Lake Forest: patched; open boats

 

You can blame Michael for this.  He wrote that he would like to see a photo of me with an eye patch, so I searched and came up with this one.  It dates back to 2011.  You will probably be surprised to learn that my reaction to it is how young I look.  Now I don’t delude myself I was young.  I was seventy years old, but when I look in the mirror now as I occasionally must, to my eye I look a lot older.  At age 82 twelve years is about 15% of my life, so I should look 15% older and I do.

You can thank Michael for this one, which I happened across while looking for a patched me.

I include it just because.  It dates to 2005 when THE HAWKE OF TUONELA would have been on her mooring in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.  While Carol is prettier, that the camera focused on the flower is serendipitous.  

The first winter Carol and I were married THE HAWKE OF TUONELA remained on the hard in the Florida Keys and we lived in a rented apartment.  That next summer I sailed her up to Boston and that winter I insulated her interior so we could live on aboard and built a v-berth in the forepeak which had been empty and used for sail stowage when she was a racer.  I drove Carol to her office and then continued on Memorial Drive to Constitution Marina.  This being Boston usually the temperature was well below freezing and upon arrival I turned on the space heater and shivered until it warmed up enough for me to be able to hold tools.  Many of you are much better at building things than I, but I managed and doing the work myself had the great advantage that I could afford my wages.

What is called Mary Bryant’s open boat voyage has caused me to be thinking about open boat voyages.  I have tried to learn the size of the boat she, her husband, two infants and seven other escaped convicts sailed.  It seems it was about 25’ long.  That is a lot of people in a small boat, but then Capt. Blight had nineteen in the BOUNTY’S 23’ launch, including himself.  CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE could have floated inside both of those boats.  Here from Sailboat Data are the specifications of a Drascombe Lugger.

I would have much, much rather have been alone in the smallest boat.

Of the Bryant voyage, they had about 700 miles to sail from Sydney before they reached the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, which would have provided increasing protection as they continued the thousand miles north to Cape York.

I have sailed the last six hundred miles from present day Cairns to Cape York four times in four different boats:  CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, RESURGAM, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, GANNET.  I have said that it is my favorite coastal sail in the world, but then I don’t do much coastal sailing.  Or I didn’t before I moved to Hilton Head.  Now I suppose I do.  From Marathon to Hilton Head.  Hilton Head to The Chesapeake and back.  Down to St. Marys.  Up to Cape Lookout.  And sometime this year I’ll sail to Charleston.  

The last five hundred miles along what is now northern Queensland  are still empty and would look much as they did when the Bryants passed. Still they were sailing into the unknown and I along that coast was not.  Cook and Bligh had passed that way, but it was a great feat of seamanship and determination.