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You are a man. You decide to sail alone around the world in a 39 foot sloop. It’s 1895.
You are there. The storm arrives, you lash the rudder and sail to the edge of the map.
Supposedly, they didn’t have GPS back then. But they also told you to put your child in a face mask, so anything is possible. (endowment collapse).
Slocum had an easy time of it. Much better than Captain Cook, who was always blundering close to the breakers and in perilous danger of scuttling the ship.
What would it be like? Ink black sea at night, the sound of breakers abeam, only the wind and heavy anchor to save you. Can you avoid being involuntarily careened on the rocky outcrop?
Slocum was given carpet tacks to scatter on his forecastle. If savages boarded the sloop, they would step on a tack with bare, savage, feet, and scream their savage cry. Time enough to grab a rifle and shoot them away. (Patagonia)
Slocum was given a hero’s welcome all around the world. Ports and harbors fully occupied by colonials, his people would invite him aboard their great military steamers and offer respite and victuals.
Here is a takeaway from this book. A lesson I’m trying to learn in my life. I think of my cabin in the woods as Slocum’s ship. Standing on deck, I look out upon the sea and examine the rigging, setting the sails; sometimes triple reefed, sometimes full top-gallants. I lash my rudder making course for the edge of the map.
Three and three cheers for this man.
Yacht club captain of America. Slocum.
Some of my highlights:
Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum
Book last read: 2023-01-12 17:56:38
Percentage read: 100%
Chapter 14: CHAPTER II
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Chapter progress: 15.15%
Highlight: Every particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and the Spray, making good her name as she dashed ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away.
Chapter 15: CHAPTER III
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Chapter progress: 18.61%
Highlight: Good evening, sir,’ I cried; ‘I’m glad to see you.’ Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence
Chapter 15: CHAPTER III
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Chapter progress: 18.61%
Highlight: that of three lighthouses built on it since 1880, two have been washed away and the third will soon be engulfed.
Notes: Don’t tell Thunberg.
Chapter 15: CHAPTER III
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Chapter progress: 19.05%
Highlight: for I had been told that from disuse I should lose my speech.
Notes: Talk more to yourself.
Chapter 15: CHAPTER III
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Chapter progress: 20.78%
Highlight: the air they breathe being about the only thing that is not taxed.
Notes: People on Azores.
Chapter 16: CHAPTER IV
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Chapter progress: 22.51%
Highlight: You did wrong, captain, to mix cheese with plums.
Chapter 16: CHAPTER IV
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Chapter progress: 23.81%
Highlight: If you want to get on well with a true Britisher you must first have a deuce of a row with him.
Chapter 18: CHAPTER VI
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Chapter progress: 30.74%
Highlight: Here, as in many other places that I visited, the natives themselves were not the ones discreditable to the country.
Notes: Colonial invasion force.
Chapter 18: CHAPTER VI
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Chapter progress: 32.9%
Highlight: Farther along in the city, however, survived the good man who wrote on the side of his store, where thoughtful men might read and learn: ‘This wicked world will be destroyed by a comet!
Chapter 19: CHAPTER VII
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Chapter progress: 33.77%
Highlight: The kaleidoscope then changed, and on the following day I sailed in a world peopled by dwarfs.
Chapter 19: CHAPTER VII
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Chapter progress: 35.06%
Highlight: Fuegian
Chapter 19: CHAPTER VII
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Chapter progress: 35.5%
Highlight: Cape Froward, the southernmost point of the continent of America.
Chapter 19: CHAPTER VII
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Chapter progress: 37.23%
Highlight: There was an unfinished newness all about the land.
Notes: Straits of Magellan.
Chapter 20: CHAPTER VIII
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Chapter progress: 38.1%
Highlight: Cape Pillar, the grim sentinel of the Horn.
Chapter 23: CHAPTER XI
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Chapter progress: 48.05%
Highlight: There was not a police officer or a lawyer among them.
Chapter 23: CHAPTER XI
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Chapter progress: 48.05%
Highlight: Although there was no doctor, the people were all healthy,
Chapter 24: CHAPTER XII
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Chapter progress: 52.81%
Highlight: For food the islanders have only to put out their hand and take what nature has provided for them; if they plant a banana tree, their only care afterward is to see that too many trees do not grow. They have great reason to love their country and to fear the white man’s yoke, for once harnessed to the plough, their life would no longer be a poem.
Chapter 25: CHAPTER XIII
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Chapter progress: 55.84%
Highlight: Nothing escapes the vigilance of the New South Wales police;
Notes: face mask enforcers.
Chapter 25: CHAPTER XIII
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Chapter progress: 57.58%
Highlight: rain of blood’, the first of the kind in many years about Australia. The ‘blood’ came from a fine brick-dust matter afloat in the air from the deserts.
Notes: Iron oxide dust particles from space. Chemtrails.
Chapter 26: CHAPTER XIV
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Chapter progress: 61.9%
Highlight: But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?
Chapter 29: CHAPTER XVII
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Chapter progress: 74.46%
Highlight: If you respect the Word of God, you must admit that the world is flat.
Chapter 29: CHAPTER XVII
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Chapter progress: 74.46%
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It sounds odd to hear scholars and statesmen say the world is flat;
Notes: 33.3
Chapter 31: CHAPTER XIX
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Chapter progress: 78.79%
Highlight: Witches at one time were persistent at St Helena, as with us in America in the days of Cotton Mather.
Notes: Cotton Mather.
Chapter 33: CHAPTER XXI
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Chapter progress: 87.01%
Highlight: carpet tacks,
Notes: On deck for savage intruders.
Chapter 36: ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN IN A DORY BOAT
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Chapter progress: 94.81%
Highlight: as my readers can imagine what a cold, damp fog in the night is, especially out at sea in a small boat.
Notes: No thanks.