I am privileged to be on the email list for updates on SHOE STRING, Jay’s Olsen 34, based here in Chicago, so I knew that he and his crew were going to perform a mandatory man over board drill before or after Wednesday night’s race. I don’t do man over board drills.
In Jay’s words they “turned west and witness(ed) greatness.”
The Chicago skyline is best seen from a boat a few miles out in Lake Michigan, rising so unexpectedly from the flat land.
I’ve only viewed it from there once, at dawn, and felt as though I were sailing toward OZ.
Thanks, Jay, for permission to share the photograph.
------
From Sam comes a link to an effort to restore the ‘soundscape’ of the Grand Canyon in part by establishing a no-fly zone over the central canyon. East and west of that, he has been told a plane or a helicopter passes over about every 90 seconds. This is something I had not considered, and I thank him for the link.
The absence of all man-made sound, unless I play music, is one of the qualities I love about sailing oceans.
Pure silence never exists in cities. Always, night and day, there is at least a low background hum.
When I return to Opua, never a noisy place, I am struck by the silence at night, broken only by an occasional dismal outboard.
I’m sure you recall from your last visit to the poetry page of this site the following written I am surprised to see forty years ago:
my silence
is like glass blown by an apprentice
flawed and cracked
but now I have learned to form silence
and next time I will do it right
perfectly
Alas, I never have.
------
When last seen Dave Scaife was sailing his 14’ home built, and as far as I know still unnamed, Paradox in Hilo, Hawaii, so I was confused when I got an email from him a few days ago headed: A Message from South Texas. All is now explained on his website.
A Paradox if you don’t remember makes GANNET look huge.
I wish him a fine cruise.
------
Wind and solar powered GANNET is the future.
------
Of the three bits the dermatologist sliced from me, the one on top of my head proved to be squamous cell carcinoma. Surprisingly considering the exposure I had to the sun when I was young, this is only the second positive biopsy. The other was also squamous cell on my left leg in 2003 in Sydney, Australia.
So I had to go back and she cut more away, leaving me with a stitched pate right on the edge of what might optimistically be called my hair line. Or laughingly.
I went back yesterday and have become unstitched.
You may recall my line: life is the process of turning baby smooth skin into scar tissue. Well I have another.
You may recall my line: life is the process of turning baby smooth skin into scar tissue. Well I have another.
Though obviously fraying, I am otherwise, in part due to my nagging watch, in splendid condition and good for a while longer.
