Marvin Creamer, geographer and circumnavigator, died on August 12th, aged 104.
馬文·克里默是一名地理學家和環球航海家，他于8月12日去世，享年104歲。
When Francis Drake rounded the globe in 1577 to 80, he took an astrolabe, compass and cross-staff with him. As Ferdinand Magellan, the first known circumnavigator, started out in 1519, he had at least an astrolabe and compass. But when Marvin Creamer set sail from Cape May, New Jersey in 1982, into thick overcast and a howling gale, on a voyage of 30,000 miles requiring nearly a year at sea, he carried, to his delight, no instruments at all.
當弗朗西斯·德雷克在1577至1580年環游地球時，他隨身攜帶了星盤、指南針和十字測天儀。費迪南德·麥哲倫是世界上第一個著名的環球航海家，1519年，他開始環游地球時，至少帶了一個星盤和指南針。1982年，馬文·克雷默從新澤西的五月角起航，開始了一次長達3萬英里、需要在海上將近一年時間的航行，他遇上了一場狂風暴雨，而讓他高興的是，他根本沒有帶任何儀器。
Well, to be quite accurate, there were a few. He had an hour-glass, the only time-keeper, to mark the watches of his small crew. Down in the bilge, in a duffel bag, were a radio, sextant, compass and clock, in case of emergency. His wife Blanche, with whom he had had months of lively discussions about this voyage— she dead against him sailing off, he, at 66, desperate to go—had insisted on this. But he had had it sealed by the navy, intending never to get those “toys” out, and never did. Lastly, there was a transmitter somewhere on the Globe Star to give the little cutter-rigged sloop’s position regularly to the coast guard. But it did not tell him where he was, and that was vital.
更精確一點的話，他帶了一些儀器。他帶了一個沙漏，這個唯一的計時器，來作為他的小團隊的手表。艙底的一個行李袋里裝著收音機、六分儀、指南針和時鐘，以備不時之需。幾個月來，他一直在和妻子布蘭奇熱烈地討論這次航行——她強烈反對他航行，而66歲的他則不顧一切地想去——妻子堅持讓他帶上這些東西。但他已經讓海軍封印了它，打算永遠不把那些“玩具”拿出來，后來也確實沒有拿出來。最后，在“地球之星”的某個地方有一個發射機，它定期向海岸警衛隊發送這艘小單桅帆船的位置信息。但是克雷默收不到這個信息，這很重要。
He was going by the stars. The ancient sailors he so admired, the Vikings and Chinese traders, as well as more modern Polynesians, had gone the same way. None of them, as far as was known, had circled the globe; but it seemed to him that they might have made predictable landfalls, setting a course and then returning again. He meant to prove, and never had much doubt—5%, perhaps—that they could also have got further. Endurance or fame were not the point of this endeavour, which even he admitted looked insane. It was the intellectual challenge of finding out how the ancients might have done it.
他要隨著星星航行。他所崇拜的古代水手、維京人和中國商人，以及現代的波利尼西亞人，都走了同樣的路。就目前所知，他們都沒有完成環繞地球的航行；但在他看來，他們可能已經完成了，確定了路線，然后再返回。他想要證明，也從未懷疑——也許有5%——他們可能走得更遠。他的這次航行并不是為了展現耐力或出名，就連他自己也承認，這簡直是瘋了。它是為了找出古人可能是如何做到這一點的，這是一次智力上的挑戰。
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