My parents, a couple of true sea lovers never owned their own boat, yet they often arranged our family holidays on board their best friends motor-cruiser. Well knowing that such kind of  holidays would make priceless memories for me and my sister, they managed to get everyting right, in order to avoid any possible annoyance: the chosen destinations were always reasonably close and the motor-cruiser capability let 4 adults with their 4 children, to cohabit without particular problems during the navigation.  As 7 or 8 years old kids we used to play below deck during the passage,  were trained to sleep two by two in the berths, or allowed to steer for a while. Great fun!  Would be my parents tricks useful to some travel advisor at hand, in order to arrange super special holidays for parents and childs?  I don’t know: yet it was exactly during a recent night-cruise, that these memories could’nt wait anymore: the boat pushed by a gentle and stable breeze under the light of a benevolent moon, having nothing do but gazing at the whispering sea, I experienced that peculiar meditative attitude that every sailor, under similar circumstances, had surely learned. “Why “-I wondered- “I am so invariably at ease while on board whatever boat or ship?”  ”Where does my sense of  well being when resting in a narrow berth during a rough navigation, comes from?” Off course, you see, the very obvious answer is deep in my childhood.

Andrew was an Australian I met in Boracay. He lived in General Luna, Siargao Island main town, fronting the pacific Ocean. Andrew owned a paraw and he used to go sailing in the Siargao sea, among  unpolluted and enchanting islands: Dinagat, Dako, Anahwan, La Januza. “An obsession!” he claimed. His tales were so enthusiastic that Gino and I could nothing but leave Boracay, go to General Luna, rent a paraw, and go sailing togheter with Andrew. In a nut shell,  there is a special feeling when you realise that you are sailing the immense and powerful Pacific Ocean on board a paraw: such a tiny boat,  a sort of unravel threat! And really our last navigation was threatening. In the late afternoon we found ourselves a mile off La Januza; we decided to head back to General Luna, at a distance of around ten  nautical miles. The wind was dropping; we tacked upwind but I suddenly  realised that the rudder blade was off the hull: its precarious tin pintles had given up. Meanwhile the gentle and constant wind pushed us towards the open sea! No wonder that we felt lost and panicked: no water or food on board, no compass, nothing but a piece of rope to bind ourselves to the mast. In the sunset light we saw Andrew’s paraw sailing home fast, getting far, while on the opposite side the unreachable La Januza looked a mirage. But, hurra! Neptune and Eolus themselves woke up togheter to save us: after a 20 minutes long hopeless drifting, the wind changed and we finally managed to land in the dusk  in La Januza beach. The island people who had previously noticed our drifiting were waiting for us. Perhaps I spent my life dearest night inside a rented room on that remote little island. The next day as soon as we had the rudder repaired, we sailed back to General Luna where an amazed Andrew was waiting for us. What else can I say? For sure our short tour had not been  a cheap package holidays!

Illustration Friday topic is: obsession

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

I’m going to be off-line till mid august. I’ll be sailing on board the Natahel, heading east to beautiful Kornati Islands. and further south to Korcula…I guess I’m going to have plenty of canned food and this is a pity: actually, I can’t stand it, since I love eating fresh fish, fruit and vegetable. Hopefully this is not only what I’ll end up to do while on vacation!
Off course I’ll glad to catch up with you all as soon as I get back…
Have fun!

Illustration Friday‘s topic is:canned

Swimming in open sea is my favourite sport: yet it scares me a little. As soon as I jump into the water, some sort of split tongued spirit talks and says out of the vast sea: “maybe you could sink and die”. When the spirit talks louder my worries can’t be denied. But I never gave up. On the contrary I keep my eyes wide open, looking for some potential danger…
The waters out of Boracay’s beach are always damn crowded by fast boats cruising at any time of the day. It is a real hassle, since local pilots seem to care absolutely nothing of swimmers, nor to understand how fragile a floating man is. It’s hard for me to forget the time when a fast paraw nearly broke me down…The reckless driver simply couldn’t see me, I guess because of the dusk…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: worry

Lightnings are electrical discharges, giant sparks of electricity, from mature storms. Lightnings cause a lot of electric current to pass through water; wooden boats are not safe at all since the vast majority of lightning injuries and deaths occur on small boats with no cabin…
The short sea passage between Gili Trawangan and Gili Air found me on board a small local boat without a cabin. It is always crucial to listen to the weather on a small aquatic vessel: during that early afternoon at sea, the sky was threatening, thunderstorms were forecast and lightnings too…
When the first powerful strike came and the air filled with static electricity on a giant scale, the anxious boatman pumped up the engine, trying to get the boat fast, trying to get to land and find a safe shelter: actually it was raining and pouring! The storm went on for half an hour and our navigation turned out to be very uncomfortable…
When we got Gili Air’s sandy beach at last, everything was over: off course!

Illustration Friday’s topic is: elettricity

The Mentaway Archipelago located  in the Indian Ocean, at about 100 miles off Sumatra’s west coast, used to be  far off beaten tourists’ routes…
A small cargo ship,  a tramp steamer almost, shuttled among those islands, carrying stuff of all sort and a few passengers. Coming to each island, the slow cargo finally anchored a few hundred meters from the seashore, waiting for the natives coming by means of paddle boats to get their stuff…it was a time consuming processes, and a beautiful way of travelling by sea. On board that ship I was too; as the only first-class paying passenger, I had the privilege of sleeping in the captain’s little cabin, instead of lying low the bare and rusty deck meant to ordinary native passengers. When off his duty the captain, a young, cute, well mannered fellow,  spent his time in the cabin and liked to tell about his young wife and family, who lived somewhere in the islands: in a house, he said, “where you can’t see the ocean, nor hear its sound”…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: captain

Maybe I should put forward for this week’s topic my whole blog! Actually every Aynaku’s post relates to memory so I consider that my most recent submission should make no exception, and be one of Aynaku’s most typical. My very first time on board a sailing boat is firmly fixed in my mind: I was nine years old and the calling of wind and sea was already precise. I remember my excitement when the crew set sail and the boat left. It all happened under my parent’s benevolent and worried eyes. Waving their hands from the dock, they valued the possibility of an accidental jump into the water: still I couldn’t swim that well!
The second memory related to this illo, is my great fascination for Japanese ukiyo-e , a fascination dating back to my  1993 Japan trip. Really some memories can’t wait!

Illustration Friday’s topic is: remember

“I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweat dream when the long trick’s o”
Just imagine rescuing these beautiful words from inside a wrecked floating bottle… Perhaps that was the day before the world had been wired for elettricity! Seamen then sent their messages in the bottle, and hope that someone would get their s.o.s…I find out that this procedure is somehow similar to what a blogger does nowadays: we don’t really know who is going to get our digital messages, yet we know that someone will get them…and that’s enough to give us a hint.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: wired

My grandfather was born in 1898. In his younger days he watched more than once the sailing ships at anchor in our hometown harbour. In his spare time he enjoyed oil painting, wasn’t so bad a painter and sailing ships where among his favourite subjects. According to my mother, his daughter, I was then a rather scornful kid and it seems that my grandfather only had the power to cool me down. Among my childhood memories there is a beautiful drawing of a Spanish galleon that he once presented me. That valuable paper got lost somewhere, but sailing ships has been the number one subject of my early doodles too, (perhaps because of the Mendel’ Laws ), indeed a real obsession! So this is my personal thanksgiving to my old dear relative who died in the early seventies. And maybe this imaginary vessel of mine somehow correlates with the anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod…

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: Thanksgiving