Evanston: 500 opossums for Christmas

        Some of you will have seen that most of my last journal entry has appeared at Sailing Anarchy along with the above photograph.

        I had second thoughts about that entry and considered deleting it.  Perhaps Webb Chiles like cask strength Laphroaig needs to be watered down. 

        The photographs appear with an article I wrote in the current issue of CRUISING WORLD.  They were taken by Ross and Topher at Hilton Head earlier this year.  It is instructive to see myself as others must see me.  In the one where I am staring down at the phone—I’m looking at iNavX, not checking my email—I think I look almost frail.  I don’t feel frail.  I feel strong.  If I hadn’t done my full workout yesterday, I might fear I am deluding myself.

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        I finished EUROPE CENTRAL this morning, a monumental, fascinating, thought providing novel that I became caught up in and finished much more quickly than I expected.

        Here are links to the Wikipedia article on the book and the NY TIMES review, with which I agree.

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        THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS is ⅚ a good movie.

        Directed by the Coen brothers, the film consists of six short stories set in the post Civil War American West.  I think the first five are good.  The sixth a dud.

        Some parody.  Some tragedy.

        Be prepared for surprise hard-headed and hard-hearted endings.

        BUSTER SCRUGGS is made by Netflix.  As I have recently read, Hollywood should be trembling, and doubtlessly is.  Netflix plans to release more than twice as many films next year as the largest Hollywood studio.  And then there is Amazon.  And Apple.  And.  And.

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        I thank Lee for bringing to my attention a NY TIMES article that caused him to recall ‘Last Born.’

        I checked to see when I wrote the story.  It is dated 2007.  A decade for the world to catch up sounds about right.

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        I’m not promoting anything, but I know how to stretch a teaser and last you get the opossums.

        Tim likes to peruse old newspapers.  He does some of this online and some in person and sends me oddities from time to time.

        Here is a wanted ad from the Butler, Missouri, WEEKLY TIMES, dated December 14, 1881, from someone I don’t think I would want as a neighbor. 

Evanston: 2019

        Two weeks from tomorrow Carol and I fly to Savannah from where she will drive us in a rental car the thirty or forty miles to Hilton Head Island.  For five nights we will stay in a hotel until she flies back to the Midwest, but our arrival will be the demarcation between my land life and my sea life.

        I expect that 2019 will be one of the more significant years in my life.

       GANNET will be forty years old in 2019, and hopefully I will complete my sixth and probably my last circumnavigation, and perhaps the second phase of my life, which began on November 2, 1974, when I pushed EGREGIOUS away from her slip at Harbor Island Marina in San Diego for my first attempt at Cape Horn, a phase I have called ‘being’.  No one at that marina now would recall that distant event, although perhaps a few there would know my name.

        I am at this moment feeling the distance between my life and yours.  I have not lived as you and even Carol have.  Many of you have talents I do not have and which I admire, but we have not lived in the same dimension.  For whatever reason I have usually tried to reduce that distance.   I don’t believe that since I became an adult I have cared about fitting in—as a child I did, but then I was a child—but I have expended a lot of energy reducing friction.  That is one of the things I most love about being at sea:  there I don’t have to compromise; I don’t have to adapt;  I don’t have to get along:  I can just be me.  Flat out, unadulterated, uncompromised me.

        I have tried to convey that experience to you in words and some photographs.  I have had wonderful experiences on land with women.  I value my interactions with many of you, some of whom I consider friends, whether we have met in person or not.  I am pleased to have been able when speaking to bring audiences to their feet.  I am pleased with some of the words I have strung together and will leave behind.  But the very best of Webb Chiles has only been experienced by Webb Chiles alone at sea.

        I hope it will be again next year.

Evanston: something odd and two quotes

        Some of you may have seen 'Age of Sail' at Sailing Anarchy.

        It is beautifully drawn, but I find it odd.

        I also note that to meet the stereotype of an old sailor, I am going to have to buy a Greek fisherman’s cap and grow a beard.  On the other hand I have known for a long time that whatever I look like is what a sailor looks like.

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        Yo-You Ma is performing the six Bach solo cello suites thirty-six times on six continents.  

        While on this tour he is also speaking at schools and meeting with local artists, community leaders and activists.

        At one such meeting, he asked, “What is this music for?”  and answered himself, “It is to help me through life.”

        Me too.

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        From Jay comes another quote from Hunter S. Thompson.  I thank him.

        “So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” 

Evanston: fallow; Shostakovich

        A friend wrote that I must be impatient to get back to GANNET and the ocean.  While I am eager, I am not impatient.  I don’t like to rush and I have time until I don’t have time.  That my time has been my own for more than forty years did not happen by chance and is my greatest wealth.

        Lying fallow is necessary for fields and people.  A season of ease and replenishment.  I haven’t done that much this year.  GANNET and I only sailed 1700 miles as shown by our 2018 Yellowbrick track above.   I have been fallow more than long enough.  I am not impatient.  I am ready.

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        How does one prepare to sail oceans alone in a small boat?

        Currently I am preparing by reading an unusual novel, EUROPE CENTRAL, by William T. Vollmann and listening to the music of Dimitri Shostakovich.  The two are related.

        EUROPE CENTRAL, loosely about the insanity and inhumanity of the Europe of Hitler and Stalin, is deeply interesting, very well written, and long.  I am reading the Kindle edition, but the hard cover version runs to more than 800 pages.  I am only a quarter the way into the book.  Unexpectedly a long section of what I have read is about Shostakovich who for many years went to sleep each night, if he could get to sleep at all, fearing that there would be a knock on the door and he would be taken away and shot.

        He was in Leningrad at the start of the 900 day siege and saw the bombing and starvation.

        I have enjoyed some of Shostakovich’s music for many years, particularly his Preludes and String Quartets.

        Vollmann particularly mentions three of his compositions.  

        Opus 40, Sonata for Piano and Cello, which Vollmann says was written during an affair Shostakovich was having with Elena, the woman he perhaps most loved and certainly most lusted after in his life.  Vollmann says the first movement “composed of firelight and kisses, remains the most romantic thing that Shostakovich ever wrote.”

        Opus 65, Symphony No. 8, was written during the war and first performed in 1941.  It, in Vollmann’s words, “half-illuminates sorrow’s carpet:  burnt earth which will soon drink in blood and groaning.”

        Opus 110, String Quartet No. 8, is Shostakovich’s most performed string quartet.  Vollmann describes it as “terrifying”.  Officially Shostakovich dedicated it “to the victims of war and fascism,” but remarked to a friend, “I reflected that if I die someday, it’s hardly likely anyone will compose a work dedicated to my memory.  So I decided to write one myself.  You could even write on the cover:  Dedicated to the composer of this quartet.”

        I note that Shostakovich writes:  “if I die someday” not “when”.  As I have observed, none of us really believes in our own death.

        Of these, I only had Opus 110.  So I bought the other two from iTunes and have been listening to all three, curious to discover if I hear what Vollmann does.  Thus far I don’t, but I am enjoying them anyway.

        I wrote about this to my friend, Tim, the marathon running violinist, who sent me a link to a moving short video from the film, SMOKE, with background music by Shostakovich.  

        I thank him.

Evanston: the ten day winter; fantastic; aground

        Winter officially begins on December 21.  It will end for me ten days later when I fly to Savannah as Carol and I decided over the weekend.  Ten days is winter enough.

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        Here is a link to a video of a New Zealander who did the annual Auckland to Bay of Islands race on a kiting foiler.  I am still smiling and  am about to watch it again.

        I have often been in the Bay of Islands when that race ends.  The video makes me homesick for a place that unfortunately is not my home.

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        The above photo came from Steve Earley, but because he and Tom Head and the standing dog—do they never let the poor beast sit down?—are in it I don’t know who took it.

        They look quite happy considering they have run aground.

        It was probably the dog’s fault.

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.

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        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.

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        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.

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        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.

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        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.

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        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.

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

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        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.

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        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.

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        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.