I am grotesque.
(I hear the murmurs. ‘Ah. Insight at last.’)
I went to see the beautiful sorceress. She is still beautiful. She sliced a couple of slivers off me to be biopsied and she sprayed me with liquid nitrogen, as sorceresses do.
Most places don’t show when I am clothed, but the top of my bald pate has several brown patches that look like continents floating in a sea of white skin. I wear hats when I go outside and so don’t frighten people more than usual, but we are having dinner with other couples Saturday and I don’t think I can wear a hat in the restaurant. Maybe I’ll buy a wig.
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The response to the 2019 entry, both from those who read it here and at Sailing Anarchy, has been quite positive.
My second thoughts were that part of it might be too egotistical. Apparently others did not think so.
Roger wrote: Webb Chiles ‘watered down’ is not Webb Chiles.
I thank him.
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I thank Gary for a quote from Joseph Conrad’s THE MIRROR OF THE SEA.
The sea—this truth must be confessed—has no generosity. No display of manly qualities—courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness—has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
More than thirty years ago while sailing CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, I wrote:
The terrible thing about the sea is that it is not alive. All our pathetic adjectives are false. The sea is not cruel or angry or kind. The sea is insensate, a blind fragment of the universe, and kills us not in rage, but with indifference, as casual byproducts of its own unknowable harmony. Rage would be easier to understand and to accept.
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John saw the following on a Sailing Anarchy Forum, posted by someone who was in the audience when I spoke at the Small Boat Festival. I thank him.
The weekend was more or less wrapped up with Webb Chiles' presentation. He was not at all what I expected. I thought he would be a bit crazy, long haired and somewhat feral. Instead, he was cool, articulate and well kept...and a bit mad.
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Under ‘the world taking a decade to catch up’, among this morning’s BookBub offerings is a novel by Amy Tan, SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING,which was published in 2005.
Those of you who have read SHADOWS—and if you haven’t, why not?—know that I used those words and idea. I don’t recall when I wrote SHADOWS, but it was at least a decade before 2005.
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Shaun Steingold, the General Manager of iNavX, learned of my recent comments about chartplotting apps from a sailing friend of his who reads this journal and sent me an email introducing himself and welcoming any comments, suggestions or recommendations I might make.
I wrote back at some length and he responded reasonably and positively.
I appreciate this outreach which is hardly typical of most companies. Shaun has certainly made be believe that iNavX seeks to produce a good product and do their best by their customers.
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I just placed my first order to be delivered to Hilton Head.
