Quotes to Ponder

The way I see it, if you want rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. ~ Dolly Parton

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. ~ William Arthur Ward

To avoid getting lost, don't go anywhere.

Navigation is what tells you where you are, even when you aren't.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

Where you have been is what determines where you are.

Only that which is thought to be difficult, is, in fact, difficult.

The obvious may be devious.

Nothing too strong ever broke.

Nothing is really work unless you would like to do something else.

The funny thing about regret is that it's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't. ~ Gibby Hayes

Poverty of Goods is easily cured; Poverty of Soul, impossible.

Live every day as though it were your last, for one day you are sure to be right.

A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. ~ Bertrand Russell

The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted life span, those days spent sailing. ~ Ancient proverb

All things can be solved by salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.

The true peace of God begins a thousand miles from the nearest land.~ Joseph Conrad

The Cost of anything is the foregone Alternative.

Always choose time over money. ~ Robert Fulghum

One of the greatest labor-saving inventions today is tomorrow.

An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. ~ General George Patton

A superior sailor uses his superior judgment to keep out of situations that requires the use of his superior skills.

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgment.

1. Keep the water out of the boat.

2. Never fall overboard.

3. Do not hit anything with the boat.

4. One hand for yourself and one hand for the boat.

5. Maintain a proper lookout.

6. Avoid uncontrolled jibes, and duck when you don't!

What is the purpose of voyaging? Why does one put up with all the inconveniences of small sailboat living? Are we seeking adventure or are we all masochist? Escaping from someone or something? I discovered that there are many fine sailor/authors who gave some very compelling and varied reasons why they do it. Each of us I assume must also share at least part of some of those feelings. So on this page I would like to thank the writers for their inspiring thoughts and to share some of their writings with you.

I hope you will also share some of those that you have discovered too. Just e-mail them to me.

• Sailing without an engine requires a philosophy of acceptance and then it becomes very enjoyable. At some point you must stop lamenting what you don't have and enjoy what you do have, wind and sail.

  John Kretschmer, Yacht Delivery Skipper

• Some people look upon cruising as a life of idleness or a life of 'nots'; not shoveling snow, not participating in the rat race, not paying taxes or voting, not conforming to schedules. But for other sailors, such as Helmut and Irene cruising is doing something meaningful, generous, creative and compassionate. It's bringing something to those they visit instead of taking away the little that they may have.

  Pat McGehee refering to Helmut Mayr and Irene von Richthofen of 'Edelweiss' (a Gold Coast 44 catamaran) in the San Blas Islands of Panama.

• Why attempt to drag five other misguided men halfway across the world when it is obvious that most of our present-day troubles come from men not staying quietly in their room at home? But upon visiting Mischief to see how things are going, such weak thoughts are speedily banished. She and her kind were never built so that men should stay quietly at home. She breathes sturdy eager confidence, a living embodiment of the truth that the sea is for sailing, that strenuousness is the immortal path and sloth the way of death!

  W.H.Tillman :From his Sailing/Mountain Exploration Books.

• I decided to go back on the water. It was the only place I knew for certain I would have to deal with things as they arose, without evasion or quibbling or self-hypnosis. Life on the water is not easy, but it is rarely ambiguous.
  The water life permits us the luxury of certain illusions, and denies others. There is no deceiving of the waves, there is no persuading the winds. Deviousness, on the water, is unthought of, because it is non-survival. On the water you either know, or you do not know, and the difference is plain to everyone. I think this is why we tend to be rather simple in our outlook; with the water rats, what you see is pretty much what you get.
  By and large, those who have chosen to live this life seem to have adopted as their banner the wisdom of America's greatest sailor, Popeye. It may even be specially appropriate that he, himself, is merely a cartoon, an imagination, a figment.

  Popeye's wisdom is, "I yam what I yam."

  That's the way it is with most of us. That's why we're here. And -- of course -- every day the tide comes in, the tide goes out. Don't forget.

  Don Berry: " Magic Harbor" (published on the WWW)

• For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze.

  Richard Bode: "First You Have To Row A Little Boat"

• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed in the things that you didn't do than in the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

  Mark Twain

• My competition is with myself and the water planet: Sailing a Laser, you hang suspended with one hand in the ocean (tiller) and the other hand connected to the sky (mainsheet). You are the pivot point between these two great fluids, the two worlds, and you get to go along for the ride.

  Dennis Olson, Tomales Bay

• A whim, once watered with imagination, becomes a dream and the best time to take your first step toward a dream is always yesterday; the worst time: tomorrow. Our best compromise is today.

  Alvah Simon

• It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.

  Andy Rooney

• Time is the ultimate currency. We may talk in terms of dollars but ultimately we trade in hours. By that measure, life is better. Much better.

  Anonymous

• There are two options in a person's life. Reflections and Actions. One is an opportunity to think about it, the other opportunity to live it.

  John McGrady

• The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes, with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must sail and not drift nor lie at anchor.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

• It is important to measure ones' own courage and master one's fear....to do something more in this life than that which is wise, prudent or necessary.

  Jean-Louise Etiene

• If I must sit down at nature's table, I first must accept that seafaring is a hearty menu offering high adventure, great sport, aesthetic delights and achievements. It is a sailor's banquet spiced by pinches of uncertainty and flavored with dashes of hazard. Those who would be gourmets of adventures are tasters of the sauce of life. They agreed that without the ingredients of uncertainty and hazard, living would be mush, crackers and water.

  Rudy Choy: "Catamaran Offshore"

• To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsman, who play with their boats at sea -- "cruising", it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and have the means, abandon the venture until your fortune change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

  "I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it". What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security". And in the worship of security. We fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine -- and some form of working activity that yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all -- in a material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, and playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.

  The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

  Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

  Sterling Hayden: "Wanderer"

• Seek not the meaning of life as life does not have meaning but a purpose. Life in every form has a purpose, the bird, plant, worm, sun, human etc. Each in its own way. Finding and realising the true purpose and fulfilling it will lead us to our greatest contentment in life. To just seek for the meaning or the little pleasures of life leads us to the merry-go-round of life itself and into the cycle of life and death.

  Anonymous

• Travel's greatest purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

  William Hazlitt

• I have come to believe the key to traveling is not in taking in the countryside like we take in a movie -- as a higher form of entertainment or even self-improvement. It lies instead in releasing yourself fully to inhabit the space you're in to the best of your ability --- in opening your heart to loving everything you see, so the more you see, then you are expanded.....for we voyage to see and then remember not just the ocean things but the land also, and the people we encounter along the way. For we see both the land and the people through a fresh lens when we meet them sailing. That experience, more than miles covered, makes us travelers.

  Larry Brown: "Sailing America"

• A sailboat cruise is a singularly impractical means of getting somewhere. The "rooms" are small, the "ceilings" low, the "yard" is an obstacle course of rigging, winches.....Even on the best of days, the time is always slow, the way always long.....But the essence of sailing is not the adoration of an inanimate object but the spiritual awakening of the man or woman who steers it.....The sailor is alone.....the sailor trespasses in an environment for which he is poorly equipped: He swims not much better than a dog......Living on a boat for an extended period is an ascetic exercise in which the comforts of hot showers, three-course meals and twenty-four-hour contact with the world is forsaken.....the acquisition of material goods -- man's first addiction -- is a credo rejected. Convention is a God forsworn. It is a good way to do penance for one's excesses.

  Daniel Spurr: "Steered By The Falling Star"

• Why would anybody in their right mind want to do this, this cruising? Why risk life and limb to see the world from the deck of a small boat? A sailboat is a high risk and extremely slow conveyence at best. There is a simple answer to this. . .because. Because we can and because we must. Cruisers are not content to simply stay in one place, ... As pelagic nomads, cruisers choose to go through the everyday motions of existence in different places. Why awake to the same dawn every day in New York, Atlanta, Newport, or Peoria when we have the opportunity to see the sun rise from Istanbul, Sydney, Mazatlan, or Tahiti? ...We endeavour to savor each and every nuance of the local culture, good or bad, we seek the total experience. It enriches us, it gladdens our hearts and gives us worthy memories.

  Stephen J. Pavlidis: " Bahama Blues" (soon to be published)

• While I'm on this soap box one final thought: Anyone who choses the cruising lifestyle is leading a much more environmentally friendly existence than those bound by the land. In terms of energy consumed, water used, sewage created, space taken - any standard you can think of, those individuals that live aboard have a minuscule impact on our biosphere as compared to the folks who live on land. So, if you are concerned with the future of the planet, sell your cars, get rid of the house, and...go cruising!

  Steve Dashew

• If things in general weren't going the way I wanted, I questioned my motives - not the situation.... The most simple and straightforward decisions in life are sometimes the toughest to initiate. And anything is possible if you want it bad enough.

  Dave Martin

• ...Travel is not a vacation, and it is often the opposite of a rest...I craved a little risk, some danger, an toward event, a vivid discomfort, an experience of my own company, and in a modest way the romance of solitude.

  Paul Theroux: "The Old patagonia Express"

• Once a journey is designed, equiped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck: "Travels with Charley"

• Houses are but badly built boats. So firmly aground that you can not think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable - not animal world, rooted and stationary incapable of transition. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content hence forward 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.

  It is for that reason, perhaps, that, 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. And always you comfort yourself with the thought that yours will be the perfect boat, the boat that you may search the harbors of the world for and not find.

  Arthur Ransome: "Racundra's First Cruise"

• I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Jack London

 

• It cost so much to be a full human being....One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.

Morris West: "The Shoe of the Fisherman"

 

The points of destination are only worth seeking out because of the journey required to reach them. Wherever I may be, if I were told to stay there, even paradise would become hell to me. The thought of having to leave somewhere touches me and endears it to me. And so it is that each time I bury a dream, so quickly forgotten, only to yearn for a new one.

Bogdan Szafraniec

 

 

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What Better Time Than Now?:

Why a young couple decide to go cruising now than later.

CRUISING DREAMS:

Realizing Your Dream About Sailboat Cruising by Jack and Sandy Mooney. Challenger 32 "Utopia".

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The Station

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves an a long trip that spans the continent. We are travelling by train. Out the windows we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at a crossing, of cattle grazing on a distant hillside, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hillsides, of city skylines and village halls.

But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour: we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there, so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes of loitering -- waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.

"When we reach the station, that will be it!" we cry, "When I'm 18," "When I buy a new 450 SL Mercedes Benz!" "When I put the last kid through college" "When I have paid off the mortgage! "When I get a promotion" "When I reach the age of retirement, I shall live happily ever after!"

Sooner or later, we must realise there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all, The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly outdistances us.

"Relish the moment" is a good motto. It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.

So, stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along.

The station will come soon enough.

Anonymous

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Sailing Dreams

"More dreams have been assassinated by guilt than ever were ended by waking up. The dream of freedom is a yearning towards growth, a need for self-knowledge, not an escape from some half seen, half felt bogeyman. We all have a need, mostly unsatisfied and rarely spoken, to measure ourselves against nature as we were meant to do. To see how far our muscles and our breath and our unaided minds can take us. In a culture that lets us do little for ourselves we have this curious and hidden need to make our way to paradise on our own two feet. Being carried to paradise on a palanquin was, I am sure, as unsatisfying as being carried there on a jet. To sleep away your passage in silk draped sloth, or to murder space in a turbine's roar, gives us no measure of ourselves and the measure of self is the meaning of life.

The reality of going to sea is a matter of casting aside all that negates your life, the vague imponderables that anchor you to some unknowable future. The passage to reality is littered with sailors stranded on the shoals of their expectations. It is difficult to wrench your world around to allow you freedom. And it is disastrous to have pie-in-the-sky expectations of what freedom will be like. The far shores of sailing are dotted with the abandoned boats and dreams of sailors who finally made it out there but found that all was not beam reaching and glorious sunsets. Sailing is hard, perhaps its chief attraction. On a long passage you either recast your expectations into something closer to the uncomfortable reality that you are experiencing or you will spend those weeks in disappointment, awaiting only the end of the passage to flee ashore.

Only in a small sailboat at sea are we reminded of our natural place in the universe. The sea forces upon us a natural scale. The sea limits one day's passage to a hundred miles, not too different from the scale used by the ancient Hebrews to measure the throne of God. Small boat sailors parse the structures of the sea in days and weeks and months, not flashing minutes as the land bound do. They have recaptured nature's pendulum. The rhythms and stress of the sea are the ancient imbedded memories of how our bodies want things to be. We sailors press more life into the years we are granted. And, because sailing is unstressing, we are granted more time in which to live. "Old sailors" is a cliche not without content. On the earth we no longer have any subduing measure of greatness. Land has been smoothed for our wheels, and the air above is furrowed by the flashing passage of our jets. Space and time‚ ..these gifts can best be savored from the deck of a cockleshell sailboat. A sailor's whole universe is only a circle with a three-mile radius, the distance his eyes can see to the horizon from sea level. It takes more than an hour of real time to sail from edge to edge of that tiny circle while, in the same sixty minutes, a jet ranges six hundred unfeeling miles. Passing through time and space in the sailor's small and personal world it the measure of natural coil‚ ...and we live better for it.

On land, companionship is thrust upon us, forcing us to be social long after we have had our fill of society. It is little wonder that we become cynics and come to hate our neighbors. And that is too bad, for beyond the companionship of our neighbors, and for some lucky few, the companionship of their God, we are quite alone in the universe. Only by seeking separation from the human herd can you become lovingly close to it. Just one more gift of paradox of which the sea is blessedly rich."

Reese Palley

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Poems

Ulysses

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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Goethe's Faust

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is
one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills
countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
that would never otherwise have occured.
A whole stream of events issue from the decision,
raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents
and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Whatever you can dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait but not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

by Rudyard Kipling

 

A Wanderer's Song

A wind's in the heart of me,
A fire's in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and
Rumbling wagon wheels;
I hunger for the sea's edge,
The limit of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic
Is shouting on the sand.

Oh, I am tired of brick and stone,
The heart of me is sick,
For windy green, unquiet sea,
The realm of Moby Dick;
And I'll be going, going, from the
Roaring of the wheels,
For the wind's in the heart of me,
A fore's in my heels.

by John Masefield.
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Me, My Life

The 'expert' claim my income
Is too low to meet my needs,
They can't get it thru their 'thinkum'
That my world-wide family feeds
On richer fare than city man
With all his gourmet greeds.

I ply no trade and work no job,
I'm referred to as being lazy
By those who brand me as a slob
For not working like crazy
To earn the cash to pay the bills
For objectives which seems hazy.

My home is paid for all in cash,
But I can't buy things on credit
That the city man discards as trash
Before he's cleared his debit
To the banks and money lending houses
Which buy your life before you've led it.

Neighbors few and far between
Each port and harbors suits me fine,
For all those friends of hundreds seem
The choice of neighbor, theirs and mine,
Makes bonds of love and leaving
Bitter-sweet like peasant wine.

For wheels of transport I've little use,
My highways of the wind and sun
I travel quite without abuse
From dirt and noise and when I've done
My daily chores and lived each day anew
I anticipate with pleasure the new day yet to come.

My life is sometimes hard but real,
Adventures shapes my mind
To learn and live and give and feel
The quality of pleasure which I find
In lifestyle simple, unadorned by notions
Vague of wealth and time.

by Paul Malkinson.

 

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