Evanston: unjibed
Evanston: unjibed
I strive for perfection.
I do not delude myself that I often achieve it; perhaps I delude myself that I ever do.
I define perfection in something I’ve created as finding upon repeated review nothing I would change, not a single detail. In writing, not a word or a punctation mark. In a photograph, not any element of composition or color.
Not much passes that test. I can almost always rewrite forever and when preparing work for publication know that there finally has to become a time to stop, that after a while I’m only making changes, not improvements.
The photograph at the top of the main journal page might be perfect. With the exception of my smoothing out a reflection in the water with Aperture because I wanted flat planes of color, it is just as it came from the camera, not even cropped.
There are some other photographs I wouldn’t change; but then because I think of myself more as a writer than a photographer, perhaps I am less critical of my photographs.
Of writing, there is certainly no entire book that I consider perfect. Some passages maybe. Most of them about survival situations.
Almost dying is a hard way to make a living, I once wrote (and that might be perfect) and I plied that trade considerably.
My most quoted sentences, found on the home page of this site, pass the test. As I think does the short story, “Sailing to Africa,” though I haven’t read it for a while, and it might flunk next time I do. And some short poems.
But all that is subjective.
Some perfection can be quantified.
Many would agree that perfect weather is temperature in the high 70ºsF/25º-26ºC, sunny sky, moderate wind. Which is what we had Saturday for GANNET’s last sail on Lake Michigan.
The wind was forecast to be only five knots, but increased to ten shortly after we powered in slow circles successfully calibrating the Autohelm tiller pilot as we had not the Simrad, and then also successfully testing the wireless remote. Heading out on a beam reach, we ended up coming back close hauled and had to tack twice to reach the breakwater entrance.
It was lively and lovely sailing.
Back in the slip came a reckoning.
You may recall that GANNET’s new furling jib was extremely difficult to hoist on the Furlex foil last May. More than extremely; almost impossibly. I thought for a while that it was going to stick half way and I would be able neither to raise nor lower it. Late in the day I did manage to winch it to full hoist, straining with both hands on the winch handle--I still had the Barient 10s then; the Harken 20.2s are two speed and more powerful--while Carol tailed the halyard, and knew as I did that I might be making a big mistake, that I might never get the sail down.
At times during the summer I’ve eased the halyard to try to move the draft of the sail aft. The luff has remained discouragingly taut. I didn’t try to lower it because I didn’t really want to know. Sufficient onto the day the evil thereof, I quoted The Bible. The evil day had come.
I freed the halyard from its clutch--the sail did not sag even slightly, used a wrench to undo the shackle securing the tack to the furling drum, sat on the foredeck, grabbed the tack in both hands, braced myself, and pulled. The sail came down. Not easily, but much more easily than it had gone up. I took a deep breath, reached an arm’s length higher and pulled again. And again down.
I have awakened in the middle of more than one night, wondering what I would do if the jib would not come down.
In a few minutes it was.
Carol and I folded and bagged it and I stowed it below.
The weather this coming week is forecast to be unsettled. Thursday looks to be the best day to have GANNET lifted from the water, or possibly the following Monday.
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I wrote that GANNET’s main bulkhead is full.
Starting from the left in the photo above: Icom handheld VHF radio, mirror, Silva compass.
To starboard of the circular cut-out, which I like a lot, is the Ambient Weather thermometer/ barometer/ hygrometer. Above it and to the right is the base station for the Autohelm remote; below is the handheld remote in its cradle. To the right is the circuit breaker panel. Below the chainplate is the panel for the Blue Sky Solar Boost 2000e solar panel regulator.
That’s all there is and all I think there ever will be.
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Today is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War battle of Antietam.
I happened across a link to a 7 minute CBS video about the battle, which makes reference to two of its great consequences: The Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln had been delaying until after a Union victory; and the photographs of the dead taken by Matthew Brady. Technology and his talent brought the grim truth of the battlefield to the civilian population as never before. No longer could war be romanticized, says a CBS correspondent. But in fact it continued to be until WWI and perhaps beyond.
In our own times, technology has twice brought that reality even closer. First, television, and more recently, ubiquitous cameras and the Internet.
I have written that wars are failures of the imagination. Such failures should be more difficult now. But I expect that they will still occur.
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Bookies in the UK run odds on everything, so I assume there is a line on whether my right eye and I are going to remain together and am going to give those of you who wager some inside information.
A month ago the odds would have favored parting. After a doctor’s visit this morning, they have swung to remaining, though I may have to put an eye drop in morning and night for the duration.
My percentage of direct hits is not good here on stationary land: about one drop in three goes in. At sea it will surely be worse. I wonder if they fill prescriptions by the quart.
Monday, September 17, 2012