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.
     
   

Captain Cook aground-Australia..... 6/10/1770

Cook charted the coast of Australia, until the ship ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

In 1969 an American expedition from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science was successful in locating the six guns jettisoned on the night of 10 June 1770. Captain Vince Vlassof with his 'Tropic Seas' was of vital local assistance in recovering the six cannons which were transported to Defence Standards Laboratories in Melbourne for reconditioning


Endeavour Reef



Just before 11pm on the evening of 10 June 1770 the ship struck a reef, today called Endeavour Reef, within the Great Barrier Reef. The part they struck stands up steeply from the seabed, so casting the lead had shown 20 fathoms (36 metres) of water right up to the point of striking.



With the sails immediately taken down, the coasting anchor was set out and an attempt made to pull the ship back off the reef, unsuccessfully. Because it was already around high tide the only option was to lighten the ship to float her off, so iron and stone ballast, spoiled stores, and the ships guns were thrown overboard, and the ship's water (drinking water) pumped out. The guns were not simply discarded; Sydney Parkinson records[2] buoys were attached with the intention of retrieving them later, but that proved impractical. (The guns and ballast were found in 1969, see recoveries below.) Parkinson also notes that every man on board took turns on the pumps, including Cook, Banks, and the officers.



With about 40 or 50 tons lightened, by Cook's reckoning, on the high tide the next morning a further attempt was made to pull the ship free, but again unsuccessfully. In the afternoon the longboat carried out the two large bower anchors, and block and tackles were put on a total 5 anchors now set, ready to try again on the evening high tide. The ship started to take on water through the damage from the reef, and though the leak would certainly increase once off the reef Cook decided to risk that. At about 10:20pm the ship floated with the tide and was successfully drawn off. The anchors were retrieved, except for the small bower which could not be freed. (It too was found in 1969; see below).



The leak increased with the ship off the reef, and the three working pumps were manned. A mistake happened in sounding the depth of water in the hold when a new man took over and measured from the outside plank where his predecessor had used the ceiling (the top of the cross-beams of the hull). The difference was about 18 inches so the new man's call made it seem the leak had gained on the pumps that much in just a short time, sending a wave of fear through the ship. As soon as the mistake was realized the relief acted like a charm and with redoubled efforts the pumps kept ahead of the leak.



The prospects if the ship sank were grim. The typical understatement in the journals of the seamen make it easy to underestimate the danger, only in Banks is there a taste of it. For a start the ship was miles from shore and the boats could not carry everyone (being made for work, not as lifeboats) so many would surely drown. And those who survived would be left unarmed and without food in an unknown land. Banks noted the calm efficiency of the crew in the face of danger, contrary to stories he'd heard of seamen turning to plunder and refusing command in such circumstances.



Midshipman Jonathon Munkhouse proposed fothering the ship, having been on a merchant ship which used the technique successfully. He was entrusted with supervising the task, sewing bits of oakum and wool into an old sail which was drawn under the ship, the theory being suction would draw those material to the leak and plug it. This worked better than any hoped and soon the pumps could be stopped and very little water came in.



They proceeded north looking for a harbour to make repairs and on the afternoon of 13 June came to Endeavour River, as Cook later named it. Strong winds prevented the ship getting across the bar until the afternoon of 17 June. There they careened her and made repairs to the hull. A piece of coral the size of a man's fist had sliced clean through the planks of the hull, and broken off, wedged there. It was fortunate it stuck, because (on Parkinson's reckoning at least) an open hole that size would in all probability have sunk the ship.



With repairs made and after a delay waiting for the wind they were able to set off again on the afternoon of 3 August. The careening hadn't got the ship completely out of the water, so only a limited examination of the very bottom had been possible, but it seemed sound enough. When they later reached Batavia (9 November) it turned out some planks were damaged to within 1/8 inch (3 millimetres) of being cut through. It was a "surprise to every one who saw her bottom how we had kept her above water" as Cook said (though doing more at Endeavour River may not have been practical anyway).

Personal note:  I sailed into Grafton Passage from Samurai, PNG to Cairns, Aus.  Even with modern day equipment it was difficult to find the entrance (one of the few) through the Great Barrier Reef.  Later on, different boats I sailed to Port Douglas and Cooktown.  I visited the Captain Cook Musuem in Cooktown (impressed) and was very surprised that the artifacts I was interested in were so recently freed from the reef herself!  One would think that the father of true navigation would have left (as he tried with buoys) (didn't work) a longitude/latitude reference that would be applicable today.  The reef is alive.  I believe it hid what it took from Captain Cook until it was time.  Many people have searched for the ballast James was compelled to remove from " Endeavor ", to survive!  When it was located and brought to the surface, Cooktown itself and a few remaining buildings from a great period, needed help in order to maintain it's status as a city. Possibly the town  (named after the greatest sailor and the river named after a his vessel) without the timing of the find of  Endeavor's treasure searched for by many but only found in 1969 would be a ghost town today!  It's not!  At one time Cooktown had a population of 30.000 people.  After the gold rush/ and over a period of time it was reduced to 1500 people.  With the boost of tourism in North Queensland I believe the population of Cooktown is 2000 souls today.  What was retrieved from the Endeavor Reef in 1969 revitalised Cooktown itself, re-establishing it's importance, historically, as part of the life and travels of the greatest sailor the world has ever known.  Captain James Cook.        

Cooktown ( why is this blog about captcook?)

My wife, Robin was hired by Ben to sail his new boat to Cooktown, Australia from Cairns, Australia. Not that far and yet you are inside the largest living organism on the face of the Earth! Captain Cook lucked out when he sailed through the" Great Barrier Reef", at "Grafton Passage". Or did he? There is a yes and a no here! There are not many entrances through the reef. He couldn't know that at the time because he was the greatest explorer, mapping, and biological ling ( I made that word up ) and making an undefinable world acceptable to a King and Queen a long way away who were just so excited by an idea that the Earth really wasn't flat and that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe! Well I'm still not sure about that one! So, Captain Cook sailed north like my wife when she delivered. What Captain Cook discovered is that once you are inside the largest living organism on the face of the Earth how does one return to the sea? Well he didn't until later. First he ran aground. His log gave an idea of a location pause......remember..these guys didn't have Greenwich mean time or zed. They were pretty much latitudinal dudes. Omega, Lo ran C, Sat Nav, GPS! Yea right! Screw your sextant also! Without a chronometer you can't realize longitude!! I went to the museum in Cooktown Australia. They found all the stuff Cook had his people through off his vessel so they could limp into a foreign port!!! Cooktown today is still a void! Not a port. Anyway, I love the museum because it's real. They only found the spot on the reef within the last fifty years where, canons, etc were off loaded or death awaited all of them. Cook's log is accessible to anyone with a curious mind. I'm amazed he found Grafton! I sailed into Cairns and had one of the most bizarre experiences through Grafton passage, unique, remind me later, to speak of it! Can you imagine sailing ( remember-no engine) with no chart, inside the Great Barrier Reef? It is rough enough with charts!!!