Sailing

One of these days I'm gonna sail a boat around the world all by myself.  It's called sailing single-handed, and I'm gonna do it. 

There have been two things in life I have found that I love to do, and both of them have one thing in common - just me and the Good Lord against whatever the world can throw at us.  Airplanes are like that, there's nothing between you and the ground except personal skill and the Lord's good graces.  And sail boats?  They're just really slow airplanes.  The same laws govern their movement.  Most people think the wind blows boats around but that's not true.  The sail creates a low pressure area in front of it in much the same way a wing creates a low pressure area above it.  It one case the boat is pulled forward into the low pressure area, in the other, the airplane is pulled up into the low pressure area.  When you're in the middle of the ocean, there's nothing between you and the harbor except personal skill and the Lord's good graces.  With sailboats, however, the contest with nature and the laws of physics lasts weeks and months instead of hours and minutes.  I've guided both craft, and had distractions caused by other dimensions in my life take the craft from me.   One of these days it's gonna be time for a new sailboat and a new airplane.  The boat will come first.  If I don't die, the airplane comes back into my life after going around the world.

My last sailboat was a 26 foot hard-chined T-Bird.  The T-Bird has a cutty cabin, which means ya have to duck your head and crawl around on your knees whenever you're below, so it's no good for a guy my age.  If ever you catch me inside a church, you may see me bow my head in respect for the Lord, but never again in a boat.  My neck doesn't work like it used to, and if I were to crawl around on my knees with a bowed head I'd need more Ibuprofen than the boat can carry.  It would sink, and I've had enough of sinking sailboats.  I spent a little over a year living on that boat in Ventura, CA. before I sank it in the Pacific Ocean. 

Well, actually I ran it into some rocks on the California coast on the way home from Catalina Island.  But it was in the Pacific, and although my feet could touch the bottom when it happened, and there was no swimming involved, it's kinda cool to claim to have survived sinking a sailboat in the Pacific Ocean.  Don't you wish you could truthfully make that claim?  (Yeah, I have witnesses!)  Maybe tomorrow I'll write a little more about that fun evening.  It's a post all by itself!

So ended that chapter in my quest to sail around the world, and it still remains the very last item I really want to check off before I check out.  I'm gonna need a bigger boat, and I'm gonna need a lot of automated equipment the T-Bird was missing 'cause I don't move as fast and am not as sure footed as I used to be, but the navigation is so very much easier these days.  As long as we don't start a war and the Chinese don't knock out our GPS system,  finding Hawaii is not the chore it used to be.  A thirty-four footer would do quite nicely.  Maybe a Catalina or something like it.  So long as it's a sloop with auto reefers, I can handle the sails alone.

I'd invite you to come along, but that would spoil the whole thing!