The Hammock Papers: sailing

Showing posts with label sailing. Show all posts

15 August 2026

Ever.

Kramer, Summer Swells, n/d

No one wants to row who has ever sailed.

Arthur Ransome, from Swallows and Amazons

03 August 2026

Fourteen knots is just a little less than twenty miles an hour. In land terms, that's about the speed you are allowed to travel through a school zone in your car. It does not seem very fast, but at one time it was as fast as any vehicle on earth traveled.

Jimmy Buffett, from A Salty Piece of Land

I'll take it.

31 July 2026

29 July 2026

Kelley & Holmes, Friend, 1888

26 July 2026

Ask.

The VAGABOND

Give to me the life I love

Let the lave go by me.

Give the jolly heaven above

And the byway nigh me.

Bed in the bush with stars to see

Bread I dip in the river -

There's the life for a man like me,

There's the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late

Let what will be o'er me.

Give the face of earth around,

And the road before me.

Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,

Not a friend to know me.

All I seek, the heaven above

And the road below me.

O let autumn fall on me

When afield I linger

Silencing the bird on tree

Biting the blue finger.

White as meal as frosty field -

Warm the fireside haven -

Not to autumn will I yield,

Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late

Let what will be o'er me

Give the face of earth around

And the road below me.

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,

Nor a friend to know me.

All I ask, the heaven above

And the road below me.

Robert Louis Stevenson

20 July 2026

Mackinac.

Boats racing in the Bayview to Mackinac have begun to make it to the island.

Watch from The Windemere or The Island House.

18 July 2026

Mackinac.

The 102nd Bayview to Mackinac Race begins today.

Watch live onboard Hot Ticket and Nobody's Fault ...

Track the boats HERE.

Watch the finish from the front yard of The Windemere.

17 July 2026

More.

Put out more flags.

15 July 2026

More.

Put out more flags.

12 July 2026

First

White Hawk, first of the cruisers to finish ...

Track the race HERE.

Watch the fleet finish from The Windemere.

White Hawk.

With about 30 nautical miles to go, White Hawk is leading the way ...

Track the race HERE.

Watch the fleet finish from The Windemere.

11 July 2026

10 July 2026

Mac.

The 117th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac begins today ...

Track the race HERE.

Watch the fleet finish from The Windemere.

09 July 2026

Mackinac.

The 117th Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac starts tomorrow.

06 May 2026

Ted Turner, Rest in Peace

Ted Turner has passed.

Fair winds and following seas, skip.

19 March 2026

Herreshoff.

Herreschoff, Westward, 1910

16 March 2026

Big.

Jones, Big Sticks Weetamoe and Vanitie, 1933

10 March 2026

Imagine.

Imagine losing your rudder out at sea and sending out a distress call. And then the largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship in the world comes to your rescue. Or in the words of the sailors on the sailing boat: "This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it?"

28 January 2026

Simple.

While I have the gravest doubts about the durability of any of my writing, few can beat me at the graceful dance of knife, fork, and spoon across the plate or the capacity to make a pickle last as long as a sandwich. I have thought of rigging tiny lights to my eating utensils and getting myself filmed while eating in the near dark: imagine, if you will, the dancelike swirl of these points of light. Just last evening in my cabin, the performance took place over a humble, reduced-calorie Tuscan stew (very lean Muscovy duck, pancétta, white beans, copious garlic, fresh sage, and thyme). Since I was alone in the twilight, the applause rang a bit hollow.

To be sure, our limitations strangle us, letting us know who we are. On a semireligious level, normally we have a secret animal we favor, but this is dangerous territory. Never tell a government official your secret animal, since it will one day be used against you. On a more mundane plateau, if you were a boat, what kind of boat would you be? You must be honest, since I can't interrogate you, what with each of us being alone. No dream boats, grand sloops, ghostly galleons, if you please. As for me, and I'm doing the writing here, I have long confessed to being a tugboat: slow, rather stubby, persistent, functional, an estuarine creature that avoids open water.

Jim Harrison, from "The Tugboats of Costa Rica"

I'd be -- I am -- a simple Sunfish.

12 January 2026

Private.

The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

Louis Brandeis

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL