Shiriri Saga # 29. The Baha coast. Night Encounter.

                                                 Night Encounter.


Somewhere off the northern tip of Cedros Island, partway down the Baha coast, we are experiencing a black and windy night when out of the darkness looms an apparition straight from hell. A big sooty mass passes ahead of us with a lurid light shining from its center that bounces across the wave crests and locks on to us. A death star? A tractor beam? The tired crew member struggles to separate fact from fantasy, and slowly the real picture emerges. She is looking at a freighter of some sort angling across our bows with a big side door at the waterline open to show the light within. Did they see us? There seems to be some magnetic attraction that determines that if two ships are in the same ocean they will be drawn together when least expected. A miss is as good as a mile, we say but resolve to keep a sharper lookout in future, not just at night but even in the day because it is easy to forget to look around the horizon regularly and to be surprised by some twenty knot freighter that has come over the horizon and close alongside within quarter of an hour.

                 San Benito Islands to the west of Cedros Island.

We are developing that familiar deadbeat tiredness (partly, a form of seasickness) that dogged our path down the northen US coast and resolve to find an anchorage and take a rest. Up ahead, off the west side of Cedros Island, is a blob on the chart (San Benito Island) that promises a lee to anchor behind out of this too familiar strong north-west wind. By the end of the day we are anchored in the shelter of a rocky cliff near a Mexican fishing village and are joined later by the yacht Victoria who is headed south like us. We met Mary and Eric in San Diego, and will get to know them better in Banderas Bay at Christmas time. Christmas? It is now December 15th and if we wish to meet with our cruising friends we must not linger. One nights rest and then on down the coast tomorrow.

                                        San Benito.
Two days later we are approaching Bahia Santa Maria to anchor for the night when we run into a fog bank liberally sprinkled with fishing boats hauling in a rich harvest created by the meeting of the cold current that we have been riding south on, with the leading edge of tropical waters. We turn on the radar and dodge our way through the circus of busy boats. We enter the wide bay in the dark and spot Wylie E Coyote and Victoria anchored nearby.

                                        Fog and fishing boats.

Next morning at sunrise Jim greets the dawn with his drum as we all leave for the final leg to Cabo San Lucas. He will have trouble from irate sleepy sailors in busier anchorages further south with this salutation to the dawn, but here in this peaceful bay surrounded by desert hills it is remarkably appropriate.

                                                            Bahia Santa Maria.

Cabo San Lucas. We arrive once again in the dark but Wylie Jim shines a light to guide us in to anchor nearby. The next day we put in a tiring day running from office to office, from one side of town to the other to do our official check-in to Mexico. Oh, to speak Spanish!

                                              The southern tip of Baha California. Cabo San Lucas.


We refuel and head back out to sea in the dark to cross the Sea of Cortez, bound for Banderas Bay and a Christmas reunion with boats we have met along the way.

Shiriri Saga # 28. San Diego. Smoked.

Safe in the Harbour at Last. San Diego is a naval base.

It takes us nearly two more weeks to work our way from harbour to harbour down the coast but finally we are checking in at the police dock in San Diego and sorting out the complex of anchorages that are available to transient yachts. In the past there has been friction between the police and the people of limited means who live permanently on boats, so everyone must now move from anchorage to anchorage every few days. This weeds out those boats of the alternate fleet that are so wedded to a certain place that they can no longer move. Since Los Angeles, we have been aware of the increasingly urban population looking sideways at transients like ourselves but this only makes us more determined to find the cracks in the system. We are now part of the landless class of no fixed address like those engaging migrant characters in John Steinbeck`s novels.

On American Thanksgiving we walk the streets near Shelter Island and watch families arrive at homes to celebrate a proper holiday supper. The problem with being free-as-a-bird travellers is just that: free and far from our own families when we too might like an affirmation that we are missed and loved. No one invites us in however, so we go shopping at a grocery store that gives a turkey away with each order. ( free, as a turkey). Heather cooks it up as a large stew with vegetables and then bottles it in the pressure cooker for future meals at sea when a precooked turkey dinner or soup will be so simple to prepare. We bought the pressure cooker for just this kind of situation so we can provision where and when food is free or cheap.( Our big boat can also carry six months worth of other supplies stowed away in plastic buckets.) All the glass jars have compartments under the floorboards or on shelves in the galley ranged below square plastic containers full of flour, oats, raisins, rice and so on. The food side of our cruising adventure is critical both to our daily well being and to our small monthly budget. We invite Wylie Jim over for turkey soup and pumpkin muffins and feel close to those original Pilgrim Fathers of a few centuries ago who clung to the edge of a strange new continent, missing their homes and grateful for the kindness of the locals.

We spend nearly a month in San Diego buying those items we will need on our voyage across the Pacific. We get a replacement for the equipment lost off Mendocino: this time a drogue rather than a parachute sea anchor. We think that something to drag behind the boat to slow us down and keep us under control will be more useful when strong winds and big waves find us again. We know they will.

We bid a sorrowful goodbye to Gwyn, our good companion who helped her parents so well when they really needed it and, after a few days, greet Anne off the train. She has left the Navy to manage without her and has signed on for the long voyage across the Pacific. We have been in port for too long as we wait for the hurricane season to be over in Mexican waters and are losing our nerve. Our friend Jim sees this and now shows us another facet of his personality. He offers to smoke us! Our eyes cross most decidedly until we grasp that Jim practices Native American Spirituality and is proposing to perform a blessing ceremony to calm our fears and align our spirits with the coming journey. Anne decides that this is too much for her and goes to do a last load of washing while Jim wafts the smoke of sage throughout the ship. We feel it flowing over us as well and take in its calming spirit. Would we have accepted this gift before the events of this voyage? We have been in a space of high adventure and in this world, Jim`s feathers, his sacred smoke, strengthens our spirits for tomorrow`s beginning of the passage down the long desert coast of Baha California.

Shiriri Saga #27 Pt. Conception. The Shepherd.

                                            The Shepherd.

Two little white masthead navigation lights swing and sway as they dance across the dark waves ahead of us. We are traveling in convoy with Wylie E Coyote and another sailboat we met in Monterey called Apogie and we are all southbound around the last big California cape we will see before we reach our next main destination, San Diego. The forecast is for light winds after midnight and so far so good. We pass a brightly lit oil platform to seaward, and a weird structure on shore that we will later find is a launching site for the space program.

Shiriri rolls heavily in the sloppy beam seas. There is not enough wind to properly fill her sails and keep her steady but the engine pushes us along as best it can. As we reach the cape the wind increases suddenly and once again Shiriri is off on another cape sleigh ride. We leave only the staysail up and continue under power as well to maintain our place in the convoy. The wind leaps to forty knots and builds a particularly steep and nasty sea. “Here we go again” we think, as we slide and lift, slide and lift through the pitchy dark night. We notice that our engine is losing power and soon it will only run at low rpm`s. This is no time to start diagnosing the problem.


Dawn finds us angling in behind the cape to a little anchorage called Cojo. Jim, in Wylie E. Coyote sails back to escort us in. He has put in a long night all by himself and could now be at anchor and resting but here he is standing in his cockpit in the windy morning light shepherding us toward a kelp filled rocky stretch of coast: the best shelter to be found. We drop anchor and Jim is over immediately to try to help me repair the engine. We are a little disconcerted. “Now? We were thinking of sleep!” He is right of course, a boat with an ineffective engine is a vulnerable boat and the sooner fixed the better. In the end, we cannot solve the problem in our tired state and sleep the windy day away.



We smell oil! The next morning, away from the windy cape, the surface of the calm sea has an iridescent sheen from natural petroleum seeps, as we slowly motor along bound for Santa Barbara. Our two buddy boats keep us company and we finally anchor not far from the big wooden pier. That night I read books on diesel engines and decide our problem is a plugged air filter. Diesels need lots of clean air and our filter is within the box in the rear cabin that encloses the engine and it has picked up rubber dust from a poorly adjusted fan belt.

The next morning our first item of business on shore, once we have climbed the very high ladder on the pier, is to find a replacement air filter. The store does n`t have our Isusu`s brand so we learn to adapt by buying another. Back on Shiriri I dig into our spare-bits-of-useful-junk box and come up with a length of rubber exhaust hose, attach one end to the air intake, lead it out of the box, up under the deck head and attach the new filter to the end. The engine now has a snorkel that sucks in clean filtered air from outside the engine compartment. It is louder, but it works!

Shiriri Saga #26. Monterey.

Three weeks after arriving in San Francisco determined to have a long and relaxing rest, we determinedly head back out under the Golden Gate and turn left once again to begin a series of day sails south toward San Diego: each night a different harbour. Three days later we drop our hook off the Monterey docks and row ashore in Edith. We find a beautiful town with some of the old Mexican heritage still in evidence.

We are practicing the “new port” skills that we will learn to use effectively over the next few years. We soon fill our propane bottles, thanks to the help of some friendly strangers with a car, and learn where we can bring Edith in to a free dinghy dock. Now we need to do free e-mail at the library to check on our family back home. I look at the books as Heather and Gwyn do their computer thing. Suddenly Heather turns to me with her eyes wide. Does she shriek? I cannot be sure! There is a letter from Penguin Books saying they want to publish The Patti Stories that she had finished way back in that other life during our productive winter in the underground house. Plus they want a sequel!


We wander around a park chattering excitedly, and then see “Patty`s Café”. We take it as a sign and go in for a celebration!

Back at Shiriri we find another yacht anchored beside us and meet Jim, single handing it on Wylie E. Coyote. We will get to know Jim very well over the next year as we cross the Pacific to Tahiti in his company, but for now we begin to get acquainted in a practical way as he puts his radio skills to work fixing our expensive marine HF radio that has worked very poorly up till now. Jim is a Viet Nam war vet and, as we will discover, has other interesting attributes as well! This casual meeting of strangers in other boats and the camaraderie that develops, the way we help each other with little useful things or big life threatening events is a big attraction of the cruising life and will be a difficult attitude for me to lay aside again once I`m back on shore.


Next morning the VHF weather radio that we keep a careful ear to at all times warns of big swells from a winter storm in the north Pacific about to reach our shore. We are anchored in thirty feet of water which could be a surf line in a little while: already we can feel the waves building beneath us. We find there is room for us at the dock and quickly raise anchor and motor in through a narrow opening past a fancy yacht that sports a large sea lion lolling on it`s scoop stern.


Once in among the dock fingers full of boats we feel the surge from the swells that causes the water to swirl around in a most disturbing way. One second we are stopped by a current on our bow, the next we careen ahead as it reverses direction. I have Gwyn poised to jump for the dock with a line to tie us quickly into place when we must make the final tight turn into our slip. I steer our monster boat (or so it always seems, when tight in among other boats with her bowsprit sticking way out in front) up a narrow channel, pause to catch the current just right, and start to turn. At the critical moment there is another big sea lion just where she must jump! I gently butt our bow against the inside end of the slip and hold Shiriri firmly in place with the engine and rudder until nearby boaters rush over to chase the creature away and take our lines. Phew! Once upon a time, this morning`s exercise would have been cause for more than a wiping of the brow, but now we simply make sure that Wylie E. Coyote has also made it safely in, cinch up our dock lines very carefully, add a few more, (the surge is now very noticeable) and finally trot up the dock to the marina showers that we can now use as part of our very reasonable dock fee. When we leave for a walk a few hours later, there are people surfing where we had been anchored. This afternoon, a couple of vacationers will be killed by these waves while walking a little farther up the beach.


We walk down the Pacific Grove street on a sort of pilgrimage: this is John Steinbeck`s real Cannery Row and we need to touch this place. We stop in a moment of recognition and say, “ Hey these are the train tracks, there is the corner, where his friend Doc. was killed by the train!” The tourist trade has used Steinbeck`s name of course, but still there is enough of the old town for us to feel the presence of the past and to thank this author for passing on his very human perspective on the world. Soon we too will be following his and Doc`s old course down the coast to the Sea of Cortez.


Death by misadventure: in the past for Doc., very close to us off Mendocino, and too final for the honeymoon couple who died while our backs were turned this afternoon. We are now living a life where the well defined borders between us and the man with the scythe have become frayed. We are getting used to living on the edge.

Shiriri Saga # 25. Yachties in San Francisco Bay.

Gwyn steers across the Bay.

We are suddenly in no great rush to get south: we really need a rest and what a great harbour to do it in. We row Edith ashore each morning and wander the streets that angle up the steep hillsides of Sausalito to the crest where fog blows in from the ocean. We look at all the typically west coast houses that originally set the design trends that have reached way up the coast to BC. It`s a little disconcerting to grasp how California has originated so much of what we had thought of as our own Canadian West Coast Culture.

We find groceries expensive in upscale Sausalito and take Edith on a long cutting-out expedition along the waterfront and up the river to a Safeway store in a more working class neighbourhood. Here we can buy food in normal sized quantities instead of pre-made, almost ready to eat portions.

By hopping on a bus we cross the Golden Gate Bridge and wander the waterfront of San Francisco and take the trolley up the hillsides. Shore leave in a foreign port! Just not that foreign!

One day we motor across to Angel Island and after wedging our way through the muddy bottom to a mooring at low tide ,Gwyn offers to take a bow line to a mooring buoy for another sailboat that arrives behind us. It turns out to be a family of four aboard Greyhawk from Vancouver and we all walk together around the island trails sniffing the scent of eucalyptus trees and trading experiences of our travels down the coast. While we were having our date with destiny off Mendocino, Greyhawk was rounding Cape Blanco further north in the same winds and opting to sail on through the night under jib alone and get close inshore in the lee of the cape as quickly as possible. Even so, it was quite a ride! We will meet other big strong boats with experienced crews, that got beaten up on their journey south during this period and it does n`t seem to matter what course they took: inshore or far offshore or somewhere in between.

The Bridge, Sausalito, Angel Island.

We are still agonizing over our own choices and remain acutely aware that we have used a lot of US taxpayer funded expensive manpower and equipment. The crew of the cutter made a point of reassuring us that we did everything right. They do not want people in trouble at sea to not call for help for fear of expense or of calling on them too early on in an emergency: the sooner they know of a problem, the more options they have available and the more likely there will be a timely and successful outcome. They also attempted to reassure us because they were aware that a traumatic experience like this would continue to return for us to chew on long after the trauma had ended. In the end, to balance things up in our minds, we remind ourselves of a boating incident just a few months earlier in which we saved an American woman from drowning. The action required no Canadian Coast Guard or their equipment, hardly any effort on my part, but the result was the same: a life saved. Eventually we learn to chalk the Mendocino experience up as a learning opportunity. We will continue to make mistakes and continue to learn from them but will just become more experienced at managing those precious opportunities!

Shiriri Saga # 24 The Second Time Around.

Gwyn steers past THE CAPE.

We find the Mendocino buoy covered in sea lions, and cross our fingers as we pass the rocky cape . It really is a double cape with the second bump (Punta Gorda) still ahead. The wind increases quickly to thirty-five knots. We have a double reaction as well: it is only thirty-five knots: our sense of what constitutes a storm has been upgraded since our first visit to the cape two weeks ago and, at the same time, we realize that we will never completely shake the dread that a rising wind strength will stir up in our guts; a fear that it may go to hurricane force again!

We sail before the wind that is kicking up a series of steep following waves all covered in white caps but we now know this is child`s play for our stout vessel. When darkness comes, Gwyn flips the switch to turn on the compass light for steering at night and nothing happens! We are determined not to stop for the night again, especially in this nasty cape place so we turn on the radar and use the outline of the coast to guide our course. When it is time for Heather and I to take our watch below ( no more staying awake) we leave a nervous Gwyn steering us on through the night. I look back through the companionway to see her head behind the wheel silhouetted against a background of steep breaking waves. Before her two hour watch is over however, we are past the double cape and motor on through the calm seas in it`s lee. Second time, lucky!

Pt. Reyes, Drakes Bay, San Francisco Harbour.

Two days later we approach Point Reyes, just north of San Francisco, in the dark. We had planned to anchor for the night before this, but an approach to an unfamiliar harbour in the deepening dusk did not appeal to us. Too risky! We have adjusted to the open ocean at last and we now prefer to deal with a night passage close to shipping lanes and a bold headland. Point Reyes has a lighthouse that sends out a powerful beam and it seems to take forever to motor around it in a wide arc before following the shoreline to Drake`s Bay. Our radar is our eyes and after watching a dramatic shoreline of bumps and blips we finally squeeze past the buoy and anchor at two in the morning in a broad quiet bay. Ah, the blessed silence! We have been under power in semi-calm conditions ever since Mendocino and look forward to a quiet sleep for the rest of the night.

Drake`s Bay

We anchor here for two more days and walk the park trails along the cliffs. We see the rugged bluffs and multitudes of jagged pinnacles that gave our radar such an interesting display on the way along the shore in the dark. This is the first natural bit of solid ground we have seen since leaving home and we have had such a stressful time in between. We suck it up as nourishment! From here it is only a short hop to San Francisco and we are soon on our way again!

San Francisco, here we come! The Golden Gate welcomes us to the landfall we have been aiming at for nearly a month. We feel that we have accomplished a Great Thing. We turn left and anchor just off the main channel to Sausalito beside a Canadian Yacht, Fairwyn, that we last met in Eureka. We are about to experience the pleasures of making an ever widening circle of sailing friends who are headed south just like us. Not only that but we now have an adventure story to dine out on!

Shiriri Saga # 23 Repairs.

Painting the final touches on Miss. Chickpea.

Sometime in the afternoon I awake with a question buzzing in my mind. Just as we stepped below in the dawn amid the onlookers on the dock, I had heard one say, " Too bad about the bow. She must have been a beautiful boat once." What did he mean?

I clamber on deck to find a foggy day and to see our survival suits draped across the main boom like three dead bodies. I step onto the dock and walk toward the bow. Then I understand the comment: the bow has been chewed up as though some great monster has been using Shiriri as a bone. The true culprit dangles from the bow; our Bruce anchor has broken loose sometime in the night and crashed repeatedly against the metal band that comes part way up the bow ("Clang, clang!") and when it missed that, had bitten into the stem piece and hull planks. ("Thump, thump!") Now I knew how close we had come to having a hole smashed through the hull and having a big jet of water hosing into the boat as we were towed through the turbulent waves. We would have gone down like a stone, in the dark. Only the iron band and the two-inch thick wooden planks have saved us. A modern fiberglass boat would not have survived.

Heather and Gwyn carry load after load of wet clothes up to the Laundromat and we begin to clean up the inside of the cabins. Several glass jars of fruit have smashed on the floorboards in the galley, but considering the turmoil, we have come through quite well. I survey the damage on deck and once again, apart from the bow, which I`ve already figured out how to repair, there is no major structural damage. Our inflatable, Rosie, is torn past repair. She had acted as a drogue, still wrapped around the propeller, and kept us steering straight behind the cutter. We need a new and improved steering quadrant made up by the local machine shop and some welding done to various bits and pieces, and that`s it. As a Coast Guardsman said later, "That is one tough boat."After a while, I haul out my tools and we develop a plan that will eventually take us two weeks of hard work at dockside to complete. We begin to notice the friendly helpful people who live at the Marina and know we will manage just fine. We are lucky that our precious vessel needs our help; we have no time to consider calling it quits and going home.

Repairing the bow, one piece at a time.

Our figurehead has lost Miss Chickpea from her arms.( She lost her head while we were losing ours.) and despite the press of work, I carve a new chicken head and fasten it on; this time strengthened with a stainless steel pin. The fishermen on our dock understand, because they are aware of the importance of luck and another good set of eyes at sea. They also tell us how to get safely around Cape Mendocino on our second attempt. "Stick close to shore inside the reefs," they say, "duck around the red buoy and back in behind the cape. The further out you are, the bigger circle you have to make, and the longer you are out there." And that`s a bad thing; as we have learned.

That "bad thing" visits me with nasty dreams for several nights at dockside and then fades away as the needs of the day occupy my thoughts and the necessity for a landfall in San Francisco before the beginning of winter storms on this coast starts to nag at us. The fog finally clears and sunny days allow Gwyn and I to paint our newly repaired bow. It is time to head out over the bar. We thank the Coast Guard again on the VHF as we put to sea.

* Some of the storm photos were courtesy of the Coast Guard who took a vidio of the rescue. These, as well as the ones above were used in Heather`s article in Cruising World Magazine. Dec. 2000.

Grey.

The ferry churns out of our island harbour . It is a grey overcast day with a flat layer of cloud from horizon to horizon: it is a June morning and this month can typically produce a lot of days that look like this. We yearn for the days of blue sky and brilliant warm sun: for the vivid colours that enliven the landscape and our own moods. We often look in vain.

Perhaps it is my partial colour blindness that helps me see the beauty in this grey seascape outside the salt speckled windows. The rocky, tree covered hills that hold our bay in the crook of their arms look serious in this light; even the new light green spring foliage is blended with the darker evergreens by the sheen of grey that coats them all. The distant islands are dipped in a restful grey toned blue. The sea`s surface presents an intricate pattern of burnished and ruffed patterns in many tones of dark and light. Even the white smudges of ferry wave crests are only white in relation to the tones they dance upon.

A grey day is so common here on this coast, often streaked with rain or raked by wind, often carrying a damp penetrating cold, that it is our familiar companion. Our moods are so wrapped in grey we cannot tell if the sky influences us or if we ourselves cast this pall upon the land.

When those brilliant days do eventually swing by, we turn our faces to the sun like plants determined to suck up every bit of light. We bask in colour for awhile, then adjust to the dappled light of cloud and sun, the drama of windswept skies and finally pull the blanket of grey back up again. I turn back to my familiar tones as to a work Monday after a weekend of relaxation: partly reluctantly, but also with a sense that I am back to the real, serious, subtle things of life: shades of grey.

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!!