I used to look at that spinnaker pole and wish I had the courage to put it out...and now look at it!

On the 30^th of January, Swell and I celebrated 5 years of voyaging together!

Top 5 lessons I’ve learned:

1.     Be grateful for what’s good and find the positive.

2.     Try first, then decide if you ‘can’ or ‘can’t’.

3.     Hard work will almost always get you there.

4.     Even when it all seems impossible, TRUST that everything will work out.

5.     Nature is the source of ALL…love it, spend time with it, fight for it!

Sending an OCEAN of gratitude to all of you for supporting me!

Love,

Liz & Swell

Coming from his recent workplace in Grand Rapids, Michigan where the temperature had hardly breached 20 degrees Fahrenheit in more than a month, my dad’s permanent grin made perfect sense…

It was shocking to think that in the 7 years I’d owned Swell, my dear father had NEVER sailed with me!?!…He’d spent more than a dad’s share of hours working aboard Swell while she was tied to the dock in Santa Barbara and when he came to my rescue in the Puntarenas boatyard in Costa Rica, but the one and only time we’d left dockside together aboard my vessel was on the day of the sea trial back on February 10, 2004. A typical winter day in Santa Barbara it had been–not a breath of wind and a fog bank lying just offshore. We went out past the pier, around the last green channel marker, unfurled the headsail just to have a look at it, and then motored back to the dock…hardly sailing, but we felt that a Cal 40’s sailing reputation was enough.

Since Swell’s recent repair saga had ended, I’d been yearning for a visit from my dad—to show him how Swell and I had transformed, all that I’d learned, and all that I loved about the South Pacific…and then surprise! An email from Dad with a 2-week holiday itinerary…yeeee haaaa!

It didn’t take long for pops to take to Polynesian life…Christmas day hosted classic South Pacific weather–moderate trades whisking handfuls of cumulus clouds across the grand ceiling of blue, making for the perfect human climate…77 degrees and a light breeze…ahhhhhhhhhhh…kick back and enjoy, Dad!!

My Great Uncle Jim, 97 Years on earth and going strong!

My Great Uncle Jim is 97 years-old. He’s my paternal grandfather’s brother, and true to the Clark genes, he’s as tough and cantankerous as they come. It had been two years since I had made a visit to see him on one of my prior trips home. I’d been curious about my sailing roots and asked my dad how he’d learned to sail:

“We should go out and talk to the man himself,” he’d said. So one afternoon, we’d hopped in the car and driven out to my great uncle’s plumeria farm in Fallbrook.

…I recalled hearing about this man on our family sailing trips when I was a kid.  My father would often recount stories from their voyages to Catalina aboard his spartan, motorless sailboats. It was with this man that my father got to know the sea…

I’d been fascinated by my uncle that day, and since had written him letters from my voyage, but I couldn’t miss the chance to see him again in person, so I made my way out to visit him day while I was in San Diego. The handwritten letters on his mailbox struck me as I turned down the gravel driveway. ‘CLARK’, they read. As much as I’ve sought to define myself as an individual, this particular trip home had repeatedly reminded me that a huge amount of who I am resides in my genes…

It was early afternoon when I arrived and I hoped he wouldn’t be napping, as the phone number I had for him wasn’t working. I pulled up to the house and a big fluffy dog came out barking wildly, followed by my second cousin Michael whom I hadn’t seen in maybe 15 years…

“Michael?” I asked.

“Yes. Liz, right?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“It’s okay, Charlie.” He cooed to the dog.

Michael is my Uncle Jim’s grandson. I was happy to see him. Up to a few months prior, stubborn ol’ Jim had still been living alone. Despite only having one eye, he would drive down the steep mountain road to get supplies of fresh catfish and orange sodas. He’d kept his tall, lean body able by tilling soil for his remaining plumerias and keeping up the house and property. Michael had recently decided to move back from San Luis Obispo and live with his grandfather, rather than let the rest of the family send him to an assisted living facility. Yeah Michael!

Uncle Jim soon appeared out of the back door and came down to greet me, moving with no evident difficulty. I threw my arms around him in a hug that seemed to surprise him. Michael grinned and they led me into the two-story, ‘barn-style’ house and up the bare wooden stairwell, lined with framed, black and white photos, spaced evenly up the wall. There was a picture of waves crashing against the rocks in northern Malibu, another of fishing boats docked in the LA harbor, and above the stairwell there was a sailboat pushing through a sparkling sea with the spinnaker aloft. It was my uncle’s favorite sailboat, he quickly explained.  Freya was a Nordic Cruiser he’d had shipped in from Denmark.

The stairs led up to one large, open room that consisted of a kitchen nook and a living area with two rocking chairs, two twin beds, a table and a lamp. Sailing trophies and duck figurines sat atop the hand-made shelves. The room was clean, airy, and had a zen-like feeling of simplicity. There was no television, only a stack of National Geogaphic’s and a newsletter from the Southern California Plumeria Society sat on a tray table in front of the rocking chairs.

He offered me an orange soda and we sat in the rocking chairs. As quickly as I could ask a question, he’d answer and ask one about my sailing adventure. As my inquiries led from one tale to another, I learned we had more than just a love of sailing in common. He’d been a photographer, a surfer, a bodysurfer, a traveler, and a lover of plants. He’d shaped his own surfboard out of redwood in his friend’s garage back in Downey. “I loved to ride the breakers that crested and toppled smoothly,” he recalled, gazing out as if he could almost see them.

I listened eagerly, cherishing every word. Michael listened, too, and gently offered additions to the conversation when he deemed it appropriate. Their mutual love and respect was obvious.

Sailing had been a hobby for my great uncle. It was his passion for plants that had led him through various jobs in landscaping until he fled the urban lifestyle into the Fallbrook hills after finding a cheap piece of land, deemed invaluable for the fungus-infected grove of avocado trees that stood there. He’d uprooted and removed them, one by one, while living out of a damp old camper van on the property. Little by little he’d cleared and graded the land. Then my grandfather Bob and my father (his brother and nephew), had helped him build the greenhouse on the hillside and the home in which we all sat. Above the house, rows of special varieties of plumeria climbed the hillside. He grew and eventually sold them to nurseries or direct buyers around San Diego county for many years. The market for plumerias ‘was done’ now, he explained, ‘no room for the little guys’. But in spite of that, it seemed clear that he’d enjoyed his life–hands constantly in the dirt while helping raise Michael from a young age. A few houses had sprung up around his plot on the hill, but from the window on the east side of the room an unchanged view of wild brush on the adjacent hillside remained.

From what I gathered, he had loved a good adventure. In addition to the large amount of time spent sailing around Catalina Island, he and his wife, Norma, had made many overland trips as well. They’d driven all the way to Cabo in the late sixties and taken numerous summer trips to explore old mining towns in remote parts of the High Sierras.

He recalled one place, way back in the mountains, called ‘La Porte’.

“There were probably only five people living in the whole town–only one general store which was also the post office with a single gasoline pump out front. A real ‘off the map’ sort of place….It was blazing hot that day, and I went inside to get an ice cream. I came out with a Klondike bar and sat down on a bench. A real ‘old timer’ was watching me and soon his curiosity got the best of him. He came over and asked…”

At this point I pause to point out that my 97-year old uncle just described the man in his story as an ‘old timer’ like the description had absolutely no relevance to him. He then went on to imitate the high and squeaky voice of the ‘old timer’…

“‘Hey there sonny, whatchyou eatin?’” he mimicked. “Then I said, ‘You mean to tell me you’ve never had a Klondike bar?’ The ‘old timer’ shook his head so I told him to wait there. I went back into the general store and bought him a Klondike bar. By gosh, you wouldn’t have believed how big his eyes were after every bite!”

It struck me how clearly he remembered this small act of kindness. He also spoke of his close relationships with the migrant workers from Mexico who came seasonally to work agricultural jobs on properties nearby–how they helped him when they saw he needed a  hand, and how he had helped them too—often helping them get legal working papers and improving the dismal living situations of those that camped-out nearby his house.

I suddenly realized it was dark outside. The afternoon had slipped away in a blur of choice narrative. My uncle’s voice began to sound hoarse and I knew I should get going, although it seemed he could have talked until sunup. We looked at the clock—nearly six hours had passed! I hugged and thanked him, giving him a copy of a book I thought he’d enjoy called, “An Island to Oneself” by Tom Neale. Michael graciously walked me out and I promised I would make one more visit before I went back to Swell…

I stepped out into the night and wandered slowly down to my car, taking in the stars above and the sweet silence between the crunching of gravel underfoot. I savored the distinct smell of native Californian shrubbery that I loved so much. Looking back at the house, its one window aglow with tawny light, I wondered, “When the end of my earthly haul closes in, what will I remember? How will I help generations that follow me understand where they came from, what to hold on to, and how to evolve? I loved my Uncle Jim for living his life exactly the way he’d believed it should be lived. I felt a surge of pride knowing that I was of his blood, and that his love of the sea had trickled down and lived on in me.

One of my Uncle Jim's sailing trophies from 1965, which now resides proudly aboard Swell.

The whole fam with with Jimmy Buffett before his show in Irvine, 10/21/10...What a role model for pursuing his passion!? Thank you, JB! The show was OUTTA this world!!

It seems clear to me that there is a direct ratio between happiness and the amount of time we spend pursuing our passions. Following my surge of inspiration to follow my heart, I noticed the people RIGHT around me who were putting themselves nearer to their passions, making a difference in their own lives, and in turn, bettering their communities and the world…

I didn’t  have to look far…Each of my family members have their hands in something that they are passionate about: My father continues to work relentlessly at bringing the most advanced drug and bio-informatics technology to cancer patients right in their community treatment settings–a vision and labor of his blood, sweat, and tears, 15 or more years in the making. Intervention Insights is the result of his tireless determination and belief that their is a better way to treat, cure, and improve the lives of cancer patients RIGHT NOW. Truly incredible, Dad! My mother, too, volunteers at an organization called Voices for Children that ensures that abused, neglected and abandoned children who have become dependents of the San Diego County Court have a safe and permanent home. My brother and his wife, who left their corporate jobs back in March, have just returned after over 16,000 miles of exploring around the US–living, looking for, and learning about their passions. In discovering his passion for simple, inexpensive ways to be more fit, my brother started a blog called Fit Simple: http://fitsimple.wordpress.com. And my nearest and dearest eco-conspirer, my sister Kathleen, is digging in at the Point Loma Native Plant Reserve where she plants, tends, and spreads the word about why we should be re-introducing and cherishing Southern California’s native plant species in our local backyards. Yeah fam!

My family’s biggest hero for pursuing his passions, the musical legend, Jimmy Buffett, invited us up to check out his show in Irvine. What an amazing time it was!! After grooving to his positive vibrations all evening, I felt that my hypothesis was confirmed…:)

Aboard the 'Einhorn', everything is re-made, re-used, and re-invented.

…Helmut emerged, a bit confused as to why I was there.

“Yes?” He asked.

“Um. Hi. Yeah, I was just wondering if you needed some help coming into the marina? You know about the cyclone right?”

“Yes.” He replied. “I’ve been listening to the weather on the radio every hour. I don’t want to go to that dock. I HATE that dock. I hate those people over there. And I HATE that little dog that yaps all the time.”

I tried not to giggle.

“But it looks like we’re going to get hit. You can’t stay out here. It’s too dangerous. Come on, I’ll help you with the lines. And I’ve got some earplugs for the dog.”

Helmut invited me aboard while we waited for the next weather report. The little space was crammed with gismos and gadgetry. He quickly explained.

“I don’t buy any of this stuff. I find it at the ‘supermarket’.”

“Which supermarket? I asked.

He grinned and replied, “You call it the ‘trash bin’.”

He toured me through ‘Einhorn’, showing me all the treasures he’d found in the boatyard ‘supermarket’ at 5 am each morning. “And I found this battery regulator last year. It took me three weeks to fix it, but it’s working now.”

“Hey, that was my regulator!!” I declared.

“Zank you, then.” He grinned smugly.

I looked around with wonder. Everything I saw there had been recycled. He had old fans out of computers cooling the cabin, a stack of flattened cereal boxes was his writing tablet. He sewed all his own clothes, hats, and cushion covers from thrown out material. He caught fish on his evening rows and lived off a few hundred dollars a month from the government.

The radio screeched and the voice came through reporting cyclone warning for winds to more than 80 knots in our area.

“Come on, then.” I encouraged. He finally caved and we prepped Einhorn, untied the mooring line, and headed for the marina together. We secured him to the dock, as far away as possible from ‘Missy’, the yappjng terrier. Then I dove with his bowlines and tied them to the big cement block underwater.

Since that day, despite his loathing and distrust for nearly everyone else around here (“those ….suckers!”), Helmut tolerates me for a cup of tea or his specialty dish of mango ice cream once or twice a week. I slyly encourage him to look for the positive, but at the same time, Helmut gives me reason to question what I throw away, further reduce my consumption, and continue to strive daily to decrease my earthly impact for the benefit of ALL beings.

I got Helmut to smile after he succeeded in fixing my favorite flashlight.

Uncle Lenny wanted to read me a bedtime story...

“Oh yeah, I forgot to introduce you to Shayla.” Caesar said casually as he walked me through his house. He would be gone for ten days and needed someone to feed his five cats. I needed a place to stay while Fred did the fiberglassing inside the boat, so it worked out perfectly for both of us.

“Shayla?” I replied. I’d never heard him mention her before. I followed him into the bathroom. He moved the hanging shower receptacle and out crawled a large, hairy brown spider.

“Well, I’m glad you introduced us.” I smiled. “She might have surprised me.”

“She’s cool.” He said. “She won’t bother you.”

Nearly a week of house-sitting had passed and I was fairly relieved that there had been no sightings of Shayla. The cats woke me at dawn, insistently hungry despite the splayed entrails of rats and geckos in and around the house. I worked long hours in the yard aboard Swell each day, then cruised back to the house in Cesar’s beat-to-hell 1980s Ford Fiesta for a long hot shower. It sure beat crouching on the piece of wood under the hose spigot in the V.I.P. yard…

One night I returned in a haze of exhaustion. After feeding Mimi, Plumette, Mostique, Pichum, and Tita, I went into the bedroom to let down the mosquito net and crawl into bed. As I untied the wad of netting, I got the eerie feeling that someone was watching me. I turned. Six inches from my face, a MASSIVE hairy brown spider–much resembling Shayla–clung motionless to the wall. I nearly leapt out of my skin in a shriek of terror. In fact, this was NOT Shayla. This was Shayla’s Big Uncle Lenny…three times her size!! I wasn’t sure if he, too, was a friend of Cesar, but there was no way I was sharing the bedroom with him. I coaxed him gently towards the door with a broom where he made a fantastic leap across the doorframe and crawled off into the shadows. I tucked the mosquito net extra tightly around the edges of the bed, crawled in, and tried my best to think of rainbows and turquoise and ice cream and perfect barreling rights…

I added oil to the jack and we were back in business. We carefully set up Mike’s puzzle of wooden blocks and metal plates that made a safe pushing platform for the jack. Next, it was time to pull out the heavy artillery…My buddy, Kyber, on ‘Natty M’ had run me through a quick certification in the use of his pyromaniac’s delight—a hefty, flame-spitting, butane torch.  The idea was to repeatedly heat and cool the bronze tube from outside (without setting Swell on fire…) in hopes of breaking the tube’s bonds with the surrounding fiberglass. Adrian stood by with a bucket o’ water in the event I lost control of the torch. The tube turned rainbow colors under the heat and boiled the water that was soaked in the surrounding fiberglass. Fantastic! When we both agreed that any more heating might cause Swell to spontaneously combust, Adrian threw on some water to induce quick contraction of the metal.

Adrian finishes the battle...

...millimeter by sweet millimeter...

THRILLED. And look...those holes in the tube were the culprit of the leak.

Next came the final showdown. Back inside the cabin, a few pumps of the jack’s lever placed 20-tons of pressure against that stubborn ol’ shaft tube. At first it didn’t budge at all…

I couldn’t bear to watch. If this failed I would have to concede to ‘open-fiberglass surgical tube removal’. Being rather nervous around pressurized jacks after my accident last year, I decided it was better for me to go down and survey what was happening on the other end.

“Hit it with the sledgehammer!!” Adrian called from above.

“Okay!!” I hollered back, slinging the beastly tool over my shoulder and unloading on the exposed part of the tube.

“It moved!!” He yelled.

“It MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVEEED!” I shrieked back in delight. The tube had officially broken from the fiberglass and moved 1mm in the right direction!

We carried on like this for the better part of the day: Adrian loading up pressure with the jack from the top, while I occasionally hammered from below. When the jack reached its maximum length, we’d pull it out and shove some other piece of steel inside, re-assemble the support, and continue to push. Millimeter by sweeeeeeet millimeter, we pushed it out of the hull! That afternoon, the final 6 inches of the tube slid out to expose a series of corroded holes, meaning it was certain that the corroded tube WAS in fact the culprit of all this leaky madness!!

Hallelujah!! It was OUT!!

'Extracteur' failure #1...aluminum plate too soft for my ferocious sledge hammering.

So…I carried the broken parts back across the yard. Everyone looked over at me curiously.

“Extracteur!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I yelled. They just wrinkled their foreheads and went back to whatever they were doing…I’m like a bad rash around …impossible to get rid of…

So next,

1. Make the washer out of a thick piece of steel.
2. Reinforce and re-weld the end plate.
3. Wait patiently for the new pieces to be made.

By Friday afternoon and I was again ready to try my beefed-up ‘extracteuuuuuuuuuuuuur’.

“Sa ne va pas marcher! (It’s not going to work)” Thierry, the mechanic, taunted.

“Extracteuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I yelled back.

After setting it all up, Taputu came over to help me. I held the new steel washer perfectly in the middle of the shaft log from inside Swell, while he slammed on the newly welded piece. But every time he hit it the washed just sucked down into the tube because the end of the tube was cut slightly diagonally.

My ‘extracteur’ had failed again.

But then I thought of something…the epoxy job on the tube that we’d just recently done! Surely the tube was firmly bonded there and no amount of pounding was going to break that adhesion. Maybe it was preventing my ‘extracteur’ from extracting! So on Friday afternoon, while the others drank beer and toasted to the weekend, I took a hack saw once again to the end of the tube and asked Taputu if I could borrow the grinder…I had little to celebrate. My leaky shaft log remained stuck in the hull and poor little Poe was sick…wouldn’t eat and couldn’t stand straight and unusually tired…

4. Tend my poor little sick baby bird

5. Cut diagonal end of tube flat with hack saw.

6. Grind off the recent epoxy job and chisel away all the new ‘filler’.

7. Wait for the rain to stop.

Terrible picture, but this is my 'slide hammer'. Imagine that I will place the upper end inside the shaft tube then put the washer and nut on that end and then hit the bottom plate from outside with a sledge hammer to extract just the old bronze tube. Yeah, I know...it's really boring when it isn't your problem...anyway, I was going to use that rusty hunk of metal as the 'slide' part of the 'slide hammer'...but it turns out it works better if I just whack the hell out of it with the sledge hammer.

I found Cesar leaned up against a shaded post near a fishing boat he was about to paint, talking with Benois, the metal worker.

“Belleza pura,” I said, offering the Brazilian greeting he’d taught me. “Hey, do you know where I can find a 6’ steel rod or pipe threaded at both ends?”

“Well…the plumbing store sells 18ft pieces of ¾” steel pipe threaded on both ends.”

“Oh and Ben, could you make me a steel washer of exactly these dimensions?” I said, pointing to my diagram.

“What is that?” They both said at once.

“It’s a ‘slide hammer’. I’m going to use it to extract my shaft log. Or in French, you could call it an ‘extracteuuuuuuuuuuur’.” I explained.

They nodded and went back to their discussion. It took a few days to gather all the pieces, but by Thursday morning Jacques had cut down my 18’ pipe to 6’ and welded a plate onto the end (which would be where I would ‘hammer’). Ben had made me the washer, but out of aluminum rather than steel. Before I complained, I figured I’d give it a shot.

I set it all up and borrowed a massive sledge hammer from the yard, and went for it. I swung the hulking head of the hammer and shocked myself by how hard it slammed into the welded plate. By the 30^th hit, though, I’d broken through the welding on the plate and the tube hadn’t budged. I went up to see what was happening inside and found the aluminum washer was completely bent.

And so, I gave up…my island style ‘extracteur’ had failed. Back to the drawing board…