Sunday, May 26, 2013

Remember that time we lost the spinnaker on the way to Panama?


     The moon is a week shy of being full, and so bright we hardly need the deck lights.  The breeze has picked up to just over twenty knots in the last hour, so it's time to bring in this giant kite that's been pulling us along all day and night.  
     So Cap puts Salty Dog on the wheel while Hoss and me go forward  to snuff the spinnaker.  Cap stays aft to let go a tweaker line, and then the sheet when me and Hoss are ready to start hauling down on the sock forward.  
    Me and Hoss have our harnesses on and we're clipped into the jacklines that spiderweb this eighty-eight foot yacht, and when we've got the blue line that's leading up the mast to the very top of the night, we yell back that we're ready.  
     So they ease the spinnaker sheet from back aft, and we start pulling like hell on the blue line, which is supposed to pull a fabric sheath (sock) down over the giant sail and collapse it, transforming it from a kite, into a giant eel dangling from the mast we can then lower into the sail locker forward.
     Hoss reaches up and grabs the line and pulls down.  The line moves a couple feet, then I reach up and pull down, and get about the same amount.  Then Hoss reaches up with both hands and cranks down using his body weight, and he gets a fair amount of line, and I reach up with both hands and crank down with all my weight, and get nothing.  
     So I'm hanging on the line, and Hoss reaches up and grabs on, and with both of us, we get a foot or so.  Then we try it again, Hoss reaching up and grabbing the line, and each of us hanging off the thing, and we get absolutely nothing.  The sock that's supposed to collapse the sail isn't moving.  
     Hoss yells back for Salty Dog to ease the sheet, and we try again, and get nothing.  
     We think maybe we're hauling down on the wrong line.  Two lines go up, maybe we got them confused.  So we grab handfuls of the other line, and pulling down we gain a few feet.  And then nothing.  And Hoss yells back to ease the sheet more, thinking the tension created by a line running from the bottom corner of the sail to the back of the boat is what's keeping the sail full of wind, and impossible to pull the fabric cover down.  
     There's a pause, and then the sail starts to flap.  Back aft Cap and Salty Dog have completely let go of the sheet line.  And now the peaceful night is filled with noise.  Hoss yells to me to clip the blue line into a block on deck so we can get it to a winch and crank it down, and he has to scream over the wild and hissing susurration of the sail folding and whipping against itself in the wind. About two-thousand five-hundred square feet of yellow and blue canvas snapping and shaking the mast, making the rig bow and bounce with the stresses of the convulsing sail.  
     We have to haul down on the line to get enough slack to put into the block, and we reach up and pull down together again, and as we stretch the nylon line the sail jerks back and I can't let go fast enough to prevent the line from running free through my fingers, and immediately I feel the stinging of salt in the small hole burned into my finger.
     And we're cranking on the winch, and the line is just getting taught, not pulling down on anything.  So we switch the lines out again, hoping we've just got the wrong one.  But we don't.  We winch down and get nothing but tension.  
     Cap comes up and eases the halyard, the line that holds the top of the sail and sock in place, hoping that relieving any tension anywhere will help.  The three of us struggle with with the lines and winches and get no result.  And all three of us are stepping all over the deck and our harnesses are tangled in with line and each other and we take a minute to straighten ourselves out, look around and try to think clearly over the flapping chaos of the sail.  
     And Cap yells back to Salty Dog to turn the boat into the wind, and he stands at the halyard while Hoss and me go forward to the clew of the sail, the corner attached to the spinnaker pole, to try and control the sail from there while Tim lowers the whole thing down on deck.  
     We turn into the wind and Tim starts lowering the sail.  Hoss and me are hoping to grab handfuls of canvas as it slackens, pile it on deck and maybe lash it to the rail with line as we go.  But we never even get an arm around the shaking canvas to wrestle it down to the deck, I was useless, couldn't even get a handful.  I just watched and was ready to do something, as soon as there was something to do, but Hoss was in hand-to-hand combat with the sail, and it threw him off at every shake.  
     And then it was in the water.  Enough square footage of canvas to cover a house now filled with saltwater, and was silent.  Like transporting from one world to another, the torrent of fabric violently thrashing at the rigging so the sound encompassed the boat and made the world seem only as large as the spinnaker could reach, and then it hit the water and silence.  
     We were in the moonlight again, and a vast ocean undulated to every horizon and the wind's thrall seemed little more than a stiff breeze to cool the sweat on my face and body as I stood there watching the sail slowly sink into the dark. 
     Hoss and Tim each pulled at a corner of the sail, and I grabbed a hank and tried to drag it up over the rail back onto the boat, but it was impossible.  
     Hoss and I working together couldn't get more than a few feet out of the water, maybe ten men could have pulled a full corner of it up and tied it off, and worked the sail aboard that way, but Cap saw the futility of what we were trying to do, and he produced a knife, handing it to Hoss with a grim look he said, "Cut it loose."  
     And Hoss took the knife and examined it, and then turned to the bowsprit where the sail was still attached pole, and he laid down on the teak deck and reached out his arms to the corner of the sail and started cutting.  
     As we drifted the sail sunk beneath the boat, and I expected it to disappear, but as Hoss sawed away at the spectre line folded into dacron and layers of reinforced canvas the sail resurfaced on the other side of the boat, which means it passed completely under us.  
     I immediately thought of all the things that meant it would be caught on.  I pictured the shape of the hull and every protuberance and what could go wrong; the bullet keel with the sail wrapped around it, the propeller shaft and the prop itself tied with specter, the rudder enveloped in a rat's nest of twisted sail, and I foresaw a night of drifting and pulling at lines and cutting sails and hanging off the side of the boat, reaching into the water to hack away at caught lines, and then Hoss cut the corner free.  
     With a twang and a slingshot of stretched fabric, the sail folded into a rolling wave, and sank.  All my worry went down with it, cleanly disappearing into the sea.  
     We walked aft, coiling lines as we went, straightening the deck, quietly.  A  post-adrenaline shock working through us, trying to fully grasp what had happened.  I kept flexing my hand with the rope burn.  Nothing bad, but enough sting to remind me, to make it all real.  
     And I decided this was a victory.  
     We all sat in the cockpit and Cap talked us through what had just happened.  We concurred that nothing more could have been done, theorizing that a capsized block in the sock of the spinnaker had seized, maybe getting canvas caught in itself or the line twisted, or a hundred other things, but the point is that we'd tried everything we could have done.  
     And though everyone was bummed at having lost the sail, I was happy with how it turned out.  Everyone still had all their fingers, good clear decisions had been made and executed, we were all still friends without anger or animosity towards anyone's actions.  We got an ass kicking, but we came out uninjured and with the boat intact.  No damage to the rig, nothing that couldn't be fixed or replaced, and Cap might have some insurance paperwork to fill out in due time, but he can handle that.  
     And so, my watch only being halfway through, Cap went to sleep, Salty Dog got comfortable in front of the stereo to play DJ, Hoss went below, and I made myself a turkey sandwich and then watched the radar as we motored into the night.  
     

Monday, May 13, 2013

Birthday Hike in Trinidad, and Happy Mother's Day.



     Maybe using a birthday as a benchmark for life is significant.  I feel like I've done more in thirty years than many get to do in a lifetime.  I feel fortunate and grateful for my opportunities and teachers,  I can only hope this coming decade can teach as many good lessons, and give as many rewards as the previous ten years has.  
Something I've learned on long hikes, always
stop in a pretty place and swim when you can.
     While I was twenty-nine I made a decision to leave everyone I love, take a huge pay-cut, and do something adventurous.  I'm coming up on two months aboard Vivid, which isn't very long, but already it is feeling like home.  When I see her after a day away, I feel like I'm returning to where I belong.  When other yacht owners compliment how the hull looks or how clean everything is, I feel like that's something I've done.  
     Last year I was on a the Paul R. Tregurtha for my birthday.  I was sailing as first mate on the biggest boat on the Great Lakes, and in way over my head.  The year before that I was on the Hon. James L. Oberstar unloading iron ore in the Rouge River, red ore dust blowing in my eyes and getting caked in my ears and the stink of the sewage treatment plants of Detroit somewhere upwind and sulfur and manure and an overly controlling captain and a wheelsman who smoked two packs a day and constantly cleared his throat with a grunt, and I was dreaming of being anywhere else.  
     Today I'm in Trinidad.  I woke up around seven and tried to get directions to a good hike somewhere on the North shore of the island.  Driving is a nightmare here in traffic with everyone at top speed on straight-aways and slamming their brakes on for curves, and the damn steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car, and no matter where you go there's only one sign for directions which says, "Airport- 8 kilometers."  
     But with TIm's help I figured out where I needed to go and I took the car, a map, a pair of shoes and a shoulder bag full of snacks, and left for the day. 
     Two hours of driving, never actually positive I was on the right road, got me to a place that resembled a description of a hike I read about online the night before.  I drove across a little steel bridge, parked the car, hid the keys on the back tire in case I got robbed on the trail (that happens here), and started walking.  
     The walk wasn't great at first.  A few cottages scattered around, and a couple trucks rolled by with their windows up, AC cranking, thumping some awful pop screeching song that sounds like it's being sung by a twelve year old girl with a sleezebag molester boyfriend working the mixer, and I just wanted to get away from society for a while.  
     So I walked in the heat, in and out of sun and shade, thinking that maybe I shouldn't do this hike because it wasn't working out so well, and then I came up on a truck idling and the owner walking back to it, and he says, "Hey, you going to Paria Falls?" And I said that I was, and looks past me and then back at me and says, "You going alone?"  
     And I explain that I do a lot of things on my own; and this whole time I'm thinking about everything online that says to watch out for people robbing you or kidnapping you for ransom in Trinidad, but I see he's smiling and his girlfriend is in the passenger seat and she seems nice and he says, "I'm just out exploring with the truck, you can ride for a bit if you want."   
     So, because I choose to trust people rather than fear them, and he wasn't one of the guys blaring bad music, I hop in the back seat and off we go.  And we chit chat and they're both from Trinidad with the thick island accent I'm finally able to understand most of, and they're great people.  The guy is friendly and happy and the girl pretty and kind, and in the back of their truck I can't help but feel sorry for the people who go through life in fear of people, rather than grateful for a quick friend.  
The nice guy who made sure I called
him when the hike was over, so he
knew not to send a search party.
     We get to some roots and wash-outs in the road we can't drive over, and they decide to walk with me for a ways.  After twenty minutes or so we get to the first beach of the hike, and it's a beautiful beach with a rough break right on shore, but volcanic rocks around you can use to protect yourself from the surf if you want to stand hip deep in the water and splash around.  
     After a while they decide to head back, but not before making sure we have each other's phone numbers and me assuring them I'll call them when I get done with the hike, because they're afraid I'm going to break a leg or be abducted in the jungle and they want to be certain I get out all right.  And then they go right, and I continue going left.  
     Steep, loose rock, trails up and down gullies and hills, with streams in the low-points and openings on the high-points to see out into a hazy ocean, slick with clay and rocks that roll out from under your foot as you shift your weight onto them, it is a dangerous hike to do alone, and I don't recommend doing it that way.  
My birthday beach.  All mine.  
     I've been asked a few times why I work out and exercise like I do, and I normally respond with something about wanting to be able to eat whatever I want, but that's only half true.  The other half is that I want to be able to climb steep hills like this.  Or surf all day.  Or kite board, snowshoe, ice-climb, swim, swing, run, leap, tumble, and then get up and do it all again.  My lifestyle requires physical fitness.  
     The trail was bad and made me roll my ankle a couple times.  But then I'd get to a place below a flowering tree and there'd be a path of yellow blossoms carpeting the jungle floor, and all would be well again. 
     I don't know what time I was born.  I'm sure Mom remembers, but I do know the moment today felt like my birthday.  I'd crossed a deserted beach, the kind of place that looked like I'd been the only person there in years, and I headed along a trail beside a river, and I came to the falls I'd been searching for.  I swam in a tropical pool, freshwater washing away the sweat and salt of the hike and short ocean swims to cool off along the way.  And then I went for the waterfall.  

The pool below the falls.  Cool freshwater and a breeze and sunshine
and life is exactly as it should be.  
    The current pressing back against me, I had to switch from breaststroke to front crawl, and then to a struggling front crawl, and then it was a full on sprint to barely stay in place as the water was trying to slam me backwards.  And then clawing at the rock to just hang on and breath, rest, relax my muscles in the flow of the current while hanging on with one hand.  

I'm under a waterfall in this picture.  The look on my face
is jubilation  
     Then a scramble of pulling on the rock and kicking in the water to get closer to the falls.  If my hands slipped I was pressed back, losing any ground I'd gained.  And then I had to stop and take pictures along the way, which is no simple process when you're under a waterfall.  And at the cusp of being directly beneath the falls I lost my hand holds, and blind to where I was going, I dove for the falls, streamlining my arms and dolphin kicking my way forward through current and whitewater and downpour, coming up in a cave behind the falls.  And I whooped.  And I screamed into the rock and water, "I'm under a waterfall, and it's my birthday!"  
     I felt in that moment a sort of celebration.  An adventure and a struggle and the sweet payoff of a memory I'll have forever.  I turned thirty under a waterfall in Trinidad.  
     The swim out was easy, just letting the current push me back into the cool tropical pool, slowly drifting across it, ending up by my bag and shoes.  I ate my lunch and drank some water.  I had a couple mangoes I'd found along the way, and sat on a rock in the sun picking the mango strings from my teeth and washing my face in the clean water, not thinking of much of anything, just being present in a beautiful place on a great day.  
     And then the two and a half hour hike back, trudging at the end as fatigue and heat wore on me.  And once I was in the car I made the phone call to my new friend, letting him know I'd made it safely. And then back to the boat in time for dinner, and then early to bed.  Because according to my older sister, I'm an old man now, and it's nothing but metabolism drops and being tired by ten from here on out.  
     
A flower waiting on a tree for me to walk passed.  









An arch a little off the beaten path.  Had to
do a little bouldering to get this close.

This is how grocery shopping is supposed to be,
picking mangoes off the ground and inspecting
for bugs.  

A small beach at the end of a stream I walked through
just to see where it'd lead me.  Was not disappointed. 

Yellow flowers sprinkled on the path for me
to walk over.  



Sunday, May 5, 2013

Fifth of May. Cinqo de Mayo


Worked from eight to six on Sunday, Cinqo de Mayo, and was just thinking it was time for a shower to end a long, hot day, when the boat across the dock asked for a hand launching their tender.  So I helped, and then they asked if I'd ever wake boarded with a surfboard, and I responded that I hadn't.  And then they insisted I try.  So I spent sunset in a Trinidad ocean with a towline in my hands and a surfboard under my feet.  Then back in the tender I got a phone call (that's why I got a waterproof phone) from my good friend and captain Tim, wondering where I was, and giving me a great compliment about my time aboard.  A great end to a damn fine day.  

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Yard work in Trinidad, but mostly missing Dad's wood shop in wintertime Michigan.

     I've wanted to write something of the yard work being done in Trinidad.  Of my day to day life as I stay in the hotel and meet Tim every morning for breakfast before heading to the boat for a day's work, but my mind keeps dragging me back to my father's woodshop.  Maybe it's because I'm doing mechanical work again, and that part of my brain is associated with the shop where I learned to read a tape measure, how to get the most from a piece of sandpaper, how going slowly and thinking carefully actually speeds up a job.
Sitting on the keel of the boat, the only
shady place to take a break.
     The days haven't been hard, but the boat's unplugged and without air con and roasting in the sun, and I'm dripping sweat and up to my shoulders in diesel fuel everyday.  I bath in simple green every time I have to walk out of the engine room to answer the knocking of some rasta-man standing on the ladder with his dreads wrapped in a kind of Dr. Suess hat asking me if we need any polish work done or winches serviced.  Everyone sees the boat and thinks of the money they can make from it.  Definitely my least favorite part of the job is having to be firm in sending people away.  Firm, but respectful as they almost beg for work.
     I'm a bit of a hermit by nature.  Except for these short snippets with the boat guys ("Sorry, we don't need any help with the winches. -They've just been done. -Please don't walk on the decks with your shoes on.  -No.  -No thank you.  -No.  -I'm sorry I can't right now.  -So long."), the only real talking I do is with Tim in the mornings at breakfast.  And that's mostly about what we're planning on doing for the rest of the day, the projects lined up and the parts needed and what makes logistical sense to get done first.  Not that we're all business, I try to get him tell me at least one story from his college years or a sailing regatta before heading off to work.
     The rest of the day is spent by myself on the baking boat in silence, except for the occasional "sonofabitch" when I hit my head or drop a washer.  But it's satisfying.  I just go slowly and accept that searching for dropped nuts and cleaning up diesel spills is part of every job no matter how careful I am.  I find it all very satisfying and mentally stimulating.  Mechanics and troubleshooting are just puzzles, and I like puzzles.  The engine room yoga is getting hard though.  Tim and I have been going to the gym in the evenings, and yesterday was back day, and it made today's "blind stretch around high pressure hydro pump with wrong sized wrench" a very difficult move.     
The space aft of the generator, one of the
better places to have to do repairs.
     But as I try to capture what it feels like to be on the boat in the heat wedged between an engine and floor joists while my weight is on the elbow that's connected to the hand I'm trying to use to manipulate a ratchet, while my other hand's fingers think they're holding a wrench on the right nut (but actually aren't), while diesel fuel is pissing out a pipe I'm somehow holding a thumb in while turning a ratchet, I can't really explain how it is I enjoy this.  Maybe it's one of those things I shouldn't examine too deeply.
     My brain is mostly occupied with solving these puzzles, but when I'm doing something tedious, wire brushing a sea chest, or wrapping teflon tape around pipe thread, I go back to Dad's woodshop, and from somewhere outside a waft of cut wood and sawdust drifts into the engine room, and I'm three-thousand miles North in the wintertime.
     Even though the fire's out in the stove it's still warm enough to take off coats and hats. Snow falling and grey outside, the wood shop is bright and strangely large and open after coming in from the claustrophobic sense of heaviness and contraction created by the cold. The oppression of the lack of scent that comes with winter overridden by the smell of sawdust, lumber, woodstove and varnish.
     Dad goes to the far end of the shop where the wood stove is on a raised platform he built so he didn't have to get on his knees to load the firewood, and from a pail he takes handfuls of sawdust and small scraps to throw into the ashes of yesterday's fire. He uses a hatchet to break up a chunk of two-by-six and stacks those around the sawdust. Then he places a log on each side of the kindling pile, and one across the tops of those so it crosses above the kindling pile. Then he cheats; grabs the bottle of lighter fluid and douses it all. He glances at me as he does this, knows I think it's funny he's using a method he once taught me was a wimp's way of making a fire.
     That was a long time ago though, before it was okay for me to grab a beer from the mini-fridge by the door and crack it open to drink while watching him take a match from a cast-iron holder mounted on a cedar paneled wall and strike, then toss into the stove where it flashes and ignites everything in the fast yellow flames of the fluid before the wood catches.
     He closes the steel door with the glass window so we can still see the fire, latches the long arm in place, and I meet him in the middle of the shop by the assembly table, handing him his beer. Normally the assembly table has a kevlar surface showing, but today there's cardboard taped down so nothing is showing, and above the table, hung from strings he screwed to a board he in-turn screwed to the ceiling, are four snowshoes.
Snowshoes and canoe in the background of where my
head has been taking me the last couple days.  
     The shoes are the latest project. We've been varnishing them, put the first coat on this morning and now we're checking them to see how they're drying. Standing next to them, they smell of damp varnish and are still tacky, might not be ready for a second coat in the morning, we decide, maybe by this time tomorrow afternoon.
     Then we have to decide if we'll want to be varnishing this time tomorrow afternoon. Beer time. Old Milwaukee's Best Ice time, the only beer in Dad's woodshop, not by rule, just because.
     I tell Dad we can play it by ear, I don't have to drive home for a few days and there's no rush, if it takes two days to dry, we'll do it when they're ready. We drink our beers looking at the woodstove, looking at the old canoe we built years ago, looking at the table-saw, radial-arm saw, planer, jointer, drill press, router table, tools I've been around all my life and some that are new. All strategically placed throughout the space based on frequency of use, largeness of the machine, the state of the material being fed into it, the need for it to be near other tools. It's a choreographed ensemble. He doesn't know it, but he's thought out and created a dance.
I wish I could have a year to apprentice with my dad and
learn everything from soldering to adjusting a table-saw
to knowing when to call it a day.  Love you, Dad.
     Raw uneven boards fed into the planer with long flat blades smoothing the widest surface of the board, preparing them for the jointer, the next machine in line, which can straighten a bowed edge, which will go well against the guide of the table-saw, which after being fed through, will create a fine quality finished board. Like great art, seeing it finished it looks effortless, natural, as if it were the only way such a thing could exist.
     We talk about my work.  The chance of me quitting to go sail around the world.  His plans for the property. Where he and Mom are going to vacation this summer. We drink beers and get more from the fridge. The fire's ripping in the stove now and there's not much left to do in the shop until tomorrow. We don coats and hats, carry our beers in gloved hands and I lead the way out, because he likes to be the one to turn off the lights and close the doors, making sure everything's okay before moving on.