On Desire

I’ve been moving tentatively on the hull repairs for the Hobie 16 because it’s scary. Grinding down gelcoat and fiberglass generates clouds of hazardous dust. There’s the expense of buying all the epoxy product to do the repair, not to mention the associated footprint.  It’s not clear how much trouble I’m getting into. The issues seem manageable but then I’ve had limited fiberglass and no boat repair experience. Finally, there’s the possibility of screwing up and either 1) compromising the structural integrity of the hulls or 2) not getting done in time. We had to scrub Hawaii, Around Lake Michigan is scheduled to begin after Whirlwind delivers the new sails, no later than August 7 +/- 1 day.

A 'crack' in the gelcoat - NOT!

In the past couple of weeks I researched repair techniques, upgraded and acquired tools and finally ordered or picked up most of the materials. With all this afoot I forgot about the sailing rockstar that I am collaborating with and the whole point of blogging. Kai has done all kinds of crazy repairs, he’s a wealth of knowledge. The rest of you can’t taste the intensity of the moment unless I am posting my process. So, without further eloquence – restoration!

Significant delamination with spacetime distortion, (note curved ruler).

After grinding some of the problem areas on the starboard hull I was less reluctant to investigate a crack on the port hull. With a precision screwdriver, I pried gently at the edge of the crack and popped off a chunk of fiberglass, exposing the foam core. Significant delamination!

Here’s a super quick tutorial. Cloth woven from glass fiber is saturated with a mixture of liquid resin and hardener. The resin and hardener react chemically (cure) to form a rigid and super tough plastic.

The sides and tops of the Hobie’s hulls have a sandwich construction -  a layer of foam between two thin layers of fiberglass.

x

This double skin make Hobie hulls strong. The outer fiberglass skin is coated with gelcoat, another curing mixture sans fibers that acts like a thick paint.

A famous feature of Hobie cats is that they can be sailed up onto the beach. For single hulled boats with keels that’s usually a disaster. Younger sailors skid their Hobies out of the water and on the sand at high speed, I know I did. As a result the bottoms of Hobie hulls can get pretty scraped up, especially if the beaches they sailed up onto were rocky.

Hard impacts either on land or water can also break the fiberglass. In the cleaning and inspection post I posted an image of damage to the starboard hull’s stern, probably from a trailer mishap.

Even a gently handled and accident free Hobie hull can have problems. When the fiberglass is initially cured, not all of the resin and hardener reacts, leaving tiny pockets of liquid in the cured material. Water can migrate into these pockets and get trapped, forming acids which eat away at surrounding solid. Eventually so much water gets trapped and the surrounding material is so weakened that it bulges out, ripping apart the sandwich. This is called delamination. The crack in the above photo may have started as an impact left unrepaired.

Let’s backtrack a bit and set the stage. This is a major physicality moment, let’s savor it.

The garage wasn’t too cluttered until I showed up in May with 20 boxes of crap from Brooklyn. Though daunting I processed it all, even locating a recycling company to pick up the styrene from all the old computer boxes I had in storage. With the decks cleared for action, I could strategize on the mess that restoration would generate. Rather than cover the entire inside of the garage with plastic, I decided to build an isolation tent with my favorite hex pipe system – I call it LEGOs for adults. $200+ for 60 ft of galvanized 1-1/4 inch pipe, not to mention the hex connectors which I always keep in stock, probably another $60. Add another $10 for some heavy plastic I had stashed away and some duct tape.

The cleaning and inspection yielded some interesting issues. The top row of pictures are likely just cosmetic patching the gelcoat though some fiberglass might have to be removed and replaced if it’s been damaged.

The second row are more sinister issues. The left most picture is a repeat of the bulging crack before I popped off the delaminated fiberglass. The second is an impact mark with a discolored drip stain running out of it. Could this be the action of acid formed from trapped water? If so the damage is likely to be far more than the crayon indicates. The third is from the stern of the starboard hull, a big chuck of gelcoat is missing and the fiberglass is exposed, but there doesn’t seem to be any impact trama nearby. Recalling the trailer accident, this gelcoat could have been poorly bonded and popped off during the impact that broke the glass around the rudder. That’s not the half of it. After inverting the starboard hull on horses in the garage, water began weeping out of the gelcoat hole. After two weeks of sitting high and dry, I found a little puddle there this morning!

To put all this into context, here’s a clever shot of me looking competent. One can hardly tell that I’m holding the camera with the other hand. The point is that I’ll need this boat to be structurally bulletproof before I take her out for 1000 miles of fun on the big lake. My life might depend on getting this right… whee!

Here’s some shots of the excavations.

There's wood underneath	A gelcoat ding goes deep	Removed outer glass and foam. The inner skin feels solid.
Checking glass structure where bottom was scraped.	Borrowed my brother's Fordham with footswitch, sweet!	Art shot of bow jutting out of the tent. Gotta dig the Century Optics wide angle.

So back to it, more pictures as events unfold.

I’m doing some research and trying to get up the nerve to shoot some video at the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii and I came across this fascinating news clip:

fron Hawaiin Star Bulletin

SATURDAY, JULY 07, 2007

“Octosquid” Discovered Off Hawaiian Coast

It’s a squid, it’s an octopus, it’s … a mystery from the deep.

What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists.

The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority’s deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab.

Now you may say that it seems that Kai is sampling way too much of the Hawaiian local agricultural products, but doesn’t this thing look like one of these? -

from wikipedia

Kraken (pronounced /ˈkreɪkən/ or /ˈkrɑːkən/)^[1] are legendary sea monsters of gargantuan size, said to have dwelt off the coasts of Norway and Iceland. The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the beasts have made them common ocean-dwelling monsters in various fictional works (see Kraken in popular culture).

I don’t want to be an alarmist but just in case, I am carrying lots of butter and garlic whenever I venture onto the sea.

If you want to read a really scary (some say true) story:

Query to readers: Does anyone know where I can get a bunch of those lobster bibs you find in fancier seafood restaurants? Also a good sturdy seafood fork would help.

“Eat it before it eats you” – Cptn. Nemo

~~stuck on the edge of paradise, yet again~~

from NOAA web site

‘Siesta’ is the forth boat from the left at the breakwater/pier coming out of the right side of the Hawaiian Hilton tower (see NOAA site for better picture).

Kai’s report:

Running a racing sailboat requires a lot of work. The Kauai Channel Race is probably the most challenging race in Hawaiian waters because of the distances involved and the exposure to unprotected waters. In those kind of conditions it takes 10 to 12 well trained, competent people to handle the boat safely. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is the race where a few years back Curtis put a superficial crack in ‘Siesta’s hull when she launched off of a wave crest and free fell into a trough while coming back from Kauai after the race. From the NOAA weather reports (see below) it looks like it will be moderately dicey especially with the difficult return to Oahu on Sunday.

For the past week there have been several mandatory ‘all hands on deck’ events for the crew. I am the only on exempt from these because I’m 270 miles away. I always show up a day or so before the race and help get the boat ready.

First Curtis scheduled a training session last weekend where only 2/3rds of the crew managed to show up. Instead of the boat’s crew being able to hone their skills Curtis had to retrain people to fill vital positions that were vacant. Then there were several work events that needed to be done to get the boat ready for the upcoming race. Only a handful of people managed to show up for these as well.

In defense of the crew, many of these people are very smart, talented individuals with complicated lives. Traditionally the bulk of the regular crew has been comprised of U of H graduate students, many working on their dissertations in the earth sciences and oceanography departments. I have learned so much from them in terms of how the oceans and how volcanoes work through our discussions. Racing on ‘Siesta’ is a necessary outlet for them where they get to use their physical and mental talents in a fun and rewarding way. The camaraderie of this caliber of people has been rewarding as well.

In talking with Curtis yesterday we discussed this perpetual problem of trying to run a race boat. Curtis has decided that over the next year or so he plans to sell ‘Siesta’ and buy a more solid cruising boat. He will still race this new boat but will be able to handle it less people. Also the costs and work of maintaining a high tech, cutting edge boat will be greatly diminished.

For now Curtis has decided to pull ‘Siesta’ out of the ‘Kauai Channel Race’ and set his sights on getting boat and crew together for the ‘Lahina Return’ race in a couple of months. Several years ago we literally surfed at 18 to 20 knots for 7 hours with full spinnaker in huge following seas. It was a thrilling E-ticket ride that wouldn’t be possible in ‘Desire’. Although I have to say that I’ve had her up to 9.3 knots, laterally carving the faces of waves off of Northern California, which is theoretically impossible for a 26 foot displacement hull. But then ‘Desire’ is an amazing boat.

So where does that leave me? As you may have gleaned through my nautical musings, nothing is for certain when it comes to boats and the ocean, or for that matter, people as well. Like trying to determine the position and speed of an electron, there are statistical maybes involved but no certainties. I’ll continue polishing up my ‘On Desire’ posts as I prepare to tuck ‘Desire’ back into storage and get ready to deliver ‘Jungle’ back to the mainland. From there who knows? I have a few weeks of work in San Diego and then I’ll make my way back to Seattle to see what awaits me there. If the gods of fiduciary commerce smile favorably on me, I’d like to take a side trip to Connecticut and see how my mom is fairing in her new digs with my brother’s family. If not I’ll make due with what I have on hand and I’m sure that will be interesting as well. Most certainly I’ll hone my talents, gain new insights and experience, as well as meet interesting people along the way. It’s merely a matter of conducting your thoughts and actions in such a way as to be able benefit in what the universe passes within your grasp of involvement. The filter feeding barnacle principle of existence.

=====================================================================

clicl for NOAA site

From the Marine section from the Area Forecast Discussion

issued at: Jul 29, 2009 4:00 PM HST

Winds have diminished a bit over most areas so the small craft advisory has been cancelled. Winds are expected to pick back up again Friday and on into the weekend so the small craft advisory will again be up during that time for the usual windy zones.

A new south swell is expected to begin filling in late Thursday or Thursday night. Latest wavewatch model output indicates that the surf will reach advisory levels Friday and Saturday and possibly into Sunday.

1100 PM PDT WED JUL 29 2009

FOR THE EASTERN NORTH PACIFIC…EAST OF 140 DEGREES WEST LONGITUDE..

DISORGANIZED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS CONTINUE IN ASSOCIATION WITH A TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED ABOUT 350 MILES EAST-SOUTHEAST OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. DEVELOPMENT…THIS SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO BE SLOW TO OCCUR AS IT MOVES GENERALLY WESTWARD AT 15 TO 20 MPH. THERE IS A LOW CHANCE…LESS THAN 30 PERCENT…OF THIS SYSTEM BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

from Curtis Collins (click on pic to see 'Siesta' website)

I have never been very keen on competitive sports. I prefer engaging in activities where I am more focussed on bettering my own abilities rather than beating other people. Sports like hiking, climbing, back country skiing, scuba diving, and long distance sailing. So it was with much trepidation that friends of mine first goaded me into participating in sailboat racing in Seattle.

I thought that there was something perverse about taking something as beautiful as sailing and making it into a competitive ego battle on the water. But I was blessed with being asked to crew on a boat where the captain and crew where using racing merely as an excuse to go sailing. First and foremost on their minds was sailing safely and having fun. If we happened to win a race or do well that was great, but it wasn’t the reason for us being there.

What I soon learned on ‘BYB’ (Big Yellow Boat) was the finer art of sail control as well as learning to recognize the subtle signs of wind and currents and adjusting the boat accordingly. Striving to take full advantage of the forces at play in order make the boat move through the water as efficiently as possible. This was to help me immensely later on when I started to do long distance solo sailing as well as crew on unfamiliar boats.

When I first arrived in Honolulu on ‘Desire’, after an epic 54.1/2 hour sail from Hilo with little more than three half hour ‘naps’, I was tired and a bit confused as to where to dock my boat. According to my sailing directions for the Ali Wai harbor the outer row next to the breakwater was reserved for visiting sailboats. Any slip that was not occupied was fair game for moorage. I slowly motored down the channel and found a slip close to the dock’s entrance gate that was unoccupied.

Now the challenge was to do a Mediterranean style tie-up to the dock without destroying my own boat or any of the one’s to either side of the slip. I needed to fix a line from my stern to a buoy in the channel and then tie the nose of the boat to the dock. This had to be done with perfect grace and timing so as to not go crashing into the concrete dock or the boats a couple of feet away to either side. This was also the first time I had ever done this kind of a moorage.

After several failed attempts and narrowly averting disaster the owner of the large blue boat to my left came to my aid. He patiently told me the sequence of what I needed to do and then caught and secured my forward dock lines. With his help I managed to safely dock ‘Desire’. After shutting down my engine I thanked him for his help and we began to talk. Curtis Collins had owned his Bounty II yawl ‘Tiare’ for nearly 19 years. He lived aboard and also raced her constantly. He was greatly impressed with my little pocket cruiser and the fact that I had solo sailed her from Seattle. We became instant friends and spent many hours, after I slept for about  12 hours, sharing our stories.

Several days later Curtis asked me if I wanted to sail with him and his crew in a simple Friday night race around some buoys in front of Waikiki. I jumped at the chance and soon met and befriended his crew. I was amazed that he had about 20 people on his boat. There were about 10 regular crew members and about 10 visitors. The 10 visitors were assigned to the role of moveable ballast, or ‘rail meat’. During the course of the race Curtis would tell them where to sit to trim the boat for the prevailing conditions. Curtis assigned me the task of assisting Joseph and Dan on the foredeck, quite an honor for a new guy.

from Curtis Collins - 'Tiare'

I remember that as we came up to the buoy at Dimondhead we were getting more and more pounded by wind and waves. Being on the foredeck the three of us were getting the worst of it with the occasional wave drenching us. As I heard Joseph and Dan grumbling about the conditions I started chuckling to myself. At one point Joseph turned to me and asked me what was so funny. I told him that when I did a race like this in Seattle I was typically wearing three or four layers because of the cold water. Now I was wearing a T-shirt and board shorts with 75 degree water hitting me and I was loving it!

I sailed with Curtis and his crew for another 2 years on ‘Tiare’. If I happened to be in Honolulu for a Friday night race I was welcome on the crew but I went out of my way to come to town for the longer ocean races around Ohahu and to the other islands. Then 5 years ago Curtis had an opportunity to buy a hot rod of a boat that had been built for long distance ocean racing.  ’Siesta’ had been sitting in storage for years as her Japanese owners lost interest in her. She was one of 12 nearly identical 45 foot carbon fiber boats built for a series of races between Hawaii and Japan. Dennis Conner has on of the other 12 boats in San Diego and he uses his to train secondary crews for the America’s Cup boats. Theses boats have very complicated racing rigs with mostly titanium hardware, mylar sails and spectra lines. Where ‘Tiare’ was a solid old lady that was very forgiving to mistakes, ‘Siesta’ was a thorobread that demanded constant vigilance and attention to detail to avoid major sail damage, rig failures and breakage as well as crew injuries.

We trained for several months and destroyed several old sails before we began to understand her nuances and needs. We didn’t do very well in the first few races but everyone on the crew knew we were in a whole new league  with ‘Siesta’ and slowly we started placing better and better, as well as winning some races. But more importantly she was a fun boat to sail once we began to understand her as well as our own roles in the crew.

While I have been able to sail a few of the Friday night buoy races since I returned to Hawaii, I haven’t had a chance to do what I really love, a long distance open ocean race. On July 31st I have an opportunity to sail on ‘Siesta’ in the 86 mile Kauai Channel Race. With a 7:00am start from the West coast of Oahu at KoOlina we plan to charge across the channel to Kauai’s Nawiliwili Harbor in 8-10 hours, depending on the wind conditions.

While this should be a relatively benign race, several years ago ‘Siesta’ cracked her hull just forward of the keel in this race when she crashed down hard in a wave trough after becoming partially airborne in 18 to 20 foot seas with close to 50 knots of wind. Luckily it was only a superficial crack in the gelcoat and the conditions calmed down shortly afterwards.

http://www.siestarace.com for more information on ‘Siesta’

Give credit where credit is due… two reasons – context for new language and imagery, credit because that’s the right way. We each take responsibility to caption our own posts.

Listing events – Dan Around Lake Michigan, Kai’s thinking about how his next move fits in.

Writing teachers as editors, who can do? What about Melonie? Commitment and help with expense?

Professionalism means ease of use, comprehensibility, clarity, structure, a scaffolding for bigger ideas but when other folks type in On Desire there should be a lobby with a manageable reception.

Kai’s got to read over all the pages and do feedback.

Bold = got
Underline = gotta get

Hobie

flares
horn
submersible VHF
running lights
new sails (ordered from Whirlwind)
solid fenders for rocky beach and marinas
new shrouds
spare rudder and hardware
etc.
power

airmarine (wind power)
agm battery

Repairs

fiberglass hulls
grommets and hiking strap on trampoline √

Diving

refresher course
regulator (checked and tuned) √
wetsuit
fins
harness
booties
mask
snorkel
tank (hydrostat test) √

Movie

* Camera A *
purchased 05-06/09

√ (1) Canon Vixia HF S10 $1300
√ (2) BP819 3 hour batteries $80 x 2 = $160
√ (1) Canon CG-800 charger
√ (2) Tiffen 82 mm white water HT glass $108 – lens protection for wide angle, on camera and extra
√ (2) Tiffen 38 mm white water glass $50 – lens protection when not using wide angle, on camera and extra
√ (1) Century Optics DS-55WA-58 wide angle and fisheye $259 – panoramic shots and tight interiors eg sauna, ship cabins, cars
√ (1) Century Optics DSFA8200 retangular sunshade  w/82 thread $149
√ (1) Juicedlink Phantom Power XLR adapter CX231 $299 – for use with professional microphones and to split audio channels
√ (1) carbon fiber monopod (converted boom fishpole) $100
√ (1) BP807 1 hour batteries - included with camera
√ (1) Kingston Technologies MobileLite card reader ~$20.00
√ (1) Delkin Technologies 16 gb class 6 SDHC ~$40
√ (1) Bowers 58-62 step up ring ~$7
√ (1) Bowers 62-82 step up ring ~$10

*Camera B*

(1) Canon Vixia HF S100 (Camera B) $989
(2) BP819 3 hour batteries $80 x 2 = $270
(1) HD6 Equinox underwater housing $899
(1) small carbon fiber tripod – sticks and head
(1) Century Optics +7 Acromatic Diopter $200

(2) Lectrosonics 400C Series Lavalier Microphone System $2837 x 2 = $5674
UCR411 Portable Receiver
MM400 Watertight Transmitter *
M152 Omnidirectional Lavalier

* Post *
√ (1) Macbook Pro 15 2.4 Intel Core Duo
√ (1) Sonnet Tempo Sata ExpressCard/34
√ (1) Sonnet Fusion F2 portable SATA drive 640 gb $250

(1) small shotgun with windscreen
(1) wind screen solution for Vixia on-board mics
(1) rain enclosure for camera

(1) Brunton Solaris 52 solar panel $679
(1) Brunton Solo 15 battery and inverter $353

(1) lens cleaning kit w/rocket blower
(1) clandestine camera carry solution – no “steal me” cases
(1) waterproof case for electronics

Health / Hygiene

(1) Banyan Botanicals Immune Support
(1) Chin wan hung – chinese burn medicine
(1) Wan hua oil
(1) Bone water
(3) oz Sencha Green Tea
(1) lb Buchu
(1) Myrrh Gum
(1) Oregano Oil
(10) oz Grain alcohol
(1) Aspirin
(2) Melatonin
(2) CoQ10
(2) DIM
(1) Dr Hauksha’s sun block

Trek

Seal Line Black Canyon 115 (dry bag large)
Seal Line Seal Pak (dry bag small)
backpack internal frame
tent – light hammock or heavier dome
sleeping bag
alcohol stove and small fuel bottle
pot and spoon
ceramic water filter

Midland 75-822 CB radio $78.74
Firestik II FG2648-B no ground plane antennae kit $76.39

Gosh, everything was just hitting the fan this week! Kai’s friends were calling him a wussy and worse because this blog didn’t make any sense. He complained that he couldn’t find anything. Meanwhile I’ve been scrambling on Plan B, a summer adventure to make-up for missing Hawaii.

His ideas for restructuring our documentation were useful. I hate that there’s no easy way to record our phone conversations with my second gen iPhone (sans jailbreaking), we’d really like to post audio excerpts for all to hear.

I’ve reduced the number of pages to; 1) a mission and disclaimer, 2)  backstory, 3) events 4) collaborators, and 5) how this works. I’ve clarified and obfuscated content as needed. There’s still a bit of category cleaning ahead, but things are much neater blogwise. Previous pages will be converted to posts and then – onward.

So what’s the deal? Kai and I are now On Desire collaborators like everyone else. We are the primary contributors only because we are showing up. Any worthy who’s willing to share wisdom will also be accorded full honors. We are conspiring to recruit other vibrant personalities to On Desire and would especially appreciate a crack editor or two and even a savvy blog mom. I’ll continue to be blog mom until future notice, final arbiter of all disputes and embodiment of divine authority.

Meanwhile, I’ve announced my plan B, Around Lake Michigan. I’ve been hard at work getting ready, stay tuned for a flurry of updates.

The original On Desire concept featured two aspiring earth stewards sailing around the Hawaiian Islands aboard the 26′ sloop, Desire. The project title ‘On Desire’ referred both to the central theme of their talks and to their circumstances. The voyage was scheduled for the summer of 2009.

Hawaiian Islands visualization by Thorsten Andresen. Nils Sparwasser, Stephan Reiniger, and Robert Meisner. Source data provided by German Remote Sensing Data Center (DLR), National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC); University of Maryland - Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF); United States Geological Survey (USGS). Thanks to the scientists and the organizations for permission to use this spectacular image.

To facilitate planning and identify the main themes, a project blog was launched in February 2009. With minimal outreach and no search engine indexing, ondesire.com had 10,000 hits in June 2009. Then in July, Desire’s captain Kai Schwarz determined that Desire wasn’t seaworthy for a voyage back to the mainland and filmmaker Dan Kelly realized that he couldn’t travel to Hawaii without compromising the integrity of the project. The defining event was kaput – but the discussion was just getting started!

Sailing around the Hawaiian islands is an event. Events and the discussions they inspire are the primary components of On Desire. An event failure can trigger rigorous and productive discussion. Rather than toss out the project because the Hawaii/Desire event imploded, Kai and Dan decided to open up the discussion and multiply the events.

08May’09 1339PST ~900knm from San Diego-

We are officially in the tropics now having crossed the Tropic of Cancer yesterday in light airs heading for an imaginary gate at 0degrees N x 130degrees West. We are sailing downwind in a very rolly boat.

13May’09 ~1200local (-2PST) 1461 nm from San Diego-

We’re half way to Hiva Oa, sailing downwind @6.5 knots.

17May’09 1145local (-2PST) N03d49.5m x W129d57.7m-

We appear to have left the ITCZ (doldrums) behind us to the North after days of switching between sails and engine. We are currently sailing a broad reach at ~6knots 229nm from the equator.

The nights have been spectacular the past few nights. Orion to the West at sunset, Saturn dancing like a disco ball, Jupiter in the early morning to the east. Arcturus heading North as we dip South. Polaris lost in the horizon clouds. Mars and Venus dancing together in the pre-dawn morning. Scores of meteors and satellites.

Last night I viewed my first UFO (unidentified floating/flying object). I was just relieving Hans on watch. We were sailing a course of 190d mag. at 5.5-6knots. At 2030local (PST-2) Hans and I simultaneously witnessed the faint glow of a white light just above the horizon due South of us. As we were both looking at it the faint white light did one powerful searchlight sweep from West to East and then disappeared. We fired up the radar and kept an eye out ahead of us for and hour but didn’t see any indication of a ship, or anything else.

19May’09-

We crossed the equator into the Southern hemisphere this evening at 17:30 (PST-2). Although they had never done it before, Hans and Erica weren’t interested in doing the King Neptune ceremony. Instead we took a bunch of pictures, ate a chocolate cake that Erica baked as part of a belated birthday celebration and had a few sips of wine.

20May’09-

Although ‘Babalu’ and her crew appear to fit and sound there is a lot of strangeness happening around her on this long dark night. As I relieve Hans on watch at 2100 (local, PST-2) he tells me  that he just saw a bright spherical light (5meters in diameter) apear and wink out in the water, directly in front of the boat. In the next few hours I see more green meteors than I have ever seen before. Normally I see yellow/orange meteors/metiorites, but every third or four one tonight glows green. Several times I also see white lights moving around the sky the way that meteors, satellites and airplanes don’t. I see one white light flash at the top of a dark cumulus cloud 10-15 miles West of us. Very strange.

The it gets even more strange. First, I have to qualify this by saying I am quite used to seeing interesting hallucinations, especially when I am tired or somehow inebriated. I enjoy these hallucinations and I know that they are hallucinations. The ones I see are always based on something that is real seen in a different way such as dancing trees, breathing walls, rolling or pulsing clouds and the occasional pope water skiing through the white caps behind my boat at night.

With an hour left on my watch I had settled down and wedged myself in the cockpit, listening to some music on my I-pod (one eared to keep a listen for the boat). I was looking down at the lit up rectangular white screen on the I-pod and when I looked up I saw a face looking back at me through the lifelines imediately next to the boat. A big round wrinkled leathery brown face about a foot in diameter with large round yellow/brown eyes, two large flat nostrils and a very small mouth. It looked like what I would imagine ET’s dad looks like but rounder head not as elongated. I only saw it for a moment as the boat took a hard wave from port and rolled into a trough of luminescent spray over the spot where the face was.

I have no idea what was going on here as I have never had hallucinations of things that are not there at all. I was well rested and Erica had done a marvelous job of feeding us well. Maybe it was the Indian curry spices acting up or bored Frenchies teasing us with their submarines in this desolate part of the ocean. I don’t know. And what I don’t know concerns me.

23-24May’09-

We are slowing the boat down as we get close to Hiva Oa so that we won’t have to wake up the Gendarmes on a Sunday.

25 May’09-Tahauku Anchorage, Atuona, Hiva Oa, S09d49.9m x W139d02.1m

At ~0900local (HST +1/2hr) we arrive in Atuona Bay harbor South Hiva Oa. Hans and Erica book a room in the municiple hotel (marinery?) and we all manage to melt the salt in our pores by taking long fresh water showers.

27May’09- Tahauku Anchorage, Atuona, Hiva Oa

We finish our imigration cha-cha with the local Gendarmes. I get a 30 day visa and Erica gets a 90 days visa, no problems in spit of our encounters with the French consalate in Santa Monica, CA. I manage to change my flight back to Hawaii to June 6th and book a flight to Papeete on June 4th.

28May’09- Tahauku Anchorage, Atuona, Hiva Oa

Doing the tourist thing today. We visited the museum dedicated to actor/musician Jacques Brel. Brel made Hiva Oa his home in the 70′s using his private plane to bring aid and medical suplies to the locals. We also visited the Paul Gauguin Museum, with which I was more impressed. Gauguin came to Hiva Oa in the late 1800′s at the height of French domination of the Society Islands and died on Hiva Oa in the early 1900′s. With grants from the French Atomic Comision and various art trusts the museum the museum recreated many of his works including his house (house of pleasure with pleasure being translated from Marqasan to French to English as ‘orgasam’).

29May’09- Hanaiapa Anchorage, Hanaiapa, Hiva Oa, S09d43m x W139d01m

We sailed around the Western side of Hiva Oa today to the Northern town and bay of Hanaiapa. With the trade winds coming out of the South East this is the leeward side of the island. Hanaiapa sits in a beautiful bay with lush fruit trees and palms growing along the valley floor and goats in the sparse hills. As we came ashore we were met by Comadore William of his self made ‘Hanaiapa Yacht Club’. William invited us to the yacht club on the porch of his house and served us his chilled homemade lemonade and his generosity of mangos, bananas, lemons, limes and chili pepers. We took him out to ‘Babalu’ for a grand tour followed by coffee and cookies.

In the evening the 108 meter ‘Aranui 3′ dropped anchor next to our seemingly tiny boat and began shuttling tourists to shore in landing craft while the locals brought copra and nay-nay fruit to the dock for export.

We had a delightful swim and snorkle around the edges of the bay and met Bruce and Ilean from the trimaran ‘Migration’of Long Beach, CA. The were in their third year of cruising around French Polynesia.

31May’09 (Sun.)- Hanaiapa Anchorage, Hanaiapa, Hiva Oa-

While Hans and Erica went to church in town I had my own services aboard ‘Babalu’ (my church and denomination of choice). I spent the day reading, tiding up the boat a bit and doing a few buckets of sea laundry.

01June’09- Hanaiapa Anchorage, Hanaiapa, Hiva Oa-

We spent the day resting and at 1630 pull up anchor for a night sail to Nuka Hiva.

02June’09- Bai Taiohae Anchorage, Nuka Hiva-

Arrived at 0630 and anchored a short distance from the town of Taiohae’s quay. Hans shuttles me to the dock and goes back to the boat to get Erica. We are in dire need of some of the wonderful local fruits. As I’m waiting I strike up a conversation with a well dressed Polynesian gal named Barbara. She’s a school teacher from Papeete visiting Nuka Hiva for a few weeks. She asks me a if I’d like to help her teach a bunch of Marquasean people english for an hour or so. In return for my efforts she’ll have each student bring some fruit as payment for my time.

I spend a delightful time answering questions and speeking with several Marquasan girls and women. When Barbara returns me back to the quay I’m laden with about 10 kilos of mango, pompamuse (monster grapefruit), lemon, lime, orange and 2 kinds of banana. I was the fruit and take a picture to submit with the IRS when I file my taxes next year.

Hans and Erica and I are having lunch at this little crepe truck bistro on the quay later. I discover the crepe lady is from Berlin and we start talking in German. A few minutes later we see Peter and Elsa, a couple from a Hans Christian that we helped out in San Diego! Small world indead. Still no world from our Austrian friends (Rolland, Cludia and Kim) on ‘Anyway’.

04June’09- Nuka Ataha, Nuka Hiva-

I’m leaving ‘Babalu’ to move forward with my life. Leon drives me 1.1/2 hrs to the airport on the other side of the island. The drive takes a very dramatic route from a lush jungle valley, up a steep ridge, through a pine forest at ~800 meters, across Nuka Hiva’s central grassy cow pasture platue (Plateau DeToovii) over another ridge with a 1020 meter pass, then through a mini Grand Canyon on the dry side of the island to the airport at Nuke Ataha. I fly a medium sized Air Tahiti turbo prop across the Tumamotos to Papeete.

05June’09- Pension Armelle, Punaauiia, Tahiti

I spent a pleasant three days getting used to fresh water showers again, resting and exploring the west side of Tahiti. Last time I was here in 2004 there was a coupe going on with 3,000 gendarmes keeping vigil on the streets of Papeete for riots. All flights out were booked solid for two months out and Shelley Sailer (see Holokai.org crew page) and I were seriously thinking about sailing a dead guys boat back to Hawaii. This time it was much calmer.

06June’09- Honolulu aboard ‘Siesta’

I flew back to Honolulu on the once a week red-eye flight from Papeete to Hawaii. From there I made my way to the big island and started planning what I was going to do with ‘Desire’ and how to get ready for Dan’s arrival. See ‘onDesire telemetry’ for the continuation of the saga.

Also see: http://www.sailblogs.com/member/babalu/

for the continuation of Hans and Erika’s voyage as well as tons of pictures of our trip.

With the web and the world being a 24hr, 360 degree longitudinal environment I struggle constantly with time when travel. Although my internal clock and sensibilities go into what I call ‘boat time’ (a near timeless state) I have to be constantly aware of clock and planet time. For navigation and communications I have to have a highly accurate idea of Greenwich mean time (GMT), Universal Coordinated Standard Time (UST), or Zulu time (the Greenwich line goes through Zulu Land). They are actually all the same, based on the prime meridian, except I feel that ‘universal’ is a bit presumptuous. This is also the 0 degree line for longitude.

If my chronometers are off by one second that equates to one nautical mile (6020 feet) of error in my celestial navigation position or one degree of longitude. One or two nm’s are acceptable. One or two minutes (60-120 nm’s) of timing error will put me on a reef or miss an entire island altogether. The entries that follow are all in local (boat) time at the time they are written unless noted otherwise.

Dan and I are still wrestling with how we note our time stamped entries on this blog. Since we are 1/4 of the world apart right now (6 hrs) you may notice a discrepancy in the timing of some of our entries as we file them at our own relative local time. Who knows what the internet and our own personal computers do with that. Maybe the answer for us, and our dear readers, would be a gadget on the cover page, linked to the atomic clock, that looks like a bunch of news room clocks with times for Dan, myself, New York, the Dali Lama, the Pope and Zulu time. That way we can dispense with the confusion caused by the spinning of the globe.

Example: as I post this blog on the web it’s 15:47 HST (3:47 pm in Hawaii), 9:47 pm in Michigan where Dan is and the preview of the page says: July 22, 2009, 1:47 am. That would put ‘Desire’s position somewhere around Libia. It smells like Hawaii but the math says not… Go figure…

Compiled @ 7:54 AM 7/21/09 (090622-0754PST,  minus 10hrs Zulu) -

<Thats 07:54am Hawaii Standard Time or 10 hours behind Zulu time.>

To make it even more complicated when the mainland goes to ‘Daylight Savings Time’ (what are they really saving?) HST  stays the same but mainland time changes.

Kai is in the house! We’ve been doing a lot of undocumented talking phonewise.

Kai isn’t totally comfortable with posting full names of collaborating individuals, he want’s to protect their privacy. He’s also reluctant to release the On Desire blog to the world. He likes the idea of keeping it low key so that we can be more free with our experimentation.

In contrast, I’ve got no problem using the full names of my people and even throwing in history and context. The point of launching a blog is to communicate – to engage and tell a story. My journey is not primarily about boats, but about sharing my exploration of sustainability with as wide an audience as possible.

It appears we have fundamental philosophical rifts. That’s great – what’s a narrative without conflict? We’ve already had a slight rift on jetting and are sorting out a focus mismatch. I’ve cleared my summer (June – September) to do On Desire.  Kai’s wedged the project in between sailing gigs and will be shifting his energy to a client’s boat by August 22. We’ve got about three weeks left of schedule overlap. To pull this off, we need to sync our focus for the next three weeks.

Wait a second Dan,  Desire is stuck in the yard and you are not even in Hawaii! The premise of the project is toast, what can you guys do at this point? Ah, friends… we can make magic – beyond geography, budget and schedule. We initiated this project because we’ve both got some serious cosmic mojo going on. What the earth needs is folks figuring out how to activate their mojo, and that’s what’s for dinner right here and now at On Desire. Good stuff.

Watch us work this.

I was just commenting on Telemetry 090630 and I realized my comment was worthy of it’s own post. Kai and I are a few steps past this now, but you can’t practice fundamentals too much.

> It seems, for ideological reasons as he won’t fly in a jet due to it’s carbon footprint.
> I can respect his convictions though I don’t fully adopt them as my own.

It’s all Jeff Gibb’s fault! Well, Al Gore too, but for opposite reasons. I ramble about this all over the site, start with these dubious calculations…

http://www.ondesire.com/2009/06/13/on-jets/

At the risk of ranting, here’s my riposte. I can’t count on governments or corporations to do what’s right by me and by the earth. The only way to change anything is to get conscious and take personal responsibility for my actions – identify my most harmful behaviors and stop doing them.

The ends don’t justify the means. On Desire is not a worthy project if we have to act in destructive ways to accomplish it. Unless you are Kai Schwarz, getting to Hawaii sustainably ain’t easy. He can do it because he’s got the skills and knowledge to get on boats or sail his own. I could probably get on boats by leveraging my production skills and starting earlier on the research.

Granted, there are cruise ships that make the passage a few months out of the year, but because there is theoretically less carbon footprint riding a cruise ship, the cash cost is higher! Most folks who want to go to Hawaii HAVE to ride jets. Hawaii’s tourist industry is a frikkin’ carbon factory.

Sustainability isn’t an abstract concept. What does a small footprint look like? For one thing, it’s small!

Dan here! Those of you reading On Desire so far may be annoyed with my quirky and often obtuse writing style. With the delivery of the Macbook Pro two days ago, Kai is in the process of coming online and catching up with his posts. I’d love to find a competent and courageous editor to svelte up our ramblings. In the meantime it is with great humility and not a little trepidation that I attempt to edit my colleague’s writing. This could mean the end of the entire project…

The editing process provides insights about blog protocols and standards that we can all apply. Steeped in usability issues during my days as an interface designer, I try to take a reader friendly approach to writing.

After grappling with Kai’s first page for an hour or two, I retired to the bathtub to re-read the first 15 pages of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I think I’m finally savvy enough to get the E of S message. Whether I actually apply it’s directives only time will tell. To all On Desire bloggers – make life easy for the reader – apply Elements of Style!

An aside – I think my fondness for code and working with complex software like Final Cut Pro and After Effects has set me up. Language is an artistic encryption. Crafting language is problem solving – how to make an idea clear and concise, how to provide the reader with an efficient workflow. Last night I re-enacted Archimedes by fusing hot water, a geeky past, Elements of Style, and, of course, a bathtub. Eureka! I’m ready to write better.

Here’s my comments for Kai…

I put some serious effort into editing because blog pages are more permanent than posts and therefor more frequently visited. I think it’s worth the effort because our ability to communicate clearly will have a big impact on our ability to 1) share subtle insights 2) attract collaborators and 3) achieve worthy outcomes for the planet.

Some sentences were trying to say too much and some i couldn’t decipher – those are in bold. I’ve attempted to simplify the sentences while keeping the jist. I’ve added a little introductory material so that folks get context. I’ve broken up unrelated ideas into separate sentences.

One question to ask is what are you trying to get across? Why write at all? It’s not just a list of what happened, it’s your humor, philosophy and approach to life that should come through. What you choose to write about says a lot about you. Your pride in your skills reads well, don’t be afraid to give geeky details if there’s a story to tell. Remember the African Queen, not such a great movie except when the details show up – forging a propeller on the beach, leeches in the swamps, homemade torpedos, the character’s development …

Here are some standards we can use through the blog.

Our main characters should be named in full when first introduced – my filmmaker friend Dan Kelly, then say Dan after that. First names are fine for minor characters, but they might still need some intro. You know who your cast is but our readers don’t. Why are they important to the story? Give us some context. Using full names also increases the value of this narrative to the world at large because it can be productively tagged.

We don’t need to put ships names in quotes if we capitalize them -  Torea instead of ‘Torea’, Desire instead of ‘Desire’.

Try and maintain a specific timeline. It’s too much work for the reader to try and figure out your history when the narrative jumps from now to 4 months later, then there’s a flashback to last year, then a few more days pass. Just insert the month and year, (no abbreviations).

After my sex change operation in April of 2006, I enjoyed a few months of acclaim working as a trans stripper. I was reminded of my first exposure to Queen in 1981, and how I dreamed of channeling Freddie Mercury, even though he was still alive then. By the fall of 2006, I felt a little discontented and began investigating how to shift my bio identity beyond human limits, perhaps to a lichen hybrid. I had always liked lichen and often played at being lichen as a wee lad, crouching low on a rock and not moving for hours or even days at a time. It was great to be 6 years old in 1969.

I took out pictures because something buggy was going on. We can put them back once the text is right.

Around Lake Michigan, The Search for Sustainable Civilizations by Dan Kelly, Trickster Pictures is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

As reported a few weeks back, Kai’s got problems with Desire. It’s been sitting for so long unattended that there’s no way he can get it ready in time to return to Seattle ahead of big weather in September. After a weekend of soul searching, he decided to keep Desire dry and prepare her for an eventual sale.

There are other boats we can borrow and hitch rides on, but that’s different from having our own boat on our own schedule. Combined with my inability to find boat transport to Hawaii, we are facing a radical redesign of On Desire. We don’t have a reliable boat in Hawaii nor am I even in Hawaii. Even if I could get there, summer is about half over.

Why not fly? It’s not about the money – jet service from LA to Honolulu is around $100, I could do a round trip from Michigan to Hawaii for less the $400 and be there in a few days. Al Gore gave himself a free pass to make Inconvenient Truth, but how much Co2 did he loft in to the atmosphere jetting hither and yon? I have to take responsibility for my own impact, whatever my good intentions happen to be. It’s about kicking my terrorist/consumer addiction, even if it means passing up on a groovy summer in Hawaii.

How can Kai and I discuss sustainability without shared geography? How can we leverage our complimentary powers if we can’t combine them in physical space? That’s exactly what we are going to figure out in the next 2 weeks, right here. The wind turbine slices the sky in blogdom – and you’re invited.

Last week I spoke with Jim Storey and Kelly Dennison of Horizon Lines, one of the container ship companies serving Hawaii. I made a proposal to document operations on a container ship traveling from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii as part of On Desire’s exploration of sustainability. Yesterday, I was decisively turned down by Kelly, Horizon’s Marketing Director. Her explanation was that Hawaii operations are just too overwhelmed right now to handle an observer, as this is the height of their season. She said that she might be able arrange port side interviews in between ships, but I wouldn’t be able to see a ship. She also looked into getting me aboard a newer ship traveling in international waters, but customs might prevent my boarding. I appreciate Kelly and Jim’s efforts and for Horizon Lines careful consideration of the proposal.

Of course, I have to evaluate the decision in strategically. It’s possible that the mystical flavor of the project (as presented here at http://ondesire.com) didn’t impress management or that my personal filmography didn’t inspire sufficient awe.  Maybe Horizon’s legal teamed balked at having no control over the final product. Perhaps an inquiry into the sustainability of container transport would raise difficult questions for the industry in general or Horizon’s Lines operations specifically. Do images of great black billowing clouds of burned bunker fuel jive with a companies ‘green’ web copy? Probably not.

There’s the rub – without transparency, the public imagination runs wild.  Without transparency there is no way to check the veracity of green assertions. Corporate policy – We aren’t hiding anything so there’s no point in looking.

Later I’d like to discuss the end of advertising and the rise of forums in connection with whether open source translates to the physical world. This bears directly on the transparency of companies and the story of how I almost invented the internet.

In the meantime, there’s no still boat to Hawaii. What to do? Plan B!

The Empire State Maritime Alliance is offering On Desire expertise and guidance on working boats, emphasizing the historic perspective. Captain Ann Loeding, (who also produced Daughter of God), has come aboard with her considerable experience and encyclopedic knowledge. Check out ESMA at workingonwater.org.

Still working on getting over the last dregs of my Honolulu cold. Several interesting developments in the last week though. Apple has come through on it’s pledge to loan us a spanking new Macbook Pro laptop with all the latest software to write and edit video from your lap. I also went ahead and bit the bullet on buying a video camera that fits my action packed lifestyle. Panasonic, who also make bullet proof laptops called Toughbooks, offers a flash card video camera that’s water proof (to 5 feet) right out of the box. Between the laptop and the camera I hope to get the On Desire project at least off of the ground into a low hover.

One of the things about being in barnacle mode, as opposed to spending much of my effort surviving on the food chain, is that occasionally a really tasty morsel drifts your way. Serendipitous synchronicity. It’s just a matter of patience and recognizing it when it is brought to you on the current.

Yesterday I got a call from Dr. Roli, a good friend of mine in San Diego. He asked me if I’d be interested in helping him deliver a 58′ Mandarin motor sailer (Sea Horse Shipyards, Hong Kong) named Jungle from Hawaii to Newport, CA. I spoke with Jim, the owner, this morning for about an hour and a half.

It sounds like a solid boat, appointed well with the makings of a capable crew. In a worst case scenario Roli and I could run the boat by ourselves. Plus Jim wants to pay me to do a bunch of electronic/electrical upgrades on the boat. The time frame is to leave from Ko Olina, HI on August 22nd with about a 20 day passage to Newport, CA.

That gives me plenty of time to get Desire sorted out, as well as work on some video stuff and do some sailing on Siesta.

I don’t see a down side.

Collaborators fill holes in the project with goodness – expertise, advice, elbow grease and even poetry. Yes, there’s room for you here too!

Non-profit
Empire State Maritime Alliance – Guidance and expertise on working boats
Northwest Michigan Folklife Center – Supporting regional expressions of sustainability

Profit
Apple Inc. – Macbook Pro loan, July – October 2009 (On Desire)
Northern Welding Specialties – Aluminum casting repair for the Hobie 16 (ALM)
Ecobuilding products – Van loan for transport, retail location for shipping drop-off (ALM)

New York
Micheal Vitti – Project advocate in the afterlife
Cynthia Palmer Stevenson – Cat hostel
Akiko Kato – Accessorization
Master Ru – Transformation and physicality enhancement
Anastasia Frenkel – Saving the Brooklyn crib
Fabrice Covelli – Logistics
Innes Smolansky – Project Attorney
Faisal Azam – Minding the store at holyboners.com

Northern Michigan
Dan Kelly artist and contributor
Melonie and Seamus Steffes Callaghan – Cat hostel
Kari Tomashik – Poetry
Micheal Murphy – Logistics, liquidation, discussion
Patrick Kelly – Camera, sweat equity and discussion
Jonathan Kelly – Car loan (power windows don’t work), sweat equity and discussion
Luke Kelly – Underage drinking, discussion
Steve Kelly – Advice and hospitality
Allison Kelly – Trying to get Dan to stay in Michigan for the summer
Jeff Gibbs – Critique, discussion
James Eichberger Kudlak – Sauna, discussion
Gretchen Eichberger Kudlak – Producer and contributor
James Barnes – Loan of the catering van
Chuck Hunt – Northern Welding Specialties, donation of rudder casting repair in support of Around Lake Michigan

Hawaii
Kai Schwarz – artist and contributor
Kristin Shacat – help with Hawaii transport

California
Don Seth – help with Hawaii transport
Chip Buck, Whirlwind Sails – awesome deal on Hobie sails and technical advisor
Julie Constantin – social media advisor, excellent friend

Arizona
Micheal Kelly – Logistics, help with Hawaii transport

Open Source Software and Public Domain Resources
Mozilla – Firefox (Brower)
WordPress – WordPress (Blog software)
David V. Kocher and the Cyberduck team – Cyberduck (FTP software)
Internet Archive (Media and home of the Wayback Machine)
Project Gutenberg (Media)

What’s worth listening to…
WBAI FM NYC streaming talk and music on the web with program archives.
somafm.com streaming music for making, (especially Space Station).

Great talk by John Lilly of Mozilla at Wordcamp. On the Web, you don’t have to ask persmission.

If you don’t know what Mozilla is, check this.

Kai has been keeping a log of his exploits since arriving in Hawaii and setting up Desire, but since he hasn’t had reliable internet enabled computation, contributing to the On Desire blog has been problematic. Mostly we talk on the phone and then I post an overview. Within the next week,  Apple’s Macbook Pro will arrive in Kona and Kai will be able to transfer his log to this blog. Yesterday Kai bought a Panasonic SDR SW20 waterproof camcorder. Both the camera and laptop should arrive about the same time. With his notes and new camera, we can expect a significant blog expansion.

I have not really defined the idea of sustainable. Sustainable basically means ‘repeat indefinitely’. Can a behavior, action or practice be repeated indefinitely?

We’ve got this big planet, but it’s not infinitely big. The global life support system – do we even understand how the whole thing works? Can we break it? Can we learn how to maintain it? Do we have the tools, the right approach?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. So rather than take the chance that I might mess up the system, I minimize or eliminate my influence on it. I choose behaviors, actions and practice that can be repeated indefinitely. It’s up to each individual to make the move toward sustainability, we each have to live it and then the governments and corporations will follow along. Green is a nice color, but how does one get green? Sustainable is a clear concept – indefinitely repeatable – that can be applied to every aspect of life. It reveals.

I’m still in Beulah waiting for news from container ship companies. The idea is to ride one of the big ships from California to Hawaii, documenting operations and ask – is container transport sustainable? The current iteration of the global economy is dependent on containers, so that’s a great question. Here’s to imminent news of a productive shipper collaboration.

Future Sailors of America (Dan, Patrick and Jonathan) met this week for disassembly and inpection of our pre owned Hobie 16. We removed the hulls, washed off surface oxidation and crayoned the problem areas. Here is the most problematic problem… a rear impact, my guess from backing into something when the boat was on the trailer. The impact was hard enough to crack the thick fiberglass lip (bottom arrow) and not only bust the gel coat under the rudder hinge (top) but shatter the supporting glass too (not shown). There are probably about 15 other areas requiring glass and gel coat repair along with a couple of soft spots forward of the front pylons, but none so significant as this. This is a must do.

hull boo boo

jonathan scrubbing trampoline

We also cleaned the main sail with Everclear, somehow managing to not drink any until the job was done.  A day or two before Patrick and I had cleaned the jib – both sails had smears and splatters of an odd greasy paint. Jonathan went to town on the trampoline with a little biodegradable Ecover dishsoap and elbow grease.

After disassembly I did an extensive parts inventory. It looks like we are missing blocks for the main and jib. Alan Vigland, the prior owner has no idea where they are. Alas, another expense.

We could almost sail this boat as is, but the hull damage from the rear impact shouldn’t be ignored. Goodness knows how long the Vigland’s and their friends sailed her like that. Project consultant and fellow Hobie 16 owner Jim Barnes agrees, he opined that it shouldn’t be ignored. Since I’ve gotta do fiberglass, I might as well handle the rest of the hull issues. Besides, Patrick is frothing at the mouth to do fiberglass work, he’s mad for making.

Buy a $400 Hobie Cat and spend another $1000 to set her straight. That’s parts and materials only. Thanks goodness for nephews and sweat equity. I keep telling them it’ll be great for picking up babes, I trust that’s true.

That’s an additional $1000 of carbon footprint as well. This old Hobie was built in 1979 with a carbon cost. One of these suckers new will set you back about $10k in 2009. Using our jet fuel analogy, if we buy burn 10k worth of gasoline, here’s how much carbon we are adding to the atmosphere…

$10,000 divided by $3.00/gal = 3333 gallons x 20 lbs of carbon = 66,666 lbs of carbon.

Back in 1979 Hobie 16′s did not cost 10k, but then again gas was a lot cheaper too, so less money could buy more gas. These are very rough estimates just for discussion, the point is making anything generates a lot of carbon, even a sun powered vehicle like a sail boat.

Now I’ll be responsible for more carbon by fixing her up. I’ll try and track that as I go.

Moon over Crystal introduces Tuesday. An oft snapped scene ever entrancing.

Another week in full tilt at the water temple. The Hobie renovation support team arrives in about 3 hours. For the moment, sweet silence and the moon.

Been doing a little strategic shoving of local allies, helping to deploy web presences mostly while tapping into the thriving tribal exchange. Mike Murphy traded me Hobie 16 transport for some snaps of his Nature of Stone spokesmodel, Amanda. Artist house provided space and quinoa upama for partner dance lessons, though I am not sure whether I trading with Mykl Werth or Gretchen Eichberger Kudlack.  That’s the people’s economy here in Northern Michigan. Love it. Ties in nicely with holes and On Desire collaborators.

Amanda, spokesmodel for Nature of Stone

We’ve assembled a pretty nifty project with some auspicious holes. Holes are the places collaborators and their products / services go. It started out feeling like magical flim flam, but with a little practice it has shaded into a jamming pragmatica. Ok, a little miraculous and gratitude certainly, gotta have it. What the heck am I rambling on about? Read on.

I’ve designed the production kit around Canon’s Vixia HFS10 / 100. This is a tiny camera that records onto SDHC cards as opposed to tape. Future Kid, “Tape, what’s that?” Old Man, “Well back in the day, cameras used to record sound and images onto spools of tape, ok? I know it sounds wierd, but that’s how it was. Soda jerks. Gasoline powered cars. Monetary based societies.”

Anyway, so the HFS100 is under $1000 -  before you buy all the lenses and XLR adapters that fussy filmmakers feel compelled to have. It’s ideal to have more than one camera, in case one goes over board or to get fancy with multiple angles. Even a modest budget could support 2 or even 3 Vixias. Even though the price is right, buying more Vixias doesn’t necessarily enhance the project. If possible, it’s better to borrow those Vixias. By borrowing, other folks get invested in the project’s objectives and the filmmaker. The project has to be in alignment with collaborators outcomes.

Initially, I had objections to making holes. Here’s one…

Question – If I ask for help to fill my holes, folks might get the impression my project is low budget and not worthy of support.

Answer – First of all, well funded projects do not insure a quality outcome. Variety is chock full of crap movies funded by mega budgets. Second, using money for everything is like banging on screws with a hammer, it’s clumsy and imprecise. Third, no budget is infinite. There’s always a point where the money runs out. A savvy Director understands that a project’s success is not determined by the amount of funds available but rather it’s outcomes, people, and structure. Fourth, money is a very limited (some might say impoverished) method of exchange. It’s more natural for my buddy Mike Murphy to ask me to make photo art with a pretty woman, stones and magic hour. The next thing I knew I’m buying a 1979 Hobie cat with a trailer, but I don’t have a vehicle with a hitch. Mike does and we drag that sucker to my place. Mike and I have known each other long enough to enjoy a robust exchange that includes humor, friendship, favors, and fun. Money is in there once in awhile but affinity is the basis of our relationship. It’s my experience that even in business, robust relationships are never limited by the bottom line.

Morrie Warshawski talks about magnetizing the field. Our mission and the objectives of our project point us towards appropriate collaborators. On Desire collaborators are selected because they jive, there is affinity.

I approached Apple, Inc. first because I’ve used their gear like crazy since 1991. I seem to sense an inherent message in thier products – you are smart. It’s true I am, but how many products realize that about me? Computers are nasty things full of toxins and big footprints and Apple seems to working to minimize this.

Affinity works both ways, something about On Desire magnetized Apple. Did I mention that our loaner Macbook Pro shipped today? Kai will be tickled, the big galoot.

Dern that boy, I thought I told him to mind the store.

Well, here’s a taste. Your humble Director is way up in Northern Michigan yanking miracles out of his butt, a half dozen a day practically. Mostly concerning the whacky Hawaii voyage, but with heavy implications for DOG. I’m loving my tribe up here, so great to breathe the peeps in the sticks, all lake diving blue and spinning poplar leaves. The magical portents thick as wood smoke in the breeze. I’ve had a splinter in my foot for about a week and if it kills me I’ll have smile on my face. Oh Michigan, mine.

More soon, just wanted to stop in and say hey.

It’s heavy ‘ready to rain’ color today, with a hint of purple / pink peeking through. Back to wearing the wetsuit when swimming deep.  A shy summer so far, teasing warmth at the end of June and now mostly wet with brisk winds. Tree friendly weather. Well, the trees can have whatever they need as far as I am concerned.

Kai is in Honolulu with a cold. He sounds a little discouraged – Desire’s not quite ready. Sheesh!

It takes a courageous soul to sail thousands of miles solo, I’ll grant him that. Freak storms, sleep deprivation, errant cruise ships attempting to convert your boat into slivers of fiberglass… that could be a rush. But try making a movie sometime, me hardy. Now there’s the true measure of a man, arr!

Disappearing in the open water is a clean exit, you’re just gone. Lost at sea. It’s mysterious, romantic even.

In contrast, making a fatal blunder on your movie usually means crowds of crew muttering against you, actors storming off the set, lawyers threatening apocalypse, massive credit card debt, post production hell, a feeling of existential worthlessness, public shame and humiliation…

I’ve got to get out there and whip that whimpering sailor into ship shape. Safety schmafety, let’s make a movie!

PS – Kai has yet to get the Macbook so it’s tough for him to respond to these taunts. For now, call me el Supremo!

Back in Kona after a long weekend in Honolulu, racing on Siesta and whooping it up under the 4th of July fireworks. Sick as a dog from a cold, most likely picked up on the flight to Honolulu.

Too many nights celebrating with the tribe this week. Forsaking my sauna pals I crawled into bed at 9:30 pm last night for much needed tissue regeneration. Up at first light this morning and wrapping the Shop and Save project from June 28. Find it under the ‘project chapters’ category.

Waiting for transportation news from various fronts. It’s a radiant day, slightly brisk with sparkling waves crests and fluttering leaves. There’s a dance event happening here tonight.

Speaking of container ships, Marc Levinson’s ‘The Box‘ looks tasty. You can read the first chapter as html or pdf. Looking forward to having it in hand as I ride the Southwest Chief.

Vision

We can’t sustain a process that converts limited raw materials into garbage and toxic waste. Eventually we will run out of raw materials, toxify the environment beyond our ability to tolerate or break the global life support system by replacing essential biodiversity with humans.

This is an addiction.

Not to mention wiping out biodiversity (the basis of the global life support system) by generating an over abundance of one species – humans.

Seems like this would be obvious to everyone but it’s not because the folks loose self interest through potent mind bending media controlled by a invisible elite. That’s the premise here.

An alternative – We realize our potential as creative beings and envision an equitable and sustainable present for the entire world. We collaborate to make it so.

July 5 is the deadline for my Hawaiian ride. We’re down to the wire. 11th hour. Time to ship or get off the ops. Now or never. Magic!

In last weeks episode…

Riding the Transpac would have been an exciting and upbeat opening for On Desire. The concept was to present what could be rather than what is – a metaphor for what’s worth striving for. Sailing is a lovely and romantic image for a renewable future. Approaching the Transpac community as a resource for implementing a sustainable society makes sense, though it may be a bit niave. According to Kai, wealthy racers think nothing of making a big footprint with mylar sails and other energy intensive materials if it’ll help them win. These folks are often successful entrenpreneurs thriving on challenge. I wanted to get in with Transpac to explore whether these super successful people could be recruited to take on the most important challenge of our time, survival.

A worthy inquiry for another time. Meanwhile, the present moment. Getting back to what is rather than what could be. Sustainability stands in contrast to what is, it’s a change. My intuition is that change is triggered by awareness of both what is and what could be. To be sustainable, we notice what isn’t. Even if this is not a valid approach, there’s a certain morbid fascination with the apocalyptic circumstances of the present. Am I making a horror movie?

I digress. It should be clear now that finding a ride is the start of the project, it’s not pre-production or incidental. How I get to Hawaii is everything. It’s magic, it’s sustainability – the whole shootin’ match. Flashy sailboats winging across the Pacific is not how the story of sustainability begins. What about starting with anathema – consumption?

The container industry enables the global economy as it’s currently configured. Containers are uniform steel boxes used to transport goods via truck, rail and ship.

Container ships churn out more carbon than cars and possibly more than jets. In one year, the biggest 15 container ships produce more carbon than all the cars on the planet combined. Pollution from container ships burning bunker fuel causes snow melt, desertification and death. All this to stock the shelves of the local big box. Perhaps our story has a sublime start – queue the discordant synth!

Matson and Horizon service Hawaii with container ships. Both companies are proud of their environmental record. How do they compare to the industry in general? Are they implementing stack scrubbers to minimize the impact of bunker fuel? Have they implemented fuel efficient design in their ships’ construction? Would they welcome documentation of their operations? Could we start the story of sustainability in collaboration with these companies?

Once again Dan is manning blog command. Say that 10 times fast.

Location – Artist house, Beulah Michigan
Weather – overcast
Health – excellent
Morale – high
Electricity – plentiful
Food – adequate
Water – abundant
Equipment – functional

There’s a car leaving tomorrow that would get me halfway to California, or at least Chicago and Amtrak. What is wanted is a boat from California to Hawaii. Whether my boat coalesces gently or pops up with shower of sparks makes no never mind to me. Let’s just do this thing, oh mysterious universe. Thanks in advance.

I’ve got a deadline now, Juy 5th. If the passage from California to Hawaii hasn’t manifested by then, we’ll be implementing plan B. Just two other people are privy to the details of plan B – Kai and my nephew Patrick. The very existence of plan B is known only by the readers of this blog. You are special!

Plan B is a synchronistic implementation of Kai’s principle of ‘dream within your means’. Stated simply, to ‘dream within your means’ is to act with what’s on hand and not wait around for circumstances to change. Plan B is an inspired redesign of On Desire that’s as cool (if not cooler) than Plan A. For now though, I’m all about Plan A and the just in time delivery of a ride to Hawaii.

Dan Kelly is an artist, bon vivant and filmmaker. In 2007, Dan solo camped for 5 days on Lake Michigan’s North Manitou Island and shot ‘Some Almonds Are Harder to Skin that Others’, a poetic manifesto for nature worshipping tricksters. Dan has watercolored his way around India, developed software for kids and made a slew of brilliant short films you’ve never heard of. His semi hilarious blog Holy Boners chronicles his process.

In September 2009, Dan will launch his one man sustainability circus, sailing solo Around Lake Michigan aboard the $400 Hobie Cat, Hello World.