Bruce....I've always found those type of stories interesting, about the war I mean. Two days ago I was in the dentist office and noticed a elderly gentleman wearing a 79th infantry division cap. I slid down and talked with him for awhile about his service in the European theater. The language he used was most descriptive about his action across Europe, in the end he would just shake his head and say horrible. He was wearing two large hearing aids without which he was stone deaf from loading and firing artillery shells. My father was there, also in Korea.....I never knew the guy, he left when I was 2yrs old.
About Tahiti, I sailed into Papeete harbor without an engine....my old volvo md3 had gave way back in the Galapagos. What comes to mind is a book I had read a while back "The Long Way" By Bernard Moitessier and his own incredible story of his participation in the first Golden Globe Race, a solo, non-stop circumnavigation rounding the three great Capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin, and the Horn, from there he was ahead of his closest competitor by a good deal and would have easily won the race, however he continued on..for reasons he described as, his refusal to except the prize money for the race, from people who did not share the same values as himself. So on he went around Good Hope across the bottom of Australia and eventually back to Papeete where he was so disappointed as he sat on a cement quay watching the cricket's and birds only to be disturbed by the activity on a new dirt road that was now running along the quay.
That dirt road is now a 4 lane highway w/red lights, Papeete reminded me of Detroit in the summer without palm trees. The French turned the Marquesas, the Tuamotu's and french Polynesia into a welfare state robbing the indigenous people of their way of life. Not to mention the atomic bomb testing on the most southern island of the Tuamotu's. They've since decided it was too expensive to keep up and abandoned the whole idea. However, the Marquesas will always be a stand alone environment due to topographic confederations, they are very majestic.
A year ago Tuesday, the HMS Bounty, a half-century-old 180-foot long wooden sailing ship, sank in Hurricane Sandy about 100 miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. A replica of the 18th century vessel of the same name, it was built as a set for the film "Mutiny on the Bounty." The Coast Guard has been investigating the disaster along with the National Transportation Board. Their conclusions could lead to changes in safety regulations and criminal charges.
I've always felt that incident was criminal....I've read in great detail the coast guard's report.
There were many bad decisions. That said....Boats commit suicide..every time, and their captains let them.
bligh
