Joined by my son Skyler, seen in the photo on our earlier 4am departure from Bodega Bay) and Ruby the Wonderdog, I sailed out under the Golden Gate bridge on March 3, 2008 so I’m now starting year number five of this grand adventure and Wow! what a ride, what a life, what a privilege it has been every day since!
NOTE: I’ll put a photo album at the end with some additional pictures and note that if you click on any of the pictures here you will get the full size view.
If you will indulge me I’ll do a bit of reflecting on these past four years of truly living life large. Sailing from one great experience to the next have taught an incredible number of lessons and created a life which for me is nothing short of awemazing. Each day has been filed with more adventures, experiences, living, loving and learning than I thought was possible for one person to experience in a full lifetime never mind just four years.
I continue to be struck by what I wrote about a two years ago when I was in New Zealand reflecting on the start of my third year at the time and trying to comprehend how I could have experienced so much in just two years. I eventually made some sense out of it and what I called “Exponential Learning Density” or ELD. In the coming weeks and months I’ll write more about that and some of the other major lessons I’ve learned in the last four years and over 25,000 nautical “smiles” as I like to call them. As I’ve recounted these lessons to others via Email, visits and even some pubic presentations many people have confirmed that these are lessons in life that completely transcend their origins in sailing and I get a lot of requests to write these up and share them online so more people can access them and I’ll do my best to try and articulate these as best I can and share them with you here.
First let me set the scene with a quick overview of how this all came to be.
I named the boat Learnativity, a word I had created about twenty years ago when I couldn’t seem to find a word to describe something I think we do all the time. We have words such as learning, working, creating, inventing, discovering and I use them all a lot. But these individual words suggest that they are discrete and independent activities on our part whereas my sense has always been that we do these all simultaneously as we go about our daily lives solving problems, making choices and just living. Do we really stop learning and start working and vice versa? Not in my experience and so I came up with Learnativity as an amalgam of all these and focal point for what I wanted to explore, talk about, experience and grow.
Sailing is something completely new to me. I grew up living all over Canada and Europe as my Dad was a chef in the Canadian army. No nautical background in my history or my family tree. No life long childhood dream of going to sea. I just happened to serendipitously stumble over sailing about ten years ago on a family vacation in Polynesia, where thanks to Diana’s great planning we chartered a sailboat (WITH a captain I might stress), for a week. I didn’t really know it then but as I reflect back now I think that is when the sailing bug first bit me. Over the next five years I became more and more curious and fascinated by sailing, read lots, had more charted boat vacations with my dear friends John and Michelle and soon reached a familiar conclusion for me that the only way to learn more was through the experiential learning of doing it myself. I particularly relish diving head first into the deep end of my many pools of ignorance and so I figured what I really needed to do was go sailing long term, indefinitely in fact. No destination in particular, rather a journey of grand adventure through the world’s oceans in general. Yea right, that’s the plan, my favorite kind; the no plan plan!
And so the search for my first boat began and spent almost two years figuring out what I wanted and needed in a boat by scouring the worldwide used boat market, going to boat shows, reading and talking with anyone who would put up with my incessant questions. Then one day in early 2005 I found just the right boat for me in Sidney BC, just outside Victoria, the one town where my parents retired and I had finished high school and started university. She is a 52’ steel monohull sailboat built from 1992-94 by Kristen Yachts and after several visits and much discussion I bought her from the original owner and took possession in July 2005 in Friday Harbour. Yikes!
She was in good shape overall having not been sailed much at all but was lived in and used by the owner and sometimes his young family as he used it as an office for his geographical plotting work of sea bottoms. However as I learned more and more, she was not set up for open ocean or blue water sailing but for short day sails and certainly not possible to be sailed single handed around the world. I didn’t know a thing about boats really and somehow I missed the memo that you can’t sail a boat this size by yourself so I just jumped in with my usual ignorant bliss and got going with what would turn out to be a two year refit to get her ready to set sail on this grand adventure. While I didn’t know anything about boats, I’m pretty handy and I can figure most things out and I’m a good problem solver and more than anything I LOVE learning by doing.
With lots of help along the way of my great friend John and his dad Juan on several occasions, as well as too many other friends old and new to mention, I spent the first six months visiting the boat up in Victoria/Sidney and then later moved her over to Port Townsend for more extensive work in the boatyard there as they specialized in steel (and wooden) boats. During the winter months in Port Townsend we sandblasted the bottom of the hull back to bare steel and put on new epoxy primer, sealer and anti foul paint, installed a new bow thruster, cleaned fuel tanks and put in a complete new fuel line system, pumps and filters, new AutoProp propeller and many other renovations.
Joined by my good friend Steve we even managed to take her on a trial run back over to Vancouver Island and docked right in front of the Empress Hotel! One of the things that grabbed me very early on in my research into sailing was the fact that you can legally anchor your boat in the middle of almost any harbour in the world! As long as you aren’t blocking any shipping or sea plane lanes, the world is quite literally your oyster. How kewl is that?! I can anchor in front of hotels that are costing their guests thousands of dollars a night, have a view to die for and sleep in my own bed for “free”! How can you not go for that?!
The Port of Port Townsend (had to say that for you Skyler!) was a great marina to work on a steel boat but it was way too far away for me to get there as often as I wanted and needed to. My home and workshop were down in Petaluma, about 50 miles north of San Francisco so I was anxious to move the boat down close to there as soon as weather would permit. Bodega Bay, which is just north of SF Bay proved to be a great spot that was less than 20 minute drive from my home and workshop and where I ended up working on her for almost two years to get her ship shape for single handed blue water sailing.
There were many attempts to get Learnativity down south to Bodega Bay that were thwarted by weather windows that suddenly snapped shut. Even my friend Robin from England (seen on the right) flew in for one of these aborted attempts and my dear friend Erik from Antwerp had a memorable flight into Port Angeles to lend a helping hand. Erik had an even more memorable experience the next day when he woke up and came up on deck to find himself swinging from a Travel Lift carrying the boat over to its final resting spot on the hard stands!
But finally, joined by a brave crew of John and his Dad Juan from Florida and two of my Autodesk colleagues and friends Dave and JohnH (the mermaid and the shark declined to join us) we finally set out for Bodega Bay on May 6, 2006. As we were to learn, the west coast of North America, in fact every continent, is not very friendly to sailors with few points of entry and all of them difficult.
The weather is also still very iffy this time of year and we ran into a severe storm about 60nm off the Oregon coast and made the call to head for Crescent City on the Oregon/California border to seek shelter from the worsening conditions that kept increasing to over 50 knot winds and 5 meter seas all the while the forecasts were calling for mild conditions. The entry into Crescent City was even more challenging as none of us had ever entered it before, it was a challenging entry at the best times and we were doing it at night in storm conditions! But we made it in just fine and were soon all sleeping soundly down below, snuggly tied up to the docks. Now THAT is experiential learning!
I needed to change the name of the boat as it was the name of the original owner’s business and so began my search for just the right name. Almost as important as naming your children I knew this was a name that would be with me for a long, long time, one I would be saying on the VHF radio every day as I called others or was being hailed, on every document I filled out as I checked in and out of each new port around the world and so I gave it great thought and deliberation. I wanted a name that would be unique and capture the essence of what this ship was all about for me and the great unknown adventures which lay ahead. Not finding any existing names or words that seemed to fit I was soon trying to create my own word by putting together bits and pieces of others such as my kids names and trying these out on everyone who would lend an ear. It was my two great kids who nailed it though when they just looked at me, with those wonderfully quizzical looks teenage children give their Dad when they are so puzzled at your apparent blindness and ignorance, and said “You’re kidding right Dad? You already have the perfect name for this boat; Learnativity!” Duh! Smack! Of course! If there was one single explanation for this otherwise insanity of buying my first boat and sailing it around the world, it was my love of learning. I love jumping into the deep end of my pools of ignorance, and trust me those ends are VERY deep and numerous! Though I had no inkling of the depths of this connection, I was pretty sure that I would be learning, working, inventing, discovering and a whole lot more every day I owned and sailed this ship. So Learnativity it was and she has lived up to that name every single day since then in more ways and depth than I could have ever imagined.
OK, enough of my nostalgic reflections for now. Thanks to every one of you who have helped me so generously and kindly in so many ways to be out on this grand adventure. I could not possibly be leading this charmed and full life without each and every one of you. I’ll be back with more stories of some of the bigger lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Friday night I had an extremely special experience when Isikelli one of the guys on my Fiji paint crew from Baobab Marine (left front behind Ruby in this photo) invited me to his home for a visit and some kava. Kava as you may know from my previous posts over the past two year’s I’ve been in Fiji, is the ceremonial drink here in Fiji and many of the other Southern Pacific islands.
This Kava drink is made from the dried and aged roots of the Kava tree which are then pounded or ground into a fine powder and mixed it with fresh water. Kava is part of a ceremony and historic cultural tradition called “Sevusevu” which is what I experience each time I first anchor off shore from one of the small inhabited islands here in Fiji.
As soon as I have my anchor down and inspected so I know Learnativity is secure, I put the dingy in the water and row ashore to meet with the chief and ask for his blessings and permission to be there. When I arrive ashore I am usually greeted by a gaggle of giggling children and seek out an adult to ask to take me to their chief. I bring with me about a pound or half kilo of kava roots which I have purchased previously in one of the bigger city vegetable markets and keep a stock of onboard. Usually my adult guide takes the kava from me and talks with me as we walk to get a bit of background on me, where I’m from, where I have just sailed from, how long in Fiji, and so on. They introduce me to the chief and give him a summary of from this conversation and I am then invited to sit across from the chief sitting on a large hand woven mat. I present the chief with the kava and he places it in front of him as we sit cross legged he then says a prayer in Fijian, we clap three times when he has done so and the then welcomes me to his island and we chat for a bit more before I take my leave and return to the boat. More informally, Kava is also the traditional drink that Fijian men usually have at the end of the day when they get home from work and is similar to having a beer or wine after work. Several times while anchored for longer times off one of these islands I've been invited ashore to join them which has been a great gift and treasured experience.
On Friday however I had a whole new and even more intense experience with kava and the Fijian people and their way of life when one of my regular Fijian paint crew and friend Isikeli invited me to join him at his home for such a drink of kava. I was not sure what I could bring as a gift of thanks and appreciation but I remembered that I had about 2lbs/1kg of kava root still on board in my stores from sailing here last year and so I wrapped this up with ribbon into a bouquet like form that is the tradition here and took that along with me. Moreover, he had expressly invited Ruby to come along as he had been telling his daughters about Ruby the Wonderdog for months and she is also a "gift" for most people we meet.
Isikeli lives with his two daughters Vani (2) and Marica (4) and his wife Salome who unfortunately was not able to join us as she works nights at the neighboring First Landing resort which is next to the Vuda Point Marina where I’ve been since September. They live only a kilometer or two away and he and his oldest daughter, Marica (Fijian for Martha), met me at the marina and we walked over to their home. They recently moved into a new rental property that is situated in the middle of a large set of sugar cane fields and it was a perfect evening and just starting to cool off as the sun was starting to set (about 6:30pm). Their home is an adjoining half of the landlord's home and he joined us for the last half of the walk to the house where Ruby and I were introduced to the kids playing in the houses and yard and Isikeli's sister in law.
The kava roots need to be pulverized into powder and they fetched a large tall cast iron or steel urn that they used for this purpose. It needed to be cleaned out of rust and water so they wiped it all out and then lit some newspaper on fire inside it to burn off the remainder, wiped it clean and it was ready to use. Isikeli, his older son and the man who owns the houses where they live all took turns in pounding the kava with a long heavy steel rod that was about 4cm in diameter and 2.5m long until the kava roots were transformed into a fine powder.
My offers to assist were politely declined as the men took turns raising the rod high overhead and then bringing it down as hard as possible onto the kava roots inside the urn. This process took quite some time, almost an hour or so by the time it was fully pulverized and was a significant and sweaty effort in the hot humid night air. All the while I was invited to sit on the woven grass mat, enjoy a tea and some biscuits as Ruby and I played with the 3 young girls who came and went from inside the house to the covered porch we were sitting on, and the yard.
As has been surprisingly common, the kids and even many adult men are quite fearful of Ruby at first as they have never seen anything like her. There are LOTS of dogs here but they are mostly roaming free and not in very good health as the concept of having domestic pets is not common in Fiji. With her strange curly black hair and small size many think she is some kind of wind up or electric toy! It took a while for the little girls to get closer and closer to Ruby, reach out and touch her and finally end up sitting with her, petting her and their initial wary squeals were transformed into that joyous giggling of little girls.
Kava has a very distinctive smell that is hard to describe but has a very earthy, spicy smell much like you might expect from a root. They were very pleased with the kava I brought as apparently it was very good quality and this was a very large quantity for them as it made enough kava powder for several months of drinking. Isikeli then brought out his kava bowl and his son put a few heaping tablespoons full of kava powder into a cloth bag which he then kneaded in the large bowl of fresh water. It is a bit like making drip coffee or tea in that you do not want the kava powder itself to be in the water you just want to extract all the flavour out of the powder into the water. Isikeli continued to knead the bag in the water for about 10 minutes to extract all the flavour from the powered kava.
Once it was all mixed to his satisfaction, Isikeli brought out the traditional kava “cups” which are hollowed out halves of a coconut shell and offered me the first drink. You accept the bowl with both hands and while the other guests toast you and clap three times you then drink the kava in one steady go and when you are done they all clap three more times and you pass the bowl back to the “chief” of the ceremony. In our case it was just Isikeli and myself and once we had both had a cup Isikeli would place the lid back on the big bowl and we would talk some more and then he would serve another round about every 15-20 minutes. Kava is apparently mildly intoxicating but I have never had enough to feel any such effect and it just makes your lips, tongue and throat a bit numb. The bowl is then filled and passed amongst all the guests and then you usually sit around, chat for a while, and then repeat the whole process. It is a very old tradition and very special to be a part of.
I had my pocket camera with me and the girls were all quite intrigued with it and wanting to see pictures of themselves so that along with Ruby provided lots of fun for all of us throughout the evening as the girls got closer and closer to Ruby, petted her and worked up their courage with this very strange creature.
Isikeli had even brought out a small can of tuna and some crackers for Ruby which Vani (the brave one of the two) served to her as you can see in this photo. I also used several bites of soda crackers to entice Ruby to perform her full repertoire of entertaining tricks like standing on her hind legs, sit, down, dancing and giving High Fives all the accompanying music of giggles and laughs from the girls.
And so this most wondrous and simple time passed with Isikeli and I talking, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with his two girls and older son. Fijian families usually speak Fijian in their homes and with their kids and then they learn English “immersion” style once they start school, which is usually when they are about five years old and start half day Kindergarten classes. So the young girls don’t speak much English yet but as usual it was no problem to communicate these simple pleasures of looking at pictures and playing with Ruby. The time passed in that oxymoronic way where it is all luxuriously slow and peaceful and yet in the end seems to go by in a blink.
We stayed until almost 9 o’clock, which is quite late here, and then walked back to the boat. Isikeli and Marica walked us out to the end of the sugar cane fields and then Ruby and I walked the last km back to the boat under a beautiful starry sky. The moon is rising and setting very early now so it was not in the sky at all so the sky was even darker and the stars shining even brighter than usual. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness and find my way along the dirt roads but the road is quite wide and not a problem to walk along as we made our way back to our little nest in the trees. I was not sure if we would be eating as part of this visit and I had been so busy with all the painting that I had not eaten since breakfast so I made up a quick snack back on the boat and was soon nodding off on the settee as I was pooped from a hard hot week of painting. I awoke a few hours later and stumbled my way into the aft cabin and was soon fast asleep in bed with Ruby curled up at my side and we were off to dream land here in this magical land called Fiji.
While it fails miserably to capture the magic of the evening, I have done my best here to describe what this evening was like. As with all experiential learning, this is not something that can be explained well in words and as the saying goes, "You really had to be there". It may sound to many like a very simple and even "boring" evening where “nothing” happened. Yet for me it was truly magical and memorable time. To be invited into the home and lives of these simply beautiful people, to have even just a few hours to become part of this moment in time was such a deeply authentic and Oh so real moment for me. I seem to be blessed with gifts like these all the time out here on this grand sailing life adventure and you can see why I say that I lead a truly charmed life.
Many of you ask what the heck I do with all my time out here “doing nothing”. It is a very reasonable question and one can fully understand as I often wonder myself where all the time has gone. But as you read more and more of my stories perhaps you can begin to understand just how full my time “doing nothing” is! I’m actually fascinated by the whole concept of “nothingness” and is why I have been devouring books like Stephen Hawking’s “Universe in a Nutshell” and Lawrence Krauss’ “A Universe from Nothing” that I am reading now. Turns out that as best these physicists and cosmologists can figure out, everything from our very selves to the entire cosmos around us has been created from "nothing” and how over 90 percent of the energy in the cosmos exists in the “nothing” that is left when you remove every atom, electron, proton and quark of visible matter.
In a similar way, I live a life of profound joy that seems to be similarly created out of “nothingness” with the eclectic range of activities that include sailing from one magical destination to the next, experiencing the wonders of Mother Nature, endless boat repairs and maintenance juxtaposed between equally endless sunrises and sunsets, and then truly living IN life’s moments when snorkeling or laying under a full night sky or sitting with some of the local people I meet along the way. To badly paraphrase Al Green’s “Use me” song, If this is what it feels like to do nothing, then nothing me up please!
Another busy week here in Vuda Point Marina on the big renovation of the good ship Learnativity as we finished all the prep work for the topsides of the hull (waterline up to the deck) and started in on the preparation of the deck surfaces for their upcoming coats of glossy white and then anti skid paint.
The topsides are the most visible part of the boat for those ashore or when you are looking at her from the water so we have been working hard to get those surfaces as smooth and flat as possible. This is especially important as I’m going to change the colour from white to dark blue and as you would know from looking at black or dark colour cars the darker colours show every little imperfection and ripple. Of course Learnativity is a 20 year old steel boat so I’m not looking for perfection and what the crew from Baobab Marine and I have settled on is that if we can feel it with our hands we remove it, which would be small dents, dings and hollows. We won’t be able to fully remove the larger scale waves in the steel plate surfaces but Learnativity was so well built originally that most people mistake it for a fiberglass boat because the steel surfaces are so smoothly curved. Most steel boats are built with what are called “chines” which are hard edges that result from building the boat with straight sections of steel plate and forming the curves for the hull by creating these faceted surfaces. But Learnativity was built by cold forming the 6mm steel plate over top of the ribs and stringers built up to create the shape of the hull and welding the plate in place as it was bent around these curved ribs. You may recall seeing how we did the same thing a few weeks ago when we welded in all the new steel sections in the undersides of the hull for added strength and to replace some rusted sections. So the last month or so has been a recurring cycle of priming, filling and sanding the hull with long sanding boards and orbital sanders to get the surfaces all smooth and flat. That’s all behind us now and these surfaces are all ready for the final spraying of the dark “Aristo” blue polyurethane paint. We are hoping to do that on Tuesday as the weather looks good that day with no rain and we will use Monday to mask off the bottom of the hull and the decks to protect them from all the blue overspray and do the last fine inspection for any small bits we might have missed. You can try to imagine how big the surface area of a 52’ boat is and we have been over every square millimeter of that surface many, many times now.
I also spent quite a bit of time figuring out just what colour blue I wanted to have. You don’t realize how many shades of blue, or any colour, there are until you start to look closely. I had a good set of paint chips from the paint company to choose from and they were very handy as they had a hole drilled in the middle of each one which let me put it up against another boat or object that was painted blue and easily see how close or far it was from the paint chip colour. So I spent several days wondering around the yard looking for every bit of blue paint I could find on other boats or tarps or stripes. I wanted to have a blue that looked blue at any time, in strong sunlight and shade and so I didn’t want to have that really dark Navy blue that often looks black yet neither did I want something too light or “baby blue”. Ahh, the troubled life I lead! Finally settled on one paint chip and had the factory mix up just one liter of it and send it to us so we could paint a small test patch and see what it really looked like. as you would know from painting at home colours look so different when they are on a large surface than on the paint chip in the store. I thought we would have to go through a few rounds to adjust a bit darker or lighter but I was delighted when the test patch up on deck as you can see here in the photo, turned out to be just what I wanted. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, it wasn’t too dark, not too light, it was just right! The factory quickly mixed up the whole batch and all 20 liters of it arrived on Friday. Now we just need a day with no rain next week and the hull will make its transformation to beautiful Aristo Blue.
With the hull all ready for final top coats our attention turned to the decks and as you can see in the photos here we are making good progress as we do the final stages of the paint, fill, sand cycles up here. The deck is quite a bit more work and slower than those expanses of long flat steel on the hull as it is almost nothing but nooks and crannies where all the life line stanchions attach to the deck for example and all the areas around the hatches, fittings, tracks, windows and the like. However if you compare these photos to the ones from last month you can see how far things have come. The white is the primer/filler paint that was sprayed on a few weeks ago after we had finished all the major filling, grinding, welding and sand blasting and covered all the base primer that was that reddish brown colour. The green you see in these pictures is the paste epoxy filler that is mixed up to the consistency of peanut butter, spread on with putty knives and fingers and then sanded down once hard.
You can see that things are turning out so well because Commodore Ruby continues to be on watch at all times and we are all under close supervision.
So all is well over here on this side of the world. My mornings continue to be wonderful sunny retreats up in my tree fort on the aft deck and life continues to unfold just as it should. More to follow after the hull is all shiny and blue so stay tuned.
Yes folks, the big day finally arrive today. Tuesday March 13th here and a very lucky day it was indeed. After months and months of work the great crew from Baobab Marine and I were finally ready to spray on the new Arista blue paint on Learnativity’s topsides!
The weather looked to be perfect with another wondrous start to the day with brilliant blue skies and sun pouring through the tree branches as it rose this morning. The crew arrived just after eight and we did the final inspection, fine sanded a few small spots and then wiped the entire surfaces down with thinner and rags to get rid of any last traces of dust or grit.
Ron, the new painter for Baobab who has been working with us steadily for the past 3 weeks was all suited up and started spraying at 10am. You can see him here with the very first hit of the spray gun as the new Aristo Blue starts to replace the formerly all white Learnativity. He works his way down one side and back up the other and then starts over again to put on each coat. All in all we put on 5 coats, 20 liters of polyurethane in all so Learnativity is VERY well covered!
Here is my whole paint crew for you to see. In the photo on the left Lorenzo, the overall supervisor who I work with for the whole renovation is on the far right and then he came and took the picture on the right so I could stand in with them. They are SUCH a great group of guys to work with and it has been such an big bonus of doing all this work here to get to know them and learn so much more about the people, cultures and attitudes of the beautiful people of this country. Thanks guys! Now let’s get back to work on those decks!! <g>
I think I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves to show you more about the whole paint job today and give you a little album here to look through at your leisure. Suffice it to say that it turned out GREAT and I am VERY happy. The Aristo Blue colour changes just like I had hoped in the different lighting from shade to direct sun and I hope some of that comes through in the photos. Enjoy looking at my shiny new blue boat! I sure am!
Another productive week here in Vuda Point marina aboard the good ship Learnativity. The weather is frankly just wonderful; hot and sunny mornings, clouds and thunder build in the afternoon and we get a bit of rain about half of the time but it only lasts for a few hours at most and we’ve had some spectacular sunsets and sunrises.
It may sound as strange to you as it does to me given that Learnativity is out of the water and jacked up on stands in the middle of a busy boat yard, but I have this incredible perch up in the trees where I sit and welcome in each day as I sit out on my aft deck about 5 meters/18 feet up in the air. The way I have them lift Learnativity out of the water in the Travel Lift is such that I was able to get them to put my aft end in right up against the beautiful trees surrounding the end of the marina and work yard so as you can see in the pictures, if you didn’t know better you would think I’m living in a tree fort.
I start each morning by rising just as the first light of day is streaming up over the eastern horizon of verdant hills which are off in the distance behind those trees and green grassy field. Ruby gets her ritual full tummy rub as we both get the sleep out of our eyes and then I fix up my favorite breakfast of yogurt, whole wheat bread, chunky peanut butter, dried cherries and a glass of cold milk and head up on deck to sit in my breakfast perch.
The tree branches are an arms distance away and filled with a myriad of different birds as they too start their day with their breakfast. As you can see if you look closely at the picture on the right, Ruby enjoys this time as well as she chases the saucy little birds that fly onboard and try to sneak off with a few pieces of her dog food. The other photos below will give you a bit more of a panorama view of the view from the front and sides of the boat and help you visualize the whole location here in the marina and boat yard.
The last two mornings have been particularly marvelous as the sun and sky have been brilliantly clear and the whole marina is enveloped in the early morning light, the sounds of birds chirping and a light fresh breeze through the trees. Part of living life well for me is surrounding myself in beauty and this will give you an idea of one of the ways I do so.
Boat work wise this week saw the completion of the final preparation of the topsides of the hull for the dark blue paint they are about to get this coming week. You quickly learn just how big a 52 foot boat is when you have to go over every square centimeter of that hull with your hands! That’s been done many times by many times thanks to the fabulous crew of guys from Baobab Marine (named after some of those trees surrounding me) and so we now have a very smooth surface with no more pinholes, dents, scratches or other marks. The new dark blue paint is being mixed up at the factory and should be here on Monday and then it is a matter of trying to read the weather right for a day where there won’t be any rain and spray it all on. Should take about four or five coats of colour to build up the full colour and cover everything completely and these all go on in one go as the painter goes round and round the boat.
This week was therefore filled with finding the last spots needing more filing and sanding and then covering it all with one last coat of white primer as you can see in the pictures. Then we taped the top and bottom edges a bit beyond where thee bottom paint and the top deck paint lines will go and washed it all down thoroughly. The big tarps went back up, the old masking was replaced with new on all the port windows and she is all ready for the final colour coat! When the blue paint arrives and it looks like we have a rain free day, we’ll wash and wipe it down again and transform the hull from the white of old to the Corinthian Blue of new. That will be a very exciting day and milestone as you can imagine and I’ll share it all with you when it happens, hopefully in next weekend’s update.
With the topsides all done our attention not turns to the even bigger job of painting the deck surfaces with gloss white and non-skid white paint. A much longer job as there is so much hand sanding and filling to be done of all the nooks and crannies you might imagine are on a sailboat’s decks with all the rigging, windows, hatches and fittings. But we have already done a great deal of sanding, filling and priming so this is the final stages of that and should go well. I’ve been busy cleaning and rebuilding all the fittings, hatches and rigging so they are ready to go back on as soon as the gloss is all sprayed. This too will take quite a bit of time because each hole has to be rethreaded to remove all the paint and filler they are now covered with, then the mating surfaces have to be caulked and fastened down firmly to seal them. I get great joy from doing all this but it is slow work and has to be all done before we can tape off all these fittings, tracks and hatches to protect the gloss around them from the non skid paint we will then apply. That’s all weeks away though so I’ll bring you pictures and details in the weekend updates to come.
It was also an unusually and wonderful week for me socially this week. On Wednesday Ruby and I were invited over to fellow cruisers Terry and Christine on Teka Nova. They are from the UK and also have a steel boat very similar to Learnativity and are also out of the water and busy doing lots of boat work. We’ve been trading stories, tools and helping each other out along the way and they invited us over for the evening. And what an evening it was! Their boat was build in Finland and the interior woodwork in particular is beautiful. Christine in particular loves hosting dinner parties and she really knocked herself out. We had a full spread of food from appetizers to a main meal of pork loin with passion fruit sauce, fresh peas and carrots, and potatoes in cream sauce with garlic onions and spices all followed with a delectable dessert of lime pie that was somewhere between cheesecake, cream and heaven. Not content with just fabulous food Christine had also laid out the dining table with a full compliment of glassware, silverware, fine china and flowers. She even made up a special meal for Ruby and Terry dug into his wine “cellar” to add to the wine I brought along. As wonderful as the meal was, the conversations and stories were even better and yet again I was reminded just how charmed a life I lead. Then on Friday two fellow cruisers Nick and Barbara on Val, also a steel boat that was out of the water for painting and had been our next door neighbours for the past month, invited Ruby and I and most of the other yachties who are living here, over to celebrate them going back in the water. Just a wee bit envious of this, Ruby and I joined a very full boat for an evening of appetizers and wine. So as you can see, life here is pretty rough, but I’m holding up OK and can’t wait for whatever is coming next.
Last but not least, this week ends with me marking the start of my fifth year out on this grand sailing adventure. Almost impossible for me to believe that it has been so long but more so short given the amazing number of experiences I’ve had and I’m going to make that the topic of a series of posts over the coming weeks as I reflect back on all this and share some of the lessons in life much more than sailing, which I’ve learned. I’ve only sailed a bit more then 25,000 nautical miles in the past four years but that’s more than most people get to experience and it has been SO dense with awemazing adventures, new sights, sounds, people, cultures and filled to overflowing with life, love and learning that it would take me more years to write about it all than it has to experience. I’ll do my best to summarize a few of the major lessons I’ve learned along the way for you starting with the next post.
Hard to believe that it is almost the end of February already but then I don’t have too much sense of time anymore with my current lifestyle and one of its many benefits. As they/we say here in Fiji “ne senga ne lenga” which translates into “don’t worry, be happy” and is truly a part of the culture, attitudes and way of life here in Fiji. I can’t articulate it well but have come to understand it now after living here for almost a year in total between my two different times here and especially these past few months from working so closely with so many Fijians. It has truly been one of the great gifts of my time here and a big bonus for doing all this boat work here to have the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with these happy people, to eat and joke with them and to be given this in depth glimpse into their lives and customs. You know how it is when you work closely and spend a lot of time with someone, when you break bread with them and when you share in experiences, how you develop such a bond and understanding of people. So far beyond anything you can get from a visit or a vacation and I’m so fortunate to have this opportunity.
The weather here has continued to cooperate as we have returned to the daily rhythm of bright sunny mornings followed by hot humid afternoons and then thunder and rain showers which typically start about 3pm or so. Not a lot of rainfall when it does happen and so things have been staying very dry and all the work on the topsides of the hull has been progressing very well.
As you can see in these pictures it is a cycle of spraying on thick coats of primer/filler, sanding with large flat sanding pads to take down high spots and then filling in low spots with filler. So Learnativity has lost its all white surface from the last round of spraying you saw last week and is now this beautiful patchwork of colours as we sand through the layers of primer and filler. The goal is to have as flat and smooth a surface as possible before the dark blue colour top coat is sprayed on. The agreement I have with the crew is that if we can feel it with our hands as we run them over the hull we fill and sand them till they are gone and if you look closely at the photo above left you can see each spot we find circled in pencil. This also means that the large wavy irregularities in the steel plate will not be removed so it won’t be a perfect mirror flat surface but that isn’t reasonable or even possible with steel or most other hulls. Going with dark blue does mean that any irregularities will be more easily seen, just as you’d be familiar with on car body panels and other dark glossy surfaces, but I think it will still look very distinctive and will truly be a whole new boat by the time we are done.
Once we have the topsides all painted our attention will move to the biggest job of all, the decks. Unlike the nice large flat surfaces of the topsides, the deck is nothing but nooks and crannies that all have to be filled, fileted, sanded and primed so it takes much longer. Then when we have this all done and sprayed with the topcoat of gloss white, I need to reinstall all the hardware, fittings, hatches, windows and rigging, as everything that wasn’t welded on was removed and now has to be replaced. This includes chasing all threads for the new fasteners, cleaning and rebuilding all the parts and equipment before it is replaced and re-bedding and sealing it all so nothing leaks. Then we will mask off the area around all these and apply the non skid surfaces. All well worth it but all very time consuming and laborious
If you look closely at some of the photos here you can see that I got them to put me in a very nice spot and position such that the stern nestled right up into the tree branches. Look a bit more closely in the photo top left with Ruby in it and you’ll see that the trees border a large grassy field and behind that is all verdant wild growth. Birds fill the trees with song and I can still have my morning routine of breakfast out on the back deck looking out over this scene as I enjoy another sunrise and quiet start to a new day. About as good as it can get for being “up on the hard” as we call it. Best of all, this kind of experience will lead to an even deeper appreciation of all those times I am up on that nice new white non skid deck enjoying yet another great sundown and put a smile on my face every time I row up to Learnativity that can only be earned through this kind of effort and experience.
Not too much else to report as this work takes up all daylight hours along with many small jobs, researching and ordering new parts as well as time helping and talking with other cruisers here, trips to town for groceries and supplies and lots of writing and reading. I’d prefer to be back in the water and anchored peacefully of some remote island, but it is still a very rich and full life that I’m blessed to lead.
Stay tuned, with any luck I’ll have a nice shiny dark blue hull to show you next week.
The weather cooperated much better this week with only a few days with rain so we made lots of good progress with the sanding, filling and painting this past week. We finished all the first stage of sanding and filling and sprayed the first coat of sandable primer on Friday so Learnativity is now all white again! Not that this will last for long as tomorrow we’ll start sanding and filling again to get it all flat and smooth in preparation for the final colour coats. I’ll let the before and after pictures show you the difference and the progress. These two above are of the cockpit area and it has been a particularly big job to get into all those storage areas inside those holes as there was lots of rust in there and as you can see they are difficult to get at. You’ll also notice that Commodore Ruby is on the job at all times and keeping a very close eye on all the work being done to make sure it is up to her standards.
Not sure how many times we will need to respray all the surfaces to get them right but probably about 2-3 more coats. The deck will also take quite a bit longer as we will spray it all with the final gloss white coats and then I’ll need to spend several weeks putting back all the fittings, tracks, pulleys and fixtures and then I’ll mask around all of these and we’ll spray on the non skid coating. To create the non skid surfaces we’ll put down a heavy coat of white paint, immediately sprinkle it with a sand like grit and then spray more white on top of that to lock it all in. This non skid paint will cover all areas you walk on so pretty much all the horizontal deck surfaces other than those right around fixtures, tracks, etc. I need to have a VERY sure footing on the deck when I’m at sea and they are all wet and even when on anchor when you are coming in and out of the water and usually have wet bare feet. That will be at least a month away I’d guess and I’ll update you as it happens.
These two shots above are taken from the bow (front) looking back towards the salon and pilot house and the ones below are taken from the Starboard side of the pilot house looking forward.
I’m getting lots of other “little” jobs done as I make my way through the seemingly endless “To Do” list I make as I find things needing attention over the past year as well as cleaning and rebuilding all the parts I’ve taken off for the paint job so they are all clean and ready to reinstall. Contrary to popular opinion it isn’t all sitting back watching sunrises and sunsets but it is a very small price to pay for this incredible life of total freedom and awemazing experiences.
Weather wise things continue to look good with no TD’s (Tropical Depressions) or cyclones in the forecast but we’ve got several months more of cyclone season which usually lasts till May or so and March is historically the month with the most rainfall in this rainy season so we’ll just have to wait and see what Mother Nature has in store and work around it as best we can.
Ruby is aging a bit faster than usual as she too has a good coat of the white primer all over her making her gray much before her time, but I’ll look after that with a good clipping once we finish spraying. Otherwise she Is enjoying our daily walks and being the talk of the marina where everyone is on a first name basis with her.
Thanks to all of you who asked about my knee injury from stepping into the empty hatch hole a few weeks ago and happy to report that it is much better. Walking is pretty much pain free and I only feel it when I twist it a certain way so all seems to be healing fine and will be good as new soon.
So that’s the update from here on the good ship Learnativity. Hope all is well on your end and that you are making great progress with all your projects too.
Greetings or as we say here in Fiji “Bula bula” and Happy New Year to one and all!
2011 was another awemazing year for me being one filled to overflowing with life, love and learning and I don’t think anyone could want for more. I know I’ve not been posting or writing as much publically the past few months and so I thought I’d start up again with this overview to bring you up to date and then some weekly updates going forward and add more as seems fit and my experiences warrant. With thanks to all of you who write and call to inquire and encourage me to post more updates, let’s get started!
As most of you know I am seriously “brevity challenged” but I’ll do my best to give you a brief update on 2011 to bring you up to speed to the present and as a lead in to my weekly updates. This will probably end up being a bit like one of those annual “holiday letters” you get from friends and family so if you don’t like those you can just skip this post and maybe the weekend updates will be more you style and length. For those interested there are blog postings you can read here on this Learnativity blog that will give you all the details of my sailing adventures first half of the year from the Marshall Islands to Fiji (and all the way back to my start in 2008) if you missed them or want to review.
I started 2010 still in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands where I had sailed to from Fiji back in October 2010 to get out of the cyclone belt by being north of the equator. (Majuro is about 7 degrees N) While there is no mistaking Majuro for a “tropical paradise” it does have many redeeming qualities such as a US Post Office which is a huge advantage for shipping boat parts and equipment in and out, a good supply of hardware, groceries and other store bought items and a close community of cruisers, many of whom have been there for many years. Majuro is also one of the largest centers for tuna boats and there was always an entertaining steam of both the large tuna fishing boats and the even larger freighters which took on all their catch. One of the local cruisers organized a tour of a tuna boat and one of the carriers and we spent hours going through both these ships with the captains and crew answering all our incessant questions.
Both out of necessity and to take advantage of the supply of parts I did a lot of boat projects, mostly engine related and got Learnativity all ready for another busy sailing season down south of the equator and by mid May I was more than ready to go. I had decided to go back to Fiji as I had truly fallen in love with this country during my extended 5 months stay there the year before and so when the weather window opened up on May 23, 2010 and I bid Majuro a fond farewell, headed out the pass through the coral of the atoll and turned south. Having enjoyed them so much on my way north the previous year I once again made stops in Mili, Funafuti, Tuvalu and Rotuma rather than do it all in one go and arrived back in Savusavu Fiji on June 18th and have been here in Fiji ever since.
I wondered if I my love for Fiji had been a first time infatuation but having now spent the past 8 months here it is clear that for me at least this is the best overall location I’ve ever been to. It isn’t any one thing so much as it is almost everything about this country that I love; the people, the food, the climate, the scenery, the snorkelling, the sailing, the affordability, the cultures…….. well you get the idea. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m such a journey person I would seriously consider buying property and living here. Many do as this is almost the only country in the South Pacific with “freehold” land, that is where you can buy and own property outright. I’m now feeling that urge to head out again and several countries west and north of here are calling my name more and more loudly and so I’m currently VERY hard at work and taking advantage of an excellent marine yard and workforce to do a 20 year refit of Learnativity and be ready when the cyclone season ends which is typically about April/May.
2011 also brought me several great gifts of sharing “my” fabulous Fiji and this great life of sailing, snorkelling and sunsets with friends and family. My brother had just moved to Melbourne Australia with his wife and youngest son where he is establishing a new office and presence for his company and they all came for a holiday in Fiji in July and so I sailed down to the south side of the big island of Viti Levu and anchored in front of their resort at Pacific Harbour. We spent a week together, partly ashore enjoying all the amenities of the Pacific Harbour resort and partly out for some short sails on Learnativity over to the island of Beqa for some amazing snorkelling there.
For the month of August I was delighted to be able to share Fiji and this life afloat with two good friends from Vancouver, Steve and Joy and we had a phenomenal time sailing all over the many islands on the far west side of Fiji to experience everything from postcard perfect little islands where we were the only boat and people there to ones with small villages where we went ashore and had “sevusevu” with the Chief where we presented him with some kava and he performed a brief ceremony to bless us and welcome us to his island. We also went to a few of the popular cruiser spots such as Musket Cove and Port Denarau for supplies and a few dinners out. Once again this sailing season, my dear friend Philip, a single handed sailor from Switzerland, met up. Philip and I initially met when we were checking into Ecuador at the same time and port, were able to meet up in Fiji and although we only had a few days together before I flew out to Florida and he sailed to New Zealand, they were extremely special. I also met Philip’s Dad when he came to Fiji for his annual sail and then later in December I was able to take him up on his offer to come visit him in Switzerland.
On September 5th, Learnativity was hauled out and put up on stands or what we call being “on the hard” at Vuda Point marina which is about mid way up the far west coast of the biggest island in Fiji, Viti Levu. She had been long in need of some serious TLC to look after lots of little things and especially the growing amount of rust spots sprouting up on her steel decks and after serendipitously discovering that there was a very good marine repair company who worked out of this little marina I decided to bit the bullet and have them help me repaint the entire exterior of Learnativity. This is no small task I can assure you as to do it properly, I had to remove EVERY single bolt, fitting, window, hatch, lines and anything that wasn’t welded on, in order to get at all the spots, remove all the rust and cover them with top quality epoxy primer, filler and colour paint. I’ll fill you in on more details in the weekly updates to follow, but suffice it to say that I am still “on the hard” and have a few more months of long hot hard days of work to get her all shiny and new again.
And while this is taking a VERY BIG bite out of my VERY fixed budget I’m quite happy with myself that I’ve been able to pay others to help me as it is something I find very difficult to do. Being fortunate enough to have most of the skills to do all the work on Learnativity and of course feeling that no one can do it better than I can, (and the fact that my life literally depends on the sea worthiness of my boat!) I tend to do all the work myself. But there is only one of me and only 24 hours a day so there is a very finite limit to what I can get done by myself and I’ve exceeded that limit for a while now. So I checked out the work this company, Baobab Marine had done on other boats over the past few years and was very impressed and so they have been working with me almost every day since September to sandblast, grind, weld, prime, sand, fill and paint Learnativity inside and out. We’ve still got a LONG ways to go but huge progress has been made and when I “splash” her back into the water, hopefully by April, she will look like a brand new boat.
2011 was also quite a year for me personally as I managed to fall in, and alas out, of love with two amazing ladies. Thanks Linda and Heidi for making my life in 2011 SO memorable and full of life, love and learning. For now though, it is back to sailing through life’s experiences single handed. While it remains my hope, though not my expectation (more on that theory some other posting) that I will some day find my “soul mate”, I leave that all up to serendipity and synchronicity as to if, when, where, who and how that will happen and by simply continuing to truly live in life’s moments, be present in the present and experience my experiences fully. It’s been working incredibly well all my life, why would I change now?!
Of course I’m never alone as I’ve got so many friends, family and new local people I meet and interact with as I sail, and I have my ever faithful and amazing Ruby the Wonderdog at my side at all times. She is not only a great companion but also a great teacher and I do my best to learn all that she has to offer such as how to adapt to whatever life offers up moment to moment.
I spent the month of November back in New Smyrna Beach Florida with my beloved “second family” where I’m blessed to have four “God children” and two extraordinary friends. This is also one of Ruby’s special spots and she had an extended vacation here with her buddy “Coco” a chocolate Cocker Spaniel when she stayed there while I flew over to Europe. I was also delighted to have my colleague and friend Elliott provide me the opportunity to make several presentations at his large learning conference in Orlando the first week of November and it also provided lots of gifts of time with many other colleagues and friends who come to this annual professional gathering.
At the beginning of December it was off to Europe for a few weeks where I was able to visit with several friends and some family. I spent two day’s with Philip’s parents in their small town near St. Gallen in Switzerland and then continued by train to the lake of Biel to spend a week with my cousin and her family who I had spent lots of time with when Diana and I lived in Germany from 1980-84. Although I had to cut my trip to Europe short to return to Fiji and look after some new boat problems that came up, I was still able to get in some time with my dear friend Erik who flew into Heathrow just to spend a day and evening with me and then I spent one more night at the home of friends Robin and Jayne who live outside of London, before I had to fly back to the USA.
A brief stop in Florida to pick up Ruby and say goodbye to my family of friends there, and then it was off to LA to spend a few days with my daughter Lia, husband Brian and their two dogs Piglet and Ponzu. It is such a treat to be the parent of two such incredible “kids” as Skyler and Lia and watch and learn as they become such amazing adults. Lia and Brian let me just “hang out” with them and catch up on their busy lives. The timing worked out very well as Brian is a high school math teacher and had his last day of classes just before I arrived and Lia had just finished her stint as a lecturer at Cal Poly Pomona before going back to her job with a fascinating nuclear medicine and unique chemical compound making company who made her “an offer she couldn’t refuse” to get her to come back and work for them again.
On December 20th Ruby and I headed off for LAX and caught our flight back to Nadi in Fiji and though we missed December 21st completely due to crossing the date line, we were back onboard Learnativity on Dec. 22nd and back to the hot humid weather we both much prefer. As you may recall, Learnativity is “on the hard” and so we have to climb up a ladder to get onboard as she sits here on her stands so it isn’t ideal but Ruby goes up and down the ladder like a pro and never misses a step. I’ve set up all the systems so we can continue to live aboard with water, stove, electricity, etc. and there is a nice clean show and bathroom facility about 100m away so it all works out well.
So Ruby and I celebrated Christmas and New Years quite literally “up in the air” on Learnativity as we adjusted quickly to the heat and humidity. It is the wet season here in Fiji so most days are around +35C/100F and we have a good tropical thunder and lighting storm with rain most afternoons and evenings. It makes working on the boat trying to do welding, sanding and painting a bit challenging but so far the rain usually holds off until late afternoon and usually after 4:30pm when they work crews like to finish, so it is all working out quite well. If there is such a thing as “sweat equity” I’m building up a fortune!!
Whew! As I warned you at the beginning it takes me a while and way too many words, but that will at least bring you up to speed on where I’m at as this new year gets underway and some background for the weekly updates I’ll start posting now. I continue to be awemazed at the charmed serendipitous life I lead and while much of that is in reference to this life I now live of being on the water, so directly connected to nature and the world around me and truly living IN life’s moments as they happen, I am blessed mostly to be able to love and be loved in return by so many special friends and family. Words alone will never adequately express my love, appreciation and gratitude for all that you do and all you enable me to do, so the best I can do is continue to live, love and learn from you and with you and share it all as it happens. Thanks to ALL of you for making all my past years SO rich and SO full and here’s to continuing that trend for as many more moments we are gifted with.
While I have no desire to live forever from an immortal standpoint (thank goodness!)I do have a deep desire to learn forever so I could read every book I would want to and feed my insatiable curiosity forever. However, I live very much in the present and this picture if of the recent presents (pun intended) I received in the boxes which arrived the other day from my trip to the USA and Canada last month which you may have seen in the previous blog entry here.
Many of you know that I have become a complete convert to eBooks and prefer to do pretty much all my reading on my eReader (Kindle) tablet (iPhone), smart phone or laptop. I’ve talked about that at length over on my Off Course – On Target blog if you are interested in more details but the reasons are essentially that my eBooks are now as good or better than paper from a pure readability standpoint, they have reached the level of transparency so I can forget I’m reading on a digital device and get lost in the story, and then they give me a built in OED dictionary I use so often as I read plus a organized collection of all my highlights and notes taken while I read so that I have this to refer to and use after I’ve finished each book or even as I’m in the process of reading it.
However as you can see in the picture these ones I’m highlighting today are all paper books because they are not yet available in Kindle or eBook format and I’m not going to let that stand in the way of me reading them especially when I get the opportunity such as here in Majuro to have them shipped to me. Here is some of what am I reading that you can see in the picture:
DRAWING on the RIGHT SIDE of the BRAIN:
Yes, that’s right Wayne is going to try to learn how to draw, go after his more creative side and learn to see the world more fully through the eyes of an artist. Well, that’s my intent and motivation anyways. As you may be able to see I have both the book and the workbook for Betty Edward’s acclaimed “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” and these are maybe the ones I’m most excited about as they represent an another journey I’ve long wanted to take, that of learning how to draw better and more so learning how to see the world better. I’ve only read the first chapter so far and I don’t know if I’m more excited about learning how to draw or all the ways in which drawing and Betty’s experiences for the past 20+ years inspire and ignite my passionate pursuit of topics such as how to become a more “whole brained” person and how this all relates to learning in general. Both are all part of this grand voyage I’m on for my own self improvement on a more quantum and spiritual level and I couldn’t be more excited about all of it.
Knowing how I like to use myself and my life as a grand experiment and my recent penchant for uncharacteristically putting myself “out there” and sharing everything, I will undoubtedly share with you some of my drawings along the way so you can see first hand how I’m doing and hopefully the great progress along the way. I
TOUCH!
I will also be using this as an opportunity to test the use of the touch screen on my iPad and my stylus to do some of the drawings. Some of you will know that I’ve long been fascinated by and talked much about how we can discern and extract the essence out of our historical and well proven practices and human elements and carry them forward into the future as we combine them with the most modern of technologies and innovations. The combination of drawing and touch screens is one of my most cited examples. We have been drawing since we lived in caves and I see no likelihood or desire to stop doing so as far into the future as I can see. However the transmogrification into the digital world and the apparent readiness of touch to be added to our human computer interactions and interfaces is extremely exciting and already upon us. I want to have the experiential learning of doing so and be able to share this all with you more knowledgeably and hence the new books and the new voyage. Wish me luck!
This is another long time coming read for me and will likely need to wait till I’m back into full time sailing mode rather than my current boat work mode, but I finally have it onboard with me now and can’t wait to dive into each of these four books; Software, Wetware, Freeware and Realware. If you aren’t familiar with these a quick search on any of these titles will give you a good overviews and you’ll quickly see why I’ve been wanting to read these for so long. I had the distinct pleasure to be at Autodesk in the early years when we were working with Rudy and James Gleick on things like Chaos Theory so my interest goes a long ways back.
I took advantage of being back in the USA and in Florida to be able to raid my carefully stowed few boxes of books which I keep ashore as they are too bulky and valuable to have on the boat all the time. I was looking for and found three that I’ve been wanting to read or reread which were:
David is one of my mentors and a great inspiration to me for over twenty years since Jimm Meloy, one of my many great “bosses” at Autodesk, first put me on to him. You can read a brief tribute I did about David and his work several years ago over on the Off Course – On Target blog. Again, I’ll let you read up on these books if you’re intrigued which I can’t imagine anyone not being but that’s just me. David is one of the great minds of the past century in my humble opinion and he has helped me understand so much about how things work, not just from the theoretical physics side of which Bohm is one of the most highly regarded scientists ever to be in that field, but also his more spiritual and holistic views on life, learning and how we think.
Inspired by my recent reading of Martin Gardner’s great collection of essays in “The Night is Large” (thank you, thank you, thank you Erik for that great gift!) I’ve become ever more fascinated by what would seem to be the one single constant in the universe: time. And I’ve also been learning about celestial navigation with the purpose less so for the actual navigation abilities it gives me in a catastrophic failure of all my digital navigation on board and the use of my sextant, but more so for the development of a true working understanding of how the whole universe works in a full three dimensional way or perhaps more. I’ve had Hawking’s books for a long time but as usual I let serendipity and synchronicity determine when the call to read them will come. It came, I’m reading!
Finally on the sailing front, I was able to pick up two books which will be extremely valuable to my ongoing education about all things sailing to which I am such a complete novice.
Tropical Cruising Handbook by Mark Smaalders and Kim de Rochers
You can maybe just make this one out over in the distance on the on the far side of my cockpit table where I took the picture above. A friend had this when I was in my beloved Fiji last year and rather than be a cruising guide which I depend upon for all the local knowledge about islands, bays, inlets and the like, this one was a fabulous collection of detailed and well illustrated explanations of things like weather systems, anchoring , navigation and health and wellness in the tropics. I couldn’t put it down nor remember enough of it so I ordered a copy for myself last year and finally have it in my eager hands now.
Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia by Linda and Steve Dashew
This is one of the “bibles” of we blue water or off shore cruisers and I finally have my own copy now. I’ve become a huge fan and student of Steve and Linda and have learned so much from being a regular visitor to their setsail.com web site where their prolific writing and photography is freely available and constantly being added to as they sail the world and more recently have moved over to power boating. In all cases they have designed and built their own boats and what is so great about them is they explain every detail about each and ever decision they make in the process. Plus they are the “real deal” living aboard and sailing or powering their way around and all over the world many times over and for many many years. Now into their seventies they are still going as strong as ever, still pushing the envelop more than ever and I’m looking forward to learning even more from them within the pages of this old classic of theirs.
I will leave for another posting the MUCH longer list of books that are patiently awaiting my attention on my Kindle and end with this additional photo of my paper books. I thought I was just taking a second photo in case the first one didn’t turn out so well and zoomed out a bit as Ruby the Wonderdog decided she needed to be in the picture. But I’m putting it in here as it will give you a microcosm view of my life right now as there is so much of it in this one photo. For example if you look just behind Ruby you will see the recalcitrant oil pan you may recall from the previous posting now awaiting an adapter I need for my oxy-acetylene welder to weld in a new section of the bottom. There is my dear Ruby of course, and all of this is taken the cockpit where I am typing this up and where I spend the vast majority of my time when I’m aboard and not down in the engine room or otherwise busy with boat jobs.
So there you have it folks, the update for today from the good ship Learnativity here in the tropical NE Trades and crystal clear waters of Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Wish you were here and you do too!!
Big day yesterday when the big cargo ship from Guam arrived and filled the US Post Office here to overflowing and then some. As you may recall when I was back in the USA and Canada for November and part of December I took advantage of being there to go through the long list of items I’d built up over the past year of things I needed and can’t get over here. This list was one that I had been building up since my last time back in the US almost a year ago so it had grown rather long. Most of the items are boat parts like motor mounts, special engine gaskets, parts for my bow thruster, and then some hard to find favorites like dried cranberries and good coffee. Some of the boat parts I just had sent to friends addresses and they were awaiting me when I arrived at their places to visit for a few days and others were trips to the likes of Costco, Wal-Mart, West Marine and some specialty marine suppliers. So I would build up quite a collection of all these bits and pieces and then carefully pack and box them all up and ship them to myself here in Majuro.
Most of the time you just do without and there is very little that I miss or truly do without as a great deal of the fun and adventure of being in all these new and different places is the all new local food and materials you get to try out. And it is also good for ones problem solving skills to turn parts and tool hunting into an adventure game as you roam some new city or country in search for some materials, parts or tools you need to look after a repair job. But there are still some things such as special boat parts and tools which you simply can’t find or are prohibitively expensive, at least on my budget. And so a list slowly builds up with all the things that I haven’t been able to find and still need and each year. As you might imagine, over the course of a year the list gets rather long and so when I get back to the US or some other developed country, out comes the list and a shopping we will go!
One of the reasons I chose Majuro as the place to go when I had to leave Fiji before the cyclone season started, was because it is a former US protectorate, now independent, but still has a US Post Office and a US Zip code. (96960) This means you can mail things in and out of here with amazing ease and low cost as it is treated no different than mailing to any other state. And so there is a US Post Office just a few hundred meters from the dinghy dock when I row ashore. The other reasons for choosing Majuro by the way are that it is in a good location weather wise, cyclone season up here doesn’t set in till around June, there was a mooring available to secure Learnativity to for the two months I would be away and there is a big air strip on the SW end of the atoll that is still serviced by Continental Micronesia airlines which makes it only one flight from here to Honolulu.
Most of the time when shipping things via USPS you send them via Express or Priority mail and they have some very good rates and it only takes about a week or less from them to be flown in here. But as you can see from the photo of the dinghy with some of the boxes in it, I had a lot large heavy items which would be prohibitively expensive. So I used Parcel Post to ship all my stuff back and this is the marine version of the Pony Express and takes two months for things to arrive as they come by ship and have to be loaded and unloaded several times onto different ships along the way with stops in Honolulu and then Guam before arriving here.
No big deal, all part of living by the different rhythms and beats of life aboard but it made for quite a celebratory day yesterday as the big boat from Guam came in and all the packages started to fill up the US Post Office. People from all over the island are there along with all the yachties from around the world of course who also take advantage of having this convenient and affordable way to have things sent in from abroad. As you might guess there was quite a large pile of boxes from the likes of Amazon here yesterday as well. Once Customs has cleared everything, which is also very quick and easy here with the close ties that remain with the USA, I could start loading up the five boxes (still three more to come next month hopefully) onto my trusty 2 wheeled luggage cart and push, pull and drag them back over to the dinghy dock and manhandle them into the dinghy, hopefully without any going over the side into the crystal blue waters here! Worked well and I soon had the dinghy docked alongside the mother ship of Learnativity for the even trickier transfer from the dingy to the deck as most of these boxes weigh in at 70-85 pounds.
Fortunately Neptune went without any rewards and soon enough I had all the boxes up on deck and could open up these boxes of joy and have yet another form of Christmas as I carefully unwrapped each item inside and stored them in their appropriate spots down below.
In addition to the necessary boat parts and tools I also took advantage of the opportunity to pick up things like wine glasses, hard to find books and some treats like my favorite dried cherries and coffee from good old Costco!
I don’t think I will ever know what I did to deserve this rich and charmed life I lead as I already had two months worth of gifts back in Nov/Dec in the form of all my visits with special friends and family and now here I was getting yet another one over here in Majuro in January!!
As you can see, throughout the process, I was ably assisted and very closely monitored and managed by the Admiral, Ruby the Wonderdog. Unfortunately for her, the boxes with her special treats and supplies in them (don’t tell her) are in the other boxes which I shipped just before leaving the US and so they won’t arrive for another month or more, but then I guess that just means we’ll have yet another day of surprises and unpacking when they arrive!
Otherwise all is well here on the Good Ship Learnativity in Majuro. As most of you know I don’t have “plans” I just have “intentions” when it comes to when I’ll leave my current great destination and where I’ll go for the next so right now I have two sets of intentions; West or South. Going west from here would likely mean spending several months or more to wind my way through the various islands of Micronesia between here and the Philippines which would include islands such as Kosrae, Pohnpei, Yap, Palau and possibly Guam. That would put me hear the east side of the Philippines and I’d need to decide if I was going to go north or the south, though knowing me I’d probably follow Yogi Berra’s advise on what to do when you hit a fork in the road of life: Take it! So I might do a very big loop down south essentially down through Indonesia around Papua New Guinea and back to where I started in Palau or so and then head north up through the Philippines to China. The other “intention” would be to go south from here and possibly head back to get another Fiji fix as I SO fell in love with that whole country last year, and then continue approximately NW through Vanuatu, Solomon’s, PNG and end up back here in the Marshalls or Micronesia and head go with my westward “intention” as outlined above.
Whether West or South I’m not likely to head out on either of these till at least March or so given boat jobs and weather but I may take a month or so before then to sail around some of the gorgeous atolls surrounding Majuro that are part of the Marshall Islands chain. As you can see I’m one of those poor unfortunate souls who is faced with the vexing problem of choosing between nothing but great choices! <g> But then, when you think of it, aren’t we all? At least that is the way I hope you are able to view your life.
Thanks to all the many Emails, Skype calls, Facebook updates, chats and other ways you reach out to connect with me. These are easily the greatest gifts of all for me and please do keep them coming. I’ll putt the full list of all the various ways you can track and connect with me below to aid an encourage you to do so!
