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.

Cool.

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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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Sailing On Akara-Hime…Part 2

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.

“Akaru-Hime” had had a mad capped crew on that trek. My brother-in-law, Sid, the owner;  a Brit, who was professional sailor named Nigel, hired by Sid for his professional nautical acumen; Nigel’s useless tit of a girlfriend, and a couple of other hangers on who knew nothing about sailing but much about the stoner life. Useless! And, to make matters worse, Sid suffered from chronic case of sea sickness. And while he loved sailing dearly and always dreamed of taking “Akaru-Hime” home to Japan, all of his sailing experience to date had been in relatively sheltered waters. The open Pacific was much less welcoming and forgiving for someone like Sid who was prone to the sea malady and was always in a constant state of heaving. Alas for Sid, the dream of sailing to Japan was not to be.  He decided at Honolulu to call it quits. Sad given that the English translation for “Akaru-Hime” (a-ka-roo-hee-ma) being “Bright Princess” the Japanese patroness of sailors, born of a red jewel…sad indeed.

Most sailors do get sea sick. If they say that they don’t they’re bullshitting. But most sailors get over the motions sickness fairly quickly and adjust and adapt to the fluid environment.  They get their sea legs. But some, like Sid, never get over it. So it was that Sid had to abandon this venture. His vision of coming home like some prodigal sailor’s son came crashing down on him like a tsunami drowning his dream. He asked Nigel to carry on with “Akaru-Hime” from Hawaii, and to sail her to her new home in Nagoya Japan.

Tits had left and the other two stoners flew back to CONUS[1] – literally and figuratively.

And that’s where I came in. Nigel and I would take Akaru-Hime to Japan!

“Hello.” What does one say when one comes calling at a sailboat? ”

“Ahoy there?” That sounds too cartoonish, like Popeye to Olive Oil.

“Anyone home? Onboard?” Nigel?? I knew his name.

Nothing. Silence except for a slight clanking sound coming from a loose halyard somewhere on some boat somewhere in the harbour and the relentless caw of the seagulls. Nothing. I was beginning to sweat in the mid afternoon sun. There was no breeze to speak of, no cool northeast trade-wind that I had read and heard so much about.

It was bright, blindingly so. The same acuity sensation one gets when exiting a dark movie theatre on a hot summer’s afternoon. I made a note to myself to get shades as soon as possible.

Dropping my kit bag into “Akaru-Hime’s” cockpit I decide to have a look at what will be my home for the next few months, my foreseeable future. From the perspective of the G35 finger float, on which “Akaru-Hime” was tied, I took a good look at her from end to end or stem (bow) to stern. She was, in the vernacular, a sloop rig. That is she was equipped with a foresail, or a sail properly positioned when raised ahead of the mast, then a mainsail, the main propulsion, providing the primary source of horsepower for the boat to move through the water. That sail’s foot or bottom portion of the triangular shape was attached to a boom, along a track that went from the mast to an end cleat, of a thingamajig contraption on the end portion of the boom. The boom itself was connected to the mast via a universal joint such that the boom could move from side to side and up and down. A topping lift, or a line attacked to the end of the boom then running up to the top of the mast, parallel to the backstay, or metal line that was connected to the top of the mast and a chain plate at the transom or stern, rear end of the boat, held the boom horizontal, about 6 feet off the deck of “Akaru-Hime’s” cockpit. The forward, or leading edge of the mainsail, the luff, was down as was the trailing edge, of the mainsail, or the leech, stuffed in a seaman-like folds to the boom and protected from the sun with a mainsail cover.

[1] Continental United States

 

 Check out my other books by clicking on the links at the top of the page.

SJ…Out

Sailing On Akura-Hime…Part 1

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.

Chapter One

21.30485° N, -157.85776° E

Ala Moana Yacht Club, Ala Moana District, Waikiki

I arrived in Honolulu early afternoon, after a 10 hour flight from Chicago. Clearing immigration and customs I ventured out to the arrival promenade. It was a broad and wide boulevard that was sheltered by a translucent canopy of tropical plants and banyan -like ferns that dropped away from the hot and high noon tropical sun. Immediately I sensed from my surroundings that I was awash in the tropical greens, blues and turquoise hues of this tropical isle. The air smelled of a sweet scented and natural perfume and nectar while a warm tropical breeze seemed to embrace the psyche. You could almost feel the tension of a hard northern winter ease itself out of every pore of your body.

Calling a cab I travelled down the Nimitz Highway. Only in America – an eight lane highway in the middle of paradise, through Honolulu, the waterfront, harbour, Aloha Tower, Ala Moana district with its large seaside park and huge but modern outdoor mall then into the concrete canyons of the Waikiki tourist district with its wide Kalakauwa Boulevard, Sky-scraping hotels, vistas, gaudy bars, tacky shops, pizza joints and squawker’s dens with Diamond Head in the far background maintaining its everlasting watch over Waikiki. It was all too surreal for someone like me who had just arrived from the cold arctic wasteland of the Great White North in a way among the towering palms, lagoon and sand of Waikiki.

Turning suddenly into a parking lot adjacent to the Ilikai hotel we came to a stop. This was it. I paid the fare, got out and surveyed my surroundings. A yacht harbour, the Ala Wai, with its accompanying Ala Moana Yacht Club.

“Akaru-Hime” lay at berth G35 at the Ala Moana Yacht Club, Waikiki, Honolulu Hawaii in the Ala Wai Harbour. She seemed somewhat tired looking from her long and laborious 19 day jaunt from Vancouver to Oaha. Her 35 foot wooden frame and lines of stripped mahogany clinkered planks, painted white, seemed worn and somewhat riddled through with expansion cracks, flaking paint, opened joints and waterlogged seams. She seemed to me to lay there at G35 in a forlorn, abandoned, and unpretentious state, in somewhat of a sad and lonely profile, feeling out of place among the 40, 50, and 60 foot sailing yachts of the Ala Wei Harbour and Yacht Club. Those sleek, modern and expensive yachts seemed to overpower and intimidate “Akaru-Hime” as she lay there unattended in her 35 foot berth.  It was as if that 1900 nautical mile sail from Vancouver had been but a bad dream robbing her and draining her of all of her energy and power. She looked tired, forlorn and beat.

 

Check out my other books by clicking on the links at the top of the page:

 

PS: There is no scientific evidence out there that masks prevent the spread of Covid 19. It is all speculative and anecdotal brought on by our so called experts because they have to be seen as doing something. We have been all wearing masks for some time now yet the incidences are still going up. Why?

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/18/major-study-finds-masks-dont-reduce-covid-19-infection-rates/

What would happen if we all just stopped wearing a mask? Period.

SJ……….Out

I Am Concerned.

 Click on the links above to learn more about these books.

It’s a start:

A leaked Feb. 1 memo from Laurentian University president Robert Haché said it took the step of the CCAA filing because “despite Laurentian’s best efforts, the university has not been able to achieve the type of cost-cutting and restructuring measures to position it for future success outside of this type of formal proceeding.

Laurentian offers 28 gender studies courses, so maybe that will pull them out of the financial fire. Or that other job worthy degree in anthropology – or philosophy…eh Ted?

Give me a break!

A veteran comedy troupe out of Toronto tried the virtue signaling route following the rise of Black Lives Matter.

When that failed to solve racism in the Great White North, The Sketchersons took extreme measures. The long-running Canadian group canceled itself before the woke mob could do it for them.

The Toronto-based group shared the grim news on social media late last month. The post revealed why its initial embrace of BLM proved insufficient, and how it forced them to crunch the numbers on its diverse lineup.

Or lack of a diverse lineup, as they saw it.

Perhaps…just maybe… they sucked……..just saying that’s all.

Readers unmoved by wokeness may be inclined to point out that a way to overcome “alienation” – here, it seems, a euphemism for ignorance – is via students learning things, perhaps even words.

These woke guys and gals would love the Navy – acronym city. I know I once wrote a sentence with about eight acronyms in it. Maritime jargon. The scary thing about that was that all of my mates understood exactly what I was saying with those words…yikes.

“I decided to resign my position to spend more time with my family”

Timing is everything:

Interesting that this guy retired just a few months before this story of alleged misbehavior with female subordinates came out…yeah right.

I don’t trust any male whose name is Vance…or Lance…or Myles for that matter:

Chief of Defence Staff Adm. Art McDonald says the military will investigate allegations of inappropriate behaviour by former Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jonathan Vance.

Wow. Yes siree, no siree, your bags now full of shyte soiree. Enjoy that pension.

It comes after exclusive reporting by Global News into allegations that Vance engaged in inappropriate behaviour with two female subordinates, including an alleged intimate relationship with a subordinate while he was in the top post.

Typical Liberal speak remarks by the Minister of National Defence, after this story broke? “I am concerned.” I can tell you  that this guy knew about this months ago, hence the retirement announcement a few months back.

Wonder what her name is. Gladys perhaps?

Great song from 1971

SJ….Out