08/15/2007

I found this poem on the 1000 days website, and it gives the best explanation of the why and what of leaving on a long journey.

Ithaca by Cavafi

When you start on the road to Ithaca
wish that the way be long
full of adventures, full of experience.
Fear not the Laestrygones and the Cyclops
the angry Poseidon
you will never find such as these in your way
if your thoughts stay clear, if a choice
emotion affects your body and spirit.
The Laestrygones and the Cyclops,
the wild Poseidon you will never meet,
if you do not carry them in your soul,
if your soul does not set them up in front of you.

Wish that the way be long.
Let there be many summer mornings
when with such a pleasure, such a joy
you will enter harbors never before seen;
you will stop at Phoenician stalls
and will acquire lovely goods,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony
and hedonic perfumes of every kind,
hedonic perfumes as plenty as you can;
go to many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from the studious.

Always keep in mind Ithaca.
Arriving there is your goal.
But do not hurry the trip at all.
It is better that it lasts many years;
and when finally an old man, you berth on the island,

rich with what you have gained on the road,
do not expect that Ithaca will give you riches.

Ithaca gave you this lovely voyage.
Without her you would not have started on the road.
She has nothing else to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not fooled you.
Wise that you have become, with such experience,
you must by now know what Ithacas mean.

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08/10/2007

GULF ISLANDS PART 2

Here is the really crazy, kooky (why did people ever stop using that word), and maybe unbelievable part of our Gulf Islands Shake and Break Cruise: it was the sheer anthology of broken bits and mistimed events that made me so happy and filled with relief that I found myself nearly in tears one evening. I know what you're thinking, 'Maybe you're right honey, and he is just making this stuff up'. Au contraire. Sure I'd been drinking, but if you read Part One, you've probably had some sort of sympathy drink yourself by now. The events of life come pretty much in two forms, 1) the stuff we choose to do, and 2) the stuff that happens to us. Choice and Luck (though the Gypsies also include Fate, and I'm not sure how you bench test luck vs. fate) are both sides of the menu, and the only sides. Life is what you make it, sure, up to a point, but it's hard to make lemonade out of being zapped by an asteroid or a drunk driver. The more you do, the more you expose yourself to life, the more bad things are going to happen to you. Just the sheer number of interfaces with the world goes way way up when you lead an active life, especially if you throw travel into the mix. It is a given in the sailing community that cruising consists mostly of working on your boat in foreign countries. Or as Tom Waits put it, 'No one speaks English and everything's broken.' Now I'm a really big fan of being alive, so I contend that more good things happen than bad, and that the ratio expands positively and exponentially with, dare I use the word (?), adventure. I know what you're thinking, 'A week and a half in the Gulf Islands' (some of which we can see from our dock on a clear day), 'this now constitutes an Adventure?' Not hardly, as my mom used to say. The thing of it is, in my head (that masterpiece of rational organization), everything to do with our boat is in preparation to one day take off again to go skid the oceans. I know how great that kind of life is, and I know the downside too, the only concern that has buzzed away in the periphery of my day dreaming is 'What will it be like when things go wrong, and the kids are aboard?' In the old days when things went bad, I could just send Carla off on an errand and go back to frantically bailing with a bucket. But children, how will they react to all the stuff that continually goes gunny bag? If you have a new boat, things work well early, but you're poor because they are gawd-awful expensive, and the longer you sail the more things start to break. When you have an old boat, everything breaks right off the bat, and then reliability gets progressively better. Two years down the river, the guy with the old boat knows how to fix pretty much everything, and the guy with the new boat figures it must be time to sell and get an RV. I'm being hit with the stick now, but I know the beach chair is coming. So, as I sat there in the evening on the first night after being towed into Ganges Marina (if you look up ignominious in the dictionary, that's the illustration), I had my epiphany, the answer to my nagging question. Drum roll please: 'When the going gets tough, the kids don't care'. They just don't. They will get their little keesters frosted over all sorts of stuff, sailing or not sailing, sure, but it isn't going to have anything to with your problems, unless the boat sinks or the house catches on fire. Realizing that filled me with eye glistening joy. Just as I can't grasp why anyone of any age would cry because they lost the race to be the first one to the bathroom to brush their teeth, or to get the blue cereal bowl, they could care less about the windlass, or the transmission, or the any other gizmo not directly related to their playing field. This does not seem all that obvious even in hindsight, but gives me so much more peace of mind going forward than a week and a half jaunt with no problems could ever have done. 'So the replacement part that you were waiting for in Vanuatu got sent to Venezuela instead?' The kids won't have anymore interest in that than they currently do with the raising of my property taxes. Their joy, and agony, will be about who gets to get in the dinghy first, not how many times the outboard crapped out leaving mom to row to the store. This peace of mind makes a new transmission plate, the best investment I could have made.
Anyway, the boat is back in her slip. And we'll head out in a couple of weeks to go searching for more of the ever elusive peace of mind, and some wind.

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Casey
08/02/2007

After having had our quite old, but new to us, 1973 Islander Mayflower ketch, Dawn Treader, for a year, we were finally ready for a week and a half sail with the children from our home port of Semiahmoo to the Canadian Gulf Islands. Even after a year, and according to strict nautical tradition, everything seemed to need doing, right up to the very last minute There I was sweating away until all hours Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, installing 2 new battery banks (2 12 volt starter batteries and 4 ungodly heavy 6 volt house bank batteries, and of course hauling out the 4 old 12 volt batteries) and installing a new alternator, 3 new belts, a new regulator, a new 2 bank shore power charger, and changing the oil. I did not change the transmission fluid, I will mention, just to set the right note of foreboding.
Come Saturday morning I'm ready for a rest and we're ready to go; after the boys and I fill the water tanks, and just after Carla asks, 'Why is it wet down in the hold?' If you choose to read on you will become familiar with our kind of ready versus say, other people's notion of preparation, which the Lyons family refers to skeptically as 'Ready ready'. So I can't figure out exactly where in the tangle of stupid, inherited patched together ad hoc and inaccessible fresh water pipe connections it is coming from; and it is just a little drip, so I figure it will be a nice project for a quiet little anchorage somewhere. We make a quick stop at the fuel dock to unload the last of our disposable income, and then we're out of the marina and heading for the Island of Sucia ('Dad, why do we always go to Sucia?' Because it's as far as we can go before you start complaining, boy!). There isn't any wind of course, so we are motoring away, and I suggest, 'Let's try that autopilot that Ed and I installed.' We set the course and flip control over to the pilot. Now this autopilot, like much of the equipment on Dawn Treader, was beta tested by Vasco Da Gama. It immediately swings us hard to port. 'Might need to recalibrate or adjust the gain a bit,' I mutter, and switch off the autopilot control. Sad thing is, it won't give up the helm, and we can't turn the wheel. 'What the hell did Ed do?' crosses my mind as I dive for the engine room.* I have to ultimately pop the chain off the sprocket with a screw driver to end the autopilot mutiny. As I pop out of the engine compartment covered in sweat, my son Tommy asks, 'Dad, do dogs like fish?' That question still sits unanswered today. We have an uneventful, seals and porpoises, kind of motor the rest of the way to Sucia.
Once into Echo Bay, Carla grabs a mooring buoy close to the beach, and it is all peace and quiet, except for the engine won't shut off. It just runs and runs. That's a new one. It shut off fine at the fuel dock this morning, and, of course, every other time in the last year, but not now. A lot of sailors have trouble starting their engines, but we tend to do things differently on Dawn Treader. I search around in the hot engine room without really knowing what I'm looking for, and finally resort to shutting off all the fuel lines. The motor eventually dies (not nearly as fast as you might think), a slow choking death. Another sailboat, Advantage with Tim, Ann, and their 8 year old son Brain, pulls up just as we are taking the chops off the BBQ. Someone suggests they side tie to us, and we are all soon eating and having a glass of vino or two. As soon as it gets good and dark (and I mean not more than 10 minutes after it is too late to move their boat) a front comes in with rain, strong gusts and waves coming straight into Echo bay.
We pretty much bounce around in the rain together until Monday morning. I perhaps fixed the autopilot on Sunday. The kids get soaking wet on shore, which can happen even on a dry day. Now here's a fun tip and note of warning for all cruisers with children. Our boys were invited over to the neighbor boat for something called, I think, Dinosaur Eggs. The eggs are a sort of a hard dirt ball that the children scrape proto-paleantolgically away at, until they get to the middle which contains a little plastic triceratops. The boys are enthralled with this process and even become rather attached to the one dino that didn't eventually somehow, well, drown (details were sketchy, but the other two evidently went overboard and it was no ones fault at all). On the other hand, Advantage, an immaculate Pearson 32, now has a foredeck that looks very much like a previous boat I owned, had, after a three day dust storm in the Red Sea. There is a tense exchange between their Captain and Admiral, which sends Carla and I in search of rainy day projects.
Monday the rains are gone, along with the wind, and we all decide to leave the anchorage and head for Canada. Advantage is off, out and gone in ten minutes. We are more or less finally moving in an hour and a half. Due to the large size of our motor, we actually catch them before the next country. This is a matter of extreme delight to the boys, who look upon each and every boat on the water as being involved in a race with us. This includes boats going in the opposite direction. I repeatedly caution them against jeering as we pull alongside, but the meaning of Tommy's little victory dance, would have been hard for another kid to misinterpret. We take photos of each other's boats motoring, which is pretty much what you do in the islands here in the summer.
We all check into Canada, by phone, but it's an official phone (not complaining, as in the USofA it is a pay phone), at Bedwell Harbor. It was known to have a pool, something that I might have promised the kids at some moment of weakness, as a bribe to get them to stop doing something or other. It was a funky old place a dozen years ago, but it had recently been renovated into jarringly upscale marina/condo/resort and went by the smirk inducing moniker of Poet's Cove. The poet had better have inherited money if he wanted to live there now. In any event, there is no room for a boat our size, and so with three stone faced children, we head further into the long harbor, away from any pool, and grab a mooring ball. Advantage takes one as well. I, again feeling like some sort of aquatic serial killer, have to starve the engine into stopping.
Tim heroically takes all three boys in his dinghy to a distant float to fish for shrimp, or shrimp for shrimp, whatever. Carla, Sophia and I take our dinghy ashore for a nice beach walk. Ann stays alone on Advantage without any children, and makes no effort to hide her euphoria. We are later invited over to Advantage for a BBQ, and oddly, are invited to bring the actual BBQ. The officers of the good ship Advantage exchange looks on the subject similar to those flying around during the now almost humorous Dinosaur Egg incident, so I don't ask any details.
Next morning we decide to head out for a little more remote anchorage up north, Wallace Island. The Advantage gang is gone in 10 minutes or less, and our take off time is cut to a mean and lean 30 minutes. As Advantage disappears over the horizon, I start the motor, and Cavan is given the responsibility of watching the dinghy line, as we are going to tow the boat, which goes against my general principles. Carla unties the mooring ball, gives me the all clear dance (another unique Dawn Treader custom), and I put the boat in reverse. The transmission makes a small squeal, and refuses to have anything more to do with acting as a go-between for the engine and the propeller. It all has that surreal slow motion car wreck kind of a feel as the realization strikes me: WE CAN MOTOR IN NEITHER DIRECTION AND ARE DRIFTING BACK WITH THE WIND AND CURRENT TOWARD A REALLY NASTY COLLECTION OF ROCKS. ** That boat we were traveling with, does not respond to our radio call (I may not have stopped the jeering soon enough). I drop the anchor. I row a long line back out to the mooring ball. Now, the anchor windless chooses not to work, though it had when I dutifully checked it before we left (kind of like the kill switch). Carla and I pull the anchor up by hand, which is curiously therapeutic.
I check: 1) that nothing is wrapped around the prop (the water is magically clear and the angle of the sun perfect to take away my hope of the easiest fix), 2) that there is transmission fluid, and, 3) that the control cable is connected and functioning properly. So, I take a deep breath as hope disappears, the kids seemed to have replicated into at least a dozen hyperkinetic munchkins, and the gawdblessed motor is still roaring impotently away. I squeeze the life out of it with the now familiar chokehold. The engine mind you, not the children.
Here's where I get slightly defensive. I do realize the boat has sails. I'm a pretty good sailor, with twenty five thousand blue water miles under my increasingly aged keel. My wife and I got very good at sailing on and off anchors, and in and out of anchorages. But a 26,000# full keel motor sailor, with three children aboard, way down in a long skinny harbor was not something I wanted to try tacking out of, with a reef just astern and strong current and no wind in the main channel. Even assuming I do get the boat out into the main channel, there wasn't any wind anywhere but the slight breeze in the harbor, full moon and big tides. When the boat eventually drifts onto the rocks, the least of my problems would be the people who would be shaking their heads and saying, 'Why don't you have tow insurance?'
I DO HAVE TOWING INSURANCE! So I call Vessel Assist, which is very helpful (thanks Nick!), and we go over the problems. The shortest tow would be around the corner and up the hill to Saltspring Island. The other option would be a tow to Sidney, on Vancouver Island, which would presumably have more options for getting repairs. Post 9-11 they can't tow to the USA. While Carla and I go over our options (and get the Dawn Treader theme song etched forever into our cerebral cortex) Nick finds a mechanic on Saltspring who can be at our boat the next day at noon at the marina there in Ganges Harbor ('well, it might have a pool'). So we arrange to have them come and haul us away the next morning at 9am. The entire Lyons family all go ashore. Dad wants off the freaking boat. We decide to see how far we can make it up the trail that leads to the top of the 800' Mt. Norman. We knew that Advantage (aka 'the boat that got away) had tried to climb it the year before and it was too much for their (then) 7 year old boy. I am proud to say that not only do my boys make it all the way (ages 8 and 6) but Sophia (4) does too. The boys know that story, so again I caution them against jeering should we ever see Advantage again. Brian didn't have any peer pressure to keep him going, I point out to them. 'What's that?', one of the boys asks. That's you not willing to be left behind by your baby sister. 'Oh.'
Nick from Vessel Assist shows up the next morning at 9am. He checked all the things I had checked, and agrees with me, the tranny will probably have to come out. He also can't make the engine turn off. It is once again garroted into submission. Figuring, if were paying for it, we might as well enjoy it, we have a quiet restful tow to Ganges Harbor.*** Carla and I recall the last tow we had received, which was 13 years before from the coast guard at Newport, Oregon, after breaking a shaft coupling on a drift net. Ken the Mechanic shows up a little late, due to having been given the wrong marina name. They have two. Ken takes a look, agrees that the tranny will have to come out, tries to talk me out of having him attempt it, and then he shuts the motor off instantly with a two finger tap of a little rubber thing. Now I know.
The next day after lunch, Ken returns, and with a few wrenches, an eight foot piece of pipe, a turnbuckle, a comealong, and a hunk of wood, we manage to remove the transmission. This involves suspending the motor from the pipe stretched across the opposing fuel tanks (the aft two engine mounts are actually connected to the transmission), undoing all the engine mounts, pulling the shaft back, and sliding the 6 cylinder engine forward with the help of the comealong and the wood braced crosswise under the main cabin. 'They said it couldn't be done, and I laugh in their face,' was Ken's comment. It appears that the transmission is okay, but the plate on the engine side is stripped. We need a new one of those. It can't be had until the following week.
Work beckons, so we will have to leave the boat and find another way home. This is the easiest solution: We will have to arrange a pickup by a taxi van to go to the other side of the island where the ferry docks, ride the ferry to Sidney, catch another ferry to Anacortes, where Carla's mom who lives on Lopez Island (and has a house full of guests) will have taken her car, so that we can get ourselves back up to Semiahmoo where we left our cars, and then we will have to get Carla's mom's car back to her on Lopez later in the week. This dreadful scenario is really the least obnoxious to other people. Advantage (enjoying the wilds of Wallace Island) had kindly offered to take us to Semiahmoo (by way of Pt. Roberts), which was crazy far out of their way and would basically end their vacation. We didn't want to be responsible for that. So we were just about to pull the plug on this stinker of an exit strategy, when I get a phone call from Dan, my tennis and golf pal, who is on his way back from Desolation Sound on his power boat. He pulls into Ganges on Saturday morning with his wife Susan, and we are soon on our way home at 22 knots. He takes us to Friday Harbor to check back into the USA, then from Anacortes drives our whole family up to Semiahmoo in his Acura SUV. Needless to say, all his putts are good inside of ten feet from now on.
Now with luck, the part will arrive, the mechanic will find someone to help him wrestle all the bits back together, it will work, and I will be able to go up and bring it back home next weekend. So really my vacation is still going on, and the fresh water leak seems to have fixed itself.

• * Per the advise/warning of Ed's purported (and kind of familiar sounding) attorney, I issue the following disclaimer, "Ed was hornswaggled into helping take the non functioning and thirty year old autopilot out of the engine compartment on the condition it would 'only take a minute and then we could go golfing.' Due to my poor short term memory, Ed was again volunteered, a few weeks later to help with the re-installation of the purportedly repaired autopilot. Ed was unpaid throughout, even with beer, never even had a thought that his name would be linked with any subsequent problems, and was never particularly close to the transmission. He also lost at golf" The latter notation was of my own inclusion.

• **Far from being bothered by all these happenings, the kids were busy making up a song about what a great boat we have. Children have little sense of irony, which is a very good thing, and little sense of timing, which isn't always as great. 'Dad, do you want to hear the song?' No. 'Okay, how about now?' No, busy, very busy. 'Okay, but it's really a good one. How about we sing it while you pull that chain up? Didn't you just put that chain down? Can I pull the chain up? Do you want to hear it now?' No! Not now, not now. It begins anyway: 'Dawn Treader, best boat ever, she is fast, she is cool, no one knows if it has a pool' (the latter refers to their ever present question asked of every next anchorage). The song continues for awhile, and is really a catchy little ditty. The four year old fades out a bit during the spelling out of the boat name, but she comes in strong at the end with a coda about the boat cat and dog, neither of which exist in any reality except for her own.

• *** This wickedly expensive and outrageously busy marina does in fact turn out to have a small pool and hot tub. In town there is a park with play equipment and a gelato stand. There is pizza. The kids are beside themselves with joy over being stuck there

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