27. Celebrity Interview with Solo Sailor- Steven Ladd

Nautical Knowledge and Nonsense

My first celebrity interview! Steven Ladd was nice enough to let me interview him about the two books he wrote. They are about the incredible adventures he as been on. One was his solo voyage for 3 years on a 12 foot boat of his own design and making. The other was with him and his now wife and new born baby on an insanely small boat. Steven pays me a huge complement in this interview, because I am apparently the only person to have ever asked him about his poetry. His response is emotional, heartfelt and personal. I hope everyone enjoys hearing about his amazing journeys and life.

Stephen's boats are "Squeak" in the first voyage and "Thurston" in the second.

Stephen's website is... https://www.stephen-ladd.com/

His WWII Marine Uncle's Book, which is brought up in the interview is... "Faithful Warriors" by Lt. Col Dean Ladd.

Stephen's Poem read in the interview...

Rowing, rowing on the roof, of a world that's made of water-

Who are they below who raise their heads as at the sky?

They who ask me of the land, "Does a falling tree where no ears hears still make a crashing sound?"

I answer: "Without me do searocks still bare like teeth? the ocean suck and seethe?

oh! and under do your talons still yearn to stave and scratch?"

They say: "We hear pf handsome Indian boys like Captain Cook's Hawaiians, thick of chest, strong of arm, open-faced and new, born of the sea, born of me, tell me, is it true?

And I: "It's true that giants walk the land with giant steps, and fire burns that never can deep down within your depths,

but tell me now where sleeps the serpent of black and yellow stripes who swims your sea along with me and when I call him, dives?"

But they unkown can only ask, so on I row and wonder, at seacaves crashing black inside, and pelicans in diagonal, in my sky above theirs.