Evanston: voyages for my 70s
Evanston: voyages for my 70s
Yesterday’s post caused some readers to believe I was about to announce the end of my sailing offshore. That was not my intention.
I am merely thinking aloud here, and using the process to clarify my thinking.
While the expression is apt, the transfer of thought from my mind to yours is soundless.
There are years and there are years.
in 2009 THE HAWKE OF TUONELA sailed 15,000 miles. Thus far in 2010, she has sailed less than 20, a total that will not greatly increase by year’s end.
Next year will probably be the same.
I love being on my mooring. I like rowing ashore, climbing the hills, anchoring off islands in the bay. I missed Opua during the eighteen months of my fifth circumnavigation, and I hope to enjoy simply being there for a while.
But when I start to think beyond next year, I find myself considering possible voyages.
In New Zealand a few months ago I was asked what place I would like to sail to next, and other than Cape Horn, which is a turning point not a destination, I couldn’t immediately think of any, partially because I like being in Opua as much as anywhere else.
You may recall the story of the Boston matron a century ago who when asked if she had been to Europe, responded, “Why should I travel when I’m already there.”
Since then I’ve realized that I’d like to visit Lord Howe Island again. Lord Howe, out in the Tasman, isn’t even very far away, and is as beautiful as Moorea and Bora-Bora and much less touristy. But THE HAWKE OF TUONELA may be too deep to enter the lagoon. RESURGAM, with 5” less than the THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s 6’ 8” draft, was aground on one of the required moorings during some low tides.
I have always expected that I will sail again to Cape Horn; but THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s repeated lower shroud failures on the last voyage are worrisome. They may be attributable to chance breakage and flawed wire installed by the rigger in Durban, but that is not certain.
Several possible preventatives have been suggested by professionals, including increasing the length of the spreaders and moving the chainplates farther out. So far the idea I like best, because it is the simplest, is to use Dyform wire, which is several thousand pounds stronger than THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s already oversized ⅜” shrouds, and which uses end fittings that are not swaged.
When the world’s most famous pseudo-sailor recently was dismasted, I believe she was talking to her parents by satellite phone and rescue was soon on the way.
And when the admirable and sponsored, Minoru Saito, developed rudder problems off Cape Horn, he radioed his shore team which arranged for the Chilean Navy to send a ship out to tow him.
My shore team doesn’t do that.
I would like to sail to Cape Horn, but I don’t know where to sail to beyond the Horn. Perhaps Cape Town for a third time.
On the chart of my voyages the only big blank is the North Pacific.
I wouldn’t mind sailing up to Japan, across to Alaska, and down the West Coast, although I fear that I might stick there, particularly since I have little interest in sailing back across the South Pacific again.
Seven times to French Polynesia is enough.
With the next possibility the problem is getting to the starting line.
I have considered resuming the open boat voyage.
There is a Drascombe Longboat for sale in Portugal. The Longboat is CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE stretched three feet. And I suppose I could sail it from there. Or ship a Lugger from England. If I did make another open boat voyage, I’d want to start in the Canary Islands where CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE ended.
A National Geographic television show, a magazine article, our evening cruise on the Chicago River a few weeks ago, have jointly lead to the idea of taking a small boat from here to New Orleans and the Gulf, even though I hear rumors of an oil spill down there and it would mean a lot of powering.
You will find on the introduction page of this site, “Old men should be explorers,” and on the lists page, “(I) am, I believe, following the clear path of my fate. Always to be pushing out like this, beyond what I know cannot be the limits--what else should a man’s life be? Especially an old man who has, by a clear stroke of fortune, been violently freed of the comfortable securities that make old men happy to sink into blindness, deafness, the paralysis of all desire, feeling, will. What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become, except in dreams that blow in from out there bearing the fragrance of islands we have not sighted.”
So at the moment five possibilities: Lord Howe Island; the North Pacific; Cape Horn: the Atlantic in an open boat; the Mississippi.
Label them all idle speculation.
But if time and chance and the Great Recession don’t intervene, I expect I’ll make some of them.
I deeply don’t want to be “The Man In the Bed.”
Thursday, July 8, 2010