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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!

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.
     
   

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