Sunday 9/27/09
It is 12:10 and we just left Dutch Harbor. There is about a 5 foot swell right now, and ominous clouds on the horizon seem to foreshadow much more from whence they come. We had a bit of a fiasco this morning, a slight delay that was solely my fault. Eric is not much of a believer in survival suits-he has sailed for 40 years without them-twice to Antarctica, 4 times around Cape Horn, and now through the Northwest passage. He says that they are unnecessary, that if we were to go down there wouldn't be time to don them, that this boat can't sink unless we hit something or catch fire(it is a self-righting boat due to the ballast system), and lastly he has a life raft right behind the helm. None of those reasons were good enough to convince me that i didn't need one, and i politely told him that I hoped i wasn't offending his sensibility, and though i respected and trusted him as a highly experienced sailor, i still wanted to find a survival suit for purchase. The problem was that that there were no stores open on Sunday, but I at least had to try. To make matters even more awkward, Eric had wanted to depart at 11 in order to miss the heavy afternoon winds that had been forecasted for the harbor. I questioned myself whether this was the right decision, and I felt badly for doubting the experience of such a renown sailor, but i insisted on going into town. I asked a few employees standing outside a closed hardware store if they knew of anyone who sold them on a Sunday morning. They made a few phone calls, and one of them gave me a ride to the other side of the island to pick up a fellow named mark who owned a marine safety store. He opened up shop for me, found me a suit, gave me an expensive locater light for free, took me to a bank so i could get cash(the atm wouldn't let me withdraw the needed amount), he gave me the suit for less then it costed, gave me a ride back to the boat, and wished me well on my way with a kindness that left me bewildered. I made it back to the boat at 12:00 and we were underway 10 minutes later. Starting today's entry with this account does not put Eric in the best light and that is certainly not my intention. He is in fact probably one of the most experienced seamen I have ever met. He used to be a fighter pilot in the british airforce in his younger days, after which he worked for a government laboratory for 35 years building particle accelerators and other highly complicated billion dollar machines. He is more educated and cultured then any seafaring person I have ever met. I surprised him a little when i identified Beethoven's Eroica symphony(#3) after he put in a cd. I hadn't yet told him about my musical background, and he assumed i was just a young kid who listened to all the modern trash that is so prevalent in america's pop culture. We talked music for a while, and i shared a little bit of my family background, including how whit became a conductor in Germany. Our subject conversation somehow moved to the problems of the world and the state of affairs we humans have landed ourselves in, after which we poured ourselves a splash of rum to uplift our spirits disheartened by such depressing subject matter.
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