Lists
early dates
1941 November 11 born Webb Tedford; Saint Louis, Missouri
1946 moves to suburb, Kirkwood, Missouri
1949 February father commits suicide
1950 legally adopted by stepfather, name changed to
Chiles
1950ties begins writing
1963 June graduates college, moves to California
1963-1974 continues writing while working various jobs
1967 January buys first boat in San Francisco, California
1974 November 1 quits job
1974 November 2 sails from San Diego
marriages
1962--1966 Mary Dubuque, Iowa
1973--1974 Lynn San Diego, California
1977--1978 Suzanne Las Vegas, Nevada
1981--1982 Suzanne Cairns, Australia
1985--1992 Jill Pago-Pago, Western Samoa
1994--present Carol Key West, Florida
circumnavigations
1975--1976 EGREGIOUS. San Diego, California. East via
Cape Horn and Southern Ocean. Two stops:
Auckland, New Zealand; Papeete, Tahiti.
1978--1984 CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE I and II, and RESURGAM.
Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands. West via Suez and
Panama Canals.
1984--1990 RESURGAM. Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands. West via
Panama Canal and Cape of Good Hope.
1991--2003 RESURGAM and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. Sydney,
Australia. East via Cape Horn and Cape of Good
Hope.
2008--2009 THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. Opua, New Zealand.
West via northern Australia, Cape of Good Hope
and Panama Canal.
2014-2019 GANNET San Diego, California. West via Hawaii, New
Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Panama.
boats
1967--1969 unnamed 26’ Excalibur sloop
1969--1973 EGREGIOUS, 35’ Ericson 35 sloop
1973--1977 EGREGIOUS, 37’ Ericson 37 cutter
1978--1982 CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE I, 18’ Drascombe Lugger yawl
1983 CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE II, 18’ Drascombe Lugger yawl
1983--1992 RESURGAM, 36’ She 36 sloop
1993--2012 THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, 37’ Heritage One Ton sloop
2011-present GANNET, 24’ Moore 24
books
1977 STORM PASSAGE: Alone Around Cape Horn; Times
Books
1982 THE OPEN BOAT: Across the Pacific; W.W. Norton
1984 THE OCEAN WAITS; W.W. Norton
1999 A SINGLE WAVE; Sheridan House
2004 RETURN TO THE SEA: Sheridan House
2011 THE FIFTH CIRCLE: the passage log; Kindle
2011 SHADOWS; Kindle
quotes used in front of my books
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds.
--from ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
by William Butler Yeats
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent, and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
--from ‘On The Eve of His Execution’
by Chidiock Tichborne
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
--Aristotle
We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures.
Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you
late for dinner.
--Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit
“You are mad,” shouted Angus, who had learned to cherish
his own limitations as a sure proof of sanity.
--from VOSS by Patrick White
With my dying strength I will bite the lips of the jaws of death.
--from THE MAN WHO SKIED DOWN EVEREST
by Yuichito Miura
A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.
--Grace Murray Hopper
My soul, your voyages have been your native land.
from THE ODYSSEY: A Modern Sequel
by Nikos Kazantsakis
Curtis probably never found out either [why Two Whistles, a Crow
chief, had a crow on his head when Curtis photographed him],
because after thirty-three years in the field taking photos of the
Indians he went crazy and was placed in an asylum. When they
let him go he went down to Old Mexico and looked for gold, with
a diffidence in recovery that characterized the behavior of many
great men--let’s go to the edge and jump off again.
from DAHLVA by Jim Harrison
(I) am, I believe, following the clear path of my fate. Always
to be pushing out like this, beyond what I know cannot be the
limits--what else should a man’s life be? Especially an old man
who has, by a clear stroke of fortune, been violently freed of
the comfortable securities that make old men happy to sink into
blindness, deafness, the paralysis of all desire, feeling, will.
What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings,
of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the
edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not
yet become, except in dreams that blow in from out there
bearing the fragrance of islands we have not sighted.
--from AN IMAGINARY LIFE by David Malouf
Cafes sweet with the trilling of singing birds whose cages were
full of mirrors to give them the illusion of company. The love
songs of birds to companions they imagined which were only
reflections of themselves.
--from MOUNTOLIVE by Lawrence Durrell
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine
The joys I have possess’d, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power.
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
--from Horace’s Ode III.29
as translated by John Dryden
He had seen men survive on ships who would have lost their
reason and tranquility forever anywhere else. Course, wind,
waves, position, the day’s run, survival; out there only those
words had meaning. Because it was true that real freedom, the
only possible freedom, began five miles from the nearest coast.
--from THE NAUTICAL CHART by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Between the vision
And the reality
Falls the Shadow
--my memory of ‘The Hollow Men’
by T. S. Eliot
I love
Carol
Entering the monastery of the sea
A boat in the groove
Silence
Words, when they come together gracefully
Being as far from any other of our species
Refections on water
Laphroaig 10 year
Making voyages no one else ever has or has even
imagined
Having gone the distance
First light during a storm at sea
Owing no one anything except the truth
Standing in the companionway of GANNET listening to
music, sipping a drink at sunset
Bach
Passion
The athletic grace of the young
That some of you understand