About Me

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Sacramento, California, United States
so salty pieces of coral from surfing Hawaii in the 60's and 70's getting reef pounded living in my body fall through my skin from time to time!

sailing to Oahu

Jimi Hendrix was playing on Oahu. I had never sailed. Surfed Mexico, California, Hawaii! Aw, how hard could it be to sail 90-110 miles from Kauai to Oahu? Piece of cake, right? Remember it was the 60's! This is so bad. We thought we were looking at Kaiena Point,Ohau, knowing we weren't going to make the concert! But at least we were in site of Oahu-wrong! Coy, who had never sailed before, me,who had never sailed before, jeff and Abbott etc. We were looking at the sleeping giant on Kauai! We had done three-sixty's in the night! We sailed on the only tri-marran I've ever sailed on ( except later ) in my life, missed the concert! It was at the Waikiki Shell Ampitheater ( Moon eclipsed . We finally made Nawilwili Harbor! The Skipper tried to give us his boat saying, " It's trying to kill me"! We watched him go stark raving mad not even realising that had we got caught in the channel current we were on our way to Japan! Remember it was the 60's and we were going to see Hendrix. I left out some of the good stuff but I will make up for it later!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Tide, Current, Wind and lahaina ( unmerciful sun in Hawaiian )

My fourth day out I realized that the motion of a canoe has the same effect on our equilibrium as a rolling deck! Sleeping on land felt like I was bobbing along in my canoe. It is a quite pleasant sensation! Very soothing. It helped me to sleep because my sunburn was more uncomfortable than painful and the illusory motion mixed with fatigue and the beauty of the skies smoothed me into oblivion. I needed to find a place to retire because just past Antioch I could not fight the head wind against tide any longer! I wasn't making any noticeable headway and was not enthralled by the view of miles of factories and warehouses! Without a drastic wind change it was fruitless to continue beating myself up for so little reward! I thought I would sleep on it and see what Mother Nature delivered to me in the morning. The night before while sleeping on a steeply pitched sandy beach near Rio Vista the incoming tide attempted to drag me and my sleeping bag into the current for a midnight swim! As it rose I kept ahead of it until I could go no further as I had run out of beach and was backed up against a potpourri of sticker berries, vines, bamboo, bushes and trees! In the middle of the night I was forced to get in my canoe and seek dryer, above the high tide line, lodgings! So! Wouldn't you think I had learned a very valuable lesson? The closer you get to the ocean the more drastic the rivers behavior is altered by tidal influences. Don't forget that river paddlers! Ha! I found this perfect little dock in the Estuary area. It was a fixed dock with a flood-gate open-close wheel at the end of the dock. Two 12' planks just wide enough for my sleeping bag and slightly protected from the wind that had halted my progress, perfect! I was looking forward to sleeping on a flat surface for the first time in days. I woke up to water lapping at the bottom of the 2x12's. I couldn't believe it was happening again! I moved my damp sleeping bag to the rocky pathway ( if you could call it that ) and watched in awe as the delta brackish salt-water covered my bed with six inches of water! I imagined myself asleep under water as if I had refused to budge and remained where I had been sleeping such a short time ago! When I had layed out my sleeping arrangement the water had been five feet below me and the boards were bone dry looking like the desert remains of a cow head with bones bleached and cleaned by the heat from an unmerciful desert sun!!! I chuckled to myself all night. Between my sunburn, the tidal battle day AND NIGHT, opposing wind, three foot chop on the nose, and fatigue, I was probably delirious. Joyously delirious because I knew and know that I was having not just an experience but the time of my life!!

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