Life Isn’t About Waiting For A Storm To Pass; It’s About Learning To Dance In The Rain.

During the Renaissance and up until the late 19th Century, the Straivarius violin was the standard of the industry. A model by which all others were judged. The Stradivarius and fine sailing ships were built by employing Pythagorean mathematics, a keen knowledge of various woods, and a sense of artistic proportion. The result was an aesthetic marvel that would be admired by generations

Lars used the same Pythagorean mathematics, his love of exotic wood, and an artist’s sense of form and proportion to build his double ended ketch over thirty years ago. Wood makes a sail boat seem alive. The steel cable stays that brace the masts play their own music in different winds and the wooden vessel comes alive and sings beautiful songs on the high seas, but you needed to speak the language of sailing to understand the music of the songs of the sea.

He woke two minutes before his alarm clock was scheduled to make that horrendous sound at 4 AM. He started a fire to take the chill out of the hand hewn 8 X 12 inch cedar log cabin, with the tight dove tail corners he had built himself years ago and measured out coffee for two cups and warmed up two skillets with butter. In one of the skillets, he threw in three pork ribs with peppers and onions and covered the skillet with a glass top: in the other skillet he’d cook his eggs with a half can of kidney beans in about ten minutes.

Lars laughed at the rest of sedentary America, he ate all the wrong things, but was stronger than most men half his age.

Suddenly, the previous night’s conversation came back to haunt him. His children, grandchildren, in-laws, and a few out-laws wanted him to become a respectable senior. They were worried that he would disappear on one of his moose or grizzly hunting trips up the coast or would perish in a storm. Of course it is harder to settle up a complicated estate among many beneficiaries, if you just disappear one day. That was surely a major consideration.

He thought back to the old days when he prospected, logged, and fished trying to make a living. He faced death many times before he made enough money to be wealthy; now, they were worried he might get killed after surviving for 65 years. Where were they when he fought gale force winds or ran pay dirt through the sluices at sixty below with nothing to eat but moose steaks and roasted barley for coffee, they weren’t worried too much about his survival in those days when starvation was only a few weeks away.

How the attitudes change when you become wealthy and no one knows for sure what is written in your will.

He thought back to his first trip to Hawaii at 15 years of age. He and his buddy “borrowed” his buddy’s dad’s sailboat and set sail for Hawaii from Vancouver. The first week was a beautiful sail, they took turns at the helm and when he wasn’t sleeping he read Louis Lamour novels. After a dozen novels, he began to wish his friend’s dad had a more eclectic reading taste. Lamour was a good story teller, but after that trip, he never needed to read another one. He chuckled to himself as he cracked the eggs and sprinkled a pinch of coarse kosher sea salt and ground pepper over the eggs.

On the eighth day, the winds picked up and they were making 15 knots by noon. Within a few hours the winds were measured at over 30 knots on the anemometer and the waves were running over twelve feet. Neither of them had been in this kind of weather, but they seemed to be handling the weather well and they both felt like real sailors. They weren’t scared, their blood was up and they were excited. Their fiberglass sloop was being driven toward the South Pacific at a tremendous rate of speed, running with the wind. The huge waves seemed to rise beneath the stern and raise the sloop impossibly high in the air, to slip down the other side at a quartering angle while accelerating at a tremendous rate of speed to the bottom of the trough with a tremendous crash, only to begin the process once again as the boat was raised up out of the trough and into the screaming wind.

They gained confidence with each hour; unfortunately, the winds were gaining momentum. When he took the helm at sundown they were running bare poles, he tried to hoist a small storm jib to help steady the craft, but it was blown away before he could run it up. The mast was quivering under intense wind pressures and was propelling them at an unbelievable rate of speed without sails. By midnight the waves were as high as homes and the winds were causing the cable stays to scream and whine in high pitched tones. The waves were irregular and they lost all control, when half the rudder broke away. The 38 foot sloop became little more than a fishing bobber bouncing around with in the ferocious waves and stinging spray. The water was completely white and the tops of the waves were blowing off crashing down on them when they were at the bottom of the troughs. They had no visibility and gave up on trying to control the ship, expecting to head for the bottom at any minute.

That next morning at sunrise the winds slowed from near hurricane speeds to a strong gale force and they felt so good to still be still alive. The boat was still afloat, but beat to Hell. The new fiberglass boat had survived the storm, but it would never look like it did. Lars jury rigged part of the broken wooden dingy as a jury rigged rudder and they regained a semblance of control. There was plenty of time for the reality of having ruined the boat to settle in over the next few days as they approached Hawaii.

They anchored the wreck in Hawaii and were chastised by the local officials for what could have happened, they were in a hundred year storm and they weren’t supposed to be alive.

It was a hard chore to phone home and tell everyone they were still alive, but the new boat was ruined. His friend’s dad was so unimpressed, he told him to stay in Hawaii; he never went back home to Canada, he crewed on different boats and eventually became a licensed skipper. He worked the tourist trade in Maui and Alaska for the rest of his life.

Those were the days, no one thought he was incapable of taking care of himself back then; now, his kids wanted him to be a manny (male nanny) to his grandkids and become a perpetual dependent, but first he had to give up his life as a vibrant free man who still has red blood with testosterone pumping through his veins.

Lars heated up a few hot dogs for his dog Clara and they had breakfast together. His dog was a generous mixture of hunting dogs and stock dogs. Her face was turning gray and she was a little stiff in the hips with many scars on her muzzle from fighting dogs and wild animals; she might be a little stiff, but she wanted to go everywhere with him.

He finished a breakfast that would have cost $25 in one of the local eateries and looked at his dog, who was resting her head in his lap and staring into his face with her big brown eyes. He had made up his mind. The only decision that was left was what to do with his best friend.

“It’s a long trip girl, there are no guarantees, it might be the last go around. I can leave you here and you can guard the grandchildren for the rest of your life, they love you as much as I do.”

She looked at him with her sad eyes and he believed he knew her answer. “Let’s get the cabin closed up for winter. We’ll set sail before daylight.”

He built the sloop during the winter of 81-82. He hired a few master ship’s carpenters to help now and then; otherwise, he worked all by himself and had the boat finished and ready to launch by june. He knew every piece of wood, every screw, and dowel that held the boat together. Thirty-five feet of wood hand formed by him.

Wooden boats take more maintenance, but they give a certain satisfaction to those who are comfortable with the past. He loved his boat. It was a part of him and he never considered buying a modern fiberglass or steel boat, even though he could easily afford one of the best.

They rowed the dingy out to the mooring and climbed aboard. On a day cruise, he would leave the dingy at the mooring buoy, but today he laced it to the the deck above the cabin. His relatives would know he was off on an adventure when they saw the dingy was gone.

He laughed at the thought of all the phony drama he would cause by dropping off the face of the earth.

Lars talked to his dog as if she understood every word, “What about Bora Bora girl, they have the most beautiful island girls. I feel the romance in my soul once again. What do you think about spending a winter or two in the tropics. We’ll buy some supplies and ships’ gear in Seattle and set sail for the South Pacific. It feels good to be free once again, heh ol’ girl.” She beat out a steady cadence against the bulkhead with her tail and was happy to be free with the love of her life.

Freedom is to be cherished, some of us want to finish the stretch run in a hospital or an old folk’s home and others want to meet life’s and nature’s challenges head on, until our last days. In either instance it should be our choice, it is the freedom to choose, that is so precious.