Tag: Hawaii

Ala Moana

Finished my fourth book. It is now out for editing and formatting for publishing. I do not have a cover design as yet either.

Excerpt:

Ala Moana Yacht Club, Ala Moana District, Waikiki

After a few days I was beginning to feel acclimatized. I did have some serious sunburn on my legs and arms but that pain was easing some. I was also getting used to the confines of “Red Jewel”, my home for the foreseeable future. Yet Nigel, my mentor in all of this, was very illusive. The few times that I did see him he paid little attention to me, as if I was some sort of albatross hanging about the neck of the boat. No matter.

I spent most of my time exploring things. The yacht club, Ilikai hotel, the lagoon and its grounds. The hotel had a broad open lobby. A cross breeze that was constant flew in across the open spaces. It was at once caressing and soothing with its aura of tropical heaven, at least to the tourists who stayed there.

“Aah, isn’t this is just heaven George? Well, isn’t it George?” I heard a couple say when entering the lobby from the outside, especially on those oppressive hot Hawaiian afternoons. Of course George was non plussed about his wife’s remarks. Probably thinking about golf or a cool one, as he was in a sweat. And on those rare occasions when it became too cool for comfort they had these massive sliding glass doors that could be set in place very quickly. All at once the lobby resembled an enclosed yet broad and open tomb but its protection from the elements when the temperature dropped was a welcomed respite.

I loved going to the Ilikai to have a morning coffee on its expansive outdoor patio. It made me feel important and gave me a sense of well being. Not belonging mind you as I had yet to make any friends here. Nigel was anything to me but a social companion. Sooner or later he is going to have to include me into his space and share his personal thoughts I thought, as we will be spending considerable time together – in close quarters. But that would come later. For now I allowed myself to fall into the tropical nuances of island life. It was grand to a young fellow like me. Not a single care in the world. No prospects, as my dear mother loved to remind me. Perhaps, but no anxiety either. It was a minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day life. Thus far I loved it.

It was July. I was told by Nigel that we would not be leaving until January at the earliest. Briefly he said as we had to ensure the storm season was behind us. He had this massive book that was a compendium of tides, seas, winds and storms – cyclones and typhoons in this neck of the woods. It was environmental historical atmospheric precedence, or weather, all over the central and North Pacific. Hurricanes were a Caribbean trait. Out here in the grand Pacific we had typhoons. No matter how you cut it a cyclone was a cyclone and extremely dangerous for small craft. And a thirty five foot sailboat such as “Red Jewel” was considered a very small craft. Interestingly, in my spare time, of which I had loads to spare, I would study that book because in some instances it held my life in its bounded, bindered hands. I handled it with subdued reverence, like a sailor’s bible. It was probably best to have some idea of the dangers ahead of us, I thought. So much to learn. So little time, ha, but I had lots.

After about a week I was beginning to find my way and getting into a routine. In the mornings I loved to swim across the Ilikai lagoon before proceeding up and onto the Ilikai’s outdoor patio. The lagoon was only about 400 yards across, if that. It had this small island in the middle of it that lit up at night. During the day, and night, a fountain would appear and erupt like an aquatic spirit of the islands, a Namaka.

I was becoming familiar with the hotel staff, even though I only ordered coffee. That and about three cigarettes made my morning pre-day routine. As anyone who smokes will tell you there is nothing better in the morning than coffee and smokes. Food? Forget it. From there it was back to the boat to pick up my doby[1] and off to the club’s heads and wash places. And after my proverbial “S” quad[2] I would head up to the restaurant for another coffee, a few more smokes and a bit of chin music with Keith who was there most every morning. I never saw Nigel nor did I socialize with him in any form. When he did return to the boat in the late evening he would harrumph me, curse Sadao, damn his current state in life then fall asleep in the forward “V” berth under the auspices of a few scotch. Normally I was half asleep at this time.

“We’re leaving tomorrow.” Nigel announced one morning. “Kauai.”

“Kauai? What is that?” I asked.

Nigel threw me a funny look. “Kauai is the Garden Isle in the Hawaiian chain” he said. “A beautiful place. The northern most penultimate island of the Hawaiian archipelago.”

“Oh…wow,” was about all I could muster in return. And what was a penultimate? Brit slang no doubt…perhaps. I will have to look that one up.

“And a couple of girls will be joining us.” He added. This will be a good famil sail for you.”

“Can’t wait.” I answered. I was both nervous and excited. And a couple of girls? And with that he left.

“Kauai, Kauai, Kauai.” I thought to myself. Spelt funny and pronounced…”Caw-why” or “Caw-why-ee.” I looked for it on the chart. Regular shape. Almost perfectly round except for a bulge to the west that reminded me of the profile of a Pit Bull. Names like Pali, Waimea, Nawiliwili, Lihue…hey… Hanalei, from Puff the Magic Dragon fame. All words that I could not really pronounce properly as yet. Not until I became more familiar with the Hawaiian language. Two things of note on Kauai are Kauai’s Waimea (Why-May-Ah) Canyon, which is known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific while the peak of Wai-ale-ale (Why-Ah-Lay-Ah-Lay) at over 5,000 feet is considered one of the wettest places on earth with over 373 inches of rainfall per year. That is thirty one feet. A lot of rain. Don’t forget your “slicker” when you visit this place, which is perennially set in a cloud.

[1] Mariner’s slang for male toiletries

[2] Shit, shower, shave and shampoo – but not necessarily in that order.

This was a big hit in 1973, when I lived at the Ala Moana Yacht Club:

SJ…Out

The More Things Change….

Designated non vaccinated seating area. And, if you are a person of colour…,standing room only at the back of the boat.

And here I thought that we as a society have come a long way since the 1960’s civil rights movement…guess not.

And the left are not crazy??

According to the Biden administration women are “birth givers” and men are “penis havers” Insanity and bad English go hand in hand with the penis havers – and the Biden administration.

Need a manicure? There’s now a robot for that.

In under 10 minutes and for less than $10, you can get a “Clockwork Minicure” — the perfect manicure, done by a robot.

PHOTO: All Clockwork services are performed by a robot rather than a human.

And after that a Clockwork Orange hairdo:

See the source image

And another one bites the dust. Canada’s founding father:

Sir John A. Macdonald statue removed from Kingston’s City Park

a person standing next to a treeHe was Conservative

But…but…What about Laurier? Nope, he is a liberal and the spiritual icon of the Liberal Party of Canada. Saint Laurier was responsible for the Chinese Head Tax and an ardent supporter of Residential Schools. And what about Pierre Trudeau? In 1970 he said this in a speech given in Vancouver with respect to the government’s “White Paper” on indigenous matters: “We can’t recognize aboriginal rights because no society can be built on historical ‘might-have-beens.'”

But Macdonald is the racist of the woodpile.

Cancel Canada Day in Victoria, BC. Soon to be cancelled: British Columbia, Victoria, Vancouver. Wait for it. It is coming. Under our current PM there is a real danger Canada will no longer exist as a unified country. The USA is toast as well. All because of leftist policies….sad.

Climate Hurricane Agnes: Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania

a group of people walking on a city street

Climate Change 1900: The Great Galveston hurricane, known regionally as the Great Storm of 1900,was the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. Yes Virginia, worse than Katrina.

A look back at the devastating 1900 Galveston hurricane ...

Climate Change: Nothing new.

Great Canadian band of the 1970s. Big hit when I lived in Hawaii in 1973/74.

Have a nice weekend. Read ya Monday.

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.

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

 

 

 

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 Don’t Have A Title Yet…Part 4

If you have any ideas for a title to this latest story let me know through the comments…thanks.

 

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 landing.

“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 looking but scruffy looking dude coming toward me.

“Nigel?” I queried.

“Yup, in the flesh.”

He was carying 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 onto Krofune, 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. 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!

“It’s really camel piss this liquid shit. But its cold.”

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.

A classic song by a classic lass

SJ……Out