beautiful

I ran across this essay on a sailing discussion forum this evening, and wanted to share......this description of the seductive pull that boats and the sea have on a person's soul hits so close to the mark for me it is both startling and reassuring.



The Sea and the Wind that Blows
by E. B. White

Ford Times, June 1963

WAKING OR SLEEPING, I dream of boats - usually of rather small boats under a slight press of sail. When I think how great a part of my life has been spent dreaming the hours away and how much of this total dream life has concerned small craft, I wonder about the state of my health, for I am told that it is not a good sign to be always voyaging into unreality, driven by imaginary breezes.

I have noticed that most men, when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wandering, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended. There is hardly a waiting room in the East that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or the drill begins to whine.

If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble. If it happens to be an auxiliary cruising boat, it is without question the most compact and ingenious arrangement for living ever devised by the restless mind of man - a home that is stable without being stationary, shaped less like a box than like a fish or a bird or a girl, and in which the homeowner can remove his daily affairs as far from shore as he has the nerve to take them, close-hauled or running free -parlor, bedroom, and bath, suspended and alive.

Men who ache allover for tidiness and compactness in their lives often find relief for their pain in the cabin of a thirty-foot sailboat at anchor in a sheltered cove. Here the sprawling panoply of The Home is compressed in orderly miniature and liquid delirium, suspended between the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky, ready to move on in the morning by the miracle of canvas and the witchcraft of rope. It is small wonder that men hold boats in the secret place of their mind, almost from the cradle to the grave.

Along with my dream of boats has gone the ownership of boats, a long succession of them upon the surface of the sea, many of them makeshift and crank. Since childhood I have managed to have some sort of sailing craft and to raise a sail in fear. Now, in my sixties, I still own a boat, still raise my sail in fear in answer to the summons of the unforgiving sea. Why does the sea attract me in the way it does: Whence comes this compulsion to hoist a sail, actually or in dream? My first encounter with the sea was a case of hate at first sight. I was taken, at the age of four, to a bathing beach in New Rochelle. Everything about the experience frightened and repelled me: the taste of salt in my mouth, the foul chill of the wooden bathhouse, the littered sand, the stench of the tide flats. I came away hating and fearing the sea. Later, I found that what I had feared and hated, I now feared and loved.

I returned to the sea of necessity, because it would support a boat; and although I knew little of boats, I could not get them out of my thoughts. I became a pelagic boy. The sea became my unspoken challenge: the wind, the tide, the fog, the ledge, the bell, the gull that cried help, the never-ending threat and bluff of weather. Once having permitted the wind to enter the belly of my sail, I was not able to quit the helm; it was as though I had seized hold of a high-tension wire and could not let go.

I liked to sail alone. The sea was the same as a girl to me I did not want anyone else along. Lacking instruction, I invented ways of getting things done, and usually ended by doing them in a rather queer fashion, and so did not learn to sail properly, and still cannot sail well, although I have been at it all my life. I was twenty before I discovered that charts existed; all my navigating up to that time was done with the wariness and the ignorance of the early explorers. I was thirty before I learned to hang a coiled halyard on its cleat as it should be done. Until then I simply coiled it down on deck and dumped the coil. I was always in trouble and always returned, seeking more trouble. Sailing became a compulsion: there lay the boat, swinging to her mooring, there blew the wind; I had no choice hut to go. My earliest boats were so small that when the wind failed, or when I failed, I could switch to manual control-I could paddle or row home. But then I graduated to boats that only the wind was strong enough to move. When I first dropped off my mooring in such a boat, I was an hour getting up the nerve to cast off the pennant. Even now, with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt, I still I feel a memorial chill on casting off, as the gulls jeer and the empty mainsail claps.

Of late years, I have noticed that my sailing has increasingly become a compulsive activity rather than a source of pleasure. There lies the boat, there blows the morning breeze-it is a point of honor, now, to go. I am like an alcoholic who cannot put his bottle out of his life. With me, I cannot not sail. Yet I know well enough that I have lost touch with the wind and, in fact, do not like the wind any more. It jiggles me up, the wind does, and what I really love are windless days, when all is peace. There is a great question in my mind whether a man who is against wind should longer try to sail a boat. But this is an intellectual response-the old yearning is still in me, belonging to the past, to youth, and so I am torn between past and present, a common disease of later life.

When does a man quit the sea? How dizzy, how bumbling must he be? Does he quit while he's ahead, or wait till he makes some major mistake, like falling overboard or being flattened by an accidental jibe? This past winter I spent hours arguing the question with myself. Finally, deciding that I had come to the end of the road, I wrote a note to the boatyard, putting my boat up for sale. I said I was "coming off the water." But as I typed the sentence, I doubted that I meant a word of it.

If no buyer turns up, I know what will happen: I will instruct the yard to put her in again-"just till somebody comes along." And then there will be the old uneasiness, the old uncertainty, as the mild southeast breeze ruffles the cove, a gentle, steady, morning breeze, bringing the taint of the distant wet world, the smell that takes a man back to the very beginning of time, linking him to all that has gone before. There will lie the sloop, there will blow the wind, once more I will get under way. And as I reach across to the black can off the Point, dodging the trap buoys and toggles, the shags gathered on the ledge will note my passage. "There goes the old boy again," they will say. "One more rounding of his little Horn, one more conquest of his Roaring Forties." And with the tiller in my hand, I'll feel again the wind imparting life to a boat, will smell again the old menace, the one that imparts life to me: the cruel beauty of the salt world, the barnacle's tiny knives, the sharp spine of the urchin, the stinger of the sun jelly, the claw of the crab.

Something for a smile

Here's a link to a little something that might make you smile. I had never heard of a theremin before, and this Short video is a pretty cool introduction to something cool and unusual.

May the Force be with us?

So what's the saying....no good deeds ever go unpunished, or something like that? Maybe that's not the perfect analogy for my current situation, but it's close. For the last few years I've tried to do a good job with what the company has asked me to do, while also working to get my situation situated to be able to take a first retirement or extended leave of absence, or whatever taking a few years off from The Job might be called. And I was close. A few things left to tidy up and close out, a few months at the most to get to the point where I could leave with a clear conscience, and then comes a blue sky curve ball from the boss that has really left me wondering about what to do next. New assignment, more responsibility, a big raise, and a move to Ft. Lauderdale vs. packing some food into the boat and heading out to chase the horizon.

Of course, when the boss asked me to take on the assignment I said OK....that's kind of my nature, I guess, hard to say no when the boss asks for help.

The fact that the company has the confidence in my abilities to trust me with running an office is quite flattering, and the challenge of moving from managing projects to being in charge of the strategic direction of the office is actually pretty intriguing to me the more I think about it. This is the kind of thing people in my position work their entire career to have the opportunity to do, so conventional wisdom is I'd be Crazy to say no. Not that I know anything about Crazy.

Anyway, after hearing the news, one of the guys in the office told me the new organization of the office leadership reminded him of Star Wars......we have the young, energetic project exec that has the Luke Skywalker charm and raw potential, we have the intrepid business development manager with a Hans Solo kind of swagger, and we have me, the Obi-Wan Kenobi character who brings the wisdom and knowledge that will help the others realize their true potential and find their destinies.

So in other words, I'm the old guy.

That hurts.

Now, I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but there is a quote from one of the movies that I do remember very clearly, and that's when Obi-Wan says to Han Solo "Who's the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him"

Guess we'll see how things play out, huh?

Exiting Port Canaveral......

Let's go Boating!

 

Alabama

A couple of pics from my trip to Alabama:

Where does the time go?

It's almost Thanksgiving already, kids, and I have no idea how this year has slipped past so quickly. Between finishing the hospital in Orlando, starting new projects in Lakeland and Ft. Myers and working on the boat to get it set up for next summer's sailing adventure every day since I got back from Paris in March has been action packed.

The work stuff has been satisfying but absolutely exhausting at the same time. It is time for a change of pace and I can't stop thinking about the day I'll be able to hoist the sails on Moon and go chase the horizon for a while.

I'm getting some canvas work done on the boat now - installing a new dodger and bimini - and got a sail in this afternoon after checking out their progress to date. What a gorgeous day....bright sunshine, temps in the mid 70s, and a 10-15 knot breeze out of the northeast. I spent a few hours tacking north on the Banana River, then had a great ten-mile running sleigh ride back to the marina with a pod of dolphins playing in the bow wave for a while.

Can't wait to see everyone in Asheville for T-day.......

Milestones

Oh hey hey hey gather 'round friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters and let me tell you what! Today, four years, two months and three days after starting the journey to build this place of hope and healing for children, we reached the point where the fine folks at the City considered the situation and conditions right and ready to issue a Certificate of Occupancy for the building!

Amen halleluja.

There's a lot of work left to be done, and it will be another several months before the first patient will walk through the door to see a doctor, but it really feels good to have this milestone behind us.

Think I'm gonna go have a cold beer and catch a nap.

Home stretch.....

I caught this shot of the building on the way home yesterday. We're getting close to being finished!

The Best Sailing Documentary Ever

I got up this morning with every intention of going to work, but as is my routine on Saturday mornings I took a few minutes to surf the net with my coffee before hopping in the shower to get tready to go, and after checking the news and weather I went to my favorite sailing discussion forum to see what I could learn. In and amongst the threads about freeing up frozen seacocks and why one anchor is better than another I ran across this video made by a group of adventurous kids that bought and fixed up a derelict old boat and set sail for the islands. Once I started watching I couldn't stop........it is inspiring, wise, scary, sad, sobering, and very funny in turns. Just likereal life.

Be warned that there is some adult language here that you might not want the kids to hear.

That being said, I highly recommend watching it, and suggest you get comfortable when it starts!



http://vimeo.com/15351476