tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82316844791415062332024-03-05T15:23:42.928-08:00Sailing - 1935 to 1985This is an account of my solo sail across the Atlantic in 1957, bracketed by what led to it and followed it. I, Dick Dreselly, live in Maine with my wife Margery when we're not travelling. You can see my other 4 travel blogs listed near the top of this blog (DresellySail.blogspot.com ), with others on Cuba and Hiking to follow. Because this is my start on writing a book, COMMENTS WOULD BE APPRECIATED, good or bad. Click on "comments" at the bottom of any post, or tell me in personDick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-23073641343773297902023-03-30T22:55:00.000-07:002023-03-30T23:04:57.978-07:00Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-64926100723402298022011-03-06T11:20:00.006-08:002023-03-30T23:06:24.707-07:00Foundation<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><i style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> </b></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 29px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-47039626-7fff-a7ab-fdbc-54ace3386d50"><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="color: red;"> </span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b>September 6, 2019: I just came across the following which explains much of my adventures: It's from Victor </b></span></span></span><span style="color: #121212; font-family: "milote" , "milotesec" , "constantia" , "lucida bright" , "lucidabright" , "lucida serif" , "lucida" , "dejavu serif" , "bitstream vera serif" , "liberation serif" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 20px;">Vescovo, 51, a rich man who financed his going to the highest places on each continent and the deepest places in each of the world's major seas. “<i style="background-color: yellow;"><b>So many people in this world don’t know it, but they’re half asleep. They’re seeking to be comfortable. That’s not enough. I want to be awake. I’m not here very long, and I’m going to die one day, and I don’t want to go through it looking back and saying, ‘Gosh, I was asleep this whole time.</b></i>’"</span></p></span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><br /></b></span></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b>To see my other 4 travel blogs, click on:</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> </b></span></span><b><a href="http://dresellyfly.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">DresellyFly.blogspot.com</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></span></b></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://dresellyushuaia.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">DresellyUshuaia</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">.blogspot.com</span></a></span></b></b></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: 15.8333px; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><a href="http://dresellylabrador.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">DresellyLabrador.blogspot.com</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></b></span></span></span></b></b></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><a href="http://dresellyushuaia.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"></a></span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://dreselly.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Dreselly.blogspot.com</span></a></span></b></b></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://dreselly.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"></a></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Blogs not visible yet, under construction:</span></b></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> Cuba: 1960 under Castro</span></span></b></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> Hiking: ME to GA, AZ, AK, HI, Canada, Norway, Germany, Japan, Mexico</span></span></b></span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>To see this entire account, just keep scrolling down.</b></span></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>To see a particular chapter/segment, click on it in the list at right, but</b></span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">to see the next segment/chapter, you </span>might<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> have to click on "older post".</span></b></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;"><b>"<i>IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT</i></b>"...</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;">I was alone on my little sloop in October 1956. It was cold black above, windy black all around, undulating black sea below. At the top of each wave I could see a few tiny low lights on the distant coast of England, near the White Cliffs of Dover. France was out of sight on my left.</span></span></span></div>
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"<i><b>SUDDENLY A SHOT RANG OUT</b></i>"....<br />
It sounded like it, anyway. Apparently my boat had struck an unbuoyed uncharted wreck. The hull heeled abruptly and was swung around by the waves. On the next swell it was lifted free, but in the following trough the crash was louder and the boat heeled more. Clearly the third impact would be the final one, and the sea would pour into the grounded hull. I had no life raft, and the nearest land was several miles away, beyond the swift currents of the cold dark sea.<br />
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The QUOTES above are the immortal words of Snoopy, another would-be author. To find out if (?) and how I survived, read on.<br />
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Here I am 93, as of 2017, an Ancient Mariner, a Valuable Antique, and have made little progress in writing a book about my travels. Part of the delay is knowing that others have had more exciting experiences and have written about them more artfully, and part is sloth. So I'm starting the book with this blog.<br />
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Andy Warhol said everybody would be world-famous for at least 15 minutes. An exaggeration, but I was spotlighted briefly by Lowell Thomas after crossing the Atlantic alone in 1957. He was the newscaster who had made himself famous by making Lawrence of Arabia famous. Soloing the Atlantic was uncommon sixty and more years ago, and always resulted in media coverage, and often a book. Now many have done it, because of precedent and improved technology (GPS, self steering, more). I didn't have much of either.<br />
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Often I've been asked why I did that. For those who don't mean, "What possessed you to do such a foolish thing ?", here's from whence the infection came:<br />
* Richard Halliburton, whose vagabonding books I got one Christmas at a time when I was a kid, starting with the seductive Royal Road to Romance.<br />
<span face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: small;"></span>* My grandfather. Not the German immigrant who got run over by a streetcar in Harvard Square when I was a year old, but my mother's father, Frost Paine Bailey, who was closer to me than was my father. The Baileys barely stayed afloat financially in the Depression by a little farming, a little real estate, a little taxi service, and his part time job as the Harpswell, Maine, agent for Casco Bay Lines, and school superintendent. All my senses recall the shiny swirling grey green water, connected to the rest of the planet, in the narrowing gap between the high dock and the little steamer Aucocisco, which Grandpa met twice daily.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;">* His brother Myron, who captained ships around Cape Horn 30 times, and to the Orient, as commercial sail was being </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;">slowly supplanted </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;">by engine powered ships. He</span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;"> survived a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">divorce, a shipwreck, and the end of the Age of Commercial Sail to die on his little California </span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">almond ranch in the Depression.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 34px;"> I met him once, in 1931. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;">He had much in common with his famous contemporary, Joshua Slocum, who "</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><i>... left his childhood home on a hardscrabble farm to go to sea... had lost two clipper ships under his command to shipwreck. His second wife was no sailor and wished to stay inland. He was broke. He had been at the pinnacle of a fine career and then everything was lost. One of the reasons was that the great days of sailing were over: Slocum had been born too late. Steel ships and steam power were taking the place of wood and canvas, and his own commands were throwbacks to a previous age</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><i>....</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><i> </i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><i>Although most ordinary crew members couldn't read or write, being a sea captain required literacy, knowledge of Euclidean geometry, trigonometry, advanced algebra, as well as knowledge of various languages, customs and law</i></span>.</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif">"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" face=""verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 29px;">* My parents, who inexplicably let me ride my one-speed bicycle alone from Maine to upper New York and back at age 14. They were less influential the next year: she died in 1950 from the effects of rheumatic fever in 1920, and he continued engrossed in the car business.<br />
* Miss Heald, my teacher in our one-room Winslow grade school, who instilled a love of geography. She told us about the Euphrates flowing past Baghdad to join the Tigris and form the Shat al Arab at Basra, and seared those names on my brain. <br />
* My appetite for exciting voyages was honed by two flights from Maine to and around Mexico in my $800 Commonwealth Skyranger.</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: large; line-height: 29px;"><b><i style="background-color: yellow;"><br /></i></b></span></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande"; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="background-color: yellow;">To bypass more preliminaries and go directly to my Atlantic crossing, click "<u>Atlantic Crossing</u>" at upper right. </i></span></b><br />
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For about two decades a succession of things had pushed thoughts of the sea to the background: puberty, girls, MIT, World War II, marriage, jobs, small planes, fatherhood. Then divorce in 1952, which meant the trauma of losing my treasured daughter Carol. That year I went to Greenland as an engineer. The hours were long and the tax-free pay was high. Four years later I took ship passage from Montreal to Holland. I thought my opportunity to sail across an ocean might never come again.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">PS in 2017: I was not only free of obligations, but also relatively free of concerns about money. In other words as an American I was</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> rich in postwar Europe, which had hardly begun to recover from the devastation. From The Economist of 8/26/2017: "The average wage for a labourer in the early 1960s was $39.70". That's a lot less than a dollar an hour for a work week of 48 hours or so, and it was worse in the 1950s. </span><br />
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There was a lovely surfeit of girls on the steamship. That's a Long Story, which means you can read between the lines, I don't know who will read this, and some ideas thought to be modern have really been current for a very long time.</span></span></span><br />
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<h4 style="color: #999999; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 78%; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: bold; font: normal normal bold 78%/1.6em 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.2em; line-height: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1em; margin: 1em 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">4 COMMENTS:</span></h4>
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<dt class="comment-poster" id="c113432798481208585" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7894508000798256234&postID=8248080781037212932" name="c113432798481208585"></a><span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="cursor: move; display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/16710697712143652055" rel="nofollow" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;">chuck</a> said...</span></dt>
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You have me "reading between the lines". This kind of writing is intimate, tasteful, and fun...and a "lost art".</div>
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</dd><dd class="comment-timestamp" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 78%; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; font: normal normal normal 78%/1.4em 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.25em; margin: -0.25em 0px 2em; text-transform: uppercase;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://dresellysail.blogspot.com/2006/02/foundation.html?showComment=1134327984813#c113432798481208585" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">11:06 AM</a> <span class="item-control blog-admin pid-483385962" style="display: inline;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=19084187&postID=113432798481208585" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border: none; color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;" title="Delete Comment"><span class="delete-comment-icon" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; padding: 7px;"> </span></a></span></div>
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<dt class="comment-poster" id="c113477297307035942" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0px;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7894508000798256234&postID=8248080781037212932" name="c113477297307035942"></a><span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="cursor: move; display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05600861361595002262" rel="nofollow" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;">Babie D</a> said...</dt>
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</dd><dd class="comment-timestamp" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 78%; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; font: normal normal normal 78%/1.4em 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.25em; margin: -0.25em 0px 2em; text-transform: uppercase;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://dresellysail.blogspot.com/2006/02/foundation.html?showComment=1134772973070#c113477297307035942" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">2:42 PM</a> <span class="item-control blog-admin pid-884612805" style="display: inline;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=19084187&postID=113477297307035942" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border: none; color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;" title="Delete Comment"><span class="delete-comment-icon" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; padding: 7px;"> </span></a></span></div>
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<dt class="comment-poster" id="c113674029208089741" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0px;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7894508000798256234&postID=8248080781037212932" name="c113674029208089741"></a><span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="cursor: move; display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/04479667687318244338" rel="nofollow" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;">TJ Blackblog</a> said...</dt>
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Very inspiring writing. My wife and I are 35 and 36 years old and share dreams of entrepreneurship, travel and adventure. We enjoyed your life stories and would certainly read your noval should you complete one. Your Portland Paper Carriers, Jason and Michelle Pulsifer</div>
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</dd><dd class="comment-timestamp" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 78%; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; font: normal normal normal 78%/1.4em 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.25em; margin: -0.25em 0px 2em; text-transform: uppercase;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://dresellysail.blogspot.com/2006/02/foundation.html?showComment=1136740292080#c113674029208089741" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">9:11 AM</a> <span class="item-control blog-admin pid-2143721500" style="display: inline;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=19084187&postID=113674029208089741" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; border: none; color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;" title="Delete Comment"><span class="delete-comment-icon" style="-webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px; padding-top: 7px; padding: 7px;"> </span></a></span></div>
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<dt class="comment-poster" id="c4875090045478820169" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0px;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7894508000798256234&postID=8248080781037212932" name="c4875090045478820169"></a><span class="comment-icon blogger-comment-icon" style="line-height: 16px;"><img alt="Blogger" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" style="cursor: move; display: inline;" /></span> <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/08158490944069907039" rel="nofollow" style="color: #5588aa; text-decoration: none;">Chris</a> said...</dt>
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I think you grossly underestimate how interesting others would find your experiences to be.</div>
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Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-36707135640950984812011-03-06T11:16:00.001-08:002023-03-30T22:57:56.204-07:00Holland (The Netherlands)<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;">In early August 1956 I looked up my friend "PJ" (Paul) McDonough and his wife north of London. He and I had worked together as engineers at Sondrestr</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;">om airbase (BW-8) in Greenland, and were amateur pilots. Now he was upgrading airfields from which he had flown in the War, eventually having become an emaciated prisoner of the Germans. We rented a little Auster and flew south over the River Thames and the huge prone white figures which the ancients had made by exposing shallow chalk near the White Cliffs of Dover. Our crossing of the English Channel, to Le Touquet France, was twice the span first flown by Bleriot only 47 years earlier. Customs, Immigration, and difficulty in finding necessary maps shortened our trip. We flew over the still vivid detritus of the recent War: miles of bomb craters, gun emplacements, V2 rocket sites, to Belgium. The next day we returned to England.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 29px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 29px;">In Holland I visited Len Punt, a local who was a subcontractor I knew in Greenland. Len confided that he was trying to ditch his girlfriend. I discovered she was beautiful and intelligent, Len began to suspect he had made a mistake, and Monique and I avoided telling him that he was too late. That's a Very Long Story.<br />
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The Dutch seem proud that their language is as difficult as Finnish, although the dialect in the province of Friesland is so close to English that I easily understood children and they me. Len's local language ability and connections were essential in my finding and buying the small yacht Swalker from the Bakkers. That couple had married in a Japanese prison camp in Borneo after their spouses had perished from the extreme conditions. Recently they had found that their impaired health made it too difficult to handle the sloop they had had built 4 years earlier. Len also bought for me from a retired windjammer captain an 1890s sextant, essential for navigating oceans before the advent of GPS. I paid the equivalent of $9 for it, and the same amount to a government bureau to resilver the mirrors and calibrate the instrument. Years later I had it appraised for $700, donated it to the Maine Maritime Museum, and received an undeserved tax deduction.<br />
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The Swalker, which means Wanderer, was 30 feet long, weighed 5 tons including 2 tons of lead in the keel, and had a steel hull. Dutch builders specialize in steel yachts, perhaps because Holland has no trees to spare. Steel or aluminum hulls can survive trauma that would sink other boats, a quality that later may have saved my life. </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">From WaveTrain.net:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , "lucida" , "mgopen cosmetica" , "lucida sans unicode" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b><i> </i></b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , "lucida" , "mgopen cosmetica" , "lucida sans unicode" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b><i>It wasn't until the 1960s (except for some boats built in Holland, where steel has long </i></b></span><b><i><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , "lucida" , "mgopen cosmetica" , "lucida sans unicode" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">been a favored material) that metal was used to build sailboats of.. moderate size.</span><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , "lucida" , "mgopen cosmetica" , "lucida sans unicode" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span></i></b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">My boat had the cleverly compact essentials of a home. Starting at the bow there was a triangular storage area, then a toilet and hanging closet on opposite sides. To the rear (aft) of the charcoal stove in the main cabin were settees on each side, convertible to bunks. Aft of the settee-bunks, to port (on the left facing forward) was a tiny "kitchen" with a sink and a butane-fired stove on gimbals, in the middle were stairs over the diesel engine leading to the cockpit outside, and to starboard (right) were a chart table and pocket bunk. The mast on most sailboats extends through the deck and cabin so it can be supported by the keel, but the strong steel deck allowed the Swalker's wooden mast to end there, where it was pivoted and could be lowered for maintenance or passage under bridges. Power for propulsion and lighting was provided by an internal Coventry Victor 8 HP one-cylinder diesel engine.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 34px;">So I now had a compact home propelled by wind or motor, with the nautical equivalents of bedroom,</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 34px;">bathroom, toilet, kitchen, and space heater. I prepared food as simply as possible, which meant using either the frying pan or pressure cooker. I had neither the interest, ability or time to make gourmet meals, so I did the minimum to keep me alive and healthy. In Holland and France I cooked vegetables and meat bought in little local stores. In Spain and its islands I usually ate in restaurants, beca</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 34px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 34px;"><span style="line-height: 34px;">use a complete meal cost the equivalent of about one USA dime. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 29px;"><br />
The Swalker lacked, nor did I buy, a life raft (because the hull was unsinkable -like the Titanic, but I would see no icebergs- unless tipped over by grounding close to shore), or dinghy (because I always was able to tie to a dock or commercial boat, or borrow a dinghy when attached to a mooring), or transmitter (because I didn't want to endanger others if my actions got me into trouble).<br />
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The very little I knew about sailing had been acquired at the MIT Sailing Club on the Charles River, where I had only been allowed to crew. Part of the purchase deal was that Mr. Bakker would teach me how to sail on a 3 day cruise on the the Ijsselmeer, an inland sea half as big as Delaware, but each time I started to do something it was done imperfectly, so he would finish it. So when he left I had learned very little. Then I proceeded to teach myself, with countless errors in trials whose difficulties were to gradually increase in fortunate coincidence with the geography of my convoluted route to America. By the time I started to cross the Atlantic I had become quite competent.<br />
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The Swalker and I began our life together at its berth at the Muiden Yacht Club, on a river near its exit into the Ijsselmeer. The surrounding boats were elegant, especially the Piet Hein, the Queen's yacht. I carefully studied the situation before casting off for my first time, and too late realized I had not allowed for the river current. The sounds of clashing hardware mixed with Dutch profanity nearby as I tangled with other watercraft.<br />
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Soon freed from that, I entered the Ijsselmeer and shut off the motor before raising the sails. However, I had not allowed for the brisk cross wind, nor the unseen shallow stone dikes flanking the river's outflow. The motor's impetus was insufficient to free the boat from the consequent grounding, so I jumped in the cold water, pushed Swalker off the hidden rocks, climbed aboard, and set sail for Volendam.<br />
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The shallow Ijsselmeer stretched to the horizon. Until the 13th century it had been a lake, as it is now. Then a great flood converted Lake Flevo into an arm of the ocean, the Zuider Zee of the classic Hans Brinker tale of my childhood. From 1920 to 1932 a 19 mile dam was constructed to shut out the sea again: a gargantuan project for such a small economy. Much of the resultant Ijsselmeer was gradually being converted to polders: farmland protected from inundation by dikes and pumps. Thus a third of Holland is below sea level. It's the only country that has expanded without taking land from others.<br />
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Nearing Volendam I made the wrong interpretation of a cryptic channel flag, and came to a stop on mud. Again the racing motor could not free the hull, so again I jumped overboard, held my breath under water, and walked the anchor out further than I could throw it. By winching it in while racing the motor, and sheeting in the mainsail so the ship heeled, I resumed sailing. On arrival in the port of Volendam I was cursed anew for my poor boat handling, this time by a man dressed like Hans Brinker. Most of the residents of Volendam still wore the town costume: a loose black jacket over a colorful shirt above long baggy black trousers for men, a colorful ankle-length dress for women. Both wore klompen: cheap wooden shoes whose utility soon convinced me to wear them often. I stayed there 3 days while a pair of twin jib sails were beautifully crafted for me, for $95. They were to be used to "tow" the Swalker downwind in the Atlantic trade winds. I was just in time for Karmas, a holiday of much dancing and drinking and costumes, and a pretty French girl with an Alabama accent: a moderately Long Story.<br />
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Later Monique and I sailed from Muiden to Enkhuizen, its colorful buildings famously askew as if on melting permafrost, and Hoorn, for which Cape Horn in South America was named by Magellan. The working costumes and accents of each port were distinctive. On this trip my progress was evident, as I didn't run aground, and nobody swore at me. In Enkhuizen I learned to cope with the anthropomorphic capriciousness of the ship when going backward. There a company representative tested my diesel engine, and without charge pronounced it fit to travel.<br />
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Mr. Bakker and I went by trolley to Rotterdam, whose modern buildings rose above ruins created by German bombers 16 years earlier, dramatically contrasting with the medieval architecture of Amsterdam, which had been spared the carnage. He helped me buy things needed for the voyage ahead: wool clothing, books, charts, a ship's log. The log is a rotor which is towed sufficiently behind the boat's wake to accurately turn a mileage indicator mounted on the stern. I was told that a shark might eat the shiny spinning rotor, so I bought a spare. I found Lloyds of London would ensure the boat for the crossing, but the 15% premium was too much for me. At least it was encouraging that apparently they thought my chances of success were at least 8 to 1 (100/15 + their profit).<br />
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Most of this account is from vivid memories, but the following is from a letter I wrote. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 29px;"><i>"I sailed from Muiden back to Volendam alone in strong winds, with full sails heeling the boat and the lee gunwale awash. Needed welding could not be done on Sunday, so I worked on making shelves. Seven cute girls and boys under 10, dressed in the local costumes, hung around the boat all afternoon, laughing at my poor Dutch, eating my chocolate, and making my work go pleasantly slow. Many friendly people came to take pictures of the Swalker in the warm sunshine". </i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 29px;">Those were wonderful days....</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">These are the children who gave me more in memories than I gave them in chocolate</span></span></b>.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 19px; line-height: 40px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: "times"; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvexSeDNYHTWj-3F5ErbCYwHiS5XWd_7v4qJKhIz4soZFGtr2A05UBBQQyke2g_rcReDT3eWi6SwP5jr0HDyF0NOlF2RJDrGfh9YdtPW0nyngoQXxLIMP4ZvrdRs6njLMQJ2VU9qtvd-31/s1600/img122.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"></span></a></span><br /></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="clear: right; color: black; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvexSeDNYHTWj-3F5ErbCYwHiS5XWd_7v4qJKhIz4soZFGtr2A05UBBQQyke2g_rcReDT3eWi6SwP5jr0HDyF0NOlF2RJDrGfh9YdtPW0nyngoQXxLIMP4ZvrdRs6njLMQJ2VU9qtvd-31/s1600/img122.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Because I intended that the difficulty of my sailing education should increase gradually, I considered the next leg, leaving Holland and crossing the North Sea, was too advanced a lesson to do alone. Rex, the brother of another young woman I'd met (not a Long Story), agreed to go with me to England, during a short vacation from his job making neon signs. We traversed Rotterdam to the North Sea on a broad canal laden with freighters, through my first two locks and past two big bridges that opened just for us.</a></span></span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Rex the neon sign maker on the Swalker foredeck. A big bridge opens for us.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Then we sailed in the dark thirty miles down the coast to the fishing port and resort of Scheveningen, near the Hague.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"></span></div>
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Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-55397015863287796022011-03-06T11:07:00.010-08:002023-03-30T23:29:23.781-07:00England<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">A magnetic compass on a steel boat is a capricious thing. Mine had to be in a central position in the cockpit that would somewhat interfere with the passage of the helmsman to and from the tiller. Consequently it was mounted on a board which sat loosely in slots athwart the cockpit, so it quickly could be put aside. Ten days later this turned out to be a hazardous arrangement. Meanwhile, before leaving Holland to cross the often foggy North Sea, I did a rough calibration of this vital instrument, by aligning it with a dock of known orientation. However, as we left the coast on a compass heading for Harwich, England, the angle between our course and the shoreline seemed wrong. I attributed the discrepancy to perspective, but an hour later we passed a coded buoy that indicated our course was about 15 degrees off. Two hours after that we came upon an anchored lightship prominently marked "G-R", which confirmed the error. ...... The picture below was scanned from a 56 year old 35 mm slide, unfortunately made on Ektachrome film. Some photos in this blog are about as old, but look much better because they were made on Kodachrome.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 1em; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; padding: 6px; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Rex in Swalker cockpit. "G-R" lightship, where we corrected our heading.<br />
Slack ropes and flag and placid sea indicate no wind, so we were motoring</b></span></span>.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div>
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</tbody></table></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"> A </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;">G-R crew member shouted, asking our name and destination. To conceal my mistake I replied " Dover", towards which in fact we had been heading. We adjusted our course 20 degrees right, to almost west, and continued through the clear night with the north star directly on the right (translated from the nautical "abeam to starboard") as a reassuring guide. It was September 24, and since the sun had risen exactly in the east all over the globe only 3 days earlier, eventually the red dawn behind us further confirmed our route. As the next evening approached but Harwich didn't, I tried to get our position using the current Consol system. This involved counting dots and dashes from 2 special radio stations, and triangulating from a special chart, but the Russians were broadcasting on top of the signals.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><br />We had aimed to the right of the port of Harwich, so as we approached the English coast we confidently turned left, and finally heard the welcome faint bleat of the Shipwash lightship. From my diary: "The pilot book has 4 pages of tangled jargon about Harwich waters, and says it is a difficult approach even by day, without a pilot vessel.. Our chart shows many wrecks, shoals and other obstructions". We were entering with the advantage of a rising tide, but the disadvantage of navigating solely by interpreting points of light on a black background. We got stuck once, but in 5 minutes were freed by the rising waters. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">Many years later I read books about England by Bill Bryson, an American who moved there. </span>Three things that he said about the country were evident soon after we arrived on my sloop:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">1. the traditional courtesy of its government employees,</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">2. the eccentricity of its place names,</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">3. the simple beauty of its rural areas and old architecture.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">As for (1), a<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"> half hour after we finally found a dock to tie to, a Customs agent </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"> </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;">impeccably attired</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"> <span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">in</span> suit and necktie arrived to check us in, as courteous and cheery as if he had not had his sleep interrupted at 2 A.M.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">
<br />As for (2), the next day we motored 8 miles up the River Orwell to the Royal Yacht Club at Cat House Hard, where Rex left for Holland. Is Hard an odd name? Compare that of the excellent pub there, the Butt and Oyster, and Bury St. Edmunds, where I spent the next 3 days at the home of PJ and his wife (see "Holland" section of this blog). What was a temporary deviation in her smooth exterior is now a man of retirement age.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">As for (3), Later I found time to absorb the beauty of the Orwell. I walked miles along its shaded grassy banks to the ivied walls of the old "public" (English for "private") school at Woolverstone, and watched iconic sailing barges as they were skillfully tacked upstream on the narrowing twisting river. The barges and skills are no more, but perhaps may return when the world exhausts its cheap oil.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">
A couple fed me twice at their nearby cozy home on a converted barge. They gave me some some medical supplies, including morphine and Benzedrine pills. They said Benzedrine would be valuable when I must stay awake, but did not tell me of its dangers. More important for the safety and beauty that resulted, they convinced me to go to Gibraltar via the French inland waterways and the western Mediterranean Sea, to avoid the violent cold storms that they said prevailed in October along the Atlantic coast on the direct route to Gibraltar.<br />
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It was late September, the waterways would start to freeze in a few weeks, and there were yet more preparations to be made. A professional came from London to adjust and calibrate the compass. His fee was a quite reasonable twenty 1956 dollars. I filled the water and diesel tanks, the latter especially important because of the severe fuel shortages resulting from the new war over the Suez Canal.<br />
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October 2 I began my longest solo sail since the protected Ijsselmeer. As I approached the sea I ran aground in Harwich again, but this time on a falling tide, and was saved by deft work with the sails and motor. The day was otherwise uneventful except for close looks at two lightships, and</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;"> outside the 3-mile limit </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">a big platform atop two concrete cylinders, which was </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">a </span><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">"</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 20px;"><b>sea fort" (click)</b></a></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;"> remaining from the recent war and later appropriated by a "pirate" radio station. As I rounded the broad mouth of the Thames River and entered the English Channel at dusk, the wind died completely. I started to lower the slatting sails, but a halyard jammed at the top of the 36 foot mast. The mast lacked steps, so climbing its varnished surface as it swung like a wild inverted pendulum was one of the physically most difficult things I've ever done. As I abruptly descended I stepped on the compass board, which broke in 3 pieces. I repaired it, but later found I had introduced a 10 degree error. </span><br />
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An arm of the Gulf Stream accelerates to pass back and forth through the English Channel funnel, making for strong turbulence that is only partly predictable, and a tidal range exceeded only in the Canadian Bay of Fundy. That's why the </span><b><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://www.doverseasafari.co.uk/page16/page17/">Goodwin Sands (click)</a>,</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"> a vast sandbar in the middle of the entrance to the south end of the Channel, is littered with hundreds of shipwrecks from Roman to modern times. Not all are known and buoyed. The coded North Foreland light, which should have been to my right, appeared ahead instead. I steered for the light, not realizing that the altered compass and capricious currents had brought me onto the edge of the infamous Sands. However, the chart and tide tables indicated I had sufficient clearance over all unbuoyed wrecks. The night was cold, moonless, and black except for a distant light on the English shore that appeared only when the Swalker was atop a swell. Suddenly there was a loud thud from below. The boat heeled abruptly and was swung around by the waves. I knew immediately I had struck an unmarked wreck. The boat was lifted free on the next swell, but in the next trough the crash was louder and the boat heeled more, indicating the Swalker was lodged higher and more firmly on the wreck. I think a wood or Fiberglas hull would have been holed. Clearly the third impact would be the final one, and the sea would pour in the hull, grounded on its side. I had no life raft, and the nearest land was miles away, over a cold dark sea. In an automobile crash the perception of time must be extended more than mine was then, but in the period occupied by 3 swells the seconds became minutes, as I went from shock to the Valley of the Shadow to gratitude. On descent from the next swell there was no crash, only the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>s</b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">oft </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>s</b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">ibilant </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>s</b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">wish of the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">s</span></b>ea, which had carried me over and free of the obstacle.<br />
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A French idiom for orgasm is "le petit mort", the little death, apparently an ironic reference to the crescendo of sensation. It is said that a sneeze is briefly like death, since breathing and pulse are briefly arrested. I had just had my little death, and it resembled not at all those other two.<br />
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Rain began, so I put on oilskins. The lights flanking the entrance gap in the Dover breakwater were apparent near dawn. Although the Sands incident had certainly gotten my attention, I had taken a Benzedrine pill to stay awake, and later realized that the substance decreases competence while increasing confidence. To maintain my heading between the red and green lights marking the sides of the harbor entrance I had to constantly adjust my heading because of the apparent swift cross current. After a while I suddenly realized those lights instead marked the two sides of a passing ship. That was quite like trying to drive between the lights of what seem to be two parallel approaching motorcycles. I corrected my course, and soon docked inside the sheltered harbor, beside the mouths of two WWII submarine pens, and had a long sleep.<br />
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When I awoke, the captain of an adjacent freighter invited me to dine</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"> with him and his officers, while the crew repaired some broken fittings on the Swalker.</span></div>
Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-29898857952749549182011-03-06T11:01:00.002-08:002023-03-30T23:00:20.938-07:00France, To Paris<div style="text-align: left;">
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October 5 I set sail for Boulogne, France, 25 miles across the Channel. A fine breeze increased until the boat was heeled about 30 degrees and the gunwales ("gunnels", the deck edges) were awash with foaming white water and sail reefing seemed soon to be necessary. The high speed brought me swiftly ever nearer the apparent harbor entrance. Views from such a low elevation can be very deceiving. As the illusion of a port disappeared into the cliffs ahead, and cresting waves indicated shallow water, and rocks protruded above the sea surface ahead, and the first fighter jet I had ever seen circled low around my apparently disastrous course, I reversed direction and headed for deeper water, which brought me to Boulogne before dark. The fishing fleet had arrived earlier to avoid the growing storm. No restoration seemed to have been made in the 12 years since the harbor facilities were devastated in the War.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;">The entry into France was a series of non-hazardous frustrations. I went where I was directed to anchor and was soon aground on a falling 29 foot tide. I put out a special brace I had had made in Holland, so the Swalker just managed to avoid tipping over onto the mud, which event might have been followed by the hull filling and remaining on the bottom of the harbor. Later I found a suitable mooring, and motored around the harbor asking where I could buy diesel fuel. All replies were a cryptic "Oui, oui", until the crew of a British freighter gave me 25 gallons of the 100 I needed, free. I found that the filter for diesel cooling water had completely rusted out, so improvised a new one.<br />
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When a ship first enters a country it must display 3 flags in prescribed locations: that of the country being visited, the flag of the vessel (e.g., USA), and the yellow quarantine flag. All aboard must remain aboard until authorities arrive, inspect, and give permission to motor inland or to the next port of the country. That's usually prompt. However, I roamed Boulogne on foot for 4 days until I found the pertinent local officials, and got from them permission to do what I had been doing for four days.<br />
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Early on October 9 I headed for Le Havre, on a straight course mostly out of sight of the indented coast. The next morning I spied through the mist the cliffs near the entrance to the port. I had taken another Benzedrine to stay awake on that long passage, so was filled with euphoria and poor judgement. After I spent 2 hours unnecessarily restoring the boat to pristine condition, the coast was no longer visible. I motored toward it on calm waters for 3 hours, and still could see only a hazy sea. I hailed a fishing boat, whose crew told me I was on the right course, but the outflow of the mighty River Seine had displaced me then slowed my return. About 6 PM I tied to a docked fishing boat in Le Havre harbor (that's redundant, like Mount Katahdin), to avoid coping with the 30 foot tide. With waning adrenalin I winched the mast down to lie on the deck for the inland waterways ahead, and went to sleep.<br />
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The next day I investigated a nearby beautiful white steamship with a Soviet flag. It carried tourists from the Ukraine, and bales of licorice which were being transferred to a French liner for shipment to the USA. I was told there were many such transfers, "because the Americans don't like to deal with the Russians". Perhaps.<br />
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I spent 3 days in port, and with difficulty obtained the permits required to use the waterways, very detailed strip maps of the hazardous rivers Seine, Saone, and Rhone; and a sparsely detailed guidebook for the canals connecting them, but no diesel fuel. All the written advice I saw and spoken advice I heard said that it takes at least 2 people to manage a boat going through a canal lock. Indeed it seemed at times I was like a one-armed paper hanger, but I managed, and at some small rural locks was even able to help an aging lock tender close and open the lock gates, which required turning a crank many revolutions.<br />
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On October 12 I headed inland on the Tancarville Canal, bypassing the shoals and turbulence near the mouth of the Seine. Several big bridges unnecessarily opened for my little boat, and I scooted under others. I parked by the entrance to the lock which would take me back to the river, and waited until 4 PM the next day until it was my turn to enter. Apprehensively, because they could crush my boat, I shared the packed confines of the huge lock with ocean freighters bound, like me, for Rouen, 90 miles upstream, or Paris, 240 beyond that. Some 179 locks remained before the Mediterranean, and winter was coming<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: "times"; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;">.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>The Tancarville Canal, connecting Le Havre (meaning The Port) with the </b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>river Seine, </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>upstream from its shallower water and extreme ocean tides. The mast has been </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>disconnected from its attachment to the deck, so it could be moved forward to </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>decrease </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>its aft overhang. The mast is about 35' long, and the boat only 30' long. </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>So the top of the mast at sea was 39' above the water. Note how awkward it was </b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red; font-size: small;"><b>to move around the deck, all the way from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. </b></span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">A big Tancarville lock with control tower. American flag is on Swalker,<br />
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Subsequent locks on the Seine were not as large, so were even more crowded. I had to wait until the big commercial vessels were in the lock, then move very fast to enter, tie up before the lock gates closed, adjust the ropes as the water rose, then untie and motor onward when the upstream lock doors opened.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;">Through my mind still runs the magnificent panorama of the storied Seine, and the imagined operatic music that accompanied it. Colored autumn leaves slowly falling, to be whisked away by the swift waters. Cliffs, made of the same chalk that makes white the cliffs of Dover, and continues under La Manche (the English Channel). Castles in various states of disrepair on the low hills beyond. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">About 200 barges per day passed me in either direction, some motorless in strings<br />
of 5 behind a tug, exercising the same right of way etiquette as a Ten Ton Gorilla.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "lucida grande";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">On the river I fell in with Max and Mauricette Delafond on their smaller boat. We all accepted a tow offered by the generous crew of a barge laboring against the considerable contrary current. This lasted until the rope broke.<br />
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In Rouen I was able to buy precious diesel fuel. Since the minimum purchase was 200 liters, I stored the excess in a barrel on deck. The Swalker no longer was a greyhound of the sea, but resembled the scruffy African Queen. I made friends with an English family on their adjacent megayacht, until their daughter appeared too friendly and they left prematurely for the Mediterranean.<br />
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To be young, solvent, and have one's yacht in the center of Paris, between the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, would seem a consummation devoutly to be wished. The impressionists and Hemingway had gone, but still there were Edith Piaf and Degaulle and the timeless ambiance of the City of Light. There to enjoy the company of an attractive young actress, the cousin of friends, would seem to be icing on the gateaux. However, "piece de resistance" is ambiguous, and she not I was the predator, my sole function being to install shelves and make other improvements in her new apartment.<br />
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I returned to my equally recalcitrant motor. The manufacturer in London had written me that their only authorized experts in France were in Paris. Those two mechanics spent an afternoon on my engine and pronounced it error free, except that it wouldn't start. I had no propulsion, nor electricity to charge the batteries for lighting. The experts damaged 5 gaskets and broke a water line, so I installed new gaskets and repaired the line. After another day on the engine they had found nothing wrong, but showed me the spectacular method I would use from then on to start it. The routine was to light a diesel soaked rag attached to a metal rod, hold it over the engine air intake while depressing the compression release button and cranking the engine vigorously (by pushing a button, or if the batteries were flat, by hand as with a Model T Ford), then release the button or crank and let the black smoke dissipate while the engine quietly idled. I knew as much about engines as I had first known about sailing, but later realized the problem source was worn piston rings, which prevented the high compression necessary to heat the incoming air, which henceforth had to be preheated to start the engine. My boat got a lot of attention while just resting, but the starting routine usually riveted passers by.<br />
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At the postoffice I picked up a check from the sale of my Chevrolet Belair in Maine, but after sending $500 to my ex-wife and $200 to my Mexican lawyer (a different sort of long story), paying miscellaneous expenses, and having $170 stolen by clever Arab money changers, I was left with about $50 for the pilot I would need to descend the notorious Rhone, a dollar a day for food until the next money drop near the Riviera, and a small reserve. For the next 3 weeks I would not be a Rich American.</span></span><br />
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More sobering news arrived. It would be impossible to cope with the locks ahead alone, a drought had made the Rhone too shallow for the Swalker to descend, the canals would soon freeze, and the escalating conflict over that other canal, the Suez, might result in World War III.... It has been suggested that, "When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout". However, there was nothing I could do about these problems, so after 12 days in Paris Swalker and I left for the Riviera, continuing upstream on the Seine.</span></span></span></div>
Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-63945079876761923762011-03-06T10:54:00.001-08:002023-03-30T23:00:33.868-07:00France, After Paris<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;">I a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>s</b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;">cended the <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">s</span></b>inuous <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">S</span></b>eine for 3 days through the suburbs of Paris, until dense fog halted all traffic on November 7. With permission I tied my boat to a barge overnight, which was simpler than anchoring or tieing to trees. This was my introduction to the Barge People, an informal isolated international society whose member families spend their lives on their barge homes, transporting goods on the waterways connecting 6 European countries... November 1 the locks went on the winter schedule, open only 8 AM to 5 PM, which could slow my progress even further.<br />
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Near Champagne I left the narrowing river for the much narrower Canal de Loing. I seemed also to have entered the 19th century. Sometimes I saw brown autumn fields being plowed by oxen. There were far fewer peasants on the banks, and most of those to whom I waved shyly turned their backs. This was not simple disdain for the USA, because occasionally I would be asked about the American flag I displayed on the stern. "Quel drapeau ?" (what country does that flag represent ?). But how many of us recognize the French flag, whose 3 colors we copied?<br />
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The narrow secondary canals of inland France required special barges which snugly fit the smaller locks. The number of barges was much smaller than on the Seine. When two of them met, one would go aground on one bank, usually the right, while the other squeezed by on the other side, noisily removing paint. A few barges were pulled by colorfully ornamented horses trodding waterside paths compressed over 3 centuries. When an intersecting bridge was encountered, the horse would be unhitched and led forward, then smoothly reattached beyond the obstruction, to the barge which had continued by inertia.<br />
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The canal banks were often lined with Lombardy poplars (aka plane or plain trees), giving the impression that I was travelling through three dimensional Impressionist paintings. This account seems mostly a list of unique problems met and solved, but know that my days crossing the back country of France were filled with beauty, competing in memory with adventures.</span><br />
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Borrowed from the Internet is this recent picture of the Briare canal, typical of rural canals between Paris and Lyon, a favorite subject of Impressionist painters and embraced by Lombardy poplars. The picture shows the canals remain as beautiful as when I traversed them in 1956.</div>
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<a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Briare_Canal_Map.png" style="background-image: none; clear: left; color: #0b0080; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Briare Canal Map.png" class="thumbimage" data-file-height="465" data-file-width="498" height="597" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Briare_Canal_Map.png" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(200, 204, 209); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; vertical-align: middle;" width="640" /></a><a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Briare_Canal_Map.png" style="background-image: none; clear: left; color: #0b0080; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;">Above is a map of the Briare canal and its connections to others I used.</a></div>
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This website has many beautiful ph<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">otos of the waterways</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of France:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <a href="http://www.french-waterways.com/07-gallery/gallery.html">http://www.french-waterways.com/07-gallery/gallery.html</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Clicking on anything in it just under "Aboard In France" will produce copious descriptions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;">For efficiency, the locks were alternately occupied by descending and ascending boats. If I had to wait long enough to enter a lock I would run the boat gently aground on the sloping right bank, pole vault to shore with the free end of a mooring rope in my hand, and tie to a post or tree. Once I spent too long buying meat for my standard pressure-cooked stew, so too quickly vaulted aboard and severely bruised my leg. Another small mishap happened when a barge charged out of a lock while I waited on the bank, holding ropes to control the Swalker. I couldn't resist the greater hydraulic pull on my boat created by his speed and proximity, so my long horizontal overhanging mast tangled with his gear, which threatened damage to both boats and introduced me to profanity in another language.<br />
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All locks had lock-keepers in vigilant attendance. Those on small locks were usually aging veterans of World War I, some handicapped. So I often worked the unmotorized lock machinery myself, which speeded my passage. The lock-keepers supplemented their meager salaries by selling vegetables they raised, or extending a tip basket on a long pole.<br />
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From my log:</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;">"With ascending locks I shift into reverse to nearly stop the boat as it enters, then clamber up the lock ladder if any, or up the lock gate, or over the lock side if it's a shallow one. Then I retrieve the mooring ropes with the boat hook I took with me, and help close the gates and water intakes. As tons of water surge in from the lock bottom, I tie one rope to a lock bollard and pull on the other to control the boat as it rises. When the lock is full I open one uphill gate while the keeper opens the other. Then I buy vegetables or leave a tip, untie the ropes and motor onward".</span><br />
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Descending locks are much easier to negotiate. The water drains from the bottom of the lock so there is very little turbulence, hence mooring ropes are not necessary, for the boat can be controlled with a finger.<br />
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The technology of canal locks is old, simple, ingenious. Over a thousand years ago the Chinese discovered that heavy boats could be raised - and lowered - by falling water, by opening and closing doors in a big box in a waterway. It's a perpetual cycle:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;"> water</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"> is transported to the clouds by solar power, from whence it occasionally falls to enable the lock system. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;">Once I looked down on rooftops as Swalker ascended a staircase of interconnected locks built before there was a USA. Centuries before that, Dutch engineers invented the windmill, which harnessed solar power in the form of moving air.</span><br />
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After a watercraft goes downstream downhill, there are several ways to get it back upstream uphill. On the canal system, it's by locks. On a swift current like the Rhone before it was tamed, it was by powerful engines. In some places it was muscles pulling on ropes: horses on some European rivers and people in the Yangtze gorges. On the Mississippi in the 1800s and Canada's MacKenzie in the 2000s, the solution was to sell the barge or raft whole or in pieces at the end of a downstream downhill run, and return upstream with the money.<br />
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November 10-11 logs:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;">"I spent the night by the bridge at Nemours, which is '(du) pont de Nemours' from whence came the name of the American chemical company. The next day was a holiday, so the locks were closed. I spent the day removing, fixing, and replacing the semi-blocked muffler, and removing much of the soot deposited in the bilge when the muffler noisily disconnected".<br />
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November 12-13 logs:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;">"The muffler malfunctioned again, so I disconnected it and vented it in the bilge again. While doing this, clad in heavy wools and oilskins, with my head in the bilge and my feet overhanging the hull, a shoe fell off. I dove in the cold water to retrieve it, without success, so until the next money drop I will wear my wooden klompen. They float, and are handy for driving in mooring stakes.... This is the latitude of Labrador, in mid-November... I went from the Canal du Loing to Canal du Briare this afternoon... The dearth of traffic allows me to make much better time: today 41 km and 16 locks. I overtake and squeeze by an occasional barge at my standard 5 mph, thereby demonstrating anew that Americans are speed demons. Tonght I listened to BBC while eating a hot meal I made of buttered vegetables, soup, cheese sandwiches, milk and cheap red wine. The coal stove works fine. I walked past a moonlit graveyard to an adjacent village of 3000 people, but none was afoot and all was quiet and dark... The camera quit permanently".</span></div>
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The Canal de Briare <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>(</b></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briare_Canal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>click here</b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>)</b></span> was completed in 1642, which was 314 years before I used it.</div>
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If you click on that, you might note the several links within it on which you can click, and that the Canals du Loing, Briare, and lateral a la Loire are in line, part of my route from Paris to the Mediterranean.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Pont_Canal_de_Briare_45250.jpg" style="background-image: none; color: #0645ad;"><img alt="File: 45250.jpg Briare Canal Bridge" height="563" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Pont_Canal_de_Briare_45250.jpg" style="background-image: url(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Checker-16x16.png); border-style: none; vertical-align: middle;" width="750" /></a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Here the Briare canal crosses the Loire river on a half-mile bridge to the </span></b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Canal </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Lateral </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">de la Loire. The structure was </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">designed by </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Gustave Eiffel,</span></b></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>who designed the famous tower in Paris. Completed in 1896, this<br />"canal aqueduct"was until recently the world's longest. The "Lateral Canal"<br /> lies beside the Loire River and uses its waters, but has locks to bypass its rapids.</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">There are French canals that pass through unlit tunnels, but none were on my route.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">November 20 log: "Yesterday I passed the summit at 986', the highest the boat will ever be... This morning ice coated the trees, decks, and water. The sun shone on a world of irridescent silver beauty, and there was a lovely steady tinkle of shattered fragments as I motored through the half inch of surface ice". Soon the ice would be too thick at this altitude and latitude,</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">November 21: "My best day's run: 22 locks and 53 km, the last 7 at night. Between river strip maps I have to rely on signs at intersections, and came on one that said only, "No Fishing". I correctly guessed the right fork was the correct one, and spent the night at my first city since Paris: Chalon-sur-Saone.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">November 22: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">I passed through 3 l</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">ocks, nearly my last on the Swalker, left the Canal du Centre at Chalons-sur-Saone, and started down the Saone River. The guidebook said a pilot is advised but not absolutely necessary. Good: I had no money for a pilot. I followed the strip map carefully, sometimes on the inside of a bend, sometimes outside. Going aground on the shifting bottom could be made worse by the push of the strong current. I soon did so, precisely on what the strip chart showed as the red marked route in the middle third of the river, to avoid a barge laboring upstream. I spent the night there, and in the morning watched, through </span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>s</b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">oft </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">si</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">lent </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">sn</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">ow from </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">s</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">odden </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">s</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">kies, </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">s</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">low </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">c</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">yclists on the distant </span><b style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">s</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">hore, oblivious to my presence. My gestured entreaties to ascending barges went unheeded, understandably because if they stopped, steering would be difficult for them. I was on the foredeck in my bathing suit in the falling snow about to walk the anchor out so I might winch off, when that got the attention of another barge captain, who slowed, threw me a light rope that I attached to a heavier one, which was used to pull me free. I shouted, "MERCI !" and he vanished in the gloom upstream.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">November 23: I spent the night tied to a barge inside a lock, which would have been OK if my alarm clock had not failed. I awoke just in time to cast off before they shed me in the river. I was told that because cold has reduced meltwater from the nearby Alpine glaciers, the Saone was low and there were many hazards downstream, so I followed the barge closely for 37 km. There were enough unbuoyed underwater breakwaters and shoals on the strip map already, without low water. Just beyond the next lock the barge got tangled with another, so I passed them and continued, until 6 km later another barge crowded me aground again. The current here was relatively fast, 3.5 km/hour, so I was really stuck. Barges ignored me for hours, until one bravely paused only 20 feet away, and towed me free.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">I arrived in Lyon, where the Saone met the Rhone, hoping to find a barge that, for a price, would attach to the Swalker and lead me down the Rhone to more tranquil water at Beaucaire. However, traffic was way down because of the low water and fuel shortage. Barges ascending the Rhone torrent needed 1000 HP, whereas engines of 50 to 100 HP sufficed on other French waterways. Fortunately I found a Rhone pilot, Jerome Pariset, who had 20 years of experience. He asked the draft of my vessel (1.35 meters), deliberated, said that was precisely the minimum depth of the rapids ahead and he would guide me to Beaucaire for 12,000 francs, about $32. A 1956 dollar adjusted for inflation to 2011 is about $10. There was no waiting list, because I was aware of no other non-commercial craft making this trip at this season except that megayacht in Rouen. There were long lines of cars at gas stations, most cars being pushed by hand as their line moved forward. I was fortunate to have bought that barrel of fuel in Rouen, for the war and petroleum shortages were getting worse. Once I reached the Mediterranean the boat could be propelled free by the wind.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Some may wonder why, if I were... intrepid... enough to have come this far, I hadn't planned to run the great river on my own. The answer is that I knew my limitations well enough that the Swalker and I survived intact. M. Pariset and I passed several wrecked yachts whose owners had been too confident. Since the current was sometimes 10 mph (not kph), twice the top speed of the Swalker under power, we ran the motor just enough to maintain steeredgeway. M. Pariset apparently knew the river very well: sometimes he would direct me towards the inside of a curve, where one would expect the water to be shallower, and twice we lightly bounced over the bottom, as he had predicted. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The Rhone was being tamed by a huge multi-year engineering project. The first step was the Donzere-Mondregon bypass canal and the world's highest single-lift lock. We tied to floating bollards in the lock, and in 3 minutes were dropped 85 feet. Looking up from the bottom of the chasm to the little patch of sky would not suit claustrophobics. We went out under the massive downstream wall of the lock. M. Pariset hitched us a tow with a passing barge friend for the rest of the bypass canal. A barge with the power to go slowly upstream on the Rhone could travel swiftly in calm water, so we were dragged 10 miles at 15 mph, twice the Swalker's theoretical maximum, as evidenced by the towering stern wave that followed us.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">I recalled the song "Sur (on) le Pont d'Avignon" from school, but here passed under the broken remains of that storied bridge.</span><br />
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The second afternoon out of Lyon we turned the boat upstream at Beaucaire, running the engine at top speed and still going downstream, until we sidled into the beginning of my last canal, le Canal du Rhone a Sete, joining the river to the Mediterranean port of Sete, in southwestern France.<br />
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M. Pariset returned home. I docked in front of a bar, and took the train to Arles, where I picked up a mass of mail, including two $500 checks. The postmistress said the mail had been there the legal limit, and would have been returned to the senders the next day. I continued to Cannes, where with difficulty I had American Express cash the checks. I ate well, and bought shoes.<br />
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At a party on the Riviera I met two young Englishmen with alleged boating experience, who agreed to go with me to Gibraltar. The bar owner gave me a cat, but it soon opted to go ashore permanently. We traversed the canal to Sete, passing through the reknowned Camargue marsh with its wild horses. This Mediterranean port was the end of the canal system for me. It is also the terminus of the Canal du Midi, a huge engineering feat, completed in 1681 to connect the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Click on: </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi"><b><span style="background-color: yellow; color: red;">Canal du Midi</span></b></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> .</span><br />
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The next anecdote deserves more than "It's a Long Story". Family and other friends, please remember this happened 50 years ago, and I did not know most of you then.</div>
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The scene was a small bar like in a low budget movie which couldn't afford extras. There were just Peter, Allan, and I at a table; the dour Amazon bar owner, and, seated demurely on a bar stool, an apparent clone of Audrey Hepburn. Tam on a short hairdo, beautiful.</div>
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We talked at length. Her name was Marianne, and she was not happy. She said she had been betrayed by her sweetheart in Marseille, and had come here that afternoon, where nobody knew her, to work in a bar. My two shipmates snickered (in English, which she did not understand) that all bar girls have made-up stories and are cynical lying thieves.</div>
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Without expression, the bar owner nodded her permission for Marianne to leave with me.</div>
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At the hotel I put the required equivalent of a worker's daily wage on the dresser. She really seemed like a college girl who had impulsively embarked on a career of sin. She directed that we sit cross-legged on the bed, where she told me an Aesop's fable. After an hour of exchanging Grimm and other tales, my French improving all the while, we knew each other better, and dawn had begun filtering through the curtains. It was a much more delightful method of language enhancement than I'd had in high school.</div>
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The inevitable happened, then we fell asleep. When I awoke, she was gone. My shipmates would expect my wallet to have vanished. It was still there, as was every franc I had put on the dresser. The unwritten message was, "I really am not that kind of woman".</div>
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Charm and beauty aside, she had integrity where it would not have been expected. Our paths had crossed at a nadir in her life. In my adult life I'd never known a woman who liked me and asked nothing in return. I did not want to let her go. And let he who is without sin cast the first stone.</div>
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At the bar the Amazon said disdainfully that the girl had changed her mind and left for her home in Marseille. I ran to the station. The train had just left.</div>
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There are many forks in the road. If I had stuck with the stock of motorcycle makers Toyota and Honda in 1964, if that speeding car had not missed me, if had reached that train in time... Only the memory of Marianne Of Sete remained... remains. With rue my heart was laden... who knows where the path not taken would have led ?</div>
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Evening the next day we 3 males took Swalker from the inner harbor towards the outer harbor, so we could sail early for the next port without waiting for the intermediate bridge to open. The waters were as black as the night, apparently asleep and motionless. As we approached the bridge I kept signalling the tender, who was officially on duty, but it became apparent that he was not awake or not there. I put the tiller hard over to make a tight U-turn, but realized too late that the <b style="color: red;">s</b>till <b style="color: red;">s</b>ilent <b style="color: red;">s</b>urface was <b style="color: red;">s</b>wiftly <b style="color: red;">s</b>eeking the <b style="color: red;">s</b>ea. The bridge met our mast at its mid-height, and the current steadily dragged Swalker sidewise under the bridge. A cross tree (a horizontal brace half way up the mast) broke, then the lone forestay separated with a loud twang. The mast was about to go. The propeller came out of the water as the hull tipped, and we were left with no propulsion except the strength of our arms, which could not overcome the power of the current. Soon my boat would be on its side part way under the bridge, fill with water, and go to the bottom of the shipping channel, without clearance for the freighters which would pass over it the next day. No life or lights on shore could be seen. The only sounds were from us and clashing steel. All was lost.</div>
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Then we heard a faint distant noise... voices... singing... harmony.<br />
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The <b style="color: red;">s</b>uddenly <b style="color: red;">s</b>tationary <b style="color: red;">s</b>ilhouettes of <b style="color: red;">s</b>ix <b style="color: red;">s</b>ilent <b style="color: red;">s</b>ingers appeared above us on the bank. I called "M'aidez !" (Mayday = Help me !). The men scrambled down to the waterside. I threw them our biggest rope, they pulled with the same coordination with which they had sung, and after a final flurry of metallic protests from the rigging we were free. As they quickly left I shouted, "Merci mil fois!" (thanks a thousand times) and threw them a carton of American cigarettes, which had cost a dollar duty-free in Rouen.</div>
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Repairs were made the next day. On the following we passed the bridge by daylight, and set sail for Spain.<br />
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Never once had I been asked for my canal permits, which had expired 3 weeks earlier.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To see the next segment (because of peculiarities in Blogger.com):<br /> <a href="https://dresellysail2.blogspot.com/2018/11/spain.html">click here</a></span>Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-26401846825342083222011-03-06T10:49:00.002-08:002023-03-30T23:00:46.861-07:00Spain<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;">After leaving Sete, our first passage on the Mediterranean was to be overnight on the Gulf of Lions to Port Vendres, France, on the border with Spain. I didn't use the sextant until I reached the Atlantic Ocean, because of the shortness of each leg and the proximity of land before that. So I relied on dead reckoning, which is estimating one's position by considering boat speed, current, time, and sometimes buoys or landmarks sighted. I depended at first on Allan, who was self-assured and supposedly an experienced professional sailor. However, as we arrived in port and were about to throw our mooring ropes to the assembled townspeople, they informed us that Port Vendres was 5 miles further on. The chart showed that had a more protected harbor, so we continued there.<br />
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Two days after that we sailed to Rosas, barely in Spain and encircled by the wintry white peaks of the Pyrenees. As we tied to the dock, a policeman told us that since Rosas was not a port of entry we would have to be gone early the next morning, but that we were forbidden to leave at all. We went with the latter restriction and stayed there 5 days, during which we visited inland Figueras. Spain was still governed by the fascist dictator Franco, and the people made no secret of their contempt for the secret police. Some aging workers said they had been Communists, the party defeated by Franco 20 years earlier, but were now nihilists. Since Hitler had supported Franco by supplying arms and personnel, it was not surprising that German was a more common second language than English.<br />
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When we started to leave, we found that high atmospheric pressure and a northerly wind had lowered the sea level, so that Swalker was hard aground at the dock. Running the engine at full power while pulling the mast from vertical with a rope from the masthead to the next dock, whilst kind volunteers with a powerful boat pulled us in a seaward direction, got us unstuck.<br />
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After an overnight in Palamos, remembered as a little town with too many barbershops, we arrived in Barcelona. The yacht club provided, as most do for visiting yachts, free mooring and a courtesy dinghy. We enjoyed the city for a week. Allan left for a yachting job just as I was about to tell him to leave. His place was taken by Roger, a young American engineer who had been living in Madrid on the dollar a day he earned from teaching English. Roger wanted to go with us to Alicante, and said he never got seasick.<br />
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Maybe that was because he never had been on a boat. Although we left Barcelona for Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands, in fine sailing weather, the sun shining, a favorable breeze blowing but with very little swell on the sea, Roger soon lost his lunch, and I did not see him again until we reached Ibiza 2 days later.<br />
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I was woken during his watch that night by a frantic Peter, who had told me he was afraid of the dark. We had suddenly been hit by the fabled Mistral, also called the white wind or katabatic wind. It is fueled by gravity, which accelerates the descent of air from the nearby Pyrenees, often under a cloudless sky. I quickly brought the bow of the boat into the wind, lowered the wildly flapping sails to the tossing deck, and raised the hitherto unused storm sails. Those, the mainsail and jib, had half the area of the regular sails. The wind was going our way faster than we were, and so were the towering foaming waves. So although we were going forward through the water, we were going backwards into the waves. To avoid capsizing it was necessary to keep the stern pointed into the unrelenting succession of waves, which, overtaking us from behind, each gave the impression we would be submerged. Then swiftly we would be raised high on the windblown crest, and sink an apparent 20 feet into the next trough, where the sails were partially blanketed from the gale. This required constant vigorous use of the tiller, and it was quickly apparent that Peter could not do it. He occasionally told me of horizontal Roger being tossed onto the floor, once through the air onto the opposite bunk. I was on the tiller through that night and the next day and the next night, adrenaline substituting for Benzedrine. The sound of wind whistling in the rigging, the erratic slap of the angry waves on the hull, and the occasional moans from the cabin below, would be a fit soundtrack for Purgatory, but combined with the great spectacle of Nature at its most expressive, the beauty was overpowering.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">My dead reckoning was quite accurate, perhaps coincidentally, considering the difficulty of estimating speed and maintaining a straight course. In moonlight just before dawn I saw that we were about to enter an array of tall rock monoliths, apparently on the north coast of Ibiza. We reversed course to deeper water, and keeping the island in sight in the growing light, made a counterclockwise semicircle around it. I was exhausted and drenched, and the storm had abated, so Peter manned the tiller and occasionally woke me to report new landmarks sighted. We continued through the narrow strait between Ibiza and the smaller island of Fomentera, and docked in Ibiza harbor in the finally warm sunshine. Roger seemed glad and surprised to be alive, and therefore left the ship permanently.</span></div>
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Ibiza was a bargain paradise. Expatriates were living there modestly on 3 dollars a week. A real estate dealer unsuccessfully tried to sell me 40 acres for a pittance, but then I never bought Toyota or Apple or Amazon when they were cheap either.</div>
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I became aware of some of the wondrous creatures that live near the surface of warmer seasl<br />
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One was the jellyfish called Portuguese Man-of-war (pronounced <u>man</u>owar). Somehow humans have discovered that a jellyfish is not just one creature, but a committee, a collection of symbiotic creatures, each having a limited function: transporting, detecting, capturing, feeding, reproducing. Lacking wings or feet, it gets about by sailing. Lacking a skeleton, its iridescent blue-green sail is supported by enclosed nitrogen. Being a colony, is it immortal, with periodic replacement of its members ? Without the ability to seek food, it gets it, to be anthropomorphic, by playing the odds. That is, occasionally it runs into a victim. Or vice versa, as I was to do later. From the air-filled body hang dozens of sticky filaments, up to 50 meters long, each lined with myriad cells containing small amounts of a venom more potent than that of the cobra. Thrashing by the victim helps to release the venom into its body. For more, see Google.</div>
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By day a bucket of tropical water is a solution of sodium chloride and very minute traces of gold and other minerals, containing one of the Benevolent miracles: countless tiny bits of life called plankton, variegated under the microscope. What numbers are needed to count them in the oceans of the world: quintillions ? By night plankton are invisible, unlit for efficiency, but displaying light via photoluminescence when agitated, as by a breaking wave or passing ship or sweep of the hand. Coexisting with plankton is the another Benevolent miracle, dolphin. This name is used both for the long fish that was to become an important part of my diet on the Atlantic, and for the five-foot-long whale-shaped mammal that followed us across the western Mediterranean. Capable of high speeds, they slowed their forward progress to match that of the Swalker, while performing the most exquisite ballet, centered on the bow and close to it. Sometimes they would dart ahead, then fall back. Sometimes they suddenly swooped under the ship to surface on the other side. Frequently the paths of several would be swiftly intertwined. Their proximity would seem to have nothing to do with survival, but is there any less anthropormorphic explanation than Play ? What made all this visible was that each dolphin was constantly coated with a thick coat of soft white light, from the disturbed plankton. Some hydraulic engineer may explain why the light should be a uniform coat, not just a trailing wake.</div>
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It's not easy to be an agnostic, to maintain logic in the presence of these spectacles. It is easier to attribute it all to a Mind of Infinite Ability, like Atlas supporting the World.</div>
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After 6 days on Ibiza we went successively, powered mostly by engine because of light and contrary winds, to the mainland Spanish ports of Alicante, Cartegena, Garucha, Almeria, Malaga, and the British colony of Gibraltar.<br />
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To see the next segment (because of the peculiarities of blogger.com) <a href="http://dresellysail.blogspot.com/2011/03/rock-of-gibraltar-as-i-saw-it-on.html">click here</a> .</div>
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Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-50320621686649824122011-03-06T10:43:00.006-08:002023-03-30T23:01:06.062-07:00Gibraltar, Africa, Canaries<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; padding: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<div style="font-size: 13px; text-align: justify;"><a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PortofGibraltar2.jpg" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.319999694824219px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="PortofGibraltar2.jpg" data-file-height="2886" data-file-width="5280" decoding="async" height="350" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/PortofGibraltar2.jpg/250px-PortofGibraltar2.jpg" srcset="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/PortofGibraltar2.jpg/375px-PortofGibraltar2.jpg 1.5x, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/PortofGibraltar2.jpg/500px-PortofGibraltar2.jpg 2x" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="640" /></a></div><div style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Photo of t</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span>he </span>port of the <span>Rock of Gibraltar, from Wikipedia. </span></span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span> I first docked where the small boat is shown left of the bow of the tourist liner. When a storm came in from the Mediterranean at top of photo, the resulting waves against the dock forced me to hire a tug to move Swalker to a </span>safer<span> spot.</span></span></span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>We arrived at The Rock, the famous symbol of Prudential Insurance, about March 1. The water was warm enough for swimming. There were palm trees and Europe's only monkeys, carefully nurtured because of the legend that if they disappeared, England would lose The Rock. Since then the primates have done so well that their numbers had to be curbed by "culling", then after that was protested, by a sterilization program.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>The Duke of Edinborough (the Queen's husband) had come to the yacht club with his boat, so we were directed to the much more exposed commercial area. One midnight there I was awoken by a sudden storm, whose winds and waves were coming on us unabated from the harbor mouth. By dawn the boat was thrashing up and down 5 feet, breaking ropes that were supposed to tether the Swalker to the concrete dock. The fenders (protective pads placed between hull and dock) were overcome by the steady surges, so for hours I kept pushing Swalker away from the concrete, but on loose tethers to keep it from blowing away. We were offered a protected mooring spot at some distance, but I was concerned that if I cast off to go there, the motor would not keep us from being blown backward into a worse spot. I hired a small tug which towed us out of the maelstrom until we could go to our tranquil mooring, away from the Duke and the docks.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>Only once have I sought sponsorship. I approached Nestle headquarters in town. They asked for no contract, but only asked that I mention them in any future lectures, and gave me two cubic feet of Nestle products. The chocolate didn't last long, but the tea did.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>Peter was to leave the boat here, but port authorities told me that the law required that a captain take from port on departure all the crew he brought in.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>So he and I took Swalker to Tangier, where the laws were more relaxed. A strong current constantly runs from the Atlantic Ocean through the Straits of Gibraltar, known to the ancients as the Gates of Hercules, to replenish water evaporated from the warm Mediterranean. We sailed in the more moderate current close to the Spanish shore until we went directly across to Africa, crabbing 45 degrees to our actual course.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>Tangier, once a stateless port, was newly part of Morocco, but the commerce and the people were still international. Ahmed, an Arab teenager, offered his services as watchman, for which I paid him about a dollar a day. He spoke Arabic, English, Spanish, and another language I have forgotten. The devout Sultan had cleaned up much of the sins of the former Tangier, and it was relatively safe to walk the streets.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>I became acquainted with an American couple and child who had come to Tangier as tourists, found that the Tangier end of smuggling was legal and lucrative, and established residence.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>One afternoon in the narrow shaded alleys of the casbah - the old native quarter - I was concerned to find two people following me through every turn I made. They turned out to be an English couple I had known in Ibiza, so we enjoyed each other's company for a couple of days.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>From my letter February 25, 1957: "Recently a Senor Guido Maresca, an Italian who owns one of the better hotels here and one in Capri, came over to express profuse admiration for my boat, which is bigger than his. He suggested I have the hull bottom cleaned of marine growth and painted. He supplied the expertise, the negotiations, and the painters, who are paid about $1.50 a day. He carted me all over town in his Chrysler to do errands, and has served me sumptuous meals at his hotel 5 times. The bar was free. At his English-type teas I met several cosmopolitan people. His elegant friendly wife is 37, she told me, but looks 25. They went with me on a day sail on the Swalker".</b></span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Swalker precariously careened on the Tangier harbor bottom. When the tide went out twice daily to expose the hull briefly, Ahmed and I worked fast to remove marine growth, and repaint. I didn't know about or use the very expensive toxic paint which inhibits the accumulation of marine growth, so my Atlantic crossing was slowed, and when the Swalker reached the New York boatyard its bottom was festooned. </span></span> </b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;"><b>Peter got a job on a smuggling boat, to our mutual relief. I replaced him with Rick Heatherly, a young adventurer who had recently ridden a horse down through most of Spain. Rick wrote me 2 months later that Peter died in the explosion of that boat, due to rivalry between smugglers, quite like the wars between drug gangs in modern Mexico.<br />
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After a farewell banquet hosted by the Marescas at their hotel, Rick and I left for the 700 mile passage to the Canary Islands.<br />
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There was a fine favorable wind, so by midnight we had overcome the current in the Straits, rounded the northwestern corner of Africa, and turned left (port, southwest), on a course on the safe side of parallel to the coast.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;"><b>To use the sextant I bought for $8 in Holland I had bought for a dollar "How To Navigate Today", a paperback by "M.R. Hart". This remarkable woman</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b> </b></span><a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DA1030F937A35754C0A966958260"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b>(click here)</b></span></a><b> </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;"><b>and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> </span></b><a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1089429/1/index.htm"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">(click here for better detail)</span></b></a><b> is one of my heroes. She used the ambiguous initials "M.R." because she figured men wouldn't trust a celestial navigation primer written by a woman. Using the sextant and Marion Rice Hart's book </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 28px;"><b>I took two sun shots and calculated my position, which agreed closely with our dead reckoning location. Thank you, Marion !</b></span></div>
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A storm arose, so we put 2 of the 3 possible reefs in the sails (made them smaller). Rick lost overboard his hat and coat and 1 of our 2 lighters, necessary for starting the auxiliary engine. While putting the third reef in the mainsail he lost his balance and fell on the boom, which broke the topping lift (the rope supporting the boom). Fortunately a spare topping lift was in place to support the boom, but later I had to go to the top of the mast again to repair the broken rope. Rick deplored my non-nautical terminology ("right" instead of "starboard", etc.), since he knew those terms from building boats in bottles. One night while I slept he used the wrong mark on the compass, so we had been closing slowly on the African coast during his watch. Another night, after we had made slow progress by tacking against a contrary wind, I awoke to find we were going downwind, because Rick was using the wrong end of the compass, dissipating our hard won progress as we sped back towards Tangier.<br />
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From my March 15 log: "We accosted a fishing boat about midnight, and were told that we were 20 miles west of Casablanca. The wind backed around to northeast, finally the favorable trade wind we had expected. I raised the twin jib sails I had had made in Holland, and, lacking any information from books or people in person, found by trial the arrangement of ropes from corners of the sails to pulleys to the tiller that made the boat steer itself. Rick recorded 3 star shots (measuring their angular altitude from the horizon), but I was too tired to calculate, so went to bed".<br />
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March 16 : Calculations from a star shot result in a line on the chart. A second shot is supposed to yield a second line crossing the first, and that's your position. That is, unless either line is in error. So you always shoot a third star, and if all 3 intersect at about the same point forming a tiny triangle, doubt is removed. That morning I calculated lines from Rick's three star shots the previous evening, and found they all crossed close to a point a few miles inside the adjacent Sahara desert. Obviously coincidental errors were made, for we saw no camels around the boat. For safety I had directed a course gradually widening our distance from the coast. We'd been warned that, with the civil war then going on south of Casablanca, we would likely be shot or sold as slaves if we landed at one of the few little ports there. (Slavery is still rife in Africa in 2011).<br />
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In the middle of one night we spotted the lights of 3 small boats. They headed towards us, and every way we turned, they followed us. I had read of pirates off that impoverished coast, and will never know if they were. We had a good wind and ran the motor at top speed, so gradually outdistanced the lights. Our maximum speed was about 7 knots (8 mph), which would have been no match for a modern pirate boat.<br />
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The date is uncertain, but about March 20 we sighted our first island in the Canaries, Lanzarote. Watching that volcanic mass appear was an epiphany, one of the supreme peaks of pure absolute joy and triumph in my life, exceeded only when I held my daughter the day she was born. I thought if I never were able to do anything else, this was worth it. The sighting showed that my navigation was successful, for I had discovered the Canaries as Columbus did 465 years earlier, and at that distance they hadn't changed at all. The world was beautiful and wide and free, and I felt that all the tribulations behind me were as nothing compared to the euphoria I felt.<br />
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The Swalker was moored for about 2 weeks at the yacht club of the principal city in the several islands, Las Palmas, on the island of Gran Canaria. Rick took a job salvaging a WWII German submarine, so I was now prepared to run the next leg, crossing the Atlantic, on my own.<br />
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I was befriended by the USA vice consul for the islands, Edmund Orlandini, and his wife, who were from Elliot, Maine. They lived well on $40 a week, which covered their expenses for an office in town, a beautiful flowered villa 1200 feet above Las Palmas, all food and utilities and car expenses and 2 maids and a part-time gardener. What was then called The Almighty American Dollar made one rich in the Canaries. I recorded on paper and memory a 5-course meal for 10 USA cents, tapas (a drink with little snacks) for 3 cents, "a rum and red wine and a plateful of fried fish for 8 cents". It was even more a tropical paradise than Ibiza, for here there were loose camels, and it was cheaper.<br />
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Once I was swimming at a public beach with Britt, a Swedish girl, when suddenly I thought I had been attacked by a shark. Something had enveloped my arm, inflicting immediate intense pain. I swam to shore, grabbed a handful of sand, and tried to scour off what I had realized were the filaments of a Portuguese Man-of-war. That, I was later told, was what Nature intended, but the worst thing I could have done, because it drove</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b> into the flesh </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 24px;"><b>venom more potent than cobra venom. A Spaniard bather immediately realized what had happened, and walked me two blocks to a doctor, in spite of the prohibition against being half naked away from the beach. The doctor administered vinegar, a standard remedy which Google.com tells me has been proven ineffective or counterproductive.</b></span></div>
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I was about ready to make the Great Crossing. I figured a young healthy person could face just four dangers on such a voyage: falling overboard from a vessel whose speed could outdistance any swimmer, breaking a significant bone (spine or leg), appendicitis, and hurricanes. I would avoid falling overboard, I would move carefully so as to minimize the risk of trauma, my appendix had been removed by a young lieutenant in Greenland, and I would arrive in Florida before the June onset of hurricanes. Only four controllable hazards, or so I thought....<br />
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At sea, anarchy prevails. It is hard enough to police the land, but on the liquid 70% of Earth surface there can be little control of transgressors except, sometimes, after the fact. I visited the home of a local family of modest means, the patriarch of which urged that he help me cross the ocean. Out there, asleep, my corpse could be tossed overboard, and he would have a prize that could be repainted, renamed, and sold. So thanks, but no thanks, amigo.<br />
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Just before leaving, the yacht club manager asked me to take back to the USA a couple thousand letters that they could not deliver, because the yachts of the addressees had never arrived there. I pondered, and declined. I intended to arrive in the USA, but thought that if I had written one of the letters I might not want the hazard of it being on a little boat in the middle of the ocean. I pored over the collection and found that dozens were for actor Errol Flynn, who had cancelled a visit there on his palatial sailing yacht. I might not have been able to resist steaming open some of those scented missives from his lady admirers.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Pictured is the</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 24px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> "elderly" (60 ?) man I engaged to watch over Swalker at night, and assist me occasionally by day. Just before leaving I paid him a dollar for each day. An hour before I set sail he rowed out to my boat, and gave me a gift of bakery desserts that must have cost him a third of what I had paid him.</span></b></span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">Because of the limitations of blogger.com,</span></span></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6;">to see the next segment, Atlantic Crossing, you must: </span></span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"> </span></span></span><a href="http://dresellysail.blogspot.com/2011/03/atlantic-crossing.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">click here</span></span></a></span></span></span></b><br />
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Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-19391961543275688512011-03-06T10:31:00.005-08:002023-03-30T23:01:22.040-07:00Atlantic Crossing<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">A page in my log lists in detail my resources for the Atlantic crossing. A brief summary:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><br />
WATER: 43 gallons in 2 tanks, enough for 6 months, because I could use a little ocean in soups, rainwater could be caught, most canned goods contained some water, and I washed myself and dishes mostly in salt water and rain. Other liquids: 18 liters of fruit juices, 5 liters of Spanish red wine (at 8 cents a liter).<br />
FOOD: 105 one pound cans of varied fruits and vegetables. 42 cans of corned beef, Spam equivalent, and sardines. A one dollar 92 pound stalk of initially green bananas. 18 eggs and no refrigeration. 14 pounds of potatoes, which lasted a little longer. 6 pounds of crackers and bread. 13 pounds of rice. Forgotten quantity of oatmeal. Small amounts of condensed milk, coffee, condiments. Some rice and spinach (the opposite of chocolate) lasted until Florida.<br />
MEDICAL: Usual first aid supplies. Benzadrine, sedative, dramamine, and cold tablets. Bought for $1 total in Las Palmas: a glass syringe and needle, four 200 milligram vials of dry penicillin, 4 vials of saline solution. Morphine. DDT. "Mexican poultice".<br />
CIGARETTES: 65 packs of Pall Malls. I quit smoking 10 years later.<br />
PROPULSION: 7 sails. 120 liters of diesel fuel, enough for 400 miles in calm water or 200 miles in moderate waves and swells.<br />
NAVIGATION: 1890s sextant. Time signals from a 160 kc - 4500 kc radio receiver. Watch, bought for $7.20 in Tangier, but quite accurate because it was kept in one position on cotton and wound every two days, with the deviation from radio signals charted and compensated. Swedish compass with compensable errors. Cheap compass and alarm clock for reserves. Lifeboat chart of North Atlantic and 10 charts of West Indies, Bahamas, Florida. Walker Excelsior log with spare rotor (see Holland chapter). Pilot books for West Indies, Bahamas, lower Florida. HD486 altitude and azimuth tables. Abridged 1957 Nautical Almanac. Slide rule, triangles, etc.<br />
COMMUNICATION: Receive yes, transmit no. I expected to reach the New World, but not call for help and endanger others. A few years later the captain of a yacht in trouble off New Jersey radioed for help. All aboard survived, but two crew members of a blimp that went to their rescue did not. Many times in the White Mountains of New Hampshire hikers have called for help, subjecting rescuers to considerable expense and danger.<br />
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The seven segments before this one were from letters, notes and memory. From here to the USA the text from my daily log is abridged and edited for clarity. The log had to be written carefully to project how long my supplies would last. Also it was important that I not lose a day. For about half the crossing I could receive BBC radio time signals, and the last half I relied on USA stations, although they gave only the precise time, not the day. An error of a day in making navigation calculations could spoil the accuracy of my navigation, which was not important far at sea, but vital as I neared land. </span></div>
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April 6, 1957: I sailed away from my mooring at the Las Palmas yacht club about noon. I was bound for Florida, rather than an intermediate West Indies island, because I had only nine dollars left. I wouldn't need money enroute, but I surely would need it when I reached civilization. It would be simple to get money in Florida, but not in the islands. Because of its eternally favorable winds and currents, my route was close to that of Columbus.</div>
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Rick took pictures of the departing Swalker and sent me copies of the few that were successful.</div>
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The moment was so unusual, like a dream, that it was like looking at myself from outside, and asking, "Is this real ?" Perhaps one feels that way receiving a Nobel Prize or facing a firing squad.</div>
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About dusk, 3 miles off Morro de Colcas light, my last landfall until the Western Hemisphere, I changed to the self-steering tradewind sails and went to bed.</div>
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April 7: Abbreviated from my log: "Hot and almost calm all day, so travelled only 3 1/2 miles, plus an estimated 10 miles of current. At dusk a wind from the west, not the best direction, came up. Kept changing sails and catnapping in the cockpit".</div>
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April 8: "At 4 AM woken by slatting sails and banging, so lowered sails and slept. 6 AM: wind up, raised sails, had my last glimpse of distant Gran Canaria island. 14,000' Tenerife volcano disappeared over horizon to NW after noon. Bananas are ripening faster than I can eat them. Ship steers itself close hauled (as close as possible to the wind), using mainsail and genoa (sail) and shock cords on tiller. Wind has been changing from dead ahead to NW, so I am steering SW and making better progress. Mileage 77/28: meaning 77 since departure, 28 today".</div>
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April 9: "Perfect sailing conditions. Wind NW force 4 (Google "Beaufort scale"), course SW at 6 knots. Ate typically today: BANANAS, soup, corned beef, carrots, bread, jam. Tonight after many trials I invented a self steering rig for a broad reach. That's with the wind from the side, as it is gradually veering around to the trade winds going my way. During these trials I broke the topping lift again. Oh God, must I climb the mast again ? Mileage 168/91".</div>
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April 10: "The sail arrangement worked like a charm, so I had a much needed good night's sleep.</div>
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Sextant readings at sea require that it be dark enough for the astronomical bodies being observed - stars or moon or planets - to be visible, but light enough so that the horizon is clearly seen. That leaves a very narrow window at dusk or dawn, which makes the job difficult. However, our sun is a star, so I devised an enhancement of M.K. Hart's methods, and measured the elevation of the sun when I prefigured it to be nearly due east or west (for longitude), and when it was nearly due north (for latitiude). I adjusted for the movement of the boat through the water, and the current, between the two observations. There was no third shot to confirm the other two, but the map distance between any two locations figured this way agreed closely with my elapsed distance by dead reckoning. Mileage 283/115. Position 19.20 W, 25.23 N Translation: I can't make the degree sign on this computer, so 19.20 W means 19 degrees 20 minutes West Longitude. 25.23 is Latitude.</div>
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April 11: "I didn't know the Swalker was capable of such sustained speed in only Force 4 and 5 winds. Beautiful, photogenic, thrilling. Had my first cooked meal of the trip. Dressed a worsening knee infection. Cool nights, warm breezy days. A tenth of distance to Florida elapsed, but have used less than a tenth of resources".</div>
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April 12: "Although I take vitamins and eat a reasonable diet, I am tired all the time, so must be missing something. Probably sleep, because I must do that "with one ear open", ready to come on deck to change sails or something else. I try to sleep mostly in the daytime, because although I am not on a standard shipping route, it is better to be vigilant at night when the crew of another ship couldn't see me.... This was not a good day. The wind died to Force 1 (bad) but continued its progress towards a following trade wind (good).<br />
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From WaveTrain.net: <b><i><span style="color: red;"> T<span face=""optima" , "lucida" , "mgopen cosmetica" , "lucida sans unicode" , sans-serif" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; font-size: 13.888888359069824px;">he concept of the twin-headsail rig, where two jibs are set flying side by side, was first propagated back in the 1950s by bluewater sailors who wanted an easy-to-manage rig for sailing deep downwind angles on tradewind passages.</span></span></i></b><br />
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I replaced the mainsail and genua with the twin jibs I had made in Holland, breaking the topping lift again. It took considerable effort to make the jibs work well, and until the wind backs further, I am travelling 45 degrees left of my desired direction.... I crave sweets, so improvised "fudge" of cocoa, sugar, condensed milk and water. The result was inferior syrup, but I consumed it all".</div>
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April 13: "Slept well. Spliced wire and rope and installed a jury topping lift from the crosstree, safer at only half the mast height. My infected right knee makes it painful to stand, for that old Mexican poultice didn't work. I dissolved 150 mg of penicillin in the special saline solution, and injected 120 into the deltoid muscle and 30 directly in the boil. I spilled 2/3 of the iodine on the floor of the tossing ship. I must cure this thing myself. Mileage 654/71. My passport expires today".</div>
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April 14: "Knee no worse, no better, but lymph node in groin is swollen and sore. I will give this one more day to start improving. After tomorrow I will be beyond where I can cut across the trade winds and sail to a doctor in the Cape Verde Islands, for which I have no charts. With difficulty I got out of bed and cooked some food. I improvised a hot water bottle from a vegetable bag and rubber band, and applied this off and on for a few hours, while the boat pitched 30 degrees right, 30 degrees left. I injected 150 mg of penicillin saline solution in the right buttock, and (pointless, said a doctor later) sprinkled 30 mg of penicillin powder on the boil. Evening: the knee is worse, so tomorrow I will take morphine and whiskey to operate on the infection, and probably head for the Cape Verdes".</div>
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April 15: "A beautiful pink sunrise signalled a significant improvement in my prospects. The inflammation has decreased within the inked circle I drew, and I can stand and bend my knee comfortably. Ship was heading for the Cape Verdes, but I corrected it for Florida. Afternoon: I got a huge amount of pus out of the boil. The moon is full".</div>
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April 16: "Mainsail chafing through, so I placed 5 split tennis balls on the port shrouds for protection. Water accumulating in bilge, so I put the transmission in reverse, which stopped the prop from turning, which stopped the leak. Don't think I'll write those letters and articles, nor learn German, for there is too much to do, monitoring and repairing and occasionally steering, and sleeping in 2 to 3 hour snatches. I am reading my last book, de Tocqueville's remarkable Democracy in America".</div>
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April 17: "Wind, high barometer reading and clouds indicate I'm being passed by the anticyclone that BBC said was off Spain 2 days earlier. Passed through first shower of the trip, which removed salt crust from sails and boat, and cut wind to Force 1. Changed from mainsail and genoa to twin jibs again. Sail changing, and operating the tiller to minimize sail wear and give a straighter course than self-steering, take a lot of time. In afternoon rain arrived while I was eating oatmeal, so I quickly went on deck and lathered up for my first shower. Then the rain quit, so I removed the soap with sea water and a bit of precious drinking water. My first flying fish came down the hatch, so I revived him and threw him back... The last of the bananas and eggs had spoiled badly, so I threw them overboard . Mileage 956/122. 122 was a day's run that I never reached again. Rain resumed at midnight, so closed hatches and went to sleep. No lights, no moon, hurtling along in the dark. Position at astronomical noon 22.37 N, 31.00 W".</div>
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April 18, 19: More of the same. "Knee almost healed. Lips burned and sore. Beard and sun tan growing. Estimated Florida arrival: May 18. Spent 3 hours re-sewing worn-out seams in mainsail".</div>
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April 20: "Passed 1/3 point.... Took 2 (of very few) photos.... Made shorts out of suit pants torn in Holland.... A school of about 12 dolphins (the fish also called mahi mahi, had thought they were sharks) has been following me night and day. I cast a spinning lure on the water, and immediately a dolphin broke it away.. A jib sheet (control rope) broke, causing a great fluttering of sails, and bringing the boat to a halt". I fixed the sheet, which subsequently I had to do every 7 days.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Going downwind in mid-Atlantic, pulled by twin jibs made in Holland.<br />
Note rope on extreme right of right (starboard) jib, connected over<br />
pulley to tiller, making for easy self-steering.</span></b></span><br />
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April 21: "Rain and wind varied, so several times I woke to find the sails askew and the bow headed into the wind. Once I saw an estimated 200 fish about a foot long simultaneously leap from the water near the boat, mysteriously coordinated like migrating birds, the reentry to their element sounding like sudden rain: plop plop plop ... They were going my way, and repeated this every hundred yards or so for a while. Their aerial excursions perhaps were prompted by a predator".</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>An easy lunch in the cockpit: vegetables, cheap red wine, very fresh fried fish.</b></span></span></div>
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April 22: Getting harder to get time signals from BBC. Climbed mast to place last 2 tennis balls on upper port stay. Sailors palm (a thimble worn like a glove, used when sewing sails) and sunglasses broke, and I fixed them.... Flashlight shone in water at night revealed many, maybe hundreds, of fish around the Swalker. I wonder why no fishing boats come to this fish-rich part of the sea. I speared 3 of them, although I regret that the first one got away, scarred. They are about 18" long. Live they are a shimmering light green, and in death 5 minutes later they are a dull grey-black. All the fish blood makes me feel guilty, but a few minutes later I am eating delicious fried fresh fish, with red wine".</div>
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April 23: "Still repairing mainsail. Today's location by sun shots seem off by a degree of longitude, so I took evening shots of Jupiter and Sirius for the first time. Today I crossed the 40th parallel of longitude. 2300 miles to go, about 60% of total. Noon position 39.48 W, 20.59 N".</div>
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April 24: "Progress slowing: mileage 1469/53. Caught and ate another fish, perhaps needed to stretch food supply. In evening got NY station, 286 meters, for the first time. No time signal, but I will try them again soon. Took self-photo: tricky". <i><b><u>That photo of me, shirtless and mending a sail on deck, was removed because it was copied and grossly misused by someone in some country. I changed the name of this blog as a result: it took hours.</u></b></i></div>
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<b><i style="background-color: yellow;">10/20/2016: It was a good descriptive photo, so here it is again. Note the cigarette, the protruding ribs, the growing beard, the sailor's palm, the paper which was supposed to describe the situation, and the lack of a safety tether.</i></b><br />
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April 25: "Ran all day with mainsail and twin jibs for the first time. This combination does not self steer, so requires constant attendance at the tiller.... What a big thrill I had this afternoon. A black pillar of smoke appeared on the northwest horizon. At about 4 miles distance they apparently saw me, and suddenly veered 30 degrees, toward me. I dashed about, displaying the US flag, stowing drying laundry, preparing message on 9"x12" cardboard; 'Please notify... that Swalker OK'. Ship was the Orinoco, out of Genoa. Its name and course indicated it was in the Europe - Venezuela trade. A voice using a loud-hailer called in English, 'Do you have a message for us ?' I showed the sign. Reply: 'Can't read it' (with binoculars). They were going too fast for me to use my poor Morse code, so I waved, they waved, and the ocean was left to me again".</div>
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"Just before sunset I heard an apparent steam valve go off, and saw a glistening black island rise less than 100' to the right. No tail or head were visible, but from the shape and the 30' that showed, I estimated the whale was twice as long as the Swalker. When it submerged I rushed to retrieve my camera. Then another black island appeared to port, only 20' away, sounding the same long whooshy respiration. I was so spellbound I forgot to push the shutter button".</div>
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". ..have bounced the spear off several fish, so the school seems to have learned to be repelled by a spotlight, rather than attracted as before. Nevertheless I retrieved two, some to be eaten immediately, some saved for breakfast, and some to be salted and air-dried in the tropic sunlight, if they don't rot first.... Sighted lights of another ship".</div>
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April 26-27: "Winds ever lighter and progress ever slower. Lit cigarette without shielding. More repairs, sail changing, and ship lights seen at night. Storage batteries dead, so hand-cranked engine and motored for 2 hours. My ribs are showing. Inventoried diminishing food - lots of space in previously crowded lockers. Average daily ration, which will make food last 4 weeks:</div>
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1 can each: meat, vegetables, soup or beans</div>
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1 cup rice and 2/3 cup Quaker Oats</div>
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2 small potatoes</div>
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Very little bread, jam, cocoa</div>
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Unlimited coffee, sugar, fresh fish"</div>
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April 28-29: "More and more light winds and calms, which are hard on slatting sails, delay arrival in Florida, and create discomfort (no air conditioning). Speared and landed 38" dolphin: 1/4 for supper, save remainder for breakfast and the experiment in drying fish".</div>
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April 30: "To replace spears lost to fish, have made 3, using broken fish spear, peened brass screw, bent and sharpened brass bolt, flattened and sharpened beer can opener, egg beater parts, mop handle, boat hook, wire. Diagrams in log. Other improvisations necessary as various boat fittings are damaged".</div>
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"I was busy in the cabin so didn't see the big white passenger liner, the Amerigo Vespucci, until it was close and sounded a tremendous blast. I rushed on deck, fortunately with my pants on, because the decks on my side were lined with waving passengers. Some burst out cheering, and some in song. I waved the "I'm OK" sign (hands clasped over head), and the ship resumed its course".</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Amerigo Vespucci in mid-ocean. Note passengers, who are singing (something?) to me.</span></span></b></div>
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May 1: "Near calm. Mileage 1684/1. That means the boat went 1 mile through the water in a day, to which must be added about 10 miles daily of favorable current. Position 45.05 W, 20.52 N. Apparently I am in the area known as the Sargasso Sea to Columbus when he travelled approximately this route".</div>
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The replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to what is now Massachusetts, travelled this route about the same time as I did. I saw its detailed log years later, and figure we were once about a hundred miles apart. That ship is still on exhibit at Plymouth.</div>
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May 1: " In a flat calm the Monster arrived. It was a hammerhead shark about 13 feet long, slowly undulating, surrounded by a retinue of zebra striped pilot fish and other piscatorial scavengers. After a brief examination of the food potential of the Swalker, it went away in leisurely random circles, only his big black triangular dorsal fin showing above the glassy surface. Then he came back, resting under the stern overhang, where I could have touched him. Because of my preconceived revulsion, which I have since regretted, I drove my biggest spear straight down on his head with all my force. The sharp steel point bent at a right angle, but there was no apparent effect on the shark, which slowly swam away. I took one photograph of it from directly above".</div>
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It is commonly supposed that a long period of isolation, enforced or voluntary, can drive one temporarily or permanently bonkers. Well, it didn't happen to John McCain nor to Nelson Mandela nor to Thoreau nor to me.... How many people find their best thinking is done when alone, as on an early morning walk or in prayer or in bed at 3 AM ? How many have said, "Just a minute, I'm thinking", besides Jack Benny (<i>"Your money or your life !")</i> ? It is said that to love others one must first love oneself. I think the same can be said about understanding, and that in solitude one can discover what one really is.... I admire those who can speak clearly while thinking clearly. I think better with my mouth shut, as my wife would agree... The first week out of Las Palmas I was lonely, like my first days of hiking the Appalachian Trail, but gradually I came to welcome the opportunity for reflection, to know myself better. I think the ability to stand alone and unsupported makes one stronger.</div>
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Some solo sailors don't agree with that, and have written in their books that they talked to themselves, and Saw Things. To a limited extent, that happened to me. If I missed a nail and hit my thumb with a hammer, I would say a few appropriate words, as you might ashore. And just once, I Saw Something of which marine biologists were later skeptical. They were before the coelecanth was caught, before the ivory billed woodpecker reappeared, before continental drift was proven. On May 1 the Swalker was becalmed on a glassy sea, with "water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink". My cigarette smoke rose straight up. There was no escape from the oppressive heat. Then I saw close to the boat, and I sketched in the log, "a little brown frog with wiggly cat's whiskers about 4 inches long", slowly frog-kicking on the surface between stagnant stretches of Sargasso seaweed. I regret I didn't scoop it up with a bucket, and preserve it in some hard liquor that came with the boat. Odd that Columbus was supposed to find strange sea creatures out here, but didn't, and I did. But a little frog was much smaller than the dangerous sea monsters some expected Columbus to encounter.</div>
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May 2-3-4-5: "Wind gradually returning. Mileage May 5: 1808/45. Forty-five is less than the maximum day's run of 122, but a lot better than the 1 or 2 on a few recent days. Eating an average of 4 pounds of food daily. Oh Joy ! : I found 10 cans of beets and carrots about which I had forgotten. Estimated docking in Florida: May 30".</div>
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May 6-7-8-9-10: More of the same.</div>
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May 11: "Last night was the most beautiful of the trip. After a Force 2 wind arose I went to sleep on the foredeck. If I were religious or poetic I'd be so here. I remember vividly the bright moonlight on scattered white clouds moving across diamond stars set in deep blue, the straining sails above my head and the gently tossing deck under my back. Schools of plankton-lit dolphin darted through the foam on parallel courses on each side of the boat. Without getting up I could check the sails (overhead), my course (North Star on the right), approximate time (moon), and weather. It was uniquely beautiful. Now I am in less of a hurry to get to Florida." </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">I expected to reach Florida, but felt that if I drowned instead, this adventure would have been worth it. In 1996 I found a kindred feeling in Timothy Treadwell, when I helped transfer his summer camp gear to the seaplane my wife and I had hired. He told us his grizzly bear friends would not eat him, but if they did it would have been worth it. Eventually they did, which was the subject of the documentary Grizzly Man.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">I have read, and think I've experienced, that euphoria (joy) can produce endorphins and therefore a heightened physical sense. One of them is described in the previous paragraph. The others --></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">** Two such occasions mentioned in the narrative above--> <i style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;">"About March 20 we sighted our first island in the Canaries, Lanzarote. Watching that volcanic mass appear was an epiphany, one of the supreme peaks of pure absolute joy and triumph in my life, exceeded only when I held my daughter the day she was born, October 30, 1948. I thought if I never were able to do anything else, this was worth it. The sighting showed that my navigation was successful, for I had discovered the Canaries as Columbus did 465 years earlier, and at that distance they hadn't changed at all. The world was beautiful and wide and free, and I felt that all the tribulations behind me were as nothing compared to the euphoria I felt"</i><b style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;">.</b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;">** I had a similar feeling when I walked Maine's Hundred Mile Wilderness on my Appalachian Trail hike to Georgia. In spite of my age then (60) and the rugged trail and occasional rain I felt joy, an absence of fatigue, and the sense that my legs were disembodied and just carrying me along. I hiked about 20 miles a day, stopping only for darkness.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;">** Dawn of June 16, 1968, on our rented sloop in Duck Harbor, Isle au Haut, Maine, on our honeymoon. See description a few pages below.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><b>My euphoria on deck was</b></span></span> interrupted by black clouds, rain showers, erratic increasing wind, a falling barometer, and appropriate wave action. I hurried below and finished my sleep... As day came, the wind was the strongest of the trip: Force 6".</div>
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May 12: "Am reducing the previous rations. 300 miles south of Bermuda. Navigation accuracy increasingly important as I skirt the West Indies and close in on Providence Northeast Channel in the northern Bahamas. Miles 2223/96. Position 57.38 W, 22.30 N".</div>
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May 13: "Used flying fish lying on deck for bait, with large hook on 45 pound test nylon line. A big dolphin (mahi mahi) bit, broke the hook off, and left. If this really is May 13, as my log says, there will be a lunar eclipse tonight.. It arrived on time, followed by clouds of a strange type I'd never seen before. There was a moderate ring around the moon, and a huge lenticular halo at the zenith, flattened on the south side, extending to 20 degrees of the east and west horizons".</div>
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May 14: "What's missing from my diet: food... How primitive is man, night bringing romance and dawn ambition, often.. How dependent we are on one another, for here I can only survive for a while with a limited supply of what others have produced. Passed the 60th west meridian of longitude... Last night I speared a dimly seen fish solidly, but it was so big that it tore the entire spear from my hand, leaving it bloody".<br />
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May 15: "Weather is getting more and more capricious as I near land. 700 miles to Providence NE Channel, 850 to Florida. Speared a fish in the afternoon, but he took my last spear away. Then he lost it, so I motored back and retrieved it, as it floated. Most of the dolphin still following me have distinguishing marks where my spears failed, so I will stop trying to catch the poor things. Am about 300 miles north of Puerto Rico". Skip to:<br />
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May 19: "I found gold ! That is, one can each of pineapple chunks and grapefruit juice in a neglected niche, so work stopped while I consumed it all. Threw overboard the last of the potatoes, all rotten. Twelve days food left at this reduced rate. I am seeing 2 or 3 ships a day, at a distance where they probably don't see me. Still repairing things, changing sails to cope with changing winds, staying vigilant at night, catching an occasional dolphin and drying some. The dried fish is a success, like tasty shoe leather. Today's dolphin was 45" long, a welcome extension of my food supply". Skip to:</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">The Chaloma or Paloma: see text</span></span></b></div>
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May 26-27: "Hundreds of land birds around. They're wasting their time, for I eat all my garbage.... At 23:45 Greenwich Time, dusk, a small freighter appeared to the NE, southbound. She had just passed me when she changed course and made for me. I turned on all my running lights and light-signalled "ALL OK" in Morse 3 times, but she came on. American voices asked, anyway, if I was OK, because I couldn't read their fast Morse reply. I shouted a request that they, the Chaloma, ask the Coast Guard to inform my family of their sighting. Yes they would. I shouted, hoarsely now, my profuse thanks". The Coast Guard's letter to Maine reported the position as just what I had figured: 25.10 N, 73.53 W.</div>
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May 28-29: "The Paloma, an apparent sister ship of the Choloma, passed close by and waved. Got my last sun-shot position for the next few days, which were cloudy. Navigation getting ever more complex and more crucial. The book shows a 1.0 knot current here, and my calculations agree, but as the Providence NE Channel is approached the current seems to have increased to about 2 knots. Sunken reefs flanking the Channel entrance are an extra cause for vigilance... As I now am on a northwest course, the air gets cooler, which makes more bearable my restricted diet. I don't mind the dozens of bugs I picked out of my rice today as much as the excrement I didn't find".</div>
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May 30: "Land Ho ! Considering the likely range of all the unknowns, I settled on a course midway between running onto the reefs south of the Channel entrance, and overshooting it to the north, which would bring me to Georgia, for which I have no port charts. Squalls all night, calms alternating with gales, so I got no sleep. So that I could see better I showed no running lights. My first contact with dry Earth in 52 days, but where on Earth was I ? I saw flashing lights, but none were the coded light of the Eleuthera Island lighthouse. At dawn I could see low land, which could be either Eleuthera or Great Abaco. I climbed the mast to see better. That and sun shots confirmed that the wide Channel entrance was just ahead. A mile off the northeast corner of Eleuthera, the entrance to the Channel, I set the twin jibs, and slept, confident of my course. Passed 5 miles south of Great Abaco Light. Dolphin have all left me".</div>
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May 31 - June 1: "Used alarm clock to sleep in 2 hour snatches. Fatigue made me fall asleep almost instantly each time. I don't want a capricious wind to have self-steering lead me to a grounding. Never before on this boat have I had to change sails so often, because the wind changes so much in speed and direction. I think that's because land weather is offsetting the trade winds. Several ships pass, but none stop to enquire, because the proximity of land makes it look like I'm OK, which I am".</div>
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June 2: Because of the strong Gulf Stream between the Bahamas and Florida I steered all night for the lights of Miami, but crabbing toward Fort Lauderdale. A series of thunderstorms were exciting, with many blinding lightning strikes, each arriving at the same time as its deafening thunderclap. A steel ship would seem vulnerable to lightning strikes, but oil tankers aren't, and the Swalker wasn't, because of a cable running from the hull to the top of the mast. Of course I took Benzedrine to cope with all this.</div>
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June 3: I entered the Port of Palm Beach, and tied up to the Customs and Immigration dock. Here were earth, people, ice cream. My bony chest looked like a washboard, and would not have attracted cannibals. The only food remaining was a few strips of dried fish, a cup of rice with moving protein in it, and 7 cans of (ugh) spinach. At the rate I had been using it, a month of drinking water remained in the tanks, and it was still pure.</div>
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Because the winds and currents were about the same in 1492 and 1957, the route of the first voyage of Columbus (the route westward from the Canary Islands) to the New World was close to mine. I deviated from the westernmost arrow on his route, to the channel through the word "Bahamas", <span style="line-height: 1.6em;">then to Florida: </span><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Primer_viaje_de_Col%C3%B3n.svg" style="line-height: 1.6em;">click for map .</a></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Me just before 9 weeks of beard were removed.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 20px;">I arrived at the Port of Palm Beach at noon on June 3, 1957, very happy and very hungry. I was gaunt and bearded.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">At the Customs and Immigration dock bystanders said the officials saw me coming, then went to lunch and left instructions that I stay on the boat until they returned. My opinion can be imagined. I immediately went to the nearest little store, bought a half gallon of ice cream, and ate it all. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">I was tidying the ship and answering bystanders' questions when the officials returned. They said nothing about my unauthorized shore excursion, but noted my passport had expired in April.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Bob Ray, who interviewed me on WPTV in Palm Beach.<br />
This friend later convinced us to go live in Cuba, which we<br />
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With the remainder of my $9 I phoned for money, and got a haircut, which included shaving off my Santa Claus beard. That immediately attracted a newspaper photographer, and reporters. I was interviewed on that new medium, television, by Bob Ray of WPTV. Bob died in November 2009. A hotel owner offered me free room and food for 2 days, which I gladly accepted.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Lowell Thomas, the newsman who became famous by making Lawrence of Arabia famous, broadcast the news of my arrival on radio. </span></b></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">Later people sent me associated clippings from newspapers around the country. According to the Slocum Society I was about the 60th person to solo the Atlantic. Joshua Slocum, the 6th to have done so, was the most renowned sailor to do that, but it was just part of his journey around the world in his sloop Spray in 1896. Now dozens of people solo the Atlantic yearly, because of precedent and more widespread affluence and superior technology: manufactured self-steering rigs, GPS, and more.</div>
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After 58 days at sea,y body and brain had become quite accustomed to the conditions. Readjustment had two odd effects. Sea legs: It took several days after June 3 for solid earth to stop going up and down while I walked on it. I wonder if I would have noticed had there been an earthquake. Seasickness: the degree to which this is physical (fatty foods, position in the boat, etc.) or psychological is much debated. I never had the least twinge of seasickness on the Swalker, nor used the Dramamine that was aboard. Yet when later I took a ferry to a Maine island, Monhegan, I seemed to be the only passenger who was very queasy. It's significant that only on the Swalker was I in charge.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="color: red;"><b>To see the final segment, because of blogger.com peculiarities, </b></span></span></span><a href="http://dresellysail.blogspot.com/2011/03/florida-new-york-maine.html"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;">click here</span></span></b></a><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: yellow;"> </span></span></b> </div>
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Dick Dresellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03690302737553412638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8231684479141506233.post-64156414471211572702011-03-06T10:24:00.006-08:002023-03-30T23:13:40.057-07:00Florida, New York, Maine<div style="line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;">
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I moved Swalker to Bahia Mar, the Ft. Lauderdale marina, to be nearer my daughter Carol..<br />
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While simultaneously trotting barefoot across a parking lot there and watching a very pretty girl, it gradually dawned on me that I had slammed a foot into a concrete divider. The doctor said it wasn't worth splinting the broken big toe, so I tried to ignore it.</div>
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The Swalker was too scruffy and slow to sell in Florida, so on July 5 Frank Bering, a hotel heir who owes me a free room in Chicago, and I "left jetties at Port Everglades at 11:30 EST", bound for New York. Nightlife to 2 AM had made us tired. The pleasant wind changed from southeast to south, so I raised the tradewind jibs even though beyond the tradewind area.</div>
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July 6: We switched back to mainsail and genoa at dawn, and went to the approximate center of the Gulf Stream, as indicated by the passage of an occasion commercial vessel, whose captain would know better than we where that is. "We're not on watches yet: one just sticks to the tiller a little longer than he can stand it, then calls on the other". We ran out of cigarettes, as both of us had planned. Skip to:</div>
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July 8: "Frank sick, loses 2-tooth plate overboard with his lunch, then is normal again. Night: Thunderstorms with lightning strikes apparently 100' from boat". Skip to:</div>
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July 10: Paraphrased from log: "Just as Frank came on deck near dawn, a bright light appeared dead ahead. We're too far offshore for that to be land. Not a ship, for no red and green lights. From whence did it come on this clear night ? In 5 minutes the mystery is solved. It is a submarine newly risen. She passes us to starboard, a green light finally showing". Skip to:</div>
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July 12: "Around 4 PM sighted several porpoises, then struck a 2" x 10" plank 12 feet long. At 5 PM sighted Virginia Beach. Frank says he is overdue and wants to get off. A launch with 4 youths comes over from the moored pilot vessel named Virginia, and offer to take Frank ashore. First they speak to the captain, who says, 'We're not running a passenger service', and threatens to report us to the Coast Guard for unspecified violations. We follow his directions to the nearest dock, but missing lights and unpredicted stakes made us suspect the captain was trying to beach us. So we returned to the ocean.</div>
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July 13: It was dangerous trying get Frank ashore. We entered Assateague Inlet, Maryland, for which I had no chart. We were briefly grounded on an incoming tide, so we headed to sea again, touching bottom a few times in surf.</div>
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July 14: "At 38.26 N 74.41 W the sport fisherman Three Sisters, from Milford Delaware, approached us. They took Frank, but the offshore swells made the transfer difficult. He wasn't prepared, and forgot his watch, so I will mail it".<br />
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July 15: "While sleeping, in the cockpit so I'd probably wake if any ships neared, I was woken by a bright Aldis lamp shining down on me. "Where are your lights ?", the voice demanded from the freighter deck above me. He was right and I wrong: I lit the lights.... I sighted whales about 8 times this day, right off New Jersey. Each had a fin relatively close to the tail, and was long. Obstacles increasing; fish stakes far at sea, missed unlit fisherman's buoy by 2 feet, wore long underwear because of the cold, variable wind sometimes dead ahead so sometimes used engine". Skip to:</div>
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July 17: "Entered New York Harbor. Much traffic, especially ferries which ignore rights of way. I was thrilled to exchange salutes with the departing Queen Mary.</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">The original Queen Mary salutes the Swalker in New York Harbor.</span></span></b></div>
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I tied up at a dirty dock in Brooklyn, flying the flag showing that the boat and I were American. A customs agent arrived, unnecessarily because I had come from Florida USA, and ignoring me, ordered, 'Someone find out what language this guy speaks'".</div>
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July 18: I motored up the East River, under the (click): <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Bridge"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Brooklyn Bridge </span></a>,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: 25px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">Going north on the East River. Brooklyn bridge ahead. Manhattan skyscrapers on the left.</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Me on the sandblasted and painted Swalker at a City Island boat<br />
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past the United Nations complex, through the whirlpools and turbulence of Hell's Gate, to City Island, where I left the Swalker for overhaul and sale. The broker, Leo Keane, had just been ditched by his girlfriend because he was blind. Festoons of marine growth that had significantly slowed the Swalker were removed from the hull, and it was painted white, with a required new number attached.</div>
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After "Why did you do it ?", the question most asked about this trip is, "Would you do it again ?" The answer is no but I'm glad I did it. I wouldn't do so now, because I'm older and married and have other passions of the mind. The heights of euphoria I felt, the pleasure of overcoming problems, seem impossible to communicate.</div>
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Forty years later my wife Margery and I chartered a float plane to see the giant grizzly bears of the remote Katmai National Park in Alaska. We saw several very close, then helped a young man, Timothy Treadwell, pack up his summer camp surrounded by grizzly paths, load the gear into our plane, and gave him a ride back to civilization. On the way he said that although many people said his bear friends would kill him some day, it would have been worth it. I felt the same way about what I did. A few years later the remains of his partly-eaten corpse, and that of his girlfriend, were found at his camp, and the documentary Grizzly Man, about him, was widely shown. I've been a lot luckier.</div>
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The ethical basis for solo sailing has been debated at length. One side says that since proper seamanship requires that a crew member or officer be aware of the vessel and its surroundings at all times, and since it's impossible for the solo sailor to avoid sleep, then solo sailing is wrong. I believe that if the solo sailor endangers noone else, then he is acting ethically. Shortly after my ocean crossing, a blimp went to monitor a yacht in trouble off New Jersey. The sailors survived, but the blimp went down and two occupants died. I feel about that as I do about winter climbers on Mount Washington calling for help on their cell phones in hazardous conditions. That's why I had no radio transmitter on the Swalker. Otherwise I passionately support the right of anyone to take any risks, or his/her own life, if that doesn't hurt others much. So I think it wrong for a parent of young children, or a doctor with unique life-saving skills, to take extreme risks or his/her own life. Nobody needed me then, but I took reasonable precautions to minimize or avoid risks. The occasions of greatest danger, and that was usually to the boat and not me, were not in the middle of the ocean. "But such a small ship" is irrelevant: ping-pong balls are quite seaworthy.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">On June 14, 1968 Marge and I were married. The next day we embarked on the nautical part of our honeymoon, the first users of a Cal 25 sloop just bought by a young Hinckley, who couldn't afford one of the famous Hinckley megayachts built by his family.<br />
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Before leaving our mooring for the first time I was using the head (toilet) while Marge was on deck drying out blankets, which had wicked up moisture that condensed on the inside of the cold "Tupperware" hull. I heard a scream and stood up, dishevelled, blood coursing down my forehead from the deck support I had just crashed into on the unfamiliar boat. When I found that she had called out because she had shaken a key overboard, I said a few words about the difference between an emergency and an inconvenience. I dove a few times, but could not find the keys on the muddy bottom.<br />
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The next morning I rose to greet the dawn on the deck of our boat, anchored in tiny Duck Harbor on Isle au Haut. We were alone. The scene, with the multicolored sunrise behind me reflected on the Camden Hills on Penobscot Bay to the west, and the green spruce around us on the shore, was so achingly beautiful that I remember the lump in my throat.<br />
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We remember fondly our stay in the harbor on Matinicus Island, enforced because we woke to a fog so thick we could see its wisps around our sloop. A lobster boat came into the harbor through the fog. We talked with the one man aboard, who spoke with the distinctive accent of the island, using expressions like thick-a-fog. He invited us to supper with him and his wife and overnight at his home. There he and his wife spoke with Massachusetts accents, not the Matinicus dialect. He had been born on the island, went away to become a high school principal in Massachusetts, and took mandatory retirement because of his age. Too old for the classroom, so he was operating a boat alone daily on the wild foggy Atlantic. They offered to let us sleep on the bed and in the room used by Edna St. Vincent Millay, but we declined the honor and slept in another room.<br />
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In later years we rented (chartered, in boat language) yachts comfortably bigger than the Cal 25. We had many adventures while exploring the Maine coast, and got as far as 100 miles up the St. John River from the reversing falls at St. John, New Brunswick.<br />
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I had been indoctrinated - permanently, I thought - by the Swalker voyage, and our love of sailing grew jointly. We planned to retire on a sloop, which we meticulously detailed. It had to have a metal hull for safety, probably steel. It was to be about 36 feet long: shorter would mean more crowded, longer would mean harder to handle and over our budget. We attended several boat shows in Newport and Annapolis, and visited examples of such a vessel in Florida, Ontario, and Maine. The latter was the Kaiulani in Portland, Maine: we almost bought that absolutely perfect craft.<br />
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For decades the following was framed in my mind, from Racundra's First Cruise, by Arthur Ransome:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> "Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition... The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place... When it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can think of nothing else. You must build to regain your freedom".</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> Precisely so.</b></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"> But we still had jobs, we were getting older, Marge's mother needed increasing TLC, and our love of the water came to be overshadowed by our love of the land: the Maine woods, Alaska, Argentina, Norway, and most of the places in between. Abandoning our intention to cruise Atlantic shores from Maine to Florida to Bermuda to Norway was difficult, and took about a year to accept. We are left with no regrets, and the intention to visit many more anchorages, coastal and inland, than we could afloat.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 20px;">On our 1968 honeymoon in our rented sloop, about 10 miles off the mid-Maine coast.</span></div>
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