Victualing

Victualing (provisioning) - that's what 18th century sailors called it and that's what we're starting to do and because of that, it finally feels like we'll be leaving soon because that's the last thing one usually does before setting out.  After a year and a half of boat shopping, buying, repairing and upgrading, we're just beginning to provision Malo for the first leg of our trip south and that feels so good to me.  It's been a long hall and we've worked hard, harder than I've worked in a long time but the proverbial light is finally visible at the end of our tunnel.  We starting early on provisioning because we're a bit ahead of schedule.  We've been doing "bonus" tasks, things that aren't necessary for a safe passage but will make our travels more enjoyable and comfortable like making bug screens for the hatches and oiling the teak.  

The Victualing Board of the Royal Navy allowed the following weekly allowance or provisions for every person serving on British ships:

 7 Pounds Bisket
 7 Gallons of Beer/Measures of Wine
 4 Pounds Beef
 2 Pounds Pork
 2 Pints Winchester Measure Pease 
 1.5 Pints Winchester Measure Oatmeal
 6 Ounces Sugar
 6 Ounces Butter
12 Ounces Cheese

It doesn't sound like too bad of a diet when you read it but I understand that the reality of 18th century sailing food, most of it packed in wooden barrels, was, let's say, gastronomically challenging, especially at the end of long voyages.  It also seems that they hadn't invented power bars or ramen noodles yet.  Hard times indeed.

Besides provisioning we've been taking more time off to visit with friends, walk the beach, we even went to Saturday Market in Newport.  The last time we visited the beach the light, wind and water was just perfect.  

As we strolled the beach I noticed the light refracting and reflecting off the water.

                        

The next day, at dusk, after a full day of electrical work on Malo Bev and I walked out on a nearby dock that went out into Yaquina Bay.  I leaned over the railing and gazed into the water below and become transfixed.  

Light waves, liquid waves and waves of wind all colliding to create an amazingly complex and beautiful scene.  One of the interesting aspect of aging is the cerebral soup one lives in, a interesting mix of the past and present.  I was reminded of a poem by Japan's Emperor Hirohito read to the chiefs of Japan's Army and Navy just before their attack on Pear Harbor:

All the seas, in every quarter,

are as brothers to one another.

Why, then, do the winds and waves of strife

rage so turbulently throughout the world?

Why indeed?  It seem to me we are more alike than different and where we are different,  strength flows from that contrast and the benefit of different perspectives.  So yes, why indeed to we often clash in strife & rage.  Why may we not instead clash and blend in an enthropic tempest of beauty and harmony?

Where the ocean meets the land...

What is it about the shoreline that continues to draw me, these past 60 years or so?  When I was five my family moved from Northern California to Midway Island in the Pacific.  Midway is a small island, only 1,200 acres.  We lived on it's main island that's called Sand Island and still we reveled in going to the shore, even though that magical place was always, only a short walk away.  

I’ve wondered before if there might be some kind of deep genetic, primordial memory that draws us beach lovers, to the shore. 

        For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),

        It's always our self we find in the sea.

                                                    e e cummings

At the shore water continuously forms around and pounds away at the land.  The land in turn crumbles and reforms, retreats and sometimes extents back out into the water.  Birds of all kinds love it, dogs, horses and llamas too.  

Bev and I often go to the beach after a day of boat work.  There is a beautiful one nearby.  We travel briefly through the magical dunes on our way to the shore. 

Beach grasses part like gossamer curtains at the theater, opening to reveling the coast in all it’s glory.   

The scene at the shore is always different, the sea, sky and land never the same.  A roaring tempest one day, clear, calm and brilliant the next.  Sometimes, especially in the mornings when it is often shrouded and softened by a blanket of fog.

On our most recent beach visit there was a group of 7 or 8 women in long dresses with white hats or bonnets on that looked to me to that they might be Mennonites or some similar group.  Anyways these women were playing along the shore's edge with all the abandonment and joy of children.  Playing for the seer ecstatic joy of it all as they ran and skipped long the shoreline with the waves lapping at their feet.     

Further along the beach we came to another two surfers and a kayaker enjoying the last golden minutes of a beautiful day at the beach.

The diversity of the folks that enjoy the beach never ceases to impress me; old, young and in-between, the athletic and the infirmed, women & men, girls & boys.  The beach welcomes us all back again and again.  

Zihuatanejo

Zihuatanejo, that should be our southern terminus for this seasons trip.  The Lonely Planet travel guide calls it; "a Pacific paradise of beautiful beaches, friendly people and an easygoing lifestyle".  I love the idea of going to a place that I pronounce.  To me that's unbelievably exotic and irresistible but how do you pronounce it?  I googled it and found this charming clip from the movie The Shawshank Redemption.  

See-wah-ta-na-ho, one you get it, it just slides off your tongue nice and smooth like a good margarita.  I like that and now I feel much better about all the work that we've been doing in prepration for this trip.  All we have to do is put our house in order, prep the boat and then take off sailing.  But those poor guys in that movie, they had to hand dig their way out of a State Penitentiary, avoids recapture and then illegally cross the boarder in order to get to Zihuatanejo.  We've got is so much easier.  Ok, no more wining from me... 

Bev earns her wings

It’s true, Beverly is now officially a mast monkey.  She officially earned that title by her assent to the head of the mast and successfully performed a task.  She photographed  and investigated the source of the chafing that was happing to our jib halyard.  

This will now be duly entered in the ship’s crew registry and and an appropriate increase in her daily compensation (grog ration) will take effect immediately.  

Bev had gone up a mast of a previous boat but that was only half way up, as a “tourist”, with no assigned task but this time she did it right, all the way to the top.

Being the neat person that she is and an overall good sailor who takes great pride in her boat, she even paused on the way down to clean the spreaders.  

Way to go Bev!

Now yur sailing....

Fortune's Fool

"O I am fortune's fool" that is me, for I plan and god laughs.  I'm sure she's getting a good god one on me.  You're welcome god!  I have been planning so hard and thoroughly and both Bev and I have been following through, working hard but still there is a niggle, a fly in our ointment, a glaring gap in our probability of success.  Dang!

Generally I feel that I live a blessed life but sailors in general, and me in particular are know for falling from grace from time to time, after all, we're all flawed romantics, we sailors that is.  Chaser of dreams, feeler of feelings, quester of quests, seeker of seeks, lover of life and the ocean, the ocean both inside and out.  The ocean below, so full of islands and the one above, full of stars and what could be more romantic than a tropical island or a bright star set in a cobalt sky full of millions of other stars from horizon to horizon, off shore, in that special zone, the one where the land creatures rarely go, the sweet spot, home base, the pelagic zone.  It can be like a narcotic to a sailor.    


First I dreamt of sailing again, a questionable desire this is sure to cause much suffering, it possibly might cause some pleasure too and it's most likely that the duration of the suffering will be exceed the duration of any pleasure.  This I know from over 50 years of sailing experience but in spite of that fore knowledge, still the romantic-me persists because to a sailor there is nothing sweeter than a good boat heading out in a fresh breeze, parting azure waters with a beautiful island or two or even hundreds of them, in the offing.  So now we have assembled most of the essential ingredients, the boat is looking great and so well sorted out thanks to Bev's skills and hard work.  But there's some sand in out suntan lotion that has nothing to do with our boat.  The Achilles-heel in my plan turns out to be our house.  Go figure.  But a house is more like a big anchor than a boat and right now it seems like we have a bigger anchor that our boat.  Not a good combination for sailors dreaming of the south seas.  What I want, what any sailor really wants and just about any romantic wants; a chance to strive, for it is the longing, the striving, the seeking, the quest, journey, road, mountain, sky, land, sea, fish, partner, home, friend... It is the journey to and the enjoyment with those energies, much more so than the mere possessing any of those things because things pass away, but energy, energy never dies, that's way it's one of the truest things in the Universe.  Oh, ah, pardon me, I got side tracked.  

I'm back now and talking about my foolish plans gone awry.  So with travel on our minds, a couple of years ago we contracted with an interesting woman to set up her tiny house on our property.  In exchange she would pay a modest rent and look after our place when we were away on trips in the mean time she became a friend.  That all worked well until she developed some serious health issues. Now she needs someone to look after her.  So we started looking around for someone to house sit for us with the understanding they would lend a hand and watch out for our tenant.  A friend recommended his sister who was retiring and planning on relocating from the east coast to Eugene where she would be looking for a place to stay.  We talked and she agreed to "sit" our house in exchange for looking out for our tiny house tenant and keeping an eye on our place.  She packed up her stuff, shipped it all to us and then flew out herself but sadly she was only here a couple of weeks when she developed a serious heart condition that landed her in the hospital.  Fortunately she’s better now.  Fingers crossed.  With the help of another friend, our tiny house tenant getting regular support from senior services.  Three to four days a week someone comes to help her, cook, clean and run errands.  It is my hope that both women will be able to look after each other as best they can, that and with friends, neighbors and senior services looking in from time to time Im hoping for the best. 

I’m someone who likes simple, robust plans but somehow I’ve managed to end up weaving a fairly complex web of supports.  Like I said I’m sure that god is having a good laugh at my plans and I trust that she will have compassion on all us mortals trying our best to get by.  And yes, I am a romantic fool, and unrepentive one at that, but I am my own fool, nobody else’s and that has made all the difference.  

A fool and his money may be often be “parted” but he’ll always have his heart and I am that fool, unrepentant and undaunted.  

Forth of July

We just spent a couple of days down at the shore working on Malo.  That finished up on July 4th with fire works.  I have always celebrated the 4th of July, even when abroad, especially when abroad but this year felt different.  I still put out the flags, Malo’s boat flag and a little one that was left over from a road race that started in our marina parking lot, but I was defiantly feeling mixed emotions.  In my 63 years I have witnessed some significant high and low spots in our country.  Times that I have been extremely proud to be an American and other times not so much.  The high points that stand out are; passage of the Civil Rights Act, Americans walking on the moon, the fall of the Berlin wall and the rescue of Kuwait.  Some of the lows; the assassination of President Kennedy & Martin Luther King Jr., the Watergate scandal, the Whitewater investigation and the second invasion of Iraq.  The Vietnam war was both a great tragedy of human suffering and a great victory for the people of America who managed to put a halt to that catastrophe.  

Now we stand at another low water mark in our country’s history.  A time when our great land, that was built on civil discourse and tempered objectivity stands divided.  Bigotry, both racial and intellectual are on the rise, as is misogyny and other unsavory forms of prejudice.  Politically we are like two separate countries at ideological war with one another, at odds to an extreme that renders our government dysfunctional with no end in sight.  It is this dark night of America's soul that has me feeing conflicted about celebrating the 4th.  

As the day turned into night we considered staying to watch the barge launch fireworks from our boat in the marina but was warned by a neighbor about the atrocious traffic snarl that follows the show so we opted to show.  It didn’t start until 10:00pm and we still had two hours of driving in the best of conditions to get home.  When we got to the car Bev realized that she had forgotten her glasses so I waited while she went back to the boat.  When she got back to the car a few moments later she looked quite troubled.  “You can’t find your glasses?” I asked.  “No” she informed me, she had found them but was troubled by the fireworks that were being set off right next to our boat.  Bev said that she felt very nervous just stepping off the boat, having to time her departure with a lull in the pyrotechnics.  We had just installed over $6K worth of new canvas on the boat and the thought of what fireworks could do to it was troubling to the both of us.  So we headed back to the boat to assess the situation.  Fortunately by the time we got back they had moved the location where they were shooting off the fireworks one boat down the dock away from ours.  That was enough “breathing room” to give us a little piece of mind.  The ironic thing was that the guy's kids that were setting off the fireworks were off a boat that is owned but a fire safety inspector in town.  Funny but not in a ha-ha sort of way.  So we stayed and enjoyed the fireworks show out in the harbor.  



The surprising thing was that the "civilian" fireworks went several time higher than the commercial ones.  The real shocker happened when folks on the fishing dock next to our marina started shooting fireworks (barely) over the bridge.  You could plainly see the cars driving over the bridge plus all the people up there watching the barge show and those rockets from the warf were passing just a little bit over their heads.  Crazy.   America, I'm glad that some of us are still celebrating, I just hope we don't kill anyone or burn the place down in the process.   In the mean time I'm listening to understand my fellow Americans as much as possible and praying.  I've been praying for President Trump and our country to transit this dark time with the least amount of suffering and greatest amount of compassion possible and I invite any other kindred soles to join me in this.  The more the better.

Good night and good luck to us all...

Sailing while old and getting older…

I’ve never been a big complainer and I hope that I’m not seen as complaining here as I write this.  It is my hope that this will be viewed more as personal reporting than complaining.  I’m sharing this now because of two things; 1) I view life, all life as a sacred journey and 2) this aspect of the life journey, the last part, is under reported and under appreciated.  So please, whoever reads my modest scribblings, let me do my small part in rectifying the unbalanced nature of life reporting by adding my own observations and thoughts as I journey up that path.

Early this year I discovered that I could not bend my right knee behind me nearly as much a I could the left one.  There was a time when my both my legs folded nicely beneath me.  

But alas, it’s seems that ability is behind me now.  Mind you, I haven’t given up hope and I still try stretching as well as I can but so far I’ve been stymied.  I set up an appointment with an orthopedic doctor who, after X-rays and and MRI pronounced that I had a minor tear in my meniscus and that my knee was mostly suffering from age related arthritis.  No surgery was recommended for the time being.  Pain relief procedures were offered and declined by me.  I can deal with pain but I don’t like doing it blindly.  I like to know what’s going on in order to lessen any possible damage whenever possible.  Over the past year I’ve been feeling arthritis in my hands which serves to take some of the pleasure of working with them.  I’ve always loved working with my hands and this has caused me to modify my approach and thinking about use my hands.  I’ve found that wrapping aggravated finger joints helps greatly.  I also don’t tend to use as much force now as I use to when doing things like hammering.  I also will now chose a larger tool in order to lessen the presser on my hands when wrenching.  I wonder if I’ll ever come to a place where I can’t do any meaningful work with my hands what what that might be like.  In the mean time I’m being a bit more choosy about what I work on and much more appreciative of the work that I can still do. Gratitude, it's one of the great balms and rewards of a long life.

Back to my knees.  They most recently and surprisingly showed up as an issue when I tried to climb our mast to replace our steaming & foredeck lights and inspect out mast head, jib sheave in order to determine the cause of excessive fraying of our jig halyard.   Back in the day, climbing used to feel effortless and fun to me.

No so any more.  Last year, when we were prepping Malo for her trip to Oregon, I went up the mast a total of 8 times spending a combined 8 hours up there, first inspecting, then removing the old radome, installing a new bracket and then a new dome, fixing the mast head light and installing new wind instruments.  It was hard, significantly harder then the last item I had gone up a mast 8 years earlier which was not so unexpected given the amount of time that had passed.  The shocker came last week when I attempted to go up the mast again.  It was a lot harder that last just year.  I couldn’t use my etriers (webbing steps) hooked to my climbing ascenders because of the pain in my knees.  I had been using the etriers in conjunction with Bev hoisting me via a genoa winch but I couldn’t do my half.  I couldn't drive upwards with my feet, my knees wouldn’t let me.  It was a disheartening moment but we huddled together and decided to give it another try with me discarding the etriers all together, Bev pulling header on the winch and me using my arms with the ascenders and both of us taking our time, with some rest breaks thrown in for good measure.  By and by we managed to get me half way up the mast.  I was able to remove the old light but broke off a bolt in the process and I couldn’t pull enough wire out of the mast in order to splice in the new fixture.  Also buy that point my hips were killing me from the compression caused from the climbing harness.  So down I came with the job unfinished.

We’re not giving up though.  We went to the base of the mast in the cabin and discovered the cause of the overly taught wiring and how to free up enough for me to make an effective splice.  We also ordered a bosun's chair that I’ll use in place of the climbing harness in order to avoid the painful hip compression.  So Nietzsche’s old chestnut about “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger” may still apply at least in spirit if not in body.