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.

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