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!
      

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)

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!

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?

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.........................

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.