On ships and stars and getting underway

- Private group -
Fri, 05/15/2015 - 11:45am

On ships and stars and getting underway


All of us who love the ocean – and the ships who sail upon her – resonate with certain phrases. They’re the poems and stories we first heard as kids and now they are part of our “oceanside memories, made in Maine,” like the salt water in our veins that speaks to our origins. We agree with Rat in the Wind in the Willows that “there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” And each spring, whether we live in constant view of the water (as we have the luxury of doing here at Spruce Point) or far enough way that folks stop us to ask what the oar is we’re carrying, the poetry of John Masefield paces the rhythm of our daily chores with “I must go down to sea again, the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”