The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I come to my last box of screws. Previous owner, the diligent Taguchi san, had labelled and boxed hundreds of screws and fittings. All of these are now back in or on the boat.

I have no idea what the last box of screws is for. They are very long.

I should have noticed that most of these screws are bent. There is a message from Taguchi san.

Wonderful Rika san tells me that the message says rearu handrailu.

Everything gels.

I have two extra handrails that for months I have agonized over. There is no obvious place to put them. I consult various Norfolk Gypsy oracles but none come with an answer.

Ain’t got no home.

I suddenly know that they screw onto the combings. I have never seen an image of a Norfolk Gypsy with these handrails.

Yay! Notice also stern cleats that were absolutely awful to install. The securing nuts are only accessible through an inspection hatch in the rear lockers. My arthritic body  could not reach them Thanks again to the remarkably supple Rika san who nailed them.

I am very excited to screw down the handrails. So easy, 8 screws into existing holes. I completely screw it up. The screws are bent, the screw heads are badly stripped.  It becomes obvious that I need new screws. This is disappointing after  the elucidation of the last box.

I go to Makeman http://www.makeman.co.jp/  to track down suitable replacements. I drive back to the boatyard, about 5 km.

I suddenly worry about my wallet. I search the car very diligently.  No wallet. All my cards, driving licences, you know. I see something on the roof of my truck. It is my wallet.

5 kms later. Still there. Luck has been the leitmotif of my life

The new screws are perfect! I have rear handrails. I wonder if any other Norfolk Gypsy owner can make the same claim.

Classy stern

Over the last week or so, the weather has been amazing, even by Okinawan standards. Hot, clear, blue and turquoise, then red as the sun goes down.

Looking out to Ie jima

Same thing, different lens.

From my balcony

But the work must go on. There are many small but not unimportant jobs to do.

I start to rasp the new gunwhale trim into the correct profile.

An interesting side effect of this job is that I rasp off the  print of my right hand forefinger. This means that I can not log into my iPhone nor iPad using  touch ID. It no longer recognizes my fingerprint. I am sure that it will grow back.

Actually this is not small. Installing the rudder plate has been a pain. Now it is done.

You may remember that Miyagi san offered to tie the eye splices in the halyards.

He does a great job.

I have also mentioned the reefing system in a previous post. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2018/08/21/fiddly-stuff/

Beautifully handmade but I fear it is too big

Before raising the mast, I have to ensure that all the blocks, shackles, sheets, halyards, shrouds, lifts are correctly in place. If I get it wrong then I will have to lower the mast again to re-adjust. No great mischief, but you would like to get it right first time.

It will be alright once it is up.

I attach the blocks at the base of the tabernacle.

Tabernacle!  French Canadian.

All of this is in low 30s heat.  I sweat.

Sorry for title inaccuracy, cannot find how to do accents etc.

I have always loved gelatinous food. France excelled in this genre with the Fromage de Tete. My Father would eat Pigs’ Faces whenever he could.

In Okinawa I can buy pigs’ trotters very cheap. I boil them slowly for many hours, throw in beans, peas, carrots and, in this most recent creation lentils. You pour the mixture into a mold and fridge it.

It sets. This is the best cold Summer food er unless you are Vegan.

There are few ways to produce something as satisfying.

Hey! Here are some people.

Tim, Mike san and Matsubara san on the boat

I go on a rare visit to OIST.

Natori san, what a great look! Ken Peach, who I first met in 1979, and Tim.

Julia, my beloved, has a baby.

Julia is the best. Beautiful Baby Tobi.

Naoko!

I have been wallowing in the pleasure of attaching  final bits of trim to the boat.

Tim sensei comes down to lend a hand.

There are long strips of trim that attach to the gunwhale, bits of which have gone missing over the years.

The end of the line. Notice the elegant profile of the trim.

One lacking strip is short  – 15cm

The other lacking bit is much longer – 128 cm

What to do? I go to the little hardware, carpentry, woodworking shop hard by my house. I have written about this place before. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/succulents/

I explain the dimensions, profile and length of the missing pieces to the old gentleman who gave me the succulents.We ponder strategy. We have hardly a word in any common language. It does not seem to matter that much.

He gets straight to it.

He knows what he is doing.

He explains that he cannot reproduces the exact profile of the existing trim but he can get pretty close. I will have to spend a couple of hours wielding the rasp to get it more accurate but the main job is done.

His wife with the product.

The whole thing took an hour, just a couple of hundred meters from home.  It costs 1000 yen. Every thing is easy in Okinawa.

I decide to replace all the old rigging with new rope, halyards, topping lift, sheets and that sort of thing. I go to Yomitan to buy rope. For 7 years I have made  bizarre requests in sign language  at this hardware shop and the owner and I have become friends. He cuts me a great deal.

200 meters.

So, although rigging frenzy is very much on my mind, Kiyuna san and I huddle over bilge pumping.

My friend Natori san has contacted previous owners of the boat and they have all complained of  engine compartment flooding.  Rain here is ferocious rather than gently permanent as in the Western Highlands. A few hours of rain, during which there is no tarpaulin nor cockpit cover rigged, results in flooding of the engine compartment. Er, you guessed it, the engine compartment is where the engine lives,. You do not want your engine to be submerged.

We conspire to set up the ultimate solution.

Meet Gulper. She is a pump that Kiyuna san pulls out of his saddle bag. She is appropriately named.

Gulper is wired onto a switch so that, as soon as water creeps into the bilge, she blasts off.

I can sleep easy at night.

A short octopus diversion.

Back to rigging. I attach the jib to the roller rigging set up with the help of a couple of guys who were in the vicinity.

Jibbed

Loops at the ends of ropes are important..The classics loop at the end of a rope is the eye splice.

I cannot tie it

What is more, I need an eye splice with a thimble.

Thimble is the metal ring.

I start trying to do this by myself. Kiyuna san is horrified.

He says, “Miyagi san will tie the eye splice”. 2 minutes later, Miyagi san shows on a scooter.

These friends are eye splice experts

I love the Ginowan Marina.

So, now I come to rigging the sails. The boat came with many lengths of rope, many blocks, many shackles and from these I have to reconstruct the set up of the sails. It is a complex job.

I finally unpack the new sails.

!992 sailbag with 2018 sailbag.

Will I ever be able to fold the jib like this again?

Jib halyard, throat halyard, peak halyard, topping lift not there yet.

To raise and lower the sails you use ropes that are called halyards. To make the halyards work efficiently there are complex arrangements of pulleys. I try to figure it all out. Once I have understood, I will replace all the rope.

Reefing a sail means making it smaller. This is very important as you do not want to have too much sail up in strong winds or else the boat will blow over and you will drown. The Norfolk Gypsy has a sophisticated method for reefing the mainsail. This is predicated by the existence of a plate  attached to the gooseneck pin with two small double blocks attached to it, which the reefing lines go through. Are you with me?

Anyway, I do not have this plate and so I have to make a new one. What a great sense of security to know that Nagahama san is on my side.

This is a wonderful place. These people can make  anything from metal.

Nagahama san is the boss here. He is young but has obviously got it. We discuss making a new reefing block support plate. You would think that this would be difficult seeing that I speak limited Japanese and he speaks limited English. I have worked with him before. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/skegness/  It makes me happy that complex design questions, how long? how wide? what weld? what bracket? what diameter fixing hole? can be resolved  through common excitement rather than advanced language skills.

He is a star!

When he is not making reefing line pulley support plates for Norfolk Gypsies, Nagahama san builds high precision wave turbines for Shintake sensei. He is going back to the Maldives in November. https://www.oist.jp/news-center/news/2017/9/20/sustainable-future-powered-sea

Alack, another minor typhoon is passing over. This I know by flocks of Pacific Golden Plovers and Kentish plovers sheltering from the wind at Shioya harbor.

Kentsish

Notice how the Pacific Golden Plover is already in winter plumage in August.

Plover discusses Brexit.

I am now at the stage of screwing on lots of bits and pieces to make the boat both pretty and sailable. It is very rewarding after months of sanding.

The boat has a fan club. Every day Japanese sailors pass by for a chat. They start the conversation by cursing the dullness of their own mass produced boats. This is polite behavior.

I glue the nameplate onto the back of the cockpit.

A moment away from the boatyard. I live in village called Onna son. There is a very strong local culture that I have been lucky enough to have been involved in. One thing I did not know is that Onna son has a flourishing choral society. My friend Chinen san turns out to be a member of the choir.

Yay Chinen san. She is a scream!

She sends tickets for Saturday’s concert.

Chinen san in back row. Spot red hair flash. Click on photo.

I am so pleased to have been invited. The place was packed, there must have been 250 people there. Two hours of Madrigals, Russian stuff, Japanese stuff, Okinawan classics, Vivaldi and stuff. I love to hear people sing. They finished with the Hallelujah chorus. Onna son is full of surprises. Aregato Chinen san.

On Sunday, elegant ex colleague Tomomi san came to visit.

The water at the boatyard is crystal clear and full of fish.

Tomomi on boat.

Tomomi makes exquisite Ikebana arrangements.

Tomomi has prepared a delicious lunch, all of which she cooked herself. We sit in the shade on the harbor wall.  Kiyuna san shows up and is hilarious. It turns out that in addition to his engineering skills, he also built all the tables that line the harbor side. Each uses driftwood as the main support structure. They exploit the strange shapes of the driftwood and are thematically similar to Tomomi’s Ikebana.

Notice driftwood fish biting the table.

Go fish!

It is raining very hard. After my weekly early morning root canal fun, I rush down to see if the boat is OK.

I had  rigged the tarpaulin so I was not too worried but as it is also very windy, there is always the possibility that the tarp has blown away.

The boat fills up very quickly. The water fills the bilges, the cockpit, the engine compartment and the cabin. It is a major drawback. I am trying to think of a way to drill some kind of drainage system through the hull that could be open when the boat is on land but can be shut off when she is at sea.

It really rains here.

After only a couple of hours, the cockpit space is full of water.

I had set up a ridge pole for the tarpaulin. This was a long piece of gunwhale trim that I had sanded for hours, given many coats of wood treater and then varnish. The weight of the water snapped it like a twig.

I am so stupid.

I spend 2 hours re-rigging the tarpaulin in the pouring rain. This is actually fun as the rain here is warm. It is a bit like a  2 hour shower.

I also fitted some lateral slats and stretched the tarp very tight. Fingers crossed. The horizontal white line half way up the cockpit is the engine hatch cover. Rain like today would fill up the cockpit in 2 hours and flood the engine.

We will put the engine in soon and I cannot allow it to be submerged every time it rains.

.

Just beside my apartment there is a family-run Do-It-Yourself store. It is run by an old couple and I think their daughter.

I have got to know them because I pop in a lot to buy odd screws, bolts, rope and such for the boat. They are very Okinawan. They greet me with “Haisai!”

The business is actually divided into 3 parts, like Gaul. First, is the DIY store, second is a carpentry shop and third is a small nursery, specializing in succulents and cacti. All three are run in an offhand, disinterested but very welcoming way. I mean I really don’t think they care if you buy anything; they just like to have you there.

I buy about 6 loose screws and wander around the succulents.

Succulent

Red flower

Yellow flowers

Choose your color

Skin disease.

Anyway, as I am wandering around the old man wanders up with a wooden box containing a cactus and some succulents.

He says, “Presentu.”

Okinawa is such a nice place to live.

I have reached that glorious stage whereby, after months of washing, sanding, wood treatment, sanding, varnishing, sanding, undercoat, sanding, compound, sanding, painting, sanding, anti-slip paint; I can now start to put everything together.

I replace the inspection hatch covers in the cockpit well. Please God make them watertight!

I screw down the protection strips on the engine hatch. Thank God for electric my screwdriver. I have screwed in hundreds of screws so far.

Nice new teak cleats.

I apply my official  Japanese registration stickers. I am hopeless at this.

The weather is very windy, rainy and hot. I strip off the backing of a sticker and the wind blows it all over the place. I lunge at the side of the cabin with the sticker flapping. One, at least, goes agley. Of course, I should wait for a calm day to do this but I get too excited.

Kiyuna san passes by and gives me a palm tree fan. I need it. Aregato. My shirt is soaked with rain rather from sweat. Makes a change.

Next, I screw on the thin wooden beading that draws out the beauty of of the gunwhale, if you see what I mean.

So, this is an interesting example of my advancing age. I place the beading and reach for the box, in which I have stored the screws. It is not there. I look around the vicinity, I look in the cockpit and cabin of the boat, I look in the car, I go to the toilet and drinks machine, which I had recently visited; the screw box has disappeared. I repeat all the above. Nothing.

This is so frustrating, after months of preparation I stumble. I am close to tears.

I had put the electric screwdriver, God bless her, bag on top of the screw box

Most of beading fitted. Notice jib sheet guide and cleat on the combing. She almost looks new.

Very mickle – I attach the bullseyes that guide the roller reefing line to the cockpit. You may have noticed lots of little clasps that will hold down the cockpit cover, er, when I get one.

Just a short serious note: Governor Onaga died last week. I had the honor to meet him several times. A truly great man, who cared deeply for Okinawa.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/11/national/politics-diplomacy/70000-protest-u-s-base-plan-honor-late-okinawa-governor/#.W3FXMZMzYUE

Rest in Peace, Onaga Sensei