Zephyr Tabled in 2008

As anyone who has read this blog regularly may have guessed...I am going to table it for the moment as I turn my focus to other writing projects in the New Year. I've had a great run over the past 30 or so months writing about sailing culture and - save for the very end - maintained a firm posting discipline that generated interest and attracted sailing readers from all corners of the globe. It's been my pleasure to be part of your world in this way. Good luck and best wishes for 2008!

WBM

“Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.” - Henry David Thoreau

Sea-Fever

Sea-Fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

By John Masefield (1878-1967).
(English Poet Laureate, 1930-1967.)

A Digression

They say that you are all alone in this world, truly. That before you die images of your life blink past your eyes until there is nothing. Or there is God. Or there is whatever you believe in.

They say that there is someone for everyone. Never go to bed angry. You reap what you sow. We only have one life to live. Rainy days are good for love. There is safety in numbers.

No word on how to learn to smile again. Or how to throw out her toothbrush. What cliché instructs on how not to wake trembling in a cold sweat at 3:00 AM with the sheets in a pile on the floor? Or how to stop at one drink? Nothing about chasing the dog’s ball under the bed and there is her slipper, nested with dust alongside a wadded up ball of tissue paper. He lay for a long time staring and breathing in dust and coughing until his eyes ran. Left the ball and took the slipper. The dog seemed to understand.

They did say that life is for the living. But Keane wondered if that was always so.

Their garden overlooked the Pacific Ocean, a tangled mass of vines and blooms choking and spilling over the cliff, the steady sound of waves breaking on the rocks below. In the center was three hundred square feet of well-trimmed lawn with two weathered Adirondack chairs facing the water. He favored the Alexander Girault ramblers, dark pink ruffled blossoms and a white center. Blush Noisette’s grew unchecked along the border and over the fences, their dusky scent mixing companionably with the ocean air. Shrub-like Rambling Rector’s with semi-double blooms, the apricot and copper blossoms of the Leontine Grevais, the climbing Lemarques wafted tea-lemon when warmed, large, pale clusters of yellow Emily Gray’s, robust La Perle’s, sun-faded Gardenia roses. A few bushes had come with the house but Aimee planted most when they’d first moved in and he kept them up now, not orderly but well tended. She’d carefully taught him their names and peculiarities and how they liked to be cared for.

When the fog came in they often sat for hours in the Adirondack chairs. They liked it when the vast ocean panorama was reduced to the small, windswept rose garden, blossoms flashing and disappearing as mist spun through the bushes like cotton candy. The rhythmic moan of a foghorn.

He was standing along the slatted wooden fence that separated the garden from the cliff and trimming the Alexander Girault when the sprinklers came on with a whir and began the steady whap tack whap tack, spurting water across the garden. He stood as a jet stitched across his chest. It was windy and bright and as the stream swept off the garden to the ocean, the breeze blew back a mist that sparkled in the sun. Moving to avoid the next jet, he tripped over the dog. As he fell he threw his hands up and the right one met the grass first. The weight of his body followed and his left arm hit the rake solidly, driving two of the five spikes deep into his forearm. He yelped and grabbing the handle with his free right hand, wrenched his arm from the rake and swung to his feet almost in one, continuous motion. Without thinking he aimed a kick at the dog’s head and missed, caught him square in the hip. The dog sang out, one hard bark and scrambled away and he lost his footing again and fell, blood from his arm laying a perfect crimson trail across a bed of white Penelope roses.

The sprinkler sent a stream tapping across his face and despite the pain it was good, refreshing and down low on the grass the wind wasn’t blowing but he still felt the heat of the sun. The earth smelled of moisture and rich soil and something flat that must have been the fertilizer. For a moment he felt nothing then his arm began to throb. Stripping off his t-shirt, he wrapped it around the wounds and sat up. He was dizzy from the way it had happened so fast. The ache from his arm shot up through his chest and made him feel a little queasy in his stomach. He used his good arm to pull himself up on his feet and kicking the rake aside, began to walk towards the house to wash and dress the wounds. The sprinkler marched steadily across his bare back and just as he elbowed open the gate he heard far off barking trailing to a whimper.

The dog had gone through the gate that faced the ocean. The gate opened to a narrow strip of land that formed the cliff and gave way to a steep slope that ended in rocks and ocean below. There was no sign of the dog. He heard him barking again and then the roar of a wave sweeping in against the rocks.

“Ah hell,” he said, and walked back across the lawn through the sprinkler and peered over the cliff. The dog had gone over, sure enough. Keane could see him down on the ledge, maybe 60 feet below, body pressed against the rock slope in anticipation of another wave. He appeared unharmed though his situation was precarious.

Carleton Mitchell Dies at 96

Carleton Mitchell died last Monday at the ripe old age of 96 - below is the NYT obit in its entirety. Those of you who are offshore sailors and have not read Mitchell order a copy of "Passage East" and give it a read...

In “Passage East,” Mr. Mitchell wrote about the mind-set of ocean racers:

“Here we are, nine men, driving a fragile complex of wood, metal and cloth through driving rain and building sea, a thousand miles from the nearest harbor; no one to see or admire or applaud; no one to help if our temerity ends in disaster. We are driven by our own compulsions, each personal and secret, so nebulous we probably could not express them to our mates if we tried. But in our own way, we are about as dedicated as it is possible for men to be.”

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Carleton Mitchell, 96, Sailor Who Wrote About Yachting, Is Dead

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Carleton Mitchell, who won the prestigious Newport Bermuda Race a record three consecutive times, and chronicled the joys and challenges of sailing in his books, magazine articles and photographs, died Monday at his home in Key Biscayne, Fla. He was 96.

His death was announced by John Rousmaniere, a family friend and a writer on sailing.

In the early Depression years, Mr. Mitchell was working at Macy’s in Manhattan, a dropout from Miami University of Ohio who was collecting rejection slips for Western novels. He had sailed as a youngster on Lake Pontchartrain, and he vowed to pursue his dream to be a sailor.

With a $500 stake from his mother, he got a job as a stevedore in Miami. He later worked as a photographer in the Bahamas, taught combat photography in the Navy during World War II, then turned to sailing and writing.

Mr. Mitchell sailed through the Caribbean in 1946, and, at a time when it was only lightly visited, wrote of his experiences in “Islands to Windward” (1948). After competing in a trans-Atlantic race, he wrote on ocean racing in “Passage East” (1953). C. B. Palmer wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Mr. Mitchell’s photographs in that book were “among the most moving ever made of that beautiful object, a vessel under sail.”

Mr. Mitchell reveled in the approach to life that sailing provided.

“No 20th-century man can really escape, but a boat gives a man the opportunity to get away from the turmoil and into direct contact with nature,” he told Gay Talese of The New York Times in 1958, after he won the Miami-to-Nassau yacht race. “Somehow the detached life on the sea gives me the ability to think. It’s a life of action, yet contemplation.”

Mr. Mitchell was best known as a competitor for his victories in 1956, ’58 and ’60 in the 635-mile race from Newport to Bermuda, winning in his 38-foot yawl Finisterre.

“His innovation, with the assistance of yacht designers, was to be able to make a wide boat competitive in racing as well as roomy for cruising; that was the real insight,” said Mr. Rousmaniere, the author of “A Berth to Bermuda” (2006), a history of the Newport Bermuda Race.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, one of the most popular and successful boat models was known as the Finisterre-type yawl, Mr. Rousmaniere said. Mr. Mitchell’s 1960 victory in the Newport Bermuda Race was his last major competition.

He is survived by his second wife, Ruth. His first wife, Elizabeth, predeceased him.

In “Passage East,” Mr. Mitchell wrote about the mind-set of ocean racers:

“Here we are, nine men, driving a fragile complex of wood, metal and cloth through driving rain and building sea, a thousand miles from the nearest harbor; no one to see or admire or applaud; no one to help if our temerity ends in disaster. We are driven by our own compulsions, each personal and secret, so nebulous we probably could not express them to our mates if we tried. But in our own way, we are about as dedicated as it is possible for men to be.”

The Star of India

I spent about an hour the other day wandering above and below decks on the Star of India - the world's oldest active ship docked in downtown San Diego at the San Diego Maritime Museum. It was a near religious experience...the weight of her history whispered to me from every corner and I came away deeply gratified that the Museum and its generous benefactors had seen fit to restore and maintain such a seafaring legend.

A bit of her background below...you can find much more here.

She began her life on the stocks at Ramsey Shipyard in the Isle of Man in 1863. Iron ships were experiments of sorts then, with most vessels still being built of wood. Within five months of laying her keel, the ship was launched into her element. She bore the name Euterpe - after the Greek goddess of music - and was renamed the Star of India by her owners int he early 1900's.

Euterpe was a full-rigged ship and would remain so until 1901, when the Alaska Packers Association rigged her down to a barque, her present rig. She began her sailing life with two near-disastrous voyages to India. On her first trip she suffered a collision and a mutiny. On her second trip, a cyclone caught Euterpe in the Bay of Bengal, and with her topmasts cut away, she barely made port. Shortly afterward, her first captain died on board and was buried at sea.

The Rudder Magazine for Yachtsmen

I recieved one of those Borders gift cards in my stocking this year (thank you ET) and was browsing the "sports" section in my local store on Saturday looking for a good sea tale to tide me through the winter season. Something called "The Rudder Treasury" caught my eye...a paperback with a good heft to it. I cracked the preface and thus began my education on "The Rudder Magazine for Yachtsmen" which was - unbeknownst to me - one of the most important yachting and boating magazines in publication from it's founding in the 1891 to it's demise in the 1950's. Though I've just begun sifting through some of the excerpts compiled in "The Rudder Treasury" I can tell that I'm in for a real treat...what a discovery!

The forward is written by contemporary boating writer/editor, Peter Spectre who asks (rhetorically) what was so special about The Rudder and then cites founding editor Thomas Fleming Day as the reason. Day “knew what he was talking about. He was an enthusiast with a deep knowledge of the subject and a well-founded point of view. He treated his readers as intelligent human beings. He didn't pander to advertisers. He recognized yacht design as an evolution, with a connected past, present and future...he was a literate, literary man of strong opinion.”

Bound for Guadeloupe

Until now I've been able to follow my parents path - they're cruising their sloop in the Caribbean Islands this winter - with some degree of understanding. They made landfall in St. Maarten. I'm a veteran of no less than three St. Maarten Heineken Regattas. They proceeded to St. Barths for a brief visit. I've made numerous "on charter" visits to the sparkling port town of Gustavia. From there they took a sail by St. Kitts. I've never been ashore but have anchored off. And they spent the holidays in Antigua, an island I've been visiting since I was a boy. But now they're going off the map - at least my somewhat limited map - bound for Guadeloupe, an island deep in the heart of the French Caribbean. In reading through the wikipedia article I came across an interesting fact about Guadeloupe...it's culture is probably best known for the islanders' literary achievements, particularly the poetry of Saint-John Perse, the pseudonym used by Alexis Léger. Perse won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time."

"The Sea . . . on its confines, under its falconry of white clouds, like a tax-free domain and like entailed land, like a province of rank weeds that was wagered on the dice." - Seamarks (1954 )

Happy New Year!

There is no question that - as Edward, the writer of the excellent EVK4 blog recently discovered -I take this blogging thing seriously. Maybe at times a little too seriously, I freely admit. After all, it's just a blog...and I'm just one voice amongst many at this point focused on sailing. But there are a few reasons for my earnestness that I'd like to touch on as we welcome 2007.

The first is that I very much believe in the medium of blogging…as silly as the word might sound against a more staid outfit like "The New York Times" or "The Nightly News with Jim Lehr" or even "SAIL Magazine." By this I mean that I believe in the power of a group of passionate, dedicated writers using a self-publishing Internet tool called a "weblog" to deliver insight, entertain, create dialog and knit together a community of like-minded people who share a passion for a particular topic. I've said more than once in this space that the proliferation of sailing bloggers and the collective contribution of their perspectives have made for far richer coverage that the "dead tree" sailing publications can hope to provide alone. For proof of this I'll make a prediction for 2007 - look for mainstream sailing pubs to increasingly pop weblogs of their own as publishers recognize they risk being left behind.

The other reason is that I've put an awful lot of damn work into this thing over the last 22 months. And though I've been blessed with a steady stream of readers from all over the world, some of who comment and at times recognize me in their own weblogs...thoughtful directed feedback is rare.

All of which leads me to publicly express gratitude for being, once again, listed in the "Top Ten Sailing Blogs" of the year by the "Granddaddy" of sailing bloggers, ProperCourse. Not only has he captured some of the most exciting new (and re-nominated a few old) voices in the still nascent world of sailing weblogs...he has also paid me a tremendous compliment that is all the more encouraging in so much that it comes from a writer (and sailor) who I respect deeply.

Happy New Year to you all! I have a feeling that 2007 is going to be quite a year.

Closing out 2006 - More Voices Than Ever

The end of the year is nigh and possibly Proper Course - the literal "Granddaddy" of sailing bloggers - is readying his list of the 2006 top ten sailing blogs. I was privileged to make the 2005 list but now...almost two years (and 600 plus posts) after I began writing about sailing under the "Sailing Culture for Voyagers, Zealots, Poets and Populists" tagline, new voices are popping up nearly every week. This obviously means that competition for readers is increasingly fierce…though hopefully their numbers are growing as well. But I hardly begrudge the competition. I've no advertising to sell and recieve nothing other than the satisfaction of writing about my passion for sailing, connecting with a like-minded community & having the chance to contribute. So while I hope I make the "Top Ten" cut this year, no hard feelings if I'm crowded out. It's been extremely satisfying to watch the whitespace fill in and to realize that together we make a strong and viable alternative to more traditional sailing media. As we close out 2006 I think that this collective accomplishment is something to recognize. I can't wait to see what happens in 2007!

All the comforts of jail, plus the chance to drown...

The Orange County Register has a very good story running in today's issue detailing the passenger experience aboard a Carribean WindJammer cruise...in this case the esteemed 197-foot Yankee Clipper. For anyone considering a WindJammer trip it's good background chock full of detail about the daily routine, accomodations, passenger idiosyncrasies, etc...but the stand out in my mind was the upfront quote from 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson, who said going to sea has "all the comforts of jail, plus the chance to drown."

Let's face it - the man had a way with words.

These Days

I've been treading water in "reportorial" mode for the last week or so of posts but in advance the weekend I thought I'd turn reflective. My so-called commute is a 20 minute drive across the CT/NY border down beautiful winding country roads. The local NPR station fades as I leave town so I usually have music from the ipod playing...this morning it was Ray LaMontagne's new album, Till the Sun Turns Black. When the weather is nice, as it was this morning, the sun roof is open and I thoroughly enjoy the drive...even though it culminates in a parking lot full of cars and the inevitable tread to the windowless office for nine hours of canned air and computer screen. Poor me.

Along the country road this morning there were the first tinges of color on some of the trees and though the days are still warm and at night the crickets sing, before long we'll feel the advancing chill of winter...which means, among other things, the end of the sailing season around here.

In my past life as a boat bum we'd be gearing up for the push down to Florida, a nice point from which to make the jump to the Carribean for the winter season. We'd make every effort to time departure on the heels of a low pressure which would mean a lumpy sea under clear skies and a stiff breeze...not the worst combination.

These days I have the country road commute to look forward too, the pleasure of arriving home after a day of work to my young children and wife and, of course, the weekends. Not to mention that this time of the year is hands down the most glorious season to sail Long Island Sound, should I be so fortunate. It will soon be time for raking leaves and lighting fires in the fireplace and apple cider.

Not the worst combination.

From the Journal

April 23, 1996
two days out of St. Thomas bound for Annapolis, MD

1000

Through the salon and up the companionway, hatch framing a star filled night and as I gain the deck one falls, firing across the sky into darkness. The winds whistles through the rigging and a shadowed figure stands at the wheel reflecting the faint red glow of the instruments. I move to the high side and slide into the cockpit, stand with my chin resting on the canopy and survey the evening.

The boat rockets through the night, sensation of speed increased by the moonless black curtain drawn tightly around us. Wind is steady on the beam, sails filled. Eyes straining I can see brief flashes of whitecaps. We take a swell on the bow and the spray turns red and green from the bow lights. Salt water splashes across the deck and wets my face I lick my lips taste the ocean close my eyes and sway with the motion of the boat. A sense of timelessness - we are outside the sweep of the clock. We move through the night forever... morning will never come. I open my eyes and glance back at the wheel, the helmsman's face jumps briefly at me, lit by the glow as he draws on his cigarette. He nods and I step around, take the helm. It's warm in my hands and I can feel the boat surging underneath me, wheel tugging as the wind gusts and we drive on through the endless night. There's a flicker in the dark just outside my vision...I almost sense instead of see it then I swivel my head and it happens again. Off the port beam, far out on the black horizon heat lightning burns the sky like alcohol.