boats Archives - Page 2 of 2 - bc-bog-trotter.com

QUIET

Monday morning. It’s tough waking up. The dog is curled into the crook of my arm snoring softly. There is the occasional drip of water on the deck. It is so quiet! Then comes the clatter of my Pratt & Whitney morning alarm. The Beaver float plane moored just past my boat is fired up to warm the engine in anticipation of the day’s flying ahead. I resolve to hit the deck as soon as I hear it start up the second time. This means the passengers and freight are aboard and the flight is leaving the dock, but this morning there is only quiet.

I finally get up to see that we are fog-bound. All is calm. A kingfisher sprints past, its chattering flight pierces the calm for a moment. Fog drifts through the tree tops and slowly burns away to reveal the sun climbing above a cloud-mottled golden sky. The flight is still bound by the fog lying across the Strait and blanketing its destination in the Fraser River. The pilot uses his time to scrub the airplane. Passengers caught up in the thrust of their day pace the docks, texting messages or gesticulating with cell phones jammed to their ears. There are no float planes droning overhead. Slowly the sounds of busyness pervade the sanctity and the day moves forward. The sun begins to heat the bay, steam rises languidly from all the damp surfaces.

In my last few blogs I have used a derogatory tone in describing certain tourist yachters who haunt the docks during the summer season. I grudgingly admit that it is their dollars which provide the foundation for this facility where I live. They are necessary to my existence here, like it or not. They are also a microcosm of a society, of which I am part, whose values are alienating me.

There are, thank the Gods, other folks. ‘Native Girl’ is living evidence that there is indeed another breed of character on the docks. Across the slip from me, my neighbour boat ‘Native Girl’ rests awaiting the day’s industry. The owners are a younger generation than mine yet they hold a passion for a way of life built around the ancient art of maintaining wooden boats and building new ones. They respect traditional nautical values and their enthusiasm for the art of maritime skills and perspectives is a hope in itself. Jon and Ryan are the proper owners for ‘Native Girl’. They live aboard her as their careers allow. Together the couple are methodically maintaining and restoring their historic vessel to her former glory.

This boat has a special place in my heart. I once missed buying her by two hours; it just wasn’t meant to be. I was an acquaintance of Allen Farrell, the designer and builder of ‘Native Girl’. He and I were friends as were hundreds of others who knew him and his wife Sherry. All I’ll say here is that they were the only real hippies I have ever known. They didn’t talk about it, they lived it. Whether it was sustainable living, peace and love or thinking green, they were role models. I miss them both, dearly. I ache for the idea of them and their living proof that financial abundance has nothing to do with real wealth. Allen once told me that true wealth was knowing how little you need and realizing how free that left you. As I write I look around inside the expanse of this boat and wonder what it is that I truly need. What the hell has driven me from one fine boat to the next and then the next? The first one could have taken me anywhere in the world I wanted to go. Then I remember how Allen also told me that a boat needs to be big enough for everyone aboard to have their own “Pouting space.” He was a wise man.

There are several other folks dedicated to a lifestyle of eating, breathing and sleeping wooden boats and following diverse personal disciplines in the pursuit of their common passion. There are some wonderful examples of boats, big and small, built and rebuilt here in Silva Bay and various other settings around Gabriola Island. I’m glad to be in their company, even though I’m a fibreglass boat kind of guy; ‘Classic Plastic’ is my niche.

So then, plan B. As the window closes on being able to take the boat south this fall I know I will not be able to endure another long dark, wet, winter. I hear folks talking about winter vacation plans and my body begins to ache in dread of being left behind. You can tell me all you want about adjusting my attitude but I can tell you we all have a tangible physical reaction to the long darkness of winter. It is a primal thing and some of us are more sensitive to it than others. I’ve spent a lot of my life working like a mule at sea and in the woods so often, it seems, in the dark. It didn’t bother me then but I’m not nineteen anymore so I while I respect the bears and other hibernating creatures I’ll try migration to sunnier latitudes for a while. This old flower needs a regular dose of UV rays and that demand seems to increase with the passing years.

It seemed the gods put a practical solution right in my path. These creaky bones don’t like lying on the ground overnight anymore so how about a compromise? I’ve been contemplating small holiday trailers for a while. They seemed too awkward to tow to places I like to go. Ones I could afford were not in good condition. Tent trailers were overpriced and didn’t really suit my needs. The wobbling tin-foil condos lurching down the highway behind a monstrous diesel pickup truck appear to me to be the antithesis of easy rider freedom.

Well now, suddenly I have a mobile bed and a light utility trailer. I drove around a corner on Gabriola and there it was with a for sale sign, exactly perfect for my needs. Of course, the right thing always shows up when you’re dead broke so I had to solicit help from my wife. Thank you Jill.

I now own a beautiful tear drop trailer. It is home-built and very well put together. Clad in a sturdy sheet of aluminium it is an essentially a bed on wheels with room inside for a comfortable double berth. The back of the trailer hinges up to form an open-air roof over a tiny galley area. It is very light and easy to tow with enough ground clearance to tow behind my little 4×4 truck into the back lands of Baha or wherever I have an urge to go. It can also double as a utility trailer for hauling my tools around. It might even fit in a large inflatable boat.

Uh huh!

What’s this got to do with the sailing dream? The boat and my finances aren’t ready to ‘Do South’ this fall but if I camp along the way with my sleepy-time bubble I can hopefully afford to get away for a while during the middle of the coming winter. I can leave the rig anywhere I want or even play leap-frog with the boat as I move down the coast. Then I’ll have access to all of the country inland from the beach. There is plenty more to Mexico and all those other places south than just their coastline.

Two more days and it is officially autumn. The fleet of white plastic boats is gone. Only a few committed yachters visit the marina. The little birds have flown south, the daylight is noticeably less each day, the morning dew lingers until noon and in the late afternoon it settles again. Painting brightwork is now an urgent order of business. I’m two weeks short of the deadline for sailing away. It is not going to happen this year but life should be an adventure so we’ll find a creative way of dealing with winter and all its dark gremlins.

One of the secrets to good writing is to quit before the reader does. My first blog, almost a year ago already, was a commitment to go sailing and indulge a very long-lived dream. It would be very easy at this point to produce big fat excuses and pack it all in for an existence in front of the television.

That won’t happen. I owe it to my readers, myself and my wife, (Whom I have tortured with this passion for decades.) The dream is alive, I’ll blog on. One day soon I’ll be able to post a photo in a blog of clear, warm green water surging through the scuppers with a palm-fringed shoreline in the background. I hope you’ll be there with me; it is going to be a grand day. In the meantime, the journey continues one stumbling step at a time.

By the way, one of the reasons I ended up with this boat is that it has an extra double bunk in a separate cabin. There are two other comfy bunks and lots of room topside to sleep under the stars in southern climates. Guests are welcome, especially….. if they can help defray costs and want to enjoy a unique, inexpensive vacation. Think about it. The ‘Seafire’ Hotel will be opening soon somewhere down there. See ya in the movies!

DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE OF THOUGHT

Huh?

…Well that’s what I first thought when I read the title back. What the hell does this have to do with a blog about realizing a dream against all odds? Specifically, getting the boat I’m sitting in at this moment out of here and sailing south within the next three months.

To paraphrase something Einstein said, you’ll never be able to solve a problem by using the same thinking that created it in the first place. And…the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over always expecting a new result. I guess I know where I am.

I’m reading a book loaned to me which I’m finding timely to my situation and it’s quite inspiring: ‘Ship Of Gold In The Deep Blue Sea’ by Gary Kinder. The title is a bit lugubrious and probably some editor’s idea of a commercially viable handle that does no justice to a very absorbing read. It is about the sinking and ultimate finding of a gold-laden ship, the ‘S.S.Central America’. One of the central characters is obsessed with process and linear thinking. He lives with a conviction that the only things impossible are those which we think are impossible. It is about how the quest for one solution leads to other discoveries and solutions. That happens in the divergence and convergence of conversation and thought about one specific problem. New possibilities arise out of the quest for a single solution.

An anecdote is provided about a young man from Ohio who was deeply inspired by the accounts of a sea captain about his travels in the Amazon jungle. Highly motivated by that account he decides to go to Brazil and duplicate the adventure. Travelling by boat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers he arrives finally in New Orleans to discover that no ships ever sail from there to Brazil. He has, however, experienced a rich life on the great rivers where he often heard the boatman’s sounding cry of “mark twain”. Samuel Clemens becomes one of America’s most beloved writers and the world becomes a better place because of a simple dead end. Divergence becomes a happy new convergence.

I’ve been trying to make sense of my sojourn in Silva Bay. Why did the gods put me here? I held the job which brought me here for the best part of three and a half years. I have made some wonderful friends, learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed the location and its archipelago of small islands. However, I’ve made only a survival income, spent a lot of dark and lonely nights on one boat or another, parted with my beloved ‘Pax’ which was ready to sail away, started yet another refit and am left pondering what I’m really doing here; especially during the apex of summer with grand weather and all these gringo boaters around the marina trying to have ‘Fun’. I thought I’d simply let the universe unfold as it will and discover the big reason why I’m here but no epiphanies yet. I am anxious to move on.

I’ve recently been in touch with a long-lost cousin who used the term “Cognitive remodelling”. I love the linguistics of that but frankly I think I already do too much of that and should perhaps apply a little more “Kinetic remodelling” and get this damned old boat out of here. So I’m tackling the project I’ve been dreading most. It began in January when I upgraded the galley counter and cupboards. I fitted a new water heater in a dead space there and have now decided it needs to be relocated lower. One of its heat sources is the engine and I thoughtlessly installed the heater at too high a level for the engine coolant to flow correctly. I may as well change it now. Damn my teeth for the oversight! So, lower it ten inches,;sounds easy right? It proved to be a day’s work and seemed to be rather like trying to perform heart surgery through the rectum.

The old water heater was stored in a cavernous storage locker beneath the bunk of the guest cabin. There is also a large sewage holding tank and an amazing snot-garble of plumbing, wiring and furnace ducting. It is a sad waste of much-needed stowage. The settees in the main cabin are on top of two monstrous fuel tanks. There is nothing other than chart storage there so it is imperative that I have as much space for stores elsewhere. The next mega-project begins.

First the guest bunk-junk moves onto the forward cabin bunk. Hopefully it will all end up neatly stowed in the new storage space or in the dumpster if I don’t have a valid use for it. I’ll sleep, for the time being, on one of the settees in the main cabin. Those have new foam cushions and I’ve redesigned and built new seat-backs to hinge up and allow for some comfortable snoozing space. Next the old mattress from the guest bunk goes. God! It reeks of three decades of fermented human presence, my imagination decides that’s it is just spilled wine but I don’t know who it’s been through before permeating the mattress. I’m stunned that I have lived with this disgusting element for so long. Out, out foul demons! Then it’s dunging out the space below the bunk area and realizing how poorly it was utilized. The aged water heater, rusted and leaking, is torn out. It’s a miracle that it still worked. There’s a hodge-podge of plumbing and redundant pumps. Each line needs to be traced, removed and relocated.

But next, more foul demons. I decided it was propitious to remove the old holding tank. I like to get the worst out of the way as soon as possible. I discovered that some rocket-scientist installed the pump-out fitting almost a third of the way from the bottom of this twenty-five gallon tank. That means that only two-thirds of the tank was ever usable and the bottom third was full of a very ripe sediment. (The boat is thirty years old, so…?) Of course, the tank had to be slid out of it’s fastenings, (Every screw-head is filled with paint) then wriggled upright so the sawn-off fittings were on the top side. Next, the tank, one third full of fecal delight, had to be manhandled out of the boat without spilling anything. I hugged that stinky, sloshing puppy as if my life depended on it. It was 30 degrees Celsius outside but it felt cool when I finally landed the tank on the dock. The folks going by to the float-plane passed quickly. The dog reappeared an hour later.

Now I can start putting it all back together The fun-part! Pressure water system first. Remember divergence and convergence. Well this too shall pass and it should be remembered that it’s all about the romance of the sea.

THE SHIP’S SPIDER

Superstitions of the sea. That’s a subject often drowned in copious amounts of alcoholic beverage and sceptical conversation. Men don’t easily admit they hold with various supersticions, but nearly every sailor has developed their own fears and respects.

Don’t begin a voyage on Friday. Never open or store a container of anything upside down. Don’t whistle in the wheelhouse. Every one knows about Murphy’s Law and how the worst possible scenario is what one should expect. My intimate and dark relationship with Murphy has taught me that monster is probably female. She’s far too devious to be male! Personally, I’ve come to suspect any boat with a hull painted green or blue and I can tell you vehemently to avoid any boat that comes with shag carpeting. There’s a practical reason for that one; but then most superstitions have a tangible origin.

As a marine mechanic I’ve developed a habit of flipping some small shiny object overboard, a stainless steel nut or screw is adequate. Much better to offer a small sacrifice to the old man of the deep than give up a treasured wrench or a pair of eye glasses or a cell phone. Kill a spider and make it rain.

Actually I’ve come to value the presence of spiders aboard as a good omen! It can be argued that with enough flies aboard to attract predators arachnids might be a bad sign but I reckon that the wiley insect will not be found aboard any vessel about to sink or burn. I am fascinated by the spider’s incredible tenacity and engineering skills. I’ve known webs in the rigging to withstand full gales. If damaged or destroyed a spider web is repaired promptly. I’ve seen their silk spun between two masts and in other places ridiculously impossible. Despite their capacity for massive industry, spiders also have incredible stealth and amazing patience.

There are nasty ones, best avoided, and even some of the tiniest spiders have formidable venom in their bite. Once a backwoods boy who could shoot the brains out of anything without remorse, I now find myself trying to move spiders and other innocent creatures from situations dangerous to them or someone else. I hope that an evolving respect for life is positive growth and that my little friends hold a reciprocal respect.

Speaking of intrepid tenacity I’ll dedicate the rest of this blog to two dear and inspiring friends. Two years ago, through friends of friends, Rodger and Ali first came to Silva Bay aboard their boat ‘Betty Mc’, registered to the Port of Melbourne, Australia. This vessel was built in Tasmania as a lobster boat. (Or, as pronounced in Aus: “Crybote”) Rodger explained that crayfishing is often done in the surf and so the boats must be built to withstand the occasional bash on the rocks. ‘Betty Mc’ certainly is. She’s a floating bomb shelter! The boat still has a livewell and could be put back to work fishing with little effort. Built of exotic timber like “Red shaggy Bark” and “Celery Top” she’ll outlive us all despite the many miles that have passed beneath her keel. With amenities like a head spurned, ( No-one has ever had to unclog a bucket!) the boat is filled with tools, spare parts and materials for repairs, extra outboards and even a motorcycle. She’s not a gaudy girl but has an immaculate engine room, snug accomodation, is wired beautifully and practically, and has an interior which is elegantly simple and practical. Her wheelhouse is clearly thought out by a seasoned mariner and holds the boat’s single luxury, a stainless steel expresso machine handy to the helm! ‘Betty Mc’ carries fuel enough for a three-thousand mile range and has a sailing rig to help her get there eventually, no matter what.

Her rugged good looks stand her out from the crowd to the eye of the seasoned mariner yet she is generally unnoticed by weekend warriors and other Tupperware pirates. Perfect! After working for a living for decades, she was refitted by Rodger and Ali and has since voyaged northward through the South Pacific to Japan then on to the Aleutian Islands and Alaska and southward to Silva Bay. Last year she returned to Alaska for the summer and so far this year has gunkholed down into the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound more miles than most yachts travel in years.

Boats have been described as the ultimate work of man; a marriage of function to perform specific work and commerce while there is also an artful form of infinite variety and beauty. A proper vessel is pleasing to the eye from angles. ‘Betty Mc’ is a perfect example. Previous to acquiring ‘Betty Mc’, Rodger and Ali cruised extensively by sail ‘Down under’ and have also travelled an enviable number of places overland Their adventures are a massive achievement by any standard and they’re definitely not over yet.

Last fall the intrepid pair bought a surplus Canadian Coast Guard vessel at auction for a bargain price. ‘Wave’ is under thirty feet in length, is built ruggedly of aluminum and powered by a screaming Detroit diesel. She once served as a support vessel for the CCG Cutter ‘John P Tulley’. Returning from a winter break in Australia, Rodger and Ali have worked very long hours for the past months to refit and prepare her for their new odyssey. They left today.

They are taking ‘Wave’ to Sidney where they’ll load her onto a truck for the long haul to Hay River, in the Northwest Territories. There, the boat will be launched on the Southern shore of Great Slave Lake. They’ll travel northward over a thousand miles downstream on the MacKenzie River to Tuktoyaktuk and then onward in a personal exploration of the Arctic and the Northwest Passage. When winter sets in (Usually sometime in September) they’ll haul her up on a safe beach and come back to her next spring. Who knows how many years they will be at that adventure! I have the honour of baby-sitting Betty Mc while they’re away from her and I look forward to learning the plans for her next jaunt; I’ve heard then mentioning Europe and Scandinavia.

What intrigues me most about Rodger and Ali is their personality. I say that singularly because that is how they function, as a single unit, a perfect balance of ying and yang. Theirs is a marriage where one plus one equals much more than two. They are quiet and unassumming while being warm and charming at all times despite the long weary hours that they often work shoulder to shoulder. It took a long time for me to learn of their high academic standing and then not from them; they are very humble. I’ve never heard them brag about anything though they’ve certainly earned the right. These two are an absolute antithesis from the stereotyped Australian who projects a wannabe Crocodile Dundee image and says things like “Brace yourself Sheila!” They prefer living as simply as possible without frills and seem to always be caught within the joy of the moment. This team constantly inspire me. Yes, I envy them. I feel quite humble to count myself among the many friendships they must cultivate everywhere they go. I wish them many spiders!

NOTE: If you are interested, there is an excellent article online about Betty Mac’s epic voyage up from Tasmania to Alaska. Google up: Rodger Grayson Betty Mc. (The url is far too long to post here as a link.) Look for the heading, Sturdy Workboats. This is a New Zealand periodical dedicated to real boats.

Things That Make You Say HUH?

Blog sites attract quite a bit of spam….. (And I’m so old that I remember when spam was something you ate.) It was disgusting stuff!

Anyway I regularly check and delete spam, sometimes pausing to read some of the gibberish. Now this one caught my attention and I’m trying to make sense of it.

“CAUTION: If you have a pet bird, it may be wise to avoid non-stick coatings.”

The first image that those words brought to mind was of a live canary stuck to a frying pan in a slather of congealed bacon fat. Then I considered an all-night blues bar called the ‘Sticky Parrot’. Now I wonder if it’s not a coded message from MI5 or perhaps CSIS warning about the perils of Asian funding in regard to the Fiscal Wall or perhaps…. perhaps it has something to do with the rising cost of spark plugs for military drone aircraft. Maybe it has to do with the bow to stern flotilla of ships that come to our coast and load up entire forests of raw logs. Is one thought anymore ludicrous than the next? Why would anyone send such a message?

You can drive yourself totally mad trying to make sense of the world around you and these little pimples of twisted wit that pop out at you. There’s no point, because there is no sense or rationality to human presence. If there is one organism on this planet which is clearly non-indigenous it has to be the fungus that calls itself the human race. We clearly don’t belong here! How’s that for polemic conjecture? I’m on the edge of a rant, it’s time to move on.

Sailing, now there is an endeavour that leaves millions mystified. Why would any sensible person want to do it? There are those who love to race their boats. That, to me, seems a fine art of practicing a vicious sort of seamanship where one tries to destroy every expensive component of a perfectly fine vessel while proving who has the tiniest willy. I’m clearly not a racer. I’ve tried it and know that despite some vague camaraderie among those whose bible is a copy of racing rules, there’s just too much testosterone, male and female, for my sensibilities. And yes, there IS a female testosterone, just go racing with the ladies, you’ll find out!

I spend too much of my life whirling around to acquire the means to take my boat and simply meander where the wind wills me to go. Maybe that’s why I know poverty so well, I’m just not competitive enough. Let’s just say I try to be a lover, not a fighter. I prefer to try and live in harmony with the elements instead defying them. Unless of course I stumble onto a lee shore or find myself at sea when the bearing of an approaching ship is not changing. Thank god for little diesel engines!

Some people just enjoy owning a boat, the simple bliss of maintaining the vessel and never straying far from the harbour. Perhaps these folks are the most blessed, they have mastered the art of simply being. They are also probably good gardeners.

There are also those tortured souls who are addicted to becoming, to growth and its inherent pain, to discovery and wandering. I am a wanderer, but let me point out that not all wanderers are lost. I understand that if you don’t know where you’re going, you will end up somewhere else and you know what? That’s just fine!

I cannot explain to someone, who does not love the ocean and boats and those who do as well, why anyone has an affinity for the ocean and being on it, sometimes out of sight of land, cold, wet and frightened, why that is what we sailors must do. I suppose the simple answer is that it’s for those few moments of purest bliss when we feel in harmony with the planet, and yes maybe even the universe with all its inhabitants. There is also the bright light of illusion when we feel completely in control. The purest radiance of all comes when we give up all control to the forces we know we cannot defy. We resolve to relax and enjoy the storm while it lasts. It never does. That can be damned hard to remember when you’re in the middle of one when each minute of the ordeal is an eternity. A Taoist would say that to surrender control is to be in control.

When I was younger I read everything I could about sailing and the sea. One of my heroes is still Jean Gau. He sailed alone around the world twice in a Tahiti ketch, a very traditional, and slow, 30′ wooden boat. He was infamous for running aground, usually due to fatigue, but I loved his determination and his pelagic passion. He was not a writer but he did pen this:

They did not understand the dream

That charmed the seas of his voyage

Since it was not the same lie

That was taught in their village.

……..Jean Gau

It has bucketed rain for the past few days. This evening is blessed with clearing skies and a golden sunset such as we have only here in Silva Bay. Anchored out and glowing brilliantly is the ‘Joshua.’ I do not know much about her because I cherish the mystery of her peregrinations. She is an iconic harbinger here of mid-spring and again of fall when Southbound. Her home port is displayed as Alameda, CA. The vessel is a full-scale wooden replica of Joshua Slocum’s famous ‘Spray.’

The builder/owner/skipper of this beauty, whom I do not know, is an older gentleman who sports a red beret and a braided beard. He rows ashore in a Gloucester Gull dory and walks with a limp like all real old sailors . That is all I know about this little ship but it is always an affirmation of all that is right whenever she’s in port. Harrrrrrr!

PASSING CLOUD

‘Passing Cloud’ is a well-known British Columbia–built wooden schooner (You can Google up pictures by simply using her name) This piece is not about the vessel, but is inspired by a wee visit to her birthplace yesterday. In fact, I find the name an analogy about how things of beauty and substance can pass or vaporize before we realize what we are losing.

By comparison here is a quote taken directly from the packaging of a usb hub I bought this weekend. “THE MAGNETISM OF THE BOTTOM CAN BE COMFORTABLY ABSORBED BY PAVING THE DESIGN IN ANY PROVINCES.”

REALLY! I guess now that China knows it owns North America it is not really concerned about getting the language right. I believe the linguist who wrote that was trying to explain that the gadget has a magnetic bottom. Remember that mutant translation next time you see an Air China Airbus passing overhead…..right then, back to the passing cloud theme.

The man who owns the property and the boathouse where ‘Passing Cloud’ was built has sold and is moving on. I met him through a friend and went to Victoria to pick up an old wooden mizzen mast Ted wanted to go to a good home. I need it for a project on a customer’s boat and so serendipity has led me to a wonderful experience. Ted is an older man with a youthful glow. He is soft-spoken yet clearly a whole person who exudes an aura of peaceful wisdom and experience and confidence. It is a feeling I often get when around people who ‘Mess’ with wooden boats. He is certainly well known within the community of local wooden boat folks.

I am writing this and publishing these photos, without his knowledge or permission, as a tribute of gratitude. I share this blog with fellows of a similar ilk and so take this liberty.

Ted’s boathouse is a temple for characters like me and I wanted to share the wonder of the place. Everywhere are heaps of treasure: tools, and home-made machinery, including a sawmill and massive planer, well-seasoned boat wood, small wooden boats, home-made tools, a forge and a plethora of nautical tools and items. It is organized choas. I had a sense that Ted probably knows where every nail is stored. All, of course, is covered in a thick strata of dust and a sense of history.

Ted has sold and is moving on. He is faced with the daunting task of clearing out the boat house before he leaves for the last time. The waterfront property will become the site for two luxury waterfront homes. Another piece of our heritage passes like a cloud. He quiety said with a sad smile that it is, “Progress.” He could find no-one who wanted to take over the little shipyard as it is.

I recall giving someone directions to a new restaurant in Vancouver. It is at the foot of Burrard Street on the now-concreted foreshore of Coal Harbour. I described it as being where Menchions Shipyard had been located and received a blank look in response. How quickly we forget. We smother everything in cement and asphalt, glass and metal and talk about ‘Thinking green’. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was honourable to make a little daylight in the swamp but we created a monster. Now it is not unreasonable to find that, as Joni Mitchell sang, they’ll charge a dollar to see the tree museum.

I suppose it is one of the reasons I am preparing ‘Seafire’ to go voyaging. At sea you can see the world almost as it has always been, ever-changing unchangeable curved open horizon; the bits of plastic debris bobbing along ignored. Sailboats are a way of getting to places where life is still lived much as it has been. Change occurs everywhere, but the notion of constancy and solid values are a great comfort to this writer who mourns the passing of things like the art of letter-writing and self-sufficiency. Now where’s my copy of ‘Blogging For Dummies’?