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!

Shiriri Saga #9 A Safe Harbour.

Conover Cove

Shiriri`s cabin lights reflected warmly on the cold wet boards of the dock. The southeast gale reached down into the sheltered bay with stray gusts that stripped the last of the fall leaves from the maples, but only the constant crash of breakers at the bay`s entrance told us the whole story of a dirty night at sea. We were securely tied up in the one really safe bay on Wallace Island and enjoying the luxury of being in the heart of a storm and yet at the same time in a safe harbour.

We had been living on board and traveling around the islands for two months now and the VHF radio weather forecasts helped determine where and when we traveled and in which sheltering bay we chose to spend the night. We did not usually find such perfect shelter as this and had been caught a few times in narrow bays that were well sheltered from the south east gales but exposed when the front had passed and the wind came gusting strongly from the northwest straight into the bay. We had learned to anchor facing out of the bay with a long rope tied to a tree ashore to hold our stern in to the land. This was why we were out here after all: experience is the best teacher and time spent among the islands at this time of year was so much more instructive than in balmy summer conditions.

Panther Point

The gale blew all next day and we enjoyed using our new bright new yellow rain gear for walking the island trails of this deserted provincial park. Once it was the home of the Conovers and we had read his book Once upon an Island describing the building of their island home: something we could relate to as we were then building our own little island homestead not far away on Saltspring. Sometimes we walked south to Panther Point to feel the full force of the wind roaring up Trincomalli Channel and at other times we went north feeling the buffeting of the wind in the trees and undergrowth. After a long dry summer the land drank up the rain gratefully and the mossy rocks glowed emerald green.

Winter landscape.

We read of course, tucked up on the seats in the saloon while the oil heater flickered cheerfully. Heather cooked delicious meals in our new galley. She baked bread in the oven of the propane cook stove. In her spare time she knitted warm wool slippers for our feet which were feeling the winter chill in the lower part of the boat. I researched in sail making books and updated my sketchbook with images of our life that day. Cooking and warm showers added moisture which condensed on the walls and overhead in the cool ends of the boat so it was not all joy, but on the whole we were well pleased with ourselves and so glad we had not tried to go to sea too soon.

After the storm finally passed on, we welcomed the chance to finally take the bulky bags of brand new sails out of the fore peak and start dressing our ship in her new suit. The jib and fore staysail were so much easier to hank to the stays on the long bowsprit when the bow was swung over the dock and the big gaff main and foresail required yards and yards of light line to fasten the sails securely to their varnished spars. We carefully sorted out the complex of halyards, established the correct order where each one belonged on its own particular belaying pin and laid out, measured and cut to length all the various sheets. There was certainly a sense of working from an antique instruction manual compared to that of a modern vessel.

Heather fishes off the dock.

We were well pleased with our choice of a newly built classic wooden design however. It had saved us so much expense along the way because I had been able to make most of what we needed. The new masts for example, had just cost me my labour (which I enjoyed) and a few cans of preservative and cetol varnish. Even more importantly, because we had designed and made everything ourselves, if things should break or wear out at sea or at isolated islands in the Pacific I knew that I could just dig in our odds and ends boxes, haul our my tools and make replacements. Our practical boat would continue to be inexpensive to maintain on the long voyages ahead. She was beautiful in her new wardrobe of white dacron sails.

The Force.

Cold rain,sleet, hail and snow. It must be Spring!

Officially it is Spring. The cool winds and occasional snow storms don`t know this yet but the landscape is n`t waiting: a green haze of tiny leaves cloaks the land.

The little pond at the bottom of the top field reflects the fading evening light in ripples: motion in an otherwise still scene. A pair of Mallard ducks are busy catching a last snack before dark. Where will they sleep safely tonight? Probably they will leap into the air and fly across the dark, rocky, tree covered hills to the still faintly reflecting surface of a lake. Soon though, they will be nesting somewhere in our woods and someday will once again lead a troop of ducklings across our lawns.

The salmonberry bushes are now in full blossom, sprinkling the stream side with vivid colour and our orchard looks just about to burst. We worry though, timing is everything and if this cold air mass stays with us there will be no insects for pollinating the apricots and peaches that blossom so early. We will have to fill the breach with a fluffy paint brush lashed to a long pole and, swinging among the blossoms, assist their pollination.

The same force that tucked all to bed for the winter is bringing everything back to life and I feel it too. I have found myself rushing the canoe project to completion and switching to garden work. My heart leaps up with the ducks.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age:
that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
Dylan Thomas.

Salmon run.

I was drawn to the song right away: "Salmon Hymn," by a BC band called As the Crow Flies .It is one of the many really excellent pieces of music written and sung by west coast musicians.

I got the liner notes and read the words:

"The winds have changed the sunburned trees;- vanilla hills grow brittle coats.
A last strong cry to face the winter rise up from their golden throats.
Their songs are leaves upon the water carried on the rivers back. The current draws them fiercely under,-the season of their beauty gone."

Sung a capella, I found it very moving, partly because it deals with end of life transitions that are increasingly within my own province, but also because it is making fresh language out of my much loved familiar landscape. It goes on to sing of the salmon that faithfully struggle up the river and, when all about is dying with the advance of the winter season, carry the promise of new life beyond death: new eggs placed in the river gravel giving the promise of the renewal of life in the spring. The song then offered the final blessing:

"So gather strength like songs in baskets, summer petals, autumn leaves. Join the fools against the current, journey on to glory land."

What appealed to me when I thought about it later was the reaching out to find in a salmon run ( which is common enough as to be ignored by most of our busy citizens) a new way of expressing an old truth usually understood in terms of well established religious imagery carried over here from Europe. Surely, I thought, that is the true function of the arts: to rebirth perennial life stories into local, accessible forms for new generations to participate in.

A few months later we were invited to an annual mid summer "Christmas party" during which a game would be played which involved the exchange of cheap, funny gifts. As I knew a commercial fisherman would be there, and that declining salmon stocks affected his livelihood, I thought of the song and the fertility of the imagery and decided to make a shrine to salmon which would feature a section of stream bed and salmon eggs in the gravel. A shrine for the increase of salmon; wishing them well. To make in more interesting, it would be in kit form: gravel and eggs to be placed by the new owner in such a way that he would be performing the act of the salmon spawning in symbolic form. I must admit though, that I was thinking a visual idea through, and this mock up would be a good way to test it out. Or so I hoped.

Of course in the end it was not really funny and the point was missed ( a pretty esoteric idea, after all) but at least it fitted fairly well among all the gifts that were being traded around. For me, that did not matter because before the party, in doing a trial run with all the ingredients, -placing the gravel, depositing the eggs (orange beads), covering them with more gravel, I had discovered that I was actually performing a powerful ritual. It was dead serious, not funny at all, except perhaps in that I had thought it could be merely a harmless diversion .

I had been reminded that the arts have their roots in that mysterious realm usually approached by religion. There is a lot of spirit here, the knowledge of which reaches back for humans to their earliest beginnings. Its part of our urge to create art, to feel the extacy and, whether we know it or not, to bring new meaning to our societies. We think aesthetics, but we touch elemental stuff.

Shiriri Saga #8 Winter navigation.

We anchored overnight in Burgoyne Bay. It was a quiet night, except for strange noises from Edith who was tied up alongside. We poked our heads outside into the cool still air and found she was rocking and bumping against Shiriri as she objected to a big otter lolling around in her bilges while eating his crab supper. The next morning we woke in the chilly after cabin, got the oil stove lit and as we drank our morning tea, we discussed our plan of action for the day. There was now a dense fog all around Shiriri and we had planned to spend all the short hours of winter daylight threading our way north to Nanaimo for a visit with our daughter Elaine. The radio said it would clear by noon but that would leave too little time for the complicated passage among the Islands. We decided to leave right away and use our new radar for the first time.

The first part was easy, the shores were precipitous and painted clearly on the radar screen. But what were those evenly spaced bright echoes spread straight across the channel? Just before panic stations set in we remembered the electrical transmission lines hidden high overhead in the fog with their big orange aircraft warning balls spaced along them. We motored north through the fog for several hours with our Isuzu diesel chugged cheerfully below in the after cabin. As it pushed us along it also charged our batteries and spewed out lots of glorious dry warmth to chase the condensation away.

Eventually the fog lifted and we found ourselves still on schedule for our passage through Dodds Narrows, a narrow and turbulent passage that would lead us eventually to a safe anchorage behind Newcastle Island in Nanaimo Harbour. The strong tidal currents meant that it was wise to time our passage for slack water when the tides paused briefly from their rushing back and forth. Here we were, leading this free life on our boat and being more focused and more careful about our time, speed and distance traveled than we ever would have been in our old land life that was already fading rapidly into the past. The Shiriris was now our name and navigation was our game.

We spent several days at Nanaimo with Elaine, and Gwyn came up for a visit as well. We used our second dinghy, Rosie the red inflatable to zoom back and forth between our anchorage and Nanaimo. The four HP outboard pushed a full load of passengers slowly across the harbour but with just one it could be coaxed to put Rosie up on plane and zoom along just like a more powerful inflatable.

Finally we motored south again through Dodds Narrows in a cold pelting rain. We took turns steering and warming up over the oil stove. There was so much flotsam in the form of drifting logs that keeping a sharp lookout was tiring. At dusk we anchored in a long narrow north facing cove on Wallace Island secure with a VHF weather forecast of no northerly wind. What a night! It was pitchy black and blowing like stink for most of the night, sometimes right into the bay and even more hair raisingly across the narrow headland. This blew Shiriri`s stern very close to the rocky shore. We found a new use for the radar: we could use it to tell if our anchor was dragging. The new spotlight illuminated the rocky shore just behind our stern.

We survived the night, and next morning moved just down the way to a more sheltered bay. There was a major South-easter forecast and being so tightly anchored in a narrow bay we had discovered could be hair raising.

Shiriri Saga #7 Pitter Patter.

I woke in a pitchy dark night to hear a few large raindrops falling on the cabin top close over my head. Heather rolled over beside me and I said " I `m just going to check on deck." thus beginning a regular night time habit at anchor for the sailing years ahead of us.

We were anchored in a narrow cove not so very far from Salt spring Island. At last we were living on board and cruising at first among the islands that were closest to home. We still thought of our home as being behind us on land and not there, moving gently beneath us. It had been a less seamless transition than we could have wished. For Heather there was a feeling that we were isolated from our family and I was having difficulty making the mental transition from boat builder to boat sailor. Of course it did n`t help that so many final building details had still to be brought to completion.

Once I`d climbed up into the cockpit, I looked out over the dark bay from under the hard dodger and was awed by what I saw. Each large raindrop created a quivering moon of phosphorescence as it struck the dark water and there were hundreds of them constantly fading and being renewed.
I could not have experienced this from my bedroom window at home!

The next morning I began another regular habit: I took out a sketchbook and drew that amazing midnight scene from memory and added a little notation. My little sketchbook grew over the years to be the journals that are such a treasure trove now. Today I open the first page to that dark night at anchor and the whole moment of life come alive to me again.

The Eternal Present.

The middle of a moss covered maple tree is the first thing I see each morning through my window when I awake. This morning, little flecks of green tip the tracery of sunlit branches and I can see the small birds that peck industriously among the cracks in the bark. I`ve watched the tree`s seasons come and go for many years and contemplate the passage of time constantly spinning in it`s yearly cycle.

A newly arrived robin flies up singing from the maple and the next second it has been taken by a falcon. In an instant the hawk, with its wings swept back and with the robin calling out and twitching in its talons has continued low across the sloping field, through the trees and out of sight.

Did I see that? It happened in an instant! Yes, a puff of feathers at the point of impact is just beginning to float to earth. So quick as to be almost timeless. In a sense it is timeless, or more accurately, outside of time.

What I have seen so dramatically is the dance of life and death, hunter and hunted that has been played out endlessly since life began to live off other life in the unimaginably distant past of our planet. It is one aspect of the song of life: all of us bound together in an eternal symphony that changes players but never stops. Time loses relevance in such a repeated cycle and I see my own life differently.

I too carry within me the archetypal imprint that is repeated over and over in the intricate pattern of life. I am, in the same moment, all my ancestors and my children and children`s children and on and on. I`m also more than that: I am part of all life, past, present and future, part of this physical planet; the oceans, mountains and the breezes that blow. One leg stands in the primordial seas and the other spans the universe to the stars of the distant future. We are all, like the maple tree, the robin and the falcon, both individuals within time and an unbroken thread that lives always in eternity.

Its still the same old story
A fight for love and glory,
A case of do or die.
The fundamental things of life
As time goes by.
A song.

Spinning.

Three generations learn to spin.

Tik, Tik, Tik. The spinning wheel turns steadily where it sits before the flickering kitchen fire. It is sheeting down rain outside; a cool wet winter afternoon. Here in the house is warmth, light and companionable industry. I`ve come in from the studio and my own absorbing canoe rebuilding project for afternoon tea and it is lovely to see Heather so involved in her own creative work.
She has recently picked up an old skill again after many years and is deeply involved in washing fleeces, dying, spinning and knitting. Her sweaters are spectacular, but the significance is not completely contained in the end product. Heather is a writer, with two published books, and many poems, short stories and magazine articles. While away sailing she completed two children`s novels, but now we are home again at last, she has stopped writing. Her drive to write has shifted back to work in textiles. She has been very busy in the last few years providing wedding dresses and beautifully designed and crafted wedding quilts for all three of our daughters and is totally involved in the development of two new grandchildren: a return to another level of parenting and the textile creativity of earlier motherhood years.

There is a kind of a relationship though, between writing and the process of making knitted clothing: we spin tales, after all. We take the raw materials of life and knit them together in interesting patterns that must also fit a specific form. We piece the elements together carefully so the threads of our story will not unravel. Heather`s work in wool is beautifully crafted, rich in the subtlety of tones, textures and colours: like her personality and her writing.

The wheel turns, the raw fluffy wool is fed into the spinner and formed into thread. A new creative life is growing on this cold winter afternoon.

Shiriri Saga #6 Masts.

Felling the old masts.

I was sitting on deck in the pale wintery sunshine, eating my lunch and idly poking my pocket knife into a slight pucker in the paint on the wooden mast beside me. My eyes were caressing the splendor of my beautifully polished and painted schooner. Pride of ownership. Months of hard work. Just then the knife blade slid smoothly in to the hilt!

That night in our little cabin in the woods I told my wife Heather the classic "There`s good news and bad news" proposition. Bad, because both big pole masts had dry rot and would have to be replaced, and good, because I had always wanted to make masts!

I walked through our woods, felled three suitable fir trees and hauled them to a large flat space beside our driveway and left them to begin drying out. I went back to work rebuilding the interior of our schooner, Shiriri. There was plenty to do and little time to do it in.

By the time the previously roughly finished cabins shone as beautifully as the topsides it was summer already and time to work on that nagging extra project. First the rotten masts had to come down. Beside our marina, just beyond the ferry dock, was a high government wharf with a small crane for unloading cargo. Some friends came to help and we brought Shiriri alongside at low tide. The wharf towered above us. A bit like tooth extraction, I planned to hook on with the crane and pull the masts up and out! Then began several hours of dementia.

It quickly became obvious that if the wire rope of the crane was attached low enough to pull the base of the masts clear out of the hull, the balance point was too low and they would tip over. Meanwhile, the tide was lifting our boat higher and higher, reducing the vertical distance available to remove the masts. I called a tow truck operator who assured me he had a tall extendable crane. We waited for his arrival. Hoards of people waiting for the ferry came to look and give advise. The tide rose some more. The tow truck operator arrived and got into a heated argument with an old enemy who was parked across the entrance to the wharf. The tide! I desperately mediated their dispute. The car was moved. The tow truck, with a shorter crane than promised and with the still higher tide was still not tall enough. He departed. Most of my friends departed. The ferry left again with the most recent crowd of sightseers. High tide at last.

High tide and my friend Bill the ex-fireman said. "You got your chain saw? You could fell the masts right on to the wharf!" Sure enough, the cabin top was now level with the wharf deck, the crowds were gone and I grasped the brilliance of the idea. I did not need the old masts in one piece after all. With Gwyn, Heather and friend Bill pulling on the rigging to guide the fall, I felled both in quick succession, cut them into several shorter lengths, and loaded them and all their rigging onto a trailer to take home to use as patterns for the waiting trees.

Back at the marina Shiriri looked like she had been through a naval battle, but soon the mast roots were extracted and brought home as well. The time for mast making had arrived. I had been doing my research and had read of a way to speed up the process by using a circular saw to girdle the logs every six inches and then to remove the bark and outer layer of sap wood with an adze. I practiced on the spare third log and then did the two long straight masts. I t worked beautifully and soon I was on to using a drawknife and an electric plane. Eventually I had two beautiful masts, finished this time with a clear varnish so that next time I would see any rot as it started. I had also made a boom and gaff out of the extra log for the new gaff foresail I was designing.

Loading the new masts.

The day we put the masts in began, like the mast extraction day, with a group of friends to lift the heavy spars onto a flat bed truck for the trip to a bay where a real crane and Shiriri waited. This time all went smoothly. The next morning Heather and I returned to reposition all the rigging and motor Shiriri( she now had a new diesel engine) back to our marina home. We were exhausted and talked over our real dilemma as we set up the rigging. A sailing friend, Penni, had seen our exhaustion the previous day and reminded us that we had at first sensibly planned to live on board and sail in local waters for a year to gain experience before sailing out to sea. Here we were single-mindedly plodding doggedly ahead toward an offshore departure in a couple of months. We were trying to stick to an agenda long since skewered by the sheer immensity and unpredictability of the task we had taken on so blithely on that winters day a year and a half ago when we first saw Shiriri.

Guiding the new foremast into place.

There are so many moments when a grand adventure can come unstuck. We knew the dangers of frightening storms or even the interpersonal conflicts that can halt a grand design but had not seen our own particular weakness: that our ability to keep working single-mindedly toward a goal had it own Achilles heel; we could loose perspective. What a relief to finally accept that we were not leaving so soon after all.