THINGS  I  HAVE  DONE   BY   ALAN PHILLIPS
_________________________________________
Sailed my small boat thru the very eye of a 
tropical cyclone and lived to tell.


Looked into the barrel of a PLO gun with the 
terrorist screaming at me in some language
and lived to tell


Looked into the barrel of an Israel machine 
gun while being screamed at in some 
languag and lived to tell


Had a beer in the Beirut yacht club while 
the Israelies rocketed and bombed with 
everything they had and lived.


Hit a reef, wrecked my boat and was 
castaway alone on Orchilla Isle in the 
Caribbean and lived to tell


Sailed up to and anchored at Pirate Island in 
the Southern Phillipines and shared a bottle 
of rum with the pirates and lived to tell


Got caught smuggling in Panama and then 
had to drink the customs officer under the 
table.  Afterwhich we altered the paperwork 
and were friends

and stayed out of jail


Escaped from the imigration police in 
Indonesia by stealing a speed boat and 
pulling Wallaby Creek thru the reef


Drilled out my own tooth with tools from the 
tool box.


Circumnavigated the world  and Australia 
and then crossed the South China Sea in the 
typhoon season.


Found a polynesian tribe that is still living 
an uncivilized life and has never been 
visited by a tourist.


Been becalmed for 3 weeks under the 
tropical sun and at the end had counted out 
our last meals.


Found a cave in PNG with dozens of human 
remains from people who entered the cave 
in order to die.


Fathered a beautiful baby with a young 
Swiss girl and married 
her even though she is 25 years younger 
and also younger then 2 of my other 
children.


Survived 3 shark attacks where the sharks 
ripped my spear and fish from my hands. I 
continue to spearfish at every opportunity.


Spent months alone at sea in a leaky boat 
with no motor and no electrical or 
electronic thing on the boat.


Left a crewman with a primitive tribe and 
returned a year later to look for him. 
Received a message in a bottle.


Crossed the jungles of the Western Province 
of PNG where no white man had been for 20 
years.



  
   JUST  JUNK..


1. To be truely challenging a life must rest 
on a firm foundation 


of financial unrest.
  Otherwise you are doomed to a routine life.


Voyaging belongs to the wanderers of the 
world who choose, or are driven, to go their 
own way without a lawnmower, a mortgage 
and a dishwasher.  Little has been written 
about the ways a man can blast himself to 
freedom.  " I can't afford it "    BULLSHIT.   
Nobody can afford not to live a free and 
happy life. 

If restaurant meals and lovely apartments 
did actually produce happiness then I could 
agree with your lifestyle. But most often 
they produce frustration and depression. So 
why devote your life to materialism?

It looks to me like materialism has  gone 
completely crazy.

 When you observe it from outside it is not 
materialism at all, it looks like utter  
madness.


The funny thing is I have had people say to 
me that they couldn't do what I am doing 
because they can't stand salt in their hair.  
UH??


2. Now up to the weather rail where I stand 
with my arm hooked on the backstay - 
feeling the weight of the wind and watching 
her go....time for a reef.....best wait till 
daylight then haul the mains'l altogether...
.run off before it.  I take the helm 
and steer by the feel of the wind.  She's in a 
groove balanced and true.   My spirits lift, I 
look back west and laught out loud. 
 We are flying!   I am free now,  free of the petty life,  
free of the cloying social restrictions free to 
enjoy, free to really feel alive free to live. 
Mysteriously I come alive.



The boat leaps, lunging up and over and out. 
 The seas thunder past.  For a day and a 
night the wind comes with relentless energy 
and the sky was clear. As I paused and gazed 
up I was astonished to realize that the night 
was perfectly clear and a million stars shon 
like diamonds.  The seas were bald blue 
promontories that moved with majestic 
savage grace.

I broke out the sextant and ran a series of 
sights with my body hooked around the 
shrouds. This ancient ritual of bygone days.

The sun's image would weave and swing like 
the ball atop a pendulum atop the steel grey 
rim of the sea

Another night came down and the moon rose 
and the constellations wheeled by in 
sombre solitude.

The wind took off at last- around midnight I 
think it was.
 One more gale I thought for this 
faithful vessel.Wallaby Creek.




3. The ship runs free.

Oh the magic of those words!  Free as a 
cloud she goes, with the sun in the east a 
brass balloon and the shadows adrift in her 
lee, undulating shadows that swell and 
collapse in convoluted patterns.  Beneath 
her bows play the dolphins- reining the sea, 
trailing scarves of still born bubbles, 
lunging sideways in ecstasy, breaching at 
intervals the blue sea dome of their dark 
subsurface world; then grown impatient 
with the plodding of the boat they turn and 
stampede towards the west- hurdlers of 
hollows and crests.


Now imagine yourself at large on the plains 
of the broad Pacific Ocean eight hundred 
miles from land. The tropic of Capricorn lies 
behind and the southeast trades are here. It 
is a mellow winter's day with a vagrant wind 
that is lost and wandering too....

No need to exert yourself.  Just narrow the 
eyes on the everyday world and loose the 
imagination.....

....Let the horse-voiced traffic fade into the 
silence of the sea.  Silence everywhere, 
broken now and then when a wave top 
tumbles forward with the sound of 
crumpling paper.  Your ears are bathed with 
the wind and the sun comes pouring down. 
Face south and fill your face with the 
rapture of the sea. Now west. Nothing   Sea 
and Sky.  North with the line of the sea and 
the low-hung spread of cloud the shimmer 
of light and shade and the spell of 
loneliness mixed with the call of the sea- 
the beckoning, bursting, smiling call with a 
promise of worlds unknown and dreams 
undreamed and a life to live.  A wonderous 
world, aworld of challenge and beauty and 
peace.
Two men at work, stripped to the waist, 
barefoot silent.

You are part of an orderly world, the world of 
a windship's deck.



Wallaby Creek rarely goes against the 
wind. We try always to work in harmony with 
nature.  The alternative is not for us.  
However this often involves hanging about 
for long periods or even full seasons. 
Otherwise finding something nice downwind 
and deciding to go there. Lots of people from 
the rat race simply cannot get it.  OHHhh 
WELL...

And we very rarely fight against the 
elements especially when things hot up. 
We turn downwimd and run off early on
 before the battles even start.

People coming from the work-a-day world
take months before they can even
begin to love it.  Sailing is definately
a spiritual experience and as such
is not for everybody. It usually takes a 
change in mental attitude and that takes 
time and pain. PAIN   PAIN  PAIN
You do not believe me.  Come anyway.
But realize that you get nowhere
near it in a month.