Opua: a jewel and a toast
Opua: a jewel and a toast
I sent an email to ask permission to use today’s photographs and received an unexpected jewel in return.
Let me explain.
A reader wrote that he had come across an ‘insightful’ entry about me on another website and provided the link. Naturally curious, I clicked and found myself at THE LOG OF SPARTINA, a blog--their word, not mine--of Steve Earley and a Bruce, whose last name I have yet to discover. Steve is on the Chesapeake, and Bruce in San Diego. Steve wrote the entry in question, which is dated December 6, 2009. What particularly caught my attention was the conclusion.
Sometimes in the mid-90's Webb Chiles did a series of
speaking engagements for (I think) West Marine. My folks
were in town and Dad and I went to hear him speak at a
hotel on the downtown waterfront. It was a fascinating
evening where he told stories, many very personal stories,
about his life and journeys. I did not get to meet him in
person, but from a distance he seemed modest, personable
and very interesting (he comes across the same way in his
journal). He concluded his talk by saying that later that
evening he would raise a glass and say a toast to all the
sailors in the room, hoping that they fulfill their dreams.
I sometimes think of Webb Chiles and that evening when I'm
out on Spartina. And I thank him for making that toast.
The town was Norfolk, Virginia, and the time late January or early February 1993 only five months after I sank RESURGAM; and though my body was fully healed, my mind and heart weren’t. That lecture tour, suggested and sponsored by CRUISING WORLD with some aid from West Marine, started in Stamford, CT and ended seven cities and eight days later in Miami, Florida. It was an important step in my recovery. Five months later I bought THE HAWKE OF TUONELA.
I hadn’t forgotten the toast with which I concluded my talks, but not having spoken in public for many years, I hadn’t thought of it either.
I enjoyed looking at his pictures and reading some of his entries, and will go back and do so again. I particularly liked the top photograph, which Steve took of himself while swimming off an anchored SPARTINA.
So I wrote an email, and received a warm reply, which included this:
I just did a four day sail down in the sounds of North Carolina.
One morning I was ghosting under mizzen and jib along
the marsh grasses in a place called Rockhole Bay. A front
had just moved through, no clouds and the water reflected
the deep blue sky. A river otter swam along the edge of
the cord grass, a school of dolphin played in the mouth
of the bay. I was miles and miles from the nearest town,
sailing this pretty little boat. "Who's life am I living?" I
wondered. And then I realized it was mine.
That’s the unexpected jewel, a perfect expression of what boats, maybe especially small boats, and sailing can mean.
The conclusion of my talk and the toast:
When CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE pitch-poled between Fiji and what is now Vanuatu and I was drifting in a 9’ inflatable, living on six sips of water and a half can of tuna fish a day, I calculated that I would reach land in fourteen days. I was in the trade winds and my direction of drift and speed were almost certain. In fact I did reach land, Emae Island, on the fourteenth day. But from the very beginning I was planning to survive not just for fourteen days, but for several months, because if I missed what were then the New Hebrides, the next land was not three hundred miles away, but Australia, more than six times farther.
Hunger was not a problem; but thirst was. Thirst is terrible.
Among the liquids I had with me in the inflatable were several bottles of Coke-Cola. I rationed them, like everything else. But I told myself that if I get to the end, I will drink the last two bottles in succession so that at least briefly I won’t be thirsty before I die.
I didn’t get to that point and reached land with several bottles of Coke undrunk.
I have been very careful ever since to go to sea with an extra bottle of Laphroaig, or if I can’t get that, cognac, so that if I ever do come to having a last drink, it is something better than Coke-cola.
I have a drink most evenings around sunset. I did not tonight because I think that you are entitled to have me as coherent as I ever am. But In a few moments, I will have a drink...of something stronger and better than Coke-Cola. And I’ll raise my glass to us. To all of us. And to our dreams. And to the passion to pursue them.
And I just did.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010