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christmas at sea

Posted on December 31, 2009 @ 10:50 am by massimo | Filed under: blog,books,fear,sailing,travel

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

boat people

Posted on December 28, 2008 @ 11:48 am by massimo | Filed under: africa,another green world,beach,news,people,travel,wordpress

Someone told me on the Vietnamese boat people who had landed on Pulao Kapas’ beach many years before.  I came across the boat’s wreck a few days later. The boat’s left over, nearly completely buried by the sand, really struck me. I stopped and stayed by that unplanned and clandestine monument a long while and   felt distinctly the very tragedy that was behind it…
Since a few years Italy is first in Europe for illegal immigration by sea. Some 25.000 desperate people somehow reached our shores in 2008. During the last three days, from dec 24 up to dec 26, about 1500 African  migrants have landed in Lampedusa Island, nearby Sicily.
Due to jingle bells and the like, Italians mostly have not paid much attention to this significant occurrence, while the ghosts of Christmas ideals rerun on Prime Minister Berlusconi’s Channel Five…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: clandestine

a surprising man…

Posted on August 22, 2008 @ 10:52 am by massimo | Filed under: animals,another green world,blog,fun,people,philippines,travel,ukiyo-e,wordpress

I like to edit again an old post written on November the 22, 2006…this fellow had a totally anti-routine life…it’s worth taking a look at his “biography” whic my friend Gino edited recently…
enjoy

Among the strange people I met, Max Maxwell is certainly the most unfathomable. I firstly met Max in Boracay Island, in 1990. Max comes from Bombay and belongs to the Parsee upper-class.
At that time he was a fit, middle aged man who enjoyed beach-tennis, wind surfing and excellent Italian food. He basically travelled between Boracay, Koh Lanta, Laddak and Hong Kong, making his earn out of fashionable batik-shirts, rattan-bags, Tibetan amulets and first rate (yet fake) Ray-Ban sunglasses. Max had an enormous ego, he was desperately scornful and selfish and, for some reason, he always surprised me. He had seen the World, that was the fact! When some harmless tourist, tried to approach him by asking silly questions such us “Have you been…?”, Max’s provocative answer simply was: “thanks for not talking to me!”. And that was all. As I said Max loved food and he was in the selected circle of acquaintances of my friend Gino.
Gino ran the cosiest restaurant in Boracay according to Max’s parameters and one day at Gino’s, for some unpredictable reason, Max allowed himself to talk to me! Max abhorred “stupid talks” but, after a good beer (he used to sip beer always by the same special glass that he-himself carried in a bag), Gino and I had the chance of glancing over his wonderful life…Finally Max decided to present Gino his photocopied biography. The document (his masterpiece) stated the man “born in Bombay during a devastating cyclone” and amazingly went on with Max ”making friends with Miles Davis, art-directing Vogue Magazine, etc…”I still have that rattan-bag he sold me and –still- I wear that  fake,Ray-Ban, and Gino and I still dispute about his reliability, his clever scorn and puzzling behaviour.
On December 8, 2006 I received a stunning report from Gino…

BREAKING NEWS:
MAX MAXWELL DIES IN GOA AFTER COMMITTING SUICIDE. HE LEFT A NOTE IN WICH HE SAYS :
“DON’T BE SORRY FOR ME. I’M THE ONE TO DECIDE MY TIME WAS OVER”

Illustration Friday ’s topic is: routine

canned food!

Posted on July 26, 2008 @ 6:06 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,fun,news,sailing,wordpress

I’m going to be off-line till mid august. I’ll be sailing on board the Natahel, heading east to beautiful Kornati Islands. and further south to Korcula…I guess I’m going to have plenty of canned food and this is a pity…actually, I can’t stand it, since I love eating …

threadless T-shirts

Posted on July 22, 2008 @ 12:04 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,fun,news,wordpress

My Threadless submission is in the running and my design will be voted on by other Threadless users for 7 days…
I’m editing this post to help spread the word about and promote my own submissions.
Please click the two banners provided for viewing and scoring.
Thank you Threadless and everybody!!!…

fierce

Posted on June 29, 2008 @ 4:10 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,indonesia,people,travel,wordpress

The train from Jakarta to Surabaya had slowly left in the late afternoon; sitting in my second class berth, I was contemplating the nearby thriving tropical landscape from one of the wagon’s window, when a fellow swiftly entered my compartment. He was an elderly tall man with …

sunken treasure

Posted on June 23, 2008 @ 10:53 am by massimo | Filed under: blog,diving,fun,wordpress

Practically every diver has fantasized about discovering sunken treasure. Although there is more treasure still lost in the ocean than has been recovered, the average diver is unlikely to accidentally find it. The chances of stumbling upon underwater riches are minuscule, and the coast of intentionally seeking it out is …

herons

Posted on May 30, 2008 @ 6:25 pm by massimo | Filed under: ancona,another green world,blog,news,wordpress

I have been visiting once upon a time, the little natural reserve of “Ripa Bianca”, just a few kilometres from home, on May, the 25th. It is a very  little area, sponsored by Italian WWF , bordering the river: actually an ideal spot for bird watching.
And I was trilled by …

split tongued spirit

Posted on May 24, 2008 @ 4:28 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,fear,philippines,sailing,swimming

Swimming in open sea is my favourite sport: yet it scares me a little. As soon as I jump into the water, some sort of split tongued spirit talks and says out of the vast sea: “maybe you could sink and die”. When the spirit talks louder …

elettricity

Posted on May 10, 2008 @ 5:54 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,indonesia,philippines,sailing,travel,wordpress

Lightnings are electrical discharges, giant sparks of electricity, from mature storms. Lightnings cause a lot of electric current to pass through water; wooden boats are not safe at all since the vast majority of lightning injuries and deaths occur on small boats with no cabin…
The short sea …

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