Gone from my sight (Henry van Dyke)

In memory of my mother, Brenda Newton, who passed from this life to the next on 27 April, 2012 - the strongest and most beautiful woman I have ever known ...

 

I am standing by the seashore.

A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze

and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength,

and I stand and watch

until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud

just where the sun and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, ‘There she goes!

 

Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all.

 

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar

as she was when she left my side

and just as able to bear her load of living freight

to the places of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,

‘There she goes! ‘ , there are other eyes watching her coming,

and other voices ready to take up the glad shout :

‘Here she comes!’

Solitaire Spirit

There's something about the journey of self discovery in a circumnavigation that is compelling to read about. It is diluted somewhat by the publicity requirements imposed by sponsors; think Jessica Watson.
But imagine if someone just decided, off the cuff, to sail around the world?
Les Powles did - with only eight hours of sailing experience!
This is a great book. Les and his self-built boat, Solitude, are true partners. He talks to his boat regularly, and displays an intuitive understanding of the sea and the art of sailing. (I've used the word art deliberately here, rather than craft. I was delighted to find the owner of one of my favourite sailing quotes appear in this book: Webb Chiles - check my last blog to read his quote and all will become clear!)
Les Powles is a real character. Of limited budget and unlimited humour, imagine his surprise when, on his first voyage, he lands in Brazil instead of the Caribbean - a mere 1000 miles off course!
I laughed at loud at some of his recollections.  On one occasion, after being alone at sea for a considerable period, he meets another boat and greets them standing on the bow of Solitude with a nine iron in his hand. The visitors ask him for directions. His response is that he can't help them because 'he hasn't played this course before'. Needless to say, the occupants of the other boat thank him somewhat hesitantly as they change direction to head away from Solitude and her somewhat eccentric skipper.
Les started sailing in his fifties and has been around the world three times now. At the time of writing the book he was 86 and living permanently on his boat in Lymington Yacht Haven, England. I would love to drop by for a cuppa and a chat.

2012 APC Logistics Marlay Point Overnight Yacht Race

The weekend just past saw the running of the 44th annual Marlay Point Overnight Yacht Race on the Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia. Here's my reflection on the race, as shared on another forum.

This was my first MPONR as a committee member; my third as a competitor; my first with my family. Entries were down by about 30 boats with 132 entries in the end, with some unable to get through flood waters and others busy with other commitments, or swayed by lack of time, money or wind. But despite the smaller numbers, there was an amazing vibe at Marlay Point on the Friday and Saturday, as competitors and spectators gathered for the 44th MPONR. Perhaps word had got out that the current from the flooding Avon River would keep us moving through the Straits, even without wind...
5-8 knots for the start and an amazing big orange moon that was soon blanketed by clouds. We were into the Straits by about 11:30pm on our Ultimate 18. We being my husband Steve (stink boater) and my seven year old son. It was so quiet in the Straits, with boats spread out and no wind to speak of. And yet we glided on through. Ran aground once about half way through when the current sucked us into shore. And then a miracle happened...
Second mate (husband Steve) refused to make his Skipper a coffee (and subsequently also refused to walk the plank or be keel hauled), so Skipper handed over the helm, muttering words of encouragement (not!) to this first time helmsman and went below to make a very strong coffee. Came back up to see stink boat hubby gazing up at the tell tales and 'sniffing the wind'. I sat quitely down to drink my coffee and observe, and watched him helm with a look of quiet contentment on his face. Could my stink boater, non-sailor husband be falling under the spell?
Out into Lake Victoria and I trimmed the sails as hubby continued to helm, adjusting course as needed to keep us on a tight track to Paynesville. Things were working well...I was enjoying being free of the helm and trimming the sheets.
Then the wind changed to downwind. Crumbs, I said to hubby, we should really put the spinnaker up, but I've never done it on my own. Well, give it whirl hon, he said encouragingly. The wind was only light, so I did just that. Seven year old son began to hoist the spinnaker with the halyard while I clipped on the pole and sheets...what a beautiful sight when the sail filled and we scooched off... OMG, I said to husband and son - the Farleys are flying a spinnaker!
Back to the genoa for a tacking duel with some Sunmaids and some Hartley 16's as we headed towards Point Turner, before rounding the point for the run home. Spinnakers again for a nano second before the wind changed (I thought I would fall off the bow with exhaustion); needed hubby to help attach the pole this time. Seven year old took the helm while surrounded by other boats and Mum and Dad were up on deck. Well done kiddo! Proud moment for Mum. Crossed the line on a close reach with about 30 other boats. What a thrill for us.
Such an honour to be a member of the tiny club called LWYC. Such a privillege to be part of the sailing community. Such a joy to sail the MPONR with my family. Such a miracle that my husband appears to have fallen in love with sailing - just don't tell him he has!
Handed in the log to be told by the Commodore that we had come eighteenth on corrected time. Hubby laughed and said 'Imagine what we could have done if we had known what we were doing!'
Imagine indeed...

More information on the race is available here:
http://www.lakewellingtonyachtclub.org/

Favourite sailing quotes

A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind-Webb Chiles

Any damn fool can circumnavigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk - Sir Francis Chichester

I cannot not sail - E.B. White

Sailors, with their built in sense of order, service and discipline, should really be running the world - Nicholas Monsarrat

Sailing is far more a state of mind and heart than it is a method of getting from Point A to Point B - Christopher Caswell

Where Pelicans Are

This is a big shout out for local author, Joy Seevers as well as a local icon, the Gippsland Lakes.
'Where Pelicans Are' is the true story of the disappearance of young, professional fisherman, Steven Grassby, who vanished while fishing with his father in Tambo Bay in 1998. In recounting the story of the long search for Steven, Joy tells the stories of Gippslands' lakes and ocean fishermen through the ages, weaving past and present together in dramatic fashion as the search unfolds.
Joy Seevers is Steven's aunt, and a member of the Mitchelson family of Lakes Entrance, who have fished the Gippsland Lakes and Bass Strait for five generations. While her grief is palpable, so is her love for the seafaring livelihood that 'oscillates between tranquility and tragedy'.
If you love the Lakes and want to understand more about their past - ecologically, historically and socially - then this book is a great read. A journo friend of mind described the writing as 'unpolished', but in my mind, that's the beauty of it. The writing is raw and real, like the industry it describes and the lives it honours.
Published by Black Fin books. If you have trouble finding a copy, let me know.

Vanished at Sea

I picked up a $6 book in a newsagent within a Melbourne hospital recently; I was attracted by the picture of the boat on the front cover (go figure!). I kind of wish I hadn't been.

The book is the story of a gruesome true crime, outlining the disappearance of Tom and Jackie Hawkins from their 55 ft trawler, the 'Well Deserved' in November 2004.  The boat had been listed for private sale. When Tom and Jackie took 25 year old Skylar Deleon and his friends for a test drive, they were over-powered with stun guns and sent overboard with one of the ships anchors to drown.

The motive? Pure financial gain. Skylar Deleon wanted the boat and assumed, wrongly, that its owners must be rich. They weren't. As the boat name suggests, they had scrimped and save for years and then sold their home to follow a lifelong dream to go cruising. The birth of their first grandchild had convinced them to take up life as landlubbers again, putting the boat on the market in Newport Beach, California.

Today, Skylar Deleon remains on death row in Orange County, USA, after painstaking efforts by Newport police and family and friends of the Hawks to get justice for the couple. Their bodies were never recovered.

There is no lesson to be learned here; no 'moral to the story', unless you decide it is best to trust no-one in life, which would be a sad thing. Jackie and Tom Hawks were tragic victims of a sociopath.

Mind you, after reading this, I'd think twice about taking strangers for a ride on your boat...

 

What are the attributes of a great sailor?

Peter Nichols book, 'A Voyage for Madmen', tells the individual stories of each of the nine men who set out on the inaugural Golden Globe, Singlehanded Around the World Race in 1968: a race which only one competitor would finish.
Early in the book, Nichols discusses 'the Ulysses Factor', as mooted by JRL Anderson in his book of the same name. Nichols describes Anderson's 'lone hero' as having 'a powerful drive made up of imagination, self-discipline, selfishness, endurance, fear, courage and, perhaps most of all, social instability...a genetic instinct in all of us but dormant in most.'
I was fascinated by this, particularly when he went on to explain 'part of the attraction of these loners is that they invariably look and sound normal; they look like us (I don't know about you, I'm seeing Jessica Watson  right now and thinking, OK, she looks like an average kid). They're usually modest when asked how they survived their terrible ordeals (yep, check, she was), they readily admit their fear (yep again), and in doing so they fool the rest of us into thinking that they are like us - or more accurately, that we could be like them. They become our idealized selves, and so they take us with them, in a way, when they climb Mount Everest or sail around Cape Horn'.
Well, Jessica Watson certainly took a lot of people with her, as evidenced by her blog and the thousands who lined up to greet her upon her triumphant return to Sydney.
So...are the characteristics described by Anderson and Nichols - imagination, self-discipline, selfishness, endurance, fear, courage and social instability - the same characteristics that make a great sailor in general?
I'd be interested in what other sailors think! Perhaps we can disregard the 'social instability' part, as I think it may be in reference to the capacity to walk away from one's everyday life for an unknown period of time, which most weekend sailors don't have to do! So let's just stick with imagination, self-discipline, selfishness, endurance, fear and courage.
Is anything missing from the list? Anything you want to argue shouldn't be there?
I would like to add 'intuitive' to the list - when an understanding of the wind and the effect it is having on the sails and the boat in general becomes truly intuitive, then surely a sailor has reached a level of mastery that many others can only aspire to?
That's what I'm aiming for; a better personal handicap be damned...I want to be intuitive!
Chay Blyth, now one of the world's sailing legends, had never sailed before he set out to race around the world in that infamous 1968 race. He followed a friend's boat to the start line, copying every move made by his mate! Yet his explanation of why he attempted the race is simple and profound and cements his 'lone hero' status ...

'It was my voyage of discovery, and what I wanted to discover was me.'