About Me

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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!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Sky Lord says...........

It is better to remain silent
than to share anything
with an unlistening ear.

To speak of something important
without an audience is
The sound of one hand clapping.

Comfortably alone
is an achievement.
Without fear, I feel
An invisible crowd

The Cyclops cried," Noman"!
His father answered," Someone"!
It was brave Ullysees, who did the deed.
And paid a price.

What have we decided we need
from our fellow man?
What we have decided.

Obligation in the guise of loyalty.
Friendship?  At what price?
Honor? Feality?  Knighthood?

I bow to a force beyond
My understanding,
For I have sailed.
Through calm, storm and
Muddied waters.

I live at the end......
behind a guarded gate.
With a thought or two.......peace

Toad Suck Ferry

   The Toad Suck Ferry is in Arkansas.  When I was a young, my parents forced me to cross the water.  I wasn't pleased because I was in Arkansas.  It was bad enough leaving all my friends from Kansas after leaving all my friend in Wyoming, after leaving all my friends in Arizona, after leaving all my friend in California!
    The interesting thing about a ferry is it allows one or more to cross a body of water.  Usually it circumvents swimming, small boating but cuts a mean line when you are directed to get from point A to point B!   I know people that have dis masted their vessel and it was cheaper to ship the son of a bitch than to fix her where she was!  I would call that ferrying. 
    I did a ferry from south Virginia to north-North Carolina.  It was a one hour, six car carry ferry!  Tom and I were exploring.  We had been doing incredibly stupid things!  Frisbee golf, exploring Sky Line Drive in the foothills.  Fishing, surfing and eating, drinking for daze in Virginia but we explored the finer lay of the land.
   My friend talked me into leaving Hawaii to visit the land that he grew up in and knew.  He introduced me to his parents and his friends.  We aren't gay or queer but friends.  I met them all and also got my Z-card in Virginia.  I became United States Merchant Marine there.  This is another story......
    I, as a stranger to the East Coast of the United States, while on a ferry holding six cars, introduced a total stranger to my friend and they were married a year later and still are.  He pointed me in a direction and said," she is really beautiful".  I agreed but he wasn't able to break ice with women.  I was and still am.  Not bragging but saying, I like people. I introduced a total stranger to my friend. They are still married.  That's something because I only know a few people that can put up with him.
   They've been married now for over thirty years.  Two daughters and my friend up-ed his grade to a first engineer in the merchant marine ( home-based ) out of Oakland.  When he was yanked ( by a doctor who saved his life )off a vessel in India he was forced to quit drinking.  He had choices!  Quit and live or drink and die!  That simple.  He quit.
   When he quit he quit me. ( I still drink beer-never liked vodka ) Haven't seen him for ten years.  This is good because that means he is still alive.  The world is a better place having my friends in it.  He is a good man and his wife could have very easily been mine.  To this day I know she likes me better than her husband and she is right. Even though he doesn't drink, he is still a selfish, arrogant prick!!  He can't help being who he is! 
That's why his wife still likes me.  I'm one of the good guys. You can always tell a good guy from the bad guy because a good guy doesn't want anything.  A bad guy always has an agenda and hates ferrys!
   Words of wisdom-maybe!  Heh!
   The ferry ride to North Carolina with six cars on it-- remains one of the strangest rides I've ever encountered. It was life changing and it was just a ferry. 
    If I was going to buy a ferry or start one on some incredible river or bay splash, I would contemplate calling it," The Toad Suck Farrie "  Heh!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

How Little I Knew

Shoot or shucks!  Mother fucker.  I'm pissed and this ain't England.  I created a site, expecting questions and that I would hopefully be able to provide answers to the questions that were never asked!  I'm not sure if anyboody has read anything I've written or cares?  I know I don't.  I combined a bunch of sails and entertwined them within real experience and dreans of many years.  I have had the opportunity to sail on many boats to many places,  I haven't even begun to share with a half way listening audience anything other than the barest neccessities of any information that you might wish to acquire without going through the experience yourself?  So-vicariously you read or think that you just might sail far off a coastline?  Forget it!
     You can dream.  A dream isn't-- once it has been fulfilled!  Faith realized falls by the wayside.  Where is hope, when it has been fulfilled, witnessed, experienced?  So, a sailboat sails with wind and tide. Does this vessel hope, wish, have faith, that it just might reach it's destination?  Most assuridly!  Not the vessel but....
the crew and passengers would love to not be tossed into the water!  \
     I don't miss being a thousand miles from anywhere as much as I miss taking off on a Hawaiian wave at 12+........That is something to be experienced!  Take off and then turn, maybe!  If you can make the turn, you just might make the wave.......I've made many and have missed many.  I really do not wish any human to go over the falls on a Hawaiian wave.  It is always life threatening and terribly frightening but when you are in the water we have a way of becoming water.  This is what saves crashed surfers! 
     I would much rather crash on take-off than be killed by trying to bust through an outside set!  That's the nub.  Do I sit inside and catch a lot of waves/or do I sit way outside/allday/waiting for that one big ass son of a bitch that Ralph has been waiting all day for? NO!   He can have it!  I don't want that!  I'm inside, 8+ and just every now and then 12' cleans me and Ambrose's clock!  But shit!  Jim Pollock, me and Ambrose Curry caught 20 waves to Ralph's one.  His was big but intersections at 8' goes through the bowl at Hanalei! 
   To me.........This is how I see it.  I'm to skinny to wait for a wave.  I got to keep moving!  Surf City, U.S.A!  I haven't even begun to tell you how much it cost my friends to dedicate their lives to the ocean!   We should start at Razor Reef!  Heh!  For the knowing!!! 

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The Wreck Of The Hesperus

                                            

                             Henry Wadsworth Longfellow     ( 1807-1882 )



It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,

To bear him company.





Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,

Her cheeks like the dawn of day,

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,

That ope in the month of May.





The skipper he stood beside the helm,

His pipe was in his mouth,

And he watched how the veering flaw did blow

The smoke now West, now South.





Then up and spake an old Sailòr,

Had sailed to the Spanish Main,

"I pray thee, put into yonder port,

For I fear a hurricane.





"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,

And to-night no moon we see!"

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

And a scornful laugh laughed he.





Colder and louder blew the wind,

A gale from the Northeast,

The snow fell hissing in the brine,

And the billows frothed like yeast.





Down came the storm, and smote amain

The vessel in its strength;

She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,

Then leaped her cable's length.





"Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,

And do not tremble so;

For I can weather the roughest gale

That ever wind did blow."





33He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat

34 Against the stinging blast;

35He cut a rope from a broken spar,

36 And bound her to the mast.





"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,

Oh say, what may it be?"

"'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" --

And he steered for the open sea.





"O father! I hear the sound of guns,

Oh say, what may it be?"

"Some ship in distress, that cannot live

In such an angry sea!"





"O father! I see a gleaming light,

Oh say, what may it be?"

But the father answered never a word,

A frozen corpse was he.





Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,

With his face turned to the skies,

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow

On his fixed and glassy eyes.





53Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed

54 That savèd she might be;

55And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave

56 On the Lake of Galilee.





And fast through the midnight dark and drear,

Through the whistling sleet and snow,

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept

Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.





And ever the fitful gusts between

A sound came from the land;

It was the sound of the trampling surf

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.





The breakers were right beneath her bows,

She drifted a dreary wreck,

And a whooping billow swept the crew

Like icicles from her deck.





She struck where the white and fleecy waves

Looked soft as carded wool,

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side

Like the horns of an angry bull.





Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,

With the masts went by the board;

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,

Ho! ho! the breakers roared!





At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,

A fisherman stood aghast,

To see the form of a maiden fair,

Lashed close to a drifting mast.





The salt sea was frozen on her breast,

The salt tears in her eyes;

And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,

On the billows fall and rise.





Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman's Woe!

The Calm by John Donne ( 1512-1631)

Our storm is past. and that storms tyrannus rage.

A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage.

The fable is inverted, and far more

A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.

Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;

In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.

As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were,

Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there,

The sea is now; and, as the isles which we

Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.

As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;

As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout.

And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,

Like courts removing, or like ended plays.

The fighting-place now seamen's rags supply;

And all the tackling is a frippery.

No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay

Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.

Earth's hollownesses, which the world's lungs are,

Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.

We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,

But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.

Only the calenture together draws

Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes' jaws;

And on the hatches, as on altars, lies

Each one, his own priest, and own sacrifice.

Who live, that miracle do multiply,

Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.

If in despite of these we swim, that hath

No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;

But from the sea into the ship we turn,

Like parboil'd wretches, on the coals to burn.

Like Bajazet encag'd, the shepherds' scoff,

Or like slack-sinew'd Samson, his hair off,

Languish our ships. Now as a myriad

Of ants durst th' emperor's lov'd snake invade,

The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,

Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.

Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,

Or to disuse me from the queasy pain

Of being belov'd and loving, or the thirst

Of honour, or fair death, out-push'd me first,

I lose my end; for here, as well as I,

A desperate may live, and a coward die.

Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,

 paid with life or prey, or doing dies.

Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay

A scourge, 'gainst which we all forget to pray.

He that at sea prays for more wind, as well

Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.

What are we then? How little more, alas,

 man now, than before he was? He was

Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;

Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.

We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,

should not then thus feel this misery.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Captain Cook and Me

There I was.  Emphasis on was.  Grafton Passage isn't done with an areoplane!  It was explosivily done by me back in " 87"!  What a cool year in Aus!  It actually rained but not for long!  The wierd thing about Queensland and the Island of Kauai is when it rains we don't do metric!  We do footage!  How much rain fell today?  2 feet!  That would be 24 inches-standard!  Fuck metric........
     So in the Daintree or Waialeale we measure rainfall by feet.  It's not new but it is a fact, Jack!  When it rains it pours.  Mt. Waialiali feeds seven rivers!  One of them is ( imua Wailua ), the only navigatable river, Wailua, in Hawaii.  Kauai no ka oi!
    Much to be said about Kauai.   For those of you who live there.  E oi e mai Ke kei O ka aiana e kapono!  So be it.  I traveled so far in Captain Cooks shadow.  Not complaining but am honoring him as he saw the world, especially the South Seas !!.  This isn't Mutiny on the bounty, this is everywhere I sailed!!!!  There are statues of James Cook.  From Alaska to N.Zed his name was mentioned.  It's kind of like this man Jesus.  He bopped around the Mediterrean Sea for awhile.  Paul( Saul of Tarsus) who never met Jesus in person ( I mean in the physical) was everywhere and sailed to heaven and high water!  Paul rode down three boats!  He and Cook had a lot in common!  He!  RB

PS.  If you get time?  Sail to Cooktown, Australia.  Park your boat in the Endeaver River.  Visit Captain Cook's  Museum.  The only reason the town is there (exists) is because of him!  Population 25 and ten Abs..
Run with the locals!  I did,,,,,,,,,,ten miles in the dark!  No Pilikia and a bunch of beer! He he

seriously!  They finally found what Capt Cook off-loaded inside " The Great Barrier Reef" to save his ship.  What has always facinated me is:  Where did they get the wood?  How did they reprovision their vessel?  How did they get out to continue their journey?  The Barrier is huge!  Cook came in through Grafton!  It wasn't named yet!  The reason he couldn't get out is there are only two ways in and out!  He found in!  God love him.....But he didn't find the out til later! 

Friday, August 26, 2011

Where are we?

       History has a way of re-writing itself.  Obviously we weren't hanging around with Capt. James in the day.  But we are hanging around with modern media today.  What do they say?  Rufus Murdock says what ever the hell he wants to say or is printed.  That's today.  Yesterday has a lot to say but you can't find it in our worldly educational systems.
      One of the reasons we are losing todays youth to edumencation is because children can discern a lie from the truth.  Bullshit is for adults and politicicians-- but not farmers.  When you change or come up with a way to save daylight, there is a motive.  Every farmer and his cattle or barnyard animals know the sun rises and it sets.  What does man do?  Creates a chronometer!  Time measured.  Awesome!
       So---here is a farmer.  His rooster crows at the break of dawn.  Why?  His job.  Who needs an alarm clock when you have a rooster?  Who needs time anyway?  City boys?  A navigator?  How does anyone know they are late unless someone told them so?  I think clock is christian.  I believe that you don't even want to know how I feel about you!  So why should I waste your time? 
        As early writen and discovered navigators throughout time stumbled by their individual veracity into new frontiers on an undefined or understood planet--we read-what?  A King or a Queen in search of wealth by her or his decree, decimated entire cultures for greed and a dream that something existed OUT THERE that could be manipulated to enforce and make stronger the tyrany and exploitation of every aparent resource form an indidgenous people to be brought home to a mother land--for what reason?
        Today, nothing has changed.
        The reason I love  Captain Cook is he brought something and took something.  Biological symbiosis is actually the true definition of friendship.Knowledge for it's own sake!  A mutual exchange of something!  I, also, would sail with him to the ends of the Earth!  He was a giver!  He didn't take more than he gave and it was never his intent to do so.  He was a curious man looking for solutions to questions that had been asked but never answered at that time and place.by any  It was his country, his queen and the worlds people --who benefited by a man of his stature?  I think in time there will be many more like him, but not today!
          Today is a good day to be on an ocean on a reliable boat with a good crew and fully stocked with provisions that just might take you to an Island continent!  Australia, where only now are the people that England rejected claiming a heirtitage like the children of the Mayflower!  Earths/societies rejects and bastard son's or sons with no inheiritence. Claim now-after generations they never knew the Salem witchcraft trials but did know their mother stold bread ( shades of Dickens) to survive and was expelled to, " Bontany Bay"!  Long sail in terrible conditions.  Can you imagine getting busted for stealing a loaf of bread?  Shit!  Send me to Aus!!!!
          There is a lot more, of course!  Cap"t James Cook ( by his log) did some more good stuff in N.Zed!
More later on him............Arrgghhghhh, matey, pass me a lime! Bloody hell, mate!  Will you pass over to me that walrus tooth?  So, I can get on with my scrimshaw!  We'll be home soon and my daughter is eight now by my way of counting.  She'll need to be seeing something of what her father has done while she has been growing!  Will she know me after this time?  Question:  Do you know yourself after all this time?

Friday, August 12, 2011

Invisible

So hard to see someone that is..........
.........doesn't exist until it is visible.
So, why does something that was ......... become visible?
I can answer that.

Reliable is visible. Tangible and physical.
I can taste a popcycle.  I might ride a bicycle,
Experience a motorcycle, Learn to love and
Find balance on a
Unicycle.  While juggling oranges!

But no one would see me but the cyclops
From Homer.  Brave Ulysses was
.........!(no man)
So I can see you don't believe me!
Can you see me?
For you must know by now,
I am
......... until I am nought!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Diane

Hiding behind lies and distortation
Secret truths
Blown out of proportion
By a friend
Some friend was he?
Who stold from his friend
So secretly!
\
The things that friend loved
Above all else.
that special friend
Stold
For himself!.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

so many pieces

Question, ( actually two in the same sentence )
       Why did God divide Himself into so many pieces?  The answer ( as usual ) is in the question!
Another question.  What is a whole thing?
       Once again, the answer is in the question.
What does anyone who is burdened by wisdom know and share with like minded individuals?  Individuals.
You see?  The answer is contained in the question!  I stress this or place importance upon it.  When or if you can frame a question you already have received an answer.  A God ( the only one ) forced me to explain something so simple that children are born with.( until they are contaminated by maturity and a sense of what their parents have been coerced to believe is true)( it's no ones fault )( but that of course is what Ulysees told the Cyclops who was Posiden/Neptunes nephew when he was asked who took his one eye out)  Tell me Homer didn't have a sense of humor!
       So sailors are returning from a terrible war and meet a big guy with one eye who just happens to love to eat sailors.  I didn't find it strange at all that Ullysees would give him a false name after blinding him!  Did you?  I find it harder to believe that they didn't eat the cyclops just to get their men back!
       Warning:  Be very careful with your questions.  Screw the answers!  Questions are far more revealing.
I could tell you why but then that would spoil everything!  Comprehend?  
        So here is a question.................Can you imagine sailing with me?  Heh....... 
       

Friday, June 17, 2011

Mermaid?

One foggy day, 28 days out from Hawaii, becalmed for two days between Catalina and Santa Barbara Islands about 20 miles from Marina Del Rey, ghosting through several major shipping lanes with no food, no engine, no running lights but did have a flashlight, I heard an unusual noise! Was it fatigue?

I'd been worried and up for three days and had already watched, knowing I was hallucinating, a giant squid slither aboard at the bow moving towards me at the wheel. It looked so real and being bored and alone I enjoyed the company and the movie on a moonless but starry dog watch. That was three days ago The giant squid never reached the cockpit because a smaller but still huge Shibe ( ahi-yellow finned tuna) took him off the bowsprit like eating a squid kabob leaving ink and his propulsion system ( tentacles ) writhing on the deck falling harmlessly back from whence they came! My imagination. I really didn't see that coming. I've seen Mahi take flying fish out of the air but I've only seen tuna eat squid on television. I've kicked still live squid out of dying tuna I've caught on the deck of a fishing boat before but was a little depressed the giant squid got food chained before his tentacles reached me. I was so hungry I had been trying to figure out if I had anything big enough aboard to smash this giant squid into chewable calamari. I knew we still had some flour. Now, I would never know and I also would never find out if my nerves would have held when the tentacles were reaching for me hiding behind the wheel.

An hour later Shang-Gri-La, a 55 foot, Choi Lee sailed into soup so thick it felt like we had entered The Sargasso Sea. You know, boats sail into it, get tangled up and never sail out of it? The fog was so thick it was like being inside a raincloud of solid water. It was like drinking air! We sheeted in the sails but left them up in the hope that someone would have a better chance of seeing us. It was very quiet and visibility fluctuated between 5 and 20 feet. Mostly 5 to 10'.

Why this situation is so nerve wrecking is it isn't a hallucination! We are doing circles blindly, with no control what-so-ever in a major shipping lane. The California Coast itself is frightening enough but throw in the international ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach! Forget about the traffic from Panama to Alaska and points in between! Can't see but we can hear-everything! Horns, whistles, bells all sounding as if they are coming right at us and are right next to us for two days! It reminded me of " Tell-Tale Heart " by Edgar Allen Poe! You could hear the tugboat engines pulling their barges on a long tow just knowing that any minute the submerged cable which was directly under us, was going to pull a fully loaded garbage barge into our fiberglass vessel crushing us into instant flotsam and no one even knowing it had happened! See what I mean about Poe? The others could stomach no more and went below to ride out a fog that was worse than any storm I had weathered in the past!. My heart at times was pounding as hard and louder than the man heard in Poe's story who had buried a person under the floorboards and was in anguish listening to a dead man's beating heart. That's when I heard a new sound!

For some reason it was slightly musical and sent a refreshing wave of peace that washed over me and quelled my throbbing heart allowing it to resettle itself back in it's moorings, still rebellious but softening the roaring that had been in my ears and allowing me to focus and try to visualize what this new sound meant. It now sounded like a swimmer having a casual swim around the boat. Spitting out water with an exhale here and then over there. Kind of like this might sound! " pssheeu ". I'd never heard the like before and couldn't wrap my mind around what it could be. As I was looking overboard, towards the most recent sound ( they were becoming more regular and closer ) I saw gracefully, fluid lines of movement, underwater, accented streaky lines like sparklers being moved rapidly by children on the fourth of July. Because of the fog I could only see the underwater patterns of it's movement when it was close to the hull on both sides of the boat but it was leaving definitive trails and definitely flirting with me and in a playful way raising my curiosity. That's when the unbelievable fact of what it had to be hit me and I knew if I called below for a witness to come topside it would disappear. I couldn't do this. Somehow, telepathically, it communicated to me that this visitation was for me and no one else. I knew I was about to become the first sailor in quite some time to spend a few moments with a mermaid. I could not believe my good fortune. I had totally forgotten my throbbing heart, my fatigue, my hunger, my fears, my past hallucinations, my crew, and reality! I was about to see a nautical mystery, a mythology realized, that maybe no sailor of the past had ever seen ! Before I could ask," why me, Lord"? It surfaced behind me at the transom and exhaled what sounded like an attempt at " Hello"!! I knew the beautiful trails it was leaving underwater, outlining it's shape and gracefulness, was agitated plankton (seaweed to the uninitiated) but my imagination had conceived by it's own volition a shining, voluptuous, long haired, magically empowered, Aphrodite or a Venus of such beauty that to be in it's presence heightened ones awareness to celestial elevations that man has only dreamed were possible to be a part of and stand amongst!

As I starred into the water behind the transom, seeing first, concentric phosphoric rings emanating from the risen creatures chest, hearing it's breathing and then my gaze focusing on her head I realized what a great experience I am having. It was a him. A very large him yet so graceful in the water that in a way it is feminine. In the quiet of the foggy sea this amazing creature had taken the time to come and visit me in the middle of a terrible night. There was no other reason for him to be here looking up at me in the middle of nowhere than to drop by and say, " Hello". We talked for awhile. He was in no particular hurry to leave and I had no way to leave which means I was exactly where I was supposed to be. He listened. I listened. Strangely, with him there I knew we were safe. He wouldn't have lived this long going back and forth from the mainland to the islands through these shipping lanes without knowing how to get out of their way! Before he left for Catalina he told me the fog was lifting and a steady Northeasterly would allow us to sail right into our slip. He warned me about a fat, cigar smoking, scotch drinking, stink boat wanna-be captain that didn't like to give way to sailboats and tried to herd them into untenable situations. He told me the guy was a bully and really a day sailing coward that never left the marina. He'd never even taken his father's stink boat the 26 miles to Catalina.

He told me to stare him down and don't give way even if it looked like we were going to ram. Sure enough, it happened just like he said. I thought the mad skipper was going to swallow his cigar and explode when he frantically put his helm hard over! He yelled he was going to turn us in to the Harbormaster. He didn't but we did. Last I heard they had informed his father what would happen if his son was caught behind the wheel of any boat at the marina. The sea lion also informed me why they knew so much about this guy. Where ever he went they could smell him. He took pleasure in releasing his toilet directly into the ocean rather than offloading it into sanctioned holding for disposal facilities. He told me even in his world, " It takes all kinds"!

That's as close as I've ever been to a mermaid. Now St Elmo's fire is another story! ARRRGGHHHHHH, matey

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Trepidation

    He says as he combs the tangles out of his beard!  Santa Cruz.  The Pacific Ocean and my finger in her
after a long, hard ride on a bicycle with 21 speeds?  How could this be hard?  Horseback is hard!  And
painful.  21 speeds!  A good horse has four!  I'll let you know if I get back about speed #16.
    My bicycle is so much faster than my canoe.  My bike has a habit of getting in cars way!  Scares me.  My canoe never gets in boats way because it is a water thing.  Boats are filled with original people that aren't driving cars. 
Boats can drift or sail without an engine.  Sometimes without rowing the WATER underneath you carries you where It is going.  Bicyles can coast ( a water word) which allows me to do the same thing!  Coasting is cool?  
     Exploration should always be done with trepidation.  Not panic but a kindly awareness that in a moment
of inattentiveness things have a dreadful way of going horribly south!  I am three days and two nights away from  friends. You do the math and critique me.  I'm not sure I could get there from here in my canoe but I do prefer boat travel!  The last time I rode my bike (not my motorcycle) to Santa Cruz, a 240 Z turned the front wheel of my bike into a potato chip as I sailed through the air at a five-way intersection in Sausalito!  I took a fairy(heh) for two bucks to the embarcadero and BART to Daly City and then rode over Skyline to spend the night is Pacifica.
    I'm not sure which route I'm going to take this time.  I do know the Tempture at this time of year is more conducive towards a good ride than it was the last time I did this.  110 degrees riding a bike uphill was no fun at all.  This is why I'm a sailor. When it gets hot you go overboard!   When it gets hot riding your bike you go downhill!  Unless there isn't one.  A boat is always on the water.  A bike isn't.  Have you noticed that?  Ha!
     The bummer is I have to return!!!   AARRGBEGARRRR!
 

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Boogers In My EYES

       Maka pia pia doesn't mean much if one doesn't speak Hawaiian.   That is why God created
pidgeons.  What does, " Howzit Bra mean"?  How you stay?  You stay good?  You come stay go?
And your answer, " I stay wenting"!
       Language is like religion!  No matter where you go, there you are.  I come stay go is actually
profound.  It combines time, space, religion, distance, physical place, identity, past, present and future and a relationship !
All this in a very simple expression or explosion out of one's mouth.  This expression is usually accompanied by
a hand gesture where the first and fifth didgital phalange are displayed with an arm shake so that even a deaf mute could receive a '"Howzit Bra"!
      Christians brought their God to Hawaii.  When they topped their wife in the missionary position after leaving  the East Coast and sailing around " The Horn" with a piano aboard, they spread a disease to a people that did not need what they so kindly crammed down people's throats.  Their very own
children ( some, not all ) left the faith.  The missionaries weren't visionaries and wore far to much clothing.
They clothed their mind.  Why do you think their children stold one third of all Hawaii?  Was it just because they were there?  No, it is because the Alii  decided whatever they decided when they decided to decide. Usually after speaking with a Kahuna.   This is all written. People are people, man.  There is no people greater than another people.  Ask an American Indian! Chiefs, medicine men, doctors, lawyers?  What? A particular tribe
of people will tell you to your face that their tribe is ," The People" !
    Aren't you happy that you know this?  You should see my passport.  I get to go to places where they all tell me what I should think.  They are right!  Right now, because some of these people in certain places I have been eat people.  They don't just kill you, they eat long white pig!  Heh!
     I haven't eaten a Christian yet but it is only because I haven't met one!  That's not entirely true.  I have met one but she is my sister and I have her on the back burner! 
    All kidding aside.  I didn't know where this conversation was going because it is driving itself.  Here is what it says though. When you greet a human, mean it.  No cliches or meaningless diatribe.  People want you to look directly into their eyes and that is your way of each saying to each other I see you, I recognize you, I may not agree with you but I am listening and I hope I did not spread an infectious disease to your village that will wipe out one third of your entire population.  I tried that in an elevator in Manhatten NY on the 36th floor of the Hilton on Fifth Ave. back in "81",,,  It didn't work but it could have!
    No- really, no joke!  I really did spread a disease wherever I have visited.  It is called, " Robbiism"!
Symtoms---A strong desire to tell the truth ( even to yourself)  Unexplained laughter( after telling the truth to yourself).  Lose of friends.( amigos).  Money loses importance. ( piquito denaro)( kala in Hawaii)(British Sterling-pound)...vision is restored. ( it's a miricle).  Forgetfulness about yesterday's tomarrows!  ( in the is)!
    Adverse reactions:  Score keeping.  Twelve minus two equals two!  If you are one of the ten then there
is no ink in my pen......That is a ten four and a sheel of steel (written in stone) ( parenthesis enclosed by)
Howzit Bra? 
   

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Sir Something

       I forgot what I have been trying to remember!  Relax is one of the few words that I can
use an X on when I am playing scrabble.  It was hard to play at sea until I purchased a letter boxed ( another X)
lazy susan and placed it on a gimboled table.  Words have new meaning when they are allowed to
exist ( another X word) in the main saloon when all about is moving with  mind and body man does not experience anything comparable to it
(another X word) on land anywhere but at a fair.  Not an affair but a fair with rides like a roller coaster. An
affair is a ride but by definition it had better be a good one because it is usually very expensive!  (another X word).  Sex is another X.  Reflex is also.
     Now I remember what I forgot!

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Not One, But Two

        Oh, how nice it is to be on land!  Two, not one, females calling to their mates!  Keeping me awake
and yet, admiring the lovely shape of my house that has nothing to do with my boat or an ocean!  They
call in a particular way their mates ( or at least the one's they have mated with) from the roof of my  house, I have not seen for these past three years for I have been at sea.
         Their mating call offended my senses to a degree that I realized non-sleep!   I have adjusted to a sleep
deprivation accorded to a master of a vessel on peculiar adventures of trade and negotiations beyond the
measure of a man jack before the mast!  I order!  And my orders are  carried out!  When I demand rest it is given to me as is my right as being a person of respect by ship, crew and King or Queen!
        So what have we here but two  females calling to twelve males?  Regardless of their design! 
It is all the same.  I need sleep and animals need to procreate.  Which is more important?  Animals making more animals or me having a good nights sleep without a bunch of sailors constantantly asking me questions
about things they will never understand?
        Simply said!   Two female turkeys ended up on my roof.  I'm trying to sleep but had no choice but
to satisfy the males that flew nowhere. They hung out! The females made it to my roof and then call out to the males, who
know that I can't miss with my " Blunderbuss"! I like to eat turkey. I give them last night and today.  If any of them disturb the
rest that I so require, tonight, their fate is on them.  I will enjoy having them on my plate even if my eyes are held open by the toothpicks that were necessary to hold them in that position because I required sleep that these local turkeys disallowed me to attain! 
       The turkeys that are infesting my house and place of rest should prepare themselves for tomorrow!
Today they had their way!  I will have my way with them in the future. Sometimes hunger devours beauty
but only because it is necessary!  When I wake up tomorrow I can promise you I will be rested and hungry and they will have found another place to be!  That is the way of it!  Heh!
    

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Answer To A Friend

What's that saying...? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

We had a rat die in the attic and I couldn't get to it, so it rotted and permeated through

the walls. Ugh.... what rancid stench! Summer time and the rat dried up in a week but

I learned... don't put Decon in the attic. Set traps


Don, here is the saying from---


The Mourning Bride. by William Congreve 1697

" Love has no rage like love to hatred turnd'd

Nor Hell a fury like a women scorn'd"



This comes at the end of Act 3, Scene 8.



Had a rat on a boat I sailed. Valhalla. Nailed it with a trap at night.

We all heard the trap when it was sprung! Snap it went!

It almost took the large rat's head completely off. I remember it was black and white in coloring and Marion, dead Larry's wife,

puked. The dead rat couldn't swim but I would lay odds a barracuda got it before a shark!

As a seaman my wish is better cockroach traps. After all these years at least I have learned one thing and maybe a few others. Never bring boxes aboard your vessel. Leave them ashore and bring your goods aboard in other devices, Young cockroaches live in the ribbing of the walls of the box and grow quite quickly. I hate the ones that can fly! When they run into something they sound like flying fish bombarding your deck at night while running from mahi mahi (dorado)! The difference is you can harvest the flying fish and eat them. I've never eaten a cockroach yet but I'd prefer that over human when in a pinch! I think I could eat a rat? I've eaten squirrel and my brother, Randy, calls them," Tree Rats"! I have been fortunate. I have only sailed with four people I would rather eat than sail with!

I recounted. Make that six but that is over 25,000 miles on 21 different vessels on several oceans and seas. Makes me wonder how Captain Bly and his crew survived such a long sail in an open boat? What do you think kept them alive? Dead William and vengeance! B'garrrrr



.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Never Knowing An Always Begining

     When I purchased my first boat I thought I had arrived.  In hindsight I had but didn't understand--what I had until I lost her! Oh, I lost her to ignorance.  I see now what youth can never see because the price has not been paid!  In youth!  Only a man knows what is lost.
      I sailed several vessels when I was young and had not yet arrived into my inheritance.  I knew what was expected of me and yet was reticent to come into a full understanding and so made due with objects of beauty but never was  willing to accept any responsibility for consequences of which I felt that in my youth I would not be held accountable for! So boat, vessel and ships were sailed to various ports; landing, exchanging goods, trading and basically carrying on with business as usual!  Forgetfulness without sorrow...
      People I thought, I thought I cared for started dieing in life around the world.  I was sorry but it did not mean that much to me because they were fat and selfish and only a people that I interacted with. There were many new people in many ports as fat and greedy that I sailed into-to trade with and barter with as in the way of the world.  I enjoyed their wine and camaraderie and when they died I sent flowers to commiserate the people ( my business partners)  that I  would really miss them.  I could not!  For tomorrow was nothing more than another day and another transaction in a business world that to go to sleep for a minute would allow your competitor to move beyond you in the scope of your business!
     What can I say but the truth that haunts me now?  Hear me, please.  What I know now is different than  yesterdays meaning!  If I may give you a small insight into your youth relative to your age now?  Hear me and accept this present!
                 " Much is for sale"? There is much ado about nothing!  Think.  What is wealth?  Be very careful what you wish for.  How much is enough?  Do you remember every man/women you have slept with?
Do you owe anyone anything?  How many mistakes have you made?  Have you ever paid someone Else's
debt for them?  Do you feel better for it? Has anyone paid yours?  Have you ever stolen a boat, a friend or done something so wrong in your own eyes that you can not forgive yourself ? Have you ever realised that
when you wake up tomorrow you do not have a dream?  Can you say that you have taught your children the price of admission into the illusory world of illusion that calls failure success and real pirates laugh at the wars and business that  governments continually create in the name of a "Holy War" called religious business?
        I laugh at dishonesty!  I am old enough to understand I am not for sale. even to the highest bidder!  I have survived storms greater than man can dish out.  What can happen to me?  A government of man will torture and kill me?  For my thoughts?  A group of pirates off Somalia will board me and take my little sailboat and my life away from me?  Heh-heh, heh, I think not.  How does one kill a spirit? Well, ask America.  They are still trying to do this in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Still hiding behind their christian Bible, fighting holy wars in the name of righteousness that I find laughable!
        I had a first sailboat.  I have had many more.  I loved them all as I loved what they all allowed me to sail through. Major storms, heavy swells and good fellowship.  God Bless the world that you'll have decided to live in.  Good business, great trade and friends on waters that  you feel comfortable with!  May the wind always blow somewhere!  Find it!
    
         So this great beginning starts right now with all of us being wrong but re-starting again and again until we get it right!  I believe it is possible for me to steal another heart which is like a vessel that sails to points unknown that can be known with children aboard and pirates that plunder the very thoughts in their minds eye!  Sail on to truer waters, my brothers at sea! Find your personal place in the many Oceans that land is surrounded by!  There is where yourself will be found amongst the stars that exist and are above another horizon.... AArrrrggghhhh!!

Thursday, March 10, 2011

True Colors

       So caught out!  After all these years gone by?  Found, not lost!  But found!  All, who knew me, now
know the real me.  Yes, I am only loyal to myself.  I was hoping all others were of the same ilk.  I was promised it was so by a wiser fool than I have pretense to be.  But yes, a fool was he and I also stand in front of you now and profess to be even a larger one, if this were possible!
        I searched for everything under the sun, knowing I am special, knowing I would find the jewell of my quest!  Hither and yon, I searched, finding pieces of a treasure that only existed in imagination.  Could the purpose of my investigation be meaningful than my very life will have had some bit of meaning and nought to have all been in vain?  In vain?  Maybe.
       There is a jury.  At the end of a voyage, when one is paid and in the leaving, one looks back and remembers.  What?  The entire voyage?  A portion?  The good?  The bad?  The complete?  There is a log and depending on how it is written and by whom it is written by tells the tale! 
       We all have memory.  Unfortunately our combined memories give us a better picture of what might have transpired as opposed to what did!  For instance:  I am forward watching five men change a headsail.  Even though in the dead of night, there was a moon and I saw who stabbed Mr. Standish and in the penetration used his and the vessels motion to cast him into the water. "  Man overboard", was cried!  Yes. It was but by the time the vessel, " Reefer", could come about and make the motions of a late at night sea rescue, Gregory Standish was aboard another vessel belonging to David Jones.
        What brings these stories to mind, now, is that as a man before the mast, I have no value.  I can not sing shanties in a pub for the rum that was so much a part of my life at sea.  The sea is my life and now my fingers are warped of it.  Frozen by the knots I have tied and by the men I have ordered to go aloft in a full gale to save us all from the peril of driving a rigged and driven!  Her under water by the weight of her design and rigging alone! Do you understand?  I do.
        I accept the responsibillity and position of every boat I have sailed.  No log announces me as unseaworthy.  Of this I am proud, but not without regret at this stage of my life.  I have seen much as in the way of living and dying!  Is there a log in a heaven, a record keeper that is better than a master of a vessel?
        What I have witnessed is about character.  I have seen a peculiur people.  An ordinary seaman save the life of a bosun's mate who had him whipped, just the day before, because it came natural to him.  Did anything change after the storm?  No!  But something did..  I did!
         Many of the men I have sailed with are dead.  Where did they die?  Where did the men you sailed with die?  On land?  The ocean does not kill who she loves but gives a dawning sunrise and a freash breeze to a gathering sea.  I have loved those mornings which are like a birthing.  A continuence of an eternal hearthrob!
Yes, I've been hard aground.  Yes, I have seen a mast toppled! Yes, I have seen sea legs take a bit longer than it should have and vomit needed to be picked up as food was neccessary to be prepared! So what?
         The oceans have food in them.  Life itself, even weather.  A sailboat has a better chance of surviving a full gale than a cargo container ship. ( or a bark) Should I count how many containers I have seen adrift in the middle of any ocean?  I always wondered if there were dead humans in them being sumggled  illegally to the US.  The dream as opposed to dreamtime, ( for those who have been down under). Coming down the western coastline I also wondered what happened to that big tree that got away?  Sixty foot trees, floating(just barely) in the Pacific Ocean!
        How about those pirates?  Not Pittsburg!  I'm talking about " The Indian Ocean" or " The South China Sea"!  How many boats just simply disappear?  One or two a year?  Doesn't make our daily news does it?  You know why?  I do .  And so does everyone that has any grey matter between your hearing receptacles.
        A pirate was a freedom fighter.  A pirate only became a pirate because he couldn't quit being a mercenary. With few exceptions (Francis Drake) All pirates fought for country and spoils of war.  It was hell when the war ended and yet, we have documented proof that piracy was still allowed, unless you were caught!  Still exists today!  And a short yesterday!
        Hard to imagine that anyone would want to sail with me.  I know the latitude and longitude where the bodies have been recognized by Neptune.  I, also, am a brewmaster and a baker.  This fact alone, usually gets me on a ship, even if it is just for the captain!  Ha!
      

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Fifteen Men (Bottle of Rum) - Original Version This is the real deal.

Flfteen men?  I doubt it!  What dead man's chest?  Who drinks rum?  Is there a map?  What is a Bucaneer?  I've heard Christians say that there are feral pigs!  Not in my day.  We brought them to eat!  Even though many of us were Jew, when it came to hunger even Jew ate pork.  It was better than the alternative!  Human flesh has been eaten throughout time.  What is the difference?  Survival in the desert or the ocean requires a behavior that violates the senses.  I never thought that drinking my own urine could surpass drinking salt water!  Yet I lived and many died.  It was not their call.  Few can kill to live and many more were not with the Donner Party!  How can anyone live after consuming human flesh?  I would ask that if one consumed human flesh after they were dead, what is the difference of this meat compared to Bambi? Where is it writen that in order to survive in a crisis situation, I am not allowed to eat, anything?  The society that I live amonst allows me to buy body parts out of a living body that is mind dead to not waste even a heart that is still beating!  But the same society allows a 14 year young girl, drug intoxicated to birth a child she can never raise and will be brain damaged in the name of creation itself!  My what a wonderful world we live in.  We send our son's to a war we can't win from a government that has nothing to do with the reallity of a democratic society, ruled by illusion under a pretense of honesty, loyality and freedom and yet has a neighbor hood watch in every community that can't wait to bust their next door neighbor.  We are taxed upon taxes as the taxers vote themselves another raise and do not fall under the rules they, a minority, creat for the rest of us.  I don't know about you, nor do I care.  I have been a pirate my entire life.  So won't you become one also.  I trust pirates.  There is no lie in them.  I trust no one else.  The open ocean deals honestly with pirates.  It is when we come ashore where we find dishonesty!  Arrrghh, matey

Rambling Sailors ~ "The Derelict" (Yo Ho Ho & A Bottle of Rum)

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Bullets Don't Hit the Good Guys

       What is close?  Kissing, dancing, hugging, shaving, knifing, horse shoes, hand grenades and atom
bombs!  I can't recall a time since WW II where we as a country haven't been at war?  If we are the good guys than why are so many of my friends dead?  I can't complain, war brought my mom and dad together
in Korea!  They made me there.  I was made in Korea.
        We used to play cops and robbers.  We used to play cowboy and Indians.  Us kids didn't really understand who was the good guy and who was the bad but we did take turns.  This time you are "Big Al"
Capone with his cronies and I am Eliot Ness with my " Untouchables"!  Bang, bang," Got you" we cried!
" No you didn't"! " You missed", answered through the neighborhood, rebounding off garages and walls that
defined out turf!  Our imaginary wars were fought from sunrise to sunset on many battlefields.  Kickball, four-square, football, baseball, track and field, basketball, stick ball, raking leaves, mowing the lawn, paper route, yes and even watering!  Are we still in Korea?
     Viet Nam is once again the Paris of Asia.  Did bullets hit the good guys there or are we immortal as we were when young and playing games with weapons that could only put your eye out?  Does anyone wonder
why anyone goes to war when they are all only financial?  Death is permanent unless you are a real believer.
Bullets don't hit the good guys, do they?  Many of my friends didn't come back from that one.  So bullets do hit the good guys and kill them, permanently!
      I think we should all arm ourselves with paint guns in Afghanistan and Iraq and do what we did as children!  With paint guns and referees you can't yell out,"  You missed", because the judge will see the paint on your uniform and announce to the other players, team mates and enemies alike, that you are officially dead!  So it's like in the olden days when killer soldiers had honor.  You are captured and as long as you promised not to return to this war you are released on your honor not to participate until the next one.
     Those were the days.  Honor. Pride in country and name.  Your flag. 
      My dad taught me how to fight and win.  He also taught me how to hunt and fish.  He taught me how to think.  Do you think it might be time to use our minds and come together with viable solutions?  Or shall we continue to pretend that there is something out there to win.  What?  The death of not only our country and our children but sanity itself?  
      Ignorance is a bullet!  And it is killing the good guys!  There is not one reason that can be or has been
shown that justifies , rationalizes, or makes known any reason to pursue a military presence in Iraq or Afghanistan!  Don't even attempt to lay patriotism at my feet!  Don't try to CYA either.  Suck it up and walk away!  You lose, again!   Why would any country fight an unnecessary war that they started knowing they could not win?  This is criminal!
     We have the technology.  We have the manpower.  For what?  To serve and protect?  Rape and plunder?  Are we Vikings?  I'm asking because my dad asked me to!  35 years in the military and it comes to this?  Poppy fields?  Government smuggling to England, Istanbul, Chicago etc, just like Nam.  Never changes does it?  Guns into what country this time?  Ask Ollie!  I'm old now and a plane crash you will arrange is OK with me you son of a bitches!  I prefer a heroin overdose if you'll give me a choice?  I know it doesn't work that way but I had to try. 
     So who are the good guys, these days?  I'm 62 and well done!  I won't say anything bad about the president--
of Brazil or Argentina.  Do we have one here? Palin, right?
     Shucks, this was one of the best super-bowls ever if the national anthem had have been sung properly!  I didn't care about the ay-eeesooies-aaneoo up and downs but I did care that a professional forgot to put the words where they belong!  It could happen to anybody when 70 million people are hearing you.  Glad it wasn't me.
     By the way-when we decide to shoot guns, I prefer that we shoot an enemy and not civilians.  So let's decide who our enemy is and shoot them.  How much longer are we going to try an shoot an idea?  Are we practicing for what is coming next?  You know, here at home?   Bullets don't hit the good guys!  Or do they? Just shootin the shit!

Friday, January 28, 2011

leaving San Franscisco-1875

       My personal feelings will remain amiss if I may not place them where they can not come against what I believe to be true.  I left my son as a representitive of our holdings in San Francisco. Wife, daughter and myself sailed but two small days ago, bound for Boston!  They are both below and have released the contents of their most recent meals. They will both adjust, they must.                                                                                                                                                                     My son has survived the absence of his father for years while I found my way back to Ohio. Then we, reunited into the mountains of rediscovery. Our claim was a hard row!  Him young! GOLD.  But refound amonst animals. Mean men.  He, a child, held with all manner of man.
       I,  have left him, stiill, a young man, amongst theives and arbitors of deception.  And yet I not only have trust with my son but have witnessed  his behavior in solving difficult and isolated problems on many levels of the smallest to the highest society;  to what many men of spoiled character but have wealth might consider weak!
      This is not what is bothersome.  He can see what is in the hearts of man.  What is dangerous is because he can: they cannot!  Sometimes the masses of ignorance are driven by liars that have desire for a kind of illigetimate wealth.  Youth fights back to readily. My son has fire.  I swear I also, I have the same.  This does not come lightly.  My son also holds the power and authority of our co-ownership of  the shipping company I am a full partner of from Boston!
       Had I have not come under the wing of Fearsy when I was shanghaid, I would have not survived!    My wife and two children in Ohio and me alive but on, " The Reefer", bound for China with people's laundry?
       I trust my son can handle our business in San Franscisco.  Our home on Knob Hill will remain intack.
He stopped being a child while observing a very simple concept. What does a man want?  He figured it out for himself.  With that understanding a man walks without fear.  In that walk is an honest relationship that demands respect without having to prove or explain it. 
      My son discovered who he is and I know him!  He is a grown man. As yet he hasn't his own family but I believe he will make wrong choices.  It will be a woman of very strong character and internal beauty that will capture his heart.  It will not be for money when she is founded but for love. 
       This is his business.  As mine was mine.  So be it. Times are changing.  I will change with them.  I have a secret goal.  It's not what everyman might desire!  I would like to to see the year 1901.
        Do you think this is much to ask?

Sunday, January 23, 2011

A New Lava Lava

     I think (my first mistake-thinking)  if I don't get my feet back in salty water, I'm dead. (maki ) I've
been on dry land far to long!  My spiritual self is not being shared and can not survive out of life sustaining
water (salty) but another three months.  I don't mind death!  What I do mind is being alive with death.  When I am sailing I am moving and responding to a living Ocean.  When I am surfing I am one with a vibration or a ripple that is in motion.  When I'm sitting on my butt I'm bored.  I can only paddle my canoe so far!
     A fart is only one's body speaking in tongues!  Even silent it speaks in a language understood by whoever is in the room that has a nose!  When it makes sound an ear hears a b flat or is it sharp?  Actually what it is saying is, "It escapes me"!  People need interpreters to understand tongues!  I like the hawaiian word," Kukai"!  Otherwise shi-shi on it!  There has to be a boat going somewhere. PLEASE!!! Take me with you....I can sail butt I can't sit.........................

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Time has come yesterday

      Time is everything to a sailor!  Without a chronometer there is no Longitude.  Longitude
exists  without being measured by time and mathematics. It is a measurement! But it is really there and has existed before it was measured.  One might say, " It existed to be measured"!
A sailor without a sextant relies on:
mechanical societal devices to know where he is in relationship to solid objects that he might run into.
Without radar a vessel might run into another moving in the same condition he is in.  Trust and blind faith, that today is not his day to die.  Fog, rain, hurricane, all the same!  Without knowing where you are, how can you  know where to go?  Does a sailor go blindly into the great otherness?  Yes, he does. He does because in the words of Richard Henry Dana, he is " Before The Mast".  Meaning: Following the orders of those above him,!  Remember Tennyson?  "  Charge Of The Light Brigade"? Even the greatest sailor, Captain John Cook, was under orders from his queen to go where no man has gone before.  Three times.
      One of the things I have learned in my travels is that when power fails, do I?  So far, not. Tomorrow is another day! Any boat 1,000 miles from land will not a 7-11, Cragon's Auto Parts, chandeliers, shipwright, engineer, any parts find!  Jury-rigger comes to mind but it is even more than that!  Your very survival depends on problem solving and usually requires thinking way-y-y-y- outside the confines of " normal" thinking.  To me it is fun, and goes with the turf! (pun intended)....To other's, that would be you, think what you will.

Sailing is like God.  It sounds good but in practice sometimes it is better to allow imagination and fantasy's to remain intact.  Sailing blue water is a complete approach to something one can't control but must be shaped by the force of outside circumstances. 
     Malaria has nothing to do with weather.  It is a part of sailing as is disease, accidents, intents, foreign languages, including cannibalism and very strange clothing and cultural belief systems that support all of the above aforementioned.  To talk about them is one thing.  To experience them would make you a world traveller and a fine human-- but not a God.  Captain Cook was received well in many unexplored places as he was on the Big Island.  I believe he didn't know or understand, " Cargo Cultism"?  When he returned to the south shore of Hawaii, " The Big Island", with a broken cloud, his ship had suffered storm damage similar to when he ran aground on the Great Barrier outside Cook town in Australia!  He didn't know Hawaiians thought he was Lono returned; when he sailed in his first landfall!  When he came back with his broken chariot (cloud-sailboat) they tore him apart and kept the pieces, just in case he really was god.  Needless to say the crew on the returning distressed vessel were not prepared for that response.  The survivors went back to the ship, grabbed their archaic guns, shot a few Hawaiians and got most of Captain James Cook's body parts back aboard to return to England to bury, respectively, for a queen that requested a third journey he did not want to make and did not complete in the body!
      Sailing isn't for everyone but religion is.  Religion is wishing that what appears to be real exists  is without challenging the reality of an imaginative illusion.  You can think and imagine that sailing is wonderful and admire sailors for the doing of it.  Even envy!  After doing it you will have your opinion modified.  Sailing isn't for everyone.  Either is living in Hawaii!  Religion is for everyone.  Spirituality isn't.
Truth constantly makes mistakes because it is searching for itself!  The search is the truth!  No lie.........,,,,,Arrrggghhh, mateys, " The Game Is Afoot"




      Does a sailor sail blindly into unknown universes?  Yes, daily!  One person sails and hates every minute of the experience because they came aboard with a destination in mind.  When one sails, sailing is the destination!  Anything tomorrow brings is tomarrowful!  A sailor smells the present.  The clouds, Ocean, lake or stream, the wind, the particular flavor of what the wind brings with it, the sun or lack of, the heat, the cold, sounds of the wind in her sails, fellowship and sharing of the good and the painful.  Suffering and celebration.  A cup of coffee offered by a Friend who woke up to provide it at the " Dog Watch" under gale force conditions! These things dreams are made of.
      Latitude has never been a problem.  People give each other latitude, even in their beliefs, which they hold so dearly .  And yet, when latitude was all there was,  people still sailed when the Earth was flat.  But only so far.  What a beautiful Ocean on a flat Earth.  God providing an endless supply of water so that it could continually fall off the flat Earth unto What?  Space the final frontier?  No! Into God's cup so He could continually pour more Ocean on us.
     
   

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Triple lose-third stanza

Hiding behind lies and distortion,
Secret truths, blown out of proportion.
By a friend.
Some friend was he!
Who stold from his friend so secretly!

The things that friend loved
Above all else,

That special friend
Stold for himself............

Monday, January 3, 2011

Damn it! Hanakoa

      People do  things for reasons.  I could lie or tell a false tale for a purpose.  So why would I do this now?
The answer is simple. 
      When you figure it out let me know!  I'm so dumb, I don't know what I am talking about.  I decided something that I felt needed to be discoursed that was very important became nought!
       And then less!  I cn't remember the a I left out of something I have forgotten.  A period!  Your's
or mine?  See-if you can?  A great white----polar bear?
        I don't get it but, then I'm putting ink to paper!  Oh! Shit!  That hasn't happened for awhile...That would be  like reading a book that I forgot about and never read!  Familiar?    What reflection?  When you look
in the mirror, who do you see?  Surely not yourself?  Or do you see yourself backwards?  I didn't yesterday!
I always nevered until I couldn't!  Then I knew nothing forevered came yesterday tomarrow.  How much
fun wasn't that?  You already asked me.......I'm positively negative about tomarrow's yesterday!  Would that be today?  In o sense? 

paradice, two cubes or paradox?

       Where does one go when He starts at the top?  Kauai no ka oi!  Downhill?
Rene Daumal, a frog, died at a young age. 3/16/08-5/21/44..... However he wrote an unfinished book called,
" Mount Analog"!   The premise from his unfinished book is when a man has climbed a mountain,
he knows what is on top of the mountain!   He also knows what is in the valley.  Until he had climbed the
mountain he only knew what was in the valley!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Whangarei, New Zealand

       A right turn and up this river we went.  After low tide mud swill prop turning as we went uphill
we arrived with, " Windigo " intact.  A Roberts 45, still alive on our way to Auckland.  The " Bay of Islands was a thing of the past as was, Dove and Nelson Island, where " The Duke" provided libation for a sailing event the his " Duchess" , in a race yelled, " give way" , I jibed unto a lee shore so that he might win. another race.  I didn't make the point on the jibe but we survived.  I had right of way and was totally committed to the ram.  We are a heavy, well built boat with a solid crew!  I gave way because I am a sailor and can!
      I got my hair cut in Whangarei
.  I think it was my last haircut.  I have long hair that doesn't grow any more or any less.  My beard I trim but not recently.  Now is hiding bad teeth and a great smile.  So long ago
was New Zealand but Captain Cook would say also, " Long Ago ".
      How many people can pronounce Whangarei?  ( fong-ger-ray?  It's like living in Hawaii! ( ha-vy-ee).
It is a quiet little town connected to the ocean.  Old gun turrents in place to protect New Zealand from the Japanese invasion that Australia new was coming. Darwin knows!  The implaced gun bunker is like Point Loma in San Diego and is a landmark to introduce a sailing vessel to the entrance of the river  that ls the way to Whangarei.  I call it the gun tower approach.  Better than leads!
      We stayed five days and enjoyed a quite little inland town that really isn't and doesn't relate to sailors.
It's to far up the river to be comfortable and if one had a choice, Auckland and " The Bay of Islands ", have much more to offer.  Still, one must see it all to form an opinion!  I hold back on those because tomarrow is another day.  Change isn't spare but it is of the essence!  I don't burn bridges that I may have to cross again.
It's not a good idea to hold on to things to tightly, it stunts growth!  Ha!   AARGGugHHHH, matey!

Birth of a human into salt water ocean and character!

         In  1961 I shifted from skim boarding to riding ocean waves.  It was my dads fault.!   He taught
me how to hunt and fish.  Things are what parents did to their children in that day, stage and time!  We surf
fished.  Sand spiked and with a very heavy lead sinker with big hooks that we were able to throw into a surf beach break!  Far out!!  Caught our dinner!
          I loved doing that with my dad and yearly, " the Grunion Run", !  Our family were inland people.  Valley Animals.  I was so young, I didn't know that if we lived inland we were considered outsiders.  I was to young to know what outsiders were?  However, I wasn't such a noviscote to be unaware that if there was a group of outsiders than there must be a group of insiders!
        So, what or who determines the inside and is it possible that anyone allowed a choice would choose to be on the outside, looking in?  Hard to believe, isn't it?
        What fun I had living in Kansas?  Go figure.  Bottom line.  There is no surf in Kansas.  California doesn't have very good waves either, on the best of days.  What I learned is, if you want something, go out and get it.  If I named all the breaks that I have surfed and all the people I have met in many countries surfing said breaks with, you would have no choice but to call me a liar! 
         I thought for a minute I had dedicated my life to surfing!  I was right but I realized later that surfing also involves sailing.  That is where and when I finally met a woman I loved and love. She is my wife. She can sail and that is more important to me than surfing. I met here in Cairns . Australia. She is from New Zealand. When it started to get crowded I thought I might try something else.  Well, it evolved into a life-style.  Sailing.  I sailed so far and so many miles that I finally met my wife.  She is a fine sailor and my friend.  We have been together now for quite a few years and in several countries. 
         I wonder what is around the corner?   I think I have one more trip left in me?  Not sure.  I am weary
because I am growing tired of bullshit on every level.  It is a sad thing but it is on every level and that would be liars!   Do you understand?

Surfers, sailors and friends?

I have been so fortunate to have friends that I call." Friends ", friends.  Once or twice I made an
error in judgement and sailed on a boat that might not have been with a balanced crew!  Some survived,
as people, some may not have survived as friends.  Does it matter?  If it does? Than, some might be called,,
" acquaintances"!  Others might be called," Pirates"!  Few remain friends.
      Pirates are interesting in that they want to take something that isn't their's.  In reality, what defines a pirate is that a country or idea they fought for have been about politics and then been disalighned.  What was a patriot then? Why is he not a pirate now?  Is it because of governmental influence or political alliance.  So who is my friend today?  Whom will be my friend  tomarrow?  Am I a pirate that looks at forty?  Yes, I am a pirate.
       I am a thief of hearts. I love truth, no lies.  I love people and spelling, and talking, sharing and telling
the honesty of everything I have read, for one reason.  What is the value of my life?  Without truth in it,
I am dead.   I have travelled so far to bring joy and happiness into life itself!  How much fun have I been allowed to share in a form of honesty to the best of my abillity?  I will not stop for to do so is death. 
       Many stories I may rely upon.  At times I wish they were gone!  But now I know they can't go- until
I share them all with you, you know!
       Many tales I can embrace with one- for a moments space!  Just when you thought you had seen it alll?
Another tale slides in so small, about a short person with no reach,
        a surfer guy on another beach that looked all the same!  
        How much fun did I have with him, who never got to surf again?
 He died you see friendlesslee, no friend he saw in his night! As he ran so far from sight!
He! Desperately looking for a light, shining so bright, guarding him from his plight, of the rocks
waiting for him to ground and die on that distant shore!  The lonelyness in his heart finely to apply! What had waiting all along There  had been?
Him still waiting for a friend! 
         Sad this tale may truly be, but kind sir another round for you and me?  A pirates tale.with a glass of grog.  helps to clear San Francisco's fog.
       
     

The ship that looked to Davy

Date: Friday, December 31, 2010, 8:23 PM


Part artwork, part boat... literally!







This guy has WAY to much time on his hands!







I bet the Coastguard loves this guy.





The Love Love was built to look as if it is sinking

French artist Julien Berthier has designed a fully functional boat to look as if it is sinking. The 6.5m (21ft) yacht was cut in half with a new keel and motor added so it remains in the sinking position while being fully functional. He describes it as "the permanent and mobile image of a wrecked ship that has become a functional and safe leisure object."

















Berthier has taken the boat (or should I say half-a-boat) across the English Channel to London and has toured it around Europe , getting plenty of offers of assistance from unwitting good Samaritans, who would presumably be either very annoyed or rather bemused by the contraption.

The designer and artist designed and built the floating installation in 2007. He named his creation Love Love .



























Originality and the finances to support it are out there! I would love to sail this boat even if it was in a swimming pool I don't possess! Ha! Happy New Year, Y'all. See you next year! Aloha RB




























Well, this reminds me of animals that use their dying death throes as a defense against an undefeatable predator! Try this in Somalia. Set up: all pirates Quack. On the other hand! What a draw to maritime law-distressed vessels! SOS. Nearest vessel come to rescue. Then the pirates ( who set the trap ) rob their rescuers! I liked the dying quail that leads one away from her nest, pretending injury, when there was none. Play dead can be a victory for the bad guys or the good guys! If you can't out run them- die. You're dead anyway! You might survive a bear attack by playing dead, no matter how hard it is to do!. But a crocodile or alligator love dead meat so I don't recommend this pretense in this situation. I do know of two survivors of a "gator" attack. Here is what they recommend. Try and roll with them as they roll. As your arm or leg are broken and the pain is excruciating rolling around and around in a predators mouth, try and hold on to your air and in the rolling try and grab more air. They have a lair where they love to let their future meal age a bit. It stinks from his previous catches. As a commercial fisherman, I am used to very seasoned smells. Look around in their home for very large objects, preferably teeth locking thick branches and large but usable rocks. You will have to find these without light! Some of these sticks or branches will be bones from previous meals. Remember you may be in there for quite some time but since you can remember you are still alive, you've already beat the odds! So. why complain. You should be happy and excited that just maybe, you'll be able to deliver a last blow to a pecking order.  Honorable, as there are so many.

Hope you can access the picture and I hope you never end up in a " gator's stomach!  If you
you do that would mean you were in the wrong place at the right time and you didn't read what I wrote!
     I always figured if I left them alone they would leave me alone!   Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!
" The meek shall inheiret the Earth"!   I haven't figured that one out yet but I'm getting close.  Ha! 

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