Log of Sloop RED WOLF
4/2/30

 Aprox 100 miles SW the Spontoons. Winds increasingly out of that quarter & may have to alter course.

 One of the nicer things about being master of your own vessel was that, in addition to being free to go wherever the winds might blow you, you could also choose not to go to where they wouldn’t!  “Red Wolf” was a Weatherly little boat & could likely claw her way up her present course towards the Spontoons if she had to.  But why make her beat upwind if she didn’t have to?  Neither of us were bound to any schedule, or have to answer to any landside owner’s orders as to what port to make or what cargo to carry.  If the winds weren’t going to take us to Spontoon today, lets have a look-see at where they would take us!

 Most landsmen have the idea a sailboat just goes pretty much in the direction the following wind blows her.  Some of the old square riggers I sailed aboard in my younger days may have done that, but a fore-&-aft rig like an Island Schooner or my sloop, actually had their best “point of sail”- that is, sailed their fastest- when showing their sides to the wind.  Taking a chart of this section of the Nimitz Sea, I ran a bearing at right angles to the prevailing wind to see what of interest might be found.

 A Starboard tack, with the wind to the right side of the boat, would take her NW 200 miles towards Krupmark.  A Port tack would head her SE 105 miles to Howes Atoll, though a note on the chart indicated is was also known under the name of “Hoot Island”.

 Now there was an interesting coincidence!  Like the Port and Starboard sides of a boat are the mirror images of each other, so were Krupmark and Hoot! Both had reputations of being secretive places outside of normal ideas of “law” and “polite society”, where “anything goes”.  But what a difference between them!  Krupmark was a shrine to greed and selfishness, whose first rule was “look out for number one!”  A dark cloud of gloom and impending violence hung about the place as if it were under some curse, and it somehow attracted to itself the scum of the seven seas!  No place for this old sailorman to be dropping his anchor!

 Now Hoot Island, on the other hand, can be better understood under its full name of “Hoot Island Nudist Colony and Hedonist Resort”.  A place where people supposedly threw their inhibitions away along with their clothes!  They don’t advertise themselves to the world at large any more than Krupmark does, but you can’t live on an island without some sailor knowing about it.  And sailors do talk to other sailors!  From what I’ve heard, just after the Great War a “Utopian Congress” was held in Europe among varied groups of nudists, back-to-nature” and “free love” cults, utopian socialists, “white” magicians, & the like, to draw up a plan for a “perfect society” where a War like they’d just survived could never happen again!  As a test of their plan, they pooled their resources and bought the uninhabited island of Howes Atoll.  The thought was that a region where the indigenous population tended not to ware much clothing in the first place, was far preferable for their theories that the European claimant (both social, moral, and physical) would be.

 A funny thing about “perfect” societies.  While fun for a short time, people tend to chafe after a while, and want to leave.  While this would have been the end of most experiments like this, the Utopians proved to be made of more flexible stuff.  If their people didn’t want to live under the wide-open conditions of Hoot Island, they could still have one hell of a vacation there!  So, from a would-be permanent colony, it evolved into a “members only” resort.  It must work, as I’m told people coming back from a stay there are practically dripping with joy and happiness.  Somehow the word “joy” isn’t something that comes to mind what thinking about Krupmark!
   
 So, Krupmark and Hoot. Two mirror images; one to Port and the other to Starboard.  The one I’d no desire to go to at all.  The other, well, I’m a bit old for that sort of thing anyway.  Besides, that new restaurant the Paradise Hotel on Casino Island opened, “Jimmy’s Cheeseburger Buffet”, sounds like all the Hedonism this old wolf would want anyway!  So, I’ll just choose the other alternative!

 Spent rest of 2nd and all if 3d hove-to at sea- anchor and exercised
 fishing tackle. (Took 2 good yellow fin tunas!) till winds came about NE 
on morning of 4th to resume course towards Spontoon Island. -G