Category: A Very Short Story

From the Short Story Vault

Akara-Hime…Part 6

From my new book, currently being written. Hope to have it completed by next summer. It is in rough draft. It has not been edited as yet.

Writing like this gives me a nice and welcome respite from the Covid 19 madness. I can escape to my own world of past adventures and excitement without a care in the world.

The dinette or table that would normally be used for dining had been removed and a navigation table constructed in lieu. It was quite large, and made out of two by fours for legs and a plywood top. It took up the entire space forward of the galley on the starboard side of the boat. It was rigidly placed having no gimble effect whatsoever. We had to ensure sharp objects that were used for navigation such as a protractor, slide rule, parallel ruler, pencils and such were well secured. Fortunately, our gas alcohol stove just aft of the chart table on the starboard side was gimballed and thus very secure in rough seas. At the very least, the chart table was functional and well placed just below the starboard side elongated port or window in layman’s terms. Indeed our boat had four sealed ports, two port and two starboard that let in sufficient light for illumination of the cabin’s interior. The table could easily display a standard size Mercator projection – or chart. We would use this table a plenty in the months ahead. Personally I would become very familiar with it.

And there you have it.

My home for the near term, foreseeable future.

I’ll explain topsides at another opportune time.

Where was Nigel? Not that I minded in the least of his whereabouts or that he was awol through the late afternoon yesterday, evening and all night long. I hardly knew that man and I was not his keeper.

I went topside to have a new look at my new surroundings. A fresh perspective from my late afternoon arrival from the day before. It was early morning, around 8am. Our berth was G35, the 35th finger jetty on the large G dock. Beside us and further along were other boats of various sizes and shapes. Some large, some massive, some smaller.  Various coloured hulls. A thirty five footer like ours is considered a small boat around here. Our boat was a sloop rig which meant one large mainsail tied to a mast and boom with a good size changeable foresail or jib / genoa / spinnaker forward of the mast and hanked on to a wire stay or forestay that ran from the bow all the to the top of the mast. On the dock as with others there was a wide array of vessels: Ketches, Sloops, Schooners, traditional Gaff Rigged boats, Catamarans, Trimarans, and one of my favourites of all being the Tahiti Ketches or what is referred to as a double ender. In essence a sailboat that has two bows. Not really two bows, but two pointy ends. All of these vessels were primarily fibreglass although the more classic styles and sight lines were the wood, mahogany stripped clinker planked hulls. The one style that really has no business floating at all is the ferro-cement sailboat. How on earth can a cement boat float? Well, as I soon found out, it all has to do with displacement. As I said I was still a newbie landlubber. I did not have my sea legs as yet nor belong to the club of old salts with the secret handshake, scruffy beard and the salty blue language…aarg, so how could I ever know about these things. To cap all of this off were the various sizes. Forty to fifty footers were the most common. Our boat was a Spencer 35 foot clinker strip planked mahogany formed hull. Indeed it was the original mold that cast a line or class of Spencer 35 fiberglass off shore cruising sailboats.

Across from my berth was “F” dock, with its long line of finger berths. A mirror image of “G” dock. On the other side of “G” dock, my dock, facing east was “H” dock, which harboured the main access roadway that skirted the hotel and apartment blocks. At the south end of “H” block the channel; opened up to form what is termed a turning basin. This was a relatively wide expanse of water that would allow the larger sailboats safe room to turn about under power or to secure alongside to load up or offload supplies or gear. There was also a small crane here to work the mast and rigging if need be for small repairs.

Looking south past the “H” dock turning basin I could just make out the jagged diamond like leading edges of Diamond Head and snippets and glimpses of Waikiki Beach. This landscape was just beyond the Ala Moana Yacht Club and Ala Wei Marina parking lot, the iconic Ilikai Hotel with its central exterior glassed in elevator and its man made lagoon. It was not really a lagoon. It was more of a landlocked pond but the touristos here, the pasty white mainlanders, of which I was one unfortunately, like to imagine it as being a tropical lagoon. That was more romantic. Who could argue with that? It was part and parcel of the image, of the Waikiki dream. Bordering the lagoon were deck chairs, chaise lounges, tables and umbrellas. The Ilikai’s dark and cool Waikikian indoor / outdoor bar and restaurant capped the scene.

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SJ…….Out

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start Me Up

Check this out.

What the world is coming too – at least in Canada and the US.

Are we in trouble as a democratic society. You be the judge:

“And now, the weird alliance of leftist rabble and plutocrats—foreign and domestic—runs everything. They don’t just control the entire United States military, the White House, the Senate, and the House: They control the universities. They control the non-profits. They control big business. They control the public schools. They control Wall Street. They control the movie studios, most of mainstream media, the book publishing houses, and the cable companies. They control Big Tech and social media. They control the newspapers, the magazines, and the musicians. They control every, or nearly every, single institution of influence in the entire country.”

In Canada this would be known as the Family Compact, wherein the Family is the Liberal Left.

“Genius does not mean you are immune to stupidity.”

Microsoft’s MSFT +0.5% billionaire founder Bill Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that would potentially reflect sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), launched by Harvard University scientists, aims to examine this solution by spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into the atmosphere — a sun-reflecting aerosol that may offset the effects of global warming.

It is time to start him up, reboot and launch Gates out of the earth’s atmosphere.

Don’t mess with God and his creation. You will lose big time.

 

SJ….Out

Sailing On Akaru-Hime…Part 5

From my new book, currently being written. Hope to have it completed by next summer. It is in rough draft. It has not been edited as yet.

Writing like this gives me a nice and welcome respite from the Covid 19 madness. I can escape to my own world of past adventures and excitement without a care in the world.

Nigel was about 33 years old, to my 22. A professional sailor as he claims to be. Hired by Sadao to help him sail and deliver Akaru-Hime to Japan. He and Sadao met each other in and around the maritime bazaars and marinas of Vancouver Harbour. My sister Pat did not take too well to Nigel and I think the feelings were mutual. Nevertheless Nigel offered to help Sadao fulfill his dream and for a modest sum would help him in his quest. So off they went. Unfortunately, Sadao had to give up on his dream of sailing to Japan but had asked Nigel to carry on.  At least deliver the boat to his homeland. Nigel agreed but with tits gone and the other stoners having departed, Nigel was left in a quandary. No one to accompany him. And that’s where I came in. Crew to Nigel’s skipper. Adventure I guess. Here I come but I didn’t have a clue. No worries as it would be some time before we left. It was only July after all.

After a few hours of idle and uncomfortable shit-chat and a few beers, Nigel excused himself and left. Told me he was going to sup with friends of his. Am I not invited I thought to myself? Guess not and I didn’t feel it was my right to ask. Spontaneity, openness, friendliness were not Brit traits. Rudeness was. Especially to us colonials, as Nigel so righteously referred to me as. So I kept to myself and fell asleep in short order. I must have been exhausted but then I woke up after a few hours. It was still light out, just so, but fell asleep again.

That first night of sleep was a restless one for me. A mixture of excitement, of fear, of trepidation and anxiety. I tossed and turned on the quarter berth settee that was only about two feet wide and about six feet long. My mattress was of a green foam of about four inches depth. As it turned out I had one hard and sore ass in the morning. My sides were aching too. Just not used to the confines of this lower deck cabin berth. I think I fell onto the deck a few times during the night. I would have to have a talk with Nigel about these sleeping arrangements. Yet I never did see Nigel that first night. He had gone off somewhere on his own. To sup he said. With some friends. I wasn’t invited. A stranger in a strange land, paradise or not. Alone. Perhaps to see a girlfriend although I doubt it as he was a slovenly chap as Brits go. Bad teeth, a succinct odour about him that was not pleasant and bad breath to boot. Fagin? Yes Fagin it would be in my mind’s eye as with his long rangily (is that a word?) brown hair that was stoked with bits and flecks of grey, falling down from the sides of his large head to his shoulders from the roots of the longest forehead I had ever seen. A top gallant of a man’s crown to say the least. Coupled with his badly tailored shorts that were held up and cinched by the smallest of a rough hewned hawser, a stained brown, long sleeved shirt with yellow sweat patches on the undersides by his arm pits, he looked the part of that sly street urchin of Dickensian lore. He had beady eyes, was of the colour of minimal or faded blue. Yes Fagin it is. Fagin he would always be to me.

Nigel was very condescending to me that first afternoon and I felt that he thought of himself as one possessed of a superior intellect, at least in his own mind’s perspective of his world. Typical male Brit, as I can say this now, as I look back on those days given my future stink, er stint, on exchange with the Royal Navy in the late 1980s. Yes I did survive those carefree halcyon days of 1973 and 1974 with Nigel in Hawaii, on Oahu, at the Ala Moana Yacht Club, near to and adjacent to Waikiki and Honolulu. I survived as best I could, given the taunts and verbal abuse that I would soon suffer, as you shall soon see, under the tutelage of one Nigel Hawthorne Filtness, Esq, delusional British Citizen of the now defunct British Empire.

As I brushed the sleep out of my eyes on that first morning I took stock of my surroundings. I was asleep on the berth on the left, er port side, of the boat, about the middle, er midships, I would guess. To my rear, aft, toward the rear, er stern of the sailboat, lay another berth. I could tell as that space was adorned with the same lime green cushioned settee as the one I had slept on. Ahead of me, forward, was a wall, erm bulkhead, that formed a separation of sorts from what they refer to as a “V” berth, all the way to the front, erm bow, of the sailboat. Don’t call it, er her, a ship whatever you do. It is a sailboat and while it may have a middle or an amidships area it is best to refer to this as midpoint or just nothing at all. Just “there” or port / starboard “here or there and everywhere the same.”

Actually the settee that I slept on was part of the “main salon” or living lounge area of the boat. My sleeping area was to be the port quarter-berth that ran under the port after deck topsides and the topside cockpit area. I do not know why they call this the cockpit. This quarter berth duplicates itself on the right, erm starboard side, of the boat as well. But just forward of that is the galley; forward of that is the dining table; and forward of that but separated by a bulkhead is that of a shower / shitter combination. Another bulkhead separates the shitter / shower with the forward “V” berth. And at the forward end of the “V” berth is another compartment separated by bulkheads holding rope and lines, erm cordage, spare sails, the anchor, anchor chain or rode and various bits and pieces. Don’t ask me why they call this a “rode” which is in reality the leading edge back from the anchor to the boat: a combination of chain and line? Bits and pieces are those things that really don’t have a nautical name or purpose. Boat junk really but if the boat was to sink this floating debris or junk would be called “flotsam.”

Just aft of this compartment, on the ceiling, erm deckhead, is a opening, erm hatch, that can be opened or closed such that sails or cordage can be passed safely to and from the topside, bow area, forward part of the sailboat or foc’sle, especially in bad and inclement weather.

Now the passageway from the ladder going topside from the cabin up to the “V” berth is called the companionway. To the rear or aft of the ladder, still below deck, which can be removed, is a door, erm hatch opening it of which exposes the diesel engine. A simple two stroke reciprocating engine, or an “up and downer” as sailors so affectionately like to call it. There are more modern variations and models of marine engines of course but this one is of a simpler antiquated, inexpensive (cheap) nature. I say simple but try to work on this mechanical plumber’s nightmare in a confined space such as this sailboat. Madness. Each and every sailor in any marina or yacht club on earth will know those boats with such a contraption: knowing this by the characteristic foul and blue nature of the language that is emitted from the confines of the engineering spaces of such a boat. A space that only a midget could love.

Across from the starboard side shower / shitter combination, on the port side aft of the “V” berth forward are a few lockers for the storage of foul weather gear, jackets, sea boots, shirts, pants…clothes. Likewise there are lockers under all of the settees for clothes or non perishable foodstuffs. The galley is well equipped although very small and cramped. Above it are more lockers for galley wares, cleaning material and the like. To the right and just aft of the galley are the electrical fuses and switches for the night navigational lights and the VHF radio. Of course in the open ocean the radio is useless. Used only for entering or leaving harbour, international distress or ship to ship, sailboat to sailboat communications if within a line of sight distance from one another. No GPS, satellite navigation or communications for us. No, no, no. In those days we were still tied to the old traditional sextant, Admiralty Tables, the Nautical Almanac, Bowditch perhaps, Norrie’s Tables, the formidable HSO volumes, Sailing Directions, Tide Tables, a good and reliable time piece and of course charts of a Mercator projection. Onerous? Yes. Complicated? Yes. Time consuming? You bet, but at the same time a fairly accurate and dependable art this navigation by the stars. And whatever methodology used: Admiralty, Bowditch or oral tradition and song, this is an art as old as the Polynesian culture and knowledge and their verbal historical account and way-finding techniques. Amazing.

 

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SJ….Out

More next week. That is if ya find this interesting. Let me know by leaving a comment or two.

Sailing On Akaru-Hime…Part 4

From my new book, currently being written. Hope to have it completed by next summer. It is in rough draft. It has not been edited as yet.

Writing like this gives me a nice and welcome respite from the Covid 19 madness. I can escape to my own world of past adventures and excitement without a care in the world.

Waikiki Beach is not the beach one would expect. Yes it beckons one to the lush, tropical and welcoming warmth of the island of Oahu but its texture is rough; its colour a dull greyish taupe and its lustre anything but that expected in the tropics. This very narrow strip of sand was not blindingly white or soft or smooth to the touch but a rough textured morass like field. Shipped in I was told. From Norway? No way. Australia? No way. Manhattan Beach California? Yes way. And on further inspection, as I didn’t want to explore too much or wander too far from “Akaru-Hime,” I noticed that the line of hotels didn’t quite make their way all the way to Diamond Head but were buttressed by a beautiful beach park where many of the locals, mainly older men, played chess or checkers under the watchful eye of a statue of Duke Pana Kahanamoku, Mr Aloha, who had just recently passed, himself a great surfer, Olympic gold medal swimmer, and well respected international Ambassador of these Hawaiian Islands.  All of this would have to wait for another time as I was anxious to get settled in “Akaru-Hime.” Besides the hot and high afternoon sun was beginning to make its mark on my, as yet, acclimatized skin.

I walked back to “G” dock, down to G35 and waited alone contemplating as to my near and future prospects in this marine environment, an environment that was entirely foreign to me. Why on earth did they ask me to do this I thought? I know diddly-squat about sailboats. I don’t know Nigel at all, what he looked like, sounded like or thought like. Nothing in common I would think between the two of us.  And where the hell was he? He knew when I was arriving this day, this hour, this time. Not a great impression on me for sure. Of course my sister and brother in law had already left and were currently in Japan, I would have thought. But no note, no letter just some vague instruction as to where I should go on arriving here.

“You must be John”

A voice, a Brit voice. behind me. I turned, shielded my eyes somewhat and there coming down the dock, about 10 feet away, was this bronze coloured but scruffy looking dude coming toward me.

“Nigel?” I queried.

“Yup, in the flesh.”

He was carrying a small bag, groceries I imagined, but no groceries, some beer, a six pack of Oly’s and a bottle of scotch. We shook hands.

Nigel was scruffily dressed in faded knee length brown, I think, shorts cinched at the waist by a length of hemp.  I can say this because his short sleeved, rust coloured shirt was unbuttoned, open at the front exposing a hairy chest that was pidgeon like, with its tail flapping somewhat in the late afternoon breeze. He was wearing dark blue flip-flops that flip and flopped with every step. He walked right by me, climbed up and onto “Akaru-Hime,” jumped into the cockpit, put his things down then opened the hatch to the gangway and cabin below.

“C’mon onboard.” he said

I complied and shyly looked into the cabin below. I could see Nigel from his backside placing his bag onto the table top on the starboard side of the interior.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck and more fuck, for fuck’s sake.” He yelled at the bulkheads, at the top of his lungs, his arms flailing wildly. A small flock of gulls just across the narrow channel that separated “G” dock from “F” scattered, panicked by this cacophony of profanity coming out of nowhere it would seem. Their frantic cawing faded away.

“I left the god damned hatch closed. It’s a bloody fucking sauna in here.” as only a Brit could say, in understated understatements.

You don’t fuckin say I thought. Sure enough it was hot, and not just from the stale air under the cabin sole. In the next breath, Nigel turned, looked at me sheepishly, apologized for his outburst, grinned, and then giggled somewhat nervously and somewhat like an English school girl revealing a mouthful of yellow stained and ancient eye teeth and molars.

“Got to keep that forward hatch ajar and this hatch vent opened for cross circulation. Or it can get as hot as Hades in here in this heat.”  He paused. “Here, have a beer?”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll have her up there in the cockpit.  Wear this hat. You’ll need it until you get used to this heat.” Never heard of a beer referred to as a her!

“Its really camel piss this liquid shit. American piss. But it’s cold.”  Of course Brit bitter is best.

Oly’s, short for Olympia Beer, a Pacific Northwest favourite, along with Rainier Beer. Hawaii has to import everything.

We sat there in uncomfortable silence as Nigel didn’t know what to make of me and me of him. He took a huge slug from his can, looked at me, sighed, depressingly like, looked around at the surroundings.

“So Sid ‘s fucked off and left me with this pile of shit dung.”

“Akaru-Hime?” Dung? He always anglicized Sadao to Sid.

“Looks fine to me” I said.  “A bit weathered perhaps but it must be in fine shape.”

“She”

“What’s that?”

“She. A sailboat, no, all vessels on the water are she’s, not an it, for fuck sakes. Jesus H Christ. What the fuck have I gotten myself into” he proffered to no one, not to me, to the gulls perhaps, to his gods. They cawed in comical response!

He kind of looked at me with a grinning disdain. This was not going well. I felt intimidated by him to some degree.

“Sorry, she. She doesn’t look too bad, I mean, to me”

Nigel grunted, took a couple more long slugs, crushed the can and grabbed another.

“So John. What do you expect here? From me? Why are you here anyway?”

What could I say. “Pat and Sadao asked me to come and help out. Sail to Japan. Help you in doing it.  I jumped at the chance. Great opportunity I thought. Looking forward to it.”

Saying nothing Nigel looked at me with contempt. What is his problem? I thought to myself.

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SJ……Out

Sailing On Akaru-Hime…Part 3

From my new book, currently being written. Hope to have it completed by next summer. It is in rough draft. It has not been edited as yet.

Writing like this gives me a nice and welcome respite from the Covid 19 madness. I can escape to my own world of past adventures and excitement without a care in the world.

Her decks were wide enough to manoeuvre, to work the sails. Painted a sun bleached dull yellow with a non skid of flecked shells, hard on bare soles but stiff and skiff free to provide non slip protection when operating forward and outside the combed protection of the cockpit. Up in the bow, in the confines of the pulpit, were a few sail bags secured to the forestay, ready to go, to hoist as they say with only their hanks showing in a step like fashion. Lines emerged out of those bags leading aft outside of all the standing rigging like sinewy snakes meandering in unison back toward the winches. Of course I can say this now, describe “Akaru-Hime” as I am looking back on this, but at the time I didn’t have a clue, or a withering breadth of knowledge of the nautical world.

No sign of life, The cockpit was very large for a sailboat of this size. Deep and narrow with combed benches port and starboard. The engine controls were abutted up against the stbd side combing in the after section of the cockpit while a manually operated “gusher” pump was situated on its forward bulkhead. Turns out that this gusher pump had an attached steel handle topped with what resembled an eight ball. For leverage I guess. I would become very familiar with this piece of kit in due course.

The cockpit went as far back as it footprint would allow ending at a narrow covered transom. The transom, or stern section, had a protective white railing attached, not robust enough to save one from hurling overboard but more for utility and functionality as cordage, various sized red and black “Scotsmen” floats were attached. Some 5 gallon buckets, whisker poles, fishing poles were also in situ as if this part of Akaru-Hime was a catch-all for the rest of the boat. “Akaru-Hime” was squared off at the rear by a stern that dropped to the vertical for about a foot then angled itself forward at about a forty five degree angle toward the waterline. The stern’s aspect gave “Akaru-Hime” an air of sleekness, fine lines and speed. An illusion as it would turn out. Of course it was impossible to see how the bottom faired as the deep bluish green shades of surface water obscured visibility other than a few inches below the boot topping. The boot topping, that narrow four inch wide black painted strip that followed the waterline of “Akaru-Hime” from bow to stern and separated her from the living and the dead. It provided an aspect that seemed to frame “Akaru-Hime” synergistically.

The hatch to the gangway was locked so I couldn’t go below. This was taboo of course without prior permission, no matter that I was deemed crew. If you want to get off on the wrong foot with any skipper or make a poor first impression just climb aboard without permission to come aboard. This I knew.

I threw my kitbag into the cockpit and left it there. I wasn’t worried about somebody stealing it for there was nothing of value in there except for a 35mm camera, which I had with me, on me. No, if someone wanted my stinky stuff they were welcomed to it. I then proceeded to explore my surroundings. “G” dock, “Akaru-Hime’s” main street was very long with finger floats abutting both sides of the main dock. Probably up to 100 boats on this dock alone. And “G” was followed by “H” and “J”, no “I” apparently, preceded by “A” through “F”. Unbelievable!  An entirely different world than what I had been used to or even imagined: somewhat of a parallel universe to the tourist district and peons of the Waikiki district of Oahu.

The Ala Wai harbour, accompanying marina and Ala Moana Yacht Club were huge. Hundreds of yachts, of various sizes and shapes: Sloops, Cutters, Ketches and Yawls. Double Enders, where the bow and stern have the same pointed aspect, Tahiti Ketches, Catamarans, and Trimarans. They were all here. No power boats. They were all berthed separately across the main channel near the Ala Moana Park. I guess they wanted to keep the stink-potters separated from the true believers.

I left G dock, walked a way over through a parking lot that abutted a park area, then a small landlocked lagoon. Not really a lagoon as it was landlocked but it was known as the Ilikai Lagoon, part and parcel of the Ilikai hotel – a local landmark as it turned out and I do recall its centrally located exterior elevator that took one from the hotel’s lobby to the top of the “I”, all the while allowing one to see the calming beauty and blue turquoise pastels are dark inshore fluid shadows or reefs of the Pacific Ocean, the Ala Wai, harbour the Ala Moana Yacht club and the like. This exterior run was also made famous by the Jack Lord version of Hawaii “book-em-Danel” 5 Oh.

The Ilikai was just many of a long line of Waikiki luxurious beachfront hotels that stretched from the Ala Moana Yacht club, skirting their way as fringes of the beach only stopping its progression by the iconic Diamond Head volcanic caldera. Luckily, not active but extinct, the sides of which was covered from its base about a third of its elevation in tropical green hues of a lush carpet like vegetation blanket, like moss, then abruptly transitions to that easily recognizable dark brown blackish coloured and bare volcanic rock that permeate the many volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The rock sides were not smooth but interspersed it seemed with symmetrical lines or cracks, seams and what appeared to be vertically oriented valleys that all too apparent on many of the mountain ranges and rock formations on these volcanic Hawaiian Islands and those other mountainous gems of the South Pacific. It appeared as if those seams were hardened rivers and streams of lava slides or floes of long ago.  On its crown you could just make out the diamond like cluster of rock cuts at the leading edge of this ancient rock.

Cool.

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