A supreme value of life is old friendships that don't die. One such that I treasure is that with Bill and Ishrut, who lived next-door to us when we moved into our house in Stoneridge, in Chapel Hill, on August 21, 1983. I still remember the date we moved to North Carolina, too: Bloomsday that same year1. Our new house wasn't ready yet, so we lived in the Carolina Inn for one week, then the rest of the summer in a house in Falconbridge.Ishrut was my wife's best friend. Bill was about the most urbane, sociable man I'd ever met. His company was eminently enjoyable. Both of them were world-traveled and cosmopolitan (and still are). They'd met in Tehran and, I believe, gotten married there. Bill was there on assignment for the international company he worked for. I think his next assignment was in France, before they moved to Chapel Hill. And it was his next assignment, to São Paulo, Brazil, that took them away again, in 1986 or 87.
As I recall, their return to the U.S. was to Connecticut, somewhere near Milford. I remember because that's where they moored their boat, and have continued to moor it the fifteen or more years they've lived in Princeton.
After their annual seasonal letter arrived last year, with its news of their sailing, my daughter told me that her memory from our first years in North Carolina of Bill and Ishrut's being sailors had inspired her twenty years later to take up sailing. This year's letter arrived this week, and I replied with our news, including our daughter's plan to participate with her husband in the Pacific Cup Race to Hawaii next summer, aboard a 42-ft J-type craft. Bill wrote back:
With a J42 they are certainly racing the right boat. With a good set of sails (mostly spinnaker work—and it is down wind (sleigh ride) to the Islands from San Fran, well, actually from Los Angeles). A very serious racing sailor friend of mine participated in this race and was a member of the on-deck night crew—and commented that he pushed the boat very hard during the night—and groused that the day guys were more conservative with shortened sail etc.—which was the principal reason, of course, as to why they did not win the race, etc., etc. Lots of stories.I shared this with my daughter, who wrote to Bill and Ishrut:
My husband and some guys sailed a Catalina 42 in the Pac Cup last year with an asymmetrical spinnaker and they moaned quite a bit about how slow it was and that it would not sail dead downwind or even particularly deep. We don't have that problem with the J42! It came with a carbon fiber pole and an asymmetrical spinnaker and our boat partner (the money in the partnership) has bought a new main, two new jibs, two symmetrical spinnakers, all new running rigging, etc. and we are yet to take the thing to another rigger for some more tweaks on the set up. The boat is currently at the yard and just got a new bottom, rudder repair (looks like we hit that shoal pretty hard back in the summer, LOL), etc. and the guys are taking it from there to another yard tomorrow to have the forward head made legal (holding tank installed). For the Pac Cup we will be running it as hard and fast as we can, considering it is set up for cruising (we will take out the microwave and leave the dinghy at home but we still have a huge stainless radar arch and dinghy davits integrated into the lifeline set up). I am the weakest driver of the six or seven going, but hopefully I will get in enough downwind (and night) practice it the next six months that I will not be completely petrified. <smile> I don't see us shortening sail or taking down the kite unless things get really hairy. We are hoping for wind and not the awful calm of my husband's aborted trip in 2000 where they had to turn around and come back due to running low on food and water!I of course don't understand all of this but am delighted that my daughter speaks sailor so fluently!
Ha ha, it is fun to write that to someone who can understand it! It certainly sounds like you are enjoying your lovely boat!
A special gift of this friendship is what Bill told me today about visiting this blog:
I truly admire and am a fan of your web site. Its content runs deep, but I do manage to glean “stuff”—just the prodigious nature of it amazes me. Anyway, the site resides in my favorites and periodically I call it up to see what’s new!<blush>
_______________
- June 16, 1904, the day that James Joyce met Nora Barnacle. It is commemorated by Joyce as the day the events in his 1922 novel, Ulysses, take place. By the way, I didn't choose Bloomsday to leave California because it was Bloomsday; it was just the first day I could leave—the day after my last obligation to IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory ended.
From the same Bill:
ReplyDeleteYour tag line on your blog spot—"I'm Nobody! Who are you? / Are you—Nobody—too?" [—Emily Dickinson]—reminds me of W. Churchill lamenting to Violet Asquith who he was courting at the time (1908) about the shortage of time to carry out his vision—“curse ruthless time / curse our mortality / curse the allotted span for all we must cram into it.” Then he says shockingly “that we are all worms.” Then he adds—“but I do believe that I am a glow worm!”