Author: ws lirakis

a sailor who carries a camera

LUTHER BURBANK

I am related to Luther Burbank by my maternal grandfather. I never paid much attention to this until being in Santa Rosa, I discovered his house and Farm in nearby Sebastipol.

Revisiting his story, the contributions he made to society are remarkable. The care taken in the preservation of his legacy by the State of California and Santa Rosa are wonderful.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

I am in northern California, by that I mean north of San Francisco. I had an idea of what to expect, I was mostly wrong. It is as diverse as the rest of California, with agriculture being the dominant feature. Being from the East I always fall back to the idea of the Pacific Ocean, surfers and people in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is far more diverse and interesting than that.

Everything is big; the trees, the spaces, the vineyards. It is fascinating for me from the East. Although I am still without bearings.
My son moved here from Los Angeles, and we are here helping him settle. I had only just gotten used to Los Angeles.



Sharks

I just watched a 60 minutes episode about shark watching. It made me remember a summer, I must have been 8 or 10 years old. That particular summer the Gulf Stream moved very close to New England. Many beaches on Long Island and in Newport were closed due to shark sightings.

It is important to put this in context, it is the mid-fifties.
I spent my summers in Westport, Ma. with my grandmother. A fin was sighted in the Westport River; a group of my grandmother’s contemporaries were there swimming. Try to visualize elderly women, in one piece bathing suits, with a skirt at the bottom, entirely in black, and all of them wearing bathing caps.
These were women of principal, seeing the shark, they swam out and grabbed it by the tail and towed it ashore. It was easily 15-20 long from it’s nose to the end of it’s tail. Looking back at the event, the shark must have been sick. The groundskeeper from a nearby estate arrived with a shotgun; put it to the head of the shark and pulled the trigger. I watched all this from the beach. and after the shark was dead, put my fist in the hole left in it’s head by the shotgun blast.

1971 Trans-Atlantic

In 1971 we sailed “Carina” first to Harwichport, on Cape Cod. David Steere, the owner of “Yankee Girl” (sistership to Charisma”) gave a large party for all involved inviting astronauts as guests of honor. The next morning very early, to catch the tide. We left, after a late night. “American Eagle”, Yankee Girl” and Carina” We took a more northerly route. and made a very quick crossing, 14 days. beating the other boats by a day. They had taken a more southerly, warmer route. In fact, I have never beaten this time, in a race.

I had purchased a BB gun and hid it on the boat. I would take the cans and glass out of the garbage, throw it over the side and shoot at it as it trailed off astern. I am not sure the English Customs would have taken to the idea of the gun, even a BB gun arriving in England.