The life of a spider web aboard an ocean satellite never lasts long, yet every morning there it is again. An undetermined future lies ahead shifting in my mind like vapor forming into shapes built of time and space and memory. Somewhere high in the trees a prehistoric squaking signals the disturbance of a heron, like an adolescent dinosaur it lumbers away in the clear morning air. Does it know where it is going? The tide is running out of this lagoon exposing all the little crabs as they run for cover; the herons have wings to drop quickly, soundlessly, no one hears them coming until its too late. Scuttling for a clam hole or a piece of seaweed the crab is driven through from above and eaten.
I stand at the door and knock, but no one answers. This mysterious nature has no window, I can't look in. Do I know where I am going? Stuck between worlds I wonder at my impulse to go ashore and build a home in the woods, a place I don't belong if I do it alone. I turn around inside and remember when I used to live in the city discontented and confused, wandering like a shadow through their streets, watching them live like puppets soon to be put away, puppets who act as though the play will never end. I left them there on the ship they'd worked so hard to build, their lives now a wreck pitched against an unforgiving coast. I left with no destination and little hope, dreaming of far of places that no longer exist. There are no more ports where man is not consumed by toxic fetish and insanity. So we are adrift as it were having no course to steer, only knowing that to return to the other way of life is to die a little more, to destroy the last vestiges of some distant home we still find burning inside us.
Today I spent the day sitting on a rock, climbing a little, eating a little, and contemplating the relationships between man's psychological needs and the modern way of living. From here on this rock it is plain that all the daily movement of goods and information in massive quantity is totally unnecessary. It is mans ideas that make the need, ideas about profit and money and ownership of little pieces of a planet passed from hand to hand. On the altar of a collective and selfish thought structure man has burned his last connections with the nature that sustains us. Both the physical nature surrounding us and the human nature within are lost completely in the modern way of living. The loss of connection to a common origin in simplicity as brought about by the mists of time and the socialization of this new way has turned the human heart into a desert. We are empty now having nothing left to give, nothing left to offer up to either the ghosts of the future or the past. With no identity apart from that given us by right relation to the natural order we cannot hope to perform the necessary tasks to save ourselves or even recognize what they may be. No false identity given by country or corporation can hope to restore man to the original simplicity as countries exist only in the minds of those enslaved by them. To the Otter playing below my sitting rock there is only one world one mind and one way to live, and something in the way it glances up at me reminds me that this law of Oneness is the only law, and by it one can leave the sinking ship and find home anywhere.
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08/19/2009, Watmough Bay
To cross the Stait of Juan de Fuca we left Kala Pt at 4:30 with a large ebb and a light southerly. Two hours with the spinnaker dropped us infront of PT. Much less current than I anticipated. Another hour of sculling, some paddling, finally some wind and we just barely made it out of Admiralty Inlet in time for the flood to start and sweep us backwards into Puget Sound. We had hopped to reach Rosario where the flood would have been a welcome friend to push us north. Luckily as we were sculling hard to stay off Whidbey Island a passing sailor offered a tow, which we accepted inspite of his warning that he might be one toke over the line. We were in tow for about an hour, listening to the whine of his outboard blend with the sound of the banjo he was playing. Turning us loose again south of Smith Island our tow continued on leaving us to wallow around drifting with no wind. Trying to get the spinnaker to fly while watching the breakers getting closer and closer as we drifted down on Minor Island, I was getting stressed. Julia on the other hand was happy to get a close up view of the birds and seals that make this exposed and sandy shoal their home. Then the wind came and saved us, shooting us north to Lopez island where we barely made it into Watmough Bay before the tide turned and once again sent us off in the wrong direction. Some lessons learned.
There is a ton of sweet deep water climbing in these islands. non of it gets climbed ever. Luke I need your muscles. i couldn't make the lip
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08/16/2009, Kala Point
Today we spent the day at Kala Pt. In the morning at low tide Badu was touching the bottom a few steps from the beach. This shallow draft is awesome. I pulled up two large horse clams which we made a chowder with for dinner. A few chores during the day like making an aft tramp, an evening walk, and somehow it is night again. The voyaging life is like a pleasant dream from which there is no awakening.
Life on Badu has been as expected with a few surprises thrown in to keep things intresting. One detail we overlooked is just how much damage is done to ones clothing and deck boots when living on 80 grit sandpaper. Foul weather pants and boots will be destroyed in a month or so, but we'll stick to the deck!
Before we left Seattle we filled the bilges with food and water leaving everything else a shifting heap that migrates around inside the hulls. We have some storage inside with nets strung down each side but they are full, and the space between is occupied by our bodies and the bags and rudders and books and water cans and tool boxes and fishing gear and boots that we share it with. This coastal cruising provides plenty of time for the shuffle of stuff that is necessary for tasks such as cooking or cleaning because we are at anchor so much. This wont work offshore so we are busy perfecting both the storage and practice of using it. With micro cruising everything becomes a practice like a martial art or meditation. In this case there is some contortion and confined scooting like living in a culvert under the road. Julia says its a pretty glamorous life, I would agree having tried the culvert and found it wanting.
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08/15/2009, Kala Point
Resting a stones throw from the beach at Kala Pt. near Port Townsend, Badus wings are folded and dinner is boiling on the stove. The water laps against the hull in a friendly manner while we watch an Otter rolling and throwing sand in the air. There is finally space inside to think a little, and after the madness of pulling out of Seattle its rather refreshing. We left that place by the blackberries and Andi's raft show under grey skies and heavy rain. After borrowing a slip for the night in some marina outside the locks we set sail for Kingston and spent the day sleeping there at anchor. Today the spinnaker pulled us north and we found this sandy spit a welcome home as the sun to the west lay low on our arrival, skipping off the tree tops it loves best. There is a peaceful lagoon here, full of birds and mystical reflections when the ripples cease; the revelation as I recline on the tramp and sip Dragonwell tea is that the pond and the sky occupy the same space. It is only when the wind is calm that this is revealed, that each resides in the common place of perception.
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A quick update. The boat is loaded with drystores, water, and all the sailing gear excluding the windvane which is half built. It has been a long process getting the boat put back together, going over almost every element and reworking all the pieces into a useable whole. We've only gone sailing a few times so most of our decisions are happening based on a combination of experience and visualization- I can't wait to push out of here and get to know the boat for real, I'm sure it will have a lot to teach us.
I think the hatch tops are solid and water tight enough for the ocean, its all rather beefy. Overall weight of the extra crossbeam, windvane (19lbs), and pilothouses is something near the weight of the engine we got rid of.
I'll throw a couple photos in the gallery. We hope to leave next week for california, beating out of Juan de Fuca and finding some ryhthm offshore to lead us south. What does this mean for you?? Finally, some entertaining sea stories.
until soon
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Fair winds & following seas, BADU!
Looking forward to SPOT updates.
I realize that some people who are checking this blog are getting bored with the boat photos., so heres one from the washington coast line.. a place we will soon leave to port as we pass
The channel where we live is full of boats, commercial and otherwise. Birds and animals share space with metal and fiberglass, eating styrofoam off the oil slicks and raising their young on white bread handouts, yet somehow they persist. The other night we took BADU out for the first scull with the sawyer oar and the scull lock. As bayliners cruised by, occupants staring at us uncertainly and pointing, it seemed we had joined the other species in exile, stuck in a techno world of motors and whirly jigs. We went slow sculling into a headwind; turning at the locks we sailed back down with just the jib. Sculling is good - tiring as it is. It allows one to slip back into the Other Place, even here in the channel there are totems in the mist if one stands at an oar. Perhaps something in the air of the Other Place gives the creatures staying power when everything is against them. Perhaps we will find a little of the same as we choose exile and join them.
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A place of aching for the Other Place,
A yearning,
A movement through space,
Continually turning,
To mark another mile.
i wrote a big post, this site timed out and I lost it. This happens almost every time i try and post and is very annoying.
anyhow, there are some pics in the gallery of sailing yesterday, the projects are moving slow as we wait for incompetent people to charge us exorbitant amounts for nothing. The marine industry in Seattle is plagued with hacks masquerading as professionals- best to do everything oneself.
until soon
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Got back to town yesterday and laced the tramp on. Unfortunately it is clear that it will rip in the first month of use. I followed the pattern for the old one which is clearly a bad design. There are not enough grommets around the edge so the stitching is pointloaded and will tear away from the strong webbing edge. In hind site, if we had seen this coming, we would have added a lot more holes in the crossbeams and more grommets. Instead we will pull the grommets and sow a grid of webbing underneath the tramp material that links all the grommets.
this week we will get the sculling system going, scavenge some sail covers, install the compass, start assembling the "rocket tops", ect.
why do boat lists never end?
ahh we are just about finished working on this thing, I can taste the salt. In my heart I am already up north building a fish weir in some quiet lagoon.
Our trip out to Eastern USA made me really glad to live on the North East Pacific, upwind of all the pullution. It is very very noticeably cleaner out here. Some recommended reading-- The Road by Cormac Mcarthy; A Sea Vagabonds World by Moitessier.
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Looking into the hull of a Tiki 21 makes me happy.
We are working on storage inside while we rig and whip above decks. Our mainsail is back from the loft with another reef in it and a new tramp is on the way.
Tomorrow we will go for a sail and see if we can't work some of the hiccups out of the mainsail operation.
The list is starting to get a little shorter and the pile of stuff in our throw away pile is growing. There isn't room for all the unecessary things we normally tend to trap ourselves with.
tomorrow I will try and update the gallery.
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cheers from france
Launching at dusk half a mile from the marina, it was a quick motor back to tie up as night fell. The boat is very very easily driven, carries no way, tracks like a car and is easy to maneuver. I think sailing in fjord country will be amazing in this boat.
now we turn our attention to rigging and setting up the main hatches. Somehow we will figure out how to live on this thing.
Within 5 min of tie up we were visited by one of the Otter people. I take it as a good omen that we are on the right track. I think the seals will also find us interesting.
I hope to try moving the boat with sweeps soon if I can figure out the right spot for oarlocks.
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My Favorite spot is sitting on one of the bow with my feet dangling in the front compartment. That's the spot closest to the water. You won't go fast but you will move. You can use the rudder to compensate for the fact that you are paddling from one side.
