By John – Page 7 – Caro Babbo

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.

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.

Greg James, The Accidental Village and the Binary Roller Coaster

Ko Olina Marina, Kapelei, HI, 24-MAY-2020 — The binary roller coaster we ride, we’re sailing to Alaska, we’re not sailing to Alaska, was turned on its ear and into trivia when we learned our friend Greg James drowned a mile from shore.

Jennifer learned about Greg’s death through a post by Kevin McBee (who you can see in the attached video) on a sailing group.

I called the local police, who were closed, and eventually the coast guard to try to get ahold of Greg’s family before they learned about his death on the internet.

Our friend, Greg James, dies in boating accident one mile from harbor

Mooloolaba, Australia, 18-May-2020 — Jennifer and I had texted Greg the previous few days discussing what he expected to happen when he arrived unannounced in his 34-foot sail boat in Australia.

We watched his progress as his inreach satellite phone posted on the web. We teased him when it appeared his boat was in the surf off Mooloolaba, the site of a large marina. We figured Greg had carried his sat phone with him ashore in his pocket. When the posting stopped, we were certain he’d turned it off. Had the aussie border people taken exception to his arrival, we laughed.

But, Greg was dead by then.

Sit or Sail?

Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 5-MAY-2020 – The Clash song, should I stay or should I go, always echoes in my head at times like this. We’re vacillating between leaving the boat here and sailing to Alaska. Dutch Harbor by the edge of the Aleutians to be exact. It’s potentially a bunch of weeks at sea in a weather window.*

The major question is, would we be welcome and could we sail from place to place? The answers are all over the place, changing from day to day. The kicker is how might answers change while we’re at sea for three or four weeks?

It’s dropping to 70-degrees tonight, could you grab a sweater for me?

Livin’ la vida barco

Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 30-APR-2020 – Well, it’s happened. We’ve acclimated. About the time that I decided we were here and it’s time to connect up Alexa, 70 degrees became sweater weather.

When I was 11 years old, we moved from Toronto to Long Island. I remember the weather from that winter vividly. There was knee-high snow, and the weather for us kids from Toronto was mild. We wore windbreakers with a sweater underneath the entire winter.

The next winter was more typical and milder still. But, by then we had acclimated into winter coats and corduroy trousers.

Pumps

Ko Olina Marina, HI, 4-APR-2020 – In the 1980s, the circle I lived in, mostly PhD psychologists of one stripe or another, mixed with some computer scientists, a bunch of neural network people, a physicist or two and who knows who else, looked at the current computer architecture as a model of how the brain works. A homologue for the CPU was easy, RAM was short term memory, disk storage was long term memory, we were certain we all knew how this fit together.

We were sure we were that first to find our current technology explained the least understood mysteries of the human body. A historian in the group pointed out that when pumps were the technology rage, technocrats of the day explained how the human body, including the brain, was just like a series of pumps.

Staying put for the duration

Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 31-MAR-2019 — The marina is where all the tourists come for whale watching trips and swimming with dolphins, for deep sea fishing charters and to spot turtles swimming among the docks. All of that is closed. The marina has settled down to a quiet neighborhood.

Boat Jockeying, Staying Put, Protecting our slip.

Ko Olina Marina, Ko Olina, HI 20-MAR-20 — Yesteday morning Jimmy Cornell’s website, Noonsite, said French Pokynesia was completely open. In the afternoon, it said FP was completely closed.