Cassius Takes the Helm

 I've had Cassius on North River 2 since he was three months old - July 4, 2020!  Sometimes he likes it, sometimes he wants to go on the "fast boat, not the sailboat".  But I'm hopeful that yesterday was a turning point.  He got to steer.  Taking command increases confidence.  A soft steady breeze after days  of rain from a passing hurricane Ophelia.

With Taisy at his side Cassius rose to the occasion.

- GWC

Two kinds of people: the motion of a boat is like 

being rocked in a cradle and those for whom it is NOT.

Profile of Gunks Climbers Liza Mills - Climbing/Outside

Liza Mills and husband Jordan

So I usually post about adventures at sea.  But these two - son and daughter in law of friends of Marilyn from tai chi - are sailors too.  They circumnavigated in a 35 foot boat.  We'd heard about that but only recently discovered their history as climbers.  As parents of two, she climbs, the other doesn't - not anymore.  Open ocean is low risk for this pair.

- GWC

What's a Nice Jewish Girl from Brooklyn Doing in Places Like this?

Liza Mills has climbed 25 Grade V (or harder) walls, had epics with Lynn Hill, sailed across the world in a 35-foot sailboat, taught art in a city dubbed its state’s “murder capital,” and, at 48, still climbs 5.13. And she has big plans ahead.

AUGUST 31, 2023SUSAN E.B. SCHWARTZ

Risk is fickle. As nice Jewish girls from Brooklyn know.

Ask Liza Mills. 

On Mills’s second big wall she found herself partnering with Lynn Hill, a dear friend from the Gunks, who, after moving from New York to Yosemite, passed the mantle of top Gunks woman climber to Mills. Still, Mills recalls, “When we’d walk around Camp 4, climbers looked at me, like, Huh? Who’s that?”

“Meanwhile everyone knew Lynn. She was climbing’s rock star.”

Their route, El Cap’s West Face (VI 5.11c, 20 pitches), should have been a stroll for the duo. But as Mills knew from her childhood in Brooklyn: Risk is everywhere. 

Example: Hydration backpacks.

Mills explains, “Neither of us had ever used one and couldn’t tell how much water was left in them. It was a super hot day and by the tenth pitch, to our horror, we ran out of water.”

Hill adds, “But with half the climb left, we had to keep going.”

KEEP READING

Barry Lopez, Lyrical Writer Who Was Likened to Thoreau, Dies at 75 - The New York Times

I just discovered Barry Lopez (1945-2020).  Author of six novels and the National Book Award (once a winner, the second as a finalist) as a naturalist.  My bad.

I'm reading his  Arctic Dreams (1986)- thanks to Thrift Books algorithm - having recently read This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich.

But it's not enough to say in a cursory way that his writing is lyrical.  So here is an excerpt:

If we are to devise an enlightened plan for human activity in the Arctic, we needa ore particularized understanding of the land itself - not a more refined mathematical knowledge but a deeper understanding of its nature, as if it were, itself, another sort of civilization we had to reach some agreement with.  I would draw you, therefore, back to the concrete dimensions of the land and to what they precipitate; simply to walk across the tundra; to watch the wind stirring a little in the leaves of dwarf birch and willows; to hear the hoof-clacket of migrating caribou.  Imagine your ear against the loom of a kayak paddle in the Beaufort Sea, hearing the long, quivering tremolo voice of the bearded seal.  Or feeling the surgical sharpness of an Eskimo's obsidian tool under the stroke of your finger.

- GWC

Barry Lopez, Lyrical Writer Who Was Likened to Thoreau, Dies at 75 - The New York Times

by  Robert D. McFadden

Published Dec. 26, 2020Updated Jan. 12, 2021

Barry Lopez, a lyrical writer who steeped himself in Arctic wildernesses, the habitats of wolves and exotic landscapes around the world for award-winning books that explored the kinship of nature and human culture, died on Friday at his home in Eugene, Ore. He was 75.

His wife, Debra Gwartney, confirmed his death and said that Mr. Lopez had had prostate cancer. She said the family had been living in a temporary home in Eugene since September, after their longtime home along the McKenzie River, near Finn Rock, Ore., was consumed by a wildfire.

In a half-century of travel to 80 countries that generated nearly a score of nonfiction and fiction works, including volumes of essays and short stories, Mr. Lopez embraced landscapes and literature with humanitarian, environmental and spiritual sensibilities that some critics likened to those of Thoreau and John Muir.

He won the National Book Award (nonfiction) for “Arctic Dreams” (1986), a treatise on his five years with Inuit people and solitude in a land of bitter cold and endless expanses. There he found that howling storms could craft mirages — a hunter stalking a grizzly bear that, as he approaches, turns into a marmot, or a polar bear that grows wings and flies away: only a snowy owl.

Grounded Expedition Cruise Ship Freed in Remote Greenland Fjord

Grounded Expedition Cruise Ship Remains Stuck in Remote Greenland Fjord: 

But three days after grounding the ship was pulled free by the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources fishing research vessel Tarajoq.  Salvage costs of 3.8 million Danish Kroner were agreed upon.  The hull was not breached by the grounding in soft arctic silt. The tide on Greenland's west coast at Alpefjord is less than 2 meters.

“We’re really happy that it went so well and that the passengers and crew of the ship can now see an end to the difficult situation they’ve been in for the last few days,” said Captain Brian Jensen, Commander of Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command. “Regardless that no one was in direct danger, I understand if being stuck in such a deserted area with no possibility to move forward has been uncomfortable.”

Initial attempts to refloat the Ocean Explorer at high tide were unsuccessful, prompting the assistance of the Knud Rasmussen, an offshore patrol vessel with the Royal Danish Navy, which was located 1,200 nautical miles away. The Knud Rasmussen was expected to arrive at the scene Friday evening, but has now been stood down.

Jimmy Buffett - parting shot

USS Nautilus: On Top of the World, Under the Ice - gconk@fordham.edu - Fordham University Mail

USS Nautilus: On Top of the World, Under the Ice - 

USS NAUTILUS (SSN-571) National Archives Identifier 77273

The various quests to reach the North Pole were equal parts danger and glory, with scientists and thrill-seekers alike pushing the limits of human endurance and technology. While the explorers Frederick Cook in 1908, Robert Peary in 1909, and Richard E. Byrd in 1926 all claimed to have first reached the geographic North Pole on foot, and the 1926 journey of the Italian-built, semi-rigid airship Norge  was the first verified craft to reach it by air, the USS Nautilus was the first sea vessel to accomplish the same feat in 1958.

The USS Nautilus (SSN-571), a nuclear-powered submarine that was created from the ambitious mind of Admiral Hyman Rickover, challenged the limits of scientific innovation during Operation Sunshine in 1958. With ice year round, the North Pole was inaccessible by all ships. However the use of nuclear technology in compact, submersible vessels allowed the Nautilus to move faster and stay underwater up to seven times longer than previous submarines. According to the Nautilus deck log on August 3, the submerged ship “proceeded further north than any other previous ship in history” at 0812 hours. Then, at 1915 hours, it passed the North Pole and became the “first ship to do so under its own power.”

[Hyman Rickover in 1981] ADM Hyman G. Rickover, deputy assistant secretary for naval reactors, Department of Energy, speaks at the commissioning of the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine USS OHIO (SSBN-726), National Archives Identifier 6352639

Nautilus (SSN-571) - August 1958, page 9, National Archives Identifier 181921919

Many more submarines have transited the geographic North Pole since then. One noteworthy example is the USS Skate (SSN-578), which at 1600 hours on March 17, 1959, breached the ice as it surfaced at the top of the world.

USS SKATE (SSN-578) IN ICE North Pole Area, National Archives Identifier 83024

Frontiers of human endurance and technology will always be broken. Ten years after the Nautilus and the Skate reached and breached the top of our planet, man’s first steps appeared on the moon. By foot, by sled, or by ship, what steps in our long march of history might appear tomorrow?   Would you like to learn more about Polar Exploration?  Check out these blog posts:  Mystery of the Arctic Ice: Who was First to the North Pole  Images of the Week: Polar Expeditions Women of the Polar Archives: The Films and Stories of Marie Peary Stafford and Louise Boyd

Vanish- Georgetown, BVI

 Larry Van Tuyl sold his auto dealership network to Berkshire Hathaway for $4.5 billion. Now he heads their auto dealership group. n As one who has hitched his financial star to Berkshire and pur Manhattan riv vu cooper apartment, should I be a little embarrassed by his extravagance?.  For the 12 guest a crew of twenty...

Anyway the helicopter is cool, as are the panels on either side from which smaller craft emerge.

Clark Island Quarry - Spruce Head, Maine

 

RUTH - a 1935 Maine-built touring boat

The folks at Portland Schooner Co.  have purchased - and plan to launch tomorrow - RUTH - a 1935 touring boat.  Built in Falmouth Maine in 1935 by Handy Boat Company it will be returning from Friendship to its home waters after years as a lake boat.  I'm sure she will appreciate the preservative virtues of salt water. - GWC

At Lash Brothers, Friendship for minor repairs.

 

Friendship - July 2023