The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

San Francisco is covered in smoke from the deadly forest fires across the Bay. People wander around wearing  facemasks. Schools are closed. I had to go to the DMV to renew truck documents and find a milling, vaguely dangerous crowd.  All driving tests were cancelled. Many, very unhappy people, who had waited weeks for their appointment. I was scared someone would pull a gun!

Anyway, I have to get connected. First phone, then computer. I have a Japanese phone that I have to get naturalized. I go to the nearest Apple Store.

” Can you make this phone American?”

” No problem Neil.” says my new best friend, Travis.

Naturalization

I now need to get a US SIM card. With my usual luck, I walk  straight into an ATT kiosk that has been set up in the middle of the mall. Aaron is competent, clear and smiling. 10 minutes later, I have a US number and a designer plan for the 4 months I will be here.

Thanks Aaron

I have no laptop since leaving gainful employ. James digs out his MacBook Pro, which he no longer uses. It is not feeling very well, it will not start up and the battery is dead. Who you gonna call? Love Haight Computers of course. It is on Haight St, very close to the apartment.

Go there

They fix older Macs. New battery, re-install operating system = $160. Same day service.

My new computer!

Amazingly, a colleague from OIST days stumbles out of the smoke. Harry is on some kind of fact finding tour of Californian universities.

This is not Japan.

Burgers!

So, I am now in the USA and will remain here until March 2019. I have finally got a computer so can start posting again.

Farewell Ginowan Marina. I have spent a memorable 10 months there working on the boat. She was more or less a wreck in January but is now an almost new boat. This was only possible because of the constant support and encouragement from the people at the boatyard. Thank you Kiyuna san, Sato san, Akiko san, Tabata san, China san, Nick san, Rika san, Kano san, Miyagi san, and a host of others.

Rika san helps me lower the mast for the last time.

I go for a last wander around the pontoons. The water is crystal turquoise and full of fish.

Lion Fish

Thousands of sprat like things swim around the stanchions.

Thank you Ginowan Marina – I’ll be back.

The Okinawan climate is very hard on boats. The worst culprit is intense sun that dries out and bleaches all the woodwork. At the start of the project I gave all the wood 6 coats of wood treatment stuff and 4 coats of yacht varnish. I thought that would set me up for  a couple of years. Not so.

The top 2 slats normally face inwards and are unharmed The bottom slat is nearly white again after 6 months

The combings were jet black and shiny a couple of months ago.

The other problem is very high humility. This causes rust on any iron/steel fittings and mildew on any surface.

My happy hippo winch is rusting after a couple of months.

I forgot to mention that the mighty Yanmar is now bolted in place and fully wired up! Just needs diesel and a battery.

It has been a long job. Notice mildew on the engine compartment walls.

No rust on air intake a couple of weeks ago.

I repaint the happy hippo winch with heavy duty anti rust paint.

I take great care on this job.  I tape everything off to avoid any sloppy smears or dribbles. I have nearly finished when, to my dismay, I find there is paint everywhere!

Aaargh!

The loose ends of my OIST Graduation bracelet have been dangling into the paint and dribbling it all over. No more hippy stuff for me.

I will be leaving the boat for 4 months. I can see that on my return, I will have to do a major wood repaint and mildew clean.

My jeans are always grubby. Just putting them through the cold wash, only option on Japan, does not remove the grime.

On  a recent visit to the university, an esteemed colleague immediately comments on how grubby my jeans are. I am abashed. I ask Naoko for help and she recommends Oxi Clean, an American product reputedly excellent for dislodging dirt.

After messing about on the boat, I go to adjacent megasupermarket San A  to buy Oxi Clean. A charming assistant helps me but after much diligent searching she finally admits that that San A does not stock Oxi Clean. She suggests that I try Tokyu Hands, another massive store in the same mall. I thank her profusely and go to buy some potatoes. At the check out, one of thirteen, the assistant rushes up to me and indicates that Tokyu Hands does stock Oxi Clean. She has rung a friend who works there, I think. So kind.

I shuffle off to Tokyu Hands, which is huge, and as soon as I start looking another assistant comes up to me and asks with a big smile,”Oxi Clean desuka?”  She has been waiting for me and immediately takes me to the Oxi Clean location.

One sixteenth of Tokyu Hands. Find the Oxi Clean.

I will never get used to the level of service in Japan. Thank you.

Can’t wait to wash my jeans.

The boat came with all her running rigging, right quality, right lengths, right eye splices  but the rope was black with mildew and generally tawdry.  Only the best for the Norfolk Gypsy!  So I decide to replace the old rope for new. Big mistake!

Some of the former rigging rope, post washing machine.

I foolishly do  not consult the gurus that surround me about what sort of new rope I should buy, but rush off and purchase 200 meters of rope that looks pretty. Big mistake!

New but bad rope fully installed.

Frequent followers of this blog will know that Sato san, he who should be obeyed, was very disparaging, in a Japanese way, about the new rope. It had to be replaced. He kindly gives me a bunch of high quality rope.

Yay! Sato san

I re-rig the boat and it turns out that the throat halyard and peak halyard are too short.  Sato san says he will lengthen them by splicing on new rope. Then came one ultra mega and one normal typhoon. Total confusion. Then came a period of bad weather with heavy rain. Then Sato san went to Yokohama to tune boats up there.

The upshot is that six weeks have passed with little progress. The defining parameter in all this is I go to California for 4 months starting early November. It has become clear that even if I get the boat in the water, I would have to take her out again after a few days to lay her up for my absence.

I wish I had used the original rigging. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Comfort food

This one has several soft boiled eggs.

I pay my mooring fees.

My friends start their gardening year by planting potatoes

I go for a glorious morning walk along a beach close to the apartment.  The beach is strewn with big shards of pottery.

A shard

Another

They are all over the place.

Okinawa is covered in family tombs where ancestors’ bones are placed.  Early tombs were in caves and holes in the rock.

I find a collection of burial urns that I have never spotted before.

I think the recent  mega typhoon destroyed some very old caves containing burial urns and some of these broken urns are now strewn all over the beach.

A tree has been blown onto the roof of a cave, which has collapsed. You can spot the urns nestling in the center of the photo.

Hmmmm.

My favorite tomb has also suffered.

In February

Walls completely washed away.

I wonder if it will be repaired?

Yup, that was a big typhoon. Tombs that had been there for decades and maybe hundreds of years, suffered badly.

Almost exactly 20 years ago, I went to the Campbeltown Folk Festival. The lead bands were Shooglenifty and Flook. I had the opportunity to talk a lot to Brian Finnegan, one of Flook’s flute folk. During the concert he had been playing a bamboo flute in F. I asked where he got it from and he kindly went to find the address of Patrick Olwell. http://www.irishfluteguide.info/patrick-olwell-interview/   

I wrote to Patrick Olwell and a few months later I got a bamboo flute in F.

Patrick is now recognized as the leading flute maker in the world. You wait a minimum of 6 years to get a new flute.

Here it is today. 20 years later. Incredible flute!

What I like about this flute is that it is just a bit of bamboo with some holes in it. It can nevertheless pump out wonderful music, er, in the right hands.

To my amazement, Flook come to Okinawa. Not just Okinawa but to Ginoza, a tiny coastal town on the East.coast.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ginoza,+Kunigami+District,+Okinawa+Prefecture/@26.4970997,127.9296808,20856m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x34e50089239b23db:0x88c347e6bf8c8722!8m2!3d26.4816587!4d127.9755894

Hard to define the strangeness of this. Ginoza is nowhere but some far-sighted folk have started to invite amazing acts to the newly created Farm Club. Thank you.

What a great place to play. All Flook photos thanks to Ginoza Farm Club.

What do you call two flutes playing A? ………. A chord.

Will Cipriani play for England?

So,  Flook:

http://www.flook.co.uk/ 

were incredible and of course the Okinawans danced throughout the concert.

We talk, they remember me, we cry on each others’ shoulders.

John Joe Kelly

I am feeling very proud of myself as I succeeded in getting stuff from Japanese Amazon.

Yes

This what I got.

Solar panel to top up the bilge pump, Gulper, battery. Battery powered LED lights that might work as emergency navigation lights. Pretty pink camo life jacket.

I am nearing completion on my new crown. Today was fitting. It took 90 mins of exquisite adjustment to get it just right.

Akiko san places the crown and then slides red  paper between my teeth. She then says, ” Tap,tap tap ,tap or bite hardu, or grindu.” Analysing the runic traces left on the crown she then adjusts it minutely with an ancestral file. She does this a least 10 times.

The dentist is such good fun

Mori sensei has to check everything is OK and we swap boat typhoon stories. His boat is OK. The crown is finally stuck in place but this is only temporary as I have to come back in a week to make sure everything is OK before they take it off again and apply the permanent glue.  Such care, such precision, such ridiculously low price!

In the boat I find a Sabani boat race T-shirt. You remember that we came last!

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/a-match-of-two-halves/

The weather has changed. It is grey and blusterly, rain is forecast. I rig the tarpaulin.

It is only 27 degrees

I buy the best Sashimi in the world from my local corner shop.

Parrot fish, 2 different kinds of Tuna, sauce. 500 yen that is $4.45. Today’s catch.

The last 10 days or so have been dominated by typhoon stuff. The first, Trami, was  a mega, ultra typhoon. The second, whose name I have already forgotten, was less kapow but it did rain like crazy.

I was so prepared.

I set up the boat for the typhoons with a focus on her not blowing away into the East China Sea, trailing multi-million yen lawsuits for damage to other boats. I succeeded.

I forgot completely to rig the tarpaulin to fend off heavy rainfall. I failed.

As soon as I can, I scurry down to the boat yard, to find a syphon set-up in the cockpit and suspicious scum lines around the cockpit walls.

See what I mean. Check out the dirty bath lines.

I meet with faithful Kiyuna san who explains that he came down twice  in one day during the rainy typhoon to empty the cockpit.   Thank you.

The risk is that the water level rises to the engine compartment hatch and floods the newly refurbished engine.

I will have to work out some way to drain the cockpit. I will be away from Okinawa for periods of several months and even with covers, there is a high risk that rain will fill up the cockpit. Hmmmm.

Anyway, the typhoons go to Spain and I start re-rigging the boat with the new rope that Sato san has furnished.

I, with help, take down the mast and position it in front of the boat. I have learnt that getting every stay, halyard, topping lift exactly in place prior to raising the mast is essential. I get it wrong in a remarkable variety of ways, very many times.

Is this right?

My left foot as I re-rig the boat

It turns out that two of the halyards are too short. “Pshaw” says Sato san, “No problem, I will extend them when I get back from delivering Lady Luck to  Yonabaru Marina.”

Splicing ropes to me is a magical skill but it is bread and butter to Sato san.

The weather is incredible!  Slightly less hot and blue.

Picnic time!

Back to normal

I was hopelessly unprepared for the reality of no power. I had no water, little food, no lamp nor candles. Of course all the shops were shut as they were in the same boat with no power.

Okinawan post typhoon roadside garbage.

I lived a very primitive life for 2 days. Water is pumped around the building  and with no electricity the pump stops. This mean the toilet does not flush, the shower does not work, you cannot wash up. Wise maidens have filled their bathtubs with water prior to the typhoon. I am not  a wise maiden but definitely will be in the future. You also need a bucket.

As soon as the wind allows, I go down to see if the boat is OK.

The next day

Lots of birds sheltering from the wind.

Black Backed Stilt.

Grey Tailed Tattler

Lots of this.

An inappropriate name.

A few boats blown off their cradles, some masts broken but not too bad considering the strength of the wind. The Norfolk Gypsy is fine – hooray!

Guess what? Another typhoon is coming on Friday. I have  a bucket.

Pretty bucket.