Ted Kennedy - O Captain, My Captain

Two days after he received the diagnosis that spelled doom Senator Edward M. Kennedy was back at the helm of his wooden schooner Mya. "That's all it takes", he said.

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!	5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;	10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,	15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

Walter Leland Cronkite

He didn't relinquish the helm until he crossed the bar.

It is with deep regret that we relay the passing of Walter Cronkite...

The Most Trusted Man in America... Revered and highly esteemed Member of the City Island Yacht Club.

Walter Leland Cronkite

1916 - 2009

Steve Fossett - Voyager

A blog called Voyages must pay tribute to the premier adventurer of our age - Steve Fossett.  The crash site and some of his belongings were found by a hiker and confirmed by the NTSB according to this New York Times acccount.  His plane's wreckage was found by  Preston Morrow, a hiker, at 10,000 feet in the mountains of the Ansel Adams wiilderness in California.

Fossett was a finance man whose wealth was called "vast, eight figure"  in pleadings to declare the missing pilot legally dead before the wreckage and remains were found.  But it was voyaging that owned Fossett, born in 1945 - like me and Van Morrison, to implausibly bracket myself in glory.  Fossett was first around the world in a hot air balloon (solo), first in solo flight around the world, and held the world distance record in a glider - 1,500 kilometers.

But it was sailing that caught my attention.  Driving Playstation, a maxi-catamaran, in 2001 he set the round the world speed record (58 days 9 hours 32 minutes and 45 seconds) and four others, including the Christopher Columbus 1492 route (9 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes and 18 seconds ).    The design genius of Morelli & Melvin  was behind Playstation - the craft for the 2001 campaign, for which Fossett was named Rolex Yachtsman of the Year.

James Stephen Fossett, 63, lost and presumed dead, September 3, 2007, declared dead February 2008.  He leaves his wife of 39 years Peggy Fossett, and a long trail of wonder.