This began as a journal entry titled, ‘the wit and wisdom of webb chiles’, claiming that while I don’t have much of either to show for more three quarters of a century, I have more than several past Presidents of the United States, who had none.
While I like to believe that I have some wit, I am less confident about wisdom. So I have decided simply to call it ‘lines’. Hopefully it is a work in progress though that is by no means certain.


A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind.

Live passionately even if it kills you because something is going to kill you anyway.

A military genius is a general of average intelligence whose opponent is retarded.

The self-righteous are always willing that others suffer for their beliefs.

Debts are chains.

The defining responsibility of the artist is to go beyond the edge of human experience and send back reports.

Life is the process of turning baby smooth skin into scar tissue.

Those of us who go to sea, deliberately leaving society behind, have no right to expect society to come and rescue us from trouble of our own making.

There is enough sorrow in life, some inevitable and much unnecessarily man made. I would rather be on the side of joy and laughter.

The fallacy lies in expecting anything at sea to be as it ‘should be’.

Almost dying is a hard way to make a living.

Philosophy: good questions, bad answers.

Schizophrenic: a solo sailor on Facebook.

Until it is a reason, old age is not an excuse.

I do not claim to have courage. Courage is doing something you are afraid to do and I am not afraid to go to sea alone in a small boat. What I like to believe I have is nerve. Nerve is the willingness, after thoroughly calculating risks and preparing as completely as resources permit, to embark on endeavors whose outcome remain uncertain and may be fatal. I have never taken an uncalculated risk.

Wars are failures of the imagination.

Don’t do things at the last minute, except, perhaps, dying.
(The last three words, which make the line, come from Dave Bush.)

I believe in greatness, the heroic, the epic, pride, honor, and my dreams. And I believe the hardest people in the world are not cynics, but those romantics who will not compromise: who insist that their dreams become reality. I am an adamantine romantic.

Make yourself as strong as possible and sailing your boat as easy as possible.

Most people project their own limitations into universal truths.

Define yourself or others surely will.

I love entering the monastery of the sea.
(I started to write ‘A solo sailor’ instead of ‘I’, but realized that most solo sailors never enter the monastery of the sea. They blog via satellite devices, call home on SSB, send emails and messages. One almost wonders if they really want to be alone.)

Prepare so that you don’t need good luck to succeed, and only extreme bad luck can make you fail.

Persevere.

The truths of the sea, like the truths of the soul, cannot be reduced to numbers.

The terrible thing about the sea is that it is not alive. All our pathetic adjectives are false. The sea is not cruel or angry or kind. The sea is insensate, a blind fragment of the universe, and kills us not in rage, but with indifference, as casual byproducts of its own unknowable harmony. Rage would be easier to understand and to accept.

Amateurs seek adventures. Professionals seek to avoid them.

True wealth is not in having more but in needing less.

Foolishness multiplied a billion times is not wisdom. When GANNET was in the Midwest I suffered from a disease for which I invented a name:  captiaterraphobia:  Latin for fear of being trapped by land. I still occasionally do.

What matters is action. Not to think about writing, but to write. Not to think about sailing, but to sail. Not to think about loving, but to love.

Stillness is unnatural and threatening to many. Perhaps because they fear that if they have to sit quietly and look within they will find emptiness. If you have lived sixty-five years in relatively good health and with at least modest means, you have had a life, and if you die with regrets for what you did not do, you need only look in the mirror to find the one responsible.

Eternity is long.  Our lives as brief as a butterfly’s cough.  I believe that they are redeemed by moments of joy.  I have known countless such moments sailing small boats across oceans.

The ocean does not offer senior discounts and if it did I would refuse to accept.

Read some poetry and listen to some Bach everyday.

I face oblivion with equanimity, although I am apprehensive about the probable pain in the process.

To life, and pushing as hard as you can as long as you can and being grateful for whatever moments of peace you find.

Go out, going forward.