Rod, Steamer Lane. Rod was a powerful swimmer, the Laird Hamilton of ’50s Santa Cruz. Fearless.
Rod going left at the Lane, which very few people did in those days. We surfed without wet suits, summer and winter!
Rod doing a hasty reattachment of skeg. That’s Pat Curren at left, me on right. On the cliffs facing Santa Cruz pier.
Jack O’Neill at Steamer Lane in the ’50s
One of the early wetsuits
Jack had this kite flyer at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, before he moved to Santa Cruz. This thing would get up to high speeds. I was his insurance broker when he opened The Surf Shop on The Great Highway in SFO in the early ’50s. Some time I’ll tell you the story of how Jack made his first wetsuit. Spoiler alert: he did not invent the wetsuit.
At the Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park in San Francisco:
A friend gave me this sleek little surfing kayak; I was excited and suited up and went surfing.
So excited I didn’t think of attaching a leash (connecting me to kayak should I get dumped), forgot a life jacket, and was wearing a 15-year-old 4/5 mil wetsuit that was stiff from age.
You can see where this is going, right?
It was kinda rough in the channel, and I wasn’t in paddling shape, but I went out and got a small wave — and was impressed that the kayak surfed pretty well (which most kayaks don’t).
I was tired, thought I’d go in, but — maybe just one more wave. And got dumped.
The kayak headed shoreward and I was getting slowly swept out to sea in an outgoing current (heading towards a minus tide). Tried swimming while holding on to paddle, but was getting nowhere, so abandoned paddle. Tried swimming to shore but the suit was so stiff I could hardly raise my arms. PLUS the the way it floated me, I couldn’t get horizontal to swim. I couldn’t get closer to the beach. (Same beach where I was a lifeguard 60 years ago — ironic.
I didn’t panic, but was worried, even contemplative: what if I can’t get to shore? How long do I have? I mean, I’m a lifetime swimmer, surfer, swim instructor, lifeguard at Lake Tahoe, Santa Cruz, Stinson Beach, and this was the first time I couldn’t swim to where I wanted to go. Shit!
There were a couple of people on the beach. Guess I could wave arms and yell “Help!” but “…the shame of it all” (a la Lee Marvin in The Wild One. Kook!
Well lo and behold, here comes a surfer, towing my kayak out. I was too tired to climb aboard, so I grabbed the back of it and he started towing me to shore. Halfway there, a girl on a longboard paddled over, let me borrow it and I paddled on in.
The kindness of strangers.
My rescuer turned out to be Kater Murch, who I remember as a kid in town and who was now a physicist living in St. Louis and home for the holidays. (This was on the afternoon of Christmas eve.)
Beyond the call of duty.
You saved my ass, I said, and hugged him.
OK, OK, if I go kayaking again, I’ll use a leash, wear a lifejacket, and wear a new stretchy wetsuit.
View of Maitavie Bay, Tahiti; painting by William Hodges (1776)
…Although the details of Tupaia’s knowledge may be lost to history, Pacific people continue to voyage in his wake. To mark the 250-year anniversary of Tupaia’s voyage, in 2019 Galenon and Teipoarii navigated the ship by the moon and stars from Tahiti to Aotearoa. They are part of a Pacific-wide movement of modern wayfinders who hope to restore inter-island networks disrupted by colonization and to build regional unity around shared challenges like climate change.
Like Tupaia, they exchanged oral traditions with people they met along the voyage. ‘Our ancestors would navigate to maintain relationships,’ says Galenon. ‘The canoe was the link.’
Above painting is Tahiti.
knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2021/reading-pacific-navigators-mysterious-map
Also, Polynesian Navigation on Wiki: wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
From Dan Dwyer
In 1962, a small sailboat sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Aboard was Kenichi Horie, a 23-year-old Japanese adventurer, who had left Japan 94 days earlier and with nothing but the power of the wind, crossed the Pacific Ocean. He was at first arrested because he had no passport, but eventually was released and given a key to the city by the mayor.
This is his boat, at the Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park in San Francisco.
If you go there be sure to walk a few blocks to the much larger Maritime museum in The Cannery building at 900 Beach Street.
…Oh yeah, afterwards an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista Cafe (across the street from the cable car turnaround)…
From David Shipway, a builder on Cortez Island, BC, Canada, regarding his catboat; his home and workshop are featured in Builders of the Pacific Coast.
It’s a fiberglass hull, modeled on a William Garden design, that has made my last 10 summers the best in my life! But as I was warned, it has definitely taken my time and attention away from maintaining some buildings here during the summer when it’s dry. I have quite a bit of roofing to do — in my 70’s now, but I’ll find some young bucks to help me.
The Humpback whale in the background of that photo is feeding on small fish that live under the aquaculture floats. These are passive shellfish enterprises, that unlike the salmon farms nearby, do not cause problems, and in fact are like floating artificial reefs, which increase the structural habitat biodiversity of this archipelago significantly, for birds, salmon and whales. Note the Bald Eagle, a white speck high above in the trees.
Founded in Oakland in 1997, Wowhaus is the artist duo of Scott Constable and Ene Osteraas-Constable. We make site-specific/
site-responsive, community-engaged public art in cities across the USA. We work in a wide range of media and contexts, so our work takes many forms, but is best known for being highly crafted, interactive, environmentally astute, conceptually rigorous, and fantastically innovative in form. We were recently commissioned by the Washington State Arts Commission to realize a project at a new public middle school complex in Silverdale, WA. We were invited by the school to choose a site within the new complex and its and propose and create a new site-specific artwork. Wanting to meaningfully impact the daily experience of teachers, staff and students, and also complement the beautiful architecture for the community, we decided to create a suspended sculpture within the main entry commons. The sculpture would daily greet people as they entered the building, but would also be visible from outside the school for the greater community who frequent the campus, which doubles as a neighborhood park.
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