"Sailing alone soothes me because the sea is fair, not cruel. It judges only your ability. It does not care who or what you are. It does not ask your age, color, sex, address, sexual orientation, education or IQ, but only your competence. It requires only that you can sail. If you can, you survive. If you can't, better stay ashore. That's fair, more fair than most of us experience on land...and refreshing."
A sure cure for seasickness? Stand under a tree.
Let those who know not how to pray go to sea.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Give a man a boat, he cannot afford to eat again.
Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah's Ark:
One: Don't miss the boat.
Two: Remember that we are all in the same boat.
Three: Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the Ark.
Four: Stay fit. When you're 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big.
Five: Don't listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.
Six: Build your future on high ground.
Seven: For safety's sake, travel in pairs.
Eight: Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
Nine: When you're stressed, float a while.
Ten: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
'In all systems, as complexity approaches infinity, the mean time between failure drops to zero.'
"Most of my money I spent on boats and women. The rest I squandered'.
"When I die, I want to go quietly, in my sleep; like my grandfather.
Not screaming in terror like his passengers."
CANNON BALLS: In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon, but prevent them from rolling about the deck. The best storage method devised was a square based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of thirty cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem - how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey," with sixteen round indentations. If this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys." Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!"
"Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, much of that comes from bad judgment."
Girls don't lay down in boats they can't stand up in.
Lecky's Wrinkles:
"There is nothing so distressing as running ashore, unless there is also doubt as to which continent the shore belongs."
"There is never any excuse to put the comfort of the crew above the safety of the vessel"
"To me, nothing made by man is more beautiful than a sailboat under way in fine weather, and to be on that sailboat is to be as close to heaven as I expect to get. It is unalloyed happiness."
"The gods do not deduct from a man's allotted span, those days spent sailing."
"Them that dies'll be the lucky ones"
- Long John Silver in Treasure Island
Sailboats are safe in a harbor. But that's not what boats were made for.
To quote Mark Twain:
"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed
by the things you did not do than by the things you did do.
So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is."
"The gravity of the situation is only increased by the slant of the ramp"
A small boat and a suitcase full of money beats a 40 footer tied to the Bank every time.
This new ship here is fitted according to the reported increase of knowledge among mankind. Namely, she is cumbered end to end, with bells and trumpets and clock and wires . . . she can call voices out of the air of the waters to con the ship while her crew sleep. But sleep Thou lightly. It has not yet been told to me that the Sea has ceased to be the Sea.
- Rudyard Kipling
"The man who would be fully employed should procure a ship or a woman, for no two things produce more trouble" - Plautus 254-184 B.C.
"There are three kinds of people in the world,
Those who can count and those who can't."
In the long run, all solutions are temporary, so go ahead and use duct tape.
Flashlight: A cylindrical object that is used to store dead batteries.
And why do you, lad, look so pale?
Is it for love, or lack of ale?
"A powerboat and a sailboat both went to sea. From the powerboat, voices asked - when will we get there? From the sailboat, voices answered - we are!!!"
Sir Francis Bacon, "They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea."
"Son, you have to remember that people like terra firma - the more firma, the less terra."
"Nothing goes to windward like a 747."
Nothing is as permanent as a good temporary solution."
In rough and rolling seas all good sailors sit to pee
Only a fool becomes embroiled in an argument on a singlehanded boat.
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
Approaching a dock with a boat it is like approaching a woman in a bar,
very seldom is a slow approach a poor approach."
"That packet of assorted miseries which we call a ship." - Rudyard Kipling
'If you have to be somewhere by a certain date, you aren't cruising, you're racing.
And my absolute fav of all time...
"My drinking team has a sailing problem!"
Oh, one more:
"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet
so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and
impatient when least effective."
-Henry David Thoreau
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