Imperfect Passage: A Sailing Story of Vision, Terror, and Redemption by Michael Cosgrove-Book Review-Five Stars

 

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

Imperfect Passage: A Sailing Story of Vision, Terror, and Redemption by Michael Cosgrove

This is a great book and a thought-provoking story packed with humorous witticisms. Make no mistake about it, this book is an emotional rollercoaster ride.

I was 32 years old and my wife Jane was 28 when we went over the horizon on our own homemade 46-foot sailboat, Dursmirg. We only had one regret….we didn’t leave sooner. We fulfilled our dream many times over and our adventures generated four books.

Michael Cosgrove’s fast moving book awakened many unforgettable memories.

Imperfect Passage is worthy of more than five stars.

Excerpts:

Playing golf at eighty is not an attractive picture. I had played with some octogenarians before, so I was familiar with how that goes. Here’s a bit of science for you: men in their eighties are weak and slow.

At sixty, it dawned on me for the first time that longevity wasn’t so much a concern as the quality of life I would be experiencing in the years to come. The picture of myself doddering in a wheelchair with oatmeal dripping off my chin scared the hell out of me. Over and over in my head, I heard: “Boy, you only have fifteen, maybe twenty years left

Sheehy hadn’t bothered to write about the eighties, or perhaps that she simply couldn’t come up with a snappy phrase for them, basically said it all. The “Easy Eighties?” I think not. How about the “Aching Eighties.” The “Ehh, Sonnyboy Eighties.” The “Amen-It’s-Over Eighties.” Have to write those down and send them to Sheehy for her inevitable sequel, The Final Passage. I bought the damn book anyway and started taking notes:

I no longer needed to perform for others; I would answer only to myself. My new mantra would be, “Think young, stay young.” If you’re not busy living, you’re busy dying. Go out and live your dream.

“Why don’t they ever go?” “Lots of reasons. I’ve heard ’em all. We’re waiting for the kids to graduate. We’re waiting for Uncle Joe to die and leave us the inheritance. Best one I think I ever heard: we’re waiting for our cats to pass away.”

I’ve seen enough of both sides of the divide to know that money and material objects can destroy the soul. Opulence can wrench families apart, and even our middle-class values no longer sufficiently emphasize togetherness, family, neighbors, human relationships. By our standards, the Polynesians are poor, very poor. But, if you asked them if they feel poor, they would laugh and tell you they are not poor but happy, very happy, with the only way of life they have ever known. I have no statistics to support this supposition, but I am sure that, given the lower rate of stress, the Polynesian people live happier and longer lives than the folks back home in the Mecca of materialism, Orange County, California.

Each crossing got a little bit easier. I’ve always been a firm believer that you can’t do well what you don’t do often. It makes no difference what the activity—sailing across oceans, solving complicated math problems, or making love.

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Sailing Beyond Lake Superior; A dreamboat becomes reality

In this collage of photos I sit at my drafting table and ponder the plan that will next become an inch-to-a-foot scale model used to loft the lines for the 46-foot finished vessel. 

The next photo is our wedding photo, then our sailing dinghy, and our dreamboat Dursmirg fully rigged and under way. Living out of the sea and off the land: 

Jane displays a flounder she caught and will prepare fresh from the sea. In the next photo I am blowing a conch horn, which is a sign of a seasoned Florida sailor, then our helm wheel, and a toast to a successful launch.

 Bottom photos: Our home designed and built multipurpose dinghy and Dursmirg, our floating home under sail. 

Read the rest of this story in Sailing Beyond Lake Superior: Travels of Dursmirg, available in paperback and digital editions worldwide.

Many a dreamboat has been scuttled by procrastination.

Sailing: Ecologically Friendly Living

GOING WHERE THE WIND BLOWS, WHEN THE SPIRIT MOVES US, AND THE PRICE IS RIGHT.

My dear old Dad used to say; “You never know when someone is doing you a favor.”

While living aboard and sailing our home designed and built dreamboat during an Arab oil embargo, we discovered that Dad was right. We now had the time to think about Mother Nature doing the work for us, cleanly and effortlessly.

Yes, someone was indeed doing us a favor. That favor altered the rest of our lives in a pleasantly positive way.

Read the rest of the evolutionary account in the Travels of Dursmirg sailing series; Sailing Beyond Lake Superior, Sailing the Sea Islands, Sailing the Florida Keys and Sailing to St. Augustine. All are available in paperback and digital world wide. Click here.

Next we invite you to view the culmination of our accumulated ecologically friendly knowledge by touring our chemically free, self ventilating, self sustaining slice of paradise home that is also a jungle sanctuary within the city of Mérida, Yucatan. This past spring, summer and fall here in tropical Yucatan we did not use a fan one single night…a testimonial to the success of this home with no mechanical air conditioning.  

Sailing the Florida Keys

Excerpts from Sailing the Florida Keys by John M. Grimsrud

Jim and Mary Flood;

Jim and Mary Flood were the owners of a twin-engine sport fishing boat named Mistress… Jim’s reason for owning the Mistress was to have headquarters for a dockside party…With a glib Irish wit and party mentality, Jim poured all visitors his potent high-octane and nearly lethal concoction that Jim jokingly called “cherry bounce.” It felt like 200 proof!

Jim had worked for Household Finance in Chicago and later Collagen Water Company where he made enough dough…Jim owned five different planes that included a DC-3 and a Piper Aztec before he came to the sunny southland to lay back. Jim drove the biggest Lincoln Continental available and owned the biggest house on the block…in the high-rent district. Jim joined the sailing community when he bought a classic Crocker designed 40-foot sailboat named Puffin with a dinghy aptly named Huffin.

Jim Flood aboard Puffin in, Melbourne Harbor.

Puffin

Jim and Mary Flood … anchored…south of Melbourne with their Puffin…his spiffy yacht that now looked like a show room specimen with its meticulous paint and varnish work. We had a fabulous time together catching fish for our dinner. Jim had a knack for landing trout, and Jane had the talent to cook.

When Jim and Mary got ready to leave, I gave a demonstration of how to sail up their anchor without using the engine…I pointed Jim’s pristine yacht in the proper direction, sheeted in the sails for optimum speed and performance, handed the helm over to Jim, and I got into my dinghy giving Jim and Mary a thumbs-up when they briskly sprinted off on a beam reach. We were later told this was the very best sail they ever had.

Jim, a scientific wine maker: Jim’s exact and precise procedures for making wine were without dispute the only acceptable way to make wine. Jim and Mary came to our boat for dinner, and Mary went to great lengths to compliment Jane on her exquisite wine…would not quit her praise… Jane is a fine wine maker…what made this incident hilarious was that the wine was made using Welch’s concentrated grape juice… we had heard Jim go extremes to profess his scornful disdain for wine made from concentrated grape juice. We knew that Jim knew this was concentrate wine, and we could sense him smoldering. Mary either knew this was wine from concentrate and was giving her husband the business or if she did not know, then Jim knew we were just getting a chance to see him squirm.

Another Jim Flood wine story: Jim told Jane that we needed to take advantage of the prolific fox grapes to be harvested in the area. We talked to our friend Harold and asked if he knew of any fox grapes. next we were off on another all-day excursion into the county down the back roads that just happened to yield lots of fox grapes and a number of taverns where Harold was well known. Jane followed Jim’s exact winemaking instructions with the fox grapes and sugar, but in the end we wound up with the driest mouth puckering wine ever produced aboard Dursmirg or for that matter the driest red wine we have ever sampled. When Jane gave Jim a glass of the finished wine to sample, Jim’s comment to Jane was: “It's always considered a good idea to wash the feet before stomping, and in good society it is considered that the shoes as well as the socks should be removed. If the socks have been worn for more than two weeks, they have a tendency to add certain piquancy to the finished product, though after the first bottle or so the unique flavors tend to disappear.”

End of excerpts.

We met Jim and Mary Flood on our yearly excursions to south Florida aboard our live-aboard sailboat Dursmirg. We made the Indian River area and Melbourne a regular anchoring stopover. The boating community included the Floods plus many others who became our life-long friends. Mary passed away a few years ago, but Jim is still ticking and keeps the jokes flowing.

These interesting people and many fascinating places are part of our Travels of Dursmirg sailing series. The Indian River is included in Sailing the Florida Keys, Volume 3. 

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Streets of Merida, Yucatan - VW - Car of the Century

VW in Mexico: Volkswagen was the car of the century and number one in Yucatán from the 1960s to the 1990s when more than 9 out of 10 vehicles were Beetles = Bugs, (or called Sedáns in Spanish).

The Beetles were produced in Puebla, Mexico.  Sales soared because of strict import regulations, low prices, and any shade tree mechanic could keep them running with readily available parts.

In the streets of Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico, the VW love affair is still alive and well. Those old cheap Beetles and transporter vans are now cherished collectables.

Jane and I became a part of this mania and owned six VW camper vans that led us to more than twenty years of far flung adventures across Europe, Canada, U.S., and Mexico. That adventure story is part of our latest publication: Sailing to St. Augustine, volume 4 of the Travels of Dursmirg series. Click the link to look inside: Sailing to St. Augustine: Travels of Dursmirg.