
As I noted on the introduction to my main site, www.inthepresentsea.com, I have kept a journal under this title for many years. I have found it useful in providing material for other writing and for memory. But making a diary public changes everything. Certainly in the past I have made entries that I would not want to publish. It will at least enable those who are interested to keep track of where I am. The tracking page for GANNET is: https://my.yb.tl/gannet
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
San Diego: washed; amps; link; chef; garlanded
Sunday, October 27, 2013
San Diego: ALL IS LOST; trashed; Saildrone
Friday, October 25, 2013
San Diego: wrecked; the right stuff; no more; changed
Thursday, October 24, 2013
San Diego: painted, paneled, pad-eyed
I knew at the time that it is bigger than I need, but it was the only one in stock and was on a hook showing a price of $24, so I bought it, along with several other bits and pieces and didn’t look at the receipt until I got back to GANNET when I found that the pad-eye actually cost $66. I could have taken it back, but didn’t. It has a safe working load of 3500 pounds, more than enough to lift the entire boat if bolted to a strong enough part of the structure. I think it will adequately secure a tiller pilot.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
San Diego: tillered; hacked; They Rode West
Friday, October 18, 2013
San Diego: sailed; shopped; terrified
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
San Diego: The Man; SCOUT's end; flat; a year ago today
Sunday, October 13, 2013
San Diego: end of season; intelligent life; failure; under consideration; oh, my
Here in San Diego, my four 25 watt panels provide more than enough power, and did so while underway on my sail down to Guadalupe Island and back. However, San Diego has more sunny days than most places. The purpose of adding solar panels would be to increase output under cloudy conditions.
Friday, October 11, 2013
San Diego: downsizing revisited; a year; walking speed; Death Watch; sealer
Thursday, October 10, 2013
San Diego: territorial dispute; harvest
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Evanston: gone fishing
Monday, October 7, 2013
Evanston: a speeding sofa; seamless
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Evanston: in case of technical difficulties
Friday, October 4, 2013
Evanston: a personal history of Chicago; big boat owner
Carol and I have now lived in Evanston for more than seven years, although as she sometimes pointedly points out, I have not been here all the time.
I have more history in Chicago than that.
The first entire night I slept with a woman was in Chicago.
We were in college west of here and on our way to spend the Easter break with my parents in a suburb of Saint Louis. This involved changing trains at Chicago’s once grand Union Station. We left one day, after telling my parents we would arrive the next, and instead of switching trains that afternoon, went to a hotel. This was more than fifty years ago and what I expect would be commonly accepted now, was not then. But young lovers will find a way. And should.
I will not embarrass you or me with details, but I still recall how wonderful it was to turn in half sleep and bump into smooth, warm flesh. After that night, I better understood Henry Moore’s sculptures, all curves and hollows.
I was married just before Christmas my senior year in college, and we drove to Chicago for our honeymoon.
I bought a copy of the ILIAD, of which I’ve written before, and as I note in that entry, we went to hear the Chicago symphony.
I did not mention that the soloist was Arthur Rubinstein. I don’t remember what pieces he performed, except that after receiving thunderous applause following one of Chopin’s short compositions, he turned to the audience and apologized for having made a mistake, of which only he and perhaps a handful of others were aware, and said he would play it again, which he did.
A lesson about personal standards I never forgot.
When my mother was a teenager, her family lived in Chicago, where her father worked for now vanished Marshall Fields. He was named August Weber and didn’t like any form of his first name, so was called ‘Webb’.
One day while walking back from lunch, he collapsed on the sidewalk and died of a stroke or a heart attack. He was in his mid-thirties. My mother, who was not the most reliable of sources, said that he had been gassed during WWI, still known then, ironically, as The Great War.
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If you walk down ‘A‘ Dock at Driscoll’s Mission Bay Marina, as I will next Wednesday afternoon, by far the smallest boat you will see will be named GANNET. Yet several of you own smaller.
Steve in Norfolk, who has just completed a fine 430 mile cruise in North Carolina waters, and Tom here in the Midwest, sail 17’ Welsford Pathfinders they built themselves. Doryman is sailing his recently restored 23’ Stone Horse, BELLE STARR, in the Pacific Northwest. Audrey permits her husband, Kent, to be moveable ballast on her 18‘ Drascombe Lugger in Florida. Dayton in South Carolina had an 18’ Cape Dory Typhoon. Glen in Saskatchewan his modified 17’ Osprey. Zane in New Zealand has a 22‘ sloop. There are probably others I’m forgetting and to whom I apologize.
I may have to start thinking of myself as a big boat owner.
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I have a dumbphone, not a smartphone.
I was curious about the camera in my dumbphone and took the above with it at the Botanical Gardens where Carol and I had lunch a week ago.
I may have to get a smartphone. But not until after the next voyage.