Evanston: dog watch

        While some of us are freezing, obviously others are not.

        Steve Earley sent me this enviable photo taken this morning while he was sailing with Tom Head and lookout on Tom’s Pathfinder, FIRST LIGHT, in the Florida Keys.

        I sense that the lookout is about to bark, “Starboard”, at an approaching port tack boat.

        I thank Steve for the photo and trust that all crew are having an enjoyable time.

————

        My comments a few days ago about age elicited two good quotes.  

        I thank Thomas for:

        The idea is to die young, as late as possible—Ashley Montagu

        And I thank Sam in Australia for:

         Of course you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.—Richard Feynman.

Evanston: chartplotting apps again; rescued; Winston Churchill on democracy

        I recently wrote that, displeased with some of iNavX’s policies, I was going to use iSailor.  I have both apps on my phone and iPads—in addition to the new Pro, I have an old iPad mini.  No sooner had I said that than iSailor screwed up.

        I learned of this when I went to their in-app chart store and found a blank world map showing no folios, which is what they call regions.  After futilely trying on successive days, I emailed iSailor support.  I received an unuseful response.  So I emailed back and was told to check to see if I had the current version, which is 1.11.0.  I did not.  So I went to the App Store which initially indicated I had the current version, but when I clicked enough showed an ‘update’ button.  I updated.  Note that an update for iSailor had not appeared in the App Store notifications.  It still hasn’t.

        During this exercise I learned that iSailor was bought earlier this year by a firm which has immodestly appended its name to the app and in an attempt to increase revenue will no longer provide updates free after one year.  They now have the same ‘subscription’ model as iNavX.

        Beyond that, though I have not seen this written as policy and it may just be a bug in their update, I have not been able to download the chart folios I just bought on my iPad to my iPhone.

        Those folios were of the west coast of the US in case I decide to sail to Hawaii and Washington.

        To cover the west coast of the US in iSailor requires two folios, with a third if you want coverage to Seattle, Washington.  In iNavX you get the entire US with one purchase.

         If you only sail a single region, as I expect most sailors do, iSailor may be more economical, but I once calculated that the charts for GANNET’s voyage would have cost several hundred dollars more from iSailor than iNavX.

        Both apps do the job.  I started with iNavX and didn’t learn of iSailor until Durban, South Africa.  I don’t know which will be my primary going forward.  I am irritated with the restrictive policies of both.

———— 

        Several of you have emailed me about the young woman who capsized in the Southern Ocean and was just rescued.  I don’t follow these races, but I had read of her at Sailing Anarchy and in THE GUARDIAN.  

        I have no comment.

———— 

        Larry sent me several quotes from Winston Churchill, for which I thank him.  They are all good.  My favorite:

        The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

———— 

        Tomorrow I make my reservation to fly to GANNET. 

Evanston: harder then; unimaginable; cold wakes; small steps

        David sent me a quote from THE ART OF NAVIGATION by Antonio de Guevara in 1539.

        Do no one enter (the sea) by choice but out of necessity, because the man who sails, if it were not for relieving his conscience to defend his honor or to protect lives...I say and affirm that such a person is bored, or completely crazy.

        That reminded me of Samuel Johnson saying, “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”  At another time he claimed, “A man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.”

        But then Dr. Johnson was an urban man who also said, “Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”  Which is obviously not true.  Among other things, there is no ocean there.

        However, I do agree with David that going to sea was harder in the days of Antonio de Guevara and Samuel Johnson.  The ships were cranky, hard to sail, didn’t go to windward well, or at all, and were filthy and pestilential.  On many voyages most of the crew died of scurvy until about the time of Captain Cook.

        David knows I was born far from the sea and asked if there were any previous sailors in my past.

        The answer is one.

        Another reader whose pastime was genealogy worked out my ancestry back to the late 1700s.  No sailors there.

        My hands are affected by Dupuytren’s Contracture which is also known as The Viking Disease, so a thousand years back there is a seagoing pillager in my past.

        That is a really recessive gene.

———— 

        The NY TIMES has an article about all the light stars have ever produced in the universe which is beyond imagination.  At least mine.

        For a start it is beyond my imagination that a few of our species are clever enough to be able to calculate that number.

        Then the article states that there are two trillion galaxies in the universe containing a trillion trillion stars.

        I can’t imagine that either.

        And finally, the universe is truly dark and empty.

        All the light from all those stars shining for fourteen billion years “provides about as much illumination as a 60-watt bulb seen from 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away.”

Permit me to quote a great poet:

To Nicholas Copernicus

Nick,
you did us no kindness
when you proved we are not the center of the universe
Easier to believe our lives had meaning then.
Harder now.

Still
it is better
to know
the truth.

———— 

         NASA Earth Observatory carries an article about the cold wake left by tropical storms, something else I did not know.

———— 

        Yesterday I telephoned the small boat yard adjacent to Skull Creek Marina which I know does not permit owners to do their own work, a now common restriction I dislike, and asked if they would reduce the cost of anti-fouling if I provide the paint.  As some of you may recall I bought a gallon of Petit Vivid before I sailed to the Chesapeake, thinking I might anti-foul there.  After some consultation, they agreed to lower the price by more than I expected.  So I have signed a contract for them to anti-foul GANNET sometime in January.

        I also have decided on which freeze dry meals I will buy to provision and where I will buy them.

        Among the ways I miss New Zealand is not being able to buy their Back Country Cuisine freeze dry meals.

        Here in the U.S. I used to buy from Campmor.  I still will buy some meals from them, but for reasons I did not know they no longer stock the Mountain House brand, which is my favorite in this country.

        Mountain House itself no longer sells Chicken Stew in individual servings.  Instead Chicken Stew is available only in what they call 10 serving cans.  From the nutritional information Mountain House provides I think each can will only provide about 7 or 8 servings. I will buy a can and repack the contents into zip lock bags.

        My list:

          Backcountry Pantry Santa Fe Chicken 

          Backcountry Pantry Louisiana Beans and Rice

          Backcountry Pantry Chicken and Rice

          Alpine Aire Leonardo De  Fettuccini

          Mountain House:

               Beef Stew

               Beef Stroganoff with Noodles

               Chicken with Dumplings

               Chicken Fried Rice

               Pasta Primavera 

               Spaghetti 

               Sweet and Sour Pork 

               Chicken with Mashed Potatoes

               Italian Style Pepper Steak 

        You may have noticed that there are only thirteen meals.  

        A packet of Santa Fe Chicken provides two meals, and 

I will also buy a few other meals to experiment with. 

Evanston: explode

       You will hear those who say that age is only a number.  They are wrong.  Age is precisely a number.

        I, who have always used my body hard, have never weighed more than I do now at age 77, am disappointed to see the changes time and gravity have made in my body. 

       My skin has lost elasticity. 

       I still wear 32” waist Levis, but my weight has moved south.  Perhaps through bone loss.

       I am fortunate in many ways, among them that I can still do what I do when seriously old.  

       Reinhold Messner and, if he lives, Alex Honnold, could not make their climbs at my age.  Or for several decades younger.  While what I do requires strength and agility, obviously not to the same degree as theirs.  I like to believe the requirement of will is the same.

       But I want to tell you, without in any way bragging, just reporting, it is possible to be filled with joy and strength and the desire to push hard against limits even when you are seriously old. 

       I sit warm and comfortable in Evanston, Illinois, far from the sea, before a fireplace, a crystal glass of Buffalo Trace at hand, an African woman, Sona Jobarteh, singing on the surround speakers, and I long to explode, to voyage out, to face Ocean as simply and directly as I have for decades.  The wind and waves and masterpiece, GANNET—I like to believe we deserve one another—to sail on endlessly were that possible.  I would not weaken—read ‘Sailing Toward Africa.’ If I could I would sail to the end of time.

        I have never sought to inspire others, though some have told me I have inspired them.  But I am willing to inspire others about old age:  the numbers are ineluctable, but you can be old and formidable.  You can find joy in old age.  If time and chance have not compromised you too much, as for many they have, and if you have it in you, go as hard as you can as long as you can.

Evanston: good climates; inflation; a surprise

        The recent ‘cold’ front that dropped temperatures to an unbearable 60ºF/15.5ºC in South Florida got me thinking about what places in the world have climates where I would like to live.  
        Although I may end up living there, the South is not one of them.  Hilton Head Island like the Florida Keys is fine for the seven months from about October through April, but far too hot in the summer.  For me the ideal is a location where it never, or almost never, freezes and the summers stay mostly in the 70sF/low to mid-20sC.

        Anyone who has been reading this journal a while knows that New Zealand’s Bay of Islands tops the list of places I would like to live.

        San Diego, California, which has the best climate of any major city in the world, is second, so long as you can live near the ocean.  A few miles inland and you are in the desert and might as well be in Yuma, Arizona.

        All of the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco.

        Sydney, Australia and the southeast coast of Australia.  

        Cape Town and the southwest coast of South Africa.

        Unfortunately for one reason or another, I can’t live permanently in any of them.

———— 

        I have transited the Panama Canal three times:  in 1984 and 1990 in RESURGAM and in 2009 in THE HAWKE OF TUONELA.

        The fees for the 36’ RESURGAM  both times were about $125.  For the 37’ HAWKE in 2009 I think the fee was about $500.

        In searching the Internet I came across a summary dated this year that shows the basic fee for all boats less than 50’/15.24 meters is now $800, but there are several additional fees that will drive the total cost of a transit to around $2,000.

        As I probably have said here before, going through the canal the first time is interesting.  It is one of the great human engineering achievements.  But after the first time, it is just a period to be endured when your boat and your life are no longer in your control.

        I have been thinking about how to get GANNET across the isthmus, but won’t know until I am there.

        I am looking forward to next year, but I am not looking forward to Panama.

———— 

        I thank Matt for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW2e8M3nzvE

        Go to the 1:30 mark and then keep your eyes on the screen. 

Evanston: honor and warriors; numbers

         I have been thinking about honor because of all things a television series.

        Who thinks about honor these days?  

        I do not know, but not having had what is called a ‘real job’ for almost half a century, I have time to think about many things that others do not.

        The television series is ‘The Last Kingdom’, based on the Bernard Cornwall ten novels set in the time of Alfred the Great with the central character being Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the greatest warrior of the age, and a man with torn loyalties between Saxons and Dane.

        I read all the novels, and Carol and I have watched all the released three seasons of the television series except the final episode of season three which we will get to this weekend.

        Honor and reputation are all to Uhtred, who also believes that “Destiny is all.”

        Some of you will recall my often quoting the similar, 'Time and chance happens to them all.'
        Uhtred believed that fate is decided by the Danish gods.  I have come increasingly to believe that fate is in our genes, that we are born with most of what will define our lives, though time and chance may intervene.

        What it is to be honorable now? I wonder.  What is it for me to be honorable?

        I am going to switch for a moment to Alex Honnold of FREE SOLO.  He is not unrelated.

        If you watched the movie you will have heard Alex call himself a warrior.  And if you have read my poems—and why would you have denied yourself this transcendent experience?—you would have read:  judge a man, then, by that against which he must strive.

        When I was young I looked around and found that the ocean is the greatest entity on the planet, and so I sought to measure myself against it.

        Alex Honnold against stone.  I against water.  Warriors?  I don’t know, but perhaps warrior spirits.  I know there have been times when I have said to my boat:  I have prepared you and not pushed you harder than necessary, but now you and I are just going to have to do this or be destroyed.  And while I once thought of my third attempt at Cape Horn as a voyage of life or death, in fact every one of my voyages has been.  

        So I think for Webb Chiles to be honorable he need only continue for at least a little while longer to do what he has been doing for far longer than anyone, including himself, thought possible:  go to the edge of human experience and send back true reports.

        Only a minuscule number read those reports.  I am grateful to those of you who do.  But I would write them if no one read them at all.
        There is a craftsman pleasure in putting words together and a sense that I am doing what I am meant to do.

        Would Alex Honnold make his climbs if no one knew?

        I like to believe he would.

        I test and judge myself.  While I would like to be admired, everyone else’s opinion is secondary.  Far secondary.

        I expect Alex Honnold is the same.

———— 

        In thinking about next year’s sailing, which will one way or another end the second and major part of my life, I have considered sailing from Panama—assuming I get GANNET across Panama—to Hawaii, then to Seattle and down the Pacific Coast.

        I happened across a website that calculates sea miles between ports.  

        Assuming it is accurate,  Savannah to Cristobal, Panama is 1563 nautical miles.  I don’t know if that is measured going east or west of Cuba.

        Panama City, on the Pacific side of the canal to San Diego is 3368 nautical miles.  Because the last thousand or more miles is to windward, GANNET would have to sail close to 4,000 miles.

        Panama to Hilo, Hawaii is 4542 miles.

        Hilo to Seattle 2380.

        Seattle to San Diego 1209.

        The total Panama to San Diego via Hilo and Seattle:  8131.

        A high pressure area between Hawaii and California causes it to be easier to sail north to Washington and then down the Pacific coast than directly from Hawaii to California.

        A lot longer, but less sailing to windward, and I do like to sail.

        This is all speculation.  I don’t know what I am going to do.  

        I do know that I long to sail oceans again.  And I long for the epic.

Evanston: at Saint Michaels; more iPad; a good line

        I thank Tracey Johns and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum for the above photos which were emailed to me this morning.  Previously I did not know they had been taken.

        I do not sail with fenders over the side.  They were out because I was approaching the dock.

———— 

       Several of you have wondered about my Byzantine procedure for posting journal entries.

        Well even it has failed and, while I am going to continue to type entries on my iPad, I am going to upload them to Blogger on my MacBook.  Today I ran into thus far unsolvable problems.

       Here are some comparison photos of the iPad Pro and my 12” MacBook.

       As you can see the keyboards are essentially the same size.  I prefer the feel of typing on the iPad’s Smart Keyboard Folio, as Apple calls it, although not being backlit is sometimes a disadvantage.

        You can also see that the display on the iPad is decidedly bigger than on the MacBook and it is glorious.  Reading magazines in Texture or watching YouTubeTV or something from Netflix is an undiluted pleasure, and it is big enough so that split screen is useful.

        With the caveat that this is coming from a partially deaf old man who wears hearing aids--but I have read similar comments in reviews by those presumably much younger and with normal hearing--the speakers are unexpectedly good.  Because it is so easy, I now often listen to music on the iPad rather than connect to our living room system or the Boom 2s.

        So no buyer’s remorse.  

         I have sold an article written on the iPad, so it has already paid for itself.  Pure profit from here on.

———— 

       After reading my tribute to my grandmother, David sent me a fine line he wrote about his mother.  I thank him for permission to share it with you.

        A beautiful thing is to see a person embrace a life fully that they hadn’t planned on living.

Evanston: blizzard; do and buy; solved?

​

        While some of you are viewing erotic sand sculptures on sunny beaches and worrying about a ‘cold wave’ that may drop temperatures to near 60ºF/15ºC, we have a blizzard.

​The official weather service definition of a blizzard is large amounts of snow or blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph/30 knots, and visibility of less than ¼ mile/400 meters for at least three hours.

​By that pleasingly precise standard Evanston has not actually had blizzard conditions and the storm is winding down.  To the west of us they have had more snow and wind and probably a blizzard.

​Nevertheless it is not a beach day and my sympathy for those of you who may soon have to endure 60º is limited.

———— 

​Now that Thanksgiving has passed and December is almost here—and the weather may have something to do with it—I am going over my to do and buy list for GANNET.  

​Assuming she has not been damaged while I have been away, the main to do is antifoul.  It is possible that I will go the way of least resistance and pay the tiny boat yard at the marina to do the job.  They won’t let me do it myself.

​There is a leak by a stanchion to be sealed.

​I would like to paint the small areas on the deck between the Raptor nonskid pads.

​The interior wood needs oiling.

​The whole interior needs painting, but that is not going to happen.

​The to buy list is not extensive either.

​I am waiting to order items until just before I return to Hilton Head so they can be delivered there and I don’t have to take them with me on the flight.

​Freeze dry meals. 60 to 80.

​Waterproof Pelican case for this iPad Pro.

​Halyard shackle with opening ½”+.  The existing shackle barely fits over the new mainsail headboard, forcing me to spend too much vulnerable time standing at the mast when I remove or attach the halyard.

​Tiller pilot.  Always and forever.  I have three working Raymarines.  I’ll buy another.  The Pelagic went into standby mode spontaneously when I tried to use it sailing to the Chesapeake.  Mine is a prototype and production models may not have this problem.  I am not inclined to hassle with it further.

​Clevis pin 1¼” x ¼” for the boom gooseneck.

​4 Blue Performance sheet bags.  Replacements for those in the cockpit that are showing their age and miles.

​Jetboil stove.  The self-ignition on the Jetboil I was using failed on the way to Saint Michaels, so I began using the backup.  I’ll buy another for backup.

​Rechargable battery charger.  One of these failed, too.  I had a backup and now need another backup.

​AAA and AA batteries.  Not rechargable.  I have become somewhat disenchanted with rechargable batteries which take a very long time to recharge, usually over night, and sometimes don’t last as long as they should.  So I am going to take disposable batteries with me as well.  My main uses of batteries are the Velocitek, headlamps, flashlights, and the handheld Autohelm remote.

​Velcro for lee cloth shackles.  When not in use, the pipe berth lee cloths fold under the berths, but routinely fall out, with the shackles on the lines at the corners going into the bilge.  After all these years and miles, I am finally going to try to secure them with Velcro when not in use.

​I will do other provisioning by bicycle or possibly Uber in Hilton Head.

​All in all not much to do and buy.

​I have yet to book my flight to Hilton Head because of possible developments with the evil condo.  It will be sometime after January 1.

———— 

​I have made the transition from MacBook to iPad Pro almost completely and have not opened the MacBook for several days.

​As I have mentioned before, the most intractable problem has been with Blogger, whose code seems to have serious conflicts with Pages in IOS.  It is possible that after trial and error—lots of error—I have solved it and that some uniformity to the formatting of this journal may resume.

​I write an entry in Pages, export that into Word, copy that to Outlook, email from Outlook to Gmail, open the attached Word document in Gmail, copy and paste it into Blogger.

​Nothing to it.

​Don’t ask me to explain.  I can’t.  But it has to be done exactly that way.