Sunday, January 11, 2004

Dear Clyde,

     Over the holidays I finished your book, “Imperfect Calm,” which I bought from you the day before Christmas when Barbara and I were up to spend a few days at our cabin. I really enjoyed the voyage for a number of reasons. First, it was good reading, both in hearing your deep thoughts and feelings so excellently expressed and following your solo sojourn south, east and north. Second, I have been a diarist throughout my Navy days and wrote my book, “Shang Log,” based on my lob entries during a nine and a half month cruise attached to Attack Squadron Twelve on board the USS Shangri-La during our WesPac (Vietnam) cruise of 1970.

    After reading your book I wish I had your ability to express my own feelings of loneliness and frustrations as well as the joy of cheating death, something I feel I never addressed adequately in my writings. Some might say flying into combat off an aircraft carrier in all kinds of weather and enemy threats was a touch as sailing solo. I think you certainly had just causes, as if you would need it, to feel death a real possibility. People will say they admire me because I was a carrier aviator but I really do not think it was anything special. I loved flying and all the thrills involved with jet aircraft. What I always have admired are those sailors who set out to sea in their boats solo. I think your voyage home a great feat to be admired.

    I had fun reading about the physical sailing involved in your voyage, remembering how so many of those nautical terms were a part of my life in the Navy. The only puzzle I found was in your definition of DR as deduced reckoning as I always thought of it as dead reckoning. Looking up the definition in Dutton’s Navigation and Piloting, 12th edition, 1969, it says, “Dead reckoning (DR) derived from deduced or ded reckoning, the process by which a ship’s position was deduced or computer trigonometrically, with relation to a known point of departure.” We used dead reckoning in our air navigation…heading, time and distance being very much a part of flying life.

    As I finished your book, I wondered how you wound up in Colorado as I know I often wonder what brought me to New Mexico. In both cases, the high desert and mountains are a long way from the sea. I often find I do miss the water and wonder if you feel the say way. Perhaps your remark about spending your retirement first with 17 years at sea is an indication you now have another adventure or work and raising a family to bring excitement and joy to your life.

    Hope to have time in the near future to visit and talk with you.

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