“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowline. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain
life-change
Reviewing the blog – a rough path to follow
In February I changed the WordPress theme for this site. This started as a cosmetic gesture – I wanted it to be easier to read and easier to search. However, in the process, it has opened up new possibilities. At the moment, these possibilities are inklings at the back of my aging mind. Discovering them means teasing them out, being honest with myself about what I think I am doing . . . and why. Therefore the aim of this post is to review what’s going on beneath the surface and reassemble the contents. I want to do this without losing the ‘Folksong’ and ’Maritime History’ elements that I started back in 2006. The path I am taking roughly follows this route:
- Visualising the current content
- Reviewing the motives for writing the blog
- Deciding the tools for learning ‘on the job’
- Considering the content and how it might develop
- Putting it all together
- The final tweak . . .
- . . . and Publish
Welcome to Beyond Steeple Point updated!
Easier on the eye, easier to read, easier to get round the site in the few seconds you have to spare.
Stillness in the dark
This series of posts has covered a short voyage. My original intention was to outline – (mostly in images), a trip I made up the rivers Tamar and Lynher in August and maybe make a few comments about waypoints. Experiencing the advantages and disadvantages of waypoints was the exercise I set myself for the trip. On the way, I learnt much more than expected. All voyages involve a personal journey of one sort or another, but, looking back at this one, there were so many things I hadn’t seen or done before. Like many people who finish their day job, I ask myself, “What on earth have I been doing all my life?”
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I go on deck around 0500 to check the rode. I shortened it last evening to keep Blue Mistress out of the shallows as the tide fell.
It is dark. I have rigged an anchor light aft rather than on the normal fore-stay because it throws a useful light over the cockpit. The boat is only 25 foot long so the difference is unlikely to affect any passing boat. Of the two other anchor lights I can see, one is rigged the same way.
Drifting on about technology
The channel narrows and we pass close to ruins of the South Hooe Mine on the outside of the bend.
(Click on image to enlarge)
All the way along the reaches of the Tamar from here was a busy mining area. In its heyday, more tin, copper, silver and arsenic were mined in this region than anywhere else in Europe.
The mines eventually ran out and the mining came to an end very suddenly in the late nineteenth century, the villages and towns emptied and Cornish miners spread all over the world. In a small cemetery in Russell, New Zealand, I was very moved to find the grave of a young miner from Cornwall who died in the late eighteen hundreds. He had made the long voyage, found work . . . and died shortly afterwards, far away from home.
Once the mining had finished, the landowners landscaped the land and it was turned over to market gardening, but a number of remnants of the industry can still be seen – like these useful cuts in the bank.
Rite of Passage
I am watching the Udder Rock buoy further up the coast. The tide is taking us inshore and I head further out to sea to stay to the seaward of it.
This is the third day of this trip, finally a day of wind, sea and sail. The cloud cover is still low, clinging to the tops of the cliffs. There are no other boats visible and, despite being close to the shore. I can see no one on the coast path.
The early mist had given the harbour a silent, closed feel.
(Click on image to enlarge)
2/14 A new tack
Let me ask you a question:
Let us say you have spent most of your life sailing down the same long estuary. Where you started, the head of the estuary was narrow, the product of a meandering stream which had grown into a river. This river joined other rivers, all flowing into the very same estuary. The further you sailed, the wider the estuary became. And as it widened, so you grew. The shoreline contained you but you always had enough sea-room. There were a few navigation problems but no more than on any voyage. Now finally you have reached the open ocean and the opportunity to steer a completely different course. You have a good feeling about this.
But at the last moment the weather turned. Instead of being free to ease the sheets and sail gently away as originally planned, you found yourself sailing into the wind – tacking back and forth across the estuary entrance, hanging on to each tack till the very last moment in the hope of making headway in one direction or another. This was immensely frustrating, each tack seeming longer than the previous one, pushing you ever closer to the shore. There was the temptation to give up and head for the nearest port. However, as the man said, “ships are safe in port, but that’s not what ships are built for,” (Grace Hopper). There is more you want to do, so you kept going – one last tack should do it!
Finally, with one eye on the closing shore, you push the tiller away from you and bring your boat into wind for the last time – the sails flap and the boat slows as it plunges into the waves. You watch the bow, mind the sheets and feel the wind on your cheeks. In a short while you will come round and set off in a new direction – your other hand on the tiller, the wind on the other cheek. In slowing into the tack, there is a very brief pause, a watchful moment to reflect, to look around and see what you see.
Here is my question:
Do you keep what you see to yourself and merely enjoy the moment? Or do you record a note or two? This is a unique moment for you, Should you say something? But this is 2014. Even if you do speak out, you know that last year there were over thirteen and a half million new WordPress blogs on top of the ten million the year before. Isn’t your note going to be lost in the ocean of words you are sailing into? Your few square yards of sea are unique but the wind and the waves will sweep the ripples away the moment you sail on.
Perhaps you should make a record. Others may judge of they want to.
Surely the significant point is that you still have the freedom to say anything at all.
~~~
Although it can be read as a single post, the above is part of a series that illustrates one of the author’s current interests, taken from a locker full of interests, at a major waypoint in his life. The series sets out as a comment on retirement before focusing around language. He wonders whether he himself has the language to cope as he steps out into the wider world popularly known as ‘retirement’ – an irreversible step into a world that he has previously only glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, a world in which he thinks the word ‘retirement’ to be a misnomer. He has used the medium of the blog to paint the picture. The irony is that, whereas writing about it does allow him to reflect, sitting alone at a computer actually distances him from the face-to-face interaction he is describing.
1/14 Writing again
A little perspective. There were 13,704,819 new WordPress blogs in 2013, 10 million the year before. That’s a lot of people writing a lot of words. But we still do it – writing them and hopefully reading them too.
We can’t read them all, so we follow particular blogs. We like the writer’s style or we like the subject and hope to learn more. Over time, we get to know the writer pretty well – or we think we do. And we notice the changes. Maybe the original topic has run its course, (perhaps the particular voyage has come to an end), or maybe the writer has reached a life-changing junction, (a different sort of voyage coming to an end). Few subjects are consistently interesting over a long period and even fewer writers are able to make them so. The blogs that stand the test of time ebb and flow – the writer revealing a pulse that keeps his/her blog alive.
Sometimes there is a longer pause. The writing stops. The writer needs to back away and think for a while. So with this one.
Well over a year ago I decided to finish the day-job. The process of finding a successor and finishing work took over. As life became less certain, I found writing more difficult. And as with the blog, so with the boat, I lost sea-time – something I thought would never happen. The whole process took a lot longer and was a lot more traumatic than I imagined. For a long while it felt like walking a very narrow gangplank with a long drop to the sea and every possibility of falling into it. It’s over now – the stormy period is easing. Maybe I will talk about it when the time is right. I want to start writing consistently again.
~~~
Although it can be read as a single post, the above is part of a series that illustrates one of the author’s current interests, taken from a locker full of interests, at a major waypoint in his life. The series sets out as a comment on retirement before focusing around language. He wonders whether he himself has the language to cope as he steps out into the wider world popularly known as ‘retirement’ – an irreversible step into a world that he has previously only glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, a world in which he thinks the word ‘retirement’ to be a misnomer. He has used the medium of the blog to paint the picture. The irony is that, whereas writing about it does allow him to reflect, sitting alone at a computer actually distances him from the face-to-face interaction he is describing.
Beyond Steeple Point 