Saturday, March 21, 2020

Evanston: trapped; good decisions; stillness; AirPods; comments

After posting yesterday, I received an email from Craig, who now lives aboard in Seattle but whom I met while we were both in New Zealand, both having sailed there solo from the US.

The situation for boats trying to cruise the South Pacific this year has become even worse.  Quite simply it has become impossible and cruisers are facing hard decisions.  While we both realize that there are more serious consequences to this pandemic, the plight of these people strikes close to home to both Craig and me.

I quote from Craig’s email:



> Late yesterday the Government had stopped the entry of all non-residents into French Polynesia.   They are also sending all non-residents home.

> Any boats arriving now, where the crew is not showing signs of COVID-19, will be allowed to re-provision, re-fuel & effect repairs with the goal of going to Tahiti where the Maritime Affairs Minister will find a safe mooring for them so they can leave the boat and return to their home country by air from Tahiti.


Yikes.

Then today, the other popular agent who is based in Papeete, Tehani, sent a longer message.  There are three options, but only option 1 or 2 are available if you are just arriving or have been there less than a month.

> For those arriving in FP this season, you have option 1 or 2 only

> For those already in French Polynesia for more than 1 month, you have 3 options.

> OPTIONS
> 1/ Return home by airplane with boat remaining in French Polynesia

> This will mean finding a safe place to anchor, moor or to store their
> boat.  For the moment Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa and Ua Pou are accepting
> boats in their anchorages.  However, no boats are allowed in Fatu Hiva
> at the request of the local population.  In Tahiti, the DPAM is
> reviewing docking and anchorage space.


> Decisions on repatriation need to be made quickly as airlines are
> limiting their flights with the risk that this option may fall away in
> the short term. Air Tahiti Nui is the only airline to be maintaining
> flights to France from next Monday.  AF, UN, FB, NZ, LT are
> progressively reducing flights; no transit is allowed through NZ and
> AU today; returning to the USA is becoming hard to arrange.

> 2/ Choose to continue sailing in the Pacific.

> We need to know who will be making a call to Tahiti to refuel etc and
> their estimated arrival date and location.

> 3/ Choose to stay in French Polynesia with their boat.

option 3 means you stay in one place and may need to move off your boat into temporary housing on land.

The Cook islands have closed their borders, as has Tonga, so option 2 of continuing to sail might mean the best destination will be back to the US.  Some people decided to return to Mexico, but now that border is about to be shut as well.


Australia and New Zealand have also closed their borders.  U.S. sailors could sail to Hawaii or back to the West Coast.  Whether other nationalities would be allowed in I do not know.  The crews would have gone through more than a two week quarantine on the passage before arrival.

By far the best choice would be to provision and go to sea for two months, but in my experience most cruisers don’t actually like being at sea.

All have my sympathy.



The inbox of the email account I give to businesses had a dozen emails in it this morning, all virus related.  Among them was one from Driscoll Marina stating that it and the boat yard are closed.  The toilets and showers for the marina are within the boat yard area.  Anyone in there without written permission will be considered to be trespassing.

I was scheduled to fly back from San Diego next Tuesday.  I anticipated increasing complications and wisely flew home last Sunday.

Another wise decision was to move most of Carol’s retirement money out of the stock market over a year ago.  Of course I did not foresee this pandemic, but I did know that the stock market was not going to go up forever, that a recession would come sooner or later, and as someone else observed:  better to get out a year too early than a day too late.



Illinois goes under a shelter in place order in six hours.  This won’t make much difference to me.  I am a physical animal, but I am capable of stillness.  The longest I have been totally alone is the five month passage around the Horn in EGREGIOUS.  But I have often been more than a month alone at sea—two months on CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE during the passage from Singapore to Aden; two months on GANNET the passage from Darwin to Durban; and many others.  In all I have probably spent seven or eight years alone at sea, and a couple more years with Jill and with Carol.  And as some of you know I also spent two weeks in a Saudi Arabian jail cell.

Stillness is unnatural and threatening to many people.  Perhaps because they fear that if they have to sit quietly and look within they will find emptiness.

So after all these decades, the rest of you are going to have catch up and live for a while in isolation from the herd as I naturally do.  Who knows?  A few may even come to like it.



Apple’s AirPods are life changing.  I did not expect that.  On GANNET I still listen to music on my Boom 2 speakers.  I have Boom 2s here in Evanston, as well as a surround sound system, but I rarely listen to music on anything but my AirPod Pros.  Even more important is that Carol likes to watch some television I do not, including more news.  I bought her a pair of AirPod Pros for Christmas.  She uses them at work for phone calls.  Here in the condo she connects them to the Apple TV and watches news and other programs I don’t want to hear.  Thank you once again, Apple.



I find the comments made on my YouTube videos interesting.  So I have changed the settings to this journal and have opened it to comments.  I am not sure how this will work and may revert at any time, arrogant bastard that I am.



Be strong.

10 comments:

Timothy Hazlett said...

Test test test...Comment testing in process. Love your writing. Seems like you could have had a great career as a financial advisor too! Drinking wine at the moment and snacking on crackers. Best to you!

Webb said...

Thanks, Tim. Plymouth gin to my left. Cheers

Solosailor said...

Your experience on the edge can help many of us in the days to come.

tatali0n said...

Comments enabled on your Journal? The world must really be coming to an end after all!

Go Far said...

Enjoying your journal in OZ while we wait out both cyclone season and....

Anonymous said...

TUCK FRUMP!!!

Our Sincere Kind Regards to Webb!

“But to every mind there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth,
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Anonymous said...

Our favorite 1904 Robert Service poem:
Jan. 16, 1874 — Sept. 11, 1958

“When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and... die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow...
It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard.

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
"You've had a raw deal!" I know -- but don't squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It's the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit:
It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard.

It's easy to cry that you're beaten -- and die;
It's easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight --
Why, that's the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try -- it's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.”

Fair winds & following seas & long may your big jib draw!

Anonymous said...

“ I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea & sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship & a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick & the wind's song & the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face & a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide,
Is a wild call & a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray & the blown spume, & the seagulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way & the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And a quiet sleep & a sweet dream when the long trick's over.”

-- 'Sea Fever' -- John Masefield

Anonymous said...

( HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUAA = Triggerfish )


“‘MY LITTLE GRASS SHACK IN KEALAKEKUA HAWAII’”
(Bill Cogswell / Tommy Harrison / Johnny Noble)
Gary Aiko & The Legends

SING IT LOUD!

“THERE'S A PLACE IN HAWAII
THAT IS VERY DEAR TO ME
I AM HOMESICK AS CAN BE
WON'T YOU LISTEN TO MY PLEA?

I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY LITTLE GRASS SHACK IN KEALAKEKUA HAWAII
I WANT TO BE WITH ALL THE KANES AND WAHINES THAT I KNEW LONG AGO

I CAN HEAR OLD GUITARS A-PLAYING
ON THE BEACH AT HO'ONAUNAU
I CAN HEAR THE HAWAIIANS SAYING
"KOMO MAI NO KAUA IKA HALE WELAKAHAO"

IT WON'T BE LONG 'TIL MY SHIP WILL BE SAILING BACK TO KONA
A GRAND OLD PLACE THAT'S ALWAYS FAIR TO SEE.
I'M JUST A LITTLE HAWAIIAN AND A HOMESICK ISLAND BOY,
I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY FISH AND POI,

I WANT TO GO BACK TO MY LITTLE GRASS SHACK IN KEALAKEKUA, HAWAII
WHERE THE HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUAA GOES SWIMMING BY
WHERE THE HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUAA GOES SWIMMING BY.”

Anonymous said...

‘Yacht Club Bar’ ( song )

“I love to sit around the yacht club bar
and talk about the things we're going to do.
I love to sit around the yacht club bar
because it doesn't move.
The swells are big and the winds are high
but that don't bother me.
Cause I never get lost and my tummy doesn't toss
It's a wonderful life on the sea.

My boat it is a big one boys. My crew it is the best.
We race around the entrance buoy beating all the rest.
We're the first ones home with a bent elbow and a powerful salt spray thirst.
We sit around and drink all night and see who comes in first.

Chorus- I love to sit around the yacht club bar

I took her out one Sunday, we got about five miles out
The wind it was a screaming, right dead out of the south.
The waves they must have been two feet high, the swells at least one more.
I'm so lost and my tummy is tossed, I'll never get back to the shore.

My head it was a reeling, my feet got tangled up.
Those damn old sheets were everywhere, just trying to trip me up.
The halyard broke, the boom fell down, the main took off like a bird.
Mayday was my final cry as I dived beneath my berth.

My sailing days are over, cause of that great scare.
You others take a warning, and don't you go out there.
There's winds and seas and swells so high, how can you stay afloat.
Be like me and drink to the sea and don't untie your boat.”

Written by Glenn Marsden in 1987, arranged by Dick and Chris Todd. These musically inclined folks met while cruising the lagoons of Baja California, Mexico. They all hailed from Newport Beach where, for most of the year, the average wind speed at the "entrance buoy" is from 5 to 12 knots.“