sailing – Page 6 – A View from the Wheelhouse

Ahab meets Aeneas

Posted on April 23, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

The sound of waves whooshed over the sandlot playground where, high overhead on the screen, elongated tars sang from the Pequod’s rigging. Dad had piled the crew into the wagon to see the awesome spectacle of Moby Dick unfold on a 50’s drive-in movie screen. Gaunt against the dusky tropical light, Ahab glowered over the taffrail, the very image of the leaden god that circumscribes our meager efforts on earth. Is that when I first heard the lydian call of the Siren’s sea?

“Ready about! We’ll never make our offing if you don’t wake up!”

McWhirr stands on the foredeck, grasping a weather shroud against the roll.

“ Ready about!”

The wind freshens, and Old Hand pounds into seas steepened by the brute contention of wind and tide, hell-bent on clearing the boulders awash off Skiff Point.

Why must we hurl headlong into the tide-race at Neptune’s mercy, when we might be lounging, beer poised, before the latest remake of the same old sea story, remote from the possability of drowning? At the question, the mind can only wander, and flow with the kelp’s sinuous curves into deeper soundings past the headland to the west…

Dad, from his wheelchair on the Laguna Beach hills, held lookout for whale-spouts on the gold-burnished horizon. A watch he may yet hold, in his heart. His stout heart, relic of the an ancient clan, has either been occulted into the rarefied vaults of the holy ones or lost in a cluttered closet on Dawson Street.

Then, in a dream, I found a a copy of the Aeneid among carved wooden heads on a laural-shaded altar. A sign? A waypoint that marks the passage of another life?

“We are becalmed, mate.”

McWhirr’s foghorn bass, seems far away.

The boom swings overhead. A clatter of gear from below rouses me in time to see an abomination of a container ship off Jefferson Head turn southeast around the Sierra Foxtrot buoy. I turn the helm alee, past sodden fishermen bent over gunwales, looking bereft of hope for even an enemic cod.

“3 fathoms. Let go here, mister Spencer!”

“Aye sir!”

I drop anchor and Old Hand slowly turns toward the flood. The east turns blue/violet, then slate-gray above the Cascade range.

“Have I ever told you that dream about Aeneas?”

“Who’s he when he’s at home?”

Let it go. That was another life. Another has signed on as swab this voyage. I was but a nipper who saw the hollow face of Saturn in the light projected on an L.A. drive-in movie screen. Just as now, he’s rough-hewn on the rocky peak yonder. He limps his sluggish round while the laurel tree’s shadow circles over the household gods, ever counter to the golden sun.

Saturnius McWhirr stories

Over the bleak whale-road

Posted on April 22, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

A bewildered Grebe in a punk hair-do ducks under the lightly rippled, gray surface of Eagle Harbor as we steam past the green buoy marking the channel. Old Hand heels sharply to port in a sudden gust as the honk of the Bainbridge/Seattle ferry echos over the rolling hills of Eagledale.

It’s Spring, season of departures; when we succumb to the age-old lure of quest, and deeds of heroism, tragedy or folly are undertaken. They are the stuff of legend, of epic voyages recounted around the galley table by dreamy minstrels or aged salts over a pint. Something in us is forever departing along the imaginal meridians vaguely descried in youth, over the bleak whale-roads of yore.

There’s Agamemnon’s dramatic farewell and foul sacrifice for a fair breeze toward windy Troy. Oaths hurled into the spray are drowned by the weazy bellows of a fake northerly gale. A sword held against a blood-red sky by a masked tragedienne brings down the threadbare curtain. It is the ritual re- enactment of the primal leave-taking, when carved gods brooded from the bowsprit, holding vigilant watch while we set out toward the golden isle of dreams.

I too, have sat hungry around those ancestral fires, a villan, hero or common swab, subject to the changeable turns of an unswerving fate.

I haul the main halyards as the mainsail flaps in the freshening breeze. Old Hand hesitates, like a portly dowager lifting her skirts before a pier-head jump, and falls off on a starboard tack toward the red buoy that marks the southern extent of Tyee Shoal.

We hear melodious calls to haul away in the pump shanty’s that float over the troubled waters of time- a theme that has lifted the spirit of land-lubber and salt throughout the ages.

In Watteau’s painterly celebration of leave-taking, Voyage to Citheria, we see jaded gentry waltzing down a winding path to a moored lighter bound toward the Arcadian isle.

Courses drawn on a yellowed, dog-eared chart mark the departures and arrivals that make up the saga of Old Hand. She recedes forever like a fog-bound light, into the theatical haze of memory.

What am I departing from? I set out before dawn, with only my own noisy mind as mate. The Captain, asleep below, will soon ascend the companionway stairs, glare at the rising swell, shout imperious commands like Gregory Peck, and set the unsteady keel of this narrative on a true course toward an imaginary landfall. He is the guiding spirit of this voyage, a horn-fisted old coot named Saturnius McWhirr.

Musings

Chop wood,carry on

Posted on April 17, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Its been very lovely in Port Madison this Spring. I’ve been regrouping after putting up the art show, taking stock and redirecting energy toward simpler things like chopping wood. We are talking serious wood chopping.

The building is a workshop built by Ed Monk. I’ve been privileged to Moor Old Hand at this historic site, built by one of the Northwest’s finest boat designers. I feel his presence in the stoutly built out- buildings and docks, and gladdened by the thought that, he too, hauled gear and materials up and down the steep path to the water. His can-do spirit inspires my humble efforts, and I take extra care in the stacking of split maple and cedar. This stacking is itself, an art.

old hand interior January '12 007 — Interior of Old Hand

At first, I was unimpressed by Monk’s designs. But as I worked on his boat-houses I came to see his ubiquitous, wooden power cruisers in a new light.

I find rusty, bent shipwright tools near Monk’s shop, and use an old, weathered workbench he made. After the long preparation for the exhibit, this physical connection with common objects that surrounded his life has inspired in me an appreciation for the simple aesthetic of usefulness.

My boat, Old Hand is not a Monk, but was built of such stuff. Her portly hull design is a scaled-down version of the hefty Norwegian lifeboats designed by Colin Archer. After 10 years of owning her I’ve greater appreciation for her ponderous lines and stout workmanship. So I am readying for another season of sailing. I look at tide tables and plot course South toward Old Hand’s first port of call: Gig Harbor.

So stay tuned for posts chronicling these adventures on the Salish Sea told in art, music and videos.

Paintings in Progress

Last touch up for April art exhibit

Posted on April 3, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Here are some paintings I’ve been finishing for my art exhibit this month. I’ve been too busy getting them ready to find time for a blog post.

The Sufi Shrine has been a real challange, but I believe I pulled it out at the last minute.

The Sleeping Poet (not sure of title) has a long history as well. It was inspired by a medieval poem called the Pearl-a pious allegory where the poet falls into a dream by a beautiful river bank. I’m not usually into allegory-especially pious ones-but something about this story has grabbed me ever since reading it (and memorizing some) 20 years ago.

The Square Rigger is my latest, unfinished painting. It evokes an earlier time of Port Madison history. She emerges from the sunset mists like a ghostly presence.

Here is my version of Dante’s Inferno. I’ve been listening to a recording of the Divine Comedy while getting ready for this show.

An artwork in progress-Port Madison Reverie

Reflections of brilliant red kayaks fall vertically into the mud off Reah’s dock . The gray water stretches toward steep soundings off Jefferson Head and a fitful northerly brightens the harbor entrance with catspaws . An ancient tug nudges a barge off Meig’s old mill site, while the sqwak of a blue heron echoes from tall cedars veiled in ghostly fog. The fog creates vast space by removing nearby objects beyond this present time to maroon me with only my dark thoughts. A little mystery by way of atmospheric perspective.

Strange to think how the population of this quiet port dwarfed Seattle in the mid 19^th Century, when Meig’s mill belched acrid smoke into the northwest gloom and the west shore shipyard built lumber schooners for the coast trade. Then, the steam side wheeler’s whistle sounded along these shores. Venerable tugs like the Politkovsky, brought passengers, mail and logs to the hearty inhabitants of a thriving boomtown built with the lumber milled for distant ports. The long history of this now peaceful anchorage holds some dirty secrets- like when Meigs suddenly fired all Chinese workers or used trickery to monopolize the mosquito fleet, the main form of transport on Bainbridge Island.

I’ve taken a break from painting to work at Thatcher Farm. My art work has long tended toward abstraction (the term is used loosely since my work is figurative) and I needed connection with our ancestral earth to ground my mercurial mind. Speaking of Mercury, it seems significant that Thatcher farm was the main switchboard for Island communications for much of the 20^th Century.

So now I’m sending out a communique into an ever expanding cyber network where few have time for an old sailor’s questionable yarn. Among crockery shards I disinter rusty hinges for a gate that opens into another time. How many have turned this soil over the centuries, have pulled crabgrass, hacked blackberry vines into submission and bent hoe blades on this weathered rock? I till midden heaps of kitchen ware and toss rocks into a plastic bucket with a loud, dull thunk!.

Under golden maples that sway over the harbor entrance, a cemetery holds the remains of Port Madison’s founders. Here I came upon a stone bearing this simple elegy:

…Gallieau, 1905-2005, Lost at Sea

What an epic sea romance is encapsulated in this terse inscription! Would that my own humble literary efforts were enlivened by such economy and expressiveness. I see Gallieau as a Conradian swab on a lumber schooner bound for Frisco after the big quake, or an ancient mariner going down for the last time off Foulweather Bluff in a squall. May he rest in peace.