Although you will have to search some you may be able to find that seventy-five years ago was truly momentous and far more significant than anything happening today. Germany surrendered. The Second World War was over in Europe.
Here is a link to photos of celebrations from the NY TIMES.
And here a link to photos of the fall of Berlin from BBC News.
I happen to be reading Eric Larson’s fascinating THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE about Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister from May 10, 1940, the day Germany invaded The Netherlands and Belgium. This was the year of Dunkirk, the Blitz, and the very real fear that Germany would invade the British Isles. I am not an unequivocal admirer of Winston Churchill, who was often stubbornly wrongheaded which resulted in the deaths of thousands as at Gallipoli in the First World War. As an aside, that we have had two ‘World Wars’ should cause some pause about our sanity as a species. However, to return to Winston, he clearly was the right leader at the time, both by word and indomitable example.
I have received requests for more information about the strongest wind I have ever experienced. I do not know its precise strength. I can compare it to the wind in Cyclone Colin in the Tasman, which according to the NZ Meteorological Service had 70 knot winds when it passed over EGREGIOUS a month later. I believe the wind off Australia was at least 20-30 knots greater than that. Maybe more. I have no other basis for comparison.
From STORM PASSAGE:
February 13, 1976
BETWEEN when I bailed at 2:00 a.m. and when I bailed at 4:30 a.m., the barometer which I had hoped and expected to rise, began a steep decline—a decline which carried it into virgin territory far below any previous reading in my experience. This was to be a day, though, far beyond my previous experience. With that precipitous drop, still there came no increase in wind. Egregious continued boisterously but safely east, while I searched the dawn sky in vain for signs of the apocalypse. I returned to my berth but did not undress or try to sleep.
Every half hour I got up. The barometer quickened its downward acceleration; Egregious continued her fine sail; I continued to be ever more anxious. Something incredible and probably terrible was happening, but the only warning was the barometer.
There was no point in lying down any longer. I donned my foul-weather gear and stood in the galley, drinking coffee and looking out at the sea and waiting. When at 7:30 A.M. conditions began to change, they changed rapidly. Within a few minutes, the wind increased to 40 knots, and I replaced the jib with the storm jib. A few more minutes, and I lowered the storm jib. And then the wind went off the scale.
Just before it struck, I finished tying myself in the cockpit. At one moment, everything was under control, Egregious moving safely along at 5 knots under bare poles; then the tiller was wrenched unexpectedly from my hands and slammed over against the starboard cockpit seat. I remember being glad I had lowered the storm jib in time. No sail could have stood to such a blast. Egregious careened to port, broadside to a wind far beyond any I had imagined, a wind that leveled everything before it, a wind that pressed us down into the sea until I began to think we would be forced under.
There were no great waves. That wind flattened the sea. Using all my strength, I fought Egregious’s bow back on course: 9 to 10 knots under bare poles. Not surfing, just being inexorably forced ahead of the wind. It was like sailing through fog. I could not see the compass 2 feet before my eyes. Yet there was no fog. The wind had torn the surface from the sea and flailed it about my eyes. I had to breathe cautiously, trying to inhale more air than salt water. I would like to believe I am inner-directed, but I thought, “This is too much, simply too much. It is too bad no one will know I got this far, that I rounded the Horn before I was killed.”
When it struck, I did not know how long it would last, but I knew that I was at the tiller for the duration. This was the time to steer beyond exhaustion; there could be no other choice. But fortunately that prodigious wind passed within an hour, leaving us to lie ahull gratefully to a 50 to 60 knot gale, which by comparison is a relief.
For the superstitious, today is Friday the thirteenth.
I think of New Zealand as green and gray. The gray—cliffs falling into the sea. The green—the hills: emerald, olive, forest, sea, lime, and, as I wrote as I sailed from Opua to begin my fifth circumnavigation, more shades for which I don’t have names. So, this morning I was surprised and distressed to find on the NASA Earth Observatory site that New Zealand is experiencing a severe drought and turning brown.
I hope the rains return. Of all places, New Zealand and Ireland should be green.
You may have read of a tragedy in South Carolina a few days ago.
A woman manicurist made a home visit to give a manicure to one of her regular clients, while doing so on a porch the manicurist noticed an alligator in a nearby pond. Upon leaving the house, she walked down toward the alligator, despite her client yelling that an alligator had taken a deer at that spot a week earlier. The woman replied, “I don’t look like a deer” and reached down to touch the alligator, who grabbed her by the leg and dragged her into the water where she drowned. Her last words were, “I guess I won’t do this again.” Authorities soon arrived, recovered her body, and killed the alligator. That is the tragedy.
A new record this morning: I did the stairs in 42 seconds. I really didn’t think I could improve on 43.5. I also went to 100 push-ups on my last workout. I could not do 100 last year. It is becoming routine.
I have twice made five year plans to escape the land, and they both worked. This is in decided contrast with the prevailing attitude echoed unashamedly even in television commercials: ‘I want it all. And I want it now.’ While writing to a friend this morning I realized that without my intention, a five year plan has evolved almost of its own volition within me. I don’t even know that I want a five year plan, much less that I will carry it out. Sometimes I doubt that I am really in charge.
