8 Bells

A Parable of Immortality By Henry Van Dyke 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 and I stand and watch her until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, " There! She's 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 just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

On 7/9/2014 11:34 PM, Gerald Sobel so… [at] yahoo.com [Cal_Boats] wrote: > > > From the Scuttlebutt Newsletter, > Eight Bells: Wade Paul Hill > <http://email.sailingscuttlebutt.com/t/j-l-ihjiuhy-hdpkjjtk-tj/> > Wade Hill, of Friday Harbor, WA passed away at his home as he wished > (July 7, 1920 – June 17, 2014). > Wade’s great passion in life was yacht racing and in this he was very > successful. He crewed on the Cal 40 Psyche when they won the 1965 > Transpac . After moving to the Northwest, he won the Cal 20 Nationals. I've edited the full post, just to observe that obituaries often remind us how many interesting people there are around us. For Mr. Hill, it makes me wonder what he would have had to say about how Cal 40s and Cal 20s handled--were there any characteristic Bill Lapworth features shared by the big boat and the little boat? Of course, by the time we're reading an obit, it's way too late to ask. What a shame. I knew the first owner of my Cal 20, long before I had sailed one, and he died long before I bought the boat. He was an avid sailor and racer and sailmaker and general eccentric, so it would have been fun to talk about the boat. Meanwhile, we all need to remember that some day each of us will be the subject of an obituary, and we need to lead our lives in a way that will make it interesting. I sailed the Cal 20 last night in moderate air, lacking the stbd. forward lower shroud (that one sacrificed its turnbuckle lower end to the aft lower, which broke). The new turnbuckle ends are scheduled to arrive today. If the new style toggle fits, I'll replace all of them, not just the three that were bent. Chris Campbell