The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

The words in the title have many meanings: cricket I think is bail, water from boat is also bail, I think, misery woe sorrow, is definitely bale, as is a compactness of stuff like cotton or hay. Then there is the whole leaving category as in: “Sorry chaps, left wing has gone, time to bail out.” or more recently, “Dudes, I am like totally gone, time to bail.”

So it has really rained a lot.

Greenshanks dreaming of Spain

How many years of evolution before Cattle Egrets invent the umbrella?

The rain fills the Scaffie with water. She becomes very heavy and I fear that she will drag her anchor or maybe rip the anchor cleat out of the thwart, if you see what I mean. I rush home from work to bail. This could mean: jump from aeroplane, leave a party in San Francisco or empty a boat of water. You decide.

Very low in the water

The rainwater comes nearly up to seat level.

I bail with my little red bucket, which I hold very dear.

Having bailed I wade home to eat. I fear or exult that OIST has changed stuff around here. When I came here, big lumps of meat were not. You had to wangle your way onto an Ameircan base to buy steak. This was always kinda demeaning.

Now, in the supermarket down the road, I can buy amazing steak.

Is this a good thing? 

Am I destroying Okinawan tradition?  I bail.

My life has been characterized by a series of lucky breaks. One is the tree that grows smack in front of my house.

I remember my early childhood as hours and hours staring at willow pattern plates in cold rooms as the rain slashed against the window panes.

We used to have lots of this stuff. Where is it now?

Now between my house and the sea, is a very beautiful tree.She reminds me of my childhood. She reminds me of Willow Pattern.  She is elegantly formed and gives each gaze seaward a benchmark of quality. “Look at me!” she insists,  “Before you look at that vulgar blue sea stuff.”

What she looked like 3 years ago.

Just prior to moving into this house, Okinawa had been battered by 3 big-boy typhoons. My tree looked fragile and I did not know if she would make it.  I have nursed her assiduously by cutting back invasive vegetation and pruning any dead wood.

Notice how much the vegetation has grown up

I lash my saw to a bamboo pole and clear away the tree stuff that is blocking the purity of my view.

She is so happy and healthy but caveat typhoonum

My tree is doing very well. I am so happy.

Red fish

More plumeria

Oriental Turtle Dove

Tim with number one boy Hugo

More turtle release with Rumi san. I walk over to her beach gazing at supersonic sunset.

No work done on these photos.

It is very warm and pesky fruit bats get tangled in my hair.

Red sky at night

We release about 100 babies who charge down the beach and heroically swim away.

Too dark for real photography

Make up your own caption.

Click on this photo! Can you see all the v shaped ripples? Baby turtles heading out to sea.

Thank you Rumi san.

I was very excited going into this weekend. It is Summer, I have tanks, I have boat, I can still manage to haul myself into boat. These are all the ingredients needed for a lot of fun without drowning.

Rain

All day Saturday it rains like crazy. Thunderstorms  that bring no wind. I stay inside sulking.

My front room

I have inherited amazing orchid display

Red sky at night

Finally, on Sunday afternoon the weather clears but even so there is little wind. Notwithstanding I slowly reach across Nagahama bay to the Cliffs of Zampa and the best diving in the world.

What can a poor boy do?

I dive.

The video only captures 10% of the amazingness.

I then have a very long sail home. The wind such as it is, blows more or less towards me. I set off on long tacks.  The worst thing about sailing is not high wind and dreadful seas, it is gentle winds blowing against you.  I make very slow progress but frankly who cares? It is a magnificent evening.

A guy on a paddle board overhauls me.

Not quite the weekend I had anticipated but incredible all same.

Tim and his baby Hugo were on the beach with me but somehow I did not take a photo of them. I regret this.

It is summer. I take off my shirt. I lurch into the Scaffie for an evening sail. In the process it would appear that I wrenched off my Raybans as I find only the string things that attached them to my person. Oh dear. Maybe I will find the in Davey Jone’s Locker tomorrow.

The wind is perfect, the weather is hot, it is the end of a very satisfying week like, you know,  you know, kinda, workwise.

We charge over the reef

I decapsule a bottle of beer as what had been left behind post party.

I look at it accidentally and discover that it had been brewed in Wisconsin. Wisconsin! I am surging over the reef in Onna son on a hot Okinawan evening, drinking  beer made in Wisconsin.

Guess the name of the beer? Leinenkugel! Germans in America now in Okinawa!

Hey, Politicians leave those immigrants alone.

https://www.leinie.com/

Welcome

Pure

Wonderful evening and I have the whole weekend ahead!

Rumi san, the lady who gave me the plumeria cuttings, came to the party. To my amazement she humbly mentions that every year she releases thousands of baby turtles onto the beach  next to her idyllic guest house.  http://www.sunset-bh.com/english/index.html  Would I like to take part?

My first pink plumeria flower came out today

She explains that the real danger for turtle eggs are typhoons. The sea comes right up the beach, floods the nests in the sand and the eggs rot. To avoid this she locates the nests, digs up the eggs and reburies them in cosy sand boxes on her deck.

Turtle hatchery

I go over tonight as the first babies have hatched. There are five and after sundown we release them.

Ready to go

It is a beautiful evening

It is too dark for photography and flash would not be appropriate. The little darlings go like hell straight to the sea and off they swim. One in a thousand grows to adulthood – boo hoo.

I know where I am going

Good luck

Golly.

I rise with the dawn and wander into my devastated home. I hate cleaning up late at night, at the end of the party. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/rebexit/   It turns wildness into domesticity, enjoyment into puritanism, release into control. So at 6:30 the next day, which is today, I wander around with various trash bags picking up the aftermath. I like this. It brings back cameos of the previous evening as I come across various clusters of glasses, cans and bottles. It is party archaeology. By 7:30 it is all clean. Luckily today is the day of glass bottle, can and plastic bottle pick up. Did I organize this?

It is the most beautiful day ever and I take diving stuff into the Scaffie to explore the seas around Cape Zampa.

Like a little boy, I dress up in diving stuff way before I need to use it.

There is a gentle onshore wind that drives us elegantly across Nagahama bay.

It is very hot

We near the holy ground.

Nobody goes here to dive. It is remote and you need a boat to get there, which is probably the reason.  Anyway, under the water there are dozens of chasms each covered in an amazing variety of coral. It is relatively shallow. I think I rarely went under 40 feet. This means there is lots of light and visibility. It is incredible. The video that you will find does no justice to the real colors of the coral and the fish. I dive, I look, I gasp. I take the opportunity to clean the Scaffie’s bottom.  I sail back across the bay towards my home. I head out to sea and then, profiting from the onshore breeze, take the gentlest of runs onto the mooring. No words.

Sunset 15 minutes ago.

There is a shoulder of lamb on the Cobb. Not very Okinawan I know but God bless you Okinawa and all who sail in her.

Rebecca has been with us for the last 6 months and has been the best fun. Now she leaves. We are so unhappy that we have a party.

This Rebecca

My neighbor comes in unusual garb. He is frankly er eccentric.

Have fun everyone.

Michele, Matsuda sensei, Rebecca, Tomomi

Arisa,Rebecca, Matsuda sensei, Tomomi

It is incredibly hot

Bye bye Becca

Frankly, it is too hot to have a party but we work at it.

There will be a party to mark the leaving of Science Writing Fellow Rebecca.  Rebecca is a role model to us all.

The Yellow Rose of Texas

To make the party go with a swing I will BBQ two legs of lamb. My noble Cobb is too small for such big chunks of meat so I borrow a big Weber. I load it into the back of the Fitu with great nonchalance. Now we come to an essential weakness in my personality. I get the big stuff done but do not pay enough attention to the end game. In this context it means I get the BBQ, I load it into the car, I drive home. I move onto the next preparation. What does it matter when I unload the Weber?

Driving to work this morning someone pulls out in front of me and I hit the brakes. Suddenly the car is full of choaking dust and I cough grotesquely as I gasp for air. I pull over and burst out of the car into the beautiful Okinawan morning, panting like an old dog.

The Weber was still in the car. The Weber was full of ash and old charcoal. The Weber had fallen over and tipped its charge into the back of my car.

After the ash has settled.

I get to work to work and it being summer, I took off my shirt, and I tried to wash off some of that dusty dirt.

I worry about how I will get all of the dust and junk out of my car. Naoko looks kinda bemused and tells me to go to the gas station that has the car wash and vacuum cleaning stand. So, a reflection on my life in Okinawa. Because I am illiterate and essentially deaf and dumb through lack of Japanese skills, I exist in a very feral way. Find food, shelter, survive. I find the places where I am least exposed. Thus in nearly six years, I have only been once to the gas station with the vacuum cleaner, never to return. It is a self service gas station and being illiterate, I could not work out how to pump my own gas.

I was going to clean the car at home with a dust pan and brush. Do you hear what I am trying to say?  Japan / Okinawan is a hyper modern society but I experience it like a fox sneaking around the trash cans at night.

I have already taken out most of the detritus.

Luckily the machine has only 3 buttons – Start, Stop and Dust. I only dare use the first two.

Any way good adventure. I like being a fox.

Check out the sunset.

Golly

Gosh

A bit later the same night.  I mean after the sun had gone down.

Ohayu gozaimasu

What next?

Nothing much to say really but I feel I have to record the glory of the Okinawan Summer. Sunsets continue to be a competition each night.

3 days ago

2 days ago

Last night

Big plans for major passage aborted due to high seas and cowardice. I have heard so many warnings, alarms, “Have you got a radio, have you got a GPS, have you got a doctor on the boat? ” My native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. Conscience has made a coward of me and I am ashamed.

I go out when the wind has gone down some, but I know that I am a pansy

Swimming home – the sea is so warm

Tim, the University CIO pops up

Tim’s wife carries sleepy baby Hugo. Can you see the rainbow?

Yep, it is Summer in Okinawa.

Geckos are ubiquitous