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A Bloody Fine First Day With a Crab Claw II

Bleeding while you are swimming is disarming and kind. What seems to be water dripping in my face is actually something horrific -- that it never stopped dripping should have clued me in, but I'm still pondering that nth dimensional paradigm. Somewhere a baby is crying. I know this sounds like a cliche because, in all the bad novels, as soon as something interesting happens, there is silence, and always, "Somewhere, a dog was barking." The thing about cliches is that they're true, they're the condensed wisdom of society, but we English professors never tell our students this.

The baby is crying, and they repeat, "Man, you're bleeding!" I say stupidly, "My foot's stuck." And it is. I'm floating in a pool of blood, my eyes are covered with a strange film that I later know was blood, and I'm drinking ounces of my blood, and it will continue for quite a while because I'm also tasting Plavix, a blood-thinner, one of my medications. Yet, I'm happy that I wore the life jacket today, because at least I'm floating while -- yes -- the Nutcracker Effect. I didn't have the words to respond better than "My foot is stuck," nor could Hollywood have scripted a more unbelievable plot.

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A Bloody Fine First Day With a Crab-Claw I

My girlfriend tells the story about her father who saw someone waste a few hundred dollars on some unworkable scheme, and he wisely observed it had been money well spent because "how often can you get a lesson that lasts a life-time for just a few hundred bucks?" My own father, well, I think he would just stand there shaking his head, perhaps with a slight grin. I can picture the ghosts of both fellows making their observations on the day I became a True Proa Sailor. I wrote most of the following narrative (some edits came later) late at night in a blood-stained shirt, hospital pants, no underwear, and a forehead fastened back together with Krazy Glue (really). I will be spending money replacing various things that fell to lake-bottom, floated away, or was stolen by a shoreside vulture after the ambulance took me away -- go ahead, shake your head, grin: perhaps it will be money well-spent.

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Nature’s Crisis

Dave Foreman : In December of 1776, the American Revolution was in its darkest hour. In response, Tom Paine wrote his first "Crisis" paper: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." We need Tom Paine conservationists in our dark hour. Let us not apologize for loving wild Nature, for caring about other species, for speaking the truth. Reach out to others. Make deals when they are good deals. But let us not be frightened and browbeaten into appeasement. Counterpunch

Turbo : Hydrofoil Daysailor

Turbo (a trendy name back in the 80's heyday of the Porsche 911 Turbo) was my project one quarter. (School of Industrial Design, University of Washington. The Dean - James Hennessey, was way ahead of the curve concerning sustainable design. He wrote a book called Nomadic Furniture in 1973 that was full of simple, light, resource/space efficient, and recycled furniture designs -- I couldn't have been LESS interested at the time... ). The project was mostly concerned with model making and presentation - and was fortunately never graded on whether the idea was actually feasible or not.

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Cheap, Capable Cruisers III

JOHN DALZIEL: We seem to have found a few ineluctable limitations as to just how far one can stretch the traditional Micronesian proa so it can meet modern Western demands. With a modicum of care we can stay well within those limits and come out with a good, inexpensive cruiser. We've also seen that there is a fairly clear trade-off point beyond which it makes more sense to build a catamaran than a proa. The question is, where can we take it from here?

MICHAEL SCHACHT: The Pacific proa is unique in that it appears to have near monohull self-righting ability, yet without the heavy ballast. That means it can bypass the displacement wave drag of monohulls - like a cat, and yet it can sail closer to its true potential more of the time - like a monohull. Best of both worlds? Only if you are willing to make sacrifices in other areas (such as extreme length), mother nature can't be cheated.

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Cheap, Capable Cruisers II

John Dalziel: We want several things: good carrying capacity so the proa doesn't get absurdly long, both genuine and perceived constructional simplicity with a minimum of hytek or expensive fittings, and a design with a clear purpose of economical sailing, not yachtie snobbery. So let's look at a few sketches I've made of "similar" boats that fill all the above criteria; a 28' dory, 28' Wharram-inspired catamaran, and three 38' proas. Just how these can be considered "similar," I'll explain a bit later. But for now, all of them have at least one-ton carrying capacity, and are all intended to be built cheaply.

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Cheap, Capable Cruisers I

JOHN DALZIEL: Well, Michael, there are a lot of cruisers out there; where do cruising proas fit in? It seems we have three overlapping categories of cruisers:

• Camp-cruisers or beach cruisers as they are sometimes called, with minimal accommodations and equipment, sailed by one or two, and mostly used on island-hopping or similar short-distance jumps which are often part of longer cruises. There's been a lot of discussion of these on Proa File International, and a few have been built, including my Charles L. Brock and John Harris' Mbuli. Gary Dierking's Te Wa would be at the outer edge of this category, size-wise.
• "Cheap capable cruisers," meaning light-weight, simple boats designed for vacation cruises of 2 days to voyages of several months' duration, larger than camp-cruisers and carrying more in the way of supplies and equipment. I'd put your proa Rozinante and Russell Brown's first proa, Jzero, in this category.
• "Live-aboard cruisers" intended for full-time occupation and longer passages. These can also be cheap and capable, but will have more room for stores and are usually better appointed with the idea that the boat is also a home. There's a few proas amongst these, also, for example About Face and De Jours Millieurs.

But over many years seeing people sail to paradise I've noticed that the majority who get there at a younger age have made the trip in small, cheap, used or sometimes homebuilt boats, seldom ideal for the purpose. Yet they are out there doing it, not just dreaming, and obviously having a grand time. So "cheap, capable cruiser" is a category that interests me quite a bit.

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Voyager

My first in-depth exposure to the outrigger sailing canoe was through the excellent book: A Song for Satawal, by Kenneth Brower (Andre Deutsch press). Beautifully written, it came along right when I needed a direction, and I was hooked. I’ve had a couple of small trailerable cruisers before but got only a little use out of them. Most of my experience is in really small man — and sail — powered craft; good ground for learning the ways of wind and water.

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Rustic Schooner Launched

The Nigel Irens designed "Rustic Schooner" catamaran was launched from Constellation Yachts in January 2005. I really like this boat - it proves that modern multihulls don't all need to be hi-tech spaceships. "Sequoya" is a 64' LOA x 28' beam day charter cat built from plywood - and it's one of the few big cats that will actually improve the view of the harbor in which it's anchored. Check out the photo gallery at Constellation Yachts.

Seeking Reality in the Temple of Denial

Back in the day, the Seattle Boat Show was full of cruising sailboats - the middle of the King Dome (Seattle's domed stadium -- demolished in 2000 to make room for a bigger one) was a forest of masts and rigging that tugged at my soul like a kite - dreams of adventure, tropical islands, freedom.

No more. The current venue for the Seattle Boat show (Qwest® Field Event Center) is nearly empty of sail. The new for 2005 'Sailing Center' is in fact a ghetto - a small rectangle of floor space off to the side devoted to the quaint anachronism called a 'sail boat' - like a Native American Cultural Center that white people visit in our smug superiority; admiring the skills of a people too backward to invent gunpowder or television.

We all know where the real action is: Powerboats! And what powerboats they are; Bigger, Faster and More Luxurious every year.

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