Casey and Ryan Higginbotham are raising money for a film of their 7-month 2200-mile voyage on paddleboards from Alaska to Tijuana: www.kickstarter.com/projects/byhandfilm/by-hand-the-film
See also:
Jim Fisher, a powerful swimmer, was on the Lowell High School (San Francisco) swim team in the early 1950s. The first time I ever went swimming in the ocean was when Jim and I went across the Great Highway from Fleishhacker Pool after a swimming meet, and went body surfing. It changed my life — the blue sky, the blue water, the waves…
After graduation, Jim went to Hawaii and, along with other haole California surfers, surfed the biggest waves they could find. I realize that this photo is blurred and scratchy, but It’s one of my favorite surf shots. There’s just something about it that grabs you. Jim said he almost drowned on the wipeout that ensued.
“Before diving as deep as 230 feet under the sea, the Bajau people put on a pair of wooden goggles. They pick up a set of weights. Then, they take one very big breath.
And they hold it for five minutes or longer.
Commonly called Sea Nomads, the indigenous Bajau people have lived for thousands of years off the coast of Southeast Asia, near Malaysia and the Indonesia archipelago. They commonly live in houseboats, spending hours each day hunting fish or other sea creatures underwater. For centuries, these extraordinary free-diving abilities mystified scientists, as the source of the Sea Nomads’ intuitive breath-holding talents remained unknown.…”
A longer article in todays New York Times Science section:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/science/bajau-evolution-ocean-diving.html
From Chime Serra
Photo: Melissa Hardo
I’m going through all my 50,000 or so digital photos in preparation for my book The Half-Acre Homestead, picking out those on the garden, home, kitchen, and tooIs, etc, and running across some long-forgotten shots, like this one.
I built a house in Big Sur in 1967, on land owned by Boris and Filippa Veren, who ran the Craft & Hobby Book Service. I was their caretaker and they let me build my house on their 40 acres. This was their pool in the canyon, Burns Creek, about two miles north of Esalen. Creek water flowed from a pipe into the pool so no need for chlorine.
I built the house out of mostly used lumber and shakes I got from old redwood stumps or short pieces left by loggers in the woods.
Each night after I finished work in the Spring and Summer, I’d go down to swim. I’d bow to the nearby family of redwoods, then bow in each of the four directions before jumping in.
I get inspired the minute I hit the road. The moving through space, the different places, different people. This time I’m driving my 19-year-old Mercedes 320E, a most unbelievably comfortable car that I bought for $3500, fixed it up, and am continually surprised and pleased by its features. I mean, I am not a Mercedes kind of guy, but mama mia, is this car great. I was on the verge of buying a Subaru Crosstrek, but have now decided to stick with the Mercedes until it dies. Luxury!
Hidden in the bushes along the coast…
A friend who has a home at Sea Ranch gave me a pass so I’m legal there. I swam in the pool yesterday. It’s one of the good designs at Sea Ranch. Architecture can be so fine when done right. The pool is surrounded by a grassy berm, and water heated with solar panels (with backup propane). Dressing rooms wittily designed. No chlorine. No one else there on rainy day. Afterwards I skated for a while. I’m a bit creaky on the skateboard, still getting my chops back after a broken arm, then shoulder operation.
Titch’s greenhouse at sunset
On the Beach Reincarnation of the Whalebone Saloon, built a few years ago by Sean Hellfritsch and friends on a remote beach. It’s at the base of a free-flowing creek that empties on to the beach, and has prolific watercress.
Yesterday was a beautiful beach day, the calm before a week (hallelujah!) of storms and rains. I lay in the sun, ran a bit, jumped in the water, right back out — brrr! Very few people on beach, one guy had a beautiful black piece of whale baleen he’d found. Later I came across what must have been a 25′-long whale rib, awesome to ponder the size of a creature with a rib of this size. This one, that had washed ashore in May, was a 79′ blue whale.
Photo by Dave McGuire: Martinis at Jack O’Neill’s cliffside home in Santa Cruz in 2013. L-R, Betty Van Dyke, Richard Novak, Jack, Lloyd
I graduated from high school in San Francisco in 1952. I had to make up some grades in order to get admitted to Stanford, so I took some morning classes at a private high school and worked as an office boy at an insurance company in the afternoons. Each day I had a couple of hours off, so I started going to the beach.
Kelly’s Cove is the beach right next to the Cliff House at Ocean Beach, and I met a bunch of guys who were starting to bodysurf there. Cliff Kamaka, a Hawaiian who was a lifeguard at the nearby Fleishacker Pool* had taught the boys the art of bodysurfing. Charley Grimm, Rod Lundquist, John Stonum, Jim Fisher, Bill Hickey — and Jack O’Neill — were some of the gang.
The water averaged in the low ’50s, so you had to really be motivated to endure the cold. They’d build a big fire on the beach to warm up after getting out of the water, and had constructed driftwood windbreaks that you could get inside to lay in the sun.
Jack was working for a company that sold firefighting equipment. He and his wife Marge and their 6 kids lived in an apartment on Sloat Blvd., across from the zoo, a few blocks from the beach. His first attempt at staying warm was a “dry suit,” as used by divers. It was thin rubber. Jack bought one He showed it to me and he was wearing long woolen underwear underneath it. Where it might have worked for diving in calm water, it didn’t work at all in the turbulent ocean. Water would come in at the sleeves, legs, and neck.
Jack didn’t invent the wetsuit. According to Wikipedia, “Hugh Bradner, a University of California, Berkeley physicist invented the modern wetsuit in 1952…” The US Navy then developed wetsuits for their divers and the first ones were being sold in stores. The wetsuit was neoprene and allowed the water to get next to your body, but kept it warm. Before they started lining them with nylon (maybe Jack’s invention), they were difficult to get on, so we had to coat our skin with corn starch so they would slide on.
I may be the only person in the world who knows this, but one day Jack went to Roos Brothers, the big department store on Market at Powell in San Francisco, and bought a wetsuit in their sporting goods department. He took it home, took the measurements off it, and returned it the next day. Voilá, he had the pattern for his first wetsuit. I know this because I stopped by to see him the day he brought it home. Like Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile, but perfected it and made it available to millions, so it was with Jack and wetsuits.
Boy am I havin fun! It’s been a perfect week down here. In the water at 7:30 this morning, a shower and now latte and raisin roll and good wi-fi. I wish I had more time to do stuff like this. Idea! I’ll make a little short-run book of the trip. Where’s my clone, anyway?
It’s so easy down here now, and it was so hard 20-30 years ago. My great little Baja bug was under water twice, I had a sketchy relationship with the cunning landlord of the palapa I rented (for $1,000 a year), the place was destroyed in a hurricane of Nov 4 cuatro de Noviembre in the ’90s, and on…
Now there’s a smoothly paved road 12 mi. out to Shipwrecks. Funny, there don’t seem to be many people around at all. Part of that being wealthy people buying (or building) trophy houses that they rarely visit. Summer’s the south-swell surfing season down here and Nov-Dec-Jan are prime times for people fleeing cold climes, but March seems perfect, it’s really comfortable, cool at night and April winds haven’t started. Surprisingly, I found nno mention of the surf online. There’s nothing like checking out the surf in person.
I still love San José del Cabo. Wandering around the quiet streets. Last night at dusk, Chilón and I walked down to the palm grove by the San José river; it was—the perfect Spanish word—tranquillo. Tortillas de nopales in a little roadside shack, with la cocinera patting out fresh tortillas…
My Instagram on the web this morning came out like a poster for the past few days:
I’m taking off tomorrow morning — for a week in and around San José del Cabo. For about 12 years, I went to Baja whenever I could. I kept a 1983 4-wheel drive Toyota truck down there, would fly down, drive 12 miles east of town along the coast, let out air pressure in tires to about 7 lbs and drive 2 miles on the sandy beach to a place gringos called Roosterfish Cove, put up my flea market tarp for shade, unfurl the rooftop tent for sleeping, and hang out for 3-4 days, all alone, surfing, swimming, running on the beach, seldom wearing clothes. In hot months, it was pretty unbearable from 11 AM to 5 PM, but the early mornings and early evenings were exquisite.
It’s been 8 years since I was last there, and I know it’s built up immensely. I’m taking fins. Haven’t surfed in months, due to cold water here and a damaged shoulder. I’ll see what happens down there. I’m staying at a few different places on the beach. Meeting my good friend Chilon when I get there, he’s making lunch for us.
Here are some posts from years back: https://www.lloydkahn.com/?s=baja
Stay tuned.
