Category: Marvels

I will continue the Rig Survey series next week.. Meanwhile I urge you to take a break from all things nautical, and join philosopher and…

Unbeknownst to both of them, during the decision-making process, the whaleboat was winding up six hundred feet of half-inch nylon line with it propeller. My buddy finally figured it out when a big inflatable boat appeared, coming rapidly up from astern… at first he thought this thing was just coming to see how things were going when, in fact, it wanted to dive under the stern of the whaleboat, explode, and wrap all up in the wheel in a knot as hard as a truck tire.  He and the preacher spent a long time trying to cut the damn thing loose, but they were frustrated by the coldness of the water, the roughness of the fabric of the top-notch dinghy, and by a five horse British Seagull outboard motor that was also wrapped around the wheel and shaft of the whaleboat. 

Heinrich had no sense of humor. I mean literally, he was missing any trace of a sense of humor. He was a solid, reliable deckhand,…

  My friend Jacob Haverfield is a naturalist, among other things. What follows are a couple of excerpts from a letter he once sent me,…