Slowly, Surely, with a wee bit of Will.

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Wed 4 Jun 2014 04:30
Position: 38 53.4 N 137 30.3 E
Course: North Speed: 2 knots
Wind: F1, Light air
Weather: light alto-stratus, warm
Day's Run: 38 nm (49 sailed and drifted)

While conditions are very light, I find that I am very much enjoying being out here. There is no swell at all, presumably Japan shelters this bit of water from the Pacific rollers, so, as long as there is a puff of a breeze that can be felt, than Sylph ghosts along at a couple of knots as we are doing now. So we haven't gone very far in the last 24 hours, but it has been very relaxing. The spray cloth has been repaired and fitted, and while I had the sewing machine out I sewed some rope into the hoist of the new Australian flags that my sister, Jenny, sent me. So a nice new Australian flag is flying from the backstay. The flag is nice and light so it makes an excellent wind indicator in these light airs. I can lean out of my bunk and see what is is doing and whether I need to set sail or not. If it lies limp we drift, if it stands out at all, then up goes some sail.

This morning, with my studies out of the way for the time being, I have been catching up on some reading of my own choosing. I still have not finished Patterson's “Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets”, so have dipped back into that. Up to sonnet 143, only eleven to go. The Elizabethans were a ribald lot. Sonnets 135 and 136 are just one big dirty, and not so nice, joke it would seem, punning absurdly on Shakespeare's first name, Will. The lady who is the subject of these two “love poems” does not fare so well. Patterson puts it down to the highly probable fact that Shakespeare was gay and had a problem dealing with his feelings towards women. Sounds very plausible. Patterson does make you laugh. For a poet and academic he is totally irreverent. In response to these two poems he says, “When will people cotton on to the fact that 'Viz's Profanisaurus' provides the most remarkable documentary evidence of the continuous innovation in inter- and intra-domain trope in living speech? Its a PhD-mine.” Hmm, well it made me laugh.

But enough of the messing around, I had better attend to a couple of boat chores.

All is well.