The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I finish repairing and scrubbing the Scaffie fairly early and so I go for a ramble to inhale some Okinawan low yo, yo stuff. I drive past a building site. A new viaduct is being constructed to improve traffic flow. Here is how the Okinawans explain it to passers-by.

Onna son, the community in which I live, declares that the bridge will make living here even more ecstatic. Notice playfulness of local government annoucements.

This one says that the new bridge will reduce CO2 and make bluebirds happy. Notice the flowers that the construction workers have laced around the sign.

After that, I visit the river that delineates the frontier between Onna son and Yomitan. Lots of stuff happening.

My friend the Kingfisher. I think there are 4 on the river/stream.

What is this?

It is Obon, look it up. There is a carnival of Eisa dancing, look it up,  on the main street of Yomitan.

In the streets

Where does this come from?

Hello ancestors

The street is crammed with dancers. It is 32 degrees with high humidity.

Learning the tradition

Hibiscus

Ben

After that I tow the Scaffie to Chioya port and set her free. Check out the video:

https://youtu.be/RxGp9rwJ_sw

Yep, the moon is full.

Okinawa.

So, I have had a wonderful project on going for the last couple of weeks. Well since the mast went overboard.  I have to replace the mast thwart in such a manner that it will not blow out again. I love stuff like this as it usually involves buying tools.  I discuss a lot with knowledgeable people, in particular Bob and Norma from Rochdale, who built the boat. They recommend replace the original brass screws with steel bolts. Which sounds stronger to you – brass screw or steel bolt?

To use bolts, I have to cut 5 inch holes in the bulkhead on both sides, under the thwart. This so I can get my hand in to screw the nut and washer onto the bolt and subsequently a spanner to allow tightening.

The best tool in the world

After a lot of mime, I manage to buy the best tool in the world. It cuts round holes in things. I also have to buy a drill and some drill bits. I drill out the old screws as what had broken off. I drill right through into the ballast space, which will allow me to insert strong sounding steel bolts.

I am so excited that I rush home from work to start the job before it gets dark. There has been a typhoon by the way but I have written about those before. Has anyone, ever, written about replacing feeble brass screws with strong steel bolts to hold a wooden mast thwart securely in place, er in Japan?

It is getting dark as I set to work.

Beautiful 5 inch hole. Ballast foam behind.

Of course, great fun though it be drilling huge circular holes in the side of the boat, I will of course have to close them off again to stop the wild and willful ocean from infiltrating. Micheal, in a truly masterful fashion, tracks down  5 inch hatch covers in some online Japanese chandlery and a polite delivery man er delivers them the next day. Thanks Micheal.

Lovely hatch cover rim.

There is a small slice of wooden missing from the thwart. It was untimely ripped when the screw was pulled out during the catastrophe at sea. I carve a replacement and glue it in, holding all together with blue string and a five pound note whilst the glue dries.

Not yet bolted on – just drying.

Hmmm maybe a tree next time.

During the drying intermission, I notice a very large stick insect cleverly disguising itself against the fly-screen. I soon realized why it had chosen such an inappropriate hiding place.

A stick insect outlaw done shot him in the back of the head.

I get up at dawn to bolt  on the now glue dried thwart.

In russet mantle clad

Bolted.

I then give the Scaffie a jolly good scrub.

Before

After, notice cute new hatch covers

So now I will launch the boat and ship the mast and sail around to see if the strong steel bolts work. What a great project. What can I cut circular holes in now?

So, there is no point trying to hide it any longer, to myself or to everyone else, whom had probably guessed it anyway.   I have to come out. Yes, I am fat.  I am glad to be fat. I am proud to be fat.  I knew there was no point in trying conceal it when I watched the video of me taking the  wounded Scaffie to safety.  Typhoon coming and it is time for discretion to be the better part of valor. Judge for yourselves.

https://youtu.be/kHz4uwmvGBU

Anyway,  having secured the near time destiny of the Scaffie, I go to celebration at the Kitagama for the exhibition at the university.  We did a project on the science behind Okinawan pottery. I used to look at  hand made pottery and go, ” That’s nice.” No longer. I now know the skill and knowledge needed to produce this stuff. My heroes are potters.

These amazing pieces they donate to the university.

The other Matsuda sensei is happy because I give him a bottle of Springbank.

People dance

What a great place for a party. Notice earth floor and drying pottery.

Good day but I am fat.

Do I care?

No.

I go out for my after work sail. It is windy and generally glorious. We hum along and I take poor photos of the sunset.

You have seen this before.

I am beating back against a stiff breeze and a reasonable chop when the mast, sail and yard make a break for it. The whole lot shoots over the port side of the boat into the wild and wistful ocean. Golly!

I do not know what the correct nautical terminology is but the wooden slab into which the mast fits, just ripped away from its retaining screws and the whole kit and caboodle, the whole shebang, the  whole shooting match, lock, stock and barrel, went over the side.

This thing.

I may tell you that I was surprised.

So, I manage to get everything back on board and lashed down fairly securely as I am being blown heartily out to sea.

Far from land

Oars are low tech. I love them.  I start rowing back in against the wind and reconcile myself to the fact that, being a couple of miles out and heading straight into the wind, I will be rowing far into the night. I sing, “The Mingulay Boat Song”, ” Westering Home”, “Leaving Port Askaig”, “My Heart is In the Cold, Cold Ground”, “I See Mull”  as I heel ya ho to the safety of the shore.

The rowing, once it became clear that I was making headway against the wind, was very pleasurable. I have been rowing since I was very young. Alone at night on the East China Sea, under a crescent moon and the twinkle, twinkle little stars, rhythmically pulling on the oars is a good place to be. I lose interest in where I am, knowing that I will eventually close to the shore. Finally, I nearly row into the   big rock  just off the house.

On the mooring a couple of hours later.

Hmmmm, how to fix? Just have to wait until tomorrow.

At the height of the British slave plantations in the West Indies, insouciant owners would come home to find a white cockerel with a slit throat hanging and bleeding  all over their front door. Voodoo!

Tonight I come home to find strange voodoo dolls placed carefully outside my front door. Oh no! What have I done to anger the eternal spirit of Bondye?

Heap Strong Medecine

So I guess it must be Ok because someone has spelled out “THANKS” with finger bones.

Primitive

The charming potters who built their own kiln on the beach, as mentioned in previous post, shipped out very early this morning. They left me a gift of the ritual slaughter figurines they had been so lovingly kilning over the last couple of nights. How sweet.

Angry Voodoo sunset last night. Click on these photos.

Tonight however the ladies have left and Nature is at rest.

No wind, no sail.

Tranquille

A couple of birds.

Chinese Bulbul

Pacific Reef Egret

After a weekend of science communication stuff, brilliantly directed by Val Jamieson and Rowan Hooper from New Scientist, we have a evening at the house.

Some people arrive

We eat food prepared by Ishigaki san and Koda san who are my best friends.

Home grown.

We drink Awamori cocktails with orchids.

Beautiful women, orchids and alcohol

Yay! Miwa san

No caption needed

The Kyles of Lochalsh

We go for a late evening sail. People swim. There is one note of discord because my wonderful beaches have people on them. This is very unusual and we investigate. Some people are fishermen, which in fact is not unusual at all. The  others are amazing. Two women from the mainland who have built a kiln in Dead Man’s Gulch and who are firing pottery overnight on the beach. They are charming, we have the best time.

Unusual

This makes everyone very excited.

On the walk back to the house one of the fisher folk reels in a massive fish.

Rowan about to eat fish. Valerie is from Glasgow.

What a great evening.

So,  this blog rarely bothers with the inconsequentials of my professional life but from time to time, Big Business bellows, groans and kicks his stall so hard that he is difficult to ignore.

Today research at the university was featured on the front page of Nature.

Deep fry

This has provoked a well orchestrated media splurge. For example:

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21660955-studying-cephalopods-may-illuminate-evolution-brains-all-sorts-tentacles

More of the same at :

http://www.oist.jp/news-center/media-links/first-cephalopod-genome-decoded

Thanks Joykrit who wrote:

http://www.oist.jp/news-center/press-releases/decoding-genome-alien

So, for the last 50 years I have had a skin irritation. It is a fungal thing that I caught in a school swimming pool and have been trying to eradicate ever since. It appears and then scurries off to hide for a few months/years but has never totally like shipped out.

I go to a jolly dermatologist who prescribes an ointment. I go to the Chelsea drug store, next door, to get my prescription filled. It seems to take a rather long time but after a wait, the beaming pharmacienne presents me with a tub of ointment that she has clearly just made up herself.

Home-made, hand-made, artisanal, anti-fungal ointment.  Does this happen in other counties? I am used to having a tube of something called, “Zapfung” slapped onto the counter.  I am charmed to have  home-cooking.

Organic

Anyway, I get up and shave and go to work. Big Business is heaving and groaning in his stall. Stuff afoot. I go home and go sailing.

Far out

This is really what it looks like.

It is pleasant and delightful to go for a sail after work.

After all the razamatazz of last week, things had to change. It is written.

“After the morning there comes an evening
And after the evening another day.
Being much more like a commanding officer
Than a man to die upon the gallows tree.”
Quite so.

The curse really began when I tried to fix the mighty Hi Jet. Nothing difficult here. Remove flat battery and replace with the the new battery that I use as a bedside table. However the sly one has many ways of tripping up honest folk. This time he placed the terminals on the new battery on  the other side  from the original battery.

The way the battery is meant to be set up. Terminals at the front giving the + terminal on the left  and – terminal on the right.

However the mighty Hi Jet’s battery leads come from behind the battery demanding that the terminals are at the back of the battery.

Yea, e’en so.

This means that the positive terminal is on the right and the negative is on the left, which in turn means that I connected the positive lead to the negative terminal  and in fact never really  connect the other one because of all the sparks. Result –  fried electrics, well actually probably just a blown main fuse. However this is where living in a country where you are too stupid to learn the language becomes tiresome. How to explain I want a new main fuse? Where is the main fuse located anyway? I flag and leave the dead truck at Chuyoya port.

Anyway the day after the party, I go for a great sail all the way past Cape Zampa and what’s more I see a Short Tailed Shearwater.

Yay!
(not my photo)

I then turn around and batter my way back up the coast in the hope of making Tern Island.

Not to be, as it gets choppy and I am not making much headway against the wind. So I turn around and hightail it back home. Wonderful sail, wind behind, sun above, 35 mins to get all the way back home. However it is very low tide, no way over the reef except through the Iron Gates. I get it all wrong. We end up on the reef in 6 inches of water. Luckily by this time the waves haves gone so there is no surf to grind her to fiber glass dust. We just perch on the reef waiting for the tide to come back in. It begins to pour with rain.

She also serves who only stands and waits . On the reef.

Moving pictures. https://youtu.be/Z2A0o7YlTOk

During the night a huge centipede crawls into my left ear and snuggles deep inside.

My new lodger

I now feel very bad with swollen ear and fever and nausea.

Home of the centipede.

The ear, nose and throat doctor takes some convincing that there is a centipede in my ear, even after examining me. He finally agrees that there is one in there of the genus ‘severe infection.’ It apparently does not like antibiotics and will come out during the night whilst I am asleep.

Our interns, which is a totally unsuitable name for world-class science writers, Joykrit and Laura have come to the end of their  stay. We have a party.

This a good day to have a party. There is a full moon, there is a beautiful sunset, Harry has cooked a pig, Science publishes an article saying how great we are.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6247/488.full

The Peer review report used the adjective “outstanding” 54 times and “inspirational” 567 times, the world’s most famous science journal sends a message that they are going feature OIST research on the cover, the Scaffie is in the water.  All in all, time for a party.

Cook that pig

Life is hard

The vegetarians

Feeling the heat

Matsuda sensei, the world’s greatest ceramicist, for whom I have total respect, gives me a plate and Laura an awamori bottle

A table – that’s French

Rare photo

The first course

Juan Luis, the quantum cowboy, sings.

Good week

Good dog

The fridge at 2:00 am