Sailing in the wake of a personal hero

Photo from Alaska.org

The statue of Captain Cook overlooking Knik Arm, Resolution Park, Anchorage.

Bear with me on my rambling thought train today. Last night I fried my microwave. I thought I was
setting the timer and I hit the cook button instead and it ran for 20 minutes with nothing in it. A look at the book today informed me that more than a couple of minutes like that and it will shorten the unit's life.  I can confirm that now.

So, naturally the microwave was in mind today, especially as I went shopping for a new one. As might be deduced, I am not totally familiar with them. Years ago a friend and fellow sailor said he couldn't understand how Captain Cook got all the way around the world without a microwave. Now I understand.

It's a long drive to the store with plenty of time to think and I went with Captain Cook. While I don't claim to be a Cook historian, I did a lot of studying of him when I was working up a spiel for the tour boat I drove for six years. Cook and I had navigated the same waters and in fact he and some of his crew, including William Bligh and George Vancouver, who returned later named many of the geographical features that I pointed out to the tourists.

Prince William Sound where we operated (Cook named it Sandwich Sound after the earl who helped finance his expeditions) is noted for its relatively calm waters. There was only one spot on our trip that could storm up into any kind of rough. Leaving the Columbia Glacier we had to cross the southern end of Valdez Arm which is one of the few places in the Sound open to ocean waves.  At times we could hit five or six footers in there and as they were on the beam, it made the passengers very uncomfortable.

I had a scheme there. If it was calm I gave a short talk about Cook's explorations in the Sound. But if it was rough, I had a talk about Cook that could go on for an hour. I would give it in a low monotone thinking one of two things would happen.  Either people would listen intently taking their minds off the rough water, or it would put them to sleep.  Either way they could make the passage with the least discomfort. It usually worked.

I would go so far as to tell them the story of the sauerkraut where after learning from German sailors, Cook forced his officers to eat the foul stuff and forced them to like it in order to get the common sailors to eat it. This was part of the reason Cook or his crew made three circumnavigations losing only one person to scurvy, and that fellow likely already had it when he was impressed off another ship in the Indian Ocean.

With all of Cook's accomplishments, that little expanded vignette should give you an idea of how long and how dull that talk could be. Despite purposely making his story dull, I greatly admired all  that Cook managed to do over his lifetime, from guiding the British Navy up the St. Lawrence to attack Quebec to being the first to figure accurate longitude and to chart many parts of the world unknown at the time. Today Cook's charts still hold up for their accuracy. Mind you this was in the late 1700s.

I thought so much of him that when I attempted or raise the money for a boat I could single-hand on the big ocean I planned to name it the Captain James Cook. To me it sounded like a grand name to use on the radio when entering some harbor where he had been. In time I had to reduce my dream to a smaller boat which I intended to call Just Jimmy.

There is a statue of the Great Navigator hard by the shore of Knik Arm in Anchorage looking out over the water, sextant in hand, the way he must have stood on the deck of his ships exploring Alaska's coast so many years ago. One amazing man. But how he did it all without a microwave, well, who knows. Can you cook sauerkraut in a microwave?

This is my favorite biography of Cook: The Life of Captain James Cook by J.C. Beaglehole