There’s Shackleton and Francis Drake, the Smeetons and Ann Davison, Vito Dumas and Joseph Conrad amongst many others.  I was particularly struck by the account of Dr Bombard who sailed 65 days without food or fresh water – to prove that wrecked sailors could survive without them.

Chichester includes discussion of scurvy and explains that lemon juice but not lime juice is an anti-scorbutic.  The mixup came because in the West Indies a lime is called a lemon!

Ann Davison was the first woman to sail across the Atlantic single-handed (in a 23-foot boat!) and it’s a blessing that Chichester included what she had to say about solitude at sea:

“I did not know how I would react  to absolute solitude. It is an experience few of us are ever called upon to undergo and one which few of us would voluntarily choose. It is almost unimaginable, because solitude is something that normally can be broken at will. Even being on one’s own in undeveloped country, popularly supposed to epitomise loneliness, is not true solitude, for one is surrounded by trees and bush and grass and animals,  all part of the substance of one’s own living. But the sea is an alien element; one cannot live in it or on it for long, and one survives that little time by one’s own wit and judgement and the Grace of God. When a man says he loves the sea, he loves the illusion of mastery, the pride of skill, the life attendant on sea-faring, but not the sea itself. One may be moved by its beauty or its grandeur, or terrified by its immensity and power of destruction, but one cannot love it any more than one can love the atmosphere all the stars in outer space.”

Along the Clipper Way is out of print.  But if you happen to encounter a copy in a secondhand book store, as I did, it’s well worth the read if you’re interested at all in the sea.

In Case You Missed It:

The real issue, of course, is OIL.  Iran is the world’s third largest oil exporter and the only one in the Middle East not surrounded by US military bases.

IMHO (in my humble opinion) What the sanctions against Iran will really achieve:

1) suffering for the Iranian people

2) confirmation that the US dollar is finished as the world reserve currency.   More and more countries are trading oil and other commodities in other currencies or gold or trade goods.If the US dollar is not used for the oil trade it would collapse. Guess which two oil exporters stopped using US dollars?  You guessed – Iraq under our friend Saddam Hussein and Libya under our other friend Gaddafi (check out the connections between him and Western Intelligence – if that’s not an oxymoron).

3) hike in oil price and possibly severe disruption to oil supplies (ie the next step down of the Great Recession).  There is almost NO spare oil production capacity. With conventional oil production now in its 5th year of decline (IEA said in 2010 conventional oil production peaked in 2006), we are dependent on unconventional oil to rapidly expanding  production to cover the declining conventional oil production.  Saudi Arabia claims to be able to sustain 12 m barrel per day but has NEVER gone over 10 million and many doubt their claims.

Anyway, here’s the piece on Israel Intelligence:

Israel Intelligence Agrees Iran Is Not After N-bomb: Report

By Press TV

March 19, 2012 “Press TV” – - Despite their saber-rattling, Israeli officials have generally accepted the US intelligence assessment that Tehran is not building a nuclear bomb, a report says.

The Associated Press report said Sunday that although Israeli leaders have been charging for years that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, their officials have accepted the more nuanced American view.

The US Intelligence Community has said in frequent reports, the latest of which was published in February, that there is no hard evidence showing Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

The report added that several senior Israeli officials, who spoke to AP in recent days clearly, said Israel has come around to the US view that no final decision to build a bomb has been made by Iran.

The officials, who are privy to Israeli intelligence, added that this is the prevailing view in the Israeli intelligence community.

On March 18, The New York Times published a report quoting a former top US intelligence official as saying that both Washington and Tel Aviv have reached a consensus over the peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

“There is not a lot of dispute between the US and Israeli intelligence communities on the fact” that Iran has not deviated from its nuclear energy program.

The Los Angeles Times reported on February 23rd that 16 US intelligence agencies agree Tehran was not seeking to build nuclear weapons.

The “highly classified” intelligence assessment was reportedly circulated among US policymakers early last year.

The US and Israel have been escalating their war rhetoric against Iran in recent months, claiming that there are diversions in the country’s nuclear energy program towards a military one.

Tehran refutes such claims, saying that as a member of International Atomic Energy Agency and signatory to Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has every right to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

In order to bring his writings to a wider audience, I’m going to post extracts from the Hermit Writings according to various themes which he himself used as sub-titles. They’re intended as bite-sized chunks that may be more easily digested. He writes well, argues simply and coherently and with a commonsense that is both engaging and intriguing.  Judge for yourself.

Little is know about the man who calls himself S.  He may be living, or have lived, in northern Canada, as there are references to the “huge horseshoe landscape curing around James Bay, the pre-Cambrian Great Canadian Shield, vast tangled forests sieved through the lakes and rivers”.

Love

“It is often our love of the Good, Justice, the higher human virtues that leads us to a philosophy that commands detachment from these very same virtues; it is often our pain, our hatred even, of cruelty, injustice, hypocrisy and destruction that drives us to a practice of detachment from what repels us. Yet this very same spiritual philosophy, in whichever form it takes, also commands Prem, Universal Love and a virtuous practice, rarely substantially different from the one we were practicing. Somehow what brought us to the door must be left outside so that we may enter the door, within which we practice what in fact led us here. It is like betraying the one you love, by not loving them anymore, in order to love them again, later, more perfectly. It is ceasing to hate what we reject in order to eject what is hateful from our hearts.

“Loving our enemies is not loving evil. Ceasing to feel passionately about right and wrong is not psychopathy. We do not replace passionate moral attachments with a selfish apathy. We do not kill because we hate murder, but rather because we have neither need nor desire to hurt or harm anything; and compassion replaces hatred for the destructive selfish delusion people are often swallowed up by.

“Nevertheless, it feels like betrayal to abandon the feelings that inspired such noble sacrifice in us. It feels dangerous, like playing with fire, to feel impartial towards evil. It is easy to be negligent and cruel behind a mask of detachment and relativism. It is easy to become addicted to anything from sloth to smoking when we turn off the alarm of a passionate ethical code. It is ever so easy for the sophistry of intellect to lure us into deeper error in our actions when we no longer have the watchdog of a powerful moral referee to howl “Foul Play!” and bark us back to the “straight and narrow.”

“As hermits, remember, we usually have no guru, unless we are among those extra-blessed who come across an elder accomplished hermit in need of an assistant-apprentice. Many of us may abide by the rules of a monastic order but with no one watching over it isn’t difficult for mere thinking to rationalise them away. After all we are not interested in obeying rules or precepts for their own sake; none of that is sacred to us. But now we are asked to give up what really is sacred to us: our moral convictions, our passionate ideals, our guiding principles: The Olympian fires of our loves and our hates.

“Every moment of every day is a threshold on which we teeter. The door is always before us, though not always so clearly, let alone ajar, it beckons as we totter on the doorstep. The abyss of everything we know is behind us, we can topple back into it as into an old nightmare. Or we can push forward, our hope on an uncertain bliss, if we give up everything, even analogies, and accept everything, especially antipathies.”

(go to part one)

We have brainwashed ourselves into the superstitious belief that endless growth, endless increases in the consumption of natural resources, is actually possible. On the basis of that break from reality, consumer civilization can’t have much longer.

Even the term “consumer civilization” is an oxymoron, if the word ‘civilization’ means more than just ‘of a city’.

We love to think how clever we are – and, yes, the flush toilet, electric lights and the computer are pretty nifty inventions.

But when you think beyond the advertising and the echo chamber of marketing, the stark fact is that consumer civilization is becoming steadily less and less efficient – contemporary consumer civilization is the least efficient mode of living of them all.

Why? Because, every year we are using more and more resources to make more and more products maintained by more and more complicated systems which are not making us happier or safer. (However, we are healthier, at last for now.)

Are Happier Than Your Grandparents?

Are you any happier eating a meal today than you imagine your grandparents or great grandparents were when they sat down to breakfast or dinner together? Yet, today’s meal with ingredients from the supermarket takes about NINE calories of hydrocarbon energy for every ONE calorie of food energy we put into our mouths.

If the purpose of civilization is to fulfill human needs – food, shelter, meaning, social expression etc – then we are failing miserably. One in six people (15%) are now on food stamps in the richest country in the world (see here).

If the purpose of civilization is for people to gain knowledge, understanding, wisdom, contentment – then we are way off target. Just look at the state of the world.

If the purpose of civilization – our justification for trashing the Earth – is to bring us peace and happiness.

Then why is the world spending almost 50% more on arms and military operations than it did in 2000?

Why does America (the richest aka the happiest) nation spend more money on its military than the rest of the world combined? (A total of 54% of global military spending. (see here)

The richest nation on earth is so happy that more than 1 in 5 Americans took drugs for psychiatric or behavioral disorders in 2010 (see here).

Cancer on the Soul of Any Society

Television, the greatest invention to uplift the human species, is increasingly being dumbed-down to serve the god of economic growth. In more and more countries, its primary purpose is to deliver consumers to advertisers – as it has always been in America.

Today’s aspirational advertising and brand marketing make no pretence to be extolling the virtues of their products but promises instead to make us what we are not: a championship athlete, beautiful and attractive, free! Aspirational marketing is a cancer on the soul of any society.

A man with no pen who wants to write does not need 100 channels of advertising in order to buy a pencil. Yet every year it takes more and more advertising to sell “stuff” to affluent consumers anywhere in the world. Every year, consumer civilization is becoming less and less efficient. Every year, our God requires greater and greater sacrifices.

 The Object in Front of You

This brings us, finally, to whatever object is in front of you, and which has prompted these comments about our Age of Consumerism.

I am looking at the mechanical pencil (sometimes called a propelling pencil) in my hands.

Mine is from Pentel and is made of plastic and metal. It propels a thin stick of graphite (the pencil lead) out of the “nib” when I click the button at the other end. Or at least it used to.

I’ve had this particular pencil for about one year and it’s always worked satisfactorily until a few days ago. Suddenly the machine doesn’t work any more. Yet nothing is broken. Nothing is worn out (as best I can tell). But now, when I push the button, nothing comes out.

This is not the first time. Every mechanical pencil I’ve ever owned has always suddenly quit after working perfectly for months. The problem, I suspect, is a built-up of graphite grease that eventually causes the mechanism is slip – the tiny jaws in the nib can no longer grasp the slippery graphite.

The solution is simple. Chuck it out and buy another for $1-50. But think about that:

•  1) nothing is broken
• 2) the machine could work for another 50 years if the mechanism could be cleaned (or problem avoided altogether through better design).
• 3) nothing is recyclable. The plastic and the metal are gone forever. As is all the energy used to make them.
• 4) throwing out the pencil denigrates the lives of all the people involved in its design, manufacture, marketing and selling.
• The same is true of the object in front of you right now.

To throw away this mechanical pencil is not only to throw away all the resources used to make it, but it is also to throw away all the time, energy and creativity that went into producing it. It’s as if, for the time they devoted to this pencil, that the people who designed, made and sold it to me never lived at all. All that energy of their lives has become meaningless.

The time and energy may be very, very tiny per person per pencil but the cumulative total of all the time and all the life effort which all of us we contribute to the “stuff” that just gets chucked is enormous.

Studies have shown that a staggering 40% of food grown in the West is thrown away – what does that say to the people who gave their time and life energy to produce it?

What meaning can people ever engender in their lives if a large portion of their energy and unique creativity is willfully being thrown away every day? More and more money seems a poor compensation for such a loss.

So that begs the question:

Just how long can a civilization survive that is build on exponential growth and profligate waste?

Whatever object you’re looking at right now is proof that the “Age of Consumerism” is going to end sooner rather than later – like the “Age of Faith” and the “Age of Enlightenment” before it.

You may want to comfort yourself by thinking I am exaggerating. But, before you dismiss me, please read this essay.  Think about the ideas and then decide for yourself.

I used to believe that consumerism – the contemporary manifestation of human civilization – might yet morph into something that was not doomed. That once we saw and understood what we were doing to ourselves and to the world that we would change our beliefs and so change our behaviours.

However, despite all the efforts of individuals to be “environmentally responsible” and all the advertising about being “green”, all living systems on the planet (on which we depend) are continuing to decline – rain forests, fish stocks, coral reefs, wetlands, crop lands etc. etc. Can you think of any environment that is thriving – apart from garbage dumps?

The oceans once thrived with marine life – now all the stocks of fish we eat today are expected to be gone by 2040. “Thrive” – it’s not a word we think of today with regard to life on Earth is it?

All of us know this, despite the best efforts of deny-ers and the multi-million dollars campaigns of corporations (and their captive think tanks) to convince us that the truth is otherwise. The current public relations efforts to cast doubt over climate change, for example, is much like the smokescreen the tobacco corporations created to confuse people about the facts about smoking when their own research proved its harm.

Zombies ‘R Us

All of us are aware of the great harm human beings are doing to this amazing planet, yet we are powerless to stop ourselves. Like zombies, we are caught in a group-think which allows little common sense and which denies the importance of emotional intelligence and spiritual awareness.

We know (before we then deny it) that something is deeply wrong when rain forest is turned into barren land, to be sprayed with chemicals to grow soya beans to feed pigs for people (in Europe) who already eat too much.

We know killing all the herring and capelin and other fish before they spawn and give life to new generations is madness and that it can only lead to the destruction of the fisheries.

We sense the intelligence of whales and dolphins.

We sense that eating fruits and vegetables sprayed with poisons is crazy.

Do you notice how much stronger “to know” is than “to sense” “Knowing” is a rational, intellectual activity – we have no equally strong words to mean “knowing through our senses”. See? I can hardly explain what I mean. Opponents of oil sands development, vivisection, whale slaughter etc. are always accused by corporate spin doctors of being emotional and not being rational. As if the rational mind is always “rational”.

We live inside a bubble of “rational awareness”, a group-think that continues to deny the cumulative effects on the Earth of economic human growth, human population growth and resource depletion. We are indeed powerless to alter our choices (action not words!) and we watch the continuing degradation of living systems on this planet like people who are stoned.

Instead of frightening human beings – Homo sapiens, aka “wise man” – the “environmental crisis” has become a cliché, a minor god to which we genuflect and can then safely ignore. So corporations labels products “green” when they have the same ingredients as before. People buy energy efficient light bulbs but live in houses with more rooms and more lights.

 Naming Our Great God

After the economic collapse of 2008 (itself a result of this group-think and the denial of common sense) almost everyone yearns for the return of our great god. That god, of course, is Economic Growth. How else are we to pay our debts and lift “millions out of poverty”?

The fact is, during the first decade of this century, the richest 1% of Americans have captured 58% of the growth in income, for example. To put it simplistically, more than half all the activities trashing the planet have been in order to provide even more to those human beings who already have many orders of magnitude more than enough.

What’s rational about that if, as we claim, our aim is to create conditions for everyone on the planet to have decent living conditions?

It’s remarkable, isn’t it, how extraordinarily religious and superstitious modern people are, given the disdain with which so many traditional belief systems are treated? Like all the others, the god we worship cannot be seen, touched or even divined – yet we still bow down and do whatever its high priests tell us to do.

Yet if our god of endless economic growth brings ever increasing happiness (which is claimed to justify the growth) why are people in the West not four times happier than their grandparents? We are not; so why do we go on worshipping this false god?

I recognize that, under our current “debt as money” system, our civilization will collapse if it does not continue to grow. (Almost all money is someone’s debt that must be repaid with interest.) But all this only demonstrates the urgent need for reform and change.

(continue to Page 2)

Part two of my suggestions for overcoming anxieties:

(read part one here)

6) Rest as much as possible. Being anxious is exhausting. Take it easy, especially after a grueling day. Give yourself time to recharge and rebalance. Weariness exaggerates worry and our ability to make good decisions deteriorates rapidly when we’re tired. You want to be fresh for the next challenge.

7) Keep going. Don’t let anxieties about what might happen stop you. Most of our fears are set in the future; we tend to overestimate risk and danger, especially in unfamiliar situations. The first time you put in a triple reef and prepare the boat for heavy weather you will be nervous. By the tenth time it will be almost routine. The worst we imagine rarely happens. And if the situation does become challenging we’re generally too busy coping to have time to worry.

Invest in training. Gaining skills and competence are important building blocks of self-confidence. Take courses or set yourself specific exercises in easier conditions. Knowing that you know what you’re doing is very reassuring and can help settle nerves when situations do get a bit beyond our experience and comfort level.

9) Get as much experience as possible. Practicing maneuvers in calm conditions and sailing with people with more experience are two ways to gradually put worries to rest. Whether experienced or novice, we learn by working through challenging conditions so that next time they are far less daunting. With experience comes the ability to make sound decisions based on knowledge and prudence rather than succumbing to paralyzing fear.

10) Trust your boat. Nothing gives greater confidence, in heavy weather especially, than knowing your boat is in good repair, has the right equipment and that you know how to use it. Conversely, if you know the anchor is undersized or the standing rigging is in poor condition, nothing is going to keep you from worrying constantly. A well-found boat is the best insurance against this.

The sea is a wilderness we can never control. Sometimes we do get caught out in conditions beyond our experience. And then we feel our fears arising from our bellies and there’s nothing we can do about it! Telling ourselves not to be afraid doesn’t help. We must focus on what has to be done and tough it out. Cruisers don’t need nerves of steel but just sometimes we have to keep sailing despite our fears. But with training and experience over time, and a well-found boat, comes faith that no matter what confronts us we can face almost any challenge, reach our destination safely and relish accomplishing our goals.

© 2012 Dennison Berwick.  May be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with full attribution.

(SEE Cruising Beyond Our Fears (1 of 2)

Every sailor fears the sea (and those who don’t are too dangerous to crew with). But long before we cross an ocean or meet our first typhoon we must face a thousand smaller challenges of sailing and navigation – any one of which can torment us with apprehension, even fear.

Making our first passage on our own, entering an unfamiliar harbor at night, going through ship locks, anchoring in very shallow or very deep water – each of these can fill us with gut-churning apprehension. Beginners and novices, especially, need to be able to deal with worries and fears in ways that strengthen confidence and fortitude rather than undermine them. We may dream of steady winds, quiet anchorages, meeting new people and mastering new skills but our dreams will be shattered if we experience too many occasions of debilitating dread.

From mild anxiety to sheer terror – fear arises from our perceptions of risks, not the external reality. We may have good reason to be afraid sometimes but conditions that make us fearful may be plain sailing to someone with more experience. That doesn’t make our apprehensions any less real to us. Being downright scared on occasion is the reality we face as sailors. Skippers and crew need to know how best to cope.

Yet fear is a subject most cruisers rarely to talk about. And there’s a tendency in the literature of voyages to play down, even omit completely, all mention of anxiety or being terrified even as the boat runs aground or capsizes in a storm. It’s as if recounting our fears is either a sign of weakness or, conversely, of boasting. Yet knowing that people we admire and may want to emulate have also been weak at the knees on occasion can be reassuring – proof that such feelings are normal. And can be overcome.

Unconsciously tightening stomach muscles when facing any challenge for perhaps the first time is a normal reaction to circumstances that are not fully within our control. What’s crucial, if we want to attain our dreams, is to learn to live with our very healthy sense of vulnerability so that it doesn’t overwhelm us. Working through our fears, rather than running from them, will help bolster our self-confidence over time.

Some degree of heightened awareness is inevitable and desirable. Isn’t that sense of being more fully alive a big part of why we’re sailing? As Cap’n Fatty Goodlander wrote in “The Zen of Wood Butchery” (Cruising World May 2009):

“I was dead-dog tired. I was scared. But I felt electric and alive. There’s rare air out there, and I was breathing it.  Few men do.”

So what can we do to better handle our fears and sail with greater confidence? Here are 10 suggestions:

1) Know that you are not alone. Everyone – no matter how experienced – is anxious sometimes. I’ve been forever grateful to a friend with many years of experience who confessed she was nervous every time she entered a new marina. And I’d thought I was the only one! Talk to other sailors and you’ll soon discover everyone has been afraid some times. But they keep going.

2) Recognize your fears. Trying to suppress them only makes them harder to handle. Recognize how you’re feeling, be specific about what’s causing the anxiety, then focus on what needs to be done. For example, you may want to cross an ocean but your fears are making you dismiss it as, “Too risky for me!” If you accept this as truth there’s no way to face the fears and overcome them. Calling out fears helps stop them becoming an all-encompassing reality – which they are not.

3) Plan for what might go wrong. Once you recognize your fears, you can work towards overcoming them. Fears often arise from uncertainty, so use your imagination to envisage possible scenarios and plan how you’d handle high risk situations such as a fire, a grounding, serious injury or if the anchor drags. It’s prudent seamanship. No need to conjure a nightmare; but thinking things through, making preparations and then knowing you’re prepared calms nerves and will help prevent disaster from happening.

Handle nagging “what ifs” by making a checklist of what should be done in situations that make you nervous. For example, the first few times you drop anchor you may worry about laying out enough chain for the rise (or fall) of tide and correctly setting a snubber. Work through your checklist to ensure nothing’s overlooked. Confidence comes with practice and experience. Meanwhile, it’s normal to be a little apprehensive.

4) Give yourself time. We work slower when we’re anxious and trying to rush leads to mistakes, which only unsettles us more. We’re cruising, not racing or making a delivery. There’s no where we have to go, no deadline we have to meet. If the forecast is for bad weather, stay at anchor an extra day or plan to make only a short hop. Setting a moderate pace and allowing yourself time to accomplish modest goals is one of the best ways to build confidence as you ascend the learning curve. Gaining lots of good experiences helps put occasional scary moments into perspective.

5) Stay as comfortable as you can. Eat regularly, even if you don’t feel like it. An empty stomach only encourages nausea and seasickness. Warm drinks, fruit or chocolate can do wonders. We all have our comfort foods and this is not the time to be worrying about gaining weight. Before departure, make sure you’re stocked up on favorite comfort foods for all the crew.

SEE Cruising  Beyond Our Fears (2 of 2)

© 2012 Dennison Berwick.  May be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with full attribution.

A low-tide solution

An old-world technique avoided a budget-busting haulout

by Dennison Berwick

(First published in Good Old Boat, Nov/Dec 2011)

All too often the easiest way to solve a problem in boating is to throw money at it.  Finding less expensive solutions often calls for a little more imagination, work and sometimes facing a challenge or two.  The rewards can be not only money left in the sailing kitty, but also improved seamanship, a sense of accomplishment and greater resilience for the next challenge.
When my 32-foot steel ketch “Kuan Yin” needed a new Cutless bearing in the middle of a 2000-mile voyage from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, I couldn’t afford two haulouts (the repair and the upcoming winter storage) so I decided instead – on the suggestion of the mechanic who would be doing the work – to take advantage of the large tides on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada.
The problems had started somewhere on the St. Lawrence Seaway between Toronto and Montreal when three engine mounts cracked and the engine shifted. This caused serious wear on the cutlass bearing before the propeller shaft finally fell off the back of the gearbox! I was completely unaware of the problems until I discovered, after weighing anchor and about to re-enter the busy shipping channel, that the boat had no engine propulsion.

I sailed a few hours downstream to Quebec City with fingers crossed the boat would not be becalmed in the narrow channel with a ship approaching, before being towed by the Canadian Coast Guard through the entrance into the Parc Nautique de Lévy, across the river from Quebec City.

The engine mounts, gearbox and prop shaft were all repaired within 24 hours but replacing the Cutless bearing threatened to put a premature stop to my passage downstream towards my intended destination for the winter.

I’d just spent two summers refitting the boat in Toronto, on Lake Ontario, and was finally on my way to Newfoundland, 2000 miles away, on the first leg of a project to retrace an extraordinary voyage made in 1811 by an Inuit sea captain and his family who took two missionaries in a 45-foot ketch 1400 miles north along the remote coast of Labrador into Ungava Bay (the “teacup” just east of Hudson’s Bay). Though the St. Lawrence River at Quebec City has large tides, the water is only brackish and the city is still a long way from the Atlantic Ocean. Given the short sailing season, any delay threatened the entire project.
My boat “Kuan Yin” is a Tahitiana 32 – Weston Farmer’s adaptation for homebuilders of John Hanna’s Tahiti Ketch, which itself was adapted from Colin Archer’s famous 19th century lifeboat for the Norwegian fishing fleet.  The Tahitiana is the antithesis of modern racing-influenced cruising boats. She enjoys bigger seas and remains comfortable, holds a course well, but doesn’t go easily to windward. She was designed above all to be seaworthy and seakindly.  She’s a double-ender, with an exterior hung rudder, a full keel and side decks that are wide enough to sleep on comfortably.  Built of 3/16th inch steel plates, she’s extraordinarily strong but weighs about 11 tons with water, fuel and supplies. Down below, those wide decks make the main cabin seem narrower than modern sailboats with a comparable 10-foot beam.  However, this does keep all handholds within easy reach. “Kuan Yin” has a draught of only 4 foot 5 inches, her keel is up to 10 inches wide and she carries her own support legs that can be bolted to the bulwarks amidships.
Sailing single-handed from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic was intended as a shakedown cruise for the boat and for myself. “Kuan Yin” had new electronics, a new charging system and modified running rigging. I’d only recently completed an intense training course and lacked any depth of practical experience.
So I was not at all keen when monsieur Bertrand suggested taking advantage of the 15 foot spring tide and 10-foot drying height in the bay next to the marina to beach “Kuan Yin” in order to replace the cutlass bearing. Knots of apprehension tightened in my stomach as I tried to imagine how the maneuver might be accomplished. The risks seemed too great. I was inexperienced handling the heavy boat. The mud and grass might be too soft for the support legs to stay upright. The boat might come to rest unevenly on the bottom and topple over. If that happened, it was easy to visualize the masts being damaged and the cabin being be flooded when the tide returned.  I’d never done anything like this before; it seemed a challenge too far.
However, I also knew that if I flunked this test there would be no way to fulfil my dream of sailing to northern Labrador.  If I didn’t have the courage even to attempt a technique that had been common practice before the convenience of travel-lifts, then I’d never have the guts to sail the remote and hazardous coast of Labrador nor the tenacity to tackle whatever challenges that voyage would undoubtably present.
So I took a deep breath and committed myself. I made a rough chart of the bay at low tide, marked the rocks, and plotted a route using bearing lines from conspicuous trees and buildings onshore.  There would not be much clearance under the keel inside the bay and it was essential that “Kuan Yin” come to rest on firm and level ground.
The 15-foot high tide coincided with sunset so daylight was already fading as I brought “Kuan Yin” very slowly into the bay along my pre-planned route.  The top sections of the support legs were already bolted to the bulwarks.  The bottom sections lay ready on the decks.  I was apprehensive but determined.
Closer to the shore, people began shouting warnings and conflicting advice about where to anchor and I could feel my anxieties rising towards a panicked inaction, so I decided to ignore everyone and to trust my own hand-drawn chart and gut instincts.  I dropped the hook near the rocky shore, then quickly assembled the bottom sections of the support legs and lowered them into the black water until the struts hit the bottom.  After that, it was a matter of hoping “Kuan Yin” would take the bottom on an even keel as the tide dropped and that the wooden plates I’d bolted to the bottom of the support legs would not slip in the mud, allowing the boat to fall over.
After two hours, the boat seemed safely aground.  After four hours, I could see, in the beam of the flashlight, that the struts was standing firmly in the grasses surrounding the boat and not sinking into the mud. Relaxing enough to sleep was difficult, though there was nothing more I could have done at that stage to support the boat.
Low tide came in the early hours of the morning, so “Kuan Yin” had to refloat through another high tide and await the next low tide before the mechanic could come out in daylight to replace the cutlass bearing. Foolishly I had not put out a kedge anchor to hold the boat in position. Fortunately, the light wind did not shift overnight and at dawn “Kuan Yin” took the bottom again in almost the same place as before.
At ten o’clock, M. Bertrand  and his assistant came out in their rubber boots with tools and the new cutlass bearing.  It was not quite the same size as the old bearing but we were able to drive the new bearing inside the old sleeve. One hour later the work was done. Then we could only wait for the high tide at sunset and meanwhile enjoy an invitation from the local yacht club to their fall corn roast.
What I learned from the experience was not to automatically accept the most convenient procedure (and usually the most expensive) as the only solution to a problem but to be open to trying less orthodox methods. By attempting a traditional boating technique that had been beyond my experience and comfort level, I not only saved a bundle and avoided a long delay, but this small success (modest as it may seem to sailors with more experience) boosted confidence and improved my skills ready for “Kuan Yin” and I to continue towards the Atlantic Ocean, the Labrador and ultimately Ungava Bay.

In Case You Missed It: Canadian Goverment Muzzles its scientists

Science & Environment

17 February 2012 Last updated at 17:09 GMT

Canadian government is ‘muzzling its scientists’

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News, Vancouver

The Canadian government has been accused of “muzzling” its scientists.

Speakers at a major science meeting being held in Canada said communication of vital research on health and environment issues is being suppressed.

But one Canadian government department approached by the BBC said it held the communication of science as a priority.

Prof Thomas Pedersen, a senior scientist at the University of Victoria, said he believed there was a political motive in some cases.

“The Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) is keen to keep control of the message, I think to ensure that the government won’t be embarrassed by scientific findings of its scientists that run counter to sound environmental stewardship,” he said.

“I suspect the federal government would prefer that its scientists don’t discuss research that points out just how serious the climate change challenge is.”

The Canadian government recently withdrew from the Kyoto protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The allegation of “muzzling” came up at a session of the AAAS meeting to discuss the impact of a media protocol introduced by the Conservative government shortly after it was elected in 2008.

The protocol requires that all interview requests for scientists employed by the government must first be cleared by officials. A decision as to whether to allow the interview can take several days, which can prevent government scientists commenting on breaking news stories.

Sources say that requests are often refused and when interviews are granted, government media relations officials can and do ask for written questions to be submitted in advance and elect to sit in on the interview.

‘Orwellian’ approach

Andrew Weaver, an environmental scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, described the protocol as “Orwellian”.

The protocol states: “Just as we have one department we should have one voice. Interviews sometimes present surprises to ministers and senior management. Media relations will work with staff on how best to deal with the call (an interview request from a journalist). This should include asking the programme expert to respond with approved lines.”

Professor Weaver said that information is so tightly controlled that the public is “left in the dark”.

“The only information they are given is that which the government wants, which will then allow a supporting of a particular agenda,” he said.

The leak was obtained and reported three years ago by Margaret Munro, who is a science writer for Postmedia News, based in Vancouver. Speaking at the AAAS meeting, she said its effect was to suppress scientific debate on issues of public interest.

“The more controversial the story, the less likely you are to talk to the scientists. They (government media relations staff) just stonewall. If they don’t like the question you don’t get an answer.”

Ms Munro cited several examples of what she described as the “muzzling” of scientists by the government.

The most notorious case is of that of Dr Kristi Miller, who is head of molecular genetics for the Department for Fisheries and Oceans. Dr Miller had been investigating why salmon populations in western Canada were declining.

The investigation, which was published in one of the leading scientific journals in the world, Science, seemed to suggest that fish might have been exposed to a virus associated with cancer.

The suggestion raised many questions, including whether the virus might have been imported by the local aquaculture industry.

Requests denied

The journal felt this to be an important study and put out a press release, which it sent out to thousands of journalists across the world. Dr Miller was named as the principal contact.

However, the government declined all requests to interview Dr Miller. It said it was because she was due to give evidence to a judicial inquiry on the issue of falling fish stocks.

According to Ms Munro, because reporters were denied the opportunity to question Dr Miller about her work, important public policy issues went unanswered.

“You have a government that is micromanaging the message, obsessively. The Privy Council Office (which works for the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper) seems to vet everything that goes out to the media,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada told BBC News: “The Department works daily to ensure it provides the public with timely, accurate, objective and complete information about our policies, programmes, services and initiatives, in accordance with the Federal Government’s Communications Policy.

“In 2011, Fisheries and Oceans publicly issued 286 science advisory reports documenting our research on Canada’s fisheries; our scientists respond to approximately 380 science-based media calls every year.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada declined a request by the BBC to interview Kristi Miller for this article. Dr Miller told us she would have been willing to be interviewed had her department given her permission.

The AAAS meeting’s discussion on muzzling is organised by freelance science reporter Binh An Vu Van. She says fellow journalists across Canada are finding it “harder and harder” to get access to government scientists.

Ms Vu Van claims that as well as “clear-cut cases of muzzling”, such as the one involving Dr Miller, media relations officers use more subtle methods. She said that when she requests an interview, she has to enter into prolonged email correspondence to speak to a scientist she knows is ready and willing to be interviewed, often to be declined or offered another scientist she does not want to interview.

“It’s so hard to get hold of scientists that a lot of my colleagues have given up,” she explained.

Ms Munro cited another example of research published in another leading scientific journal, Nature, that was published last October.

An international team including several scientists from the government agency, Environment Canada, set out details of a hole that appeared in the ozone layer above the Arctic.

Ms Munro said she had called one of the scientists involved who she had dealt with several times in the past. He agreed to speak to her, but said that he had been told that her request had to be put to government media relations officials in Ottawa.

“So I phoned up Ottawa and they just said no you can’t talk to the guy. A couple of weeks later, he was available but by then the story had been done. So they take them out of the news cycle,” she said.

Ms Munro also claims that journalists were denied access to scientists working for the government agency Health Canada last year, when there was concern about radiation levels reaching the country’s western coast from Japan following the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Ultimately, journalists obtained the information they sought from European agencies.

The Postmedia News journalist obtained documents relating to interview requests using Canada’s equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act. She said the documents show interview requests move up what she describes as an “increasingly thick layer of media managers, media strategists, deputy ministers, then go up to the Privy Council Office, which decides ‘yes’ or ‘no’”.

“The government has never explained what the process is. They just imposed these changes and they expected us to sit back and take it,” she explained.

Professor Andrew Weaver believes that the media protocol is being used by the Canadian government to “instruct scientists to deliver a certain message, thereby taking the heat out of controversial topics”.

He added: “You can’t have an informed discussion if the science isn’t allowed to be communicated. Public relations message number one is that you have to set the conversation. You don’t want to have a conversation on someone else’s terms. And this is now being applied to science on discussions about oil sands, climate and salmon.”

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