“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
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Welp, that’s quick. Hell, would have taken me four days and change in my FSS (Fast Sealift Ship), and that would have needed circa 700k gallons of dino juice to go up the stacks. Of course, there would have been tens of thousands of tons of tanks, trucks, helos, humvees, and boxes aboard, so there’s that.
Quite the machine, Comanche; impressive what a tenth of a billion gets you occasionally.
A boat is a hole in the water you throw your money into.
The 2 best days in a boat owners life are the day he bought it and the day he sold it.
The trick is to crew on somebody else’s boat.
I owned a 27′ +/- Pearson sloop for several years and loved sailing that babe even, occasionally, when the wind was blustering at around 20-25 kph. Don’t think that’s tough for a single hander, give it a shot and see.
But, even in my wildest dreams would I have gone out in that kind of blow. No way, Jose, even as a trained crewman. That voyage is long and hard and requires a little bit of different breed with a whole lot of crazy.
¿QUIÉN ES MÁS PROBABLE QUE QUIERA UN BEBÉ?MIS PASTELITOS
Still own three sail boats, sold my ocean Boat last year. We beer can race wed nights here on Klamath lake. Was racing a Santana 25, Refered to as a 525, older boat sails well. I ripped the keel about off last year tackling to port, for final approach the start line, for the evening race.
Hit a submerged rock at roughly 10/12 knots. The danger Bouy was a full 100 yards off. Hit so hard I pushed the front of the keel driving the rear of the keel thru the boats hull. We race the a class stayed with everybody but the boat kept “rounding up” becoming over powered, causing loss of directional control.
Lost by four boat lengths. At me slip, the foredeck crew guy opened the hatch, laughed and asked if the foot and a half of water inside the cabin was ok? Dam near sunk her right their. Was able to rock to boat to the crane, where she was lifted out for repairs. The keel isn’t back on yet, had three discs removed in my spine, Dr’s haven’t released me yet.
Also own a Hunter 25 cruiser and a 27 ft Oday, imrebuilding. I sold my Halberg Rase 35 two years ago.. I really dig sailing, more to the point I really enjoy making any sailboat push the envelope of speed in any wind!.
Dirk