding myself, I still don’t feel used up. So while this is statistically the decade in which I am likely to die and I am knowingly in the third and dying part of my life, I am looking to the future with eagerness that surprises me.
In part this is because after a year and a half it is possible, even likely though I fear to say it, that the Hilton Head condo logjam may be breaking up and the renovation will resume. I have not written about that here and will not now. There has been a plethora of lawyers, insurance companies, home owners association, government officials, and I am not going to write anything that could make matters more complicated, if that is even possible. Nevertheless there is a chance, perhaps even a good chance, that the evil condo will become habitable this year. If so, GANNET will have another truck ride which I expect will cost less than did her forty mile jaunt across Panama.
In the meantime I have decided to push my aging body harder. Each workout I am doing a few more push-ups or crunches. No set amount. Just a few more. And I bought a set of 10 pound dumbbells to go with the 5 and 2.5 pound ones Carol already had. I use them on days I don’t do my usual workout and on one of my three seven floor stairwell climbs each day I carry 30 pounds in a knapsack on my back. Not much for those of you who have been through Marine Boot Camp, but then I am old.
‘Use yourself up, old man.’ I’m trying.
I have written about my friend, Roger, who cruised up and down the east coast this summer in TRAVELLER, his excellently home built 40’ catamaran. He is now preparing to cross to the Abacos. Roger grew up near Hilton Head and if I remember correctly has sailed on Skull Creek since he was a boy, but living on board more or less full time is new to him and he recently wrote in an email some eloquent words about that which he has kindly permitted me to share with you.
I am settling into this life now, but it has been odd to me how difficult it is to relax. When I was working we would sail on my summer vacations and I could easily fall into some state of relaxation, but perhaps it was a wishful state or like practicing to relax, but I find now that there is a true state of solitude and comfort in this life aboard Traveller. Hard work it is and my situational awareness is about Traveller and her well being which is one and the same as my own well being. I am changing for the better and my heart is tucked into the natural world around me. I am only a reflection of the wind and water and the boat I built; nothing more than an instrument to them, as they play me.
I was going through old photos when I came across some I had forgotten, including the above, which is not me and Tom Brady, but me and Carol on the pier leading out to the Skull Creek Marina. Our shadows are on what I believe to be spartina, after which Steve Earley named his almost Drascombe Lugger.
