Shiriri Saga # 22 Mendocino.

In Difficulties.
We are back in enormous waves and rising winds. It is evening, and we are thirty miles south-west of Cape Mendocino. Should we continue and try to sail out of it, or heave-to as we usually do? On such seemingly minor points, can big outcomes hang. The crew opts to do the usual thing and suggests it is also time to try out the storm parachute sea anchor. It takes some trouble to deploy off the weather bow, but finally it pulls our bow to face the waves: just as advertized!

Cape Mendocino. Northern California. X marks the spot.

Suddenly the motion is horrendous, like being anchored in an enormous surf line of breaking waves. In thirty foot waves with a six second interval, we are being lifted above the height of a three story house and back to the basement every six seconds as the sea anchor holds us firmly in this wild spot on the seas surface. The latest train of large ocean swells has touched ground far below amid the rocky canyons of the San Andreas Fault and begun to boil at the surface. Our stern tosses high in the air as our bow disappears into the face of a wave. We have gone from situation normal to overload in minutes.

We have been towing our Inflatable, Rosie, all the way down the coast with no problems, but now it is tucking itself under the stern and taking a thumping from the transom. I pull it alongside out of trouble. Shiriri turns slightly so the bar tight line to the sea anchor is now lead under the bowsprit and starts to thump and wear on the bob stay. I start the engine to motor ahead and bring the line back on the port side and feel the propellor wrap a stray line from the inflatable around itself. I shut down the engine immediately but too late: our engine cannot be used now until calm conditions will allow me to swim below the stern and unwrap it! We put in a terrible night in the cockpit hanging on and hoping the weather will improve. Amid such powerful forces, things can rapidly spiral out of control.

By morning, the steering quadrant has broken, so now we have no steering. The weather is worse: the wind is gusting to over sixty knots and building the swells quickly into breaking waves. Just when we need all our wits and strength, we are totally exhausted and sea sick. Shiriri is handling the conditions well enough, pitching up and down in the wicked seas but the crew is not! We decide to send a pan pan distress message to the US coast guard so they will know we are out here and struggling but not yet in a may day situation. Half an hour later, a helicopter hovers overhead appraising the situation and an oh- so-welcome friendly voice offers us a tow to harbour. We accept.

The Rescue.

In accepting the proffered tow by the Coast Guard we have placed ourselves in other`s hands and can not now decide on a course of action of our own - like cutting ourselves loose from the sea anchor and drifting past the cape. We have elected to wait for rescue: we are sick, sleep deprived and far too passive for our own good. We do not eat or drink or try to keep up our spirits: just loll in the cockpit for the whole day as the wind now blows at hurricane strength and the brilliant blue sea heaves and writhes; all fringed in white foam. Even in the circumstances, we love it`s impersonal beauty under a cloudless sky. This is no winter storm, just the high pressure cell in the Pacific strengthening and spinning out winds that are increasing near the coast as they meet the low pressure air that rises over the warm land. These winds are then doubled in force again as they are squeezed into a narrow path as they curve by Cape Mendocino.

The Coast Guard sends out an aircraft to keep an eye on us and it checks in on a regular schedule over the VHF radio. We must be quite a site bouncing around in the foam. They tell us that the cutter is coming from way up the coast, that it has just finished towing another yacht in from one hundred miles out and it will not arrive until evening. What a long sleepless day we have ahead!

Shiriri suddenly turns sideways to the waves and heels far over so that one side is high in the air and the other buried in the waves. Our sea anchor line has finally chaffed through and we are drifting sideways with wind and sea. At first we think this means the boat will tip over but after awhile we find that things are quieter. We no longer pitch violently, but are lifted bodily sideways on the crest of a wave, the slack bilges of our traditional schooner form a gentle curve on which to slide. Water is forced under the keel and forms a large patch of turbulent eddies that catch and neutralize the jets of breaking water and foam that rush down the wave faces toward us. After half a hour we know that we are safe, if still in a precarious position.

The four engine C-140 Hercules starts to circle with a wing tip pointed toward us and over the waves bounces a toy sized cutter; sometimes perched on a wave crest and at others hidden in the troughs. Only as it comes near can we see it is eighty feet long and it is only the size of the waves that dwarf it. At first they tell us to prepare to jump into the water and be rescued by the rescue helicopter that now hovers nearby. What? We were waiting for a tow! We point out that we are not sinking and that the heel is from wind pressure on masts and hull and is not due to being half full of water. To abandon a floating boat for these rough seas seems crazy to us! We loose our apathy, and begin to draw on the next level of adrenaline.

"Ok," they say, " One try to take you in tow."They throw a heaving line which falls neatly across our bow and I lunge for it and start hauling it in to retrieve the heavy tow line attached to the other end. It is so close to the boat and then becomes too heavy! Heather beside me, who has been sliding back and forth on the high side deck relaying messages to me from Gwyn on the VHF radio shouts "Give me the end of that!"and together we haul it aboard and I slip the end over the bitts at the bow. We are connected to our rescue vessel and after some more attempts to retrieve a drogue during which I nearly go overboard we are under tow back through the waves, north bound around Mendocino again, and en route through the night to the northern California port of Eureka.

I have just had a peak life experience out there on the bow, half smothered in cold sea water and retching my guts out, as we dealt with the details of our rescue. Even as I was aware of the helicopter hovering beside me, the cutter sometimes below and seconds later looking down on me, of the sting of spray in my face, part of me was a calm observer who said, " At last you are in the company of the people you have read about all your life. Here is Joshua Slocum. Here are Miles and Beryl Smeeton". I was at last facing terrific adversity and able to draw on a fund of resolve that only this kind of experience could bring forth.

The Long tow.
Shiriri is moving to windward at what seems a terrific pace.( Six knots) Ahead, pulling on the tow line, the Coast Guard cutter cuts through the top of a big wave and seconds later our boat tosses her bow high on the same crest, tries to lunge across to the next crest, fails, and plunges her bow deep in the face of the next wave. We smash it aside in a spray that reaches to the tops of our masts and back to where Heather and I lie miserably in the cockpit. And then again, and again! Gwyn is just below us in the after cabin in her berth, close to the VHF radio where she can communicate with the cutter each hour. Our trip to Eureka, in Humboldt Bay, has begun, and it seems that our greatest challenge of the night will simply be to hang on, stay awake for another twelve hours, and keep from dying from exposure.

After a few interminable hours of wildly pitching progress, our main mast pulls the running back stay fittings out of the deck and, in jerking back and forth, chews up the wedges that keep the mast firmly held in the deck. We are about to loose our mast, and it will fall on us! I talk to the cutter who does not want to stop or slow down ( they wish to reach the harbour entrance at slack water when the seas will be calmest) and beg them to stop for ten minutes. When they do, I balance in the dark catching lethal swinging blocks attached to the end of wire rope stays and tie them down as best I can. I wedge more wood around the mast and then off we go again. In the interval though, we notice that the seas have gone down considerably: we are out of the maelstrom.

I am so cold! We cling to each other for warmth, but my survival suit was soaked back there on the bow several hours ago and the adrenaline has settled back to simply keeping me awake. The sleeping bags we drape over us are soaked almost immediately by the cold spray. When Heather asks me what that metallic thumping sound is, I can barely think and imagine it may be coming from the propellor shaft below the cockpit; Clang, clang, thump, thump! We only discover the true cause after our arrival, and of all that has happened, this one could have killed us very quickly as we were towed along in the dark.

We finally cross the calm bar into Humboldt Bay and are handed over to a smaller cutter that lashes itself alongside and takes us to a marina. While Gwyn takes the crew on a tour of inspection of Shiriri to be sure we have all our required safety gear, Heather and I are taken below in the cutter and, after having our survival suits stripped off, we are toasted under heat lamps. Soon we are able to thank our most recent batch of rescuers and stagger up the dock to long hot showers and a good breakfast of bacon, eggs and pancakes.

We are so pleased to be alive and on land again. We return to our tattered boat in the dawn past a group of onlookers ("What has the cutter caught this time?") and step down into our messy cabin, onto our berths and fall fast asleep! We have been awake for forty -eight hours.

Shiriri Saga # 21. The Big Ocean.

The voyage down the coast.

The waves are enormous! Off Cape Flattery the wind picks up from the usual North-West quadrant and we begin a roller coaster ride on enormous swells that lift us high in the air. We then steer down the slope with our hearts in our mouths. In the trough, the wind goes light, and then the wave slides under us and we are back on the windy crest once more. These are not wind waves, but swells that have travelled many hundreds of miles from a storm in mid North Pacific and are now feeling the shoaling off the cape which serves to make them shorter from crest to crest and higher ( at least 20` high). We have cut the corner too close as we pass the cape.

We have read in advance about this passage down the coast and two theories have emerged: stick close to land and dodge into a harbour when the weather gets worse or you need a rest, or go 100 to 200 miles out, away from shoal water and capes and treat it as an offshore passage. We choose to sail only 30 miles off shore and keep our options open. Partly, we are afraid of deep water but also concerned that the available harbours along this coast are difficult to get in and out of because of big waves and shoal, sandy shores. Like most sailors from the Pacific North-West with it`s Inside Passage, we are unaccustomed to open ocean sailing and this trip down the coast is our first major introduction to it. Unfortunately, these West Coast waters are rated the fifth most dangerous in the world, so if we hit a rough patch we will have a very steep learning curve. We have chosen a middle path, and that will be a problem for us up ahead.

Once well past the cape and in deeper water, the waves settle down to only eight feet or so. - still difficult for us, as Shiriri wants to slew around on each wave crest and she requires a careful hand on the wheel. We will all learn eventually to make a slight correction just before she tries to turn, but in the meantime the crew works hard to maintain course.

It is cold out here so we don our survival suits for the duration of the voyage and settle in to steering due south so we will slowly edge away from the south-east trending coast of North America. Night presents another problem. Because the waves are catching us at an angle on our quarter and making steering difficult, Gwyn and Heather cannot manage it in the dark. We must all take our turns on watch so others can sleep ( there is no more anchoring for the night,) and so we decide on another compromise: we will stop the boat for the night by heaving-to ( reducing sail and swinging the boat around so she just gently rests close to the wind and is more or less stopped.) The helm is lashed and the person on deck only has to watch for other boats. We are tired and desperately need our sleep but by stopping at night we have chosen to double the length of time we will be out here in these turbulent conditions. So, the more likely the weather will be to change and the more exhausted we will become. We all feel sickly from the motion and the standard anti-nausea pills leave us sleepy. This is not fun!

Over the next few days we sail past the coasts of Washington and Oregon states and actually pass the notorious Cape Blanco in a calm, under power. We have yet to learn not to tempt the Gods however, and start talking about San Francisco and getting out of our survival suits. Only one more big bulge in the coastline to negociate: Cape Mendocino!

Shiriri Saga # 20. Departure. The Big Leap into the Big Pond.

Cape Flattery.

We have chosen to make our departure for our Pacific voyage from Victoria`s Inner Harbour on the Labour Day weekend( Sept. 7) when there is a Wooden Boat Festival at the docks. Just backing Shiriri into a slim space between highly polished vintage yachts is stressful and the noise and crowds of curious onlookers is not the best for last minute jobs and especially our goodbyes to friends and family. Our pride and joy, Shiriri, that now has all her paint and cetol varnish in multiple layers to resist salt spray and tropical sun is splendid and practical in our eyes but does not measure up to the floating varnish advertisements that surround her. During our isolated up-coast summer we forgot that the work-boat standard we had struggled so hard to achieve would look, well, .... practical!

Finally the hardest goodbye for me is over ( saying goodbye to my frail old mom), we have topped up our fuel tanks and jerry cans with diesel and Heather, Gwyn and I motor out of harbour and turn right toward the place where Juan de Fuca Strait becomes the open Pacific Ocean. We motor out past Race Rocks lighthouse and start saying goodbyes to each familiar piece of landscape we pass. We say hello to a Canadian Navy ship in the strait that Anne is serving on, and imagine that future date when Gwyn and Anne will change places in San Diego. There is no fog, no head winds, no wind at all in fact and after several hours we anchor for the night at Port Renfrew.

We understand why so many voyages never successfully get launched. We have had so many impediments ourselves lasting over several years and now we are sharing our berths with the most difficult companion of all - fear! There is something about leaving the familiar shore that claws at the guts. Nevertheless, the next morning we hoist sail to a fresh breeze and angle across the entrance of Juan de Fuca for Cape Flattery and the beginning of our first passage down the coast to San Francisco. Shiriri is southward bound at last.

Reflections.

Radiating ripples break the mirror surface of the pond. Either something has fallen from above, or reached up from below: it gives a dynamic quality to an otherwise quiet and predictable scene. I`m reminded of the Haida Indian explanation of mankinds place in the order of things. There are beings that know only the hidden world beneath the surface - fish, for example. Then there are those who experience reality on the surface membrane of water and land - humans, among others. There are the fowls of the air who know the extacy of the upper regions. Only a few of these can dive below, swim and walk on the surface and fly over all of creation. Only these can have a complete understanding of the nature of reality: the rest of us can have only a partial perspective.

Of course its not that clear anymore. Humans can now dive into the ocean depths, travel quickly to the ends of the earth, and fly so high that they can reach the moon. If the Haida story were strictly about the tangible reality of the world we might be forgiven for placing it in the category of outmoded historical myth. The myth, though, remains current because it is using the metaphor of three world levels to point beyond our limited human perspective to the intangible aspects of spirit reality - realms visited by shaman concerned with maintaining a proper relationship between humans and the underlying and overarching spirit of the visible world.

The creative process too is a kind of interactive metaphor that my human mind uses to process information and make the leap from specific knowledge to a larger understanding. I imagine how it all began: two remote ancestors walk down a wooded trail and catch a blur of shape stretched out in the speckled light and shadowed foliage above them. Their imaginations fill in the missing information.... and see the big hungry cat just about to pounce. They turn, link hands, and run. They survived, that`s why they are our ancestors; and they passed that ability to imagine a larger reality beyond representative parts on to their descendants and they, over time, refined it into cave paintings. These people of maybe thirty thousand years ago saw the partial shapes in the rocky surfaces of caves and refined them into images that captured the forms of the big animals they hunted and who hunted them. The image captures the essence of the real thing; is a visual metaphor. Behind the specific animal, is a master pattern and, by extension, behind all reality is a master pattern. The cave painters can now interact imaginatively, create story, dance and song: enter into the unified mind of all their fellow creatures.

This concept of metaphor is a useful tool for me to understand how I interact with the world. I draw a ripple into a quiet pond scene because the image calls for it; the ripple sets my mind off into deeper thoughts as though it turns a key in my mind. The drawing itself is a metaphor - the reflected tree, the ripple, the water lilies, all say, "This drawing is the essence of ever changing reality; focused and suspended out of time so you can experience it." The individual image represents the greater whole.

I was recently re- reading the old Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf and was reminded of the poetic device called a kenning: a metaphorical devise that lifts the account of brave hero and nasty monsters past a blood and guts rendition to a wider picture of mankind, fate and courage. Last night I watched a movie based on the mythic story of Tristan and Isolde. It was populated with lots of handsome young men and women loving and killing to give an audience a vicarious thrill. I was still touched by the almost obliterated deeper story that shone through: a metaphor that spoke of deep patterns of love, loyalty and the workings of fate. These old stories carry metaphorical thinking forward into the present day.

The picture on the cave wall is the spirit, the master pattern, of the flesh and blood representative. The kenning that calls the ocean " the whales way" creates linking metaphors that point to a larger appreciation of reality. Tristan and Isolde, that Arthurian legend, reaches into our own emotions: we feel the emotion and are the momentary flesh and blood representatives of a master pattern and metaphor is our link to it. Those ripples that break the perfect pond reflection of the overhanging tree and sky are a metaphor that opens the surface of reality: I can use them to open my mind to understand deeper patterns. Those spreading waves are the tones of a bell that focuses my thoughts and guides my pencil .

Shiriri Saga # 19The Octopus Islands.

June 16 The Octopus Islands.
We have carefully edged into a small bay in the Octopus Islands north of the Strait of Georgia. They are amidst the maze of islands and channels that lead toward the north end of Vancouver Island and the open Pacific. The tidal currents sweep up and down these channels so rapidly that we must time our arrival at the narrowest parts so as to catch the few minutes of calm at the high and low points of the tide. We have passed through Surge Narrows at close to slack and even so Shiriri rolled and twisted in the whirling eddies. Now we are anchored and stern tied to the land and can settle down to get the last of the brightwork stripped and refinished. We work in the mornings, and wander off to explore in our dinghy, Edith, in the afternoons.

The weather is cool and damp as it often is in June on the coast so we get a lot of old finish stripped and not much revarnished but we also have the bay pretty much to ourselves. A speed boat zips past the narrow entrance and then turns and comes in for a closer look at Shiriri, some interesting sailboats come in and anchor for the night but the summer rush has yet to start.

One day we visit one of the small islets in the group and just laze away the afternoon poking around and sketching: a thing we must make ourselves do as we are so used to seriously working on all our boat projects. Even in this lovely setting far from the cares of the world, we have a mental clock ticking down to an offshore departure and there is so much to do!

Quadra Island is very large and this end is wild and unpopulated. We make a longer expedition one day to the head of a large bay (Waiatt Bay) to the south of us. The chart shows a short valley that connects the head of this bay with another on the other side of the island. A chance to go for a hike ashore!
Some old ruins of a logging camp troll their rotting piles and steel cables out for innocent anchors as we motor past in Edith and if we had paused to look on landing at the forested head of the bay I`m sure we would have found indications of an old Indian village. This coast is more solitary now than ever with the decline in logging and fishing: and any signs of the past disappear so rapidly under the lush undergrowth.

We have a lovely hike amid the red cedar trees that keep the undergrowth in check and come out at last at the bay on the other side. Way out in this bay another sailboat lies at anchor and it`s crew are exploring the far shore in kayaks. We walk a little farther and then find a large pile of very fresh manure in the middle of the trail. "Probably bear" I say, ..... "Or wolf?" We retrace our steps in leaps and soon are back with Edith, pushing off quickly and heading back to those suddenly all important boat projects.

Shiriri Saga#18 Paths of Glory.

Jervis Inlet ("old Jarvy," First Lord of the Admiralty) is a fijord that leads deep into the heart of the Coast Range.

June 6 AM Paths of Glory.
Sailing up the long winding reaches of Jervis Inlet is like visiting my favourite maritime sailing books -The series by Patrick O`Brian beginning with Master and Commander and following the life of Jack Aubrey through fourteen books in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. We sail up Agamemnon Channel(HMS) with Nelson Island (Horatio) to port and discover that nearly every island and bay carries names of historical ships and characters in O`Brian`s books. The naval officers who charted these waters with Captain Vancouver must have been bursting to accomplish this massive task quickly so they could get back to Europe where "real glory"(and promotion) was to be won in battle. This mountainous, forested coast bears the names of glory yet.

That BKW (breakwater) in Killam Bay should have warned us off. Old logging shows mean old cables and other junk.



PM Anchor Tango.
The anchor is snagged on some old logging cable. We have tried to anchor near an abandoned wharf on a narrow ledge along the precipitous sides of Jervis Inlet that winds for miles deep into the heart of the Coast Range. The cable holds the anchor from being raised completely to the surface and will not let go even when I try dropping the anchor quickly. I am exhausted. Heather suggests a cup of tea, and by pouring it carefully into the murky water we win free! No, unfortunately we did n`t think of that, but the tea break and a brainstorming conversation leads me to try motoring in circles and that breaks the rotten cable. We cross the Inlet in the dusk and anchor in a hundred feet on the glacier smoothed rocky bottom of Dark Cove. Thankfully it is a calm night or we would have dragged across this bottom for sure!



Thats HMS GOLIATH(74) . I wonder who KILLAM was?


June 7 A Stress Test.
Princess Louisa Inlet near the head of Jervis Inlet really is a spectacular place! We motor through the narrow entrance of Malibu Rapids at slack water and twist our necks from left to right looking at sheer rock faces leading up to the snow caps and glaciers of the Coast Range. We can hear the roar of water falling down the slopes even over the sound of the engine. At the head of the fijord is Chatterbox Falls splashing right into the sea and a dock for visitors to the park. At last we do not have to anchor!



Just look at those nearly vertical contour lines!

This spectacular place features in a classic boating book A Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet. We look for the family and their little cruiser Caprice but know in our heads if not in our hearts that their time is long past. All the books we read bring the places we visit alive, link us to personalities and events in the past and give us a sense of participating in a story ourselves.

We do go ashore and have a chat with the ranger who tells us of an unusual bear that is hanging around that seems to have no fear of humans. One of the crew has a really healthy fear of bears so we do not wander far from the boat. The problem here is that the falls are so loud that the bear could not hear us coming and move out of the way even if he was of a mind to. It turns out that it is not funny at all when I touch Heather`s arm as we walk beside the Falls and say "Roar!" in a friendly sort of way. Ah, these rational fears!

Shiriri Saga # 17 Dragging The New Bruce Anchor

June 5.
The forecast is for gusty winds as we approach Pender Harbour, so we keep winding our way passed several possible anchorages until we reach Garden Bay - the innermost one. It is a beautiful place with high hills to shelter us from southerly winds. The chart tells of a mud bottom, but we feel safe because before leaving on this trip north we bought a new anchor and chain. "Blow ye winds hi ho!" At first we anchor facing a northerly wind but the next day we move again in preparation for the southerly gale that is on its way. But still, we have this excellent anchor, right?

This bay has literary associations for us because it is the home of Fishing with John by Edith Iglauer and we can see their home close by. We go for walks ashore, do some more scraping and sanding and generally enjoy ourselves.

That night the gale arrives and, far from being sheltered, the bay catches big gusts that rush down from the heights above. These are the worst conditions for Shiriri because she lunges backwards in the gusts, coming up tight on the chain anchor rode and then moves forward on the slack chain in the lull. The next gust catches her bow a glancing blow and she heels and sails off to one side only to be brought up with a sharp snap, turns, and sails off in the other direction. The new Bruce anchor is jerking and swivelling from side to side in the soft muddy bottom of the bay. After several worried hours of this, the inevitable happens and we break free of the bottom and drag rapidly backwards between several anchored boats, finally coming to rest just off a dock at the head of the bay.

We retrieve our anchor with difficulty. Not only is it stormy and pitchy black, but the usual hand signals between bow and cockpit are useless in the dark. I crank the windlass and run back and forth to communicate with Heather who is steering blind and controlling the engine. Finally we motor back out into the biggest open space in the bay and re-anchor with lots and lots of scope and spend a few more hours keeping an eye on lights ashore as bearings to see if we will drag again. The wind slowly drops and we get some sleep.

* The funny thing looking back on this anchoring episode is how ordinary it seems in retrospect. The Bruce anchor actually performed well that night, all things considered, but we have dragged it through some pretty high class harbours since then. No anchor is foolproof in all conditions and we kept on learning!

Blown Away.

Today I will dig the remaining row of last seasons potato crop and prepare the ground for other vegetables. Two weeks ago I planted this years crop in new ground . I used certified seed potatoes and did a careful job of it. These homely vegetables that are so taken for granted are a mainstay of our winter diet. The generally mild winters allow us to keep them from freezing in the ground by spreading fall leaves on the surface. It is a patch dedicated to potatoes alone that is the size of most suburban lawns. Then there are other big beds for strawberries, beans, peas, beets and so on. There is a greenhouse for tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Higher up the terraced slope grow raspberries, espaliered fruit trees, kiwis and grapes. Surrounding all are rock gardens, flower beds and lawns, because beauty is an essential crop as well.

All this keeps us busy through the summer; growing, weeding and finally, harvesting. We eat what we grow with only occasional visits to the produce section of the supermarket throughout the year. We have n`t just recently discovered this as a new age idea of eating organic food or helping the planet ( though both are worthy goals), my family always had vegetable gardens and our grandparents mostly lived on farms. We would n`t have to go back through more than three or four thousand years to find our more remote ancestors hunting and gathering, living off the land and experimenting with improving wild grains and replanting the immature edible roots they found to grow to full size before harvesting. From such small beginnings we have progressed to modern industrial human societies that rely on networks of trade and finance to supply the necessities of life.

We grow, and then preserve like mad through the summer and into the Fall. About the time I am bringing up the winters firewood we will be proudly and thankfully surveying the long shelves of preserves and a freezer filled to the brim with fruits and vegetables. When the boxes of apples and squash are emptied by mid winter we will nibble on dried apples and other fruit. All this is not to tell you how virtuous we are but to show how normal this is for us and was for all our ancestors back into history.

All this is not work, like going to the office or factory every week day for life is work. This is growth from which the most basic blessings flow. The skill-set to do this lies just beneath the surface in all of us. Mostly, we have come to believe that growing things is second class dirty work suitable for second class people. The way of life to which many in the world aspire has risen like foam to the top in our industrial societies. We have education, wealth, lots of toys and ownership of the earth`s resources. We are also very vulnerable if the systems we trust with our lives should falter.

Just remember that glass of cold beer with the lovely head of foam on top. How pretty, how fragile, how easily blown away.

Shiriri Saga #16 Begin it now!

Jededia Island is tucked into the flanks of Lasquiti Island, just across the channel from Texada Island in the northern part of the Strait of Georgia.


Scrape, scrape, scrape. Paint, paint, paint. Heather and I are anchored stern to a rock face in a bay at Jededia Island. It is early summer, we have left our winter cave at last, Heather has a clear bill of health from her doctor and we are making our way north to explore the islands and channels at the northern end of the Strait of Georgia. When it is rainy we scrape off the old oil finish on all the teak and mahogany brightwork and when it is sunny we sand and refinish with cetol - a far more bulletproof finish than was our first choice.

This island has become a provincial park quite recently thanks to a big citizen`s fund raising campaign and we enjoy the freedom of walks ashore through the woodland trails, abandoned farm fields and orchards. At a south facing bay we discover a cairn in memory to a climber who lost his life on K-2 and whose legacy helped make this public bit of natural beauty possible. Here is written his favourite quote that we write into the first page of our ships log.

Whatever you can do or dream you can,
Begin it.
Boldness has genius, power
and magic in it.
Begin it now!
Goethe.

After all the waiting, we are just three months away from our big jump offshore and are feeling a little jittery. This affirmation is just what we need!

A few days later we are ready to sail on to Pender Harbour but that morning we speak to a woman who has anchored with some difficulty the previous evening. She has just a little sailboat and is bound for Alaska all by herself. Her partner with whom she shared the dream of this voyage has recently died and she is setting out alone to accomplish their dream. She is running on high octane courage and has reached the northern limit of many summer cruisers. North of here it gets wilder. She too is feeling the jitters, so we say, "Stop! Before you leave you must go and see that cairn and read the words."


Her story, and the life and death of the mountain climber put our own worries back into perspective and we sail out of Deep Bay with renewed resolve.

Courage.

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
The Lotus-Eaters.
Tennyson.

These opening lines of Tennyson`s poem The Lotus Eaters have stuck with me ever since I read them in high school. I`ve always been moved by visual ideas and here the picture from Homer via this Victorian poet, of Odysseus rallying his crew to see the loom of land ahead which gives them hope of survival after many days storm tossed on unknown seas has always been a powerful one for me: long before I went to sea myself and needed to hear those words in earnest.

I painted this picture on the side of a wooden box and later, on the computer, experimented with putting the lines together with the image. Combining words with images interests me, as you can tell from this blog, and here I am borrowing from Tennyson to dig a little deeper into my own understanding of courage.

There are so many forms of courage. What they all have in common is the link to a common ground shared by all who must achieve an end beyond their usual abilities. People are supported by all of life at that moment and it acts through them. It does n`t have to be a big heroic act, it just has to be a courageous thing for that person to do. The person who finally puts aside an addiction through sheer will power would have done a courageous thing within their life experience. A soldier, continuing to think and act cooly while under fire might simply be carrying out what he has practiced many times to do: courage, for him might take a different form, like refusing to follow an illegal order. There must be so many people who are living lives that call for courage that it would seem to be a common human capacity that we all can reach for, a kind of constant in the human condition, rather than a rare event associated with heroic deeds.

Odysseus is calling to his companions to rise up out of despair, to take heart, reach within themselves for the strength that lies deep within all of us and step forward. It is such a powerful thing to do that I feel it yet.

Shiriri Saga # 15. The Photo Shoot.

Shiriri , just before the knock down.

"How did I get sucked into doing this?" I mutter to myself as I hoist our big mainsail on a stormy winter`s day. Heather has had an article accepted by a sailing magazine and a photographer has arrived for a hurried series of pictures of Shiriri in action poses. There looks to be plenty of action very soon with a gale funneling up Captains Passage combined with the photographers insistence on some shots under full sail.

Gwyn and Heather pose precariously.

Shiriri carries a lot of canvas in her normal working rig of main, fore, forestays`l and jib: suitable for light airs only, with the expectation that sails will be lowered or reefed as wind strength increases. Our photographer has his eye on the spectacular shot however and somehow he has taken control. We find a deep cove on Prevost Island that has some shelter, hoist all sail, cross our fingers and start to zigzag slowly downwind towards the open sea while he directs us from a chase boat. "Get those pictures now!" I mutter as I carefully gybe Shiriri back and forth down the narrow bay.

"OK the wind has dropped out by the beacon. Sail out there!" comes the order from the chase boat and out we go. I can see why he wants this particular picture, so full of power and drama. He is a professional. But not a professional sailor, and I should not be signing my job away. Once off the point in the full blast of the gale and with the rocky headland right under our lee I have to gybe again and Shiriri, never the stiffest boat in the world, rolls on her beam ends and lies there, sails thrashing. It feels like the moment lasts forever and that we are frozen, unable to act.

An interior shot looking aft from galley into the saloon.

Fortunately, if her crew fumbles momentarily, Shiriri can still shake her head and get back up on her feet and is quicky sailing heeled rail down out into open water. I must have finally given my own head a shake and decided that a photo of Shiriri`s red bottom would have to satisfy our photographer`s lust for the perfect picture, because I get the big mainsail down and head back into shelter despite excited commands to "Keep those sails up!"over the radio.

We finish with all the other shots throughout the afternoon and then he is gone as quickly as he arrived. We look at each other and agree we have learned a few things that day. The obvious one is never hand over command to someone else`s agenda but the more important one was that Shiriri is a tough boat who will keep coming up for more. Without that pressure to risk ourselves we would not have made that manoeuver and found there was a lot more to her design ancestry of East Coast fishing schooners than a romantic appearance.

Shiriri Saga #14 Underground.

The figurehead with her first white undercoat.

The summer of caring for my recovering mother is finished but we still have months to go before the doctor can be sure that Heather`s angioplasty is a success. We hear of an underground house that needs house sitting until the following Spring that is near the bay where we can keep Shiriri for the winter. We move in and look around at this interesting design.

Large windows face out over Captains Passage and Trincomalli Channel, the entrance crosses a pond, and an atrium is full of an enormous bouganvillia. The whole concrete house is enclosed in a mound of gravel. After life on the boat it seems cave-like but after caring for my mother in my childhood home for weeks it also feels like freedom! She now can manage on her own with visiting professional help.

Sea lions swim past in Captains Passage.

This continued pause in our sailing plans could have been difficult to accept but for some reason these winter months are some of the most productive times ever. Heather completes a children`s novel- The Patti stories. Life on the Farm, and I paint and draw every day and cover the long blank windowless side walls of our cave. We walk the windy headland trails and keep a close eye on Shiriri in the fifty knot winter gales that reach into her bay from the south- east.

Shiriri at her winter mooring.

It is here that I carve the figurehead for Shiriri and place Chickpea in the girls arms. What a lot of pleasure they will create in anchorages around the Pacific when canoes approach our anchored vessel and we hear excited voices in a variety of different languages saying, " Look! There is a girl on the front of that boat! ...... And,... and,... there`s a Chicken in her arms!!

Shiriri Saga # 13 The Hermit Dog of Beck Island.

Every day when the Tide drops to expose the big sandbar beside our mooring, a black dog comes out to run busily around, splash in the puddles in search of fish, and bark. Ruff! Ruff! The tidal flat is connected to a little forested island and he must live there when the tide is high, but he is always alone and quite self sufficient. We name him " The Hermit Dog of Beck Island"and concoct a story of shipwreck and high adventure. Perhaps we are feeling a little marooned ourselves as we wait near the little town of Tofino for word of Heathers heart angioplasty back in Victoria.

Tofino is connected by road to the east coast of Vancouver Island so the plan is for Anne to drive her up so she can join us on the boat and yet still be near the Tofino hospital in case of post op. trouble. We wander the streets of this tourist town and the long sandy beaches of Long Beach while we wait, and sample the beauty that we have so recently sailed past on our way north from Barkley Sound. The waters around here combine rocky islands with big sandy shallows making navigation even more educational than usual!

It is time for Elaine to travel back home to Nanaimo, so Gwyn and I decide that while we continue to wait we can make a small circumnavigational voyage of discovery around the high forested mountains of Meares Island. We will be sailing in protected waters and this time we plan to actually SAIL as much as possible rather than use our engine. We have had to motor up `til now as we rush north in the calm mornings to reach the next sheltered bay before the strong headwinds start to blow in the afternoons.
We pick our way carefully through narrow Browning Passage under power until we reach open deeper water and then hoist all our sails and beat back and forth in the fresh afternoon breeze. Shiriri is reminding us that she is after all a sailboat and handles in a much more lively fashion when heeled rail down and roaring along. Without the engine noise we hear the wind whistling among the sails and rigging and the splash of our wake. Like Shiriri, we feel very much alive. Its easy to forget how recently sailors have had an engine to assist them and how much skill they once needed to navigate these waters under sail alone.

By evening we have slipped into the sheltered entrance of the Kennedy River, rowed Edith as far up river as we can get and eaten supper in the silent thunder of a red sunset. The next morning is all sailing as we run wing on wing before the wind and into Mosquito Harbour. How elementally satisfying it is to sail Shiriri into a narrow gap in a rocky shoreline and as we pass through into the hidden bay behind to smell the air change from crisp salty to the summer smells of warm rocks and coniferous trees. The wind eases as we enter the bay and we round up and anchor under sail without benefit of motor assist. We have made a sailor`s landfall and feel positively salty!. We wait here through the afternoon for the all important tide to turn and carry us through a narrow passage and around the end of the island. Its getting late but if we don`t go now it will be even later tomorrow before we can try again. It`s mid summer and the days are long so out we go and find the wind is now against us . After tacking frantically back and forth in the channel we admit defeat, lower sails and plod along to the very narrow entrance to Quait Bay, threading the needle in the dusk until the bay opens to a generous size. We have followed a small motor boat piled high with hay and wonder how many horse power he must have to feed, but find a big floating fishing lodge instead. Something is fishy alright!

We arrive back at our mooring near Tofino the next evening to hear that Heather`s operation has gone well and that she will arrive the following day. We feel a load slide off our backs that we have been carrying for so long that it`s only when it is lifted that we feel it`s absence. She arrives with Anne and all would be joy except that she brings word that my mother has had a worse stroke and is struggling. We decide that we have had enough of being at the end of a phone line while events are unfolding at home and sail quickly back down the coast propelled by those north westerly winds that had made travelling so difficult on the way north .We sailors move ashore to care for my mother so she can have a chance to recover at home.

Our summer sailing was cur- tailed like the dog of Beck Island but at least we had the experience of West Coast survival, Heather`s survival and now the opportunity to assist in my mother`s survival.

Lone Cone. Meares Island.

Shiriri Saga # 12 Survival Training.

Edith visits islet on outer edge of Barkley Sound.

Edith plunges into a deep trough and shoots up and through a breaking wave crest. We are exploring along the outer edges of the West Coast`s Barkley Sound where the Broken Group of Islands meet the open Pacific and its big swells. This is exciting! Dangerous too!

At anchor. Effingham Island.

Our little dory has been extensively modified since we found her abandoned on the hard beneath the equally abandoned wooden schooner that would become our own Shiriri. She now has foam flotation under the seats, a mast and sail, and a notch in her transom that will fit a small outboard engine, lead out anchor warps and provide a space for an oar to steer by. Most obvious are the canvas covered closed cell foam sponsons along the gunwales: scorned by a fellow boater as "training wheels,"they don`t add to her looks but are providing the extra buoyancy that lifts us up and through the breaking waves.

Edith. Modified for adventure.

We feel vulnerable in this beautiful but lonely wild place: we are pushing our limits. Shiriri is safe though, in a sheltered bay at Effingham Island, deeper in among the bigger islands and we have prepared ourselves carefully for these day expeditions in Edith. We are using the four HP outboard engine to give us speed and extended range, there is a waterproof bag lashed beside the bailer that contains everything we need if we have to camp overnight on an island. We carry all life saving gear, a waterproof chart, compass, VHF radio and we will keep adding to all this daily as we gain experience.

Barkley Sound. The Broken Group.

We keep a weather eye out for fog banks, stay upwind of Shiriri in case an engine failure ( we have spare parts for the engine as well) forces us to have to sail back to the boat. We handle Edith carefully wave by wave using all our boat handling skills. We are pushing our skill level with caution, teaching ourselves as we advance. This is just the training we need for sailing safely along this outer coast and eventually out into the Pacific.

When its time to move Shiriri to a new anchorage so we can explore the more protected islands deeper in the Sound, we proceed with equal caution, threading our way through a maze of reefs and islands. The girls and I develop a piloting technique that teaches us all and keeps us safe. Although I`m the one with the piloting courses, we find that if we disagree on our course, we stop until all agree and only then proceed. Not only am I fallible, but it is important that everyone on board has these skills.

As we thread our way into the next safe haven at Turtle Island we can`t help but notice that this intricate work close to shore is something we do well; all that practice in the tight rocky bays of our own Gulf Islands is paying off. What we can`t know yet is that the mental attitudes we are developing now will serve us so well in the future.

Taking a stern line to shore.

Ducks Bellorum Est.

I keep running into ducks these days. When I step behind the studio for an armload of firewood they rise into the air from Big Pond with a wild flapping of wings. I call to them,"Sorry, I did n`t mean to be sneaking up on you!" At any time of day I can catch a glimpse of wings in the sky among the tree tops and turn just in time to watch them twist around a high projecting branch and drop almost vertically to a tiny pond on the forest floor. What amazing grace displayed so casually in the every day life of ducks.

The ripples in Lower Pond are caused by that same mating pair and this particular leads me to contemplate the larger more general picture. What is happening on my few acres must be spreading a thousand fold across our island. The ripples of multiple ducks expand wider up the coast and across the rugged landscape to the Rocky mountains. My mind has long since lost any ability to perceive such a magnitude and that`s only DUCKS! All that busy life in a billion variations going about its business outside of our human world.

The other night we saw some pictures of a town on the north shore of Lake Superior called Jackfish that had been abandoned in the 1950`s. Fifty years later this quite sizable town had been taken back by nature. Trees covered everything and, I like to think, its full of ducks. Ducks are such graceful creations, they would make a good replacement for us don`t you think?

Shiriri Saga #11 In the Eye of the Storm.

At Port Renfrew

We are feeling a little nervous as we point Shiriri`s bow away from the sheltered inland waters of the Strait of Georgia and out towards the open waters of the Pacific. We are motoring as fast as we can go up the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the misty light of a summers morning because the forecast is for thirty knot winds in our face if we cannot get past the rugged outer coast, around Cape Beale and into the harbour of Bamfield by noon. Shiriri plows along through the big swells and tide rips and if we look away from checking off the lighthouses that mark our progress, we can see the curved horizon of the open Pacific. We cling far too close to the reef strewn coast as if it would protect us from the unfamiliar world out there.

There are other reasons for our unease besides the great uncertainty that the ocean represents: Elaine, Gwyn and I have left Heather with Anne in Victoria to have the heart procedure done when her name finally comes to the head of the wait line and my elderly mother has just had a slight stroke. We seem to be travelling in the ominously quiet center of a dangerous storm that circles just over the horizon. We know that we need the experience of the open ocean that a voyage along the west coast of Vancouver Island will give us and we also know that the constant delay of our ocean sailing plans is sapping our resolve. We need to have this adventure to maintain momentum but are realizing that there are many different kinds of storms that must be weathered if we hope to even just keep our heads above water.

For the present however, we live in the needs of the moment and struggle around the final Cape into calmer waters and eventually to a mooring at Bamfield. A few minutes later the first fierce gust of wind whistles in our rigging to tell us that it is twelve noon on the dot.

The Sun is a Luminous Shield.

The sun is a luminous shield that is carried across the sky each day by a god. Sounds improbable? Wait, there is something to think about here that tugs at our perception of reality. This way of thinking of the sun is more humanly accessible than the way physics describes it and variations of this version of truth exist in most cultural traditions around the world. The difference is that the traditional versions place the physical world into harmony with the imaginative world of people -makes it an active agent in their lives, while the scientific version does not. Which view is more functional? Carl Jung was once asked if he believe in God, Heaven, Angels an Afterlife and so on. His answer was cast in a similar manner - To believe or not to believe, which works best for you in your life? If believing in some form of higher power helps to integrate your life and gives it meaning then why would n`t you? The image of a greater power that places even the life giving sun in harmony with the world grasps an all inclusive truth and expresses it in an imagery that can be integrated into peoples lives.

The difficulty in accepting a more than scientific view of reality is made more obvious when we are presented with a myth that is outside our own particular culture story: it is a challenge, a stretch, to step into the culture story of another. Yet we are all from one root and the genesis of this story comes from that early time. I found the Navaho story of the sun`s journey in Joseph Campbell`s book Transformations of Myth Through Time and again in Wisdom of the Elders by David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson and decided to carve it in a special piece of red cedar for my daughter Elaine`s wedding present. It would be a companion to Moon Woman on the walls of their new house. I was pleased she wanted another one of my carvings!

My first little thumbnail drawings were crude and barely formed but useful as attempts to draw an idea out into consciousness. At this point I dared not be critical or the Gate of Beginnings would slam shut, so I kept absently doodling until eventually I combined a couple of ideas and added the hands called dusk and dawn that cradled the sun. I liked the way the final drawing showed the nose of the god slightly overhanging the disk of the sun to give a sense of depth. The image was still very rough but I did n`t want anything more refined. The carving needed lots of elbow room to create itself along the way.
A complication with this carving was that the piece of wood had a wildly convoluted grain: cut from the buttressed base of one of my cedars, the wood could not be carved with normal chisels. I used a router to cut the various heights and shapes and a belt sander to grind out the rounded forms. Only at the end did I use a very sharp knife to slice the final edges and details. This was such an industrial approach to carving that I was gratified to see the image taking charge and swimming to the surface in its usual mysterious way: the original seed still there, but now developed into a powerful presence. Glass beads gave life to the hands of dawn and dusk and the eyes came to life with their burning orange light!

I cringe now to think that at this point I considered using paint on this lovely piece of wood. That is part of the process though: to find a correct solution I must entertain every idea without prejudice and take what seems to my everyday self like wild chances. This is creation after all and I am in co-operation with mystery. After a lot of hand sanding, I soaked the carving in Swedish oil and in a flash of vision waxed the sun`s disc and buffed it to a bright luster. The depths of the convoluted grain now shone like the swirl of gasses deep in the wood and the surface reflected like a mirror.

When I visit my daughter now I catch a glimpse of my carving at the end of a shadowy hallway. The sun god gazes searchingly at me , the beads on his wrists glow from dark to light and light to dark, and, in a single shaft of light, the sun is a luminous shield.

* I took the title from a splendid musical composition of the same name by Imant
Raminsh.

Shiriri Saga#10. Winter Interlude.

Shiriri turned with the tide on a mooring in a narrow bay at the head of Long Harbour. It was snowing gently, it was New Years Eve and she was all alone. We had just moved back into our cabin in the woods for three months so we could stay warm and catch up with family visits. December had been stormy, like November only more so, and we had decided that while practicing handling our big boat was a good thing, wrecking it in a monster winter storm would be a stupid thing to do.

One day, Heather and I were moving firewood deep in the big woods when we noticed that Heather was taking lots of breaks while pushing the wheelbarrow full of wood. She was noticing a vague tightness in her chest. The doctor discovered eventually that she had a heart condition that would need to be tested and dealt with. Our first thought was " Oh no!" the second was " Thank goodness this did n`t happen somewhere in mid Pacific and far away from our national medicare system."

Our tendency to reach for the positive interpretation of a nasty situation had once again come to the rescue and allowed us to stay focused and plan our way forward through the months and months of tests, the angioplasty and long period of recovery time that followed. We would not be leaving Canada next summer that was for sure, but we never said we would not be leaving: we just needed to work patiently with the situation until it sorted itself out.

"Be brave, stay calm, and wait for the sign."

from The Dead Dog Cafe radio drama on CBC

A Winter hike on Portland Island.

Moon Woman.

I carved her many years ago, and our children grew up in her quiet presence. Now she hangs high on the wall of my daughter Elaine`s living room watching over her family. When asked what possessions she would grab if her lovely new home were to catch on fire she chose Moon Woman without a moments hesitation. Such a close relationship with a graven image!

In the beginning, she slipped under my poised carving knife and into the big cedar board just in time to slowly emerge and take form again after an absence of two thousand years during the Christian era . Moon Woman, a god of the Bronze Age peoples of Europe, once again had form, had eyes, was an agent again within our human lives. One can understand the Biblical stricture against the making of graven images, they take to life so quickly and could so easily divert people from the correct path.

Unlike an ink painting whose essence is lost if it is laboured over, a carving emerges slowly from the void of mystery, like a face shimmering slowly up to the surface of a dark pool. One would think that the carver would have time to think, to press his mind firmly into the wood at the cutting edge of the knife blade; to plan and execute that plan. I`m sure many do just that, but I suspect that for some of us anyway, the carving creates itself. We live in a society now, where rational mind is king and it disturbs people to have something from deep below our present world view float to the surface. In this modern era, we still automatically think "Beware of graven images." Even Christian imagery and what it represents is now often viewed with a skeptical eye.

And yet! And yet! She is so beautiful, so calm, she has looked over us so well through the years that I can`t help but question that stricture. What is so frightening here that we should close our eyes or look aside? By the way we choose to see the world we can build barricades of conventional wisdom around ourselves or we can stay open to the winds that blow and the rich imagery and enticing life that exists just beyond the castle gate.

Out here, Moon Woman looks kindly down on us from her home in the night sky. Out here, she can speak to us!