On one passage offshore, I brought my handheld 5×7 Linhof Technica. It’s definitely not the smallest point and shoot camera in the world. With a 210mm lens and film holder it weighs a little over 12 pounds. Mine has a universal view finer, and focusing is accomplished through a split plane parallax system combined with a dedicated focusing cam for a particular focal length lens. This is a 100% mechanical camera. Think of it as a giant Lecia M series range finder camera. The rest of the top side crew were amazed the fist time I hauled it out on deck to photograph.
As I’ve said in a previous post, being at sea on a large sailboat is like being a NYC cop, 98.5% not doing to much other than your job, the other 1.5% of the time being scarred to death. This image made with my 5×7 Linhof is a good illustration of what days at sea are like. Obviously, we were nearly becalmed; and the planet’s eco-system is doing it’s job, evaporating water into the atmosphere until it condenses into rain showers or little squalls providing a dramatic afternoon “late show”. The wonderful thing about sailing on the ocean is how little effect you have on the biosphere, how little damage you do, you don’t even leave a foot print. One of the sad things about being a thousand miles offshore is seeing all the evidence of our collective disregard as stewards of our planet: there’s plastic and human manufactured crap floating everywhere. Any that’s just on the surface. What will take to stop polluting our oceans? (Oh, I have an idea: each nation contributing to the ocean’s pollution has to get it’s dumbass politicians and environmental policy makers out on sailing ships, and go out there and pickup all the crap floating around (funded from that nation’s defense budget): that would be a start.)
