Man of Ideas Meets Man of Adventure

I'm a former college professor from the east coast who has never knowingly put my life at risk. There is a rare breed of men who do exactly that. My life adventures have been limited to competitive sports, climbing the academic ladder, exploring exciting ideas and learning about the world through contacts with others, some travel and reading.

Yesterday I learned some new things about the world, the non terrestrial world, the world of the sea. Like so many others I have always been drawn to the coast. Perhaps it was all those youthful days and nights spent swimming or trolling for girls on blankets or on the boardwalk at Jones Beach in N.Y. Perhaps it was those Saturdays spent with my father on crowded, deep sea fishing boats, departing from City Island piers at Godly awful hours of the morning. But I was never that far from dry land and civilization.

We, my wife and I, were at Old Saybrook, in Connecticut Island and I struck up a conversation with an ordinary looking solitary, middle aged guy who happened to be nearby. His sleek black ten speed bike leaned against a nearby tree. He had biked there from his home in Essex. Well he was anything but ordinary, he was an adventurer, the kind you read about, but rarely meet. I too like biking and meeting him at the waters edge I commented how biking has somethings in common withHe had been a Special Forces Officer in Vietnam and had trained raw West Point graduates who thought they knew it all. Throughout our lengthy conversation I kept having lines and verbal images from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" pop into my head. You see, this impressive and eloquent sailor had sailed, along with eight other crew members on a 58 foot sloop around the Cape of Good Hope, off the southern tip of South America, a section of the ocean not made for men of prudence or caution. It is a Hellish place and a way of testing yourself against the furies of nature. Our newly found friend, like the mariner in the story, had repeated, almost spiritual experiences, with albatrosses while in the deepest most southern seas. He didn't kill one with a crossbow but came close, because the creature with ten foot wings would dive for the bait they were using to snare tuna and would get caught on the oversized hooks.

Unlike the poetic narrative of Coleridge these sailors were to be tested, not by an absence of wind, but by too much wind 45 to 50 knots worth. The Albatross, in contrast thrive on powerful winds, they need wind to fly, for their wings are for gliding not for takeoffs or flapping. His Epiphany was sounded by the roar of a rogue wave that came out of nowhere hitting broadside and throwing all that had just been vertical onto the horizontal including the masts. Jack described being thrown clear out of the cabin into the turbulent waters. Luckily his tether which was connected to the steel railing didn't break and while the boat was being righted he was able to pull himself back in. To this day he can feel that connection to his life jacket yanking furiously at his chest.

The Cape of Good Hope is an island off the coast but in reality it is the southern extension of the Andes mountain chain. It is a rock island an outcropping surrounded by cross winds coming from three directions, the point where the Atlantic meets the Pacific with huge furious converging waves.

They sailed in waters so far south there were no land impediments to buffer the movements of water so waves would grow in height and accelerate in speed. Jack shared with us a bit of seafaring lore. Sailors have nickmames for winds at the different latitudes: the roaring forties, the furious fifties and the screaming sixties. "When you are south of 40 degrees latitude there are no laws. South of 60 degrees there is no God.

When it was time to go I explained to Jack that I was late for a wedding. He smiled knowingly.