The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Things have been tough at OIST this week.

One, two, buckle my shoe.

Five, six pick up sticks.

But I can watch sunsets.

Tintern Abbey

My way out.

Wordsworth.

I have mentioned that the Octopus store has been made over. It is now gleaming and just a touch soulless.  Still great fun,  however they clearly cater for the tourist trade which makes we Okinawans look down our noses a tad.

I am very pleased that Sashimi is still cut by hand.

I buy a big octopus that I will cook and eat.

Fush – fresh and cheap

Notice English sign. There has been a major increase in tourists from Korea, Taiwan and China

You choose a fish that they either cook for you or slice into sashimi in front of you.

I like Okinawa.

It is Summer. 31 degrees. From my terrace.

I cannot stop thinking about Norfolk Gypsies. These are boats made in England, one of which has turned up on the dockside of Miyako Jima, an island a couple of hundred kilometers from here. I yearn for her tragically.

Phoarr!

The narrative goes like this. If I get permanent residence in Japan, then in my dotage I can spend long periods in Okinawa. The idea of sailing around the Ryukyu Islands in a Norfolk Gypsy stops my breath. Therefore I should do something about it.

My Darling asleep

I need to buy the boat and have her transported to Okinawa at great expense. Once here she needs to be placed on a trailer and pulled up to my house to undergo months of massage with perfumed oils. I do not have a trailer.

Once restored to her full beauty, I have to trailer the boat to a slipway and launch her. After dirty fun times at sea I have to get her back onto the trailer and pull her up the slipway.

My much beloved Hi Jet truck, despite her mighty 600cc motor, does not have the grunt to achieve the above. So clearly I have to get a bigger, more powerful boat puller.

This leads me to purchasing a Nissan Xtrail that has 4 wd and a big motor, er like, by Japanese standards.

My future

Click to see the hook

It little profits that an idle king, 
By this still hearth, among these barren crags, 
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole 
Unequal laws unto a savage race, 
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

So do you get it? I have neither permanent residence, nor a boat, nor a trailer but I have a truck.

Living the dream.

Blawearie

Kinraddie

I have not gone on a long sail in the Scaffie since the epic Keramas adventures with Ben in November 2015. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/saving-sergeant-scaffie/

This weekend the weather is announced fair so I determine to take off to Minna Jima.

Where the umbrella is on the beach to the right is my initial mooring. The red pin marks where I finally moored.

The Scaffie loves a long sail and so do I. Minna Jima is about 30 kms from my house. With a fine breeze on the starboard beam we go along very nicely at around 4 knots.

IPhones can do anything

I wear a new hat as I have been admonished by many for not doing so. Can you see the mesh in crown of hat? This actually allows the sun through and my pate was horribly burned.

The course takes us far out on the ocean, in fact right into the main shipping lane up the west of Okinawa.

The boats were all much closer than the photos make them appear.

Collision is inevitable.

This one was definitely going to hit me so I closed my eyes.

Minna Jima comes into view. It is the low lying one in the foreground. You have to click on these photos.

The weather is fabulous, the flying fish are inexplicable, I mean what are they doing? Black Naped Terns and Roseate Terns come over to check me out and screech. I love this stuff. It only takes 4 hours to get there.

I initially plan to camp on a length of beach where I know there is a Tern rookery just off shore.

Get off my beach!

Black Naped and Roseate Terns hang out on the beach with me. Roseate have more black on head.

However I am not happy with the Scaffie’s anchorage.

Agony and pain.

So I up sticks an head down to the harbor.

Worse places

A guy who runs a business dragging people around behind his jetski is very interested in the Scaffie and is I think surprised that I have just sailed over from Maeda. With authentic Okinawa gentility he insists that I tie up beside his jet ski. He demonstrates a very cool knot that allows the mooring rope run up and down a fixed line such that the boat never grounds at low tide but follows the water out.

I wander off to the next beach from the harbor to set up camp. I snorkel and see a huge octopus.

Camp

Dinner

Loads of big hermit crabs appear to make sure no food is wasted

Sun goes down.

I am exhausted and sunburnt and I think I fall asleep before it is dark.

Dawn in russet mantle clad

My beach at 5:45 am

So off we go on the return journey. I worry about how long it will take and so we are out of the harbor by 6:00. It is a beautiful morning. The wind is coming straight offshore that allows me to whizz down the  the length of the island towards home. There is something wonderful about being 10 miles out at sea at 7:00 am. The light is, er you know what I mean, and it is not yet hot.

I get back to Maeda by 10:00 but I am 4 or 5 miles out to sea and now have to beat against the wind to get home. This takes another 4 hours!  I have a motor but it seems cowardly to use it. The Coastguards actually pass by to see if I am all right. They have clearly seen me tacking back and forth without making any progress. They hail me with “Good morning, Captain.” This makes me feel good.

Any way I finally make it home, very fatigued and horrendously sun damaged. I sit down to watch the All Blacks play the Lions and fall asleep in the second half. This a good metric of my exhaustion.

But what a great adventure!

Naoko found me a Japanese rugby streaming channel. This is probably bad news as I can now vegetate in front of the screen and watch rugby all the time. It has already had an influence on my social life as the graceful Arisa was singing last night but her performance clashed with All Blacks / Lions. Er, sorry Arisa.

I don’t like sponge cake!

Anyway, I swim out to the field of antler coral as what lies close to my house. I have sailed over this wonderful place a few times recently and have noticed a big sheet of plastic that had snared on the coral.

I swim out to remove the plastic from the coral.

The offending article.

The sun is hot, the sea is warm, the fish are amazing.

Hello

Sunday afternoon

This is Okinawa

I used to be a scout.

It is Summer in Okinawa. It is hot, the sea is warm and so all things look seaward. About 20 meters from the shore in front of my house there is a family of Clown Fish.

When did you last see your father?

I amazed that they survive. At very low tide they are in scarcely 20 cm of water. Typhoons crash on them but there they are every year. They are my friends.

I know how you feel.

So, to photograph them, I wait for very low tide and then lie in front of their home for hours. It is very pleasant. I have a mask and snorkel. The sun beats on my back as I lie in 50 cms of water.

I love you

Their behavior is indeed clownish. They come out from cover and cavort and pose. Any  suspicions of danger sends them scurrying to safety with shrieks and cries.

Okinawa!

A minute of silence for all who suffered in the Battle of Okinawa. I was honored to represent the University at the the Memorial of the end of the battle. Prime Minister Abe and his cabinet were there as was Naoko Kiyan, whose family suffered terribly.

After the ceremony, Naoko takes me to her family shrine. Kannon Bosatsu is  the Goddess of Mercy.

Hokulami, the University band play sad songs to mark the event.

God bless you Okinawa.

So, I think the title of this post is a reasonable translation of Grand Teton. Well, on reflection, teton is probably more accurately translated as nipple. Nipple however sounds ruder.

Grand Teton National Park was where we were headed. We intended to watch Bear, Elk, Caribou, Elk and such.  We were also determined to camp. Grand Teton was actually a big disappointment for after 1000 miles or so on back roads, it it is very civilized with gas stations, stores, lodges and loads of people. The weather turned really bad and we could not see the famous big breasts. We tried very hard to camp.

Nice spot, notice bear box for storing food.

James camps

We wait out the storm in the back of the truck.

Storm gets worse and worse.

We have no waterproof clothes and the idea of cooking outside in driving snow to later crawl soaked into the flatbed of a truck to shiver and freeze through the night is not appealing.

View from campsite. Hit it and quit.

We chicken and head on out to find a Motel.

We finally see the fabled Paps

Breakfast next morning. Pork chop,eggs over easy, hash browns, English muffin, lots of coffee.

Somewhere in Wyoming

We head back to San Francisco down country roads.

Potential road kill

The real thing

Back to the city.

Amazing trip! Thanks James for being such a good traveling companion.

San Francisco 2017

The whole point of the trip was to take amazing photographs of birds. This we did do.

We took amazing photos! Especially of Sand Hill Cranes as what are very rare.

This is where tragic misfortune stepped in.

In a a shotgun motel in Idaho I download these gems from camera to computer. I have forgotten the computer charging cord and she has little spunk. In the middle of the download the computer closes down due to loss of battery power. The photos do not reside on the computer but tragically no longer reside on the camera card.

Everything digital is wonderful until something goes wrong. I have lost all my bird and wildlife photos for the majority of the trip. Misery and pain.

America is full of wildlife and birdlife in a way that we poor, having murdered our wildlife centuries ago, Europeans can hardly imagine.

Some scraps from the end of the trip.

Goldeneye

Osprey

Antelope

Avocet

Gone, gone and never called me Mother.

So, these are just some photos of a drive around the Northwest.

I feel safe

Yeeha!

We did a lot of this

Don’t ask

Safeway is a great store.

State line

Sure is

You da ho

Highly recommended

Never tire of the road.