Kim DuToit memorializes the renowned Sloop New Dawn’s master, owner, and captain.
The Layabout Sailor
Longtime Readers may recall that a bunch of my friends and I used to get together once a year for the Feinstein-Daley Memorial Shoot at the east Texas ranch of Reader Airboss (sadly, since deceased). It was always a festive affair and featured the occasional gun.It was at one such event where I met Doc Russia, at the time still a med student at UT-Houston, who had a blog entitled Bloodletting (which I miss dreadfully, even though I still see him regularly for shooting and dinners etc.). Another blogger also came along at that same meeting: Jim Siegler from Smoke On The Water (ie, blog, linked at Kim’s place—M), which featured guns, politics and details of his life on board his beloved yacht, the sloop New Dawn.
While Doc was an excellent shot, Jim was likewise; actually, Jim was easily the best all-round shooter — pistol, revolver, rifle and shotgun — I’ve ever met.
I need to make a comment at this point. Frequent Readers of this website may remember that I have always referred to Jim as “the Layabout Sailor”. That was a total lie, because Jim was one of the hardest-working men I’ve ever come across, and the ironic nickname was the complete antithesis of him. Having come from extreme poverty — his first job was washing dishes at a restaurant, at age eight — Jim worked his whole life at a number of jobs, sometimes two at a time: insurance adjuster, car salesman, bus driver, roofer, whatever paid the bills. He used to joke that his best-paying job was when he enlisted in the Air Force in his late teens, so you get the idea. College was never an option because there was little money and he refused to get into debt. But he was always well-groomed and impeccably dressed — and by the way, very intelligent, well-read and well-spoken, his soft Texas drawl a welcome sound always, along with his impish sense of humor. (His online signature: “Jim S.– Sloop New Dawn” became “Jim S. — Sunk New Dawn”, which masked his despair at the tragedy of its loss.)
Last November Jim wrote to me to tell me that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — Lou Gehrig’s Disease — and of course as we all know, ALS is incurable. His prognosis was grim — perhaps two years — but the cruelest part was that while ALS can affect both the brain and the muscular system, Jim’s brain was completely unaffected. So his body was starting to collapse, leaving his lively, intelligent brain intact. He became weak and his speech began to slur.
My friend Jim died two weeks ago, in late June 2025, after only nine months since his diagnosis. Rather than a slow decline, his condition simply went over a cliff, and he died of pulmonary failure, as his lungs — even with a respirator — ceased to function.
And the world became a little worse for his passing.
It did indeed. Most of you have probably run across Jim Seigel’s remarks in the comments section of one blog or another, maybe including this one; for a good long while there, he popped up at CF frequently. I was fortunate enough to enjoy an extended private email correspondence with Jim as well. Never did get to meet the man IRL, alas, nor to go shooting with him, which makes me just a wee mite envious of DuToit, damn him.
But as I slowly, torturously figured out after my late wife’s sudden, violent demise at an unfairly early age—as I have told friends who are fetched up in the deepest toils of mourning over the loss of a beloved spouse, child, parent, sibling, what have you—the only way to get through the agony of bereavement is to not be bitter over what you lost, but to be grateful for what you had. Yes, maintaining a positive outlook, keeping our attention tightly focused on gratitude rather than the easy, more natural slump into bitterness, darkness, and crushing despond can be tough sledding indeed. No matter how long one had with the Dearly Departed—years? Months? Weeks? Days? Hours?—it can never be long enough to satisfy those left behind.
Although Jim and I were on friendly terms, and I hugely enjoyed our email correspondence, we weren’t so close that I’d presume to offer counsel to his widow and other loved ones on how they might best cope with the unfillable hole in their hearts Jim’s absence is sure to leave. I hope and pray that Jim’s people are hanging in there as well as might be, and that when the immiserating flood-tide of grief has at last begun to subside the survivors can evade the dead-end swamps of bitterness, resentment, and leaden futility to walk the more comforting, luminous path of gratitude instead. Like I said, that really, truly is the only way. Same-same goes for our old buddy DuToit, a good and decent sort his own self. Kim, my prayers are with you and yours, my friend.
Regardless of whether you were familiar on any level with Jim of the Sunk New Dawn or not, do read all of DuToit’s heart-rending post. The death of such a singular, multifaceted, and noteworthy an individual as was Jim Siegel diminishes us all to some extent, whether we know it or not. As such, his passing should be marked, his numerous accomplishments remembered, his extraordinary life celebrated.
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Beautiful words. Thank you.