The news is filled these days with lists and observations about the best and worst of the closing year and decade which have caused me to consider what the decade has meant for me.
Most obviously I made my sixth circumnavigation in the supurb GANNET. I had to check the lists page on the main site to see that I also published two books early in the decade, THE FIFTH CIRCLE and SHADOWS. I wrote GANNET’s passage logs which could become a book—I have not yet decided—many magazine articles of which I have not kept track, four poems, one or which, ‘Ithaca, Illinois’ is certainly original and may be great, and this journal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcKvHCTCU3M
GANNET’s voyage means that I have now completed circumnavigations in five successive decades. Two in the ‘00s.
I almost forgot that I received the Ocean Cruising Club’s Jester Medal and the Cruising Club of America’s Blue Water Medal. I forgot because, while meaning no disrespect, I do not measure myself by awards and neither is on display in our condo. When last seen one was in a desk drawer and the other a back closet.
I also gave some talks and speeches and at the request of others shot a lot of videos. I even like some of them myself, perhaps particularly the two ‘end of being’ videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU-IbkwZFdY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9UILrfAk9s
I have grown old and perhaps most significantly completed the second part of my life, being.
As the decade began I was 68. 68 may or may not be old. 78 unquestionably is. Despite in recent months having cracked a rib and caught a virus, I am in remarkably good health, take no medications, have normal blood pressure, a resting heart rate in the 40s, and still can and do more than my age in push-ups and crunches.
On the down side I went totally blind in my right eye this decade and also now wear hearing aids.
Whatever my other achievements, I have stayed married to Carol.
I sailed a little over 7,000 miles this year, almost all of them in February, March and April.
Above is GANNET’s Yellowbrick track from Hilton Head, South Carolina to San Diego, California. Studying it I see us being blown back while lying ahull in a gale a few days out of Hilton Head and I see those dots representing positions at six hour intervals frequently become solid masses as we were becalmed out of Panama, and the tacks the last more than a thousand miles.
Not all months are equal. Here is the Yellowbrick track of the sailing I have done in the last seven months.
Regular readers will know that I love being in San Diego and that GANNET has chanced into a perfect dock position, but I am ready for a sea change and I expect that this time next year GANNET will not be in San Diego, but either in New Zealand or Hilton Head.
I have written that the numbers have become something out of science fiction. The year 2020. Age 78. I can hardly believe it.
