Post #1064

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea - "cruising," it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

"I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?
—from "Wanderer" by Sterling Hayden, Sailor extraordinaire

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Post #875

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
—Mark Twain

Post #819

Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify: but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.
—James A. Garfield

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The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity.  ¶Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work.  ¶In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same.  ¶The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction.  ¶When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few.  ¶If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging.  ¶Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting.  ¶Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius.  ¶Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius.  ¶Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all.  ¶The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by.  ¶The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant.  ¶There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass.  ¶And it all avails nothing.  ¶If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader.  ¶Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages.  ¶That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial.  ¶That which deserves to live — lives.

written by Theodore F. MacManus

Copyright Cadillac Motor Division

Post #743

Everyone must row with the oars he has.
—English proverb

Post #707

A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the Walloping Window Blind -
No gale that blew dimayed her crew
Or troubled the Captain's mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow.
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he'd been in his bunk below.
—Charles Edward Carryl

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The Snipe's Lament

Now each of us from time to time, has gazed upon the sea
And watched the warships pulling out to keep this country free
And most of us have read a book or heard a lusty tale
About the men who sail these ships through light'ning, wind and hail
But there's a place within each ship that legend fails to teach

Its down below the waterline, it takes a living toll
A hot metal living hell that sailors call the hole
It houses engines run by steam that make the shafts go round
A place of fire and noise and heat that beats your spirits down
Where boilers like hellish heart with blood of angry steam
Are moulded gods without remorse, are nightmares in a dream

You have no time for man or god, no tolerance or fear
Your aspects pay no living thing the tribute of a tear
For there's not much that man can do that these men haven't done
Beneath the deck deep in the hole to make the engines run
And every hour of every day they keep the watch in hell
For if the fires ever fail their ship's a useless shell

When ships converge to have a war upon the angry sea
The men below just grimly smile at what their fate might be
They're locked in below like men foredoomed who hear not battle cry
Its well assumed that if they're hit the men below will die
For every day's a war down there when the gauges all read red
Twelve hundred pounds of heated steam can kill you mighty dead

I've seen these sweat soaked heroes fight in superheated air
To keep their ship alive and right though no one knows they're there
And thus they'll fight for ages on til warships sail no more
Amid the boiler's mighty heat and the turbine's hellish roar
So when you see a ship pull out to meet a warlike foe
Remember faintly, if you can, the men who sail below.
(copied off  a bulkhead at BT "A" School, Great Lakes, Il.) 
Author Unknown

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Post #680

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of sails and not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Post #656

Have a care therefore where there is more sail than ballast.
—William Penn

Post #614

A whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville

Post #601

True sailors die on the turn of the tide, going out with the ebb.
—Sailor's saying

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Post #545

He who is shipwrecked twice is foolish to blame the sea.
—Publilius Syrus

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Post #71

Ocean sailing does not cease at sunset, or when a motel is reached, or when one is tired of it. It goes on and on, day and night, hour after hour, seasickness, discomfort not withstanding, hammering seas be damned.
—Tom Wicker from 'Rough Passage'

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Post #68

I wish to have no connection with any Ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way.
—John Paul Jones

Post #35

You can't change the wind; you can, however, adjust your sails.

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