Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Robert Service


When you're lost in the wild and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil it's according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver . . . and die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . .
It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard.

-Robert Service, The Quitter


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Captain Cook & I'm Back

It certainly has been a while.  I have spent the last two months or so shopping around the east coast for a yacht to carry me far away.  It looks as though I might have found one out in Marathon of Florida.  The survey is being conducted today, so wish me luck.

The plan is to take the next two years away from the lawyering to sail around the world.  To voyage the distant south Pacific islands, to adventure and explore.  I am not sure if I will ever come back.  I do not particularly like being forced to rise each morning and head to a job simply to pay for common commodities.   Maybe my path will dissuade me, but I am thinking I would much rather be subsistent with the sweat of my brow.  Hunting and gathering, you know.

As of now the path starts in Florida December 01 of the year of our Lord 2012.  From there it will be a whirlwind: to the Caribbean, down to the Dutch West Indies, Venezuela and the ABC's (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao), over to Panama and through the canal.  By then the typhoon season in the South Pacific should be over, so stage in Columbia for the big passage, hop to the Galapagos and then head out for the four week no-land segment to the Marquesas or head south to Easter Island.  Probably spend a good six months there visiting the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti and French Polynesia. Samoa, Vanuatu, Tokelau and Tonga.  Once tired of these Isles of misfit drunks (so I have heard) it is over to Papua New Guinea with a quick stop in Bouganville (my grandfather fought the Japs there in WWII).  Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia are next, with a stage in Sri Lanka.  Then to Mauritius, Reunion and Madagascar, South Africa, up the western coast of Africa past Cape Verde and the Canaries, to Morocco and through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean.  Six months of the peak sailing season in the Med, then out back to the Canaries and across the Atlantic back to the Caribbean.  Not sure what will happen when I get back.

There are reports of significant piracy around Somalia, Venezuela and the Philippines.  We will see how that goes.  No adventure without sacrifice.

Fear not, this blog will not resort to one of sailing.  For your reading pleasure, Captain Cook's journal from his first voyage around the world of 1768-1771.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8106/8106-h/8106-h.htm

Otherwise I will be back with my odd ramblings and beautiful pictures of the life on land I will no doubt miss.   My library first and foremost.

Here is what I hope will not happen.  Mast snapped, 360 roll and all.