Now that I have secured the mast, life is more difficult. I have no regrets about that, The unsecured mast was worrying me. There never has and never will be a time when others say they are ready and I say I am not.
There are very few of you who could live on GANNET now. I measured. You would have to squeeze through a space 12” by 24”. A few of you are athletes greater than I, but I am not sure that even you could squeeze and contort through that space. And when you did you would find yourselves in Webb’s Inferno. The difference between being above and below deck is astounding,
I had my evening drinks on deck and considered sleeping there, but can’t see how.
So in some ways my life is difficult, probably more difficult than more than a minuscule number of the seven billion of our species now alive could endure, and that from a 77 year old man.
Yet my life is really simple.
I love Carol.
I go to the edge of human experience and report back truly.
I detune myself and wait for others to do their jobs and get GANNET across this isthmus, and if they do, I sail to San Diego or die trying,
That’s it.
Can you define your life as clearly?
I count an Episcopal priest who is also a sailor as a friend.
She is a tolerant woman who knows I am not a Christian.
We had lunch not long ago during which I told her that she would be surprised to learn that when young I went to a Presbyterian college with the intention of becoming a minister, but as soon as I got there had a reverse epiphany of Saul on the road to Damascus and knew I could not do that.
She said she was not surprised that I got back on the donkey because I am a seeker. Not a word I have applied to myself, but I am. Sometimes I gain insights from others.
I told her that we both expected different experiences after death: I oblivion; she a Christian heaven; and in a just universe we would both receive what we expected.
