The following is an incident from our early days.  I don’t think I ever put the story on a blog (if I did it was on another blog written years ago) but in a way, it is a dramatic opening and a not just a bit of a bloody start to our adventure out here.  The reason for writing it is to gauge from you guys what kind of an opening to a book it might make.  Please feel free to comment.  Better put: please comment.  It would be a great assist to me.

It was frigid.  I was in the water.  And I was hurt.  One second I was fine, the next I had been hit in the head by a 20 hp outboard motor propeller as it drove over me at full speed.  It hit my head like a sledge.  Some kind of hot goo was coming out of my skull as I flailed about trying to get back to the surface and I was starting to think that this might not turn out to be such a good day after all.

I had just been injured in a freak boating accident miles from anywhere.

My wife and I were constructing a small wilderness cabin up one of the inside passages on the BC coast on a sparsely populated and un-serviced island.  It was around noon on a hot July day when we left our building site for a trip to the local store.  We are located ten nautical miles northeast-ish from the nearest settlement with roads and telephones, 30 miles and a ferry ride east-ish from the nearest small town and two miles South of our nearest neighbour.  It is isolated by our standards.  Remote by any standards.

I was 56 at the time.  My wife 52.  We are basically healthy and relatively capable people but still citified to the extent that both of us had soft hands and a single day’s hard labour resulted in extremely sore muscles.  We had more fat than muscle, more optimism than experience and more patience than skill.  Building a cabin was our idea of a challenge and an adventure.  Fortunately, we liked doing it and had each other to share it with.

It doesn’t get any better.

That day, my wife and I were riding along in our small inflatable boat at full speed – at about twenty knots.  Sally was at the helm. I was sitting up on the bow.  I was leaning forward into the boat because equalized weight distribution helps level the trim of the boat and allows it to ride better.  I was leaning in towards the center of the boat with my seat on the front tubes, my upper weight on my arms placed on my knees.  My weight was well inboard.  I thought I was sitting safely.

But I straightened to look at something on shore at the exact same instant we hit an inexplicably large wave.  The momentum of straightening my posture together with the deceleration of the boat hitting the wave sent me over the bow.  It was instant.  I remember thinking as I went over, “Damn!  The propeller!”

Then there was a huge ‘bang!’ and I remember thinking again, ‘Damn!  The propeller.”  As the boat passed over me, I was twice struck by the spinning blades.  One blade cut along the part line of my hair and the second cut almost at right angles near the crown of my head.   It felt like a single hammer blow.

A few seconds later, I bobbed to the surface with a view of the inflatable still moving away from me.  I could see Sally’s back.  That was not a good moment.  She seemed so distant.  Worse, she was heading the wrong way.  I could already feel hot liquid pouring from the top of my head.  The pain was obvious and extreme but not incapacitating.

I was conscious but not overly coherent.  I remember instinctively calling out, “Oh, my God!”

It occurred to me at that moment that ‘Oh, my God!’ was not going to convey the appropriate message so I took a deep breath, collected my thoughts, tried to be calm and yelled again.  This time I had purposefully formed the sentence in my head: “Come and get me.”  And so I let out at the top of my lungs,  “Oh, my God!”

Again.

This involuntary and repetitive exclamation struck me as mildly amusing at the time.  It seemed as if I was destined to yell prayers instead of instructions.  Just as well, I thought, considering the situation.  So, I shut up and began to swim slowly towards the finally-stopped boat.  It was about 75 feet away.  It seemed like a mile.

Sally had watched the whole accident unfold in some kind of horrible slo-motion but the boat was traveling too fast to do anything about it.  She stopped the boat rather than try to adjust to the situation right away.  It was the right move.

As I swam I became more and more aware of my circumstance.  I was fully clothed, but injured and bleeding.  My immediate rescue was likely but medical assistance was not.  We were a long way from anywhere.  I was particularly aware of the temperature difference I was experiencing.  I was in 50-degree water and my body was rapidly becoming colder.

In the meantime, of course, hot something was pouring from my head and down my face.  My head was covered in a gooey, sticky-warmth and my body was getting colder.  It was very strange and not just a little disconcerting.  I started to worry.

Sally re-started the boat and covered the distance to me within seconds.  She was very good.  She could have easily come too fast or missed me altogether.  Instead, she drifted up to me neatly with the engine put in neutral at just the right time.  We connected the first time we tried.  After a few futile attempts to get me into the boat, I suggested that I hold on to the rope looped along the gunwale and that she simply drag me to the beach as quickly as she could.  I adopted the harpooned whale position which came somewhat naturally in the situation and Sally took the extra precaution of lashing me to the boat.  It was a good idea.  I was losing consciousness.

Being dragged through the water increases heat loss.  It was scary cold.  After what seemed like an hour but was more like five minutes, we got to shore and I rolled into the boat from the beach, holding Sally’s just-disrobed t-shirt to my head to stanch the flow of blood.  I had inadvertently wrapped one of its buttons against my head and for the next few hours felt what I thought was a skull fragment as I held the shirt in place.

In retrospect, that silly error was the worst part.  I kept expecting brain matter to ooze out whenever I moved the cloth.

We drove another ten minutes to the nearest neighbour and they called the Coast Guard.  Forty-five minutes later two Coast Guard out-station, rapid response teams were on site and thirty minutes after that a helicopter arrived.  Within the next hour I was at the Campbell River hospital and soon after that I was examined and stitched up.  They even gave me a sandwich.

I was very lucky.  It seems the propeller had neatly sliced through my scalp in two separate places for about ten inches of laceration but had not cut into my skull.  There was no skull fragment – only a bloodied button and an overly vivid imagination.

That kind of precision cut is not an easy thing to imagine.  Try pinching your own scalp and see how much skin you get.  Then wonder how two powerful blades could have sliced only skin deep without cutting much deeper.  I was more than lucky.  I was saved miraculously.

I guess I am also hard headed.

I was fortunate in more ways, too.  I met fabulous neighbours who all came to my aid.  People I did not know came to help.  Blankets were volunteered and comfort was extended wherever possible.  The Coast Guard personnel were perfect – just like you want them to be.  They were proficient in the first aid and skills they manifested but also in their caring and humanity.  They were not only skilled professionals but they were also decent human beings.

As I was being carried aloft by the medivac helicopter, the remaining Coast Guard staff turned to assist my traumatized and worried wife.  They took care of our boat and got Sally to the nearby town where the hospital was.  They were excellent.

The helicopter crew and the hospital staff picked up where the Coast Guard left off.  They, too, performed and behaved way beyond my expectations.  In fact, I was catching a ferry back to my cabin four or so hours later.  I looked a bit ridiculous in my blood-stained bandage and I certainly felt a bit ‘whacked’ but, all in all, I was intact and doing fine.

I remember entering the ferry passenger waiting room with a dazed look on my face and wearing a weird looking bandage-cum-turban on my head.  Sally had gone to buy the tickets.  I entered a room with about ten others already seated and waiting for the ferry.  Some looked up at my arrival.  They looked horrified.  Blood was seeping through the bandage and trickling down my neck.  I hadn’t noticed it.

Tipping my turbaned head forward, I said, “I’m the leader of a new island cult.  Anybody wanna join?”  Nobody laughed.  Nobody even acknowledged my existence.  They just looked away or at each other.  The message conveyed clearly to me was that they knew a nut-case when they saw one.  And after a few minutes, everyone left the waiting room.  They decided to wait outside.  I don’t blame them.

I guess my echoing laughter at my own joke didn’t help allay their concerns.  They felt safer outside.  Sally didn’t come in either, now that I think about it.

The sun was setting as we crossed the last body of water on our way home in a water taxi.  I held Sally close for a long time and reflected on the day.  I was very thankful to be there.  And with her.

“You know, Sal, with the exception of the propeller, it was a pretty good day!”

We have a steep hill at the end of the road on the nearest island.  Where we park our cars.  It is really steep.  Black diamond.  And, over time and weather it develops some pretty severe moguls.

A normal car or van can’t make it.  You need a 4×4 and even 4×4 pick-ups (being lighter in the back end) have a bit of trouble.  The ideal vehicle would be a 4X4 with chunky tires and a short wheelbase.  Like a Forerunner or a Pathfinder.  That is what we have – an older Nissan Pathfinder.  It is great.  And that is what most of the vehicles are like.  We all have SUVs.  Mostly.

Interesting lesson: it is better to go down a steep hill front ways and then back the vehicle up that same hill when you want to return rather than trying to back down first and driving up frontways after.  Why?  Weight distribution.  You have better braking going down frontways and you have better traction going up backwards (engine over the drive wheels).  Kinda counterintuitive, isn’t it?

The smallest suitable vehicle is a Tracker and the largest is a Suburban or Expedition.  There’s a Subaru in the lot but I don’t think they attempt the hill.  Not enough clearance for the dips and holes.  A vehicle can get hung up pretty easily.  A few years back a small 4×4 pick-up snapped it’s frame going up. The whole thing was stuck on the hill like a giant half-open jack-knife.

We also have several dead or dying trees looming over the hill.  They will fall.  Someday.  Soon.  And that would make getting up and down even harder.  There’s also a little spring that seeps out of the hill about halfway down.  That constant stream helps the tires erode the surface and so the ruts and moguls get bigger and the road becomes more impassable every year.

The hill almost qualifies for a National Geo picture sometimes – especially in the winter when the snow is on the surface and the ice from the spring has ‘paved’ the bottom into an inclined skating rink. More than a few of us have slid to a stop at the bottom.

That is when we start to use good boots and balance to get up the hill instead of horsepower and winter tires.  When you slip down more than just a few feet, you leave the vehicle at the top.

Four years ago 34 neighbours gathered on a particularly rainy day and with shovels and wheelbarrows resurfaced the hill.  It was a magnificent effort.  We did good.

And it lasted four years.  That was all fine for awhile but life and roadways change.  The hill is deteriorating.  So is everyone else.  We’re getting old.  Carrying heavy weights up and down the hill in the winter is becoming less of an option.  Especially when even good boots don’t afford good traction.  The writing is on the hill.  We have to do something.

I’ll keep you posted.

I was happy outside in shirtsleeves working on my deck.  Sal was up at the bunkhouse learning to make sourdough bread.  Early afternoon.  It was sunny.  Life was good.

When I saw her returning, I went in to put the water on for tea.  She arrived and we sat down to a nice cuppa.  The clouds seemed to roll in pretty quickly after that.  Within 20 minutes it was dark-ish outside. Windy.  And cold.  Ten minutes later it was snowing!

For the next 45 minutes we watched in horror as the wind raged and the snow came in screaming horizontal sheets obliterating our view of the outside.  Couldn’t see twenty feet from the house! It looked like a scene from Jack London.  It felt like Yellowknife in January.

And so we sipped our second cup of tea, put another log on the fire and wondered which episode of the Twilight Zone we were now in.

Sheeeesh!

Forty-five minutes after that the snow stopped and a few minutes after that sun peeked through.  Within the hour, we were bathed in sunshine, sky clear as a bell.  Sal shrugged on her jacket and went out to play with the dogs.  I went out, cleaned up my work site and started the sushi rice for dinner.

The Snow Thug was gone.

Now, don’t get me wrong……we’ve had snow before.  This is Canada. We know snow.  But I have never known Hit-and-Run snow.  Rogue snow.  Snow Blitzkrieg.  I have never encountered a mini, nano-term, snow tempest on an otherwise sunny day.  At sea level!?

What is going on?

OK.  It is not global warming.  It is not global change.  It is not global anything.  I admit that freely.  But it was damn odd.

And I blame the oil companies.

Only kidding.  I can’t blame the oil companies for an anomaly in the weather.  I already blame them for enough as it is.  Just about everything, actually.  Well, them and Harper, the CIA and Globalization.  But I think I can let them all off the hook for that little tempest.  But, of course, like most people, the thought crosses my mind.  It does make me wonder how a snowstorm can hit like an outlaw MMA fighter in the middle of the day.  It really felt like we were being ‘mugged’ by Mother Nature.

What is the world coming to?

Blew like hell yesterday.  Gusts to 50.  Sal was working up at the post office and had gotten there that morning when it was pretty calm in her little 11 foot boat.  Things changed quickly after that.  By 3:00 pm (an hour before she was to leave for home) the seas were three feet high, choppy and the wind was howling.   I was concerned for her safety.

The phone rang.  It was the head postmistress.  “Did Sally go to work today?  I am concerned.  It is an awful day for a small boat.  I am going to send my husband to go get her!”  

“Well, that is very kind of you but if anyone goes to get her, it’ll be me.  And I am thinking of going myself.  Looks pretty rough out there.  My only real concern is that Sal thinks she is the captain of her own ship, the master of her own destiny and that she and her little boat are capable of facing up to force four hurricanes.  If I go out there, she’ll get mad at me.”

“I’ll send my husband.”

“Thanks for that but never mind.  I am going.  I’ll definitely get in trouble but I’ll get in more trouble if someone else’s husband goes.  The best outcome for me is that she flips into the sea and I arrive just in the nick of time to save her.  That would at least shut her up.  Anything short of that and it will be hell.”

“You are weird, you know that?”

I went.  Met Sal as she was just leaving the post office dock.  She glared at me.  We headed out into the teeth of it together.  Separate boats.  When we got home to our dock Sal reamed me out for over reacting.  But when I got home I received an e-mail from a neighbour watching the whole one-act drama from her window play out on the ocean in front of her. “Oooooh, it was sooooooooo nice to see you go out in the storm to get your sweetie!”

“Yeah.  Love that sweetie.”

Like Mrs. Ahab loved the captain of the Pequod…………

I am a bit overdue for a post.  Sorry.  My only excuse is so unlike me as to be unbelievable.  I am not so sure I have anything to say……..

.…doooooo………dooooooooo….doooooooo..dooooooooooo  (image of Rod Serling looms in digital fashion in the background)

Part of the reason is that I am busy doing work and getting ready for spring.  Part of it is that I have a small, temporary eye infection and it inhibits screen work.  But the largest part of this writer’s malaise is a mild state of confusion re topics.  Whales and Ravens?  Politics?  Building? 

Waddawedoin’here?

I am just reading Al Gore’s book, The Future, and it is, so far, kinda bleak.  My kinda book, really, but this one is dark.  Ugly dark.  Seems we are all likely doomed.  All to Hell doomed. Globalization, computerization, robotization and wealth inequality together with climate change and we are soon about to enter the perfect storm.  This kinda thing somewhat dampens one’s plans for the future, ya know?

Well, it changes them, anyway.  Gore is saying that the playing field is altering.  And altering quickly and radically.  What we have come to know as ‘normal life’ is going to change.  He claims this is not a prediction but rather a report on what is already happening.  It is changing.  Most of us just don’t know it yet.

I won’t bore you with the details.  Suffice it to say, he overwhelms you with information and so far, it is convincing.  I have no idea what the answer is – I am only 1/3 of the way through the book.

But one factoid made me think…………seems we were stone carvers and spear-chuckers for some 200,000 years before we learned to plant a garden.  Then we were ‘agriculturists’ for 8,000 years before we made some machines to ramp up production of consumer goods.  The Industrial Revolution is only 200 years old and it is already being replaced by the Digital Age (read: computer, robot, no-need-for-humans era).

That part is not hard to follow.  We are rapidly changing the way we cover the basics of life.  He cites 3-D printers as being the forerunners of Star-Trek based ‘replicators’ and that we can all expect to have one relatively soon.  Those of us who can afford to buy them, that is.  He is easy to understand.  We are changing so fast as to be caught confused and unaware. And many will be caught poor.

I get it.  So far, so bleak.

But think of this very minor point: when we chucked spears, we did so outside.  When we planted rice, maize and wheat, we did so outside.  When we began making model T’s and big screen TV’s, we moved inside and went to the park or the beach on the weekends.  A little bit of outside.  Maybe.  But when we work online, shop online and are soon to ‘produce’ entirely online, we are not outside in the fresh air at all.  In fact, there are a number (in the hundreds of thousands) of people who seemingly never leave their screen ever.  They have full-time lives online.

That can’t be good.  Put aside for the moment the matter of money and all that crap.  Forget about your RRSPs and 401Ks and financial plans for a minute.  Waddabout your body?  Doesn’t that need some basic attention?

I just read that one in three Americans die with some form of dementia.  They do not necessarily die from some form of dementia but they have it when they go.  Not good.  And we all know of the increasing prevalence of cancer and heart disease. Maybe we should spend a bit more time outside doing some basic healthy, physical, natural things?  It is definitely healthier and more fun even if it does not add to your aggregate wealth.

More importantly, perhaps, and according to Al Gore (so far in the book, anyway), being able to live simply and off the land may be a requirement for survival in the very near future.  Seems the elites and the robots won’t have a great deal of need for the billions of people that used to provide cheap labour.  Not anymore, anyway.  They just won’t need us.

And, honestly?  I am hoping to not need them!

We caught the early (8 a.m.) high tide and hauled Big Surf onto the beach.  We do this by dragging it up two large logs that are run parallel into the shallows like a marine ways.  A winch (as you’d expect) is attached at the high and dry end and, with a little pull and tug, she comes up pretty easily.

Good way to start the day.

But, tragically, Big Surf may be there forever.

When you live remote, looking, sourcing, finding, buying, procuring, acquiring,  and obtaining stuff is a challenge.  We work hard to get. The internet helps but, generally speaking, shopping (comparing and pricing) is too difficult logistically.  Basically, you take what you have time and opportunity to get. My window of access and time is short.   And we hermits are obliged to make fast, executive decisions when it comes to shopping.  “I don’t care what the price is, I am here.  And so is it.  That is magic.  A sign from the Gods. Gimme dat!”

When I am at Home Depot the clerk always asks, “Did you get everything you wanted today, sir?”   I laugh.  “Five out of nine this time.  Not bad. Anything over 50% of what is on my list is a lucky day!” 

As I have said, shopping is a challenge.

But selling!?  Selling is impossible!  Think about it……………

I put an ad on Craigslist: 17′ Surf, good shape but not pretty.  Dry.  No engine.  To view take several ferries, and drive a 4×4 15 kms down a remote logging road, launch a similar boat to the one you are coming to look at and take the following compass bearing until you hit a distant island.  If you have not found me by dark, fire off some flares.  Price is negotiable.

Unsurprisingly, things on islands tend to stay on islands.  It’s the way it is.  Most of my neighbours, for instance, have several boats.  They have to.  It is de rigeur for life abroad.  But, when they get a new one, the old one often just gets ‘hauled up’ and becomes part of the landscape.

This is especially true for vehicles.  Some folks even include appliances in the phenomena.  In fact, anything that is heavy enough to sweat over or invest barging fees in is likely to remain ‘in the remote’ forever.

Boats – because they float away (if they can) – have a theoretical chance for re-use but selling them just requires too much in the way of synchronicity.  Buyer and seller are literally too far apart.   Boats with a chance for a second life (actually, island boats are like cats – they have nine lives) usually go to friends, neighbours and/or family.  They can check out any time they want but they can never leave.

Many are just given away.

Bottom line: I may be the proud owner of Big Surf for a long, long time.

We haven’t been able to get off our butts much these past few days.  The weather has been wet and uninviting – but that isn’t it.  Not really.  We just don’t have the juice right now.  We are a smidge sluggish.   I just don’t wanna go do, ya know?  I dunno………….the idea of a nap keeps cropping up for me.

Which is just fine.

Sal never stops but she slows down and she is in a bit of a slow mode now, too.  Mind you, everything will still get done but ten little ‘side-jobs’ probably won’t.  Not today.

This is not an unusual state for me.  It is for Sal.  She’s not yet used to just sitting.  I am.  I like to sit and stare at the sea and just think every once in awhile.  Thinking, for me, is a treat, an indulgence.  For years I just seemed to have seconds to think something out, much of the time reacting to the moment, the stimuli of the city, my work, my family, driving, TV and the like.

Any empty spaces were filled with catch-up phone calls, checking schedules, finishing half-done chores, side jobs, etc.  There were no truly empty spaces.

Pausing to think, reflect, ponder, contemplate was simply a luxury I never seemed to have time for.  Now I do.  A woman’s work is never done, they say, but Sal is catching me up in the slowing down department.  Ironically, it takes a while to slow down.

I, however, can lay on the bed and just day-dream for an hour now and enjoy the whole process immensely.  I often use that kind of time to plan out a building project in detail in my head. Then, when the time comes to get to it, the work just seems to flow.  It is a nice way to get things done. Feels right.

But I was stunned to discover this ‘weird way of being’.  It was about four years ago just as we were slowing down from having built the house.  We had tons of projects still to do but the ‘big push’ was over and, amazingly, we could start to work at a more relaxed pace.  That meant not rushing, not working as fast as we could, not thinking-and-working at the same time.  For the first time in my adult life – it seemed – I had real down time.  Real time.  Real time NOT already spoken for in some way.

It was amazing.

Still is.

Highly recommended as well, by the way.  But this ‘head space’ is not something you can achieve by simply having a vacation, taking time off or interrupting a normally stressful life.  I should know.  I tried.

Stressful or just plain rapid-living is like a heavy fly-wheel.  You may stop the engine but the flywheel keeps going and you just can’t really slow down.  Not right away.  You might get a rest but ‘slowing down’ and reflecting, contemplating and pondering – well, they don’t come easily to a usually-stressed mind.

Honestly?  I don’t think I achieved even a partial mind-state of ‘nothing’ until the second year of having actually slowed down.  And I am still not there.  Not fully.  But mostly.  Hard to explain without sounding all Maharajah guru on ya.

The point: peace is a state of mind.  And pace is a major influence in it.  The words are similar because they are.   The city has pace.  The country does not.  It has seasons.  We have managed to achieve some peace by reducing our pace.  And it is almost seasonal in it’s rhythm.  It’s a good thing and something not really understood until you get some of it.

Some time ago I told you of my small-city-guy neighbour’s houseboat project.  Well, it is underway again.  Last weekend he came out and all hell broke loose, lumber flyin’ around and getting erected.  Makin’ off-cuts.  Saws whining, hammers hammering.  Whoosh!  Bang!  Typically, this guy works hard and fast and, once he gets going, he is a machine.  Things get done.  Makes me tired just watchin’.  I half expect him to be finished by the time I’ve written this.

Pictures will follow.

The other ‘Big-city-guy’ came up this week.  He works hard, too, but he brings rain.  Unbelievable.  If he goes to town, it rains.  If he comes up, it rains.  The guy is a regular Joe Btfsplk.  It’s a curse.  But, I confess, it amuses me.  In August, in the middle of a ten-day streak of sunshine, he announces he is going to town for supplies.  And I watch the storm clouds gather.  By the time he has shopped and returned, the rain lets up.  This is true well in excess of 80% of the time.  He is a true rain-maker.  We could rent him out to California.

But it is nice to see him up here.  He loves it.

First W’fer of the year wrote looking for a place to volunteer.  We’ll likely take her in for the wood-cutting week.  Makes things go easier if we can get a labour-chain going.  Plus I like having a young person to boss around.  Makes me feel good, ya know?

So Spring is almost here.  All the signs are showing.  It’s all good.

I can’t believe it!  A regular reader suggested that the occasional political rant would be appreciated!?  Ya gotta wonder…….?

But, of course, I’ll oblige.  But I’ll make it quick.  First off, what the hell is going on with the stock market?  The Dow is at a record high, the NASDAQ is higher than it has been since 2001.  Where is the confidence coming from?

Here’s my theory: there is no true outpouring of confidence.  Not popular confidence, anyway.  Confidence is not what we are seeing this time.  This time we are seeing the rich investing because they have no other place to put their money and, since the rich have gotten richer, they are a bigger influence than they have been in the past – proportionally.  Wall street used to manifest the confidence of Main street.  Today it manifests the disposable income of Park Place and Boardwalk.

That is what I think.

Canadian politics is finally getting interesting.  Harper is an all around pariah.  On just about every front, too.  Even the CBC are taking shots at him.  The lapdog has turned.  They have been beaten and starved for so long, the CBC has no teeth so the battle is far from fully engaged but, for the first time in a long time, the CBC is finding stories that are a negative force on the government.  They gave up that kind of criticism with the first government cuts decades ago.  They may be too weak now to even be heard.  It may be too little too late.  But it is good to see Ol’ Yeller getting it’s voice back – weak as it is.

Christy Clark (Premier of BC) is starting to look like Rocky Balboa without the juice to make a last-minute rally.  The blood is pooling at her feet.  And she is reeling and teetering from the beating – all self-inflicted punches.  The NDP will win the next election.  But with what?  What have they done, said or even tried to do in the last ten years?  It wasn’t the NDP who punched her out.  It was shadow-boxing with the shadows winning this time.  Were the NDP a vital opposition or a mute, neutered pablum of a party who simply sat back and watched the Liberals self-destruct?

It was the latter.

The latest figures indicate that the earth is warmer (climate) than it has been in 11,000 years.  The threat of climate change is no longer a threat – it is now underway.  And it seems to be underway at a quicker rate than even the most pessimistic forecaster predicted even five years ago.  Yesterday, March 10th, I got too much sun working outside for about four hours.  Got a sunburn.  March.  In Canada.  Who woulda thunk it?

I got more.  I got tons more.  I am a veritable cornucopia of political and universal opinion.  My biases runneth over.  But that should be enough.  That should satisfy my reader friend.  For a while, anyway.  To the rest of you, my sincere apologies.

Now, on to a quick local update……………

Pod of Orcas yesterday.  Five or six of them.  Heading north.  A red-headed Woodpecker of immense size (well over a foot long) on the rotten tree out the kitchen window.  Gorgeous.  Prawns seems to have left the building……..no one is catching any.  Weird.  Now is their time.  Sump’n’s wrong.  Sal and I got all our lumber for the new studio (frame) in and up the hill.  And, in one more afternoon, we’ll have all our logs up the hill, too.  Should be all set for choppin’ and stackin’ for year three’s heating supply.  It is good to get your wood supply in that far in advance – and then keep it there.  Means you burn dry wood.

And I can start on the studio soon.  Things are lookin’ up.

Sal’s putting in the garden.  Things are already starting to grow.  March in Canada?  By July we may get avocados and pineapple if we plant ’em in now.  Who knows?

State of the union?  Mixed with occasional rain, cloud and sunny periods. Maybe sleet.  Maybe not.  Winds gusting and shifting from all points of the compass, possible volcanoes and earthquakes.  Tsunami warnings.  BC Ferries are stuck in MarineSec One but we are at DefCon 2, confused and wondering.

Be careful out there, anything can happen.

New boat is in the water.  I like it.  But, OMG, is it an ugly boat!

Wasabi is 16.5 feet with a walk-thru windshield and a pretty nice hull shape.  She’ll do well.  She replaces Lolita, the 14.5 footer that I had temporarily while I fixed up Big Surf, the 17 foot Whaler-type knock-off.  Yes, I got boats!

Wasabi

But I traded sweet little Lolita to my mechanic ’cause she needed a new home now that Wasabi is here and she was just too small for me anyway.  So she is gone.

And now I have to find a home for Big Surf.  It is also a good boat and practically perfect for a builder-on-an-island ’cause it is almost rectangular, ultra stable, handles seas beautifully (Whaler style hull) and is completely open which makes loading stuff easy. The problem with Big Surf is that she is so heavily built, she takes a larger outboard for any kind of efficiency.  I have a 50.  She needs a 70.  I took her apart because I thought there must be water trapped between the two hulls but no, she was dry as a bone.  Just heavy scantlings.  Great work boat.

Wasabi is old.  Circa 1980.  But the hull is in very good shape and so is the deck.  The deck/interior is all a faded green that, when cleaned up a bit, looks like wasabi paste (horseradish flavoring used with sushi), thus the name.  We went down yesterday and ‘chucked’ the sleeper seats that were wrecked with age and permanently wet.  We’ll use Dairyland milk crates as seats instead.  They are light weight and they don’t get soggy.

While we were down there ‘chucking and cleaning’, we checked Wasabi out more closely.  Sal removed an unnecessary deck fitting and the original colour of the hull was revealed.  “Oh my Gawd!  Nuclear puke green.  Worse than day-glo pus!  That is soooooo ugly!  The dirty, faded, blotchy colour is a blessing by comparison.  Who could have possibly bought this boat new?  Yuck!”     

Lolita cost $500.  Wasabi the same.  No one uses the term ‘beater-boat’ but, essentially, that is what many of us have out here.  We are definitely no longer amongst the teak-varnishing, bronze and stainless-polishing, yachty-set.  We tend to use our boats now like old beat up pick-up trucks. 

“Don’t care what she looks like so long as it runs good and carries a lot!”  And it is the engine that determines that for the most part.  $500 for the boat, $5,000 for the engine.

That statement would have been heresy when Sal and I lived on our boat when we were in our twenties.  (Three different boats, actually).  Now, it is just practical.  We don’t do SAILPAST out here.  We just commute. And carry stuff.

Wasabi came with an old cracked vinyl roof on an aluminum frame.  Completely wrecked.  Probably original.  We put it up.  Wasabi is now – hard to believe – even uglier.  But Sal will make a new canvas top soon and that will make it look better and provide some much needed winter shelter.  Sometimes speeding along in an open boat in the winter sleet and storm spray feels like a ‘bit much’.  We are getting soft.  But soon, we’ll be comfy.

Ahhhh, yes.  Does it get any better?