Opua: time; push-ups; mooring; Icarus; Monet
Opua: time; push-ups; mooring; Icarus; Monet
I made it ashore this morning on my second try. After one shower passed, the sky partially cleared and I thought I could make it before the next; but I was wrong. The next began just as I flipped the dingy over to empty it of water and a two foot long piece of sea weed. Retreating to the cabin, I waited that one out and then rowed in; showered myself, bought a few things at the general store; waited out another shower on the deck of the Opua Cruising Club, and rowed home.
We haven’t had very much total rain, and low clouds are mixed with sunshine and less frequent showers this afternoon. However, the wind has risen to twenty knots. The Wednesday evening race may be interesting.
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Although those who have what are inexplicably called ‘real jobs’ will be surprised to hear it, I have been working too hard. I haven’t had a ‘real job’ since 1974. I’ve had a life, and generally do whatever I do seven days a week: write, work on the boat, whatever. I don’t like holidays because I think you should celebrate when the spirit moves you, not to a schedule, and I think you should live so you don’t need a holiday from your life.
Ever since I returned to the boat I have been doing one thing, then the next, then the next, within the limitations of my hands--which limitations no longer exist because I am pretty much healed--and it has only been the enforced leisure of these past two days that have given me the time and space and silence to think and collect myself and feel that again I have illusory control of my life. I even did my exercises yesterday for the first time this month.
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Push-ups are a part of my exercise routine. Last week I saw an article online praising them as an excellent measure of fitness, including a chart from the WASHINGTON POST showing various levels for each decade from 20-29 through 60+. I do not know who compiled the chart or its validity. What I do recall is that the number of push-ups to reach the highest level at ages 20-29 was 58, which steadily declined through the decades until at 60+ it was 28.
I see no reason why this should be so. While you certainly lose quickness as you age, I don’t see why you should lose strength if you keep active. Over the years I have modified my exercise program only to accommodate my back. I do crunches instead of sit-ups, no longer do push-ups with my feet elevated on a chair, and no longer touch my toes. I still do the same number of push-ups I did in my 20s: 150 in sets of 70-40-40. There is greater satisfaction in doing your age in push-ups at 60 than at 20; but barring illness or injury I don’t see why the standard should be changed.
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By law my mooring has to be inspected every three years.
I bought the mooring from the marina for about $2000 US not long before an inspection was due in 2005. The charge for the inspection is only about $100 US, but needed repairs added a couple of hundred to it last time. However this inspection, by new owners of the mooring service who I know and in whom I have confidence, revealed that everything had to be replaced at a cost of $1000 US. Even adding $100 a year of an annual fee/tax, it is still an inexpensive home for THE HAWKE OF TUONELA with a multi-million dollar view.
My mooring is in water averaging about 25’/7.5 meters deep. The local tidal range is generally 6’-7’/2 meters.
When I bought the mooring I was told that it is attached to a 2 ton block of concrete; however the inspector states that it is in fact a 3 ton block.
Attached to that block is now a 16.5’/5 meter length of 1 1/2”/38 mm chain. (I saw a piece of this chain in the workshop. It looks as though it could hold an ocean liner.)
Then 10’/3 meters of ¾”/20 mm chain.
Then 10’/3 meters of .6”/16 mm chain.
Then 33’/10 meters of 1”/24 mm rope.
That makes approximately 70’/21.3 meters of chain and rope for 22’ to 28’feet of water.
I didn’t previously know what was down there.
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If anyone actually clicked the link in the last post to W.H. Auden’s poem, he or she found the reproduction of Bruegel’s painting too small to be of any use. Here is a link to a larger version. Icarus has already fallen into the sea. Only his legs are visible in the lower right hand corner of the painting.
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Last evening I noticed a young couple sailing a dinghy and towing another. The photograph looks to me like something by one of the Impressionists, perhaps Monet.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008