By John – Page 3 – Caro Babbo

You and me riding somewhere, going nowhere….

Port Chatham, AK, 2-aug-2023 – We’re two days from Homer, nine hours sailing to be exact but we’ll stop in Seldovia for a day. There’s unlimited internet there, some restaurants, and a place to stop. We found we haven’t enjoyed this trip as much as others. We’re not entirely sure why, perhaps because we’ve done this part of Alaska for three years now and this is enough.Perhaps it is something to do with my stroke. Jennifer brought me here to get me out of the house to do things that I was familiar with. It was a very nice thing to do and these are things that I am familiar with and that came back to me easily.The weather here has been mostly no wind. The last three days, it is turning into summer weather and perhaps we will now be upset that we returned.

We sailed across the Barren Islands to get from Shuyak Island to the mainland where Port Chatham is. The weather is good for the first time in a while, not blowing hard and not dead calm. It was probably 15 knots in the morning and we sailed as far as the Barren Islands before the wind stopped. Continue reading “You and me riding somewhere, going nowhere….”

We’re going!

Port Townsend, WA, 19-JUN-2023 –We met with my cardiologist yesterday… Yes, I’ve said it, my cardiologist. I now have a cardiologist for the rest of my life, and who knows what other doctors, but that’s the way it is. It’s better than the reverse.

…We met with my cardiologist yesterday who told me everything is fine as far as going on the boat, and getting away from things. I do have Afib, and I seem to be constantly in Afib.

I’m changing

Port Townsend, 12-JUN-2023 – I’m changing. I think I’m changing back to whom I was; I am different. I know I feel the same things I used to feel, but I’m different.

Since the stroke, there have been changes in me. In the early days, the days would pass by without really an end to them. They were somehow continuous. Eventually, that stopped, but even now days don’t have the strong breaks that they used to. I seem to sleep heavier.

We’re ready.

Port Townsend, WA, 26-May-2023 – We bought tickets to go to Anchorage. We’ll fly up on the 26th of June and return in early September.

Jennifer will fly up the same day as me, which didn’t really click until I spoke to an old high school friend, Roberta Guzzone. Jennifer is flying up with me on those dates, she’ll be with me for two weeks while I get the boat ready to go into the water because she wants to be around me in case something happens. It’s an odd feeling.

I did a teleconference with a nurse practitioner at Harborview Medical Center. The nurse practitioner is from the stroke facility. I am, it seems, completely recovered from the stroke. I know that’s not completely true because I have a slight lisp when I say certain words that have an S in them. It’s not anything anyone else notices but I can.

Allegro, non-troppo

Written before the excitement, which does nothing to change the larger directions we are all chasing.

Port Townsend, 3-MAY-2023 – It’s been a heck of a year since we returned from Caro Babbo last fall.

I’m back from almost 3 weeks of bouncing around Europe seeing old true and good friends. Just before I left I started to feel the pressure of tasks to be accomplished before Caro Babbo can go in the water. I set all of that aside, other than to book my flight, then jetted around Western Europe seeing friends. It wasn’t a return to an old life, we’ve all more or less left that life. Franz, with another 10 years before he wants to call it quits, has decided he’s had enough of the newspaper industry and being a CEO. He starting a new venture with a new love and exploiting an untapped Italian market for which there are government monies looking for a place to go.

Ann is still in Paris having left Dublin 40 years ago. She’s called it quits and lives the Parisian life of leisure and magazines. Elena flew down from Moscow, she’s a travel writer, we traveled for a week around Milan and Lake Garda: travel if you can with a travel writer. I don’t need to say more.

One, Two, Three Strokes, you’re out at the ol’ ball game.

Port Townsend, WA, 8-May-2023 – Today feels like it is the end of the day that happened. But it’s not. That day was six days ago.

I remember sleeping much closer to Jennifer than I normally did, she was comfortable and quite warm. She had her hand on me, across my shoulders, then it felt a little uncomfortable. I also felt I needed to go to the bathroom.

Jennifer’d been gone for days, and I had been gone for weeks prior to that, so we hadn’t seen each other much in the last two months. It was nice to have her near, and very comforting that she should put her arm around me when she was sleeping. I scooted over leftward to the edge of the bed. She must’ve been closer than I thought because I could still feel her hand on me.

Fame: ‘‘Dennis and Me saw this boat on the back page of Wooden Boat Magazine…’’

After a few minutes of repeated mentions of Dennis, I asked, ‘‘Who is Dennis?’’

‘‘Dennis Conner, everyone loves Dennis.’’

I responded, ‘‘I lived in San Diego when he lost it.’’

He parried, ‘‘Won four, lost two.’’

Port Townsend, WA 14-MAR-2023 – What was unsaid, of course, was that Dennis Conner was the first American to lose the America’s Cup. It was said that the head of the first skipper to lose the Americ’s Cup Trophy would take its place at the New York Yacht Club.

Waiting for (car) parts in Todos Santos Mexico.

Todos Santos, BCS, Mexico, 5-Feb-2023 – The long and the short of it is that Celica is parked in a dirt parking lot across from a group of restaurants outside of the town proper in Todo Santos Mexico.

Jennifer and I are on a trip from Port Townsend to Todos Santos to visit our friends Dennis and Lisa, stopping along the way to see friends, both boating and non-boating.

And my mind is preoccupied with repairing the Celica. A busted car on the side of the road where I don’t have the means to repair it bothers me. It eats at me. Lately, I let other people work on our cars with mixed results. Even the best return the car with things not quite right to be discovered by us a thousand miles away. No, this breakdown is unrelated to any work we had done, but the brake pads we had installed before we left are not seating correctly. It has little impact, but it is that worm in the back of one’s head.

The drive down was a contrast of the beauty of the country we drove through, the people we met, both new to us and old friends, and the disparities of the developing world where so little works and so much is abandoned – in the rural areas. Vibrant cities, supposedly cartel-controlled cities, like La Paz blot that all out. Anglo communities like Todos Santos, where real estate prices exceed Seattle, blot that all out. But it is there. We’re in a developing nation here in Mexico.

Safety of Life at Sea – SOLAS – Death of a friend

Port Townsend, WA, 23-DEC-2022 – A phrase from years ago, which was repeated to me with annoying frequency, was that sailing was safer than driving a car. I’d never really given it any thought.

Back home, in Mount Sinai Harbor, every year or two a drunk would fall into the water at the Mount Sinai Yacht Club and drown. But as Jennifer and my sailing years progressed, we came into direct and indirect contact with people who died on the water.

Babbo

Today is the three-year anniversary of my Dad’s passing. I initially wrote this in the days following his death intending to publish on the anniversary of his passing. Life, as it does, got in the way. I wrote and edited portions in April 2021 at the Rocky Point house, the house I grew up in, preparing it for rent, reviewing the artifacts of a long life, and in quiet moments… just sitting and thinking. Time does not rest and months and now years have passed. I have left the dateline to match the day I started writing this.

Rocky Point, NY, 31-DEC-2019 – The first time I realized my father wasn’t perfect the world tipped on its axis. I can’t remember when it was, exactly, but I was an adult. A young adult, but an adult. I remember what I understood at that point in my life, my world view and my sexual experience, all of which frame a time.

My father died this past Sunday morning at Stony Brook Medical, as they are calling the university hospital these days. His heart stopped. It was related to blood thinners, with the nursing staff saying he must have clotted from too little thinner, and the on-duty MD saying it was internal bleeding from too much. Does it matter? He’s dead.