SAILING AND DYING

My cousin has been writing poetry. It’s full of angst, but I think it’s good stuff. So, because I am a copycat, I’m posting some prose I found in a brochure in the hospital I work in. It was a brochure next to the chart of a patient who might die soon.

  I am standing upon the seashore.  A ship
at my side spreads her white sails to the
morning breeze and starts for the blue
ocean.  She is an object of beauty and 
strength.  I stand and watch her until at
length she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come to mingle
with each other.

  Then someone at my side says:  "There, 
she is gone!"

  "Gone where?"

  Gone from my sight.  That is all.  She is just
as large in mast and hull and spar as she
was when she left my side and she is just as
able to bear her load of living freight to her 
destined port.

  Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at
my side says:  "There, she is gone!" there are
other eyes watching her coming, and other
voices ready to take up the glad shout:
"Here she comes!"

  And that is dying.

                    Henry Van Dyke

WINTRY WOES

It’s snowing again, where I am. And again, my thoughts turn to warm waters, good winds, and lots of sun, all of which I’m told you get plenty of in the British Virgin Islands (and the U.S. Virgin Islands too, but “British” sounds so exotic to me).

If anyone else is interested in joining me in my hopes to someday sail bareboat in the British Virgin Islands, here is a website that I found a few months ago, written by a guy named Bill Dietrich.

http://www.geocities.com/bill_dietrich/RetireSailboat.html

He retired in 2001 and has been bareboating ever since. His site has some nice information about how to become a live-in charterer. I think it’s important to learn from others’ experience, because if you always learn from your own, you might not live to learn something new!!

SAILING SONGS

Yesterday, another sailing aficionado called me up because he wanted to go sailing. He wanted to bring along two of his friends who are from France. I said, “Sure! We can take one of the bigger boats out then.” It was great to sail and get a French lesson at the same time. I learned a bit about France, and they learned a bit about the U.S. Sailing is never dull. The wind was really dead yesterday — 3 mph most of the time. But, the company was good, and that’s what matters. In fact it took us maybe an hour to get out of the harbor, and we had to ROW most of the time. Fabien and Rosienne started to sing French songs, one of which, when translated to me meant, “Shut up and row. Row, baby, row. We’re not going anywhere, so shut up and row!” I wish we had an English song that could compare to that! In spite of the lyrics, it was actually a very nice song! And somehow in the middle of singing, the wind picked up to maybe 7 mph, and so we got a good bit of sailing done. It was Fabien’s first time to sail. Rosienne said she had sailed a Hobie Cat before, and and she agreed that it is fun when those things are heeling.

Fall off – To cause conscious crew members to become frantic and yell “Man overboard”.

I finally got some time to do some boat maintenance, and replace a rusty paperclip we’d been using to a real ringding. I also fixed some frayed tie-downs, and OW! Burned my finger! Tip for if you’re heat sealing rope with a lighter:

Wrap the rope end with some tape first. Snip off the really frayed parts. Then get out of the wind, if possible. The hottest part of the flame is just above the top of the flame. When you heat the end, make sure your finger is not directly under any melting plastic. Cuz YOWIE! Those drips hurt!

SAILING SEASON!

Today some of my clubmates went sailing without me.  I was indoors all day, doing surgery.  Surgery is a lot like good sailing.  Timing is important.  People doing the right things at the right time, in a speedy efficient manner is the key to successful surgeries and also successful racing.  I have a friend who is really into go-shin jitsu, and I suppose he’d probably equate surgery with that, instead.  Either way, surgery is like an intricate ballet, that requires good coordination and timing, as well as good diagnostic skills.  It’s like sailing, I tell ya!

I’ve been getting brochures in the mail about residency programs, and one of them was from the U.S. Navy.  The brochure talks about doing research and benefits and things like that.  I’m burned out on research.  In the brochure are also lovely pictures of sailboats.  Now, as a resident, you are worked like a dog, I don’t care where you are — civilian or government hospitals — so the idea of sailing is ludicrous to imagine.  Nevertheless, the pictures intrigue me.  Plus, I think it’d be nice to serve my country too.  If anyone’s seen “Black Hawk Down”, you’ll know what I mean.

EARLY SAILING

I actually got to sail this weekend! It was about 13 degrees Celsius, but the wind was very good to us. We took out a Hobie Cat, and met some very nice people who helped us raise the mast. As I have said before, sailors are a mixed bunch, but small-boat sailors are the nicest. I remember once, I was out in a small monohull, and our centerboard got jammed and wouldn’t go all the way down. So we couldn’t sail into the wind to get to the dock. This cabin-boat guy was not very helpful, just sat there on the dock saying “You’re not going to be able to paddle upwind like that.” But he didn’t give us a hand, either. And we had no choice but to paddle, because the shoreline was too rocky to walk the boat upwind. He was a lot of help. Yeah. Big-boat sailors. Pshaw. But, these really nice people helped us step the mast, and the wind was excellent. Better than it was last summer, actually! I got absolutely soaked, and unfortunately was not wearing my wetsuit, because I came straight from making rounds at the hospital. So, both me and the guy I was sailing with got really wet and cold! God, I love it!

I never felt that Hobies tack very fast, but yesterday we did figure out that you can get it to turn without coming to a standstill, by just waiting until the very last moment to let the jib fly over.

I also learned some French words for sailing. If you are close-hauled, that is “Oh-PREH” (with the French r-sound that sounds like a very long K). If you are turning upwind, that is called “LOO-FAH”, and if you turn downwind, that is called “A-BOT”. If you are at a broad reach, that is called “Oh-PORTO”, and if you are wing-on-wing, that is called “SEE-so” (which means “scissors”). “Fast” is ra-PEE-doh. “Slow” (which we weren’t) was “LOONG”.

Yup, had fun yesterday.

My cousin Daniel is such a hoot! He has these quizzes on his page, and according to his current one, he is a “Tequila Sunrise” which just cracks me up because he’s not even of drinking age! So, I took the quiz myself, and got this result:

Combine equal parts of Irish cream liqueur, white creme de cacao, triple sec and vodka.
“Which cocktail are you?”
brought to you by Quizilla

I have to say, though, the above statement is absolutely wrong because I like sailing more than I like candlelight and ice cream, although sailing with ice cream is even better!

I am such a dork! I went out to buy my surgery textbooks and what do I do? I buy Learn Windsurfing in a Weekend. I did buy my surgery textbooks too, and I did read them today. But geez, are they soporific! I made the mistake of reading it in bed, and fell asleep for 5 hrs straight. It probably didn’t help that I was up till 5 AM last night.

Why did I buy a windsurfing textbook? Well, I tried learning windsurfing from the guys at the lake, but, and I hate to admit this, because they *are* nice guys, but windsurfers are usually loner types. They don’t usually like explaining, or even company. That’s been my experience anyway. And so learning has been mostly trial and error for me, and if a book can help me avoid pitfalls, hey! I’m all for it.

Sometime this summer, I intend to take our club gear down to a little local lake, and try my hand at it. Other than rigging it up, I don’t see how it can be much harder than waterskiing!