Southern Ocean - photo of the day Volvo Ocean RAce

March 26

Navigation Computer (technical post) | Issuma

How he does it...techniques that Richard Hudson has developed in his voyaging.  Argentina, Brasil, labrador, Greenland, the Northwest Passage, Bering Sea, Inside passage, Pacific Coat, Easter island,and now in Puerto Montt, Chile. Where next? South.

Navigation Computer (technical post) | Issuma



'via Blog this'

Issuma: Puerto Montt, Chile

A few weeks back Richard Hudson and crew Max made the journey from Easter island to Chile.  About six hundred miles south of Santiago is the city of Puerto Montt. A city of 150,000 it is beautiful now but at 41 S and 73 W it is due south of New York and at comparable latitude.  The weather turns cold and wet soon. Like Irish winter - high of 50 F, low of 38 F is the average in July.  It is at the north end of a great Gulfs of Ancud and Corcovado about 700 miles north of Cape Horn - a landmark I expect Issuma to pass on its way south. - gwc

In the wake of Typhoon Pam

The tail end of  Cyclone Pam - which brought devastation north - provides power reaching for the six Volvo Ocean Race boats a couple of days out from Auckland, NZ on their way to Brazil.  A helicopter catches the fun. - gwc

Dinner with Dad at Sicily, Ventura

Note any familial resemblances?

Peter, Dad, Nancy, and I at Sicily,
Main Street, Ventura

End of an era

My parents home in Santa Barbara for forty two years.

Thomas Merton and the Eternal Search - The New Yorker

A convert to Catholicism, a searcher, a monk, and a celebrity.  Fr. Thomas Merton was all of those things.  He represented openness despite the cloister, or was it because of the cloister?  He had been a conscientious objector in WW II because he was not a warrior and was committed to the Trappist monastery he had not yet joined.  He explored his own life in and out of the cloister, looked to eastern mysticism in a serious way - and tragically died at 52 - electrocuted in the shower  in a monastery in Thailand.  We are still shocked that the pilgrim  had died so arbitrarily,with so much yet to be seen, thought, and said.  - gwc

Thomas Merton and the Eternal Search - The New Yorker
by Paul Elie

Here ends the book, but not the searching. Thomas Merton ended “The Seven Storey Mountain” with a little Latin to that effect: Sit finis libri, non finis quaerendi. Set tombstone-style in small caps, at once pompous and obscure, it runs against the spirit of the book, which is personal, casual, talky, and self-deprecating—the story of a conversion to Catholicism and a call to a Trappist monastery as the adventures of a young New York dangling man.***

“Well, what is it that I have been trying to say?” he asked in the same piece. After dismissing the obvious answer—that he was trying to make a case for the contemplative life—he answered the question with another question. “When a man enters a monastery he has to stand before the community and formally respond to a ritual question: Quid petis? ‘What do you ask?’ His answer is not that he seeks a happy life, or escape from anxiety, or freedom from sin, or the summit of contemplation. The answer is that he seeks mercy. ‘The mercy of God and the Order.’ ” That, Merton declared, is what he had sought, and he offered his writing as evidence “that I have found what I sought and continue to find it.”

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Greenland Glacier Collapses

Cameras Were Placed In A Remote Area In Greenland. What They Captured Is Stunning And Terrifying

Frozen Fishing From a New England Port - NYTimes.com

New Bedford harbor

Frozen Fishing From a New England Port - NYTimes.com

by Katherine Q. Seelye



NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Mark Abraham, who has fished the New England coast for decades, kept a sharp eye on his catch as the slimy haddock spilled onto a dockside conveyor belt. He had just returned from 10 frigid days at sea, among the most brutal he has spent.

“It’s probably been the worst winter in 10 years,” he said as workers sorted the fish by weight and slid them into bins. “It’s not even the ice that’s stopping you, it’s the wind. It’s too rough to fish. If it’s rough like that, you don’t catch anything.”

This winter has pounded much of New England with record snowfall, encased the region in a deep freeze that has kept the snow from melting, and disrupted work, school and lives in general for millions of residents. Here in New Bedford, the top commercial fishing port in the nation, the winter has also slowed commerce, as was instantly apparent from Mr. Abraham’s relatively meager haul.

He unloaded 18,800 pounds of haddock at the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction here; Richard Canastra, president of the auction, said that in good weather, Mr. Abraham might have brought in 40,000 pounds.'via Blog this'

Ice floes -late winter

We just had the coldest February in 80 years in New York.  Average temperature 84 F!

Hunters Island, Pelham Bay Park

Hunter's Island, Pelham Bay Park

GW Bridge and Ft. Lee

North River from Chittenden Ave, Washington Heights

GW Bridge from CastleVillage

Friendship harbor - Maine