Oct 28, 2025by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

ALREADY – Janice Anne Wheeler, Sparring With Mother Nature

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Another week of SPARRING— have you enjoyed yours? I hope it’s all worthwhile, because you loyal readers make my little ‘stack worthwhile….that much I know. Thank you. ~J

If you’ve just joined our engaging little community, please read SPARS & SPARRING, my introductory piece.…. ~J

ALREADY

STEADFAST Turns 91 and Poseidon’s Looking Out For Her

Janice Anne Wheeler

Nov 16

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The clouds were hypnotic at sunrise today, a convergence of startlingly tinted mare’s tails, cirrus and cumulus all distinctly recognizable with none quite thick enough to cover an already- dark-blue sky; fall temperatures permeated my bones. I was astonished to see a waning crescent moon directly above my head. ALREADY? How is that possible? It seems I was just admiring the Super Moon but that was last week, already.

From a human perspective, time goes fast. Really fast.

A friend told me that her twelve-year-old grandson commented on his school semester going by in a flash. Him, too? We laughed out loud, thinking that time zinging by was a sign of aging. I still stand by that. I can remember, as a child, mourning the end of summer because we had to leave our beach-side Adirondack Mountain ‘camps,’ but I don’t believe the time, the days themselves, catching crawfish, sunfish and frogs, went by so fast that I left anything undone.

STEADFAST turned 91 on the 11th and I spent this week mixing those plastics mentioned last week with a varying degree of curing time, and then dropping to hands and knees beside Sailor Steve, (who is much more intimately acquainted with laying fiberglass, after three decades or so in the business) atop nine-decades-old, dusty detritus.

Here’s what we’re doing with each daylight and some dark evening hours: protecting a 56-foot wooden vessel with a layer of modern building material that will save her from the factors that befuddle the world. She gets longer every day, it seems….

Rolling resin, the starboard side keel covered, working at night, and cutting 1708 25-ounce biaxial fiberglass with mat, the tough stuff.

Creating fiberglass, with all its complexities, is a one-shot deal— a very limited working time, no matter what the brand or type; we are using West System Pro-Set. You can’t make mistakes. If you make mistakes it’s more time, money, frustration, manual labor, grinding, and, frankly, it’s a damn mess (you know I edited that). We can’t slip up right now. There’s a bit of tension here, two mid-fifty-somethings, down on our too-creaky knees, sticky, stiff, working with thick, exothermic, chemical reactions that will hold heavy, toxic, shard-glass fabric up over our heads, hoping that it will stay where we stuck it the first time, every time. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

The week is over, already. There wasn’t much time to do what I fully enjoy—writing far-flung stories to entertain not only you, but myself as well. I was trying to decide how to rectify that when I saw Poseidon’s Trident in the sky above STEADFAST, and I had to share that.

It was clear remarkably clear! (See below for Poseidon’s real Trident). Of course there was a bit of wind drift happening prior to finding my camera, but what’s really clear is that the God of the Sea must be watching over us even on land. What a relief with a dash of fun distraction. It’s awful to be forgotten or disregarded, especially by a deity. Right? You can see it. Humor me even if you can’t, please.

Just a couple of hours later that day’s aura was truly pervasive—things fell into place; someone’s looking out for us. I know that; I knew that ALREADY. But it’s nice to see it, sometimes, in black and white, feel it in your soul, see it in a text message, hear it in the words of a friend, no matter what you believe. Higher Powers, in any form or format, can come in handy.

I hope you have another week in which someone or something looks out for you. Thank you, as always, for being here, staying here, and sending this along to a fellow preserver or sailor. SPARRING has loyal subscribers from all walks of life in all hemispheres of the globe and for that I am truly grateful. Truly. ~J

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For more on our powerful Greek God of the Sea— take a peek at this from 2024.