I wondered what The Most Interesting Man In The World was up to lately ...
What problem did building a boat and sailing across the pond solve? Just wondering.
The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed.
People with no money often insist that money doesn’t make you happy.
They may be right but I’m not interested in finding out.
I am not a sailor, but I had actually thought of the idea of making a very small, space-capsule like watercraft for solitary ocean voyages. As long as you have enough food and water, it doesn’t matter how slow it is.
My dad went to sea at the age of 9 (NINE!) with the Gloucester Commercial Fishing Fleet. At 17, he joined the Navy and fought in the South Pacific in WW2.
Right about the time I was born he re-upped and was in the Korean War.
I was barely 11 when I was taught how to tie knots and sail a small boat in the North Atlantic ocean.
The Sea is a Glorious but harsh Master. It is not to be trifled with.
Just sayin.
Intresting to see how it goes for him. That’s a lot of sardines no wonder he is sailing alone. I did not see anything about taking water so does he have some sort of desalinzation device?
Freegards
LEX
‘Hard work is the boat across the endless sea of learning.’
Good for him! Thanks for posting.
My wife and I went from desk jobs in the big city to moving to the country to raise beef cattle on a 25 acre farm when we retired. Never done it before. We've learned it all from scratch since retiring. We planted an orchard, grew a garden, harvest pecans, made jelly and jam from our blackberries and make wine from our grapes. We have lots of citrus trees too. And that's the easy part. We can build and mend stock fences, fix stock tank problems, corrals and even a greenhouse, some sheds and small barn. We've learned to work on the John Deere tractor and Gator utility vehicle and keep the implements maintained. We've raised our herd from just two heifers we bought 3 years ago to 11 cows, 3 steers and a bull. We even learned how to pull a calf when a birth went south on us last spring.
Oh, we have a comfortable new house we built, watch a little TV and I've played a few rounds of golf since moving here. But mainly we work everyday on the farm. It's a lot of work but that's the point. Keeps you busy and healthy. We're both over 65 and are having the times of our lives. No silk sheets and condos for us.
I wondered what The Most Interesting Man In The World was up to lately ...
600 days nonstop.
800 pounds of food. Not enough.
Will require a minimum of 4800 pounds of water. Don’t see where he’s going to get enough power to purify it from seawater.
He’s not going to have any storm damage or require any repairs?
I really don’t think this will work.
"What if you break a leg or get lost" they invariably say.
Yes, there is some risk to this. But when I am out there on that trail, with nothing around me but trees, hills and deer, it is invigorating. Knowing there is an element of danger definitely takes your mind off your other problems and forces you to focus on the here and now.
A few years back, I got myself into a life-threatening situation. The wife and kids had gone to Florida and I decided to rent a hotel room up in New Hampshire and hike a favorite trail over the weekend - one that required about 24 miles of hiking.
It was in middle of January and a snowstorm was forecast for Saturday night. At the crack of dawn on Saturday, I hit the trail, knowing that it would be about four hours out and four hours back with only a couple hours to spare before it started getting dark. Only this time, the snowstorm was coming too. The report that morning had snow moving in around late afternoon. I figured I had plenty of time to get back before dark but I knew that it I didn't, it was going to get hairy. This really got my adrenaline flowing and as I set out that morning, I had butterflies in my stomach thinking about it.
It was definitely a hike I will remember the rest of my life. I felt totally alone out there, like I was stuck in a Jack London story. As I hit my turning around point, the skies had already clouded over and the steel grey cloud deck above me looked ominous and a few miles later, as I climbed a hill, I could see the snow approaching on the western horizon. The storm was definitely moving in faster then predicted.
Within minutes, the flakes began to fall. Gently at first but quickly building in intensity and the ground began to whiten, obscuring the trail at times. I was relying on the tree reflectors to guide me but they began to get snow covered as well.
The next 2-3 hours were the scariest hours of my life. Many times, I felt I had veered off the trail and the wind-whipped snow was beginning to sting my face. Eventually I realized I lost the trail completely. Fortunately I did not panic and continued to maintain an easterly direction (yes, I had a compass) - which I know would eventually put me on the main road to where my car was parked.
Just after 6PM, I hit the road just in time to see a snow plow come by. There were about 4 inches of snow on the ground by then. I did not know at that time if I was north or south of where my car was parked. I guess I came out north of the trailhead so headed south, the whole time wondering if I should turn around and head north instead.
Fortunately I was in the right direction and saw my snowcovered car parked at the trailhead. I almost missed it and walked by it entirely. It was a bit of an adventure getting it back on the road as there was now some six inches of snow and I had a front wheel drive vehicle that was low to the ground. But I made it and collapsed in my hotel room totally exhausted.
I remember the next day getting an extension on my room and just spending the entire Sunday afternoon sitting in the jacuzzi watching NFL playoff football games. I was definitely feeling lucky to be alive, knowing that I could easily have perished in the woods the day before. I also realized I never felt more alive than I did during the last leg of that hike.
Rather than turn me off on solo hiking, it actually intensified my desire for it. Even to this day, I like to take long walks in the woods, even in middle of winter, knowing that I must rely on my discipline, my senses and a little bit of luck, to keep me going. However, I never had another close call like that one.
I'm thinking that this is what is driving this 75-year-old man to circle the globe in his little boat. He wants that intense feeling of being alive again.
I was enjoying reading about this man until I came to the sentence that had this stupid thought in it:
...our excessive, consumption driven culture that takes way more than its fair share of the world’s natural resources.