Always My Friends The Stars

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
By Walt Witman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Invictus (Unconquered)

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.  

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the Skipper of my soul.

Into The Boundary

Dear Reader, if you double click on the above photo then it will be enlarged for your visual edification. To the right you will see 'The Hen' the main island in the 'Hen and Chickens' Islands. In the distance to the left you can see 'The Chicks' the other part of the 'Hen and Chickens' group of islands.

This photo shows a very recent trip to Bream Head (the headland to the left of my kayak). What a great, great  adventure it was, kayaking close along the headland amongst the rocks and caves, with the ever present bush clad land dropping almost sheer from the Bream Head walkway high above.

I love the boundary between the sea / lake / river / estuary and the land. I love too the open ocean with its pure wave and wind blown majesty, but the boundary area contains an interaction that more than complements the deep sea - and in a sea kayak or small centreboard yacht it is hard to resist - rocks, surf, waves, reefs, kelp, marine life, caves, beaches and in New Zealand the ever present sight and sound of native bush.

Today I bought a small belt sander from our local 'Bunnings' hardware mega store that will facilitate the next stage in the restoration of my Starling sailing dinghy .....

...... I know where I shall be headed with a tent and a weeks provisions 'Swallows and Amazons' style when she is sailing......... Into the boundary.

Milestones and Penultimate Moments

In the Nana Olympics Christine would be without a doubt a gold medalist - without a doubt; she's that good.

When we see our beloved grandson approximately every month he has either reached some sort of milestone in his development or he is just a step away from the next one. To date Zane is pulling himself up from the floor and hanging onto furniture. Soon it will be one small step for our grandson, one giant leap in his mobility. Such a sea change in Alex and Ramizas bright new world of parenting will mean that things will never be quite the same again. Intelligence, curiosity and mobility will be an interesting alliance.

How quick has been his development, how so very, very rich the experience of watching him grow - such an abundance of love flows in his direction - he deserves it all - love, his doting parents and his gold medalist Nana.

Modifying The Honda Accord

These two photographs from the Auckland Boat Show picture how some seven foot long P Class yachts were transported in the first half of last century. It was back in the real days when sensible people in New Zealand grew their own vegetables on their quarter acre sections, women knew how to make Pavlova correctly, men hadn't lost their mojos, teachers used real sacks (not these new fangled, pathetic, synthetic thingies) for the children's sports day sack races and real cars had running boards on which to cart small yachts around on - what the fuck happened to the world?

These photographs are fortuitous because I have 7 boats (A sea kayak, a small inflatable dinghy, Two rigid fiberglass dinghies, two sailing dinghies and one relatively large ocean going yacht.) [That's a lot of boats - not as many as I would like; BUT there's still time - but I digress] ...... and I have no way of getting any of the six of the seven boats to the water! I recently put a tow bar on my Honda Accord with the idea of purchasing a trailer to take these little boats down to the sea, but I can see the solution right here in these photographs - a running board on the Honda is what is needed, now, without a moments sailing time to be lost. Bingo! I now have a use for that old sheet of corrugated iron.

Camping With A Seven Footer

On a screen between two seven foot P Class yachts at the Auckland Boat Show I watched a slide show complete with themed music for each decade; beginning in the 1920s, showing the P Class in all its various guises. I took photographs of some of the slides.

This very early photograph shows something I never did do with my own small P class yacht - camping. This is a very New Zealand version of Ransomes' "Swallows and Amazons". On the right of the photo is a P Class turned on its side. One of the yachts mainsails is being used for a tent and the dining table is one of the centreboards. The photograph was probably taken by the other P Class skipper with a Box Brownie camera. The young fella in the photograph is so handsome it could almost be me.

It is said that when you get to a particular age all you do is look back and reminisce - bugger that. Hanging up in my carport on a six part purchase pulley is a small P Class yacht that I restored a couple of years ago. Her name is 'Cygnet'. As I mentioned earlier I never got to go camping in my spinnaker red coloured little P Class called 'Elusive' but I am going to change all of that when the weather gets a little warmer -phfff, who said Halcyon Days are only for those of a certain decade.

IT MADE ME SMILE

Every Friday here at School the children can order a sausage on bread with or without tomato sauce. It costs $1.50 for a sausage at our 'Friday Sausage Sizzle' school fund raiser.

Today a hand written order arrived, delivered by an adult as he dropped off his children. He was doing everything possible to make sure the sausage order arrived and was processed. The hand written note was precise, legible and with exemplary spelling. The signature at the bottom of the note had the flourish of a mission accomplished. It was the sort of note whose nuance (ripped with precision from one end of an envelope) stated unequivocally: "If this note doesn't elicit sausages at lunchtime today then the Cosmos in general and Einsteins General Theory of Relativity in particular needs some serious tweaking."

Lets call the children Jack and Jill. This is the handwritten order.

Hi ******

Could we please get three sausages.
1 X for Jack Rm 1
1 X for Jill Rm 3
           ______
           $3.00
Thanks  enclosed $5.00 (Change $2.00)

signed (Adult signature)

This makes me smile. I love this sort of thing because it makes me feel not so alone in the universe. May God bless this man many times.

Auckland Boat Show

There are two annual boat shows held in Auckland. One is on the waterfront where moored boats can be viewed and the other is at the Auckland Show Grounds. I have been very disappointed in the Auckland Show Grounds boat shows in the past as there have been no yachts displayed at all. What is displayed is mainly power boats, fishing rods and their associated paraphernalia and those detestable surf ski thingies that turn pleasant anchorages into dangerous race tracks with their noise and their poncy, ostentatious hubris. In my opinion never has such a lamentable addition to the boating scene  ever been invented - but I digress - I was pleasantly surprised this year to find a small part of the 2014 Auckland Boat Show devoted to centerboard yachts. There weren't as many as I would have liked to have seen but enough to put a smile on my face. I found them unexpectedly just as I was leaving. I had gone to the show to get some information on a new diesel engine for my yacht 'Mariner' and caught the small pavilion out of the corner of my eye as I was leaving. Inside amongst the displays I found a couple of P Class dinghies, an OK Dinghy and a fine example of a Starling sailing dinghy, a boat that I am currently restoring.

This P Class yacht in the photo used to belong to Dean Barker, New Zealands' Americas Cup skipper. I must have been a little over zealous in my removal of the signage in front of Dean Barkers P class so I could take a photograph, as an amused voice enquired, "Are you an old P class sailor?" I replied that I certainly was and added "How great to see not only some yachts at the boat show but some wooden ones into the bargain."

The voice belonged to Dean Barkers father, himself a former P Class sailor. He told me that this P Class yacht in the photo is the boat that Dean won the New Zealand National Championships when he was a young fella. He told me how he had tracked down this boat, restored it and presented it to his son Dean on his 40th birthday. When Dean arrived at the party 'Evolution' was floating in the family swimming pool. I think that's just about the best present I have ever heard of and I told Deans father so. 

"Yes, Dean was pretty stoked to see his old boat again!"

 I can imagine, I know Exactly; how he would have felt.

THE JUNK RIGGED FOLKBOAT 'JESTER'

Well shipmates, anyone immersed in yachtie folklore with the degree of obsession that this writer has knows about this little boat. She is the famous converted 'Folkboat' Jester. The only original part of the Folkboat (a class of yacht with its own illustrious history) is Jesters hull. The deck, cabin and rig are additions by Hasler. She was conceived and built by Colonel 'Blondie' Hasler back in the late 1950s.

Colonel Hasler is well known for his involvement as one of the 'CockleShell Heroes' of WW2 during the commando raid 'Operation Frankton'. Six canoes were taken to the area of the Gironde estuary in France by submarine. Twelve men paddled up river and successfully placed limpet mines on Nazi ships. Two men survived: Hasler, and his number two in the canoe, Sparks. Eight were caught and executed by the Germans, while two died from hypothermia when they capsized. Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated that the mission shortened the war by six months. Admiral Louis Mountbatten, called the raid "the most courageous and imaginative ever carried out by the men of Combined Operations during World War Two."

After the war Blondie Hasler was one of four crews in the inaugural single handed Transatlantic race along with Francis Chichester, David Lewis,Val Howells and Jean Lacombe - all yachting legends.
He was also influential in a number of other areas. He designed the Hasler Wind Vane (which is attached to the stern of Jester in the photo) which enables a yacht to self steer. He took Jester to Loch Ness and made a thorough search for the Loch Ness Monster! (Something any yachtie worth his salt would do - having a good reason to sail on a Loch must enhance the experience!
He was also an early pioneer and promoter of the Chinese junk rig which is known for its simplicity and ease of operation. The rigging and reefing of the mainsail and the steering of Jester is operated from the steering position without going on deck at all. Hasler married at the age of fifty a woman nearly half his age and went on to live a fruitful and interesting life farming and building another small experimental yacht and being involved in other interesting design projects.

Now the yacht in the above photograph is not the original Jester. Let me explain. In 1964 Jester was sold to Mike Richey who sailed her in every OSTAR (Observer Singled Handed Transatlantic Race) (Observer being the sponsoring English newspaper) with various degrees of success until 1988 when Jester was lost and sunk in a huge storm. This was the second time she had come to grief. In an earlier OSTAR she had been hauled aboard a passing ship like a huge fish after suffering damage in a storm.  At this point in yachting history Jester had become such an icon of the OSTAR, so well known in the anals of small boat sailing and being much loved by the yachting public, that a trust was formed and a new exact replica of Jester was built and presented to Mike Richey. It is this Jester that is in the above photo. Richey sadly passed away recently at a ripe old age and a life of sailing his beloved Jesters. I am not sure who now owns and sails Jester but I will find out.

Whilst Googling for this post I found out something I didn't know. That is, a sister ship to Jester exists. Her name is 'China Blue' and what a fine little craft she looks in the photograph below.

From a classical point of view these are not beautiful yachts but I find them strangely attractive. The attraction is one of function over form. Functions that have been planned and created by Blondie Hasler in the same inimitable way he designed a kayak that could be loaded down a submarine hatch for the raid in France, a self steering wind vane and an adaptation of the junk rig for a small yacht which sailed into yachting history.

LISTENING CORRECTLY

 
In the deep core 

I felt the hearing of it 

Felt it with my heart

If I had been deaf

I would still have heard it

 Clambering up onto the deck 

Of my small boat

I heard the high sailing stars singing

Singing

Singing

Singing in my heart

- Alden Smith

"An Engine, An Engine, My Kingdom For An Engine!"

Well, actually it was William Shakespeares' Richard III in the play of the same name who, when unhorsed on the field at the climax of the battle, cries out, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" We didn't end up in  the same desperate plight as poor old King Richard but we could have been I guess, if time, tide, luck and chance had been against us. But we did have our own tricky time. 

The crew deals to our first fish. Every time we have caught a Kingfish from Mariner it has always been on the first day of a trip and it has always been off Bream Head, the first headland of our journeys north. This one was caught by David (right). Gerry (left) a keen naturalist was able to give us a running commentary on every bit of bird life we sighted - (Prions, Stormy Petrels, Fluttering Petrels, Skuas, Shags, Gannets, Blue Penguins and various Gulls).

Fair weather saw the spinnaker being flown. A downhill ride with a spinnaker drawing hard and fast is always a joy in moderate conditions - in fresh breezes one gets the taste of what it might have felt like to be a kamikaze pilot.

We caught over eight Schnapper off Limestone Island on our return journey. We had to throw half of them back as they were undersize. This one was a couple of centimeters over the legal minimum size.

The first set of tight situations we found ourselves in were when entering Tutukaka harbour on the Northern coast. The entrance is narrow and the wind was flukey when tacking in. We then had some fun tacking amongst the anchored yachts looking for an anchorage. I wanted to go in nice and close to the land. This meant weaving in and out between yachts and being given some anxious looks by some of the owners. We anchored in about two fathoms and had a quiet night out of the harbour traffic and swell.
The second tight situation was returning to the mooring up stream of the new Whangarei lifting bridge. The first stage had us anchored for the night off Limestone Island. Gerry who had abandoned all hope of sleeping in his bunk the night before and had retired onto the floor of the boat was very keen to spend the night on Limestone Island in a 'normal' bed. He knew the  ranger (Gerry is on the Limestone Island Trust Board) and was sure of being able to persuade the ranger to give us a tow up river, which he did. Gerry complained that his berth was too short and that it felt like he was being tipped out onto the floor all the time. We replied with, "Gerry, you are English and we rest our case." We could have said, "Gerry you an anal retentive whinging Pommy bastard, not happy with just colonizing the world with your redundant stiff upper lipped world view, you also complain like the Princess and the Pea about having a kip in quite adequate sleeping arrangements, so take your feather duvet, unmanly powder puff pillow pretensions and fuck off ashore to unchallenging luxury".
But we didn't say that, for we on Mariner like to take an encouraging Whanau approach to things.

Dave the ranger towed us as far as the bridge, but no further, as he had visitors coming to Limestone Island. We were very grateful for the tow as it is nearly impossible to sail around the last very narrow bend in the river. He left us waiting on the bridge pontoon pondering our situation.
We didn't have to ponder very long because within ten minutes another yacht turned up wanting to go through the lifting bridge to the Whangarei town basin. The yachts owner kindly towed us up channel, past the bridge where close to our mooring piles we cast off the tow line and coasted up to the mooring.

As we coasted in we watched with amusement at the manner in which the owner of this overseas yacht was cleaning his dinghy. He had flipped his inflatable upside down and was vigorously scrubbing the bottom with a brush.
It was a short but eventful trip. All I have to do now is fix the engine so we can go on another sortee up the coast or out to Great Barrier Island (My goal for the next trip as I haven't been there in years) - but I am faced with some very major work which may entail replacing the old engine - time consuming and expensive. In the mean time I have thrown myself into doing a good job of work in the classroom at my school and are ignoring the compelling voice of Richard III.

A Brief Sail North

Here I am headed North with a couple of friends. The motor blew up just as we approached the first exit through the new Whangarei lifting bridge. It was a case of aborting the mission there and then or continuing on with our brief holiday and taking my chances at being able to get in and out of anchorages and make passages without a motor. Small auxiliary diesel engines are very useful on small yachts as they enable you to get in and out of tricky harbour entrances and among anchorages when there are a lot of other yachts at anchor. Engines are also good when there is no wind and there is a set return date. I thought "Bugger this, if it was good enough for Abel Tasman, Captain Cook, Maori since circa 800AD and every other man and his dog to have tootled around these waters without the aid of an engine then I would take the chances of a skinny white man with a dodgy ticker and sail engineless".
I thought hard about the implications but knew that my experience and sailing skills would probably keep us safe, which they did. We had a fine old trip, be it short, but it contained some interesting situations that I had not be involved with before. More of that in the next post.

Back She Goes

After what was a lot of quite pleasant but hard work Mariner was put back in the water and onto her mooring. As I motored back up the river I was not getting any water coming out of the exhaust which meant that something drastic was wrong. Back on the mooring I fixed or thought I had fixed the problem - I ran the motor and cooling water was flowing and exiting the exhaust - but the problem persisted later with some decisive consequences which I will fill out in some following posts.

Its That Time Again

Mariner has not been out of the water for a scrub and antifouling paint for over two years. There were a few barnacles and other marine growth on the hull but considering the time since the last haul out she wasn't in too bad a condition. I gave the cabin and deck a good clean and now begin some under the waterline repairs and paint before returning her to her natural element.

CLINCHER

This is the Santa James and I made for the Hikurangi Christmas parade. It all began on the deck at Stacy and James's house one Saturday early in December. We took some interesting advice from Stacy during this construction stage.

First we constructed a large globular shape out of number 8 wire. Then we covered it with chicken wire. James's students covered this armature with papier mache. It rained all week during the construction process so Santas large paper mache tummy was dried 24 / 7 with a fan heater. James is covering the paper mache body with PVA glue prior to the application of summer snow.

 

I bought a large beach ball from 'The WareHouse' for the head. All of this work was completed during a week when we were still writing end of year student reports - Just another weeks work for Kiwi teachers, but we are not complaining.

 

The head and the body were then covered in summer snow (white insulation fabric). We had problems with the body because the weight of the waterlogged paper mache combined with gravity conspired very hard to make Santas body into an ellipse. James cut the branches for the arms and I, (now being very knowledgeable about surgery) used wire cutters to cut holes through Santas rotund wire body and insert them with surgical precision. I made the nose and the eyes, Terry our Deputy Principal gave us a bright red scarf, her class made the black pom pom buttons and I found a red Hikurangi sun hat somewhere in the staffroom. What New Zealand teachers aren't called to do in the name of education and community isn't worth mentioning.

The Hikurangi School float won first prize in the Christmas parade. James and I in a fit of modesty named our snowman 'Clincher' because it was of course our snowman who made all the difference to the float and clinched first prize for the school. We made ourselves very popular with the almost all women staff by continually repeating this fact over and over and over  and over again - they knew deep down that a couple of Kiwi blokes working with number 8 wire is bound to win the day. It was one of those situations where men were men and women were glad of it.

There is an old saying in snowman making circles that explains in a deep and meaningful metaphorical way the tough physical and emotional environment that we were working in.....

......... "Its easy to forget that you came to drain the swamp when you are up to your arse in alligators." ........ Well, James and Moi, drained the swamp and now have a couple of pre...ttty sharp alligator shoes in our wardrobes, yup, we clinched it alright.

IT'S BEEN QUITE A YEAR

2013 has been quite a year. This is the staff of my school photographed yesterday at Hikurangi Primary School. They are a great bunch of people working in a great school. It's been quite a year. A year of survival. The school survived an ERO visit (Educational Review Office). The teachers and children survived teaching, learning and living together. I survived a massive heart attack a hop, skip and jump from where this photo was taken. Yes it's been quite a year.

GIFT

A day so happy.

Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.

Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.

I knew no one worth my envying him.

Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.

In my body I felt no pain.

When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Czeslaw Milosz 

A Cunning Plan

"Why, yesterday, was this dinghy laden classic Honda with a damaged right front wheel arch parked under a Pohutakawa tree in Devonport opposite the 'Evergreen' second hand book shop"  I hear you ask --- Well it's all part of a cunning plan that I will explain to you. But first ......

The Evergreen second hand book shop in Devonport has a really good sailing section amongst it's bookshelves. It is from said shop that I have almost completed my collection of UK published Yachting World Annuals 1950 - 1973 (I am missing 1955, 1968, 1969, bugger, but I live in hope ).  I called in to take a look and bought a great book by the legendary Kiwi sailor Adrian Hayter

.........But what about the damaged car ? I hear you ask again. Well, a large and impossibly stupid steel post literally jumped out on me as I was reversing in a supermarket car park, simple as that. Bloody supermarkets, someone should show them how to design car parks fit for sailors, or alternately someone should show the car manufacturers how to fit tillers to cars instead of that stupid encumbrance called a steering wheel.

 Now to the cunning plan, bear with me as I explain. Dinghies are a perennial problem for small yachts such as mine. Inflatable dinghies are problematic because they don't row very well at all ( they are very dangerous in high winds as they are almost impossible to row ), necessitating the use of an outboard motor (fuel cans, stowage, smell etc, etc) which are expensive.

Also, inflatable dinghies not very robust. Nothing beats a rigid dinghy as a tender for a yacht - BUT, and its a big But, a rigid dinghy is almost impossible to stow on board small yachts such as I own ( 30 feet / 9 metres ) unless the dinghy is really small. But the problem is that most really small dinghies are not very sea worthy and don't have a great carrying capacity.

Dinghies are usually stowed upside down  between the main cabin hatch and the main mast. They are stowed here for safety reasons as towing a dinghy offshore in high winds can be dangerous as when running before the wind dinghies have a tendency to surf on the following seas. There are many cases where the dinghy has either surfed, broached and capsized or surfed itself aboard into the cockpit and injuring the crew.

What is cunning about my plan is that this second hand dinghy is the minimum size for sea worthiness, carrying capacity and stowability (is that a word?). It should stow snugly between the main hatch and the main mast with enough room for any crew member who is as thin as a Norwegian racing sardine to slip below when required.

This dinghy is shaped in such a way that it has a lot of volume for its length, has good free board and rows well to boot. This is a dinghy that boxes above its weight. I know all this because my late father had just such a dinghy which he used for his own little yacht back in those far off sailing days that I remember so well.

I got the dinghy for a fair price but it needs a lot of TLC including a complete re paint. What with my yacht Mariner not having been hauled out for two years because of my heart attack, my current big old trusty work horse of a dinghy in need of a lot of repair work and now this new (old) dinghy in need of work ..... guess what I will be doing over the Christmas break.

1st Prize In The Christmas Parade!

We did ourselves proud this year by taking out first prize in the Hikurangi Christmas Parade. What a lot of work for a 30 minute parade up and down the main street of Hikurangi; but I guess it's as much about the process (children involved in a lot of art work) as it is about the product.  A great deal of work went into the creation of this float by teachers and children - what a great day!

CHRISTMAS 2013 ROOM 5 HIKURANGI SCHOOL NORTHLAND NEW ZEALAND

This Saturday is the Hikurangi Christmas parade. Since the year dot Hikurangi School has had a Christmas float in the parade. This year will be no exception. The theme this year is 'Winter Wonderland', not exactly meteorologically correct for Aoteraroa New Zealand at this time of year but we have done the jandals / beach / pohutakawa theme before. So lets just say this year is a nod towards our Pakeha cultural hertitage from the northern hemisphere. The colours for the 'Winter Wonderland' theme are red, black, white and silver. I am sure on the day the float will look as awesome as it has done in years gone bye. These black trees (above) is Room 5s contribution to the parade.

I thought it would be great to have a big Christmas tree in the classroom but then I felt it would be nice for each child to have their own traditional Christmas tree to decorate and take home at the end of term. These are the childrens efforts. They brighten up the our room well and I hope they will brighten up their homes for Christmas in a couple of weeks time.