Blog, Blog, Blog

(B)Log . . .

On the eastern side of the Lower California peninsular, the country is predominately green, while on the other side it is predominately dry and brown. There are numerous cattle ranches that one could see along he shore and as we came into Los Frailles Bay, near our anchorage, it was odd to see great numbers of cattle wading along the shore close to the water. I never knew that cattle like to go bathing at the beach, but these seemed to take the beach, either, as a convenient road or they enjoyed walking in the sand. There were 20 to 40 cattle roaming around the beach at Los Frailles Bay.
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Blog about the Log:

I’m blown away as I transcribe my grandfather’s log (journal). The things he would write about. The language he’d use. I know that he coveted the recognition from places like the New York Yacht Club, and the Cruising Club of America. I know that his circumnavigation meant a lot of things to him. The journal would be his way of putting his stamp on that world. This, his generation, was one of legacies; Sterling Hayden on Brigadoon and Wanderer, the Johnson’s on Yankee; Schooners traveling to the South Seas and around the world, writing about it and sharing it with others - following in the footsteps of Captain Cook, Bligh and the Bounty, Christian on Pitcairn, Darwin in the Galapagos.

In the sixties around the dining room table, the comments I’d hear, the references to other schooner trips. Those discussions echo in my ear as I read the words in ‘Dr. Holcomb’s Journal’ as I type them on this computer. The purpose of the journal is clear to me.

But the subjects are eye opening. The Grandfather I knew was a sailor who strummed a ukulele on the deck of a schooner anchored in Ayala Cove, signing lusty sea chantries and ballads to society folk from that lesser city by the bay; the city with Lake Merritt in the middle.

The songs bringing to mind time spent in the South Pacific.

Not cows bathing at the beach.

That’s a side of him I lost and am beginning to find.

We'll get to the south seas later.

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Blog about the Passion of Sailing, where does it come from? Where does it take me? :


I was watching Peter Bodanovich's film 'Running Down The Dream' about the 30 year legacy of the rock group Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Not fully paying attention to the film, I was reflecting on the difficulty of writing my Blog and trying to keep three streams of thought going at the same time:

. . . Discovering my Grandfather through his journal.

. . . Relating his circumnavigation to the loss in my life.

. . . The passion for sailing and sharing that with others.

It's like I'm trying to write three Blogs at the same time.

The answer came in the words of one of the people being interviewed in the film.

He remarked on the idea that the really successful rockstars all seemed to come from childhoods that involved the loss of a parent.

I’m no rockstar, in any sense of the word. But I understand that passion, I think every sailor knows that underlying drive to go down to the sea and find what was lost on land.

The idea there was this passion and drive that emanates from such a loss – now that resonated with me. Experiencing a loss as a youngster creates this well of emotion resulting in a passion for something. That the ‘something’ could take on different drives for different people. The loss I suffered is too personal to write about at this stage, but the passion that stems from that loss . . .

That I now understand.

For sailors, the passion drives us to go down to the sea, take to the water, leave the mechanics of the industrial age bound up in the machinery of mankind, and seek the natural forces that are the imbalance between wind and water; that get you somewhere else. To seek the treasure buried elsewhere.

I shared this with the wise Admiral. Her suggestion was to compartmentalize, something I’ve always struggled with. But it makes sense now – thus three blogs in one post.

In each compartment, a post that fuels the passions that propels me to write.

. . . The journal

. . . What it means to me

. . . Sharing the passion of sailing