Opua: sailed

        A glorious day.  Sunny and warm.  In the 70sF/low 20sC.

        I dropped the mooring at 10:00 a.m. in calm conditions and rode the tide north at 1 knot for a half hour before any wind came up.  GANNET went from 1 to 5 faster than I can write the words.  We stayed mostly between 5 and 6 knots, but, still being helped by the tide, did see some 6s and 7s in not more than 5 knots of wind.  

        I let the replacement Raymarine tiller pilot steer some, but I mostly steered myself.  No problem steering with my left arm.  I even hand held the jib sheet with a single wrap around the winch for a while in my left hand.  

        I turned around near a cruise ship anchored north of Russell.  

        On the way back the wind dropped and it took me an hour to cover the last half mile.  I passed a moored sailboat three times both forward and reverse, forward with wind, back by tide.  I thought about digging out the Torqeedo, but didn’t, and finally a slight breeze carried us to the mooring which I picked up under mainsail alone.

        My shoulder aches, but not much more than usual.  

        Steve sailed SPARTINA on the Pasquotank River.

        Ken sailed on the Swan River in Perth, Australia.

        Tom sailed on Tokyo Bay.
        Shelton sailed on a lake in Georgia.
        Rik sailed off Aruba.

        I expect that Bill and Roger will sail in the Bristol Channel.

        A tennis player did play.

        A runner and music lover ran and listened to Bach whose 330rd birthday it was.

        And sailing friends near Chicago where marinas don’t open until May 1 enjoyed martinis.

        I trust more joy will be found before the weekend is over.

        After I post this, I’m moving on deck to listen to music and sip Laphroaig.

        Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ would seem appropriate, but is too boisterous.  I’ll find something more serene.

        Contrast the above with the last photo I took this month.

Opua: a joy-in

        On different sides of the world, Steve Earley, who had a hip replaced in January, hopes to go for his first sail of the year on SPARTINA this weekend at about the same time I will sail GANNET for the first time this year.  Saturday for him; Sunday for me.  Perhaps thousands of more miles distant Bill and Roger will sail CALSTAR on the Bristol Channel.

        I invite you wherever you are to join us doing whatever you love to do this weekend.

        If you have a boat on water which can be sailed,  sail.  Unfortunately that excludes my Chicago neighbors and Eric in Montreal and many others.

        If you are a runner, run.  A walker, walk.  A lover, love.  A musician, play.  A lover of music, listen.  A reader, read.  A tennis player, play.  A horseman or woman, ride.  A cook, cook.  A star gazer, gaze.  A gardener, garden.  A dreamer, dream.

        Whatever brings you joy enjoy it.

        And if you want email me about it, I’ll try to put it all together.

Opua: lost Eden

        The distance from the Kerikeri Airport to Opua is 15 miles/25 kilometers.  I know every bend in the road, and I’m filled with happiness as I near the Opua hill and see the harbor in front of me.

        Another sailor was about to leave the dinghy dock and kindly gave me a ride out to GANNET, so I didn’t have to row the marginal fiberglass dinghy I keep locked ashore.

        I found the little boat in excellent condition.  No water in the bilge, no mold, no spiders.  She smelled a bit musty and needs her deck scrubbed and hull polished.  Open hatches took care of the mustiness.  I’ll work on the deck and hull soon.

        One of the first things I do when I go aboard after being away is check the battery charge.  4.0 was not a number I expected.  Then I realized that the first and last numbers of the digital display on the SolarBoost 2000e solar regulator are no longer working.  4.0 is really showing charging at 14.0 something, which is normal.  

        It took me a couple of hours to stow the stuff I brought with me and get the cabin organized.  

        I got it all done in time to listen to music and have a glass—literally a glass because I brought two from Evanston—of duty free Laphroaig on deck accompanied by music in late afternoon.

        The music was Bach and Mark Knopfler.

        Mark Knopfler’s newest album, TRACKER, was released in the U.S. the day I flew.  I bought and downloaded it from iTunes while in the San Francisco Airport between flights.  I’ve listened to TRACKER a couple of times, like some of the songs, but none as much as several on PRIVATEERING.  Last evening ‘The Dream of the Drowned Submariner’, ‘Haul Away’, ‘Privateering’, ‘Redbud Tree’ and others drifted from GANNET.

        I got some sleep on the long flight across the Pacific and have had less jet lag than usual.  In fact I feel quite normal today.

        When I rowed ashore this morning, I went to the Customs Office to ask for an extension for GANNET to remain in New Zealand.  I did not know when I sailed in last year that New Zealand had changed regulations and now permits foreign yachts to remain two years instead of one and I only asked for one.  The pleasant woman in the Customs Office found that GANNET had been given two years anyway.  All problems should be so easily solved.

        Although there have been a few sprinkles of rain, the days have been mostly sunny and warm.  Shorts and t-shirt.  No socks.  Lovely.

        So far my shoulder is holding up, though sometimes painful.  Perhaps only other Moore 24 sailors can fully appreciate from what odd positions and angles you often have to lift and shove and brace yourself on the little boats.  Sometimes this hurts.  My shoulder presently aches, though not unendurably. 

        I’ve pulled and pushed various stowage bags around, hauled the Avon dinghy onto deck and inflated it, managed to get my heavy duffle bag on board, have filled and lifted a 5 gallon jerry can of water—lifted with my right arm, and rowed ashore several times.  I am pleased that I can row without even a twinge. 

        Just after lunch I bent on the furling jib.  GANNET might soon sail.

        Opua for me is a lost Eden, not one from which I’ve been banished, but one which I can only visit, not remain.

        It is wonderful to be back. 

        But you already knew that.

Evanston: after the storm; from others; gone

        I had an email late yesterday from Mike that GANNET has survived Pam unscathed.   Mike runs Yachtcare and I have paid him a modest sum to look in on GANNET from time to time in my absence.  His email was considerate and appreciated.

        GANNET is so light that she is easy on moorings.  A greater concern was that other boats might break free and smash into her.  Experience of the sea often makes sailors fatalistic, and I do not worry much about what I can’t control.

        This morning I received the above photo taken by a man named Rob, an acquaintance of a friend, as he rowed by GANNET after the storm.  I thank him.

        The little boat looks to be much as I left her.  I’m eager to be back on board and curious to find how much water made it down below.

        The harbor does not look as muddy as I would have expected from runoff after a major storm.

———

        From Jim comes this link to an amusing video of a song, “Six Months In a Leaky Boat” by the 80s New Zealand group, Split Enz.  I thank him.

        I wonder what made him think of me?

        Here are the lyrics:

When I was a young boy, I wanted to sail around the world

That's the life for me, living on the sea

Spirit of a sailor, circumnavigates the globe

The lust of a pioneer, will acknowledge no frontier

I remember you by, thunderclap in the sky

Lightning flash, tempers flare, 'round the horn if you dare

I just spent six months in a leaky boat

Lucky just to keep afloat

Aotearoa, rugged individual

Glisten like a pearl, at the bottom of the world

The tyranny of distance, didn't stop the cavalier

So why should it stop me? I'll conquer and stay free

Ah c'mon all you lads, let's forget and forgive

There's a world to explore, tales to tell back on shore

I just spent six months in a leaky boat

Six months in a leaky boat

Ship-wrecked love can be cruel, don't be fooled by her kind

There's a wind in my sails will protect and prevail

I just spent six months in a leaky boat

Nothing to it leaky boat

        Obviously I’m not a real sailor.  I don’t dance jigs, have a beard or wear a captain’s cap.  Or want to.

———

        From Eric in still frozen Montreal comes a poem for which I thank him.

Now you are alone and the ocean waits

When your eyes will study the sky far away

Alone with yourself and sinking into yourself

When the salty mist burns your skin and fills your lungs

And when you feel all your limbs numb

Time will stop and begin your destiny

You will leave like gannets plunge into the sea

You will see the pilot of the Pinta flying like an elf

And you’ll drink Laphroaig with Slocum on Spray

On the ocean veil sailing with your new mates

———

       I expect the next entry to be written on water.

Evanston: a near miss?

        Cyclone Pam has made the world’s news.

        I’ve been watching it for several days at the Earth Wind Map and Windyty.  

        Above is the current—Saturday 0800 Chicago time—Earth Wind Map.

        Here is the Windyty view.

        And this is Windyty’s projection for tomorrow morning.

        The Bay of islands forecast is for rain and gale force, but not hurricane force winds.  

        Cyclones, being heat machines, weaken as they move out of the tropics and over cooler water.   

        Pam did reach Category Five near Vanuatu and has been called the most powerful storm in the South Pacific for thirty years.  I do not know if that is accurate or hyperbole.

        She has done great damage, including to these boats in Port Vila, Vanuatu’s capital.

        Vanuatu—then the New Hebrides—was where I reached land after being adrift when CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE was swamped.  I first went ashore at Emae Island, thirty or forty miles north of Port Vila, and was then flown in a small plane to the hospital there.

        I remember Port Vila as being a good harbor, well protected from all but the west.  Still it is not a place I would keep a boat during the cyclone season.

        I’m glad I’m not flying to New Zealand tomorrow.

Evanston: graduation day

        Yesterday was my last day of physical therapy.

        I was not awarded a diploma.  I was given a t-shirt.

        I consider the therapy a success, though the possibility of surgery remains.  The tear in my rotator cuff is still there.  Unlike a broken bone, it will never heal.  The purpose of physical therapy is to strengthen the adjacent muscles and tendons to relieve stress on the torn element.

        Apparently rotator cuff tears are common.  Most people with them are asymptomatic.  The indicators for surgery are pain and/or inability to function.

        My shoulder has been strengthened and I have full range of motion, if sometimes a bit tentatively.

        The torn shoulder is my left and I’m right handed.  If it were my right, surgery would probably be unavoidable.  I can do everything I need to.  At least I think I can.  Sailing GANNET will be the test.

        I do still have a constant dull ache that bothers me more at night when I wake than during the day, and occasional, unpredictable short, sharp pain when I make a wrong move.  I can live with these.  I’m old.  I’m supposed to have aches and pains.

        I have been given a series of maintenance exercises that I’ll try to do three times a week when not sailing.

        I’ll experiment a little, but push-ups continue to be prohibitively  painful.  I doubt I’ll ever do my age in them again.  I can still do my age in crunches.  In fact in the absence of push-ups, I’ve increased the sets of crunches to 100 and 73.  Different muscles; same body.

        My last graduation was fifty-two years ago.  I had to wear a cap and gown.  

        I like the t-shirt better.

———

        The photos have nothing to do with my shoulder.  I just like them.

        The one above is from Rik of his Pathfinder yawl, VANESSA,

sailing in the Caribbean.

       And this one was taken by Will Calver in the Bay of Islands where I will soon again be.

Evanston: 'dare greatly'; history lesson; spring; request

        Last Sunday near the beginning of CBS’s 60 Minutes an ad ran that proclaimed, “Dare greatly.”  It is aimed apparently at those who think daring greatly is to buy a luxury car.  My thought:  they have no idea—and I include whatever overly paid ad agency hack came up with the slogan and whoever at Cadillac thought it a good idea, as well as the intrepid car buyers.  

        I also think the ad agency and Cadillac should be fined for gross misuse of language and impertinence.  Though neither is a crime, perhaps they should be.

        Naturally there is even a dare-greatly.com.

        I really need to get to GANNET.

------

        One hundred and fifty years ago the Civil War was coming to an end.  According to the Civil War Today iPad app, the casualties were nearly even:  North  374,444; South 357,883.  The difference was that the North could replace them; the South could not.  I have read that during the four years of the war, one in five white southern men of military age was killed.

        One hundred years ago what we now call World War I was barely half way through the first of its four even bloodier years.  Poison gas had been used on the Eastern front and was about to be used in the West.  The Second Battle of Ypres was about to be fought.  Australian and New Zealand troops were about to land at Gallipoli.  

        Fifty years ago the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam increased

from 23,000 to 183,000.

———

        After last Friday’s record low for the date in Chicago of 0°F/-18°C, spring arrived.  Saturday was more than 40°F warmer.  Yesterday reached 52°F/11°C and next Monday may be 60°F/15.5°C.  

        I opened the doors to the balcony yesterday afternoon to let fresh air into the condo for the first time for months.

———

        When I wrote the introduction to this site nine years, one circumnavigation and part of another, a blind eye and a torn shoulder ago, I said that the artist’s defining responsibility is to go to the edge of human experience and send back reports.  The artist has no responsibility that anyone read or experience those reports, which might be words or a painting or a composition or a number of other things.  If enough people do it can change his or her life; but that is not the point.

        But, having said that, it is probably better to be read or heard or have your work viewed than not.  So I am going to ask you a favor, not for myself but another.  It will cost you nothing and take less than four minutes of your time.

        Click on this which will take you to Brian Cockburn’s choral version of one of my poems.

        If you want, open another tab and go to the poetry page where “leaves of men of leaves” is the second poem and follow the words.

        Listen to Brian’s composition to the end.

        At the moment it shows only 62 plays.  

        I will be grateful if that number is soon considerably higher.

       Thank you.

Evanston: new boat; new sail

        Now that I’ve ripped up my shoulder, I’ve decided I want something a bit more comfortable than GANNET, so I’m buying a new boat.  Here’s the link.  Be sure to click through all the images.

        The designer has named the project SALT.  Obviously I am going to add ‘OLD’ before that.

———

        All my boats since EGREGIOUS have been three sail boats.  On CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE they were jib, main and mizzen.  On all the others:  furling jib, fully battened mainsail, and asymmetrical.      

GANNET is about to become a four sail exception.  

        Her current asymmetrical is cut too full to use with the wind on or before the beam, similar to that of the G2 in this graphic. So I am ordering a G1 from North Sails in New Zealand.  

        I had hoped to be able to use the new sail during my upcoming visit to GANNET, but some measurements need to be taken on the boat before the sail can be made.

        It is possible that I will end up using the G1 as the only asymmetrical and GANNET will resume being a three sail boat.  But I confess to a vision of setting both asymmetricals wing and wing downwind in light air.  Imagine GANNET under that cloud of sail.

Evanston: Capt. Brown; BIRDMAN; the East India Company

        I had not  known of Capt. Eric Melrose Brown, nicknamed ‘Winkle’, until I happened upon a documentary about him on Netflix, MEMORIES OF A WWII HERO:  Captain Brown’s Story. 

        Born in 1919, Capt. Brown is still alive at age 96.  

        During WWII he was the Royal Navy’s chief test pilot.  He has flown more different types of aircraft than anyone and made more carrier landings. 

        Interviewed for the film two years ago, he was lucid, wry and charming at 93.

        The viewer realizes as various near fatal incidents are related, that Capt. Brown survived because he was a great natural pilot and because he possessed the judgement and ability to take instantly the only actions that could save him.

        More modestly, he attributes his survival to preparation—and where have you heard that before?—and his short height.  In one of his crashes, had he been taller, he says, he would have lost his legs.

        A very worthwhile hour film.

———

        We watched BIRDMAN two evenings ago.

        If this is the best movie of the year, then one must conclude that there were no good movies made last year.

        BIRDMAN is a Hollywood movie about Hollywood actors acting and thus appeals to Hollywood.  To name it as the best picture of the year is an act of monumental self-indulgence.

        Personally I find little sympathy for a movie star trying to make his life have meaning who considers ‘selling the Malibu house’ a great sacrifice for his ‘art.’

        There is more to the movie than that, but not much.

        It was two hours long.  

        It seemed much longer.

———

        

        A giant corporation with interests spanning the world.   Wealthier and more powerful than most governments.  A law unto itself.  Functioning beyond government control.  Using its wealth to influence government, buying elections and politicians.  Too big to fail.  But fail it does.  And is saved by a government bail-out.

        I could be describing current affairs, but I’m not.  I’m summarizing an informative long article in THE GUARDIAN by William Dalrymple, titled, “The East India Company:  The Original Corporate Raiders.”

        I have read several of William Dalrymple’s books, starting with his first, IN XANADU, written at age twenty-two when he crossed Asia seeking the ruins of Kubla Khan’s palace.  He is a fine writer.

        The East India Company was not a fine company, unless you care only about the bottom line, and of course no one is that shallow.

        The Company conquered and controlled and looted—as Dalrymple points out the word itself comes from India—what is modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  

        Five hundred years ago Vasco de Gama and Columbus initiated a seismic and cataclysmic shift in power, five hundred years of Western dominance that have run their course.

        William Dalrymple’s article provides insights into that dominance and asks some very pertinent as yet unanswered questions about “corporate influence, with its fatal mix of power, money and unaccountability.”

        This is a very long article, but worth the time.

        Don’t waste two hours on BIRDMAN.  Watch MEMORIES OF A WWII HERO and read this instead. 

Evanston: the love of the thing itself

        I treat all questions I receive with respect, but sometimes I get what I suspect are hoax emails.  One such last week caused me to go to Project Gutenberg to obtain a link for a free download of Joshua Slocum’s, SAILING ALONE AROUND THE WORLD, which I have read several times and wanted to provide to the purported person who had emailed me.  While there I found Slocum’s other book, THE VOYAGE OF THE LIBERDADE, and downloaded it for myself.  I thought I had read it long ago, but I hadn’t.

        Slocum built the LIBERDADE with the assistance of his 15 year old son, Victor, in four months after the 326 ton trading ship, the AQUIDNECK, which Slocum owned and captained, went aground and was lost in a small Brazilian harbor one hundred and fifty miles southwest of Sao Paulo.  He and Victor then sailed the LIBERDADE five thousand five hundred miles back to the United States, hand steering watch and watch, four hours on, four off.  Slocum’s second wife, Henrietta, and his young son, Garfield, were also aboard.

        Slocum passes quickly over the almost miraculous building of the boat in a remote harbor with few tools and materials.  Fortunately good wood was close at hand.

        When the sails blew out soon after the voyage began, the LIBERDADE was towed at speed to Santos; and from there coastal hopped along until Pernambuco from where she sailed 2150 miles non-stop to Barbados in 19 days.  

        Jill and I sailed off that coast, going directly from Rio de Janeiro to the British Virgin Islands.  Once around the bulge of Brazil, trade wind and strong currents are behind you.  Slocum claims one current assisted day’s run of 220 miles; but the LIBERDADE’S average was 103.

        As you can see from this drawing the LIBERDADE was an open boat.  She should have sailed well downwind.  She was relatively light with little wetted surface. 

        By the time they reached the United States Henrietta had had enough.  She never made a voyage with Joshua again.  Thus are single-handers sometimes made.

        I enjoyed the first part of the book which was about the AQUIDNECK as much as I did the latter part about the LIBERDADE.  The business of making a ship pay.  Slocum finding cargos, delivering them, ever seeking the next.  There was also cholera, small pox and a mutiny during which Joshua shot and killed a man.

        The voyage of the LIBERDADE was audacious.  Perhaps as much as setting out in the SPRAY to become the first man to sail alone around the world.  

        Slocum had his own doubts about moving down from sailing a ship to a vessel only 35’, but once underway he wrote, “The old boating trick came back fresh to me, the love of the thing itself gaining on me as the little ship stood out; and my crew with one voice said, “ ‘Go on.’ ”

———

        Peter emailed me about another useful companion volume to the Patrick O’Brian novels, A SEA OF WORDS—which I think an excellent title—for which I thank him.

———

        Snow changing to sleet.  Fortunately today is not a physical therapy day.

       Chicago has not had a particularly bad winter, certainly nothing like last year’s or New England’s.  But we did tie a record set in 1875 for the coldest February with an average temperature of 14.6°F/-9.6°C.