Tawodi Sailing Adventures

For those of us bludgeoned by the tyranny of an average week, running breakneck away from the hellhounds of time as they gnash their gnashing teeth at our heels, for those of us jumping, as if our panties were on fire, from email to twitter to face-book to television- perhaps too distracted to even notice flaming panties, there’s nothing quite like an H.F. radio phone patch to momentarily simplify a day.

Especially when the signal’s not all that good.

You shove the phone hard against one ear, plug up the free ear and squint. I don’t know what the squinting does for this process- it just seems to come with the game of dragging a voice out of the static.

This is no regular, let’s catch up on our personal gossip, phone call. You don’t get to interrupt or talk over each other, no overspeak just because what you have to say is so damn important you can’t possibly wait, allowed. It’s this strange thing of listening and responding appropriately, listening and responding appropriately- an activity becoming as mysterious and hard to find as a Brooder’s Whale.

And it is a conversation complete with it’s own vocalized punctuation.

OVER.

The Captain’s voice through the scratch and crack of a radio. Thirteen hundred miles away- from a hole of oceanspace- it stops the day. It gives me a five minute conversation boiled beautifully down to essential thoughts. I love you. I miss you. I respect you. Is there anything I can do for you? OVER.

The Kaisei has regained her satellite communication and a blog has appeared on her website. They watch for debris, they gather, they hope to date their findings- give a historical timeline to the waste, they name the crew. Technology has come back aboard and opened a viewing window into their days.

It’s good. Good for the cause, good for the voyage and, yet, it’s not quite like grimacing your way through the radio noise to find that one familiar, that one essential voice. Not quite like the temporary cessation of all things rushed, harried, gnashed at by those damn time hell-hounds. A temporary cessation of what is our basic cultural norm- moving through distractions barely noticing that our ass is on fire.

I own an odd sense of gratitude to the Kaisei voyage. They pushed me into facing the little plague of plastic threatening so much of our planet. I’m grateful for that. I’m obliged to them for that. And then they gave me the chance to have the radio phone patch- the lovely, noisy, simple moments to wear a day down to its essence.

I love you. I respect you. I miss you. Is there anything I can do for you? OVER.

Thanks again to the Pacific Seafarer’s Net.

The bandwagon. Because of a general leaning towards hyper-skepticism- there’s a reason to be wary of any bandwagon as a general means to transport a message.

Bandwagons are for those without their own agendas, thoughts, personal morals- let’s be completely snobbish here and just say it- Bandwagons are for the ethically lazy- bandwagons are the haute couture of the uncertain and slightly apathetic. 

Sketchy at best as a means to arriving at a good moral high-ground and horribly likely to be found lacking.

And yet- it’s hard to not think how super-awesome it would be to jump on this one bandwagon, this one eco-questionable platform.  

Flip through the Kaisei website and you’ll find the Ocean Conservancy Website.  Flip through that to find the Pacific Garbage patch and you’ll find, lo and behold- the Coca Cola Company.

 There came a moment of umbrage. How can there not be when one is trying to be all high and mighty and NOT plastic only to find the world’s major soda-plastic bottle manufacturer staring you in the face.  And then there came the “aha” moment.

The- let’s be an opportunistic eco-warrior- moment, let’s think out of our overly defined green box  process.

Let’s wonder about how we can encourage the Coca Cola Company to make the Captain and I a main sail out of recycled soda bottles.  A sail- hell- why not the majority of a boat.  Make us a viable- moving- performing message- to take around the world.  Make us a message that shouts- DON’T THROW THAT BOTTLE AWAY.

Don’t toss it across the river-grass, onto the median, into the cow pasture.

Save it- because it can make THIS.

How super-awesome it would be to take a company that is responsible for an estimated 606 million PET bottles spewing out into the world every year- and that’s just for Coke my friends- to turn around and make a boat out of their own waste.

A boat to sail- A message to float on the oceans that plastic has so sorely used.

That’s a dream worth having.  That’s  a dream worth sipping over a good Merlot.

When Stephen and the Kaisei left for the great Pacific Garbage Patch there were a few of us who watched with a squint and a clicking of our teeth.  What’s the point, really?  I mean really- look at the numbers- what is the point?

And then there it was- under the Ocean Conservancy’s website to read and ponder- the Coca Cola Company was a sponsor of researchers at Duke University in North Carolina, who are compiling all information on the Pacific Garbage Patch and other similar accumulations of marine debris in order to make a full assessment.

Coca Cola: sponsors of plastic garbage research, most notably sponsors of some rattling group of scientists after ALL information on the Pacific Garbage Patch, and there, there is a point worth chasing down like a hyper dachshund after a slippery squirrel.  Give us the will of a corporate monster struggling to shove itself into a bunny-suit and we can give you a message worth having.

This is the BING-BING-BING- moment, where the lights flash and if it were a game show we’d all be excited about what had just been won, because this is the moment when what’s behind door number three is worth having.

There have been those of us questioning the point of the Kaisei  voyaging out into the Pacific Garbage Patch.  There always will be, but, if questioned far enough, looked at with the right prism, skated over with just the proper amount of whimsy and idiotic determination- there is a possibility.

Imagine.

Coca Cola making a boat- a viable sailing vessel out of recycled soda bottles and, then- you can imagine what might just be possible with your own water, soda, fruit juice, shampoo, soap………etc bottles.

It’s not just about cleaning up our refuse- it’s about dreaming of new ways to use it.

And, YES- that was a lot to get through just to get to another  message about recycling.

Anyone wanting to follow the progress of the Brigantine Kaisei must be sorely dissapointed or, at the very least, bewildered. The last media posted to the Project Kaisei website is dated May of 2010. There’s nothing about whether she left, how long she’ll be out, who her crew is.   A brief mention of the 2010 voyage and then, well, nothing- nothing but last year’s media.

There’s a slippery insidious thing about dated information- last year’s effort- when we know this year’s effort is out there ready to report.  It’s like having a party guest arrive only to promptly disappear into the woods of the backyard.  Where’d they go?  What are they doing?

Last night, through the tin-can scratch of an HF radio- patch telephone call, I got the semblance of an answer as to why we’re all sitting out here looking at a blank slate wondering what the hell is going on. None of the satellite hardware the ship had been depending on for email-web- general communication purposes, functions.  The gadgetry is dead, leaving the ship at the mercy of ham radio operators willing to take the time to patch phone calls through.

Thanks to the Captain, his call sign,  the Pacific Seafarer’s Net and a still functioning HF radio, the Kaisei can be followed through the Pacific Seafarer’s Net and Ship Tracker.  The Captain’s call sign is KI6QNE.  Look for that on the roll call and use it as an input in Ship Tracker.

On a personal note it was a lovely moment to hear the Captain’s voice, but, perhaps on a slightly more special note was hearing Tom’s voice.  Tom patched through the call for Stephen.  The sound of his voice was so familiar, such a happy note that I almost, almost wanted to spend more time talking to him than my Captain.

Tom was with us most of the way around the world as one of the many familiar voices of the Seafarer’s net. To hear him again was to remember how much that radio-net brought into our tiny isolated world.  To hear him again was a chance to remember how I really didn’t mind sitting outside, hand steering in 50 knot winds, because i could still hear the net, which was our only link to the sound of the human world.

Thank you Tom and everyone on the Pacific Seafarer’s Net.

Three years ago Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for what amounts to an enormous media effort. “The Inconvenient Truth”: a visual and verbal onslaught about the global collapse of our environment and with it, our climate.

The Nobel-effing Peace Prize,  awarded for a gesture. How else describe the 2006 film and subsequent international debate; it was a gesture intended to be a slap, no, maybe more of a punch, in the face.

To a significant degree it worked. Batallions of people climbed onto the ‘green’ bandwagon making eco-activism not only prudent but, also, uber-chic. Go to the ‘climate crises’ website and you can find out about ‘Girls Gone Green’ a ‘A fun, hip, and inspiring book about girls who’ve taken the initiative to “go green”.

Fun. Hip. Inspiring. Indeed.

Squinting down the long slope of dirt butting up against Washington Street, it’s easy to see that the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ missed an opportunity to talk about the need to embrace an inconvenient life and that there’s not much fun, hip or inspiring lolling about the road-side weeds.

Plastic bags, plastic wrappers, half a plastic table, endless plastic scatterings, bits of toys- a sort of histrionic jumble that mocks all the ‘green’ spin filling our world. Down the barrel of that shotgun hill- the plastic waste seems to snigger at all our best intentions of tree-hugging, earth loving, carbon offsetting, recycling, green goodness.

Plastic- lightweight, cheap, easy to produce- it is also an apocalyptic road sign describing our culture and it is the very thing the Captain is off hunting. Television offers up ‘Whale Wars.’ The Captain and Project Kaisei offer up Plastic wars.

Voyaging out to the center of the Pacific Garbage Patch, the Brigantine Kaisei and a crew of nineteen activists and researchers hope to capture and collect tons of our lost plastic garbage; garbage that has been corraled by currents into the middle of the Pacific High. It is a gyre that has been estimated to be the size of Texas and for anyone who’s ever driven across Texas- we know that’s depressingly huge. Project Kaisei is a voyage and an effort into that enormity of waste, a voyage and effort better described as a gesture.

The world produces approximately 100 million tons of plastic each year. Approximately 7 to 10 percent of that is recycled. Approximately 10 percent of what’s left ends up in the ocean every year. That, given a whole bunch of happy numbers, leaves us with 9 million tons of garbage. The Kaisei is only 151 feet long. They can capture, they can collect but they cannot even dent the amount of garbage being vomited into our ocean.

A gesture. A bold raising of fists with pictures and video and words and science all waving around with the hope that they can win some hearts and minds- instill the appropriate amount of guilt, fear, shame- whatever- to make people back away from the plastic bottles, plastic food containers, to make people demand something better from retailers other than the hell of plastic clam shell packaging.

In the end it comes down to the one thing few of us mention- that we need to embrace an inconvenient life if we’re going to change this ugly hallmark of our culture. We need to find a way to transfrom our greed for time, ease, simplicity, cheapness, CONVENIENCE into a spirit of avarice based on decency and an environmental moral high ground.

We need to find the miracle of making our instinctive greed work us away from our instinctive laziness. As for why anyone should care about garbage in the ocean, well, the oceans comprise 70% of surface of our planet, account for 5% of the protein human’s consume, phytoplankton produce half of our oxygen, about 200 million people depend on the ocean’s for their livelihood, they act as climate temperature regulators and, if nothing else moves a body, they contribute a good portion of the food we feed our chickens and pigs.

If you like bacon you should care about the ocean.

And if you’d prefer your bacon to not be infused with polymers, pcbs, bisphenol A and polysterenes than you should care about how much plastic ends up in our ocean.

For the voyage of the Kaisei to have meaning, for their gesture to have purpose, we need to find a way to make an inconvenient life our goal, find a way to understand that the time, money, effort saved buying that plastic bagged salad, that plastic bottled beverage, that plastic wrapped widget isn’t saved at all.

As for the Captain- he and the Kaisei sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge at 1pm on Saturday, August 14^th. He estimated it would take about five days to find the watery Texas of garbage.

As for returning, the Kaisei is due to sail into San Diego Bay on September 2nd to participate in the Festival of Sail. Maybe we can all go down and meet the Captain and the crew and tell them that because of their effort, their gesture we’ve learned to ‘just say NO’ to plastic.

I’ve only been home for a little more than a week, but I’m going to sea again in a few days.  This time I’ll be on the Tall Ship ‘Kaisei’, a 151′ brigantine, taking a group of scientists and enviromental activists out to the Pacific Gyre.  The Gyre is the area in the vicinity of the Pacific High, the relatively stable high pressure system that dominates the north Pacific Ocean, and where all the floating trash gathers together after drifting across the ocean.  Most of the trash is coming from the countries which rim the Pacific as well as by other vessels that transit the sea, commercial deep drafts coming and going from Asia as well as fishing boats of all types.  One element of the floating garbage are ‘ghost nets’, which are nets or pieces of net that are lost to their vessels yet still drifting and capturing and killing.  The pupose of this voyage is to look further into reclamation and recycling as well as gathering more data about the damage and raising public awareness of the problem, which starts with the prevalance of plastic in society and the “out of sight” nature of the gyre, which is far out to sea (but roughly as big as Texas).  We’ll be at sea for a month, leaving early wednesday morning (8-11-10) from San Fransisco.  I’ll be renting a car on Sunday to drive up and join the ship.  Our plan is to sail into San Diego on or about the 3rd of September.  If you ‘google’ “tall ship Kaisei” you can see the website for the ship and for the Ocean Voyages Institute, the organization which runs it.

So, not too much time at home this time around, although I did get to go for both a bicycle and a motorcycle ride with Kathleen and we plan on sailing Tawodi in a fun race Friday evening (tonight).  I have two sailing charters booked on the big Catamaran “Aolani” for Saturday afternoon and early evening.  Sunday Kathleen and I will probably take Tawodi sailing again, then return the boat to it’s mooring and I’ll go pick up my rental car.  I will start driving up either Sunday night or early Monday morning.

The Captain went off to drive a big Brig, home again home again Jiggety Jig.

  My tour on the Lady Washington has ended and I am back home in San Diego on my own little boat.  I left Washington state early Saturday morning on my motorcycle and rode south down the coast.  I stopped in Arcada for breakfast then rolled on.  It was foggy on the 101 so I slid over to the 5 for a while, then back over to the 101 in the afternoon.  I made it thru Washington and Oregon by early evening and was in Crecent City for dinnertime.  I had a big ribeye steak and a baked potatoe then went off to find a hotel room.  Many hotels were sold out and those that had room wanted too much, so I just kept going south.  I made it to ‘drive thru tree road’ in the Redwoods at 2am, I stopped and laid my bike cover down as a ground cloth and slept in my clothes till about 04:30.  Then I woke up and kept going.  My parents mentioned they were going to be in Ventura, CA on Sunday and although I did stop for a nice breakfast, I made it to Ventura by 3pm.  I met up with my parents and we went out to a late lunch.  I had a double cheeseburger and a large milkshake, then we walked around until 4:pm when they checked into their hotel.  They continued walking but I went and slept in their room for an hour, then I showered and said my goodbyes.  Home was calling.  I made it to San Diego by 9:pm and was home in bed by 10.

I’ll miss adult summer camp and the great crew of the ‘Lady’, but it is good to be home. 

My latest tour of duty aboard the Lady Washington is drawing to a close, which means my time at adult summer camp is almost over.  We transited to Bellingham, WA yesterday from Blaine, WA.  We fired two cannons at the harbor entrance to announce our arrival, which is way more fun and effective than a horn.  Our time in Blaine passed quickly because we were having so much fun.  We were well supported by the locals, most conspicuously by Capt. Richard Sturgill and the crew of the Drayton Harbor Maritime organisation.  We were given a vehicle to use for provisioning and running around and to ferry both crews to the Birch Bay Waterslide Park on our crew training day, where we trained in water safety and learned about hydrodynamic friction, stability, inertia, buoyancy and water-tight integrity.  We also were shuttled to a party held by Capt. Richard and Co. in his backyard/bamboo forest.  They provided plenty of food and drink as well as great company and a fire pit which we hung around late into the night singing sea shantys, not to mention something like a gazillion chocolate chip cookies.  While in Blaine we also hosted dockside tours of the vessels and took groups out for adventure and sunset sails as well as our weekend battle-sails.  On the Saturday battle the Hawaiian Chiefton was on her game and won the day, so I handed over my sword to the other Captain.  On Sunday we redeemed ourselves and I earned my sword back.  It was returned polished, which was a pleasant surprise as it had tarnished somewhat during the circumnavigation of the southern ocean.  While in Blaine several of us took the opportunity to walk over to Canada, which was about a 1/4 mile away.  I walked around in Peace Park for a while the returned to my own country, which did not have pedestrian access at the border crossing so I had to go through secondary like a suspicious car.  After waiting in a line reminiscent of the DMV I was eventually cleared to return.  While waiting in line I could see our ships out the window of the Customs building.  We are here in Bellingham till Sunday when we leave for Annacortes and Family Camp in the San Juan islands, but I won’t be aboard.  My last day is Saturday when I turn the ship over to Capt. Jeremiah and return to Aberdeen where my motorcycle is stored.  Once I have my bike I’ll be riding down the coast back to San Diego and my own little boat/home.

Lake Union has been fun, but it’s time to leave.  We had our last sail this evening, Monday.  Last night was the last good night to go out on the town, because we’re underway early tomorrow morning, around 6:am.  Last night I walked up into the neighborhood where Kathleen used to live, under the shadow of the ZinoGen building, which we call the Zombi factory.  I found a great little bar called the Mars Bar, conjoined with the Venus Cafe.  The place wasn’t crowded, in fact there were only 3 customers when I walked in.  Soon the Kareoke started and we took turns singing songs to each other, bartender included.  After a while a few more people came in and it was clearly a local crowd, but they all went out of their way to make me feel welcome, including dedicating a group of nautical themed songs to me.  A fun last night.

Tomorrow we transit.  We must get out past the Fremont and Ballard bridges before 7:am because they won’t open during morning rush hour.  Once we get past the bridges, we go through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and under the BNRR bridge to rejoin the Puget Sound.  We plan to go north up the inside of Whidby island and through Deception Pass.  The Pass should have slack water at 6:pm so that is our target time of passage.  From there we’ll pick a nice anchorage for the night.  The next day, Wednesday, we’ll finish the transit to Blaine, arriving in the afternoon sometime.  It should be a lovely ride.

The 4th of July holiday has passed us by and we, the crew of the tall-ship ‘Lady Washington’ survived it.  Saturday the captain of the ’Hawaiian Chiefton’ and I built a boat in about 2 hours for the Quick and Daring race, and then passed the torch to crew members for refinements so we could get underway for our afternoon charters with the big boats.  When we returned in the evening I was not satisfied with the water-tight integrity of the hull, so I reinforced it with duct tape.  One of my crew stayed late to paint the boat and by dark she looked great and ready to race.

Sunday, the 4th dawned and I discovered that the solvents in the paint had attacked the duct tape, it was all falling off.  I quickly borrowed a staple gun and fastened the tape with staples.  We had a morning charter and a battle sail in the afternoon.  By the afternoon Lake union was a zoo.  They had blocked off half the lake with the fireworks barge and safety perimeter and the other half was filled with drinking boaters at anchor.  I have sailed through ridiculously crowded anchorages before, but not with a 208 ton tall-ship.  There were some close calls, and I mean CLOSE.

Toward the end of our battle-sail, wherein Captain Jimmy of the ‘Chiefton’ and I teamed up against the drunken anchorage, which we called the ‘Jimmy Buffet Fleet’, the Quick and Daring race began.  We had each left a crew member behind to race the boat we had built so we left off firing on the anchorage and proceeded to the race course for the Quick and Daring.  The fleet of quick built dingies got off the line and our boat and crew was fast downwind, no matter where they wanted to go.  They struggled with the second leg of the three leg course, so we swooped in with the 112′ Brig and towed them upwind to the finish, while barging the course and firing cannons at the rest of the fleet.  They disqualified us for cheating, but we cheated with style and everyone seemed to enjoy the show and the spirit of fun.  Later, at 8:pm, we got underway a for a third time that day with a group of spectators aboard for the fireworks show, which didn’t start until 10:15pm.  The show was fantastic but the traffic was fully insane.  We somehow made it back to the dock without any collisions just before midnight.  It was an 18 hour day for all aboard, but fun just the same.

Next weekend we have a Pirate-themed wedding, a ‘Make a Wish’ charter and more battle sailing.  We’ll be doing dockside tours, maintenance, and afternoon adventure sails until then.  The Center for Wooden Boats has been a great host and there certainly were some lovely boats here throughout the weekend festival.  On tuesdays they hold the Lake Union Duck Dodge, a version of Beer-can racing.  On wednesdays the power boats come out en mass for a Drink and Drift type of gathering.  All of this with sea-planes coming and going, it’s quite a show.

I am onboard the tall-ship ‘Lady Washington’ and we are here at the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union in Seattle.  There is a festival this holiday weekend and it is fun to be a part of the activities.  Yesterday, the 2nd of July there was a big barbeque and ice-cream social.  The ice-cream was served aboard the tugboat ‘Arthur Foss’.  Afterward there was chanty singing aboard both the ‘Adventuress’ and the ‘Hawaiian Chiefton’.  I have to give the nod to the ‘Chiefton’ for being more realistic, if less lyrical.  Today we have a battle-sail in the afternoon, but before that we begin construction on our entry for the ‘Quick and Daring’ race.  We must construct a boat primarily of cellulose in a short period of time and tomorrow we will race said boat against the other entries.  We are the Peoples’ entry.  All other competitors have been prepairing for months.  We went out last night and bought some plywood.  Our design, which had to be submitted for approval yesterday was scrawled on the back of a scrap of paper late in the day.  Mostly the design exists within the head of the Captain of the ‘Chiefton’ and myself.  We begin constuction at noon and then tag-team with crew members because we must get our boats underway for the Battle sail in the afternoon.  Tomorrow we have an Adventure sail in the morning, a Battle sail in the afternoon and are also getting underway with spectators for the fireworks on Lake Union.  We will punctuate the fireworks with cannon blasts.  In the middle of the day, two of our crew will race in the ‘Quick and Daring with whatever we construct.  This is my work for the next few weeks.  Kathleen calls it adult summer camp.  Remember, these boats move forward only because of volunteerism, and if you wanted to be a part, you too could sail with us.  Just go to the Lady Washington website for scheduling and contact information for the office.  I should be returning to San Diego at the end of July or the beginning of August.