Scottsdale, AZ, 29-MAY-2021 – There are two pictures of Caro Babbo that have special significance to me. The first is Caro Babbo at anchor on our first trip north along the inside passage. In the scheme of things we didn’t go very far, only as far as the top of Quadra Island, but to us it was an unimaginable adventure. Caro Babbo is at anchor. Her transom is nearly naked and, in my mind’s eye, not even her name is there, but it is, so this picture must be from 2014. There is no windvane, there is no EPIRB, nor outboard engine. She is uncluttered.
Category: People
Posts that focus on people. Generally, people we have met while sailing, but not always. We generally identify people with as much information as we have, but often times we leave out their surname, sometimes because we don’t know it, other times because it wasn’t something we thought to include.
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Sail
Rocky Point, New York, April 4th, 2021, Easter Sunday – Winter has passed, the snow here in New York is long gone and Maxi 95 owners in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe are putting their boats in the water.
Preparing this house for rent has taken longer than any similar project I have worked on, and is coming up on four times longer than I had planned. I hadn’t planned to be away from Jennifer this long, I hadn’t planned to spend this large percentage of my remaining life here, doing this.
Continue reading “The Long Dark Tea Time of the Sail”After six days in Dutch, we head east again.
Written on my birthday. Two days prior, two fishing boats left Dutch Harbor, and Jennifer and I climbed to higher ground, all of us waiting for a tsunami.
Dutch Harbor, AK, USA, 24-JUL-2020 – It is my birthday today. I’ve come to the conclusion there is no such thing as a day off. Here in Dutch Harbor, we have had a full social life and will take tonight for just Jennifer and me. We’ll go to Angelina’s, which has an amazing Mexican menu. We’ll eat some small plates, I think, and drink some beer.
Living on Discovery Dock with us in the Bob Moss International small boat harbor are Anja and Thomas on Robusta and Ola* and Michael on Crystal.
Continue reading “After six days in Dutch, we head east again.”Life in Homer
Labor Day Weekend 2020, Homer, AK – Homer is not what we expect. Alaskans tell us, uniformly, that Homer is the Port Townsend (where Jennifer has a house) of Alaska. We feel blind, because we don’t see it.
Continue reading “Life in Homer”Caro Babbo Sleeps, John Doesn’t
Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 – In Homer, AK, Caro Babbo, resting on stacked wooden squares called cribs, winterized, locked and watched over, sleeps. I on the other hand toss and turn. Dryland, people, culture, and COVID are difficult transitions.
Give me a few minutes to catch you up.
Continue reading “Caro Babbo Sleeps, John Doesn’t”Back in Port Towsend, so much has changed in the US
Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 — We spent a few days sleeping aboard, winterizing Caro Babbo, then drove our rental car† back to Anchorage airport and flew to Seattle’s SEATAC.
I can’t sleep well since we have been back: anxiety dreams. Recent dreams have been about missing meetings and other things from my business life. These dreams are, instead, generally about Caro Babbo being on the hard and improperly winterized.
But, I know it is also withdrawal and the social pressures I feel being around people.
Continue reading “Back in Port Towsend, so much has changed in the US”Our last anchorage; I do not look like a tadpole
Port Chatham, AK, 27-AUG-2020 — This is the last time we will anchor on this trip. Everything is mixed: Melancholia at having this long adventure end, and impatience to move on.
The day before yesterday and the day before that stick in the mind as embodying so much of an Alaska cruiser’s life. We motored and motored around a point from one anchorage to another: four hours, some of it dodging rocks and kelp. Much with no wind and some with wind that would have required beating to windward. Continue reading “Our last anchorage; I do not look like a tadpole”
William F and me
53° 18.93N 168° 27.14W 17-jul-2020 — I’ve started William F Buckley’s Atlantic High, a book I’ve known about since parts of it were printed in the New Yorker in 1981. The copy I have is the fifth printing, so the book did well.
I had, before I read the NY’er piece, determined I wanted to sail across the Atlantic. Buckley took a number of friends on this trip (he’d crossed before and written a well-regarded book, Airborne) and required his friends to keep journals of this trip that he would turn into a book.
It was different sailing then. Position was mostly by celestial navigation, though I think Loran may have existed. In celestial navigation you learn once or twice a day where you think you might be, generally based on where you thought you were yesterday, if you have clear skies. Otherwise, it may be a few days sailing by compass before you once again learn where you think you may be. Continue reading “William F and me”
Why are we still in Hawaii? We leave in the morning.
Hanalei Bay, Kuaui, HI, 25-JUN-2020 — If you’re asking why are we still in a Hawaii, it is the proper question.
We were to have left Tuesday, but will leave tomorrow instead.
I’ve wriiten that in a cruising boat, you, the skipper/owner/crew are the weak point: the boat will protect you. I am the weak link. I have been injured and then suffered from Vertigo. We waited while I healed.
Continue reading “Why are we still in Hawaii? We leave in the morning.”Rigger, Author, Friend: Brion Toss Dies
Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 8-Jun-2020 — Brion Toss died the night before last. The news arrived in an email from Scott Wilson, a mutual friend in Cambodia.
Sometimes, news like this hits you right between the eyes and the cumulative unspent emotion doesn’t want to stay unspent.
Continue reading “Rigger, Author, Friend: Brion Toss Dies”