Land ho!

Departing for Bermuda, June 1981

Norm Lind, left ~ Jim Covington, foreground ~ Tom Gabriele ~ Bruce Kenney
I'm taking the photograph

I just received this e-mail from Norm Lind. Without his skill at keeping our sails and rigging sharply tuned, as we plowed for more than twenty hours thru a hurricane force tropical depression, we might not have survived. And it was he, standing on the spreaders, high in the rigging, who spotted that tiny island first. Who can forget his ~ Land ho!

Hi Dom,

I saw Tom back in December and he gave me your e-mail and blogsite addresses. Since the day you taught me that Escargots and Jack Daniels are very special gifts from the gods, I have always enjoyed your insights and your tireless pursuit of knowledge and experience. In retrospect, I believe that the small restaurant we dined at in Marion, Massachusetts, prior to our embarkation, was the only place that ever prepared Escargots to absolute perfection. But thankfully, Jack Daniels continues to be available everywhere, even here in Maine.

I should add courage to your attributes. Letting it all hang out on a blog takes that or maybe just a thick skin. But I won’t test that armor of yours and I genuinely agree with your favorite book list and music, et al. Samuel Eliot Morison is a truly great naval historian. Melville's Moby Dick blew me away when I read it the second time three years ago. Imagine stumbling across this particularly pregnant passage, early in the story: Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States; Whaling voyage by one Ishmael, Bloody Battle in Afghanistan.

Sharing that ocean racing experience to Bermuda with you, Tom, Jim and Bruce was one of the greatest adventures of my life. I learned and enjoyed much from it and I am forever indebted to you for allowing me to be one of your crew. I even learned that Rodrigo de Triana was the first one to sight land for another of those “infamous” Italians, Christopher Columbus.

Your own Rodrigo, Norm Lind

These four men were drawn from a pool of about two dozen zealous young bucks. That they chose to follow a doddering old senescent like me to Bermuda, on a boat that I put together in my driveway, brings to mind some echoes of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.