On this day in 1862, Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis. His last clear words were: "Now comes good sailing," and then "moose" and "Indian."

His conclusion to Walden also uses a sailing metaphor:

"It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar."

For a quick online walk-with-Henry Walden memory, click here. To download the full text, click here.

Oh, alright, one more sailing quote:

"It is generally supposed that they who have long been conversant with the ocean can foretell, by certain indications, such as its roar and the notes of sea-fowl, when it will change from calm to storm; but probably no such ancient mariner as we dream of exists; they know no more, at least, than the older sailors do about this voyage of life on which we are all embarked. Nevertheless, we love to hear the sayings of old sailors, and their accounts of natural phenomena which totally ignore, and are ignored by, science; and possibly they have not always looked over the gunwale so long in vain."

Henry David Thoreau; Cape Cod (1855-1865), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 4.

Photo: Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Sometimes doing good is its own reward. And sometimes doing good can bring rewards with rewards -- like sailing on a 72-foot race boat in Great Britain and the Mediterranean this summer. For free.

The British organization Tall Ships Youth Trust is looking for experienced sailors to sail as Volunteer Crew on board their new fleet of 72ft Challenger Yachts. The Trust purchased the four steel-hulled yachts -- which previously took part in the Round the World Challenge races -- at the end of 2007 to bolster their sail training fleet.

"Crewing our Challenger yachts is fantastic fun, and with a busy program of voyages throughout the summer we need more Volunteer Crew to help us on board," said Tim Law, Operations Director for the Trust. "We are looking for people aged 18-65 with a good level of experience of sailing large yachts, who enjoy calmly and patiently sharing their sailing knowledge."

Volunteers sail as Watch Leaders, Mates and Skippers, depending on level of experience, and voyages can last from 5 - 10 days over weekends and during the week. The Trust takes over 4,000 young people a year to sea.

“Sail training is a well recognized and powerful tool for developing young people," according to Martin Jay, Chairman of the Trust. "Increased self esteem, better communication skills and a healthier, outdoor lifestyle are just a few of the benefits."

For more information, and an application, see www.tallships.org.

Photo: Courtesy of Tall Ships Youth Trust.

"If it turns out we see bombs exploding on our waterways, it is not going to be really good for boaters..."

Spoken by Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as he outlined a general plan of action to combat potential terrorists threats in U.S. waters. Chertoff also used the occasion to introduce the department's latest report, the DHS Small Vessel Security Strategy.

Chertoff also said that Homeland Security will expand "investment and research" into small-vehicle identification systems for possible installation aboard boats.

Read more about Chertoff's general plan here, and view the full DHS Small Vessel Security Strategy report here.

After Saturday's "Beating of the Retreat" at Nelson's Dockyard -- and the inevitable closing parties signalling the end of Antigua Race Week -- the Caribbean racing (and cruising) season winds down pretty quickly.

Sunday morning activities generally include: waking up wondering where you are; reaching for aspirin; grabbing just about anything that can pronounce "halyard" and signing it on as delivery crew; getting North pronto before insurance policies cancel (or quadruple in price) because of the start of hurricane season.

This Caribbean ritual has played out for years with few glitches. But this year, sailors heading West are going to find a big problem -- a huge traffic jam at the Panama Canal.

According to a recent report there are currently more than 150 sailboats on the Caribbean side of the canal waiting to cross. Many have been told it will be weeks, in a few cases, months -- before they will be able to get through. Sailor Rod Heikell and wife Lu, aboard Skylax wrote:

"There are around 50 yachts in the Flats anchorage at Colon, another 30 in the Panama Canal Yacht Club (PCYC), 30 or 40 in Shelter Bay Marina and a similar number cruising the Atlantic Panama coast. All of us are waiting to go through the Panama Canal and things aren't looking good. On Skylax we arrived a week ago and our given date for the transit is June 23rd, a nine and a half week wait. And the same goes for all the other yachts here except for anyone with a few thousand surplus dollars who can arrange a special transit."

A manager for the Canal Authority stated that groups of yacht transits have been dropped from two per day to one per week because of their negative impact on commercial shipping transits. Read more about it here.

Some advice for a deadlocked Democrat -- go sailing.

According to a recent poll, 15 percent of boat owners say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate if he/she is a boater. By that statistic, if Hillary or Obama (please, not both) took up sailing, the democratic candidates' fight-to-the-party's-death would be a done deal.

Other interesting statistics from the recent survey by Progressive insurance:

• Twenty percent of boaters would never sell their boat. Six percent would only do so if threatened with physical harm. Five percent said they would only sell if asked to do so by their spouse. (Presumably that leaves one percent who think they can run to the boat faster than their spouse can smack them with a frying pan).
  
  
• The majority of boaters (77 percent) who sold their first boat did so to upgrade to a newer/better boat.
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• More boaters disagree (38 percent) than agree (27 percent) with the old adage "A boat owner's two greatest days are the day he buys his boat and the day he sells it."

And Democrats, there's no time to waste. In case it comes down to picking running mates at this summer's convention, here's something else to think about -- Kennedy was a sailor, L.B.J. wasn't.

Check out the results of the survey here.

It's hard to gauge the health of an ocean out in the ocean. But where the water meets the shore, the dirty truth is revealed. That is what volunteers in 76 countries around the world discovered last September.

A report by the Ocean Conservancy released last week details nearly 7.2 million items that were collected by volunteers on a single day last September as they combed beaches and shores. After cleaning 33,000 miles of shoreline, six million pounds of trash was collected and catelogued. That worked out to an average of 16 pounds of trash per volunteer. More chilling, that means that the 378,000 volunteers on average collected 182 pounds of trash for every mile of shoreline

Volunteers in the U.S. collected 390 pounds of trash per mile, among the highest rates of any country, while collectors in neighboring Canada collected 74 pounds per mile and those in Mexico, 157 pounds per mile, according to the report. (The high number in the U.S. also reflects the large number of U.S. volunteers who took part, according to an Ocean Conservancy spokesman.)

Read more about the cleanup and about this year's project here. Or check out the raw data detailing the items collected in five worksheets which can be viewed by item, state, and country breakdowns -- or any combination of those -- here.

Photo: Courtesy of Ocean Conservancy.

On boats, bad things happen when words get mixed up.

Take the Cosco Busan, the 900-foot cargo ship which slammed into San Francisco's Bay Bridge in dense fog last November. According to a newly released transcript of an interview taken the morning of the crash, the ship's pilot asked the ship's captain to point out the "center" of the Bay Bridge. The pilot said he was trying to locate the center point between the bridge's towers on the radar screen. The captain, a Chinese national, showed him the center of the bridge's entire span, which was also the location of one of the towers.

The miscommunication resulted in a spill of more than 50,000 gallons of bunker fuel. It was the worst oil spill in the Bay in decades, fouling beaches from Marin to Contra Costa to San Mateo counties and killing more than 2,000 birds. The pilot, Capt. John Cota, has been charged with criminal negligence for his actions guiding the ship out of the Bay.

Teamwork is all about communication, and sailing is all about teamwork. The crew all need to speak the same language -- even if it means using obscure sailing-specific terms. After all, it's hard to mix up "you're right" with "your starboard." Check out the safety section for tips about fire danger, safety gear and particularly marine communication, where failure to communicate can result in failure to live.

Mention sailing in polite company and talk will shift to quiet coves, "cocktail cruises" and other peaceful images. Mention sailing to sailors and talk often turns to things that went from good to not-good in a big hurry.

Need proof? Check out this video.

The cause of this potentially deadly calamity? A jib sheet over the side before the skipper started the engine. When the prop started to turn, it got wrapped by the sheet and stalled the motor. No motor, no wind, no control. Waves win.

Watch the video for a memory-jog to watch those lines. Anything loose in the water can get pulled into the prop causing big problems. And by the way, if this skipper had an anchor ready to go and dropped it before he got pushed into the "impact zone," could he have bought himself some time?

"I will never set sail again. Never."

Spoken by seventy-year-old Spanish fisherman Cristo Herrera who was rescued last week after spending 23 days adrift in the Atlantic. Herrera and his partner, Jose Quevado, 61, set off from Cadiz in south-western Spain, on a four-day voyage to the Canary Islands. Within hours of leaving, the engine failed on their 33 foot fishing boat, the radio failed and they could not get a cell phone signal.

Rescue appeared certain on the first day as a Moroccan boat spotted the drifting fishermen and pulled alongside. That boat's occupants turned out to be thieves who stole the fishermen's phones. The pair were reported missing on March 15 after one of Quevado's children called his father's cell phone and got through to an Arabic speaker. The fishermen were finally rescued last Friday by a Cypriot merchant ship 160 miles south of Tenerife.

Read more about it here.

Top honors in the 800 mile Corona del Mar to Cabo San Lucas race are going to a 50-year-old "oldie" sailed by a bunch of "goodies." Sabrina, a 50-foot wooden "double-ender," has beaten a handful of high-tech "sleds" on corrected time in the annual San Diego to the tip of Baja race. Not that Sabrina's actual time is anything to be ashamed of -- she covered the course in three days 22 hours 40 minutes 30 seconds.

Fifty-year-old Sabrina was designed by the father of current owner, Chris Calkins. And unlike today's stripped-down speed demons, the woody has all the comforts of home. Describing the race, Calkins said:

"We had cushions out, the cocktail table out. We watched the guys on the sleds running their heads off and having to go back and forth, and we just sort of pointed in one direction and went."

Calkins' San Diego crew was 41 to 65 in age and most are well-known successful sailors in their own right. Calkins is 62. His navigator, Fred Delaney, is 65. Others were Doug Peterson, the noted designer, Norm Reynolds, who Calkins put in charge, Star sailor Mike Dorgan, Jim Sakesegawa and Bill White.

And unlike the post-race antics of many of the sleds' "rockstar" sailors, after tying up in Cabo, Sabrina's skipper and crew sat down for lunch on the boat.

"Rather than going ashore we have some mahi mahi that we caught this morning on the way in, so we're having it for lunch with beer and wasabi," Calkins said. "It was a stunning experience. There were big seas but they weren't overwhelming, and getting that ride at night was glorious. For an old wood boat, it was all right."

All right is right.

Read more about the race at the Balboa Yacht club website.