Losing Time in Spencer Gulf

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Thu 7 Jun 2012 04:18

Noon Position: 34 02.2 S 137 09.1 E
Course: North Speed 4 knots
Wind: East F3, gentle breeze
Weather: mostly sunny, cool
Day's run: 137 nm

We have made good time overnight mostly running square wing on wing before the fresh south easterly breeze and with the tidal streams favouring us, catching the flood to the half way point in Investigator Strait where the tide turned at high water and then the ebb assisted us as we continued west. Once past Althorpe Island I dropped the pole and altered course to the north. Soon we were in behind York Peninsula, the sea eased a little but the sail overnight ended up windier and lumpier than I had anticipated so we have ended up a little west of my planned track. Now the the wind is easing further as a high pressure system starts to dominate the weather pattern and we are losing speed. We should have a nice strong flood tide to carry us further into the reaches of the Gulf about now. I will be interested to see how far we get.

As we start to wallow in Spencer Gulf I continue to wade through “In Search of Time Lost”. Try this on for size for a sentence, Proust writes lots of long sentences but this one is beauty:

So that if I owed to Bloch — for his ‘good tidings’ that beauty and the enjoyment of beauty were not inaccessible things, and that we have acted foolishly in renouncing them for all time — a debt of gratitude of the same kind that we owe to an optimistic physician or philosopher who has given us reason to hope for length of days in this world and not to be entirely cut off from it when we shall have passed beyond the veil, the houses of assignation which I began to frequent some years later — by furnishing me with specimens of beauty, by allowing me to add to the beauty of women that element which we are powerless to invent, which is something more than a mere summary of former beauties, that present indeed divine, the one present that we cannot bestow upon ourselves, before which faint and fail all the logical creations of our intellect, and which we can seek from reality alone: an individual charm — deserved to be ranked by me with those other benefactors more recent in origin but of comparable utility (before finding which we used to imagine without any warmth the seductive charms of Mantegna, of Wagner, of Siena, by studying other painters, hearing other composers, visiting other cities): namely illustrated editions of the history of painting, symphonic concerts and handbooks to ‘Mediaeval Towns.’”

I find it a little hard to pick that he is talking about being introduced into a brothel. I had to read it several times before I could make any sense of it. I actually wrote a paraphrase to make sure, but I won't bore you any further.

Talk about time lost.

All is well.