Ted Williams was the last man to bat .400 in the major leagues. He did that the year of my birth which means it was a very long time ago. However I have just battled 1.000 and rather wish I hadn't.
A little over a week ago a pleasant young woman cut three pieces from me and sent them to be biopsied. Having had literally countless skin cancers I was reasonably certain one of these would prove positive. All three did. One has been scheduled for removal next month. I should soon receive word when the other two will be. I continue to be whittled away.
Now that the summer heat has ended, I would like to go sailing and have asked the dive company to clean GANNET's bottom. Skin chopping may interfere and I am in working mode, but I am willing to take a break if doctors and weather permit.
As some of you know I focus on one thing at a time. Presently that is working on the GANNET book. I wake at around 6 AM, get dressed, start the coffee machine, pour a half glass of grapefruit juice, swallow a multi-vitamin, and retire to the guest bedroom and work for a couple of hours, producing five hundred to a thousand words. This is more than I have usually done on first drafts in the past, but this is mostly collating from passage logs, journal entries and magazine articles I have already written. I am now 35,000 words in. I understand the structure. I will continue until GANNET and I reach San Diego and then I will go back and rewrite and eliminate and rewrite and rewrite. I like rewriting, which is like polishing, and could do so endlessly, but sometime it must come to an end. I know the time to stop is when I find myself changing back one morning what I changed the day before.
You can expect to continue to find posted items I have come across in reading past journal entries for the GANNET book.
One is the above photo taken by the man I believe to be America's foremost living open boat cruiser, Steve Earley, in his previous life as a newspaper photographer. The newsroom heard of a derecho approaching, so Steve stationed himself with a view of the Norfolk waterfront. This is one of my favorite of Steve's photo and I believe perfected by the man in the red shirt in the foreground.
From Joseph Conrad's novel, CHANCE.
The exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded.
and
Sailors are not adventurers.
From Wilbur Wright.
No bird soars in a calm.
From Grouch Marx.
Just think what God could have done if he had the money.
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