Whose watch does a navigator love? Yours! On your watch I can make no mistakes! If I give
you a heading and you can't or don't keep it, it's the captains fault. I can wonder why till the day that
I die? Is a given heading a hard course? What? You saw lights, maybe a lighthouse warning you of
the danger of driving at night with no lights? Oh, you had an original idea that you know more than the
one who reads the sextant! Wake the navigator up! Don't bother the Captain! What does he know?
The Captain trusts his navigator. Shouldn't you? If not, Why knot? A watch watches. A skipper
skips and a navigator navigates! When a watch skips a navigator, what happens?
That depends. Did someone feel or hear a change brought about by watch? Before any cataclismic
damage was done to vessel and/or crew? Yes? Once onboard a sailor is in tune to every nuance his
exoskeleton ( his vessel ) can make. It is a finely tuned instrument that sings as the ocean and wind place
it where it will. But safety and direction are the navigators. He has time on his accurate chronometer
(watch) distance measured by speed over water and Earth with stars, Moon and Sun announcing, " Here is where I am"!
How can a watcher, tell The Watcher, what to watch for? Be Leary but not Timithy! Before changing
course, always ask someone wiser than you, "What is the best course"? Then go your own way and be
prepared for the price you must pay. This is how we learn.. There has got to be a more affordable way!
Sometimes learning is a life and death experience. So is sailing with a good navigator and a crew with a mind of their own! Arrgh, aground are we on a lee shore? Die dogs!!!!!!
Surfing Kauai defined me! Sailing the South Seas measured me. Commercial fishing fed me. The U. S. Merchant Marine showed me! Diving everywhere I have traveled allowed me to become something more and yet something less than the bird pile/fish feeding frenzy I have witnessed. What is above meets what is below, a paradox! No-balance.
About Me
- Robbin
- Sacramento, California, United States
- so salty pieces of coral from surfing Hawaii in the 60's and 70's getting reef pounded living in my body fall through my skin from time to time!
sailing to Oahu
Jimi Hendrix was playing on Oahu. I had never sailed. Surfed Mexico, California, Hawaii! Aw, how hard could it be to sail 90-110 miles from Kauai to Oahu? Piece of cake, right? Remember it was the 60's! This is so bad. We thought we were looking at Kaiena Point,Ohau, knowing we weren't going to make the concert! But at least we were in site of Oahu-wrong! Coy, who had never sailed before, me,who had never sailed before, jeff and Abbott etc. We were looking at the sleeping giant on Kauai! We had done three-sixty's in the night! We sailed on the only tri-marran I've ever sailed on ( except later ) in my life, missed the concert! It was at the Waikiki Shell Ampitheater ( Moon eclipsed . We finally made Nawilwili Harbor! The Skipper tried to give us his boat saying, " It's trying to kill me"! We watched him go stark raving mad not even realising that had we got caught in the channel current we were on our way to Japan! Remember it was the 60's and we were going to see Hendrix. I left out some of the good stuff but I will make up for it later!
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