too big?

[jkrueger]

hmmmm,

I used to be carefree and self oriented. Especially back in the days I owned a large ketch, sail boat with 2 masts, and was sailing up the Atlantic on the vessel's maiden voyage. Had just purchased it. Said, "hey, let's go bend a mast and see if what I bought was a dud."

Well, 35 mi winds gusting to 65 and night where the clouds looked green with moon being ripped apart. Every 7th wave I took over the stern. Wow, and as we broached the top of each 15 to 20' swell, hi end surfing.

Was, moveing fast, on a reach, and, ... da, this is dumb! Here I am with one crew member asleep below and I got it. Intelligence is not suicidal!

I put on a life jacket and hooked up a life line.

Didn't break a mast and all was well, including my crew.

To surf a lage sail boat is incredible, to be a smart ass about physics, and safty is not even interesting.

Nice video though,
Jack

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I'm getting tired of the jokes I get about being 6-9. So I'm saying near 7 feet more often

 

[Gypo Logger]

Hi Jack, it is an emotional rush after the fact when we get the lucky chance to sh!t bricks, but the best game of all is when we have run the guantlet as you so eloquently described on your sailboat. You wouldn't trade that for anything I bet, as most of us wouldn't trade our scares, emotional or otherwise.
Feeling safe with the danger is what I twig to, till it becomes common place.
Just an ole fart beating his gums. LOL

I'm Scared of it All

I'm scared of it all, God's truth! so I am;
It's too big and brutal for me.
My nerve's on the raw and I don't give a ????
For all the "hoorah" that I see.
I'm pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again --
I'm scared of the terrible town.

I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains;
My rivers that flash into foam;
My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns;
My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome.
My forests packed full of mysterious gloom,
My ice-fields agrind and aglare:
The city is deadfalled with danger and doom --
I know that I'm safer up there.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I'm lonesome -- I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole.

I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus,
And seeking the lost caribou;
I wish I was up where the Coppermine flows
To the kick of my little canoe.
I'd like to be far on some weariful shore,
In the Land of the Blizzard and Bear;
Oh, I wish I was snug in the Arctic once more,
For I know I am safer up there!

I prowl in the canyons of dismal unrest;
I cringe -- I'm so weak and so small.
I can't get my bearings, I'm crushed and oppressed
With the haste and the waste of it all.
The slaves and the madman, the lust and the sweat,
The fear in the faces I see;
The getting, the spending, the fever, the fret --
It's too bleeding cruel for me.

I feel it's all wrong, but I can't tell you why --
The palace, the hovel next door;
The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky,
The crush and the rush and the roar.
I'm trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt;
I cower in the crash and the glare;
Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt,
For I know that it's safer up there!

I'm scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear
The voice of my solitudes call!
We're nothing but brute with a little veneer,
And nature is best after all.
There's tumult and terror abroad in the street;
There's menace and doom in the air;
I've got to get back to my thousand-mile beat;
The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet;
The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet;
Good-bye, for it's safer up there.

To be forming good habits up there;
To be starving on rabbits up there;
In your hunger and woe,
Though it's sixty below,
Oh, I know that it's safer up there!




--- Robert Service