Samurai, PNG---Cairns Aus......

Forget the Phillipines! We ran out of money! We headed to Australia to make money to haul "Guinevere" out of the water and go through her, heal Her from the many battles she had fought and won not only functioning as our house or exo-skeleton but as an extension of who and what we were about: who drove Her into strange harbors and filled our imaginations with truths that were the truth and not subject to whims created on "Wall Street" by think tank anal-ists! Ha! I saw You because You wern't there! The sail from Samurai was uneventful until we found the outside lead into Grafton Passage! That will be a story you need to remind me of for a future telling. For now this story is about after the green flag. When customs in Cairns took away a canned, sealed,unoperned tin of ham, manufactured in Aus, but bought in Papua, I knew we were in for some fun. It started raining so hard, if you put your hand to cover your eyes like a baseball cap you still couldn't see! We finally cleared customs without making any enemies but I had no visa so they gave me one for $ 35 for 24 hours. Dave, my skipper, paid and Royal Gage and I ran through rain that I had only experienced on Kauai, Hawaii before! Places where you measure rain in feet! We made it to the Cairns Yacht Club, laughing because this is the first, first world country we had been in for awhile and a rum and coke was not far away and the view inside "The Club" was a site to behold! We were so happy to see all these wonderful people having a great time we never realized we were being laughed at until later. At least we hadn't stepped upon the Cairns Yacht Club logo, on the floor! If we had done that we would have been forced to shout a round for the entire house! However, we did seat ourselves at the bar (never wondering why with a full house there would be three open chairs next to the service area) and were completely neglected. We finally with a few ( tongue in check) references found that we were siting in the gereiatrics section! Susan( the bartender) became my friend and many friendships spun off of Royal's and my unawareness of Yachtie behaviors. My future wife witnessed this event having no idea that we would fall in love and someday be married and have two children that are now adults! ( According to them) Guinevere got fixed! Royal and I got our rum and cokes! Customs got their's. We worked hard in Cairns and we all made it to New Zealand but that can be another story. It will be about " The Tasman" and " The Bay Of Islands"!

Truth, Embelishment Or an OutRight Lie?

All the boats with sails I have sailed kept a log. All the sailboats I have sailed on I have written or recorded my watch; as all other crew members recorded their watch. Signed/ witnessed by the " Skipper", the hourly occurrences of day by day moments of import, events that are important when your life is at sea. Some of the ships I've sailed on keep a log but it is not my business to know what is in those logs because of my position or rank on that particular vessel. Fishing boats I have sailed on keep a log and some of their logs I am party to because of my position on that vessel and some I am not. Historically, sailing logs are more accurate than even the records of the greatest historians. All good sailors are story-tellers because they have a wealth of experiences to draw upon and have had all the time in the world to shape change ( in the telling and re-telling ) of special " Happenings "! A story is good because not only his self but his shipmates experienced it also! Witnesses!! Like how many sailors have seen " St Elmo's Fire "? Mermaids? The " Green Spot " on the oceans horizon line as the sun sinks off the face of the earth? Truth or embellishment never matters when a sailor is telling tales! Read " The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner ", and tell me it couldn't have happened! Read " Moby Dick ", I know it's based on truth! But an outright lie has nothing to do with what is mentioned above. Why would a sailor lie? To impress a land lubber? I think not! A true sailor has such a vast wealth of experiences to draw upon that I am absolutely certain that if anything he must play down the wonders, (whores) horrors and majesties of what he has witnessed and been subjected to so that maybe just a few will believe that while he embellished his story it is based on truth and it was pleasant to the mind in the hearing of it! But I will tell you the truth now! If a sailor ever tells the black and white of it not only will it sound like a lie but the understanding of it will miss the mark! It will sound so unbelievable to anyone who isn't comfortable away from land that the romance and illusion you have allowed to exist in your Hollywood imagination will be forever excised from your thoughts! Remember what the movie, "Jaws " did to your relationship with sharks and the ocean? So I say now to all of you that this may concern. If anyone is within hearing distance of a story that comes out of my mouth, pay attention! I don't waste my time or yours with a lie! However, I will embellish the truth but only with anything I can use to color in the harsh realities of an uncrossed "T" or an undotted "Aye" matie! I only lie to ' Customs Officers ", I try not to! But sometimes you gotta! Tell um I said so!

What Sailing Is

August 1, 2009
What Sailing Is

Captain James Cook didn't start out as a Captain. Think about the time and the world view of his day! He loved his country and his queen. Nothing has changed. Any man or women who decides to sever for ever the tie to land because he has tasted a freedom that only comes once one has felt the release of the tensions that land locks or imprisons a sailor onto! And yet, because you are a sailor you are compelled to always search out the micro and macrocosims of a world that can only be defined by voyagers in ideas who challenge the traditional realities, tilt them, question a status quo until nothing is left but a complete anialation of social mores and taboos that have always allowed a " Gentle Society ", to thrive on the agreements and contracts that any student of history (of the world ) or Human Nature ( sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc )knows only leads to I'm out of here!!!! Captain Cook sailed from England three times and did not have the luxury of the Panama Canal so he did " The Horn"! He didn't have the charts that we have today. Duh! He and his guys created them! What's a compass rose? What is variation? What is deviation? He and the people that sailed with him not only were naming and creating the charts of places that had no names except named by the so-called indigenious peoples that were on these islands or continents at the time of his exploration! Shoot, the Maori's of New Zealand wasted the people that were there before they arrived! What is an indigenous people? England gave Israel back to who? Is a Russian Jew and a Spanish Jew and a New York Jew Isreal? I'm part Indian! Don't ask me which part! No, in all seriousness I have only a few hero's in my life. My dad is one and James Cook is another. The reason is What Sailing Is. It is not for everyone. The Oceans of this world are so vast that there is no desert that even compares to the isolation and vastness, an expanse, a view, a vista, a format of endless possibillities and probabillities. The power, force of weathers, swells so large they defy description, and yet you by the grace of God survive but also thrive on ship, captain and crew. Yes,I have seen people weep when all around was what appeared to be chaos and I also have enjoyed a beam reach with a following sea and a sunset that no painters brush or photographer's lense could have done justice with. Captain Cook defined an idea. He truly went, did and brought the best people to discover what was there to be discovered! They didn't invent what was there! They were excited about new horizons. They witnessed and recorded. I'm telling you now that nothing has changed from then to now. The world out there is as special, original and unique as it was in the day of Cook! What I am writing isn't just about sailing. It isn't for everyone because life is about exploration. I'm not a mountain climber but I sure love to hear a mountain climber tell about his hero's and the mountains he has climbed! So you all go out there! Step away just for a brief moment. Take a deep breath and find a moment where, by yourself, you can look at the moon and realize that without the sun it would be invisable to your eye. It is cold and lifeless and yet reflects in it's endless pursuit the majesty of a continual explosion without which life as we know it ceases. Can you imagine the fear of early sailors knowing that to sail beyond a certain point would sail them off of a flat Earth? I tell you nothing has changed. But it will!
Posted by Robbin

Cooktown ( why is this blog about captcook?)

My wife, Robin was hired by Ben to sail his new boat to Cooktown, Australia from Cairns, Australia. Not that far and yet you are inside the largest living organism on the face of the Earth! Captain Cook lucked out when he sailed through the" Great Barrier Reef", at "Grafton Passage". Or did he? There is a yes and a no here! There are not many entrances through the reef. He couldn't know that at the time because he was the greatest explorer, mapping, and biological ling ( I made that word up ) and making an undefinable world acceptable to a King and Queen a long way away who were just so excited by an idea that the Earth really wasn't flat and that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe! Well I'm still not sure about that one! So, Captain Cook sailed north like my wife when she delivered. What Captain Cook discovered is that once you are inside the largest living organism on the face of the Earth how does one return to the sea? Well he didn't until later. First he ran aground. His log gave an idea of a location pause......remember..these guys didn't have Greenwich mean time or zed. They were pretty much latitudinal dudes. Omega, Lo ran C, Sat Nav, GPS! Yea right! Screw your sextant also! Without a chronometer you can't realize longitude!! I went to the museum in Cooktown Australia. They found all the stuff Cook had his people through off his vessel so they could limp into a foreign port!!! Cooktown today is still a void! Not a port. Anyway, I love the museum because it's real. They only found the spot on the reef within the last fifty years where, canons, etc were off loaded or death awaited all of them. Cook's log is accessible to anyone with a curious mind. I'm amazed he found Grafton! I sailed into Cairns and had one of the most bizarre experiences through Grafton passage, unique, remind me later, to speak of it! Can you imagine sailing ( remember-no engine) with no chart, inside the Great Barrier Reef? It is rough enough with charts!!!

Carvings, frogs, Kiwi.s and a skipper-missed

I want to talk with you about a friend of mine, Dave Laurie. He was born in South Africa but was raised by his parents in New Zealand from the age of 14. He thought he was a KIWI. But knowwwww! When he sailed his boat with his wife and children ( who were kiwi's )he found out his parents had never changed his citizenship!! How much fun is it to try and clear customs when your skipper is a South African? I'll tell you. Because the politics ( at the time ) are so fucked up with arpartied and the " Kiwi rugby All Blacks " are dominating the world! And because the frogs ( french people ) had bombed " Rainbow Warrior " in N.Z. And hadn't been brought to court even though they were all caught! Oh hell! I love Dave Laurie and his wife Leslie ( legsly) and son, Andrew, and daughter Amanda. When I begged Dave not to sell " Guinevere " he laid one of the greatest thought/ideas of which I have kept a few! Dave said " Robbie this is not my first boat, which I loved, nor will it be my last boat, which I loved, but all of the boats I was allowed to sail led me to the next boat!" I understood! That's why I sail other people's boats. They are to expensive to maintain. People who own boats work very hard to maintain them. They bring one or two people aboard, share a cocktail and on a clear day swear they will sail to Catalina Island and yet never do. Dave sailed and I sailed with him. He's dead now but I swear to you the carvings that his wife, my friend Leslie, has and was with Dave when he traded for them in the South-South Seas are priceless and I hope she has held on to them. I couldn't believe they kept the master/owner of the vessel aboard at Port Villa, Vanuatu-New Hebrides.Dave was pissed!! I laughed for a month-no two!!!Ha! He was pissed mainly because he was out of cigarettes and figian rope does not cut it! Either does their kava. The ceremony is way cool but there is no punch to kava ( ava ) until you try Vanuatuan kava. Whew!!! I loved Dave, Mark

The "Big Island", Lono, Capt. Cook and Sam Clemens

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The Sacramento Daily Union, September 22, 1866
Kealakekua Bay, July, 1866
THE ROMANTIC GOD LONO
I have been writing a good deal, of late, about the great god Lono and Captain Cook's personation of him. Now, while I am here in Lono's home, upon ground which his terrible feet have trodden in remote ages - unless these natives lie, and they would hardly do that, I suppose - I might as well tell who he was.
The idol the natives worshipped for him was a slender, unornamented staff twelve feet long. Unpoetical history says he was a favorite god on the island of Hawaii - a great king who had been deified for meritorious services - just our own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference that we would have made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt. In an angry moment he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Alii. Remorse of conscience drove him mad, and tradition presents us the singular spectacle of a god traveling "on the shoulder;" for in his gnawing grief he wandered about from place to place boxing ant wrestling with all whom he met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty, inasmuch as it must necessarily have been the case that when so powerful a deity sent a frail human opponent "to grass" he never came back any more. Therefore, he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered that they should be held in his honor, and then sailed for foreign lands on a three-cornered raft, stating that he would return some day, and that was the last of Lono. He was never seen any more; his raft got swamped, perhaps. But the people always expected his return, and they were easily led to accept Captain Cook as the restored god.
THE POETIC TRADITION
But there is another tradition which is rather more poetical than this bald historical one. Lono lived in considerable style up here on the hillside. His wife was very beautiful, and he was devoted to her. One day he over heard a stranger proposing an elopement to her, and without waiting to hear her reply he took the stranger's life and then upbraided Kaikilani so harshly that her sensitive nature was wounded to the quick. She went away in tears, and Lono began to repent of his hasty conduct almost before she was out of sight. He sat him down under a cocoanut tree to await her return, intending to receive her with such tokens of affection and contrition as should restore her confidence and drive all sorrow from her heart. But hour after hour winged its tardy flight and yet she did not come. The sun went down and left him desolate. His all-wise instincts may have warned him that the separation was final, but he hoped on, nevertheless, and when the darkness was heavy he built a beacon fire at his door to guide the wanderer home again, if by any chance she had lost her way. But the night waxed and waned and brought another day, but not the goddess. Lono hurried forth and sought her far and wide, but found no trace of her. At night he set his beacon fire again and kept lone watch, but still she came not; and a new day found him a despairing, broken-hearted god. His misery could no longer brook suspense and solitude, and he set out to look for her. He told his sympathizing people he, was going to search through all the island world for the lost light of his household and he would never come back any more till he found her. The natives always implicitly believed that he was still pursuing his patient quest and that he would find his peerless spouse again some day, and come back; and so, for ages they waited and watched in trusting simplicity for his return. They gazed out wistfully over the sea at any strange appearance on its waters, thinking it might be their loved and lost protector. But Lono was to them as the rainbow-tinted future seen in happy visions of youth - for he never came.
Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their death; but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die if he was a god.
THE FIELD OF THE VANQUISHED GODS
Only a mile or so from Kealakekua Bay is a spot of historic interest - the place where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of course we visited it and came away as wise as most people do who go and gaze upon such mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood.
While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, the idolatrous customs which had obtained in the islands as far back as tradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old Kamehameha I was dead, and his son, Liholiho, the new King, was a free liver, a roystering, dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient tabu. His assistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and high-spirited, and hated the tabu because it restricted the privileges of her sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of brutes. So the case stood. Liholiho had half a'mind to put his foot down Kaahumanu had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whisky did the rest. It was probably the first time whisky ever prominently figured as an aid to civilization. Liholiho came up to Kailua as drunk as a piper, and attended a great feast; the determined Queen spurred his drunken courage up to a reckless pitch, and then, while all the multitude stared in blank dismay, he moved deliberately forward and sat down with the women! They saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled! Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, still he lived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld! Then conviction came like a revelation - the superstitions of a hundred generations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout went up,
"The tabu is broken! the tabu is broken!"
Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whisky preach the first sermon and prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward over the waves of the Atlantic.
The tabu broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege, the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion that Captain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly killed him without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as well as a man if it suited his pleasure to do it; and satisfied that the idols were powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and pulled them down - hacked them to pieces - applied the torch - annihilated them!
The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be; they had held the fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they had been great - they had stood above the chiefs - and now they were vagabonds. They raised a revolt; they scared a number of people into joining their standard, and Kekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of royalty, was easily persuaded to become their leader.
In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua. The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near being an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused to listen to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forth under Major General Kalaimoku and the two hosts met at Kuamoo. The battle was long and fierce - men and women fighting side by side, as was the custom - and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in the land!
The royalists matched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new dispensation. "There is no power in the gods," said they; "they are a vanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak; the army without idols was strong and victorious!" The nation was without a religion.
The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the gospel was planted as in a virgin soil.

Fijian Coup

I just loved running aground within the leads of Suva, Fiji, Harbor! You would think their government, which was commonwealth sponsored by New Zealand, a prisoner of Mother England, a nation of great sailors and discoverer/conquerors of the unknown world in it's day! Notice my blogs real title? Captain Cook Rules!! So Guinevere, a faro cement, ketch, built in Bluff N.Z. 7'6" draft, full keel, steel ballasted, one yard wide runs aground weighing in at "40" tons, something has to move! Or go and it was never Guinevere. We ran aground five times and always got off with no damage to the boat but much damage to whatever was in our way. It wasn't a power trip, it was weight, gravity, inertia and no brakes! That would be a great invention? Brakes on a boat! A drogue is a type of brake as is a sea Anchor, but running aground is always a problem, especially for fiberglass! Wouldn't a sky hook be awesome? Anyway , I wander, Even with updated charts , radio, etc., it is hard to keep up with what the weather has done with channels and fluid rivers washing silt into traffic channels which sometimes need to be dredged. That was this case. Shit, we wanted a beer! We had already come ashore illegally, without clearing customs to buy cigarettes and a case of quarts of Fijian Bitters!! Anyway we got a friendly tug-boat to tow us off the sand bar we were hard on for a qt. of scotch! I said we were out of beer not out of alcohol! I'll tell you a story later of how and why we never ran out of alcohol!! So we are off and now moored at the Yacht club. Suva is a fun place unless you are sleeping at the stadium on the night that the Indians from India decide they HAVE had enough of the Fijians from Fifi who now are a minority in their own country and are over-run by the third generation of born and raised Indians from India. The only reason I speak of the Indians from India is so you don't think of the Indians from America that slew General George Armstrong Custer!! It really was an honorary rank. He was lucky to be a colonel during the civil war. Why do they call it the civil war? I would think it would be called " The Un-civil War "! That's like Civil Disobedience! There is nothing civil about disobedience! Sorry I rant! An American girl and I were sleeping ( yea right ) at the stadium in downtown Suva which happens to be right next to Government House. The riot was quick and efficient and got the job done because the next morning the Indians from India had a controlliung voice in the politics of Figian government. Can you imagine a group of people coming into your country and breeding like rabbits so that by the third generation their vote is the voice to be listened to! Amazing or what? Duh? Habla English?