Proper Course: Tillerman's Top Ten Blogs of 2009

Proper Course: Tillerman's Top Ten Blogs of 2009

ahhh Fanning Island (atoll)

What a strange place! Shaped like the letter C we sailed into the mouth of the C. What I would learn later is that inside a lot of atolls in the Pacific Ocean are lagoons. Shallow, colorful and filled with unique life forms that defy descriptions. The entry ( the gap that makes a c a c ) between tides is in stasis. Great diving until the ebb or flood creats a current kind of like when you flush your toilet in your very own bathroom ( head-nautical)! Try and swim-motor against that! Really. In fact, the four-hundred and fifty people on Fanning Island have pier-end port-0-pottys that drop directly into the inside of the lagoon. So the out going tide is one big toilet flush. I heard you go UUUHHHHHHH! Don't do that. All mordern sailboats now have a "y" valve that is locked when you are slipped! At sea you may pump human waste through hull but not in port. Chum? When you are on a sailboat with 8-10 people aboard it requires a lot of pumping to get all the waste underboard-outboard so you may begin the same process again on the manana! The reason I am spending time with this crap is that Mark and I surfed perfect four foot waves just outside of the entry into Fanning. We had brought our surfboards and happened to catch a great little swell which Judy, Marks young lady, took some pictures of. It reminded me of small Bobo's on Kauai. If you weren't careful your fin would touch bottom and there were a couple of spots where you had to use the face of the wave to go above and around a reef obstickle. Reef sharks were plentiful but it didn't bother one of the guys off of Ginseng, Ben's boat! He body surfed with Mark and I. No kidding, sharks o'plenty! Reminded me of Pakala ( infinities ) on Kauai! Maybe if we're lucky Judy will send me one of the pictures she took that day and I'll post it! I'm sure the poop in the water at Fanning killed Ben. He was a Congressional Medal of Honor holder from Korea. Special to me because my parents were married there and I was conceived in Korea. Had to mention that. Ben got a staff infection. Mark got a similar infection. Ben died in American Samoa. The infection had entered into his bones and they could not quench the fire and it consumed him. His boat "Ginseng", that he had built with his own hands sold ( I heard ) for 25 large! Mark lived. To this day I'm sure Mark survived because Mark had Judy to insist that he apply proper medication and because Mark had surfed and was very aware of how damaging coral infections especially in the conditions I have mentioned above can be! Mark had surfed Mexico and survived Montezoma's Revenge!!! He didn't rebel against medicating a cut that seemed so small having a wisdom and a sense of self-survival that I beleive Ben didn't have or had forgetten! He actually said on Fanning, " It's just a small infection, it will pass!" Shoot, Fanning's only access to the outside world is a barge that brings supplies three times a year from Tarawa! The island's radio isn't as good as Sea Rover's Ham!! Shiza! I liked Ben but could not have sailed with him. Kindest and wisest man you could ever speak with on land but he kept us awake at night belittling in very loud phrases his crew day in and day out. I'll bet you even he was surprised that it was staff infection instead of Davey Jones that got him and of all places, Pago Pago, Samoa.

We missed Christmas

Just by inches on a chart did " Sea Rover" miss Christmas!! How can one miss an Island in broad daylight that you are looking at? The same way that you can find an atoll by it's reflection on the bottom of a cloud formatiom giving you a heading towards an object in the middle of no where that has an elevation of 4' at it's highest point! Anyone who has sailed the "South Seas" knows that a current runs fast above and below the "Equator" fluctuating between four degrees north and south moving about four to six knots parallel to th equatorial line! So we, on Sea Rover, a Cullen Archer, double ended, norweigian keel, faro-cement, slutter; unwilling to start the Yan-mar to over heat our feet on a teak deck that was already drying out from lack of any moisture due to the prevalent weather written about by every sailor who has managed to bypass the conditions required to get from a northern to southern or vise versa, decided to head for Fanning Island!!!! Screw Christmas, Bah, Humbug! So. Mark and Judy and Corrine and Skuppers decided to flow back to Fanning. I'm glad we did. I hadn't realized how many ships had run aground on Christmas! Now, I can see why and how. My next small story will be about Fanning Island. We stayed there awhile and learned much.

Lanai Or " Bust "

A friend or so it seemed for so many years has died. July 6th, 2009. Now that he is gone I will speak about him. Some will say " You should not speak un-well of the dead", but I say now is the time to speak the truth about a friendship that I carried a lot longer than he due to the resentment towards me that laid buried under a guilt-ridden, so-called weakness of the moment; an action he considered un-manly, that festered like a bodily wound unattended until it had absorbed his very self in regards to me! Whereas now, and for years that I had no knowledge of, instead of friend ( out loud ) He thought of me ( secretly ) as his enemy! And yet not I! But the infection from an event which I am about to explain that shaped his thoughts and ideas forming a complete understanding of what went wrong off Lanai that night! We'd been working on a " Block Island " 45' ketch (49' from bowsprit to bumkin )spending all we had in dry dock on Oahu. It was time to see if this boat could sail! The year was 1971, early. I had just sold my resturant ( I had partners ) The Rice Mill, Hanalei, Kauai. Larry, Bob and I decided to sail to Maui. The trouble began when the wind picked up ( with swells ).....Here is where skippers are good but they are capable of making bad decisions! In the course of sailing across the Molokai Channel ( one of the reasons America Cup potential racing challengers practice there ) the potential for diverse wind and swell configerations was beyond us with our limited sailing experiences. Years later Eddie Aikau ( someone Larry and I both knew ) drowned or disappeared off these islands going for help. This was a terrible thing. Larry and I can remember when they established the first life guard station at Waimea Bay, Oahu. Eddie told us ( he was the life guard ) that we could no longer body-surf Waimea shorebreak ) We were pissed!!! We had 5 people aboard when we left " The Ala Wai " Boat Harbour! After that, the swells, thunder and lightning and wind were so horrific that we had to shorten sail! Easy for me to say now that I have sailed half the Earth! How does one shorten sail? But then, to be a novice, a babe and to have the entire known forces of nature, a swirling lighthouse that appeared to be 6' away, hearing the pounding surf on shores that I could see the white mists of battered water rising as vapor and falling again to return to the rocks on shore that had carved into a slow or sometimes rapid oblivion the lives of not only the sailors aboard but the dreams of the builders themselves to die in the open ocean or on a foriegn shore never to know or be known the unrealised dreams of all who chance like the roll of the dice, that from the " greatest unknown ", we all who sailed that day would find ourselves on many a distant shore! I'll never forget and either did Larry! How he looked me square in the eyes and said," Mairum and I are going below. The ship is yours and Bob's. If we arrive at a safe destination I will sign over title as I never want to sail again as long as I live!" So there you have it. Larry went on to sail many boats. He sailed " the New Carthigianian" from Sweden to Lahaina. He got his skippers licencse including a "six pack" running tourists down the Napali Coastline on Kauai!!! I purchased that package! I'll never be able to tell anyone how special Larry Byfield is to me! But he is my friend. No matter what he has said or thought about me. You see people the truth about all things is this. It is that love is a one way thing. Love is given without the thought of receiving. I gave Larry Byfield, my friendship! Whatever came back is a blessing! He was so afraid that I would tell someone that in a crisis situation he had broken down! That would suggest that I never had! Shit!!! I have seen grown men cry when they face their own demise! So Larry died. He is my friend. I wish he would have returned my calls!

Rock Island Fever

What the hell is " rock Island fever"? Is it like " cabin fever"? Oh! It might be like " Saturday Night Fever"! UH-H-H-H! Yea, that's it! All of a sudden ( years) time just slides away from dreamers, who have not fulfilled anything on their wish list! So they just pass on to their children their frustrations or a few geological, political/teritorial-historical, racial realities that they, the parents, thought might help that child along it's way, empowering said child to grow to a better emotional and physical understanding than they ( the parents) had the opurtunity to achieve! Rock fever is when your parents take you to an airport on your island. They celebrate with their neighbors as 14 children, harvested, to fight for their country get on an airplane to fight a battle against " the enemy"! Was Viet Nam our enemy? So if your boy survives I guess he is free of rock fever! Then they go to college on the G.I. Bill. He marries a haole on the mainland and they live happily ever after with the law degree and their 2.2 children somewhere over the rainbow! So you are free now of rock island fever. You can go visit your grandchildren in Nebraska or Kansas or Iowa! Their religion and values have changed but there are very few rocks because they have been moved. I've never had rock island fever, though on the island of Kauai, there is only eighty miles of road. Within the sphere of weather, humidity, time, climate, temperature, swells, views, people, beaches, elevations,it changes driving back! Whew! It is a very large small island! How does one get bored living in Paradise? Where is paradise? Aloha

Life ON The River

You have just got to love paddling a canoe through a marked speed zone on The Sacramento River! I would casually wind my way through a matrix of moored boats anchored and docked like a little city on the water. If I saw a human being I would shout out, " I just cut my speed to four mph so my wake wouldn't disturb your boat at rest "! They would laugh and offer me a cup of coffee if it was morning or a beer in the afternoon. I must admit I loved the solitude of the long stretches of river where there is no human contact but coming upon pockets of civilization had its rewards also. It's amazing what a joy a simple conversation with someone is after not speaking for 24 hours or more! Walking on " Sea Legs " to a store to get beer and supplies was always an adventure. Finding a place to park and getting your first glimpse after climbing the levee of the possibillities of finding a head or a store wasn't always a given. There are outposts on the river that have a post office, a store that carries very little, a bait shop but no toilet or gas station. Forget about a pub. So you just never know what you'll find when you top the levee. There were a few days there when I wished my canoe was equipted with a port-a-potty! When I stopped at Rio Vista and went into town I felt like I had just come into New York City! The contrast from extreme isolation to total sensory bombardment was so severe it felt like culture shock! Usually I exhibit 100% extroversion. But after zero human interaction for long periods my people skills flew out the window leaving me speechless as if dumbstruck. This turned out to be a blessing in disquise as most farm or fish orientated small towns don't need a hyper-metabollic, machine gun, word firing, companion starved, bread shopper in their store! So I shopped, saying very little, went back to my canoe and continued my journey. As the days went on the river cast a spell on me re-birthing me into one of her children, altering me to her course and ways and moods. I love how subtly the city gets washed out by the ways of the country. Admitedly it's not for everyone but it's for me!

Power Trippers

Just as every surfer manifests his total identity, reveals his very nature, tells someone with a discerning eye, who he is and what he is about while riding his wave, so do all who drive their vessels on our water highways! It doesn't matter if it's a sailboat ( tri-marran, catamarran, or mono-hull ), powerboat, jet-ski, surfboard, canoe, kayak or sailboard! We tell each other a lot about ourselves by the etiquite we demonstrate while launching, using and picking up our vehicles. we are being scrutinized every step of the way by the curious and the furious! Why do stink-boat captains hate sailors? Why do sailors hate powerboats? Why do mono-hull sailors dispute with multi-hull sailors? Why do blue-water sailors have a hard time rubbing elbows with racing sailors? Why does everyone hate jet-skiers? We all know why, don't we! I'm a blue-water sailor who doesn't enjoy racing but my wife is a racing sailor. She enjoys blue-water. I enjoy power boats with my friends, and even though I prefer mono-hulls have had great sailing experiences on multi-hulls! The point that I would like to share with all people who use water for pleasure is to share it. The gracious skipper gladly follows " the rules of the road ", not because he has to but they come natural to him. In the course of upcoming posts I'm going to share with you good and bad stories, good skippers and good skippers making bad decisions! Ha! On this latest canoe journey I was thankful for the few arrogant stinkboat drivers who relished showing me the size of their rooster-tail! Some stretchs of The Sacramento River are not only tedious but hynotically monotonous. The timed stroke repetition mixed with the heat would have been maddening save for the occassional ego-centric, power mad, big-waking, engine screaming, powerboat trippers!!! Little did they know as they roared by, peddle to the metal, knowing they were showing canoe-boy who the " River " belonged to! I turned to dance with the beautiful waves they sent this ancient surfer, gleefully riding naturally what I have been doing my entire life, laughing at how divinely poetic God is! What they thought they were sending me was a devastating wake with a definate possibillity that I might be swamped! But what they couldn't see or know was God laughing at how he had used their ignorance and rebelious arrogance to give his friend ( me ) some bitchin waves to play on! Ain't life grand?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf71tBYXbmk