Still More Sail 4

Sails . . . .and migratory birds share rhythms: following the coast in tune with seasons. New sail and birds appear after having wintered southward over the horizon.

 

Inbound a week or so ago was Juno, launched 2003 in Massachusetts. Scroll down for info here.

 

Arriving about the same time was When and If, built for General Patton in Maine to sail around the world “when and if” he survived the war; most of the rest is history, but he didn’t survive long the postwar long enough to circumnavigate.

 

The vessel above is the length of Juno and When and If combined, although you’d never guess that from this foto. Knickerbocker, less than 20 years old was built—in Wisconsin!

 

And here for a few more days is Pride of Baltimore II.

As Herman Melville says in the first chapter of The Classic,

“Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall northward. What do you see? – Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster – tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No.

They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand – miles of them – leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues, – north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?”

My answer: Yup. Always did and always will.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.