http://self-portraitinthepresentseajournal.blogspot.com
Webb inspires…over and over.
He is one of the reasons I purchased the sailboat back in 2017. I had read all his books and followed his blogs for many years and I had sometimes thought about owning and living on a sailboat, as so many others have done. As retirement began back in 2014 I again started spending time with him. While sitting in my first landing spot down in Mexico in 2014, where I had that very expansive view of the Pacific for 6 months, I read not a few books by others on the topic. The passage from a book that really got me serious was the one where the author (not Webb) claimed to know a woman who, at the age of 68, did just that, and then took it from the west coast of Canada to the South Pacific. So, why not me?
Years and not a few adventures later, including now owning my own boat, I met Webb and was able to spend 2 hours sitting in the cockpit of Gannet. She was tied to the dock in Marathon, Florida. He was about to sail to his east coast home at Hilton Head Island. He had put in at Marathon after his passage from South Africato on his 6th circumnavigation. She needed to have her keel reparied. He is one of those men who have lived the most heroic of lives, and at the age of 79, still does
This morning as I read this post about his preparations to once again put to sea, I myself feel an incredible draw to do so myself. Absurd, as it was in 2017-18, I have no where near the skill set required, which is why I sold the boat anyways. Too little too late.
But everytime I read his blogs or watch his videos or read his books, all of which I do to excess, I hear for the 100th time these lyrics by Lyle Lovett, and I begin to dream again about how I might care to pass my end days…
“So my friend carry me down to the water’s edge
And then sail with me out to that ocean deep
And let me go easy down over the side
And remember me to her”