June 24, 2009

Essays

This is an essay that I composed for my personalized Comparative Civilizations 12 course. My appologies, the images which you see reference to in the citations are not featured in this post.

RENAISSANCE: REKINDELING THE PAST; SPARKING THE FUTURE

An Illustrated Essay by Bradley A. Clements


The word “Renaissance”, meaning a re-birth or re-vitalization, was first used to describe the Italian Renaissance of the 15th and 16th Centuries in Europe. The word has since come to be most commonly associated with any period of great cultural, intellectual, scientific and social prosperity arising from a suddenly renewed interest in the past. Under this definition it can be said that many notable renaissances have occurred around the world throughout the course of history, bearing comparable characteristics in their nature, rise, and aftermath.
While the word may have been first used in the context of the Italian Renaissance, the concept of a renaissance is far older. The first discernable periods of renaissance may be said to have been in the mid to late 700’s and 800’s A.D., with the emergence of the Carolingian, Macedonian, and Islamic Renaissances. However, it would seem that in ancient times the world lived in a virtually constant state of renaissance, of flourishing culture looking back at the past. Rather than only during the great state of revolution that were the later renaissances, ancient peoples always looked for identity and justification from the past. For example, conquerors often claimed a symbolic – if not actual – lineage from a previous notable general, as King Pyrus of Epirus who, in his war against the Romans in defense of the Tarentines, proclaimed himself a “latter day Alexander the Great” (1). Alexander the Great of Macedon, conqueror of the Persians, had in turn claimed a symbolic succession from Agamemnon of Mycenae who had led the Greek invasion of Ilium. The ancient value of heritage seems only to have been broken by occasional periods of revolution. The reinstatement of the traditional Egyptian polytheistic religion by Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1336 B.C. after the Amarna Period of Akhenaten’s reign (2), the Athenian Golden Age brought about by Pericles in 448 B.C. after the two sackings of the city during the Persian Wars (3), or Augustus Caesar’s era of cultural excellence in the Roman Empire from 27 B.C to 14 A.D. following the Roman Civil War (4), could all be said to have been cultural and political renaissances. They were, however, merely returning to norms which had not been long dormant, and which had certainly not been forgotten.
Through an observation of some of the many renaissances of history, it can be seen that the genesis of a renaissance hinges very much around politics, often backed by a newly invigorated economy, inspiration from the outside world, and new innovations in communications technology. It must be realized, though, that these components merely act as the match which lights the fuse of a pre-existing creative culture.
The Islamic Golden Age of circa 700 – 1200/1600, as an example, was a renaissance which began and flourished under the encouragement of the Abbasid Caliphate. The caliphate supported the founding of many centers of learning, including the world’s oldest universities and the largest libraries which the world had ever seen, many of which were open to the public. In these places the texts of the ancient Iraqis, Romans, Chinese, Indians, Persians, Greeks, Byzantines, and North Africans were archived, translated into Arabic, and studied passionately. Due to the impressive size, wealth, and power of the Islamic Empire, commerce flourished and soon replaced warfare (5). With this new development the Empire became stable, prosperous, and the cross-roads of the world. These conditions provided an ideal breeding-ground for art and learning, with a broad base of wealthy patrons and available inspiration. Despite all other catalysts, the explosion of learning could not have become as wide-spread as it did without one new piece of communications technology: paper. Knowledge of the secrets of papermaking was revealed by Chinese prisoners in 751 A.D. (6), and allowed for a much easier, transportable, and more affordable medium to communicate information and ideas.
The Islamic Golden Age provides a fine example, and is nearly stereotypical when speaking of the birth of a renaissance. The Carolingian Renaissance, during Charlemagne’s reign of the Frankish Empire from 771 to 814 A.D. (7), was similarly inspired by the monarch and made possible by the stability of the empire which he had forged (5). The Italian Renaissance itself was based largely upon a stable commerce-based economy which empowered the arising middle class to give their patronage to the arts; based upon new innovations in communications technology, most notably in the form of the printing press; and based upon the competitive encouragement of political and religious leaders, perhaps the most famous example being the Medicis. The Elizabethan Era, England’s cultural renaissance during the rule of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603, has come to be known by the name of the monarch who inspired it. The First Hawaiian Renaissance, from 1874 to 1891, came about due to the interests of traditional Hawaiian culture held by King Kalakaua (8), and more recent attempts to bring about renaissances, such as the Urban Renaissance in the United Kingdom (9), have been driven largely by government incentives.
Although many very diverse renaissances have occurred throughout history, they can all be defined as renaissances by specific characteristics of their nature which they hold in common. Note that many field-specific renaissances have happened over the course of history, such as the revival of Greek, Gothic and Tudor architecture and classical styles of painting and literature, but these cannot rightly be considered to be renaissances in the application of the term to an era of history in general. The most notable aspect of a substantial renaissance is in the arts and learning, often followed closely by science, religion, and many other attributes of society. While cultural developments occurred to varying degrees in different renaissances, the areas of development were often essentially the same.
As an example, the Italian Renaissance is recognized as one of the most remarkable periods in all of art history. More artists are recorded to have worked during the Renaissance than during any other period in European history (5), and innumerable striking and innovative works were created. But a few examples of works of art include the largest masonry dome ever erected, Brunelleschi’s Duomo in Florence (10); the Mona Lisa, the renowned portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, and the riveting Statue of David by Michelangelo. Revival of the classical ideals of realism and humanism led to studies in form and the discovery of perspective in the visual arts. Musical experimentation with the use of polyphony, discovered during the 12th Century Renaissance, resulted in awe inspiring motets by such composers as Josquin Desprez, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Claudio Monteverdi, becoming the basis for all of Western Classical music (11). Literature reached new bounds. New works, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’, were created building upon the form of the novel which had been experimented with by the ancient Greeks, and the novella which had been the form of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th Century work, ‘The Decameron’. Poets and playwrights, such as William Shakespeare, made popular their antiquarian forms of literature. They perfected the use of rhyme and rhythm which had been resurrected during the 12th Century Renaissance, and the form of the sonnet which had been invented by Giacomo da Lentini in the 13th Century and immortalized by Francesco Petrarca in the 14th Century (12). Even the “lesser” arts, such as the martial arts, were revolutionized. The rapier evolved, a long thin sword adapted to the ancient Roman style of swordplay which was based upon thrusting. This new style of fencing took Europe by storm with many competing schools springing up across the continent, such as those of Capo Ferro, Agrippa, and Morrozzo. Not only were these many art forms growing and changing tremendously, they were also experiencing a demand that may not have been seen before or since. “Renaissance Men”, as they were called, although members of both genders were deserving of the name, were idealistic individuals which a passionate interest in a myriad of fields. Members of all of the courts of Europe were expected to fulfill these standards and be accomplished in all of the arts, as well as be courteous, tasteful, philosophical, and honorable, as outlined in such works as ‘The Book of the Courtier’ by Baldassare Castiglione.
New breakthroughs were made in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, mathematics, alchemy, and physics, despite the disapproval of the Catholic Church. Humanism led to a greater desire to find explanations through logic, science, and reasoning, rather than through the blind faith of the Church which had more or less governed Europe’s thinking for the past millennium. New philosophies emerged which criticized the Church to varying degrees. This eventually led to the Reformation which saw the rise of counter-Catholic dioceses such as the Lutheran Church and Calvinism, interpretations of Christianity which sought the original striped-down version of the religion.
The conclusion of a renaissance can be as abrupt or as gradual as its rising. An observation of the tendencies of various renaissances can lead us to believe that the more substantial the renaissance the more prolonged its outward transition and the more enduring its legacy. Historians still differ in opinion as to when between 1200 and 1600 A.D. the great Islamic Golden Age can be said to have ended (5). Only circa dates can be given for the period of the Italian Renaissance, partially because it ended at different times in different parts of Europe, but also because it melded so seamlessly into the Baroque. Other renaissances seem only to have endured under their protectorate, such as the Elizabethan, Hawaiian, and Carolingian renaissances, all of which ended with the reign of the monarch who initiated them. This is likely to have more to do with the surrounding circumstances than with the content of the renaissance, but it is notable.
Renaissances being periods of such cultural potency, it is not surprising to see that their legacies are long-enduring indeed. The 12th Century Renaissance, while little known today, saw the rise of today’s judicial and educational systems (13). In true renaissance nature, these innovations were inspired by the ancient Romans and Arabs, but were re-introduced and re-interpreted by the Renaissance scholars in a way which has made them immortal. The architecture of the 12th Century, the science and mathematics of the Greeks and Arabs, the religion that was first championed by Charlemagne in the Carolingian Era and the branches of it which emerged from the Reformation, the art of Michelangelo, the inventions of Da Vinci, the philosophies of Socrates, the language of Shakespeare, the politics of Castiglione and Machiavelli: the products of renaissances surround us each and every day.
One could say that history is a pendulum which is eternally swinging from extreme to extreme. Using this analogy, the centre of the swing is the Renaissance: the place that is in balance between the two worlds of faith and reason, nature and order, past and future. The Renaissance is the place of looking back and moving forward. In the words of one who lived during a renaissance, John of Salisbury in his ‘Metalogicon’ of 1159 A.D. (13):

“Our own generation enjoys the legacy bequeathed to it by that which preceded it. We frequently know more, not because we have moved ahead by our own natural ability, but because we are supported by the menial strength of others, and possess riches that we have inherited from our forefathers. Bernard of Clairvaux used to compare us to punt dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”



Reference Citations

1. Garland, R. Close Encounters. Lecture from series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of-Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.

2. Akhenaten. Egyptology Online. 2008. http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm.

3. Age of Pericles. Wikipedia. April 21, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Age_of_Pericles.

4. History of Augustus Caesar. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa09.

5. Walker, R. 1998. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. p. 213-216, p. 260-286, p. 333-335. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.

6. What was the Islamic Golden Age? Wise Geek. 2009. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-islamic-golden-age.htm.

7. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html.

8. King Kalakaua. Aloha-Hawaii.com 2004. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/king+kalakaua/.

9. Urban Renaissance. Wikipedia. September 18, 2008. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renaissance.

10. Florence Cathedral. Wikipedia. April 16, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Florence_Cathedral.

11. Holister, Robert. “Viderunt Omnes”, Lecture.

12. Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet. Wikipedia. April 22, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#Italian_.28Petrarchan.29_sonnet.

13. The 12th Century Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture26b.html.

Image Sources*

Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/image-michelangelo-god-creates-man.html.

Anonymous A. Venus de Milo. http://www.mlahanas.da/Greeks/Arts/VenusMilo2.jpg.

Anonymous B. Arabesque. http://krsparks.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/frieze.jpg.

Raphael. The School of Athens. http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/School%20of%20Athens2.jpg.

Anonymous C. Stained glass cathedral window. www.fpcokc.org/aboutus/

* in order of presentation.

Bibliography

The 12th Century Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture26b.html.

Age of Pericles. Wikipedia. April 21, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Age_of_Pericles.

Akhenaten. Egyptology Online. 2008. http://www.egyptologyonline.com/akhenaten1.htm.

Anonymous A. Venus de Milo. http://www.mlahanas.da/Greeks/Arts/VenusMilo2.jpg.

Anonymous B. Arabesque. http://krsparks.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/frieze.jpg.

Anonymous C. Stained glass cathedral window. www.fpcokc.org/aboutus/

Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. George Bull. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967.

Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance. The History Guide. October 11, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture20b.html.

Florence Cathedral. Wikipedia. April 16, 2009. http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Florence_Cathedral.

Garland, R. Close Encounters. Lecture from series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of-Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.

The Greco-Persian Wars. Classical Ideals. July, 2006. http://www.classicalideals.com/Greco-Persian%20Wars.htm.

Harlem Renaissance. World Book Reference Center. April 24, 2009. http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/article?id=ar246340&st=harlem+renaissance.

Herodotus. Histories. Trans. A. de Selincourt. New York: Penguin Classics 1972.

Hindu Renaissance. Encyclopaedia Britannica. April 24, 2009. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/266310/Hindu-Renaissance.

History of Augustus Caesar. http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa09.

Holister, Robert. Lecture. Viderunt Omnes. November, 2008.

Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. The Iliad. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1998.

Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet. Wikipedia. April 22, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet#Italian_.28Petrarchan.29_sonnet.

King Kalakaua. Aloha-Hawaii.com 2004. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/king+kalakaua/.

Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. Sistine Chapel. http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/image-michelangelo-god-creates-man.html.

Morgan, Michael Hamilton. Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists. Washington, United States of America: National Geographic Society, 2007.

Raphael. The School of Athens. http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy-images/School%20of%20Athens2.jpg.

Urban Renaissance. Wikipedia. September 18, 2008. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renaissance.

Walker, R. 1998. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. p. 213-216, p. 260-286, p. 333-335. Oxford University Press, Don Mills.

What was the Islamic Golden Age? Wise Geek. 2009. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-was-the-islamic-golden-age.htm.
This is an essay which I wrote as part of my Comparative Civilizations 12 self-designed curriculum.

Observations of the Silent:
Investigating Neolithic Orkney

History is often studied through writings, but what happens when there are no writings to study? When the written word is lacking or is disputable, only one thing remains reliable: solid, physical evidence. While there is no written record of Neolithic Orkney, it is one place where there is a treasure-trove of evidence. On the main island of the Orkney archipelago, bordering the North Sea off the north coast of Scotland, there survive to this day examples of virtually every manner of Neolithic architecture to be found in Europe: stone circles, earthworks, stone chambers, standing stones, and the finest examples of Neolithic domestic residences to be found anywhere. Through the clues left by these extraordinary pieces of evidence we can derive a remarkable amount of information about the lifestyle, social structure, and beliefs of those who built and used them.
Under a sand hill known as Skara Brae, on the edge of the Bay of Skaill (1) on the main island of the Orkney group was found the most perfectly intact Neolithic settlement ever discovered. It was uncovered when a windstorm tore away the covering sand in 1850 A.D., and was excavated by Professor Vere Gordon Childe in the late 1920’s. Although Childe initially dated the site at c. 500 B.C., pottery comparisons conducted in 1939 by one Stuart Piggott showed that it must be older. When the site was finally radio-carbon dated in the 1970’s it was concluded that the site was within the range of 3100 to 2480 B.C., placing its occupation well within the European Neolithic (2).
The first most striking thing to note about the village of Skara Brae is its compact nature. Composed of at least ten distinguished buildings, each unified in size between 4.6 and 6.4 meters across (3), the village is entirely interconnected by a single tunnel. The structures are, and always were, semi-subterranean in the interest of shelter from the harsh Orcadian elements. The village was in fact built into a previous settlement of a similar nature, which had been abandoned at an earlier time and religiously filled in with midden. The stonework of the surviving settlement is notably skillful, using large slabs of stone carefully fit and arranged tightly together so that the ceiling curves to form a structure close to a dome. In such a small community, melded so closely together, there is no evidence of any form of hierarchy. Unless the settlement itself was a ‘palatial structure’, as historian Euan MacKie has put forth (2), the people who lived in Neolithic Orkney knew of no discrimination of social status. There is also absolutely no distinguished evidence to dictate that Skara Brae was such a palace, and the presence of a workshop, basins for the keeping of fishing bait, and the equality in size and intimacy in layout of the dwellings would indicate that the settlement was a simple village of work-a-day folk with little need for social structure. Indeed, with such a small population – Skara Brae could have housed a maximum of nine moderately sized families – a fixed elite would be neither sustainable or logical. The village would most probably be governed by the whole and must have been very co-operative judging by the layout of their settlement and the immensity of the projects that they engaged in.
While there may have been little or no class identification, was there any manner of gender inequality? Wood being scarce in the Orkneys, the people of Skara Brae furnished their dwellings with stone, including bed boxes which have lasted to this day. It has been noted that beds found on the left side of the houses tend to be somewhat smaller than those on the right, and that beads have been found in the beds on the left while being absent from those on the right (3). This has been deciphered to signify that women slept on the left side of the house in beds which were smaller than those of the men, and were therefore held in lower regard. This, however, is only one way of reading this evidence: it is possible that the beds on the left were occupied by children or individuals while the ones on the right were reserved for adult couples, causing it to make sense that those on the right should be larger. Perhaps beads were only worn by children or unmarried individuals in Orcadian society. It is difficult to come to a definite conclusion to a question such as this based solely upon the physical evidence available, but a study of the way the people lived, the challenges they faced, and the beliefs that they held may add to our understanding of it.
Judging upon a myriad of historical examples and logical reasoning, it can be seen that an emergence of social and gender inequality almost always occurs as a result of warfare, whereupon a caste of male warriors rises above the rest of society. There is every evidence that this did not occur in Neolithic Orkney. No martial weapons survive, and none of the many sites of the period are martially fortified in any way. The population of surviving settlements such as Skara Brae which date to Neolithic times could not have sustained warfare, and in the sparsely populated islands it would have been difficult and pointless to engage in conflict. The size of the settlements is also evidence that they must have maintained co-operative communications, as the workforce of several villages would have been required to work together in the construction of their substantial monuments. The various communities must also have intermarried, for the gene pools of such small concentrations of people would not have been sustainable for the amount of time that the settlements remained populated.
Everyday life in a village such as Skara Brae must have been very communal, although each house maintained considerable privacy. The individual dwellings once had doors, perhaps of wood, which could be barred by a slab of stone. Within each house was a separated cell through which ran a drain (2), probably used as toilets, demonstrating a very remarkable recognition of the importance of sanitation and individual privacy. Beyond this, however, there was probably little privacy within the family as everyone lived and slept in a single room which probably lacked partitions. Each dwelling appears to be physically and socially centered around a communal hearth, where most of the cooking, working, and socializing would no doubt have taken place.
The people of Skara Brae were obviously incredible artisans, as their architecture and implements show. Skara Brae had a specified workshop designated at least partially to stone working. Judging by the many stone chips found in this shop, craftspeople repeatedly heated and cooled their stone (2) to make it easier to carve. Much of the works of these craftspeople demonstrate a remarkable proficiency at their skill, especially small ornate spheres which were carved for an unknown but probably religious purpose (3). They were also incredible bone-carvers, using mostly whale bone which they shaped into beads, pins, bowls, and similar objects. While they did craft pottery which was decorated to some extent, their skill at this did not transcend practicality.
Upon close observation of surviving evidence it can be seen that the people of Skara Brae enjoyed considerable plenty. While they still practiced fishing, hunting, and gathering to a large extent, they also domesticated animals and farmed the land. Although only a small population of pigs were kept due to the lack of trees, the land was perfect for the herding of sheep and cattle making them the chief providers of meat, hide, fleece, and possibly milk. The villagers also hunted the wild game of the island, especially the red deer (1). They gathered limpets which they soaked in basins of water for use as fishing bait (2). They may also have actively hunted whales, or they may have simply taken advantage of the ones that beached themselves upon the shore. While they continued to collect plant foods such as nuts and berries in the wild, the villagers also practiced the agriculture of grains to feed both themselves and their livestock through the winter. One piece of evidence demonstrating the degree of plenty which was enjoyed is the lack of lamb bones to be found (2). In most primitive cultures that experienced winters as harsh as those in the Orkneys, most of the young livestock would have to be slaughtered before the onset of winter because there was not a sufficient surplus of food to keep them alive until spring. Such was not the case in Skara Brae. That enough care and surplus was available to feed the lambs all winter long is notable indeed.
It would appear by the many surviving monuments that science and religion not only went hand-in-hand in Neolithic Orkney, but were practically indistinguishable from one another. Both, as we shall see, were remarkably sophisticated. Twelve kilometers from the village of Skara Brae is a prime example of one of them: a seven meter high human-made mound dating to 3000 B.C., known as Maes Howe. Within the mound of Maes Howe is a chamber, one of the typical types of religious monuments of the Neolithic Era. Entered by a nine meter long, one meter high passage, the chamber is 4.6 square meters on the floor and three meters high in the center of the dome (2). The whole is constructed of massive slabs of local sandstone, some as long as four and a half meters and as heavy as thirty tons (1), which slope steadily inward to form a dome. The physical labour required for such a project is impressive, but the technical knowledge and cunning that the designers must have had is mind-boggling. The fact that these Stone Age people held the knowledge of the mathematics of thrust and counter-thrust to the degree that they could design and construct such a sophisticated structure in a way that has kept it standing for five thousand years should be enough to make us look at them in a new light.
Historians have long called Maes Howe the tomb of a “Priest-King” (1), simply because other Neolithic chamber sites were commonly used as tombs. Other chamber sites of the Orkneys, however, were used as mass tombs, not for individuals who could be associated with a particular leadership role or an upper class. As for Maes Howe, it is ridiculous to label it as a tomb at all as the only human remains found within it were a few tiny skull fragments. What, then, was the purpose of Maes Howe?
The passage of the chamber is of such a shape and co-ordination that the light of the sun enters it only for eighty-one days of the year: the Winter Solstice and the forty exact days before and after it. The passage itself is aligned perfectly with several menhirs, two stone circles, and the location of the setting sun on the shortest day of the year (2). Such alignments can hardly be coincidental, and were obviously carefully calculated and religiously observed. All things considered, it would appear that Maes Howe was not a place of burial, but rather a place of ceremony and worship. The alignments of the passage also bear testimony to the Neolithic Orcadian’s reverence of the sun and value of universal interconnectedness.
One of the stone circles with which the Maes Howe passage aligns is the Ring of Brodgar, 2.4 kilometers away. Originally comprised of sixty megalithic standing stones, equaling a total of twelve thousand tons of stone, the circle took an estimated eighty thousand hours of labour to complete. There can be little doubt that it was erected by a society that was in close co-operation and had enough surplus to afford so much time devoted to their beliefs. Again, we can only marvel at the mathematical accuracy of the design. The Ring is in the form of a perfect circle, and historians such as Professor Alexander Thom have concluded that the designers based the layout upon Pythagorean triangles of whole numbers. Looking again at astronomical alignments, it has often been proposed that the Ring of Brodgar was used as an astronomical observatory. It is interesting to note that many astronomically-based religions that we have record of associate the sun with masculine energies and the moon with feminine ones, and the Ring of Brodgar lays notably equal importance on both. The Ring is surrounded by a ditch, three meters deep by 9 meters wide, which is crossed by two entrance causeways. One causeway is in the South-East, aligning with the sunrise on the Summer Solstice, the other in the North-West, aligning with the Winter Solstice sunset. Of even more interest is that the site is positioned perfectly for the observation of the lunar cycles, most notably the major lunar ‘standstill’ which occurs only once every 18.61 years (2). That the people who erected these stones had the dedication and tenacity to make the long and laborious process of observing, calculating, and constructing these projects shows just how much they were capable of and the deep value that these sites embodied for them.
It is difficult to determine the exact nature of the rituals that took place at these religious sites, but they were almost certainly in correspondence with the Solstices, lunar standstills, and other astronomical events. The notion that sacrifices of humans or animals were made has become acknowledged as a fantasy which does not predate the 19th Century (1), and there is no evidence to support the existence of this practice. Some record of Norse and Celtic rituals which took place at similar Neolithic sites later in history can still be found (2). For example, the Norse practiced their marriage ceremonies in the Rings of Stenness and Brodgar. The bride would swear her oath of love to the groom in the Stenness Circle, before all of the gods, and the groom would do the same for the bride in the Ring of Brodgar. Then the two would hold hands through a now-destroyed menhir which had a hole through it, sealing the marriage. Another account tells of a Norseman passing nine times around the Ring of Brodgar on his knees as an act of either worship or penance. According to Julius Caesar in the 50’s B.C., the Celts of Britain held a great festival near Stonehenge once a year, which consisted of great revelry to celebrate the visitation of the “Great Goddess”, apparently their principal deity. It is unknown just how much these ceremonies reflect those of the builders, but they may offer us some insight into the nature of the earlier practices which may have influenced them.
It is difficult to discern why the monuments and settlements of the Orkneys were abandoned as they were, but they were surely left in a calm and deliberate way. The village of Skara Brae was ritually filled in with consecutive layers of the occupant’s belongings and midden so that it could not be reoccupied (2), just as the previous village that it was built on top of had been. It may be that a change in climate for the cooler and the clouding of the skies caused them to migrate to a more temperate climate with clearer skies to continue their astronomical observations. Some mysteries we cannot solve with anything more than speculation.
Silent as they are, the monuments of Neolithic Orkney can tell us much about those who erected them. They tell of a time and place where humans were not their own enemies. They tell of the extraordinary feats that humans can accomplish when they live in mutual co-operation. They tell of a people who, great as they were, felt honoured and humbled by the skies above them. They tell an amazing lesson which speaks to us across the millennia, a lesson as important today as it has ever been.


Reference Citations

1. Linklater, E. 1965. Orkney and Shetland: An Historical, Geographical, Social and Scenic Survey. p. 20-26. Robert Hale Ltd., London.

2. Marshall. 2004. Europe’s Lost Civilization: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Megaliths. p. 7-19. Headline Book Publishing, London.

3. Ingpen, R, and P. Wilkinson. 1990. Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places: The Life and Legends of Ancient Sites Around the World. p. 21-25. Viking Studio Books, United States of America.

Bibliography

Ingpen, Robert, and Phillip Wilkinson. Encyclopedia of Mysterious Places: The Life and Legends of Ancient Sites Around the World. United States of America: Viking Studio Books, 1990.

Linklater, Erik. Orkney and Shetland: An Historical, Geographical, Social and Scenic Survey. London, Great Britain: Robert Hale Ltd., 1965.

Marshall, Peter. Europe’s Lost Civilization: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Megaliths. London, Great Britain: Headline Book Publishing, 2004

Walker, Robert. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Don Mills, Canada: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Neolithic Europe. Wikipedia. March 18, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Europe.
A History of Communication Methodologies in the Western World

By Bradley Albert Clements


If someone wanted to communicate with another person in the modern world, how would they do so? There are various methods: one could e-mail them, write them a letter to be delivered by post, travel to their home to speak with them in person, or one could pick up a telephone and call them. Today these are simple methods that are not foreign to most people. However, with the ease of modern communication easily at hand, it is easy to forget that these technologies have been long in the making; growing throughout history upon the shoulders of pre-existing traditions and innovations.
Probably the first and most important of communication innovations was discovered by humanity’s early ancestors: speech. Anthropologists believe that early humans had the ability to communicate by speech 60,000 years ago (World Civilizations: A Comparative Study). Since then, language has been the primary method of inter-human communication. Oral traditions eventually developed the practice of verbally re-telling histories and mythologies. These traditions grew and soon became highly formalized and were often considered very sacred (First Nations Novel Study Module). Perhaps the pinnacle of oral tradition in Europe was the epic poetry and drama of the ancient Greeks - works of such artists as Socrates, Aesculus, Euripides and Homer - which were recited by memory. The popularity of oral tradition reached another high during the Middle Ages through the performances of the troubadours.
The spoken word gave virtually everyone the ability to communicate, but it had its limitations. The use of speech allowed anyone to speak with anyone else within shouting distance, but words could not be conveyed to a distant place or preserved for future reference. While the conventions of oral tradition attempted to perpetuate stories, and messenger were entrusted to the carrying of verbal news across geographical space, neither could be consistently relied upon. And so writing was developed. The idea of writing first emerged in ancient Sumer before 3000 B.C. (http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html), although visual representations of physical things could be seen in cave paintings as early as 35,000 years before (http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/rockandcaves.html). The basic writing that appeared in Sumer were originally pictographs, simplified representations of the things which they stood for. They were used to faithfully record trade agreements, and were thusly generally only striving to represent physical goods such as oxen, arrows, grain and bricks. Soon, however, the vocabulary of writing widened to include abstract and conceptual ideas. As this occurred the complexity of writing increased tremendously, resulting in such sophisticated systems as Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. As a way of simplifying writing, syllabic systems were developed, in which each symbol stood for a single syllable, the building-blocks of words. Writing was finally fully simplified by the ancient Phoencians in c. 1050 B.C. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#History) when the alphabet was invented and used to represent individual phonetic sounds. The Phoencians were a seafaring trading people of the ancient Mediterranean and they spread their new alphabet concept to many surrounding cultures, including the Greeks who later influenced the Romans (Lecture, Professor Robert Garland). The Romans used their adaptation of this writing across their Empire, spreading its use throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world.
Writing came to be used for all manner of records, whether economical, historical, personal, religious or communicative. It too, however, had its drawbacks. Illiterate populations vastly outnumbered those who could read throughout most of history, meaning that writing had a very limited audience. Those with the ability to read and write were regarded, at the very least, as notably intelligent, if not as mysterious and mystical. The rampancy of illiteracy was largely because of the shortage and expense of written material. Books were slow and tedious to write and copy by hand, a task that only literate and highly skilled craftsmen were capable of. It is estimated that, during the Middle Ages, it would take an entire year to copy a single Bible (Lecture, Dr. Kwakkel). These problems were minimized by the perfection of the printing press and movable type by Johannes Guttenberg around 1453 A.D. (World Civilizations: A Comparative Study) which made printed material quicker, cheaper, and easier to produce. More people from more social classes gained a reason and ability to read as printed material increased in quantity, accessibility, and reliability and communication became much more reliant on the written word. The ability for average people to communicate from place to place, to publish their ideas to a wide audience and to educate themselves strengthened the rise of democracy and the middle class.
The combined methods of communication which had been developed prior to the 20th Century made communication possible to a remarkable extent, but all of these forms were bound by their physicality. Oral communication was only possible face-to-face, and written material – whether copied or printed – had a physical form which had to be transported to the audience, or which the audience would have to transport themselves to. Innovations in telecommunications, developed in the 20th Century removed many of the physical limitations which had previously posed as barriers. The electric telegraph, first invented in 1809 and refined to usability by Samuel Morse in 1844, paved the way for the ground-breaking inventions to come. The telephone, generally credited to have been invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell (http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/telephone.htm), made it possible to transmit verbal messages unhindered by geographical separation. Around the end of the 19th Century, Guglielmo Marconi (http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm) proved and practiced the use of radio waves to transmit wireless messages and sounds through the use of radio waves, a discovery that led to the radio. The television made drama and other forms of oral tradition available to audiences around the world. Audio and audio-visual recordings had the ability to perpetuate oral traditions beyond the capacity that silent letters were capable of. With the development and cultivation of the internet in the 1970’s and 80’s, the ability of the general public to publish uninhibited information to a world-wide audience surpassed the degree that any previous innovation had achieved. New methods of direct communication became possible through the use of the internet, such as e-mail which allowed digital messages to be delivered instantly between any individuals with internet access.
It can be seen that inter-human communications have been developing for as long as they have existed, building upon the foundations of previous innovations. Writing could not have been developed without language, printing could not have come about without the methods of writing which preceded it, and telecommunications and the internet would probably have been impossible without all of the previous breakthroughs. While each consecutive innovation worked on the weaknesses of those which preceded it, no one technology has been universal enough to completely replace another. Whenever someone sends a letter or an e-mail, reads a book or a website, or chats with a friend in person or on the phone, they are tapping into a continually evolving heritage which is older than history itself.

Bibliography

Bridgeman, Joan. First Nations Novel Study Module. Victoria, British Columbia: Open
School BC, 2005.

Garland, Professor Robert. Lecture series: The Integrated History of Ancient Greece and
Rome. http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/2655216/The-Integrated-History-of
Ancient-Greece-and-Rome.

Homer, translated by Robert Fagles. The Iliad. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books
Ltd., 1998.

Psalm 7 from a 15th Century Book of Hours. The Illuminated Manuscript Company.
May 22, 2009.
http://www.illuminatedleaves.com/images/Spring%202008/5196mainlarge.jpg.

Internet. The Great Idea Finder. 1997-2007.
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/internet.htm.

Kwakkel, Dr. Erik. Lecture: Medieval Manuscripts. March 13, 2009.

Phoenician alphabet. Wikipedia. May 16, 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#History.

Radio. About.com. 2009. http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm.

Rocks and Caves. History of Visual Communications. May 18, 2009.
http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/rockandcaves.html.

Sumerian. Ancient Scripts. 1996-2007. http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html.

Telegraph. About.com. 2009.
http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/telegraph.htm.

Telephone. The Great Idea Finder. 1997-2007.
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/telephone.htm.

Walker, R. World Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Don Mills: Oxford University
Press, 1998.
The Enlightenment of the Arrow

The bow – a simple piece of flexible material, bent and strung under tension – has shaped human history. Our early ancestors of the Mesolithic Era painted depictions of hunters carrying it on cave walls. The gods of innumerable early mythologies carry it. The Pharaohs, god-kings of ancient Egypt, fought and hunted with it. The Tartars of the Mongolian steppes conquered vast areas of Europe and Asia with it. The yeomen of medieval England revolutionized the Western world with it. The Zen monks of Japan found enlightenment in it. Now, hundreds of young Canadians like myself take it up every Saturday morning to practice the sport which embodies the legacy of our ancestors.
Hockey may be the sport which best represents Canada, baseball may be the national pass-time of the United States, soccer may be popular in France and cricket in the United Kingdom, but if one were to search for a sport to which the entire world could be identified with, what would it be? Archery may be the only sport to which almost every country on Earth has its own traditional affiliation with. The bow and arrow is a weapon, a tool, a piece of sports equipment, which is native and integral to virtually every tribe, culture and civilization of the world. Australia is the only populated continent to which archery is not indigenous, but even there archery has flourished since its introduction. Every nation has its own unique history of archery, and many would appear to have invented the bow independently.
My own introduction to the sport of archery began in the Melanesian archipelago of Vanuatu, while visiting there with my family in 2003. There, on an island enrobed in rainforest, a native man made me a bow and a set of arrows. The bow was a long rounded staff of pale wood, tapered to sharp points at both ends where the cord of twisted banyan-tree bark was tied and looped. The arrows were of a straight, light, smooth cane, notched at one end to fit the string and bearing a large hardwood blunt on the other, which was traditionally intended to stun birds. It was with these, the most primal of weapons, that my love for archery was born.
Returning to my hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, I sought out an archery club where I might be able to pursue the sport further. I was fortunate to find the Victoria Bowmen, an international level club that had hosted several prestigious competitions and had an excellent Junior Olympian Program (JOP). There I received much beneficial coaching and integrated into a diverse group of fellow archers. Members of the club practiced all forms of archery, from traditional longbow to modern compound, and were of all ages and walks of life. I made friends not only of my own age, but also some as young as eight and as elderly as eighty. After a year in the club I began volunteering as a Junior Representative on the board of directors, helping to organize fun-shoots and other activities for the JOP. I also took courses in Judging and Coaching and became certified in both. This led me to become an assistant coach at several recreation centers in town, and to continue the cycle of teaching and learning.
Once I had gained a suitable degree of skill, experience and confidence I began to shoot in notable tournaments. The challenge and experience of the tournament inspired me to travel around the Province and compete on various levels. After less than a year of formally practicing I was off to Kamloops to take part in the B.C. Summer Games, which put me to the test and introduced me to young people of many disciplines of archery. It was a very educational experience which I enjoyed greatly.
Archery offers these experiences – and many others - to everyone. I myself am able to enjoy it despite having poor distance vision, and in my time coaching I have taught people with fused wrists, others with stiff backs, and one with no fingers. Other successful archers of whom I know shoot from wheel-chairs, or with the aid of a mechanical release mechanism due to the loss of an arm. Archery stands among the first sports in which women were permitted to compete in the Olympic Games, and an archery club in Ottawa was the first sports club in all of Canada which was intended solely for women. Throughout its history, archery has proven to be a remarkably inclusive, democratic sport.
Today, archery brings a discipline, a stillness, a communication to the mind, body and soul in a world where the ability to find that space is all too rare. Far from being the flashy, violent, exertive activity portrayed in films and video-games, it is a sport which allows young people to take control of their bodies and quite their minds. When one places an arrow upon the string of a bow and draws it to the jaw, one becomes aware that their entire life has lead up to the immediate moment, and that the ensuing shot bears the weight of all history. All of the hurry and rush of the modern world must come to a halt when the bow stands bent with the energy of a coiled snake. Then, without a sound, the string is gone. It is said that when one finds the space in which the arrow leaves the bow they have found the enlightenment of the universe.
This report was written as a Renaissance project in 2007.
Way of Life of the Haida Natives, First Nations of Haida Gwaii

A Report by Bradley A. Clements

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Social Organization
Social Structure
Village Structure
Family Life
Material Culture
The Gathering of Food
Housing
Transport
Warfare
Art and Ceremonies
Art and Dance
Potlatches
Conclusion
Post-European Changes
Bibliography

Introduction

Haida Gwaii is the main island of an archipelago, known now as the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the northern coast of British Columbia. Haida Gwaii, as are all of the Queen Charlottes, is covered in sub-tropical rainforest, abundant with western red cedar trees, berries, and fruit and game of many sorts. The islands are isolated from the coast by a broad belt of treacherous water, the Heckate Strait, which teams with halibut, rock-cod, and salmon.
Of these islands were born a people, their lineage stretching back over ten millennia. The archipelago was fertile soil for growing an advanced civilization – all of the resources that were necessary for life were abundant and close at hand, and the surrounding waters were more impregnable to enemies than any fortifications. In this report I will attempt to scratch the surface of the mountain of lore and history surrounding these people, and, perhaps, reveal to you some of the wonders of their world.

Social Organization

Social Structure
The Haida are one of the oldest ethnic groups still existing in North America. Exact dates cannot be confirmed, and resources disagree on the exact age of the Haida culture, but we can expect that it is somewhere between 9,000 and 13,000 years old, possibly older. Most of the major villages are located on Haida Gwaii, but others are scattered throughout the islands – more than one hundred of them - and in outposts on the mainland coast and, more recently, on some of the islands of southern Alaska. The Charlottes’ coastal areas are known to be quite violent – large surf and harsh winds pound much of the shoreline – so villages were located in sheltered coves and stream-deltas.
The Haida had a distinct language unto themselves, and oral tradition, including dances, songs, story-telling, and art, was very important. Every man with a notable lineage was expected to be able to recite it all, sometimes back as far as the peopling of the islands. Their society was fundamentally hierarchical, divided into castes of nobles, shamans, commoners, and slaves. Nobles owned rights to plots of land for hunting, gathering, building, and logging, and grounds for fishing or laying fish-traps, and commoners had to pay to use the noble’s lands. Nobles were people who were expected to know how to manage wealth, conserve the lands that they used, have a respectable lineage, own a house with a housepole, and to give potlatches. Commoners did not own land rights and were not allowed to have a housepole. Commoners were the majority of the population and shared in group activities and work. Some commoners were prestigious artisans, had links to the lineage of a noble, or had shamanistic powers, and were respected above their fellow commoners, but they still had the same rights. Slaves were usually prisoners of war, and could be sold, killed, or given away. They were the base working class and were owned by nobles, but they could obtain freedom if they expressed outstanding skills in art or hunting.
The Haida were divided into clans. Clans were descendants of a common ancestor and owned rights to territory, dances, songs, and crests. The two largest clans were the Eagles and the Ravens, who lived in a state of mutual peace. They both relied on each other in many ways – they traded goods of cultural importance and cross-married between clans. Within each moiety, members of the different lineages resided at opposite ends of the village. Each was made up of a number of houses, and the Eagles included twenty-three families, and the Ravens, twelve. They both owned the rights to certain crests and displayed their specific clan-crests often in their artwork (an eagle for the Eagles, a raven for the Ravens). It was believed that the clan ancestors had obtained the crests from the animal spirits that they represented. All land mammal crests, apart from the beaver, are property of the Ravens, but all sea creature and bird crests, besides the cormorant, heron, hawk, and humming bird. There were many traditions two keep the two co-operative – for example, if an eagle chief died, the Ravens would arrange the funeral and the Eagles would thank them by giving a potlatch in their honor. All of the clan chiefs of a village formed a council, with the head chief of the clan in the majority acting as the village chief, but if his respectability was not kept intact he could be replaced.

Village Structure
There were more than one hundred Haida villages throughout the Queen Charlottes, the major ones including the villages of Skungwai, Cloak Bay, Kiusta, Dadens, Yaku, Masset, Yan, Kayung, and Skidgate. Villages were always built on the shoreline, so safe and protected coves were ideal sites. The layout usually consisted of two or more rows of longhouses that stretched along the beach, and the house of the chief was the largest of the village and located in the center of the first row. An average longhouse could shelter fifteen or twenty families, but a particularly large one could hold as much as twice that many. The house chief and his intimate family had their private area in the back of the longhouse. The fireplace in the center of the house was considered public area for cooking, working, and socializing. Families set up screens or partitions to mark their private space.
(see also Social Structure and Family Structure)
Family Structure
The society of the Haida people was matrilineal – children traced their ancestry through their mother’s side of the family. A man inherited his property from his mother’s family and his social rank from an uncle on his mother’s side, who was considered the family head. Property, names, titles, crests, masks, songs, and dances were hereditary privileges. Hospitality was expected to be extended to all members of the family, and war could not be waged upon them. A household often included thirty to forty members, about ten closely related families, but an important chief’s household sometimes included more than one hundred individuals. Each household had an acknowledged chief who led them in peacetime, and another ‘war-chief’ who led them in time of dispute.
When a woman was to give birth there were many taboos and rituals put in place to ensure a healthy delivery and a woman from the baby’s father’s family assisted in the birth. The arrival of a baby was greatly rejoiced, but girls were especially favored, as they carried lineage. A baby would be named after a relative in the paternal grandfather’s family and a small feast celebrated the name-giving. Babies had their ears were pierced when they were four days old, and tattoos followed as they grew older. Boys would have their arms, legs, chest, and back tattooed, and women would be tattooed on their arms and legs. When boys reached their childhood the father began teaching them with oral tradition, but they moved to their maternal uncle’s house at an early age to continue their teaching. It was important for them to learn their family’s heritage and proper social conduct. Their uncles also had the job of ‘toughening them up’, by making them complete such tasks as swimming in the winter. Swimming was an important skill, and they were required to eat dragonfly wings and suck on duck-bills to make them swift in the water and give them strong lungs. Girls were instructed by their mothers in cooking, loom-work, childcare, and in gathering spruce-roots, cedar bark, berries, and seaweed.
When a girl came of age she had to be part of the coming of age ceremony. She would be secluded behind a screen in her parent’s house and used a stone for a pillow, ate little, could not drink water, could not approach the house fire, could not talk or laugh, was kept away from implements of hunting and gambling, and was cared for by the sisters of her father. She would then have her lower lip pierced to wear a labret, the size of which reflected her social standing, as did the duration of her seclusion. When the ceremony was over she was ritually cleansed. The boys did not have a formal coming-of-age ceremony. Parents would arrange their children’s marriages when they were still in their childhood, or even infancy. If the couple was married young, their parents made the arrangements, but if they were older this was done by the man’s family and the woman’s parents and maternal uncle.
The ceremonies of death were the most elaborate. The higher the rank of the deceased, the more elaborate the ceremony. The women of the family of the deceased’s father had the job of cleaning, dressing, and painting the face of the body, which was then displayed amidst his/her material property at the rear of the house, in a coffin which had been built by the men of the deceased’s father’s family. People could then walk past the body and pay their respects to it. The body was kept in the house until the funeral was ready, when it was place under a mortuary totem. A man’s funeral was prepared by his heir whereas a woman’s was prepared by her husband. When a man died, his younger brothers and nephews inherited everything, leaving the widow, usually, with nothing but a empty house. When a woman died, her daughters inherited all of her former belongings. The spouse of the deceased fasted, and his/her friends and family cut their hair and blackened their faces with charcoal. At the funeral, a reincarnation promise was made, stating who would give birth to him/her in his/her next life. After the funeral potlatch, it was believed that the dead was carried to the Land of Souls in a beautiful canoe.
(See also Village Structure and Social Structure)

Material Culture

The Gathering of Food
The cultures of the Northwest Coast are unique in that they have become a very sophisticated civilization without the help of agriculture. This was partially due to the nature of their environment, this being abundant with food, housing, and clothing supplies. However, to take full advantage of this they had to do ‘Seasonal Rounds’, collecting what they needed from various sites at different times of the year - when and where what they needed was abundant.
The winter months were spent at home in a winter village, making and repairing tools and telling tales. By spring time, food that had been gathered the previous year began to run short, so the village would break up into family or house groups and go gathering. Bases were often set up at various gathering locations to serve as a temporary village and food storage site.
Staples that were gathered included seasonal fruits, nuts, barriers, bird’s eggs, oysters, mussels, clams, and others. Fish was probably the most important staple, especially salmon, halibut, black cod, eulachons, herring, and sturgeon. Salmon were dried or smoked and eaten all year around. Yakun River and Copper Bay were two of the most sought-for salmon fishing sights. Long canoe trips were made to the Nass River on the mainland to catch eulachons, which were used to make an oil that was eaten. Nets, hooks, lines, and traps were some of the implements used by the Haida for fishing, and sometimes, especially with salmon when they crowded the rivers, fish could even be caught by hand. Seals, sea-lions, and otters were commonly hunted, but, unlike some Westcoast peoples, the Haida only caught whales when they were naturally washed ashore. Deer, caribou, land-otters, and black bears were the most common land game. The Haida also traded with other natives for food that they could not get locally.
It was very important to the natives to leave the balance of nature undisturbed, for they knew that they relied on it and its health meant their wellbeing.

Housing
If salmon was the center of Haida diet, then cedar was the center of Haida shelter. Every part of the longhouse was made of it, from the frame to the sheathing to the roof. Longhouses ranged in size from twenty to sixty feet in length, and could house large numbers of people.
The frame was heavy and durable, consisting of corner posts supporting massive roof beams. Logs were notched and fitted together with extraordinary accuracy. The walls were made of split planks, and the roof was shingled with cedar bark or overlapping planks. Adzes, mauls, and wedges were some of the most common tools used. Lower quality shelters, such as canoe sheds and the houses of the lower-class commoners were usually roofed with cedar bark, which had to be replaced often. Support pillars of longhouses were elaborately decorated, and eventually the frontal house pole evolved out of them, which, with time, gave birth to the totem pole, some of which stood over fifty feet tall. The crests of the clan and family who inhabited the longhouse were incorporated in the design of the pole, together with myths involving them. The lower classes were forbidden from having house poles, but were allowed to decorate their lodgings with paint. It was believed that the art of housebuilding was divinely gifted to the Haida from the Raven, after he had stolen the knowledge from the Beaver.
(see also Village Structure)

Transportation
Transportation was by foot on land and by canoe by sea. Canoes were dug out of single cedar logs, and were finely crafted and sometimes decorated. They were extremely seaworthy and designed for long sea voyages. Large canoes could be over sixty feet long and could carry fifty people. Smaller canoes were used for fishing and short-distance transportation. Ceremonial canoes were often decorated with the crest of the family, as were some war canoes.

Warfare
The Haida were known to the neighboring peoples as fearsome warriors who were renowned for surprise attacks, great seamanship, and superior war canoes. The Charlottes were a safe haven from retaliation, blocked by the strait that only they dared to cross. Even so, fortresses were sometimes built some of which were credited by Captain James Cook to resemble the Maori pas of New Zealand. After the arrival of white-men swivel-guns were mounted on canoe bows, and their fortresses were armed with canons that defied even the Europeans who had introduced them. Haida warriors wore round helmets with wooden visors, breast-plates of wooden slates, and tough sea-lion or elk-leather tunics which were emblazoned with their family crests. War was considered a ceremonial act, and was mainly centered on the capturing of slaves.

Art and Ceremonies

Art
The Haida, it seems, did not really have such a thing as ‘art for art’s sake’, but they apparently enjoyed decorated anything that could be decorated – clothing, boxes, houses, canoes, implements, gambling sticks, ext. Most of this decoration depicted myths and stories, or family and clan crests. Art was often created as gifts to other families, clans, or nations, as well as for themselves.
Woodcarving was one very popular art form, and included masks, poles, bowls, boxes, canoes, and similar things, both in full size and as models. Dance masks were made to be worn by dancers to depict a character, and often could be mechanically operated to, for example, make a raven snap his beak or an orca paddle with its fins. Their totem poles and house poles could reach fifty feet in height, all of which was beautifully carved and painted. Boxes were used to store personal belongings in and varied in size from large chests to little cases. So fine was the workmanship that some carvers could make boxes that were completely waterproof, even when submerged under water.
Jewelry, especially bracelets, were made of precious metals such as copper, silver, or gold. They were engraved with designs and then beaten into shape.
Hand weaving was done by the women, who used it to make cloaks, rain hats, dance hats, baskets, mats, screens, wraps, and cordage. Spruce roots, the inside bark of young cedars, and other wood and grass fibers, were used to weave with. Some methods included checkerwork and twilled pleating. Some of the most popular forms of hand weaving were in basketry and hat making, where elegant simplicity was the goal. Baskets could be made in a wide variety of different styles, shapes, and sizes, some of which could be made watertight. Spruce-root baskets often had contrasting bands of dyed roots, whereas hat designs were usually skip-stitched or painted on. Haida hat makers wove from the crown and worked down to the brim, resting the forming hat on their knees.

Dance
Dances were an important form of oral tradition, in which the legends of their families or clans were acted out. Dancers wore magnificent masks and costumes to help them act the part of the character he was portraying. Dances were often considered as property and could only be performed by those that had rights to it, and they could be given or inherited. Most dances followed strict guidelines as to how it was to be preformed, but others were improvised. Dances usually followed the beat of drums and singers.

Ceremonies
There were many different ceremonies for different occasions among the Haida people – the birth of an heir, the building of a house, the raising of a totem, the death of a chief – but most of them took the form of ‘potlatches’. The word potlatch is derived from the Chinook “to give”. Status and wealth were very important, and the potlatch was a method of displaying it. Potlatches included the performances of dances, the eating of huge feasts, and the destruction or giving away of many gifts, including masks, expensive mountain goat wool, slaves, canoes, blankets, food, coppers, boxes, and, the most valuable gift of all, eulachon oil. Through potlatches wealth and food was distributed throughout the populence so that the rich didn’t get richer and the poor didn’t get poorer. They were usually held in the winter when people had time, as some guests would come from far away. When guests arrived they would come in ceremonial canoes and singing traditional songs.
Inherited rank chose where guests were seated. A high ranking man would devout years of hard work to aquire enough wealth to give away at a potlatch, as no man could be considered a noble had he not given a potlatch. The more a potlatches a man gave, and the more he gave away at each one, the more his social standing rose. To except a gift was to acknowledge the hosts standing. The guests were given large amounts to eat – seal, bear, and berries preserved in fish oil – and were expected to eat as much, or more, than possible. Speakers would retell family history, praise the host, and ridicule guests had they not eaten all of their food or had not expressed sufficient thanks for their gifts. Potlatches were sometimes likened to battles, as two men who were struggling for higher rank than each other would continuously host them. After a potlatch, the host would be left poverty-stricken, but soon someone else would invite him to a potlatch and he would regain much of his former wealth.

Conclusion

The Arrival of Europeans
The arrival of Europeans brought and disease decimated the populations of Westcoast peoples. The Haida were not so easily controlled as some others – they sometimes raided European ships, coming out by canoe at night. When the white-men retaliated to such attacks, they often found that the fierce warriors in their strategically placed fortresses, which were now armed with firepower, overpowered them. However, missionaries eventually subdued the outgoing natives, and peace was generally had. Threats to their culture, such as the confiscation of cultural items and the banning of potlatches discontented the people, and the natives actively protested the logging of their islands.
Today, most of the major Haida villages of old lay deserted, but their culture is re-emerging. The language, art, dance, stories, and other traditions are coming back. They are a reminder of one of the many sophisticated cultures of the world that is not to be taken for granted.

Note: More effort was made to make this report brief than to elaborate on writing technique, so I apologize for the unattractive writing style.

Bibliography

Bial, Raymond. The Haida Tarrytown, NY: Benchmark Books, 2001

Marilees, Andrew. Haida Gwaii: Queen Charlotte Islands Halifax, NS: Nimbus Publishing, 2006

Drew, Leslie. Haida: their Art and Culture Surrey, B.C.: Hancock House Publishers, 1969

Cranny, Michael. Crossroads: A Meeting of Nations Toronto, Canada: Prentice Hall, 1998

June 21, 2009

Past Letters

Here are copies of most of the letters that we sent durring and after our trip around the Pacific. Something you can read between other novels!

Bradley


The Trip of S/V "Silent Sound"

Letters sent from Bradley A. Clements and Stella Holliday from Silent Sound's trip around the Pacific Ocean in the years 2000 - 2005 A.D.

BC Coast

June 17, 2000
By Bradley
Age 10

We went to the U'Mista Cultural Centre at Alert Bay. We went to a potlatch at the Big House. You should have seen it. There was lots of food, dancing, singing and masks.

At Port Hardy there was a boat fire and it was almost right beside us. There was nobody home when it first started. We were down below and we heard somebody shout "Fire, fire". We ran up on deck and owner came running to his boat and opened the door. Smoke bellowed out. He went in and came out again coughing and spluttering and called for fire extinguishers. Everybody brought some including us. We called 911, too. A few minutes later the fire was out, and right after the firefighters arrived.

We went to Pine Island a few days later. On the way we saw two porpoises. They played around our bow. One we kept on missing by a foot or two. The other one I almost touched once. At Pine Island Lightstation there were six kids in one family. They had cut down a rotten tree and made three forts out of it. It wouldn't be hard to mistake two of the boys and one of the girls for birdwatchers. My mother's uncle used to be the lightkeeper here. Two of the kids had remote control monster trucks and one of them let me use his. They were really cool. One of the boys gave me two endangered species coins - a timberwolf and a leatherbacked turtle. My grandma's grave is here. We saw it. The kids called the place where it is Lilyvale because there are lots of lilies. On the way back we saw a nest in a tree with three baby birds.

We saw a motorboat and there were two people in it waving lifejackets and paddling. We sailed over to see what the problem was. Their motor had conked out. So we started towing them. When we got to Klemtu a policeman and a by-law officer were waiting and helped us tie up them and ourselves. They said that they had been reported overdue and there was a call out on the radio, but hadn't been listening.

We went past Butedale where there are a lot of broken-down houses. Some had fallen through the wharf, some had fallen on top of each other and some looked as if a meteor had gone into the middle of them. There was only one house that wasn't broken down and it was only half built.

We went to Bishop Bay and went to the hotsprings three days in a row. Dad painted a fungus white and painted "Silent Sound" and our names on it and put it up in the shelter over the hotspring bathing pool. We saw lots and lots of waterfalls. Soon we will be in Alaska.



May 10, 2000
By Stella

We are currently in Alert Bay visiting friends, bike riding and waiting for a 50th birthday party and a potlatch on Saturday.

We left downtown Victoria on April 1 after Stella’s last day of work on March 31. We visited our old neighbours at Hidden Harbour Marina that night and then went to Sidney Spit and explored a bit the next morning. Bradley’s friend, Calen, who was with us for three days dug up two horse clams which made a good chowder. We then spent several days in Canoe Cove tied up to “Pelin” replacing diesel heater carburetor and working on injectors.

We then visited in Deep Cove before returning to Canoe Cove for injector and continuing to Russell Island. We bushwhacked around this small island which Ray’s parents used to caretake (now part of Gulf Island Marine Legacy Park). We visited on Saltspring Island and spent a night in Clam Bay before crossing to Vancouver in light wind and rain on April 13. We anchored in False Creek near old Victoria neighbours “Freedom Dancer” and “Daedalus”.

We spent 10 days in Vancouver visiting friends and relatives, aquarium, Science World, taking friends for day sails, an overnight trip to Deep Cove (N. Van) and one to Snug Cove (Bowen Island).

We had a nice sail to Pender Harbour picking up Ray’s brother, Rick, off the beach of Davis Bay. We visited with Stella’s brother, John, while sitting out a gale and then went through the Skookumchuck Rapids to Porpoise Bay (Sechelt). Harry had his 4th birthday (April 28) at his grandmother’s with three uncles and two aunts also. Ray did some inside painting - too wet to do outside. On to Blind Bay on May 3 and a fast downwind sail to Powell River the next day. Some sailing and calm nights in Galley Bay, Squirrel Cove (great lagoon for dinghy) and Owen Bay - first time through Hole-in-the-Wall rapids even for Stella.

We spend three days and nights at Port Neville visiting Lily (86), Lorna (about 50) and Erica (13). Very tame deer to handfeed and sandy beach - but cold wind and water.

We poked through narrow channels to Minstrel Island, Potts Lagoon, Mamalilaculla (native burial area - black bear on beach and first fish of year (cod) to Mitchell Bay on Malcolm Island. Good bike riding place and now over to Alert Bay.

The boat is running well, only one day of seasickness for kids. Kate had an accidental swim at Snug Cove. Have seen hummingbirds, eagles, loons, various other birds, bear, whales, elephant seal, sea otters, mink - not may fish.


Alaska

August 7, 2000
By Stella

Ray's childhood friend, Andrew Mathisen, arrived on the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert in the late evening of June 19. We left early the next afternoon in light rain and motorsailed to Foggy Bay, Alaska. The GPS started losing satellites and not working on batteries as we approached the border, but I was able to get it up and running again just in time to show when we crossed the imaginary line in Dixon Entrance from Canada to the U.S.

The next day we motorsailed to Ketchikan, the southernmost port of entry in Alaska. Both we could have sailed, but had deadlines of dark and Customs and Immigration office closing times. We arrived in Ketchikan at 4:50 p.m. and I ran for the Federal Bldg. hoping to get in before closing time. There were several people at the Immigration office so I went into Customs and got a cruising permit for about 6 weeks. No questions about goods on board. Then I looked at their clock - 4:00. It thought maybe they were on standard time, but no, it was Alaska Daylight Time so I had an hour to spare! Immigration wanted to see all the bodies. I had come alone because I thought no one else was allowed ashore until we were cleared. This is our first "foreign" trip with the boat. So back to the boat for the rest of the gang. Passports stamped and no questions except "Any stowaways?" which surprised us all. We walked around town and watched one of the two cruiseships pull out. We found there are between one and four cruise ships a day. They all arrive in the morning and leave by afternoon or evening and the town goes back to being quite deserted. Gold and jewelry shops everywhere. Very touristy and expensive even before the exchange. We didn't buy much or eat out.

We stayed three nights as Ray got a fishing license and a 24 hour salmon tag to try his luck at the King (Chinook) salmon pooling at the mouth of Ketchikan Creek. We saw some whoppers landed - 20 to 25 pounds, but he only lost two lures and almost his whole line and three fish. We explored the trails and lots of stairs up the hillsides and Harry and I walked through the short tunnel. Internet was $3.00 U.S. for 15 minutes, $5.00 for 50 mins. after free in B.C. or $2.00 Can./hr in Prince Rupert so I'm saving this for better rates! (P.S. Great idea - {Petersburg was $10.00/hr so I’m still waiting).

Then on to Meyer's Chuck (what a name!) for the night. Nice sail and second mainly sunny day which apparently is very unusual up here. Powering on to Port Protection so named by Capt. Vancouver who was glad to find it. It got late and wind and sea picking up a bit so we called a boat that we saw heading into Red Bay which we were just about to pass by and asked if we could follow him in as we didn’t have a detailed chart of the narrow, kelp strewn entrance. That worked and we anchored in a sheltered part of the bay and watched a bear on the beach. The next day we continued on to Port Protection and checked out the tide grid, but decided not to put the boat on it as we weren’t sure where the rudder would come on the cross pieces. The people were very friendly. One fisherman offered us three large salmon steaks just as I put half a salmon that Andrew had bought from someone else for $5. on the BBQ. Tom gave us his S.E. Alaska CD to download all area charts onto our computer which allows us to go places we hadn’t planned on without paying $23. a chart. He also convinced us to take to outside route up until the leak in the head pump assembly got worse and charging system appeared to be doing strange things in addition to the oil pressure gauge having ceased to work. Due to all that we decided to go back to plan A and sailed the next day for Peterburg and motored up the 20-mile long Wrangell Narrows which has over 60 markers and buoys which are mostly lit at night in red and green earning it the nickname of “Christmas Tree Lane”.

Petersburg has no cruiseships which makes it a resource based economy and a very different town than Ketchikan. Lots of fishboats and canneries. Ray found a new head (“toilet” for the unnautical) and carried it home with Andrew making “man with two heads” jokes all the way. Found wire that had come off oil pressure gauge and re-connected it. Left on Canada Day for our first glacier in Thomas Bay. I made a cake and Bradley decorated it. Water turned from blue to green to almost white and wind got cold. Got close to end of inlet, but it’s not a tidewater glacier so we couldn’t get too close and there were no icebergs although we had seen some in distance from glacier up the next inlet. Scenery Cove was scenic! Very high mountains with snow and landslides and sun and blue sky - a beautiful Canada Day in Alaska. We even sang Happy Birthday to Canada!!!

The following day the engine revved and few times and stopped about 1:40 p.m. as we motorsailed up Frederick Sound. I tacked across the sound and back while Ray and Andrew replaced fuel filters and tried to track down the problem. I put out a call on the radio and the Coast Guard radio station in Juneau retransmitted it with the wrong position co-ordinates. A 103 ft. power yacht came over, but we didn’t want a tow then as sailing conditions were good. About 6 p.m. as the wind dropped considerably what should appear around Cape Fanshaw but an U.S. coast guard cutter. I called them on the radio and explained our situation. The captain promptly sent over his chief engineer and assistant and two others to man the Zodiac. Two hours later after several radio calls from the Liberty asking how long it would take, the Zodiac started to tow us to an anchorage which we had drifted to within three miles of. They were trying to catch slack tide in Wrangell Narrows and the captain had originally given them 20 minutes to assist us. On the way in they finally finished installing our spare fuel lift pump and bleeding the fuel system and to our great relief the engine finally started. They rushed off taking some of our tools and leaving one of theirs and we powered the last mile to anchor.

The next day was over 11 hours of powering against a light wind seeing our first up close icebergs off Tracy Arm a distant glacier and lots of high snowy peaks. Taku Harbour was very sheltered with free State float and only one other boat. Cannery ruins and a short boardwalk made an interesting evening stroll.
One the morning on July 4 I bought a sockeye salmon from a fisherman who had arrived in the night and we stopped at a beach on the way into Juneau. Ray and Andrew actually went swimming!! We anchored off Juneau as we couldn’t get under the bridge with the high tide. We BBQ’d the salmon and waited for the fireworks display that never came. Turns out it was at midnight the previous night!

On the morning low tide we went nervously under the bridge with a few feet to spare and docked with 3 or 4 feet of water under the keel. We delivered a letter of thanks to the Coast Guard Commander’s office and did some errands in town. We had an electrician down to the boat the next morning to check over the charging system. A loose connection or two and a few minors adjustments and everything seemed to be in order. We slipped out under the bridge just after a low tide a bit higher than yesterday’s. Some fog and drizzle on way to Auke Bay which is a suburb of Juneau, but a long way by boat around Douglas Is.

We took a city bus to see the Mendenhall Glacier - still a good walk from bus stop. Kids liked the moraine beach and waterfall nearby. Big lake with icebergs was interesting. Nice hike along the shore and cab to mall for provisions and back to the boat as bus is every 2 hours. That evening I found out by phone that my Uncle Frank (my dad’s brother-in-law) had died on June 30 and the funeral had already taken place in Vancouver.

On July 8 we left for Tenakee Springs seeing a pod of killer whales and arriving in the late evening. One advantage of north latitudes is longer daylight on summer evenings. The hotsprings have men’s hours (15 hours a day) and women’s (9 hours). We arrived about 5 minutes before men’s hours started at l0 p.m. so Ray and the kids went in and I returned to the boat. They met a boy Bradley’s age and the kids played with him and his 6 year old sister the next day. They call the settlement City of Tenakee Springs although the population is about 110. Very quaint, no cars, lots of bikes and some all terrain vehicles. One path along water with houses on each side. One store, one café/gift shop, one tavern and the bath house.

We stayed two nights and then sailed for Glacier Bay going all afternoon and anchoring at l:40 a.m.off the park headquarters in Bartlett Cove. We only had a three-day pass and you have to arrive on the pre-arranged date or you lose out - 12:01 a.m. is O.K. but not before. Later that morning we went to the orientation on video and visited the museum at the Lodge before proceeding up the bay. We saw hundreds of sea otters feeding in the tide rip all around us, several sea lions in and out of the water on an island whose cliffs were covered with terns nesting and puffins swimming all around. Also lots of humpback whale feeding in close along the shore. Boats are not supposed to go within 1 mile of shore so as not to disturb them. We spent the night in Blue Mouse Cove moving to the other side in the middle of the night when we got tired of waves slapping under the stern. Of course they didn’t start until well after bedtime. The next day was the highlight with several glaciers, countless icebergs and landscapes more like moonscapes. All of Glacier Bay was full of ice when Capt. Vancouver sailed by 1794 and now some of the glaciers are 65 miles back from the entrance to the bay. We explored Reid Inlet which is about 2 miles long ending in the Reid Glacier. I picked up some icebergs (bergy bits) with the fish net and we packed the fridge, put some in a bucket with the beer, some on the side deck for the kids to play with and some in our lemonade. Talk about old ice cubes! We came upon Lamplugh Glacier suddenly around a point. It wasn’t really a surprise since a cruise ship was parked right off it cameras flashing away. We continued up Johns Hopkins Inlet but didn’t dare approach its glacier too closely as the inlet was a mass of ice bergs drifting on the tide and we didn’t want to plow through them. We put Andrew off in the dinghy to take pictures of the boat with the bergs and glacier and then retreated to Reid Inlet for the night.

The next morning we rowed across the inlet and walked up to the glacier. Ray and Andrew climbed up aways beside it. The beach in front of it was mounded with silt and stones it had pushed ahead of it and the ice on the front corner was extremely dirty. Pieces of ice of various sizes fall of almost continuously. The wind came up while we were there and Ray and Bradley had to row across and bring Silent Sound over, as it was too rough for everyone to cross in the dinghy. The alternator packed it in somewhere around that time. We went to park headquarters back at Bartlett Cove and anchored for the night although our time was up and we should have left the park. The next morning we moved to their float and replaced the alternator leaving at 4:00 p.m. for Swanson Harbour and then back to Auke Bay the following day. Andrew took the ferry south after we put the boat on the tide grid in the middle of the night. All went well and after an exhausting day and two nights the prop zinc was changed, bottom cleaned and painted, barnacles removed from knot meter that had stopped it from turning, and through hulls serviced. We floated off at 1 a.m. on July 17 and moved back to the float. We spent the day getting to leave for Skagway and points north.

We had to get up at 5 a.m. to be at the ferry terminal at 6 although the ferry didn’t leave till 7. The ferry stopped in Haines. We saw a humpback whale slapping its tail on the surface and the kids enjoyed the play area although it wasn’t nearly as good as on B.C. ferries. We arrived in Skagway at 2:15 and were picked up by the hotel van (they should for the price). We explored Skagway which is only a few blocks long and three or four blocks wide. The kids stayed up till late evening even though they’d been up so early. We had to get up at 7 a.m. the next morning to catch the White Pass and Yukon Route train to Fraser, B.C. It follows one of the routes to sourdoughs used to get to the Klondike gold fields in 1898-9 before the train started running. The last spike centennial was July 29, 2000- only a few days after we went on it. There are two tunnels, several bridges, views down the valley back to Skagway and on the actual White Pass trail including Dead Horse Gulch and the wagon road which tried to compete with the railway. The summit is a strange landscape of glacial rock and scrubby bushes and lakes and over 2800 feet. We transferred to a bus to Whitehorse. We visited the S.S. Klondike- a Yukon River sternwheeler which is a National Historic site and had a visit with my cousin Rex and his friend, Erica at our motel.

The next day we rented a car and drove to Dawson City - over 500 km. We found out that day that their music festival was about to start and were lucky to get a room for the night so decided to only stay one night - very expensive. We attended a Robert Service reading which Bradley greatly enjoyed. It was still perfectly light at midnight making the hard to get the kids to bed. The next day we visited the cabins of Robert Service and Jack London and saw where Pierre Berton lived before heading to the goldfields of Bonanza Creek for a gold panning lesson and a try in the creek with a rented pan. Like many others before us, we didn’t get rich. We headed back to Whitehorse arriving at ll:15 p.m. - shortly after sunset.

The next morning we visited the MacBride Museum before catching the bus back to Skagway and rushing down to the ferry terminal since we didn’t have a reservation or an hour before it left. We reached Auke Bay at 11:15 p.m. and spent over an hour waiting for a cab to go a few miles. The boat and Kate were fine having been looked after by a woman on another boat. We spent a few days working on boat and provisions. The alternator we’d left to be repaired hadn’t been for lack of a part. We left on July 26 spending a night in peaceful Taku Harbour before going to Tracy Arm for one last look at glaciers (two) and icebergs (lots) and waterfalls (lots) and cliffs, high mountains and valleys - very majestic. From there we went to Warm Springs Bay on Baranof Island stopping in beautiful Chapin Bay on Admiralty Island for the night after a squally wet day.

The warm springs were hotter than the hot springs we had been to. The kids barely got wet, but were right beside a raging rapids which were a beautiful back drop and had pools of very cold water you could cool off with. The next day was a short one at under 20 miles as it was getting a bit rough so that kids were starting to feel sick and it was pouring rain so we decided to take refuge in Red Bluff Bay. That was fine until we went to bed minutes before the wind decided to howl through between the islands and we were worried about being to close to shore. We stayed up and re-anchored, went out of the bay and finally re-anchored in a different spot at 5 a.m. after the wind died out suddenly and finally got to sleep a few hours before the kids woke up having slept through everything.

That afternoon we continued south along the spectacular east coast of Baranof Island to Little Port Walter and got up early the next morning to make a small ocean crossing to Coronation Island where we anchored in Egg Harbour and heard the family conversation of sea otters for the first time - quite like the barking and growling of dogs. We toasted marshmallows with fire lit with our garbage and walked the deserted beach. We left early the next morning to go around the outside of Coronation Is. to see the nesting cliffs at Helm Pt. which go up 1000 ft. from the water. Both the kids were sick briefly in the ocean swell, but recovered quickly. It was a beautiful sunny day and we were able to sail for awhile and then went quickly with the tide through narrow, scenic El Capitan Passage. We are going from an area of mainly Russian names to Spanish ones. We anchored after over 12 hours of travelling.

The next day we followed more narrow passages to the City of Craig - a small fishing, canning town. We left late the following afternoon and continued the following day through more narrows and wider straits down to the Barrier Islands which are near the south end of Prince of Wales Island which reaches within a couple of miles of the U.S.-Canada border. Another 12 hour day took us down wind and with the ocean swell through Dixon Entrance to Dundas Island on the Canadian side and on to Prince Rupert ending with a nice sail through narrow, tortuous passage right into Prince Rupert Harbour.


June 30th, 2000
By Bradley
Age 10

We're finally in Alaska!! We're kicking the can in Ketchikan. We're Gypsies enroute to Juneau.
We' ll be scallywags in Skagway. Anyways...we're lasting in Alaska!

While in Ketchikan Dad bought a fishing license for him and I. He also bought some hooks and three buzz bombs. Dad caught three (3) Chinook Salmon (BIG ONES!) but...they all got away- two of them took the buzz-bomb lures with them as keepsakes. I caught a bullhead that didn't get way- I let it go! Later, after leaving Ketchikan, Dad caught a small salmon and quickly ate the evidence.

We saw a whole pod of Dall's porpoise playing around our bow and another one in the distance and two pods of whales! At Foggy Bay we saw a bear near where we were anchored. We didn't go ashore. The same thing happened in Red Bay. We saw the same pod of killer whales twice on the way to Ketchikan and we saw some humpback whales' flukes, tails and spouts near Port Protection where there was a man who built lots of model boats which he set sailing and named for cartoon characters. Most of them where found by people out at sea. When we were there we saw a little yellow one called the "Betty Boop sloop". We saw it twice - once it came right near Silent Sound and it sailed over and stuck on a rock and the next day we saw it sail from the dock, under the wharf to the other side of the bay and back again. We met the man that made them. He had some friends and they gave him some salmon and he have half of one to us. It was boneless.

Our new crew member, Andrew, is going to teach me calligraphy and how to make maps look very, very old. Dad and him used to do calligraphy together when they were kids. Mum found dad`s old nib pens and we bought some ink and I'm practising writing olde English lettering. We are now in Petersburg
dad bought a new toilet ( Harry was the ferst one to use it....and he broke it!. We saw a Viking ship a real one but it wasn't in the water yet. I am now reading Harry Potter for the second time. We bought a gold and silver pen and I'm working on a map to replace one I made in Victoria and lost. Harry built a little, styrofoam boat and we set it asail (we never saw it again. ) Today (June 30th) we went to the Petersberg library for a special event. They had a table with "free" books. I got a story about the American revolutionary war and Harry got a Franklin the turtle book. There are all inds of events happening this weekend as it's the American 4th of July holiday. Some of these include fishing derbies, bicycle races and the blindfolded rowboat race. There is also a herring toss (whatever that is) and a street-long pillow fight!

Petersberg is a busy fishing town full of norwegian descendants. It is a Cruise-ship Free Zone unlike the tacky tourist hustle & bustle of Ketchican. Last night we rented two videos. One was Monty Python and the the quest for the Holy Grail. It was a very funny comedy about King Arthur and his goofy knights. I was very disappointed at the end when the police car showed and arrested all the knights for murderous mischief and storming a castle without a license. I think it was made around Easter because the most terrible monster was the little killer bunny in the cave. It ate three of the knights. It had animation and songs and it was a good thing the animator had a heart attack when the 12-eyed, 2-legged animated monster was about to devour the goofy knights. The other movie we watched was "Life is Beautiful" an Italian film that won some Academy Awards. It was an unusual movie that looked with humanity and humour at the treatment of Jewish people during the 2nd world war.

I'll probably send another letter soon. So long for now. We'll probably be setting sail soon and heading out to explore the Glacier country. That should be neat! I hope your having a good summer and having lots of fun.



July 16, 2000
By Bradley
Age 10

When we were leaving Petersburg we saw 8 icebergs floating out from behind a point where there was a glacier! They must have been really big because they looked the size of my fingernail, but it was miles away! Dad has hired me as cabin-boy! But I'm still doing garbage-monkey duty a bit too . TONS of fish-boats come in and out of Petersburg. Even though we're in Alaska we're celebrating Canada Day, Mum made a cake. Now it`s a nice summer afternoon and it`s as sunny as can be .......and it`s less than 10 Celsius....yes it is! And......we're by a glacier!!! The water is O Celsius. We tried to go ashore to see the glacier except it was too shallow for the dinghy and we didn't want to get stranded by the falling tide so we went back to the boat . It was so cold that I dressed with 4 layers, scarf, mittens and tocque.

Our new crew-member Andrew, who I told you about in my last letter, is reading "Long John Silver" to us. If you've heard of the story of "Treasure Island" it was by the same author.

We had just left Thomas Bay when the engine made a funny noise . It`s a good thing we were motor-sailing because suddenly the engine conked out! Mum sent out a call on the radio 3 people and the Coast Guard answered. Dad and Andrew pulled up the floor boards and started working on the engine . Four hours later as we sailed back and forth across Frederick Sound we saw a Coast Guard cutter. Mum called them on the radio and they said, ''O.K. we'll come over in the Zodiac." The chief engineer and his assistant came aboard and helped Dad work on the engine. They replaced the fuel lift pump with our spare. Two hours later as they were towing us to an anchorage with the Zodiac as they were well behind schedule, one of the mechanics said ''Go and try to start the engine ....now!'' Dad did but it went ''RRRrrrrrrrer''. The man said ''Try again.'' Dad tried 2 more times ''RRrrrrer Rrrrreer BBbRAAaaaammmme!'' And it started! Me, Mum and Harry clapped. We motored into a bay and anchored for the night.

The next day we saw a whole bunch of Dall's porpoise. They played around the boat for a few minutes and then left. We also saw at least 8 pods of whales. 1 whale stuck his tail out of the water, slapped it against the water! Another jumped way out of the water! We saw lots of icebergs off the mouth of Tracy Arm where there are several calving glaciers. One looked like a ski jump from one side and like a sea monster from another side.

I made Harry two helmets, a cape, a suit of armour, a sword and a shield which said ''Sir Harry'' on it. I also made myself a suit of armour and we battled.

Andrew wrote a letter of thanks to the Coast Guard commander and we delivered it to his office in Juneau. We had to go through a X-ray machine to make sure we weren't carrying any weapons. I had to go through three times before we realized my Swiss Army knife was making it beep. In the Federal Building we also saw a small display of historical artifacts and a time capsule which was a small, sealed room with items from 1994 to be opened in 2094. We also saw a B-17 and a B-24!

I got a new camera and gave Harry my old one. Andrew bought me a book called ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court '' by Mark Twain.

In Auke Bay we went to a glacier by city bus. There were two beaver dams in the glacial lake and lots of icebergs. We went over two bridges and along a trail and then we went down a rocky slope and through another trail and across a small stream. We came to a sandy beach near a gigantic waterfall. It was near the Mendenhall Glacier. We played on the beach and I climbed a rock and looked at the waterfall from higher up. On the way back there was a person on the cliff and he threw three rocks down and we pretended he was a pirate throwing grenades. We saw some glacial flour which was used like talcum powder and we were allowed to touch it. I found out that you could make 12 trillion ice cubes out of the glacier. We went back in a taxi.

I drew a picture of a boat and the owner came out and asked me what I was drawing. I said I was drawing his boat. He said it was really nice of me and brought me a Coke. Some men passed and told me that it was nice picture. One of them used to be an artist, but now he was an naval architect. The owner took my picture and asked if he could buy the picture for a dollar. I said OK and he asked me to sign it. I did and he gave me his card.

Then we went to Tenakee Springs. Tenakee Springs is a very nice place because there are no cars allowed. There are only all terrain vehicles and bicycles. First we went to the hotsprings. It was really hot compared to the last one. I liked Bishop Bay better because it didn't smell like sulphur and looked nicer. Two other people came in and they told us they lived there on a boat. The next day we went over to see them. They had two kids. One of them had a model sailboat, no engine and remote control steering. Us and some other kids went to the beach with his boat. He sailed it, his friends sailed it and I sailed it. We made a little harbour for it by the beach. There were lots of shipwrecked boats on the beach. The two biggest ones have lots of history. The biggest one we thought was from a war because there was a box inside with 20 bullets.
The smaller one was wrecked on the tide grid while it was for sale. It started to fall apart so the owner left it
on the beach. The boat had already gone all the way up the coast.

Today we arrived at Glacier Bay! We went to the Glacier Bay Log Lodge . On the way we saw a big dug out canoe. We went up the path and we saw a big tree with an Indian carving of a owl and a sign which pointed to the Lodge . We went to the Lodge. Harry and I got a Glacier Bay pin and we looked at a shirt which had a picture of a killer whale wearing a hat, pants and a shirt which said ''Save The Humans!'' and he was holding a pair of binoculars. On the way to the boat we saw a marmot sitting on a log. Andrew took out his camera and it quickly looked away. It must have seen lots of other tourists who took his picture and he hated the flash, I bet. We called him "Barney the Blind Badger of Bartlett Bay".

Then we went to Blue Mouse Cove in Glacier Bay. On the way we saw hundreds of sea otters. Some of them were eating sea urchins by breaking them with rocks on their chests. Some had babies on their chests. We also saw several sea lions and thousands of birds - mostly nesting terns and some puffins. We saw several killer whales feeding. Then we went to a glacier! It was Amazing! Astounding! Marvelous! You should have seen it! THOUSANDS of ice bergs! At least 6 water falls! About 4 caves! And the glacier was GIANT and it went from blue to black to white and was moving and breaking down into the water! Mum caught an ice berg in the net. Harry and I ate some and Andrew put some in the fridge! 1 of the ice bergs looked like a dragon and it might of been one because some dragon's melt when they touch the water and some instantly die. Maybe this one died and got covered in ice! We also saw one like a dragon skull. We went around the point, but we didn't see what we expected..........A HUGE glacier! I saw 2 BIG pieces of ice fall off! We went on and Dad said ''There's a dragon around this point''. I didn't believe him at first, but Andrew who was up on the bow called, ''You won't believe this!'' When we went around the point I saw what he meant. There were more ice bergs than I've ever seen even on T.V. There was also another glacier (Johns Hopkins) and from where we were the grooves in it made it look like it had legs and another part looked like a tail and it went on and looked like wings. There was a big ice berg that looked like it had a head. I don't know how Dad knew their was a glacier there that looked like a dragon. We went back to Reid Glacier and stayed there the night.

In the morning we decided to go ashore and Dad and Andrew climbed up beside the glacier. We went to the bottom of the glacier. Harry and I pretended to be Indians with sticks I cut with my knife. We saw two types of footprints - bear and moose. Finally we saw Dad and Andrew. We had to cross several streams (big and rough) to get to the glacier. There was a big ice cave. Harry, Dad, Mum and I lined up by the glacier and Andrew took our picture. Just when Dad had taken the third picture we heard the splash of ice falling off the glacier into the water. When it was time to go back, the wind had picked up too much for all of us to cross the inlet in the dinghy so Dad and I went with spray splashing us , but we finally got to the boat. Dad showed me how to check the oil and then he took up the anchor and I washed it with the saltwater hose. We crossed the inlet and re-anchored and Dad left me in charge and rowed ashore for the rest. He gave me the binoculars to watch for ice bergs and the shore party. He told me to steer into the wind and put engine in forward once in awhile to reduce strain on the anchor.

We left and went back to Bartlett Cove. The next day Andrew, Harry and I went for a walk and we went to the Ranger station. We saw a map of Glacier Bay with an X on the beach near Reid Glacier and then we found out what type of bear had made the tracks. It said a bear was at that beach the same day we were and it was within 20 feets of some campers. All 10 campers started screaming to scare it away but it didn't care and started going through their backpacks. We went back to the boat and went to Swanson Harbour. Then we proceeded on to Auke Bay.

At Auke Bay we put the boat on the tide grid. The next day we went down the ladder to the beach. There was a 5-year-old boy and his friend fishing. We played for awhile, then we saw his friend's rod suddenly bend and a big splash. He had snagged a big King salmon by the tail. He played it and played it. Finally it got tired and came close to shore. Their dog bit the line and pulled the hook out and it got away. The next time I brought down our net. After a while he caught another one. We cut it up for halibut bait.

Now it's south to Canada unless we take a ferry to Skagway.


September 14, 2000
By Bradley
Age 10

Andrew took the ferry and bus back home. We decided to go to Skagway. We went on the ferry and saw some presentations and during the last one I went up and talked about the potlatch we went to. When we arrived, we went to a hotel. It was 101 years old. We got coonskin hats for Harry and I. The next day we went on the White Pass and Yukon Route train to Fraser, B.C. We saw a graveyard, two tunnels, three trestles, the trail of ’98, etc. At the border we got off and we got on a bus to go to Whitehorse where we stayed the night after touring to S.S. Klondike (river sternwheeler). The next day we drove a rental car to Dawson City. We went to a Robert Service reading. It was still light at midnight. The next day we went to the Robert Service and Jack London cabins. We saw an old graveyard. We went gold panning and I got $2.50 worth of gold and Mum got two flakes out of Bonanza Creek. Then we headed back to Whitehorse.

The next day we took the bus back to Skagway. On the way we saw a brown bear cub. In Skagway it was pouring with rain and so we ran to the ferry. On the way back we watched a movie called “The Last Great Ride”. We stayed several days at Auke Bay before heading back south. We stopped at Taku Harbor on the way to Tracy Arm where we saw lots of very high cliffs, waterfalls, ice bergs and two glaciers, and then we went and stay at Chapin Bay, the night.

The next day we went to Warm Springs Bay. We went up to the Hot Springs, which was made up of lots and lots of little pools, and was near a humungous water fall but very hot. Then we went to Red Bluff Bay, then to Little Port Walter, then to Coronation Island, where we heard the Wailing Otter Orchestra. We went threw an interesting passage to Craig, then finally back to B.C. and to Prince Rupert.
I bought Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling. We stayed in Prince Rupert for 6 days, till we left to Port Edward, where we got the boat hauled out of the water, to fix the Cutlass Bearing (a sort of tube to stop the propeller from wobbling.)
While we were in Port Edward I made a new friend, and I lost almost a hole box of NERDS candy, in a hostile game of poker.
Andrew came back to crew with us, to San Francisco the next Thursday night.
2 days later we went to Humpback Bay, were we visited Fran & Beau (some people we met in Prince Rupert a month ago) at their farm (which they call Feel Good Farm) were their boat Ilelegak (which is Eskimo for Baby) is kept.
Two days later (after a gale) we left for the Charlottes. Everybody got sea sick but Dad.
We were at sea all day and all night. We stayed at Queen Charlotte City, for 2 days, till we left to Skedans. In Skedan we got a tour of an abandoned Indian village, then we went to Thurstoen Harbour where we stayed the night.
The next day we went to some hot springs. There were 4 pools, first we went to a little one to rinse off, then we went to a really neat one, it was the size of a small lake.
At one end of the pool there was a bridge with a small stream of steaming water trickling down, beside it was a plastic air filled killer whale. I paddled over grabbed the whale, hoped on it’s back and paddled back. When we went to the 3rd pool who should be siting there but Miles Richardson, and Jim Fulton, founders of the Park. The 4th pool was on the beach. Beside it there was a small tide pool which also was warm and had sandpipers in it. We saw a humpback blow just a little ways out from the beach. When we went to the Watchmen’s cabin we saw a deer. We stayed the night by the island. The next day we went to Burnaby Narrows where we saw some interesting sea life. Then we went to Rose Harbour where I finished my Harry Potter book (which was interesting as it is a very long book and I had only been reading it for about two weeks). Then we went to Anthony Island where there were no Watchmen so had the whole place to ourselves. We went along the boardwalk and through a trench where seawater used to flow. Halfway through the trench we saw a small entrance to a cave. A little further on we saw a larger entrance so Dad and I went in. We found that it was the same cave. When we got through the trench, there was a beach and at the far end there were a whole bunch of totem poles. A little ways up there was a computer monitor covered in goose barnacles and crabs washed up on the beach. We took pictures of it with the totem poles in the background because it’s very unusual to see a computer monitor in an abandoned Indian village. We looked around at the totem poles and the remains of a huge house. Then we went to a beach on the other side of the island and I climbed over a big rock and found another beach. There was a cave on the other side. Dad came over and found a meadow that used to be a potato patch. We headed back to the Watchmen’s cabin and signed the guest book before going back to the boat and getting ready to leave for San Francisco.

We set sail for San Francisco at 6:30 p.m. At first everybody was fine…until Andrew got seasick …then Mum…then Dad (which was funny because he’s only been seasick once in his life which was for four days on the way to Hawaii from Tahiti with his parents), then Harry. I was fine until I decided to risk it and read half a page of my book. Nothing really interesting happened until we saw an albatross. Dad decided to head towards Vancouver Island because he was getting worried about the steering, the weather and the health of the crew. That night I felt fine. I went out on deck and saw a whole bunch of shooting stars and the Northern Lights. We stopped at Hotsprings Cove were we had a great time. On the way up the boardwalk to the hot springs there were hundreds of boat names carved in the boards. The first and prettiest was the Oriole (Canadian Navy sail training vessel). There was quite a few familiar boat names including Windago (sailing friend of Grandpa’s). We were talking about putting our name on a board when about half a mile on we came face to face with a board written in the same style as on our bow was Silent Sound. It also said they were there in ’95. The hot springs were very nice. It had a waterfall and several pools below it and then flowed into the ocean. Andrew cut his foot on a rock jumping a fence. We went back and put ’00 on the Silent Sound board. While we were preparing to go to Tofino someone ran down the ramp calling “Your board is the most beautiful board on the trail and has been for years.”

We stayed one night and one day in Tofino. I went to Roy Henry Vickers storytelling. It was very interesting. We set sail for San Francisco again at 6:40 p.m. on September 3. I got seasick when I got up most mornings and then asked, “What’s for breakfast?” The first interesting thing we saw was a pod of Dall’s porpoise. They stayed with us for 40 minutes which gave me time to name two of them. I called one “Splasher” because every time he surfaced and blew he soaked me as I hung over the bow. I identified him by his curved dorsal fin which was almost completely white and a scar on his back. I called the second one “Skimmer” because he always skimmed the surface with his dorsal fin. I identified him by his pointy dorsal fin and because he was the largest of the group. The next interesting thing we saw was an albatross. Andrew saw some sharks. We hove to for 23 hours waiting for a gale to go by. I made a little note a map and all ower names burned the side scrunched it up rolled it up put it in a bottle and through it over bored. We were all below except for Dad who was steering on September 11 when we heard him shout “Land Ho”. We all ran up on deck saw the outline of Point Reyes through the fog. All around were lots of sea birds including pelicans and lots of trollers and sports fishermen. We saw Pt. Bonito Lighthouse. I honked the horn at it and it honked back. Then we saw one of the biggest bridges in the world, the Golden Gate, looming above us out of the fog. Once inside San Francisco Harbour sailboarders shot past our stern jumping over our wake and lots of other traffic was going every which way. We sailed around Alcatraz Island and looking at the old prison. We anchored in front of the Maritime Museum and rowed ashore in the dinghy. We went and had pizza which was so good after eight days at sea. We were wobbling around like drunken sailors since we had not lost our sea legs. That night I could hardly get to sleep because of California sea lions barking, Katie snoring, fog horns honking and sirens wailing.

The next day Andrew went ashore with a rower to stay in a hotel for the last days of his vacation without having to look at everyone on the boat. We took the cable car to Customs then back to Hyde Street pier where we toured the Maritime Museums floating exhibits including the side wheeler ferry, Eureka, the schooner, C. A. Thayer, and last but not least the bark, Balclutha. The next day Harry and I built a sand castle on the beach we met a young woman from Korea who helped us. Dad’s friend, Pan, arrived with his dog, Nick, (who looks a lot like a very small lion and will eat anything people are eating) and sailed with us to a marina near where they live.


California

December 22, 2000
By Bradley
Age 10

Andre got a cat. It was living on a boat but no one was taking care of it. It was all orange. Andre called him Tigs. But unfortunately the owner wanted him back and was offering a reward, so he was returned.

Today was so much better than the last couple. You’d think in San Francisco it would be great weather but not in the winter, no way! NOT IN THE WINTER! We got here just fast enough to tell the summer weather “Good Bye!” We have to get moving’ with the geese. When the geese get out of sight then we’re late. It’s too cold here and we’ve got to get South.

We moved back to Aquatic Park. We went to the Maritime Museum. I got a model pirate ship, and Harry got a model tugboat. The next day we went under the Golden Gate and we went to Half Moon Bay (We called it Pelican Poop Cove). There we went trick or treating for Hallowe’en. Harry was a ghost and I was a pirate. Together we both got 5 buckets full. The next day we moved to Santa Cruz. Then we moved to Monterey (Montare’y). Once Monterey was attacked by pirates! Here’s the Story: ‘On the afternoon of November 20th 1818 two sails were sighted off Point Pinos. The ships worked their way slowly into Monterey Bay and at midnight the smaller one dropped anchor off Battery. A hail from shore brought no response and the vessel remained ominously silent through the night. As day dawned, she opened fire without warning and was briskly answered by the fort, where feverish preparations had been in progress during the night. The vessels proved to be the Argentina and Santa Rosa, under command of Hippolite Bouchard, a self-styled privateer with the ravaging instincts of a pirate. Fitting out at Buenos Aires, he had come around the Horn to fight the cause of the Latin-American countries for freedom from Spain.

After two hours the Santa Rosa’s Captain Corney found that his fire was having little effort on the fort as his guns would not elevate sufficiently, but the Spaniards were getting the range and some shots had passed through the deck of the Santa Rosa. The morale of the non-descript crew was easily broken and the men piled pell-mell into the boats and rowed frantically to the Argentina which was tacking back and forth out of range. A landing party silenced the fort and Corney wrote in his log: “As we approached the town the Spaniards again fled, after discharging their field pieces, and we entered without opposition. It was well stocked with provisions of every description which we commenced sending aboard the Argentina. The Sandwich Islanders, who were quite naked, when they landed, were soon dressed in the Spanish fashion and all the sailors were employed in searching the houses for money and breaking and ruining everything…We had three of our own men killed and three taken.”

As the distressed people surveyed the havoc the pirates had left, they were gratefully at least that the mission, where most of their possessions had been hastily stored, was spared by the pirates. All of the missions contributed to the rehabilitation of Monterey and life soon was going on as usual.’

We stayed in Monterey, for 3 days. In those 3 days we went to the Aquarium, Maritime Museum, and customhouse. There were up to seven BIG Sea Lions on our dock, and when we went on the dock and deck they barked and growled and showed their teeth. Their teeth were big enough to bite your arm off, and they were big enough to break bones. We got two more scooters. We went to Morro Bay (Moro’). In Morro Bay, there was a big gas explosion which sunk a boat. Then we moved to Santa Barbara (Santa Barbera). It took from 3:15 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. the next day. Nobody got seasick. We went around a cape called Point Conception but it’s known as “The Cape Horn Of The Pacific” because of it’s big winds, but luckily when we were there the wind was ok. In Santa Barbara, we got another scooter. From Santa Barbara we went to Santa Cruz Island, where we saw LOTS of BIG caves. We went in the dinghy and tried to go into one of the caves, but it was too dangerous because of the swell so we went into the largest one (the Painted Cave) which is 150 feet high and 600 feet long. It was very interesting. There were lots of high ledges, which looked perfect for a dragon to live in. It was all volcanic rock. There was lots of fog-like steam in the cave. There were lots of archways. We went about halfway in and then it got too dark and the swells got bigger and our flashlights weren’t strong enough to light up anything so we headed back.

We stayed the night in Willows Anchorage, on the other side (south side) of the island. The next day we went to the Anacapa Islands (Ane’kapa). Anacapa means illusion or ever changing. On the way to the Anacapas we saw pinnacle rocks, amazing scenery, blowholes (holes with air trapped in them and when water gets in them it shoots it out like a geyser), clear water, and caves. When we got to the Anacapas we had a full cargo of flies. It took about an hour to get them all out of the boat. The Anacapas were just as interesting as Santa Cruz Island. They had lots of caves and interesting rock formations. We called the second one Cyclops Island because you could see a Cyclops in the rock and it looked like the island from Jason and the Argonauts. At the end of the island there was a lighthouse and a gigantic arch, which has been standing there for thousands of years.

We went to Los Angeles. We stayed in Marina del Rey, (de’l’ ray). Del Rey is Spanish for ‘of the king’. We went to Hollywood. In Hollywood we went to see my mum’s step-brother, Geoff. We went to the museum of Scientology, where he works. We walked along the “Hollywood Walk of Fame”.

I met two other kids, on they’re way to Mexico soon with their family on a 45 foot sailboat. We went to the La Brea (Le Bre’a) Tar Pits and the Page Museum with them. It was very interesting. The tar pits have been there for 30,000 years. It had theatres and you could see into the laboratory and the bones from mammoths to almost microscopic mouse toes all taken out of the tar pits as well as life-sized and moving models of mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers, giant sloths, etc. We got the actual tar pits. There were some bugs stuck in the tar and seagulls were trying to get them without getting stuck themselves. There were bubbles coming up from deep down inside the earth. We saw bones sticking out of one of the pits. In the first pit there were four statues of mammoths and one was stuck in the tar.

A couple of days later we went to Catalina (Ca’ta lena) Island, where we saw lots of porpoises and cactus. From Catalina we went to Newport Beach where we went to Disneyland. We went on Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, Star Tours, Thunder Mountain, Rafts to Tom Sawyer’s Island, Davy Crockett Canoes, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Pinocchio’s Dangerous Adventure, Honey I Shrunk the Audience (3-D), Mickey’s House, Minnie’s House, Chip n Dale’s Treehouse, Jolly Trolley, Astro Orbiter, the Magic Castle, etc. Before we left there was a big, amazing fireworks show. We got pirate pistols for my pirate costume. We met a very tame black goose which followed boats around including ours. After Newport we went to San Diego. In San Diego we went Sea World (which was completely amazing although we got soaked!), San Diego Zoo where we saw hundreds of exotic plants and animals, and The Wild Life Park, which was a lot like the Zoo and the maritime Museum (Which was in the Star Of India and old stem fairy). In the Zoo I met a parrot, which was so tame it let me come less than an inch away. I also found out that gorillas act a lot like humans. When we were there the young gorillas were chasing another gorilla who had a stick and one of the gorillas kept acting like he wasn’t playing, crossing his arms and legs and hunching over on a log until the other got close enough to try and get the stick. The elder gorilla was hunching over on his fist and I was certain he was thinking a lot (he fell asleep while doing this). My favorite animal in the zoo was the rhino viper because it looked a lot like a dragon.

In the Star of India we saw models the ship and an exhibit called Pirates. In the Ferry we saw a Navy exhibit models and the ship. I learnt a lot!

The next day I did a presentation at a school about living on a boat. It was very interesting being in a school again. The kids and the teacher really liked my presentation. I did some lessons with them till lunch.

After San Diego we left to Baja (it’s initials are B.C. for Baja California). We were sailing for two nights and a day until we decided to go into Bahia San Quintin (Baiea San Qintin). Then we sailed for a day and night to Isla Cedros. It was a very interesting town. The scenery was amazing. It was like a desert with some bushes. The entire town was Spanish speaking. We practiced our Spanish getting directions to the Harbour Master’s office. There were lots of dogs and the people were very nice. The next day we went Turtle Bay. On the way two fishermen came over and threw three lobsters onto the deck (a fourth hit the sail and fell in the water). The lobsters were very good. We reached Turtle Bay by sunset. We notice it getting warmer every time we go further south. It is now December 17 and I’m wearing a T-shirt and shorts and still hot. In Turtle Bay the people were even nicer. When we docked at the Pier there were two kids there to tie up the dinghy, help us up the ladder, and help us unload the dinghy. A man gave us a tour of the town. The little shops were very interesting. My favorite one was the bakery. Then we went to Bahia Ascunsion and Bahia Ballenas (two day trips). Then we went overnight to Bahia Santa Maria. On the way we saw two humpbacks come up near the boat, some frigate birds (one landed on the mast), a whole school of Pacific white-sided dolphins which were fishing until we went through their fishing area (there were about a thousand jumping all around the boat and they were in pairs. It was amazing.), about a million little red shrimp, and flying fish. In Bahia Santa Maria there was a humungous beach which went on for miles. We went to the beach and met the kids from “Paudeen”. We made a big fire to burn garbage and a sand castle and found the skeleton of a parrot fish and a large snake and lots and lots of sand dollars and shells (some poisonous).

Merry Christmas (although it’ll be late) and Happy New Year. Feliz Navidad y Prospero Anno.


Mexico

March 24, 2001
By Bradley
Age 11

Mexico is very interesting! Our next stop was Santa Maria Bay. It is an amazing place. Its’ white beaches goes on for miles. The mountainous hills (although only cacti, snakes and scorpions live on them) are very beautiful. I walked across the sand dunes, with my friends Emily, Clare and their dad, Darren. On the other side there was open ocean. The surf was huge! We saw a crab that went really fast. On the way back we saw a snake skeleton and a scorpion molt.

We celebrated Christmas Eve in Bahia Magdalena on a boat from Victoria called “Fortunate 1”. For Christmas I got “Two Years before the Mast”, “Peter Duck” and “Pirates” - all books.

Our next stop was Cabo San Lucas. We stayed there for five days while Dad worked on the steering. I was glad when we left and got away from the roaring Sea Doos (jet skis).


I went snorkeling at Los Frailes in the Sea of Cortez. It was really amazing. I saw about a hundred different types of fish especially small rainbow ones. In the same place I climbed halfway up a large hill but didn’t make it to the top. We went to dinner at a ranch. The ride there was very interesting. We rode in the back of a truck and went past interesting shaped, completely red cliffs and giant cacti.

We went to La Paz where we stayed for five weeks. We played soccer every two days until the referee sailed away.

Jan. 23 2001
We celebrated my birthday there. Emily and Clare (from “Paudeen”) and Sam and Alex (from”Tigger”) came to my party. We went to the Serpentarium where we saw crocodiles, iguanas, snakes, spiders, and other reptiles.

Jan. 29 2001
We went to the El Mogote which is the peninsula across the bay and helped clean up the garbage off the beach. While we were cleaning up we saw lots of dead stingrays, small live lizards, lots of dead fish, a big tortoise shell, pelicans and their skeletons and coconuts. We found a lucky coconut and wherever we threw it there was garbage under it. After the clean up, the restaurant Paradise Found brought over hamburgers and pop for everyone who had helped.

Feb. 12 2001
When we left on February 12 we went to Caleta Partida (Separated Cove). This bay was made by a volcanic crater, which sank into the sea many years ago.

Feb. 13 2001
When we went on the beach we saw lots of interesting things - gigantic cacti, a small dead stingray, puffer fish (dead and alive), a live rattlesnake in the wild, and crayfish (possibly centipedes or cockroaches).

Feb. 14 2001
We celebrated Valentine’s Day in Caleta Partida and took a day sail to Ensenada Grande (Big Cove) on “Shea La Vie” who we had met in Dana Point, San Diego and La Paz. Harry and I got a box of Jolly Ranchers and Mum got a giant Hershey’s Kiss and Dad got a box of Kahlua chocolates.

Feb. 17 2001
We went to El Cardonel. We also went to Los Islotes where we went snorkeling. I saw a sea lion do a back flip and a ray do the same. We went to La Paz again to get Dad’s gold crown fixed. I got a filling and three sealants done.

Feb. 22
We went to Carnaval (a Mexican celebration). We saw fireworks and went to a fair. The next night we went to the fair again. I got to sit in the front of the roller coaster. I also went on the Ferris Wheel, Bumper Cars, Haunted House, Tilt-a-Whirl, Bucking Bull and motorcycle with Harry.

Feb. 23 2001
We got a crewmember named Denise. We went to Puerto Ballandra where we went on the beach and dug for clams, went snorkeling and took pictures of the famous Mushroom Rock (it’s a big rock that is shaped like a mushroom). I met two girls and we had a mud fight. That night the wind and waves got very big so we left in the middle of the night.

Feb. 25 2001
The next day we saw a new type of bird with a long spiky tail. Some frigate birds tried to land on the mast, but none succeeded. That night I saw three shooting stars and the Southern Cross. The next night I slept in the cockpit and saw more shooting stars and birds.

Feb. 26 2001
The next day I woke up to see the lighthouse at the entrance to Mazatlan Harbour (this lighthouse is the second highest above sea level in the world).

Feb. 27 2001
We went to the parade for the last day of Carnaval. There were a lot of extremely good floats. There were lots of Mexican ones, but some looked Tahitian, Chinese, Egyptian and South American. My two favorites were dragons and the phoenix. We had dinner at El Pollo Loco (the crazy chicken) and a humungous dinner - lots of chicken, bean soup, french fries, salad, tortillas, taco chips and pop. On the way back we saw an entertainer, musicians, and lots of vending stands. We climbed up to the lighthouse with the “Paudeen” crew. I saw a small spider with a shell that had six red spikes and black dots and a lot of different types of cactus. When we reached the top we were allowed to go inside the lighthouse.

Feb. 28 2001
We went to Hotel Marina El Cid. There, there was a pool, which we went in. There were two water-slides, four waterfalls, (three with caves which went through secret passageways to another pool) a hot tub, and things to climb on too!

Mar. 2 2001
There was a big rain and wind squall! We collected 11 liters of genuine cold Mazatlan rainwater in an hour or so.

Mar. 4 2001
We left Mazatlan. Harry lost his second tooth!

Mar. 5 2001
We saw a whale and caught up to “Paudeen” again! We got to a beautiful tropical island, Isla Isabela! We saw LOTS of iguanas, LOTS of frigate birds, LOTS of booby birds, LOTS varieties of palms, LOTS of sugar cane, and a land crab - all about one foot away! I tasted some sugar cane. It doesn’t taste like plain sugar, but better. We saw a lot of dead booby and frigate babies that had died in the rainstorm.

Mar. 6 2001
We went to a large tide pool just outside the bird studying camp. We went snorkeling in it. We saw stingrays, little fluorescent blue fish, parrot fish, black fish with yellow strips, tetra neons, big black fish, big yellow fish, boot fish, puffer fish, bull heads, sea urchins and coral. After snorkeling went to the lagoon beach where we found a cave.

Mar. 7 2001
Today we climbed a hill up to a light tower. We saw LOTS and LOTS of blue- and yellow-footed booby birds. We saw more chicks that we did on the last hike. The way booby birds walk and land is extremely funny. They lift their legs up to as high as their head while walking! We started collecting the band numbers. We got 554, 262, 996, 172, 005, and 007.

Mar. 8 2001
We left Isla Isabela by nightfall we reached San Blas with “Paudeen”. San Blas used to be a stop for galleons filled with treasures on their way to the Philippines. There is a fort on the hill which used to be used to fight Dutch, French and British pirates.


Mar. 9 2001
We went to town in the back of a pickup truck. I bought a souvenir spear at the market in the Town Square.

Mar. 10 2001
We went ashore early in the morning and went to the San Cristaval River. In a panga, we went on a Jungle Tour through a mangrove swamp and tropical scenery. We saw lots of termite nests hanging in the trees. I even saw some tree snakes. We went past some houses on stilts which were used in a movie. We saw of turtles, iguanas, several different types of herons and egrets, an owl, numerous other types of birds and even crocodiles! We went to a crocodile farm where didn’t just see crocodiles but also a deer, coyote, raccoons, coatimundis and peccaries. One coatimundi kept sticking its nose out of his cage and sniffing at my foot and pulling on my toe nails with his claws. We also went to Tovara Springs were we swam with fresh water tropical fish.

Mar. 12 2001
We went to the ruins of a cathedral and fort (the one I mentioned earlier). We saw some tree lizards. The cathedral looks like a hall from the inside and out, but we found that it’s much more than that. Clare, Emily, Dad and I found lots of pieces of old pottery. We gave 12 bags of clothes and toys to be delivered to a poor tribe of Indians who live in the mountains.

Mar. 13 2001
We left San Blas and sailed to Jaltemba with “Paudeen”. We saw a pilot whale being chased around the bay by a panga.

Mar. 14 2001
During the night we went to Punta de Mita because the anchorage was too rolly. The surf here is huge, but the anchorage is better. We landed in Paudeen’s canoe on the beach and nearly got flipped. I went surfing, but not for long because when I got a little ways out I got a good wave except it tossed me off the board, I went under and the board went flying over me without touching me. (I was lucky because it was going at a speed to break bones and the dagger boards are sharp). Back at the boat we saw fireworks. We don’t know what they were celebrating, but they were magnificent.

Mar 15 2001
We went to the beach again. I went boogie boarding (nothing as bad as yesterday happened).

Mar 17 2001
We got mail for the first time in over two and a half months!

Mar. 19 2001
We went to Las Tres Marietas. The “Paudeen” crew and the “Ave del Mar” crew also came. On shore we found a cave (I guess you have to be there, but this island is hollow, with caves) full of pumice, hermit crabs and bird’s nests! Some hermit crabs got up to an inch or two long! At another beach around the point we found over 12 more caves. Emily, and Clare, came back on Silent Sound.

Mar. 20 2001
We went to Paradise Village Marina, in Puerta Vallarta (P.V.). We saw raccoons, macaus, flamingos, quails, tigers, crocodiles, monkeys, etc. We went in one pool, which had a hot tub, two bridges, and a water slide. Next we went to the 2nd pool, which had a hot tub, three bridges (one a suspension), a cave, a little kid pool, and two water slides.

Mar.23 2001
Today Harry, and I, got BOOGEY BOARDS! We also got a C-D Writer.

In the next few days we will be moving to P.V., and from there we will go to the Marquesas, and I will send another letter from there.


April 17, 2001
By Stella

I’m planning on sending this today which will our last day in port before leaving for the Marquesas if all goes as planned which it often doesn’t in cruising.

Bradley completed our dentist work in La Paz by having three molars sealed. Most people seem happy with the dental work here and the prices are certainly very reasonable even when coming from a 90% paid dental plan. The day before we left La Paz I called Denise to see if she wanted a crew from La Paz to Mazatlan to get to know us and the boat better before making the big decision to cross to the South Pacific with us. I told her to be on the dock the next day at 9 a.m. if she wanted to go. We spent our last evening at Carnaval eating, looking at merchandise in numerous street stands and taking kids to rides again. There were several stages, but those areas were very loud and very crowded so we didn’t linger long. It’s like a fair, but spread along the length on the main waterfront street instead of in a fairground.

Denise was waiting for us when we pulled into the dock at 9:30 on February 23 for diesel and water. It was a busy time saying goodbye to “Old Manatee” and “Shea La Vie” and doing a few last minute errands. We got ourselves and the boat organized as we went out to channel and then put up the sails for the first time in two and a half months (except for cleaning them at the dock) as we cleared the channel. After a short while the wind decreased and it got quite hot so we decided to stop at Puerto Ballandra for a swim as we had wanted to stay there longer before going to La Paz originally. We had a nice time snorkeling and playing at the beach, but we should have left after that as the wind increased and before bedtime I was seasick at anchor - a first for me - I had been reading to Harry who wasn’t feeling well either. The anchor snub line broke shortly after midnight and Ray and I put a stronger one on. We finally left at 3:40 a.m. after very little sleep.

It was much better underway, but Ray got sick and then went to bed. Denise and I stayed on watch until we cleared another channel and then she went to bed. We took shifts for the 52-hour trip with me doing a bit less watch time and more food and kid duties. Harry was sick once. We got the windvane working quite well and had our best sail ever I would say. 15-18 knots aft of the beam and small seas and sun. We saw the Southern Cross for the first time and the Big Dipper dips close to the horizon for part of the night. I saw phosphorescence as dolphins swam around us, several shooting stars and satellites, large birds trying to land in the rigging all night and a new type of unidentified bird (tropic bird apparently). Denise woke us up under the lighthouse at the entrance to Mazatlan Harbour at 7:20 on the morning of the 25th. The anchorage is just inside the breakwater. The crew of “Paudeen” appeared to be still asleep and the soccer referee from La Paz on “Lev”.

After breakfast Denise and I started the check-in process, but couldn’t complete it because the Harbour Master was closed till the end of Carnaval. Emily and Clare from “Paudeen” had reading and art with Ray while Darren and Tam went shopping. All nine of us took the bus to a restaurant for a seafood dinner which was very good. The next morning the four of us and the “Paudeen” crew climbed to the lighthouse which at 515 ft. is the second highest above sealevel in the world. The view of the anchorage, city and area was terrific. The kids and Ray did drawings. “Paudeen” left that afternoon and we went to the final parade of Carnaval. The floats were very fancy and there were big crowds. We had dinner right after at a chicken place while waited for the crowds to thin out a bit. We ended up walking all the way back as we couldn’t find a bus or cab and consequently found some street entertainers and vendors.

The next day I finished checking in and Denise took a ferry back to La Paz. She plans on rejoining us in Puerto Vallarta in early April for the crossing to the Marquesas. The kids and I took a bus (3 pesos each) to El Cid Marina about 12 miles away and enjoyed their hot tub and chatted with Ross from “Fortunate I” who we haven’t seen since Los Frailes in early January. It started to blow and cloud over while we were there and was raining by the next morning, March 1, when Josie from the office and her family arrived on the cruise ship “Elation”. We are very thankful to them for bringing us a tillerpilot from Victoria which, when wired up, will steer the boat and be like having another crew member. Our visit was dampened by the wind and rain unfortunately. We spent most of two days on board out of the rain. I finally baked cookies and bread since I didn’t want to go out. The kids and I provisioned at the market, bakery and supermarket after the storm blew over and we left Mazatlan on the afternoon of the 4th.

We travelled overnight to Isla Isabela which is a national park and has been featured in a Cousteau show. “Fortunate I” was just ahead of us and we were happy to catch up to “Paudeen” again. We hiked across the island with them as our guides. This was our first experience of sugar cane (Tam borrowed a knife from a resident fisherman to cut some to suck on), banana palms (they weren’t ripe yet), pineapple plant (one baby pineapple), iguanas, other lizards, pelicans, hundreds of frigate birds within a few feet of the trail and their young, blue-footed boobies (with incredible light ultramarine blue webbed feet), brown boobies and various other birds. Unfortunately last week’s storm killed 80% of the booby babies and a lot of the frigate babies. There are scientists here observing the birds and there is no precedent for this in the 20-year history of the park. Apparently the birds don’t fly well when wet by rain and can’t feed the young who die of exposure as the nests are small and open and it rarely gets this cold here. Quite an amazing island, hope to provide some photos as we took some great ones. The next day the crew “Paudeen” showed us a great snorkeling tidal pool. We avoided the three stingrays and saw lots of new tropical fish and coral. Harry just paddled and Bradley still finding water a bit cool and snorkeling a bit difficult. The following day we hiked up to the light tower where we saw numerous boobies of both types, a few live young ones and lots of dead young. Tam and I bought some fish from a fisherman for dinner with help from the German biology student researcher they have gotten to know. Great on BBQ.

The next day we set sail for San Blas with “Paudeen” taking pictures of each other underway. We arrived close together and anchored in Mantanchen Bay. In the morning we all went to town. We shopped for souvenirs in the town plaza where the Huichol Indians sell their beadwork and other handicrafts. We explored around town, but missed the market which closed at 2:30 so weren’t able to get much fresh food. Near the anchorage there are numerous stands selling banana, pineapple, carrot and coconut bread, coconut macaroons, etc. On the beach is a row of restaurants. Apparently this is a big surfing place in the summer, but a calm, quiet anchorage at this time of year. We had been told to be back at the boat well before sunset to avoid no-see-ums which can be very bad here so we did. Most nights we have been having dinner with “Paudeen” on one boat or the other except when we both need a quiet evening.

The next morning we got up at six to be at the panga (large outboard boat) on the river by 7:30 for a four-hour “Jungle Tour”. We saw crocodiles, turtles, iguanas, and numerous birds of several different kinds. There are supposed to be 420 species, but we didn’t see anywhere near that many. We stopped at the Crocodile Farm where they had crocodiles, coatimundis, raccoons and a few other animals. We spent two hours at Tovara Springs which is a fresh water spring. We snorkeled with the fresh water fish which are no where near as colourful as their salt water tropical counterparts. The next afternoon we went for a sail on “Paudeen”. Darren wanted to find surf, but we didn’t. Tam made personal pizzas which were great - fried crust and broiled toppings as they don’t have an oven. The next day we went to see the ruins of a fort and cathedral on a hilltop with a great view and got the shopping done. We donated about 12 grocery bags - mostly kids clothes - to people who collect for the Huichol Indians who live inland where it gets cold and are very poor. Now we have space for more provision for the South Pacific and less clothes that we won’t be needing for awhile.

We both left together for Jaltemba where Ray and I snorkeled, but the anchorage was rolly. We both moved to another spot which was worse for us. We left at 12:30 a.m. and were much more comfortable and had a good sail after about 3 a.m. arriving at Punta de Mita at 7:20 which is inside the northern point of Bahia de Banderas at the head of which is Puerta Vallarta. I counted 30 boats in the anchorage. Darren finally has found his surf. We left the three older kids doing school on “Paudeen” and went ashore. Darren tried surfing and Ray, Tam and I had turns on their boogie board. Harry found a five-year-old girl to play with. We fetched the kids later and they played with the boards.

Now, almost two weeks later, we are still anchored in the same spot. We rigged the sailing dinghy for a few days so we could sail ashore instead of rowing. We did lots more surfing, boogie boarding, swimming and playing on the beach. We made a few bus trips to P.V. to do boat errands, e-mail, shopping, buying a CD writer to save digital photos with, finally got some mail (first since late December - two batches appear to have gotten lost), go to Paradise Village to play in pools with caves and slides, etc. One day we took two boats and three families to nearby islands called Las Tres Marietas to swim, snorkel and play on different beaches. The Middle Island is honeycombed with caves and arches. The four kids made enclosures to contain dozens of hermit crabs in a large cave and spent a long time in a smaller cave doing who knows what. We sadly said a rushed goodbye to Emily and Clare as they caught to bus to the airport to go back to their mum in Richmond. We will miss them a lot. We actually had ice cream cones at McDonald’s and 2 for 1 pizza at Dominoes at the Paradise Village the evening before they left.

In between the playing, we have initiated a few boat projects to get ready to go to sea. We have the new tiller pilot in the shop for a new chip (don’t ask!), some sailbag and other heavy-duty sewing being done, I’m working on provisioning list which gets very tedious and the actual provisioning. I found a used boogie board just Harry’s size on another Canadian boat and a new one at Sam’s Club (part of Wal Mart) for Bradley which is now well broken in. Betty from “Ave del Mar” from Vancouver installed CD-writer into our computer and got it to run which turned into a complicated job, but it now works. Ray and I have been snorkeling a lot to clean the growth off the bottom of the boat. Stuff grows like crazy down here. Water was 21.8 C. according the Betty’s thermometer. It was warmer earlier in the winter apparently.

On March 29 we moved to Paradise Village Marina to make it easier to access materials to do boat jobs. We met “Pelbe” for the second time. They are from Calgary and have a 9-year-old boy. We have been to the beach and pool(s) of the hotel of which the marina is a part everyday. Harry met a family from Courtenay, Mark, Anne, Colin (5) and Graham (almost 3) who are living here for at least six months while the dad works in construction. They invited Harry for dinner at one of the hotel’s patio restaurants as it was free for under 5. They are had a great time and we meet them for the Pinata party after.

Since then Ray has been working steadily on boat projects. Denise arrived on April 6 and has been a big help. I’ve been taking the kids to the pool everyday. Bradley’s swimming has been improving from several hours a day in the pool and he’s now snorkeling around the pool with no problem. The example of another four-year old, Jaryd, got Harry and his five-year-old friend, Colin, going underwater on purpose and repeatedly and in the last few days they have both started to swim a little underwater which is how Bradley started at four.

There are boats leaving every few days for the Marquesas and also for Panama, San Diego and the Sea of Cortez as hurricane season in May approaches so we are feeling the pressure of the season to get moving so we can’t spend as much time visiting and playing as we would like.

Anne offered to host an early birthday party in their condominium for Harry which was a great relief for me as the boat was a mess of tools with all the seat cushions in the shop being re-covered and provisions not yet stored on the floor and Easter as well. Beside their two children and ours we invited Jaryd from “Kinship” out of Vancouver and Ryan from “Aitana” who we’d first met in San Diego out of San Francisco - all boys. The party was on April 14 with one day’s planning and went well with Anne and her family doing a lot of work with the food preparation and blowing up balloons. Their help is greatly appreciated.

The Easter bunny brought what he/she could find in Mexico - no chocolate bunnies and large eggs here and the hotel had an egg hunt with real painted egg shells.

After almost three weeks at the marina we are hoping to leave today and anchor back at Punta de Mita for a night before leaving Mexico. The crossing should take three to four weeks.

Please keep future e-mails as short as possible as I have been told that e-mail access is very expensive in the South Pacific like a lot of other things, but we still do want to hear from you. Hasta la vista.



April 2001
By Bradley
Age 11

Hola, and Bonjour, from Paradise Village Nuevo Vallarta. Ever since we came to Paradise Village we’ve been going to the pool, every day. I lost a tooth. Harry celebrated his birthday, at his friend’s (Colin, and Graham’s) house, in Paradise Village’s Residence. Ryan off “Aitana”, and Jaryd off “Kinship”, also came.

We got the crewmember from La Paz, Denise back. I got a ride up the river on the steamboat African Queen. We saw lots of crocodiles! On April the 18th we went to Punta de Mita.

We left Punta de Mita heading for the Marquesas on April the 19th. We saw flying fish, dolphins, sea turtles, and squid. After 3 nonstop days of motoring and sailing, we came to Isla San Benedicto. The island is not even as old as dad. The island is actually a volcano. The same day we left for Isla Socorro. The island is volcanic and quite large. The doctor, a sergeant and two guards with machine guns came on board. The doctor gave Dad some medicine for his side and looked at our papers. We went snorkeling and saw lots of fish - orange and purple, green, yellow, gray, brown and light black, etc. We saw a mountain sheep and her baby on the volcanic cliff on the southeast side of the bay.

We celebrated Harry’s birthday at sea. Harry got ten cars from me, a monster truck, playdough, a plane and Hot Wheels on Viewmaster slides and a colouring book.

We have seen porpoise, dolphins, a turtle, lots of flying fish, squid, bonitos (fish), wheals, and many birds including boobies, frigates, tropic birds, Pacific terns, etc. One day when the sun had just gone down, we got a large squall. There was lightning, thunder, wind and rain. We put chains down on each side of the boat to stop the lightning from possibly going down the mast and making a hole in the boat. The chains made it so that the lightning, if it hit, would go down the shrouds and chains into the water. Two nights later was had another storm - not quite so bad and another one the night after that. In the last storm I mentioned the rain started before it was dark and it was coming down so quickly and in such big drops that everybody that was outside looked as if they had just fallen overboard. We had showers in the rain and got water for drinking. We got a bonito a day for three days. Unfortchonitly, one night when Danice was on shift a unknown fish took line and all!

Finely, we crossed the equator! Harry and I covered aware selves in tattoos, face-paint, and saving cream! We pigged-out on pop, chocolate bars, Jell-O, and Pinacoada, and had a blast!

On May 18, 2001 we sited land!

French Polynesia

Ahoy Mess-Mates!
Age 11
Kaloha amis, from Timbuktu (Atuona, Hiva Oa)!
I meet two French boys, named Simon and Joey. The same day that I sent my last letter we took a tour of Hiva Oa. It was amazing! We went over every road on the island. Did you know the Polynesian had Kings? We got some tropical fruit. We went so high in the mountains that we almost went into the clouds! There were great views. We saw some double rainbows. We went to a tiki (Polynesian statues) sacrificial and burial ground. There were five tikis. One of a god, one of the god’s wife, one of the god’s son, one of the king, and one of a woman. We heard lots of history.


The next day we went to town and saw Paul Gauguin and Jacques Brel’s graves. Then we went to the Gauguin museum and saw lots of his pictures and carvings.
Our Marquesean friend, Antoine, was playing his guitar outside of the museum. There was a replica of Paul Gauguin’s house next to the museum and we saw more of his work there. We went out for ice cream and hitchhiked back to the boat.

Denise and I hiked to some ancient petroglyphs overgrown by the jungle.
There are two main petroglyphs. They are on a wall built like steps up the hill. Each step is about 100 m long and 10 feet up/down. It was so hard to get around! Imagine trying to clime up crumbling overgrown ruins!
We also saw a huge boulder covered in moss and petroglyphs. We saw a weird mushroom. It’s stem had a big ball on top (no dome) and a net, that went from the ball to the stem! If I hadn’t seen it in a book I’d have refused to say it was a mushroom!

Harry met a five-year-old girl named Hannah, off a boat named “Skive”.

On May 24th, we went to Hanatetoi on Tahuata Island. It is just paradise here! I got towed ashore by the dinghy, on my boogie board. I went snorkeling. I saw SO MANY fish (I guess you had to be there)!!!!!!!! There were fish from ½” to 3ft., and every color I know!!! I saw all sorts of coral. I saw millions of sea urchins, with spines from 2 inch. to at least 8inch. long! Believe me, because I cannot be more exact! I got towed back to the boat, but without a boogie board.

On May 25th, we decided to leave for Fatu Hiva. Fatu Hiva is famous for it’s beauty, and because the famous author of the book “Fatu Hiva back to Nature” Thor Heyerdayl lived there for a year. I was very seasick the whole way. However once we were there, it was worth it! We just feasted our eyes on the beautiful landscape of lush, green, tropical jungle! There were pinnacles, about 100m up, and 30m across and they also had smaller pinnacles growing out of them (I called them ‘hitchhiker’s rock’ because they look like the ‘thumbs up’).
One had Captain Cook’s face on it. Our friends on ‘Kaien’, and ‘Laughter’ were also here.

On our second last day in Fatu Hiva we went on a hike to a waterfall. The ‘Kaien’ crew and a bunch of annoying, but useful locals came with us. It was just as hard to get there as it was in the petroglyph jungle! Sometimes we had to duck are heads under over-hanging cliffs, climb over rotting overgrowth with unknown (well, known, but not by us!) insects and lizards climbing up and down on them, and climb up crumbling, slippery, eroding cliff-like hills of rock and dirt, all at once! When we got to the waterfall, it was beautiful! The water fell a shear fall of at least 60m. We swam in the freezing cold refreshing (it might not seem refreshing to you, but when you’ve been hiking in a tropical forest than it would seem very refreshing!) pool of the waterfall.

We returned to Atuona. On the way I got seasick except it wasn’t half as bad as on the way there. When we arrived, our friends on “Elakha” were there. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to do much together as they left the next day. I rowed ashore by myself for the first time (although I had a lot of trouble for the docks are not too good for landing in the ocean swell).

On May 31 we went to back to Tahuata Island. Today I took a seasick pill so I won’t get seasick and so far it has worked. Fortunately I need not have taken it. We sailed beautifully, with the wind on our beam, across the calm sea. Finally, we reached Vaitahu, where ‘Kaien’ ‘Elakha’ - two‘Canadian Kid Boats’ were. We went fishing. We thought we had failed, but as Denise was hauling in her line she shouted in amazement as two pacific snappers came onboard, one on the hook and the other tangled in the line! But unfortunately they gave us the amount of meat of one small fish!

The next morning we reached Hana moe noa. The beach here is beautiful (like every other place we’ve gone). While Harry scampered around on the beach, and in the surf, building sandcastles, hunting crabs, and jumping waves, Mom and I went snorkeling. We saw HUNDREDS OF ALL SORTS OF FISH! I went snorkeling, boogie boarding, and other beach activities for the rest of the day, until we hoisted anchor and headed to Ua Pou.

We stayed in Baie D’ Hakahau. On Sunday we went to church. It was very interesting. We meet some locals that were good at ukulele and guitar. Later we went to the beach. We played soccer on the beach with some of the local kids. Harry was known as “Small Buoy” and I was known as “Braee”. We left Ua Pou on June 4, and went to Taiohae on Nuka Hiva.

We went out for a steak, french fry and pop dinner, at a (so-called by me) Fold-Up-Car-Snack-Bar restaurant. We saw many interesting trees such as Mangrove, Coconut, Banana, Skyroot, etc. Two days later we went to shore. And it rained, and rained, and rained some more! SUISHHHHH!!!!!!! Luckily the giant strong-leafed mangrove trees offered shelter.
Back at the boat - as everybody in the anchorage had observed - it was unusually windy, and as we looked out to sea saw a waterspout (well, I thought it was but dad said it was a mini hurricane). It was not like the low-lying full waterspout we sailed close by at break-neck speed in San Francisco, but it’s cloud was about 1000ft. above water level, and it did not completely come to the water. Yes, it did look a lot like a hurricane. We left for the Tuamotos on June 6. We sailed beautifully the whole way, except when we ran the engine to generate power (although even I thought it was a pity because we were sailing so well). I loved the flying-fish when they beautifully skimmed across the water, steering themselves with their extra-long bottom tail-fin then go completely air-born altogether.
On the very last night at sea a bobbie landed on our newly assembled cross-bar, tired of flying in a squall we had just had.

After 4 days at sea we reached the amazing Tuamotus! Not at all like the mountainous, volcanic Marquesas, the Tuamotus are low-lying coral atolls. The first atoll we went to looked beautiful from the distance, but when we landed on the shore it seemed ugly. I got what I called bit by the Paradise Beetle which is a beetle I made up which bites you and causes you to see the beautiful place as ugly. We went to town. It was very interesting crossing the streams on the reef which come from the open Pacific into the lagoon. We saw lots of oysters with beautiful lips of all different colours and sea cucumbers (ugly). I saw a hermit crab which was about 6 inch. up/down and 4 inch. across! In town we got provisions and had a picnic on the beach. This particular motu (islet) is much more pleasant than the other one. We went back on the Pacific side. It’s amazing that all the rock and sand on the motus are made from coral. The coral builds up on top of a volcanic crater to form the lagoon. The coral grows up to the surface of the water and dies on the top, but grows on the sides. There is an outer part of live coral still growing and then the reef suddenly drops down thousands of feet to the bottom of the ocean. We went snorkeling. We saw more fish than we saw here yesterday. There are sharks here as Mum and Denise experienced when they went snorkeling on the shelf. They also saw seahorses and many other fish. Whenever we throw anything overboard (including cat furballs wrapped in toilet paper), the suckerfish will appear out of nowhere to chomp it all down.

On June 12, we tried to leave. However the exact thing that we were afraid of happening happened - our anchor got stuck! Fortunately there were divers on a boat named ‘Batrichian’, next to us. They got our anchor up, and we headed to Ahe. With Denise up the mast, Mom on the bow, Dad at the wheel, and me at the depth sounder, we got out the pass and in the next. Ahe is my favourite place in the South Pacific so far. Dad had been here 25 years before, with his parents, on their boat called ‘Windaway’. We anchored off the quay, where a big supply ship was. We went ashore. We meet a man named Tiena who had been friends with Dad when he was here!
We walked around town, and saw the same place were Dad had had his picture taken 25 years before! Dad rigged up the sailing dinghy and went sailing, while Mom and I went snorkeling. It was SO interesting floating around the coral heads looking at the exotic fish!
We took three local kids who had been helping us with the dinghy out to the boat. Their names were Famaiti, Tinis, and Hridece.

Teina and his girl-friend, Marie, came out for dinner on Silent Sound. Teina was very interested in hearing Dad’s old journal from when he was here.

(I’m not to good on getting things in order, because I can only write this when the engine is running). The next day we went to church. It was very interesting. I liked it more then the last church we went to.
The same day we went to Teina’s house, to listen to music, with the “Tenacious” crew. Unfortunately Teina’s friends didn’t come so there was no music.

We sailed in the sailing dinghy to a swimming hole, followed by “Illusion”, in their’s. After snorkeling, swimming, and swinging on a rope swing, we had a picnic on the Pacific side of the atoll. It was fun!

On our last day at Ahe, after snorkeling, some kids came out to the boat. We had fun leaping off the boat with them. But when we started the engine they clambered quickly into their kayak with dad joking to them “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?!?! Aren’t you coming to Rangiroa with us?”
Off Ahe we sailed through a giant black cloud of bat-like birds. Soon after the birds were gone a large pod of porpoises joined us.
The next day we entered the pass into Rangiroa. Rangiroa is the second largest atoll in the world! After we had anchored we went to shore and had lunch at a local restaurant with the “Four Winds” and “P.J.’s Dream” crews and talked about boat problems. We sailed to the pass in the dinghy to the so-called aquarium to go snorkeling with the fish and sharks. Unfortunately the three to four knots threatening current stopped us. Instead we dropped Denise off to snorkel and we went to the beach and snorkeled from shore. We saw a moray eel in its den. We also saw lots of fish. The next day we rented three bicycles and rode over to the other side of the island. The roads here are paved and in some places even blacktop! At the other end of the island we had a picnic by the other pass. We were talking to a South African couple off “Nondi” when Dad said, “Look at the fin”. A little ways up the beach there was the fin of a black-tipped reef shark. The two sharks were trying to get some fish heads and skeletons that fishermen had thrown on the beach. Sometimes they almost went aground. After having ice cream and looking at fish off the pier we rode back to the other end of the island with our buts aching. Next to the pass that we had come in there was finer sand than we’ve seen since Mexico. Harry and I built a sandcastle and it had built-in coral plates to stop the water from getting in. On the way back we went to an e-mail shop where the nice French couple gave us coffee, tea and hot chocolate while we were waiting for Mum on the computer.

The next day we awoke to see a manta ray-like, mini-submarine. After going ashore, to do e-mail, we got a ride with some people in a zodiac, to the Aquarium. Vroom, VROOM, VROOM!!!!! In the water it was another experience all together! However, we did have to watch out for Trigger Fish, like the one Dad had had a bad encounter with the day before. When dad had first seen it, the fish swam at him at break-neck speed, and slammed him hard in the mask! That day the French woman, at the e-mail shop, Sandrena, had told us: “You must be careful! Dee’ Trigger Fish will ram into you and bite hunks of flesh from you, to defend der’ home. Dey’ are more aggressive den’ dee’ shark.” I did see one Trigger but I got out of there fast! We saw fish of every shape, color, and size! We saw one school of the common yellow fish with black strips (sergeant majors), only this time it seemed interesting - because this time you couldn’t see the bottom under them all!
Two days later we left - or we tried to…. As we raised and lowered the chain, and circled all over the map, the bow was violently slamming up and down, some times knocking us off our feet!
Finally we got up the anchor, and headed for Tahiti. While going through the pass we watched surfers surfing. We saw our first Tuamotu shipwreck the out side of the pass.
After two days of sailing we sighted Tahiti. Just off Tahiti we swam off the boat.
The same church and market is still here that was here when Dad was here 25 years ago! We saw fireworks, for the Heiva Festival. After we went to a concert. There were speakers 2x the size of an average house! We saw dances, both modern and traditional. After a Marquesean dance the MC said ‘kaloha’ to the Marqueseans, and I had to correct him that it was KAOHA!!!’, strictly if you were Marquesean.
On Friday we had breakfast on ‘Tenacious’, while we watched a outrigger race.
The next day we went to church, and eat out.
On July 2, I lost 2 teeth! A vet came to look at Katie.
The next day we went out, saw a dance rehearsal, and had ice cream. While we were watching the rehearsal an old man about 70, came out and began dancing on the stage, a mixture of Tahitian, make-up, Modern, and Haida. Everybody laughed in hysterics, until, to our disappointment, a security guard took him away.
We went out for happy hour on ‘Queen Jane’.

Jim from “Irish Melody” came over and had dinner with us. Mum went to a dance with Linda from “Irish Melody”.

Hope to hear from you again soon. Say hi to everybody.





NEWS LETTER BRADLEY A. CLEMENTS PAPEETE, TAHITI, FRENCH POLYNESIA JULY 9, 2001 BOX 2346 PRINCETON, B.C. PIRATEBRAD@HOTMAIL.COM Silentsound2000@hotmail.com
Age 11
Iorana amis

I am writing you from Papeete, Tahiti.
I hope you are well, I’m fine. Just today another outrigger race took place. It took 6 and a half-hours, and went around Moorea.
Dad and I went to a dance. It was great! Many of the modern dance moves came from the traditional Polynesian.
Andrew flew in tonight, from Honolulu.
Did you know the amount of tourists which come in to Honolulu in one day, is the same amount of people that fly into French Polynesia in one year?

We moved to Maeva Beach (Welcome Beach).
On July 12, we went to a waterfall (you know this Taishan names. I don’t remember what it was. Fa-something), the Arahoho blowhole, and a black-sand beach. We had a picnic, played in the black sand, and bodysurfed in the surf. The way the black sand is made, is the volcanic rock (which is black)- Tahiti is volcanic - erodes into dust and - there you have it - black sand!
The Arahoho blowhole was amazing! We had to grip onto the cliff with all our might as not to be blown onto the road. Blowholes are made from volcanic tunnels witch lead into the sea, and when the waves come they push out the air with a tremendous force and …SSSHHHHUUUIIISSSHHHH!!!
Next place was the waterfall, which fell 60m or more! It was a lot like the waterfall at Fatu Hiva. On the way back the road there were hundreds of chickens. We had to listen to Harry screaming, “Look! There’s a baby Cock-a-doodle-do! WOW!!! That Cock-a-doodle-do has wings!” (They all had wings).

On July 13, we swam off the boat. Harry swam on his own (more or less - with his lifejacket on) for the first time.

We left Maeva Beach for Moorea. I believe Moorea is the most beautiful island I have been to. We went to Cook’s Bay. There are cliffs suddenly coming out of nowhere. We hiked up to one of the cliffs. There were lots of pineapple groves. From up on the cliff it looks as if everything is green and then suddenly patches of grey were the pineapple groves are. There is a trail called ‘3 Coconut Pass’ because someone planted 3 coconut palms there, but then a hurricane blew down 2, but it’s still ‘3 Coconut Pass’ (we didn’t go there). The evening we went to a potluck for all of the cruisers held at the Bali Hai Club. Andrew’s friend, Ron and his daughter, Fleur, were there. Fleur used to work at the café where J.K. Rowling (who wrote Harry Potter books) used to write.
I slept outside.

The next day we moved to Papetoai Bay (the next bay over). The waves looked small, but they made us roll badly outside the pass. There were clouds of flying fish like blue butterflies. We went snorkeling. It was like of garden of coral. There was coral of blue, green, black, brownish and white. I saw a snowflake moray eel, 2 triggerfish and numerous other fish which I could not identify. In some parts there is no coral and in other parts there are no parts that aren’t coral. Some fish were camouflaged into the reef and when they moved it looked like a part of the reef was moving. It was some of the best snorkeling I have done since Los Frailes, Baja.

Since yesterday a Maramu (a very strong wind, which can last for 20 days) has been blowing. Therefore we will go to Robinson’s Cove, instead of Huahine.
Andrew and I hiked up to the road to the belvedere. There was a pineapple and papaya grove. We saw Vanilla Plants, Hibiscus Trees, Ironwood Trees, and lots of other plants.

We left for Huahine.
We sailed over night. We saw a shipwreck on the reef.
We went snorkeling. Dad and I went sailing in the dinghy. The same boat that was on the reef got towed in. It was held way over - half-sunk - so could see half the side of the boat was missing. It was called “Shawnagan”. The Tahitians had salvaged it.
Dad got a ride on something called a “WAKE BOARD”, and actually did well!
The next day we rented bikes and rode all over the island. We had a picnic on the shore of a salt-water lake, called Maeva Lake. Later we reached some Marae (sacrificial) grounds. We meet a man named Fils. He taught me some Tahitian words. Now I know Yorana (Hello), Ia Ona Na (Good Morning), Na-Na (Good-By), Manuia (Cheers), Aia Pea-Pea (no problem), Vahine (Woman), Tana (Man), Marururoa (Thank you very mutch), Maeva (Welcome), Mitairoa (Very Good), A’ahi (Tuna), Honu (Turtle), Tenuare (January), Fepuare (February), Mati (March), Eperera (April), Me (May), Tiunu (June), Tiurai (July), Atete (August), Tetepa (September), Atopa (October), Novema (November), Titema (December), Tapati (Sunday), Monire (Monday), Mahana Piti (Tuesday), Mahana Toru (Wednesday), Mahana Maha (Thursday), Mahana Pae (Friday), and Mahana Maa (Saturday).

We left on July 22, to Huahine Iti . Iti is just as pretty as Huahine Nui.
We went snorkeling ashore. The shapeless coral garden was crowded, with fish of every shape and color; such as chromis, wrasses, tetraneons, and numerous others.
The same day we went to another bay on Iti.

The next day we hiked up to another Marae. Andrew sacrificed some blood to the “God of Thieves”. On the way back we went snorkeling. Harry snorkeled for his first time!

We left back to “Nui”. I went snorkeling, with Mom and Harry. I saw Orange Spined Tage Fish, Threadfin Butterflyfish, Humbug Fish, Chromes, Convict Tang Fish, Yellow Striped Goldfish, Moorish Idol Fish, Saddleback Butterflyfish, Clownfish, Needlefish, Tetroneons, Wrasses, a Snowflake Moray-Eel, and an Octopus.
We meet 2 Tahitians, one named Manarii (I don’t know what the other guys name was), and there 3 Californian.
Andrew flew back to Vancouver.

I tried to sleep outside. I knew a squall was going to come over, because there was a huge, black, cloud on the horizon. But it was worse than I thought. In the night the wind and waves got so big and so strong, that we dragged anchor - some 50 feet from the beach!
The next day we went to Iti.
We went for Happy Hour on the beach, and did crab races and petanque (bocce).
The next morning a gale started which lasted 2 days. Dad went outside with 2 T-shirts, a rain-jacket and long pants but still had to dry off with a towel! Only him and Mom went outside, Harry and I didn’t go outside for 2 days! The wind was so strong it heeled the boat, and waves so big it made the chain go up and down the roller!
As soon as the 2-day squall had been blown off the sun broke out into a bright blue sky. We rigged-up the newly-painted sailing dinghy. Leaving Harry on Bifrost, aa Australian boat with 2 boys, Jesse (6) and Ben (4),who we met at Happy Hour, Mom, Dad, and I sailed off. We sailed all the way to the far side of the bay - about 4-5 miles - were the water is thick with sea urchins and coral heads. A cloud was over the sun so we could only see a couple of feet in front of the bow, we were going at ‘super speed’ when suddenly there was a crash and we stopped so fast everyone was jerked forward. The bow was under and water was coming in. Soon we had the dinghy off the coral head and on our way again, but we didn’t go quite so fast. We watched breakers on the reef which were from 5 to almost 20 ft., it looked like. That night we went to Happy Hour on the beach.

The next day we went snorkeling and saw lots of fish. Mom and I saw a stingray with a head like a bird. It was swimming smoothly along flapping its long, black wings. Then we left for Fare on Nui. On the way we watched porpoises and surfers.
The next day we left for Raiatea, leaving one of my favorite places in the South Pacific.
Two days after we got there we tied at the “Raiatea Marines” docks, getting ready to be hauled out. We got to plug in to shore power! It’s amazing that you can run as many lights as you want, G.P.S., TV, and computer all at once!

Ever since Katie tried Whiskas (canned cat food) she’s been going on a hunger strike! All she’s eaten is human food such as: yogurt, bread, pancakes, steak, etc., and all she’s drinking is fish juice, milk, and fridge water.

We got the boat hauled out on August 6. The used an ordinary farm tractor (the ‘New Zealand Way’)!

On August 8, we rented a car and invited the “Force 8” crew to come with us to drive over the island with us. Dad had to stay at the boat to work.
Our first stop was the “Vairua Perles”, a pearl farm in the middle of the lagoon. The nice people there told us about how they plant the pearls and showed us how they did it. At the time they were pressure washing the oyster shells. One man was fishing with a bamboo pole as all the fish were feeding near the little coral island on the stuff being washed off the shells. He got out another rod and let Harry and I fish. Harry caught two fish, but the big ones which we did not want to catch were scaring away the other fish that we did want to catch so I didn’t get any. While Harry was playing on the thin walkway to the pearl farm he fell in and came running back drenched although it was only about two feet deep.
Our next stop was at a group of maraes. We saw the largest marae in all of French Polynesia. It was about 200 ft. long! We had lunch under some banyan trees near it. They banyan trees used to be used by Tahitian families - they would bang a stick against it and it sounded like a drum so they could communicate with other families just like the American Indians used smoke signals.

We went out for dinner with Tenacious one night and for a potluck the next.

FINALLY, AFTER A WEEK ON LAND, SILENT SOUND IS BACK WERE SHE BELONGS!!!!!!!!

The day after, we left for Tahaa. We stopped at the town on Raiatea, first. After shopping we left for Tahaa. We stopped at Apu Bay. The next day we went to another bay were we meet some nice people named Alain and Cristina. The next day we left to an anchorage near the pass. Paul off Endeavour came over for Mom to sew their cockpit awning. We moved to a near-by bay. We went ashore. There were pens near the dock holding sea turtles, sharks and a stingray. We hiked through the jungle till we reached a poisonous-centiped-covered road. We flagged a car down, and it turned out to be Angelo, a man Dad had meet here 25 years ago!!!!! He drove us back to the boat, and was soon zooming over in his, with his 1-year-old daughter. They came on board, and we towed their boat to our previous anchorage.

The next day I awoke at 6:00 a.m.
Soon after breakfast Angelo came speeding over. He zoomed us ashore, we hoped in his car and his wife Cynthia, his oldest son, Michael and Marjory(the one year old), and we flew off for a tour of the island. After our 3-hour tour we stopped back at their house. We were introduced to their 6 friends, 5 dogs, 4 cats, and 3 children. After petting the cats (most of the dogs were too vicious to pet), and having a go on something called video games, we sat down to an all-Tahitian lunch. We ate taro, poisson cru, fish (head, fins, and all!), banana poi, etc. Tahitian food is strictly eaten with the hands, and you fill your plate with coconut milk before food. Afterwards we were given gifts of pearls, taro, bananas, the leftovers and vanilla beans. Then we were taken back to the boat with some of his friends. We listened to rock and roll and talked. I got a ried on a surf bord being toed by a zodiac. The next day we gave Angelo a pair of conga drums and set off for Bora Bora. I got seasick but I all ready had a cold! It was rainy, foggy, over-cast.

Hope the weather clears up for our passage to the Cooks. I miss you.

POLYNESIAN HISTORY

There were 2 ways of island making:

The formation of the archipelagos in this southern part of the Pacific is related to the ‘hot spot’ phenomenon. These hot spots are accumulations of magma generating alignments of volcanoes on the surface of the moving plate of the lithosphere: they will become the future archipelagos.

French Polynesia’s 118 islands are divided into to 2 groups: islands of volcanic origin and low coral islands.

Chronologically speaking, the volcanic islands reveal one of the first phrases of these islands’ formation. The volcano erupted beneath the sea before emerging into the air. The size of an island depended on the conditions prevailing when it was created. The longer and stronger the volcanic activity, the wider and higher the island became.

After the mass had cooled, the precipitation created by the altitude played an essential role in the erosion of the island. Valleys were hollowed out, and subsidences formed bays. Sometimes, parts of the volcano’s side remained intact.

These changes were directly linked with the height of the island, as this factor determined the formation of clouds and therefore, the quantity of water flowing down its slopes. There are fewer rivers on smaller volcanic islands.

Once this first phase was over, some, but not all islands became surrounded with a coral reef. Whether the undersea inclines were colonized by coral, or not, depended on the prevailing conditions. For example, in Rapa, in the Austral Islands, the water temperature is not always sufficient to promote the development or coral growth. Elsewhere, and in the Society Islands in particular, the islands were surrounded by a typical reef complex: a fringe reef, with a lagoon, and a barrier reef intersected by channels.

The intermediary phase in the atolls’ development is revealed by the extinct volcanoes of Moorea, Huahine, Bora Bora and Maupiti, now subject to progressive erosion. As these masses sink downwards, the peripheral reefs become more and more prominent. When the last volcanic peak has disappeared beneath the lagoon, the island will have changed into an atoll.

This explanation draws on the subsidence theory, the most widely held of current hypotheses.

2. An elevated volcano becomes extinct, and cools down. Its height encourages the formation of cloud-masses and rainfall plays an important role in its erosion.


The volcano has already sunk down a long way and the crater may have caved in, allowing the lagoon to move in. From the time the volcanoes became inactive, coral formations began to create a crust on its slopes. The accumulation of coral eventually reaches the surface of the ocean, thus forming a barrier-reef.

Millions of years later, only the main peak of the island is still visible, whereas new motus have emerged, forming a much larger reef.


The island is completely submerged and has disappeared beneath the coral bed of the lagoon. The outside ring has become enlarged and is made of long, low, islands. The former volcano has become an atoll!

Island Settlement

Although regrettably, oral tradition does not give us any precise information, we know about the ancient Polynesians’ knowledge of astronomy, meteorology or navigation, that their conception of the relative movement of the stars was very accurate. They also knew that if they traveled continuously in a region of trade winds, the wind direction would very from North-East to South-East propitious for long voyages. They had also noticed the correlation between the winds and the direction of the swell and they were able to guess that land was near by noting changes in breakers and where they came from. These sailors had an innate sense of direction and navigated by the sun and stars, knowing for example, which island could be found in the direction of witch star. It has been established that the Polynesians’ ancestors came from the archipelagos of South-East Asia. Thanks to archeological discoveries, such as the Lapita pottery, it has been demonstrated that these peoples were already in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa between 2,500 and 300 B.C. For a very long time, and even up till recently, experts thought it was mere chance that had led them to sail to the East to colonise these islands: the Society Islands first and Easter Island a few years later. In actual fact, the theory of a one-way voyage undertaken by chance, rested on the usual idea that it was impossible for them to choose a destination, as they had no instruments, no compasses and no knowledge of latitude and longitude.

Now that the striking difference between the astronomy of the temperate zone and that of the tropical zone has been established, we are able to envisage a navigation by the stars completely opposed to that of northern latitudes, in the equatorial zone traversed by the Polynesians. So what was beyond the powers of European civilisation became possible here. Because the equatorial sky was characterised by large trails of stars, the sailor could like the island he wished to reach with a constellation. So we must conclude he was acquainted with that island, hence the “return trip” theory.

A first voyage of exploration would be carried out to discover what island might be suitable for settlement, then its direction in relation to the stars was memorized and finally, they went back to fetch families, animals and plants to make an attempt at living there. These voyages must have lasted several centuries. As they embarked on longer and longer voyages, they improved their canoe-building and food-reservation techniques. In 1976, a reconstituted double canoe attempted to sail from Hawaii to Tahiti, and its success proved that this type of craft is capable of keeping to a prescribed route by beating to windward. If these canoes had only been able to sail in a leeward direction, or merely drift along, there would probably have been no Polynesian settlement before the arrival of the Europeans.

The Tahiti Handbook


October 3, 2001
Niue
Age 11
Hello All!
By Bradley

Our trip from Bora Bora was great! We even caught a wahoo (a fish that looks like a swordfish only smaller and the sail is smaller and so is the beak)!

On September 3 we reached Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Once anchored, Dave off “Ondarina” came over and we invited him to help finish the last of the wahoo. All boats in Rarotonga tie stern to the quay as the harbour is too small to anchor especially with the big supply ships coming in and out. So the next day we tied up.

“Tigger” who we had met in Mexico and who had come to my birthday party in La Paz tied up a couple of boats away from us. We finally got access to a library after a year of reading the same books again and again so we were grateful to dig in. We played with the “Tigger” kids, Alex, 10 and Samantha, 7 for much of the next two weeks. On September 9, we went hiking with Alex, Sam and their dad, Bill. The “Tigger” kids were proud to present the mimosas, a small, green fern that folds up its leaves when touched. There were many domestic animals along the side of the road such as pigs, cows, chickens, horses and goats. At the end of the road we met two biologists who were studying microscopic water creatures in a swamp. We hitchhiked back to the boats. That night we went out to dinner at a hotel with many cruisers including “P.J.’s Dream”, “Tigger”, “Amandla Star”, “Cap d’Or”, “Layla”, “Altair”, “Kanaloa” and “Carelbi” and many more. Afterward many cruisers went to the cinema. Bill and Alex and Dad and I went along with many others. The price was $5.NZ for adults and $2.50 for kids! We watched “Pearl Harbor”, a sad tale about a surprise attack on the Hawaiian Islands by the Japanese in W.W.II.

The next day we dropped Katie cat off at the house of a friendly Cook Islander named Terangi who was willing to take care of her while we are in the harsh lawed New Zealand. I know we will miss her as much as I have missed you.

We went around the island by bus with the “Tigger” crew. The scenery was beautiful. We stopped at several beaches and a waterfall. We hiked up a path which we called the Raptor Game Trail. The lush, beautiful, exotic jungle scenery was amazing. It was all a dark shade of green. There were ferns the size of small trees, palm trees of every type, mangroves and every type of tropical vegetation you can imagine.

The next day we rented a motor scooter and Dad and I rode around the island again with Bill who had also rented one hot on our tail.

The next day was Mum’s birthday. Dad, Harry and I had gone around getting everyone in the harbour to sign her card. After her birthday cruise around Rarotonga on the motor scooter, we went out for dinner at a Polynesian restaurant. Then we came back to the boat and “Tigger” came over for cake and present opening. She got a Polynesian mother-of-pearl necklace from me and a beautiful pareo (sarong or wrap) from Dad.

On September 16 we left for Niue. Four days later we took a break at Beveridge Reef which is a reef which has no atoll, motus or islands. Another boat, “Wandering Mistress” was also there. The only sight of anything solid above water level is the wreck of the trawler “Nicky Lou”. The fish and sharks there are not used to humans and will swarm all around you if you swim or your lure when you’re fishing. We caught two fish, but they were the only ones that would bite. The next day the “Wandering Mistress” crew (Dave and Victoria) splashed us over to the wreck in their motor dinghy through the wind, waves and current. A few days later we were back en route. The next day we reached Niue or the pancake island as Harry called it. Niue is a twice uplifted coral island full of caves, crevasses, arches and chasms, very low lying (about 200 ft at highest point) and surrounded by cliffs. The water is crystal clear because there are no rivers. “This island looks like northern Mexico, Dad”, I commented. It did a lot only slightly lusher.

Harry and I met some local kids, Clifford, Ben, Jason and many others. The people are extremely friendly. The shores seem to be infested with sea snakes. Some are big and red with white stripes and there are small black ones with white stripes. Their venom is twice as strong as a cobra’s, but they need to be very provoked to bite and even then it is hard for them to bite a person, as their mouths are so small. Like land snakes, they bask in the sun and lay their eggs ashore. The biggest I’ve seen was about three feet long. We like to watch them from the dinghy or the shore basking with their head and tip of their tail out of the water then with a flick of their tail they dive.

On September 26 we rented a car and drove around the island. Our first stop was Avaiki Cave. It was so amazing! There were pillars like candles, deep chasms, stalactites, stalagmites, arches and overhangs. Then there was a smaller cave with a big, crystal clear pond. Our next stop was Limu, a snorkeling spot. However, unfortunately my snorkel was being annoyed so I could not go with the rest. We went to some chasms where we swam. Then we went to a canoe-landing place. In a cave nearby I found a pile of human bones. Our next stop, Togo Chasm, was amazing. After a short walk through the haunted forest as Dad called it, we were overlooking an amazing valley of spike-like coral going all the way down to the ocean. The waves were huge. We climbed down a long, ladder into the chasm with a big beautiful white sand beach. Back at the car we drove to Gabe’s Food Bar where we had dinner with “Wandering Mistress” who had arrived that day and many locals and tourists.

The next day we drove around the island again with the “Wandering Mistress” crew. Our first stop was Hikutavake Reef where we swam in the warm underwater chasms on the reef with many fish and coral. The chasms were deep with large overhangs at the surface making them look much smaller than they really were. Dave and Dad swam the width of the reef by diving through underwater tunnels into the next pool. We then went to the Matapa Chasm for a picnic lunch. We then walked to the Tavala Arches. We climbed through an incredible cave and waded over to the giant arch where the natives used to keep a look out. We found many good shells. On the way back we saw our first giant spider. It was huge. The next stop was Togo Chasm. There were waves like milk they were so foamy and big as they broke. Inside a cave we found in the chasm there was a hole in the side that let the surf in. It was thick foam! We also found a stagnant pond turning into a swamp only a few hundred feet away from the white sand beach with coconut palms.

The next day we returned the car. We had dinner at a hotel with some other cruisers. On Saturday we went to a fair at the high school. Ben and many other locals and cruisers were there. There were games, food and crafts, etc. On Monday Dave and Victoria rented a car (the same one we’d had) and took us for a ride around Niue. We went to a look out where we saw some huge waves. We also went to a burial cave stuffed with human bones. We went to an ice cream place. We went to a canoe landing. I don’t see how an outrigger could possibly land without being smashed to smithereens by the huge waves as it’s on the prevailing wind side of the island. We went into a chasm with lots of spiders. At the bottom was a fresh water pool. We then went to Avaiki Cave again where we saw a Disney film crew doing a documentary on the sea snakes. So keep an eye out of T.V. You might see Avaiki Cave, sea snakes or even us. Let me know if you do.

On Tuesday we went to Gabe’s Food Bar with most of the other cruisers for Build your Own Burgers.

Niue is a great place and we are sorry to leave, but we are on the move and know there are other great things to experience.

Dying to hear from you. I hope you’re having fun. Wish you were here.


Tonga

Ahoy there !
Age 11
By Bradley

What’s happening lately? Tonga was beautiful and it’s people friendly. In fact “Tonga” is the native word for “Friendly”!
Anyway, we stopped at Neiafu on the main, and most northern island of the Vava’u Group. Our second day in Neiafu we went into town. Most men wore a black long-sleeved shirts and black skirts, with a small traditional tapa one on top.
The women wore the same only with longer tapa skirts. During our time in town Harry and I were given candies, shown traditional arts and crafts and spoken to by many locals. I bought a small carving of the traditional Tongan God of Love. The man said that it was the only one in all of Vava’u. Later that week we went out for dinner, at the “Dancing Rooster Restaurant & Bar” (also known as the “Dancing Cockerel” by the British). I raced model sailboats many times that week. I tied with Colin off “Elahka” in a “Mini Jr. America’s Cup Championship”! I won a free milk shake from the “Mermaid’s Bar & Grill”, and got my name on a plaque there. Dad was also racing. Every Friday he would race the sailing dinghy against Jaki off “Sailfish”. Jaki’s grandfather used to know my grandfather and one of my uncles used to know her and another of my uncles knew her sister. She now has to adopted children, 3 year-old Taj, from the Caribbean, and 5 year-old Xiao-Li from China. The first time Dad won a BBQ dinner at the ”Dancing Rooster”, the second time he won two loaves of bread and the next time he won two beer holders. We left Neiafu and went to Mala. “Sailfish” also came. We went out to play on the beach and go to the restaurant at the resort many times. We went back to Neiafu were we met up with “Tigger” who we had not seen since Rarotonga. Our next stop was Anchorage 16. “Tigger” also came. We had several bonfires on the beach with them. Alex, Sam, Harry and I liked to search for “poppers”, large seeds which we would toss into the fire and they would blast open with a bang and a cascade of sparks!

We went to Neiafu for a few days. We went to a Hallowe’en party on October 26. Harry was “The Emperor of Canada” (we draped him in huge Canadian flags till he looked like some sort of Julius Caesar or some thing), Dad was Popeye (and it’s about time he won Jaki in a sailing race!), Mom was “The Halloween Queen”, and I was a piece of abstract art (there were comments about my costume for weeks after). Alex, Tig, Bill and Sam, were also there, as well as Jaki, Taj and Xiao-Li. Alex was a Dementor without a hood (numerous girls couldn’t look at him). Sam was a Ballerina and Tig was a Witch. The Sailfish crew where gypsies. Jaki had a big witch hat which seemed to get around, and whenever Taj found it on a table or some where, he would ask me to put it on. What a sight! A large, black, white, red and blue object with odd things sticking in every direction being chased by a particularly small dark boy wearing a turban and a little vest that only covered his chest carrying a black pointed hat bigger than him self screaming “Put on da witchy hat, Buadui!”

We then went to Mala again. Tigger also went there. In Tigger we went to Mariner’s Cave, a cave only entered underwater. Only Dad and Tig went in.
Back in Mala we sailed the Ia-Orana, a model ketch that Grumpa had made and we had fixed up.

“Tigger” left for New Zealand and we went back to Neiafu. On Hallowe’en we had a witch hunt. Nobody found a witch, but most of the hunters got wet and splattered with powdered milk and mashed pumpkin. That didn’t make it so much fun. We then went to Olo’ua for a traditional Tongan feast. I had a sip of kava (a Polynesian tradition called the kava circle where a bowl of ground up kava roots and water is passed around and drunk. If you drink enough you will fall asleep. Your tongue and lips tingle and sort of fall asleep.) I met some of the local children. They are very nice. The people of Olo’ua do not understand how important shells are to us and since not many yachties come here we found two tiger cowries, a spider cowry and many others. The people are also very friendly. We were given a tiger cowry and candies. I taught the children how to play a few games with only natural things, as they don’t have any toys. We even played soccer with a breadfruit! Soon a small tattered piece of fruit was flying over our heads! We left for anchorage 30. We hiked over the island. On the other side the waves were 15 ft. high. We found a coconut crab in the rocks. There were many spiders. As we were walking back something rushed across the path. As we wondering what it was, we got back and Peter off “Rise and Shine” who was the only other palangi (non-Tongan) at the feast said that there were wild goats here as. Later on the goats came down to the beach and we saw them again. We went back to Neiafu to clear out with Customs and then went to Port Maurelle. We had a bonfire on the beach with the Sailfish crew. As we were roasting our wieners and chicken a baby horse and two adults came down to the beach to have a drink of salt water! Taj and Xiao-Li went mad (“OOOOOOH! Wook at da wido housy!”).
We left Tonga for Minerva Reef. We had a perfect but uneventful passage to the reef. There was no swell, no clouds, but good wind. In Minerva there were 20 boats! Skive was there with 6 year old Hannah on board so Harry had a ball. Minerva is just like Beveridge where land is a week away. The only difference is here the reef dries (almost dries I should say!) at low tide so we had to walk on it! It was so neat! It was like walking on water out in the middle of the ocean. We saw a little trigger fish which would slowly come up to a hole in the coral then move slowly backwards then suddenly turn around and bolt with a big trigger hot on it’s tail then do this again. There were some pools water you could not put your foot in they were so hot!

We left Minerva. Again we had perfect conditions. In the middle of the trip, the water was full of dolphins. We saw some babies leaping all together and the adults playing around our bow. It was just like in Mexico. A few nights later, Mum and Dad saw an amazing meteor shower. A couple of days later, Dad and I found a large pod of pilot whales playing in our wake. They did not stay for long as there were many fish nearby.

We arrived in Opua just under a week after we left Minerva. A front was coming in and it was howling wind and as soon as we tied up, it began to dump rain. There were many boats in front and behind us. I saw mallard ducks for the first time since Victoria. The Quarantine and Customs Officers boarded us and searched for any illegal things. They took away things like potatoes and onions and my Mexican feather good luck charm from Puerto Vallarta. That evening we went out of the American Thanksgiving as we had missed the Canadian one. It was a great turkey dinner and there were many yachties we knew. Cap d’Or left more than a day after us and had gotten to Opua a few hours before us.

The day after the turkey dinner we left for Russell. We went to town to do some errands. We have decided to stay in Russell for quite awhile. Dad got a job as a painter/decorator at a resort and we had a steak dinner at the Russell Boating Club.


New Zealand

Bradley Clements
Box 2346
Princeton, B.C.
V0X 1W0
silentsound2000@hotmail.com
September 30, 2003
Age 13

Sorry I haven't written my newsletter for so long. We bought a van in Whangarei, New Zealand. Dad had trouble trying to get a driver's licence as his Rarotongan one had expired. Eventually he decided not to get one and mum did all the driving rather than start over as a learner. Our friends on "Circe of Aeaea" helped us load the van and we set off for Auckland in February. It was a long drive to Auckland and we were caught in a traffic jam. We met our friends, Melva and Hilton on "Spindrift" who we met in Victoria before we left. We stayed the night with them and then explored the Auckland Zoo. It's the first time we've been to a major zoo except San Diego. We did a lot of errands including liferaft maintenance and went to the America's Cup Village. We went to the "Alinghi" exhibit where you could try to grind a winch, do a quiz, play a video game of a race and the bow of a previous Alinghi yacht which you could try to walk up and attach a halyard while it was lunging up and down (probably more than it would be in real life). Afterwards we
went to the "Star and Stripes" exhibit where Dennis Connor had his collection of silk screen prints and models of old America's Cup yachts.

We left Auckland and drove to Piha of the west coast and had our first view of the Tasman Sea. Piha is a major surf beach and a little blue penguin colony. There is a huge rock in the middle of the beach which Mum and Dad hiked up. The next day we drove on to Parakai where there was a campground at the thermal resort pool. There were two huge waterslides which you could slide down on mats. We had lots of fun.

Then in Matakohe we went to the Kauri Museum where there is the world's largest collection of kauri gum, lots of models and artifacts. A kauri tree is a gigantic tree which grows only in NZ and is one of the thickest and tallest trees in the world. It also can live thousands of years. Its wood almost never rots and is very valuable. The fossilized sap can be dug up and is also worth a lot of money. We traveled on to the Kai Iwi Lakes where there was a packed campground, but we found another one of the other side of the lake which was almost empty. We swam in a lake which was very calm and beautiful. We were lucky we weren't camping by the lake where people are permitted to waterski. We went to the kauri forests and saw the first, second and seventh largest kauris in the world. They were so large that they seemed closer than they were. Our friends back in Whangarei, Roy and Tui, went looking for the largest one before the viewing platform was built and thought they were walking beside a huge cliff until they realized it was the tree! There are many plants in the top of the tree and it looks like a mini forest 50 or 60 feet off the ground!

Our next stop was Oponui. We drove up a hill and could see across the bay were there is a HUGE sand dune! How that much sand got there I don't know, but it must have been hundreds of meters tall! Next we went to 90 Mile Beach. 90 Mile Beach is actually 90 km long. We went on a bus tour to Cape Reinga through farms and pastures. Our tour guide was very nice and a pure blood Maori. He sang us some songs and told us some stories. We stopped at the Wagener Museum which is one of the largest, privately owned museum in Northland of New Zealand. We saw lots of amazing artifacts and specimens from all over the world and all different times. There was everything from chamber pots that sang to golden busts of pharaohs, from butterflies to two-headed sheep. I know now how annoying it can be to be a tourist as you can't spend time to look around. We then drove the rest of the way to the Cape where there was a small lighthouse on the very end where the Maoris believed the spirits of their dead ancestors departed by sliding down the roots of the pohutakawa tree into the ocean and to their ancestral land of Hawaiiki (which was their land of origin - possibly Hawaii). On the way back we drove down to the beach where there was a mountonus sand dune. We had to crane our neces to look up at it and as we walked to the top it seemed that we were climbing a cliff. At the top we sat on our plastic sledges whitch the bus driver had given us and after admiring the view we pushed off and zoomed down across the sand at amazing speed! After our sand skiding we got back on the bus. Next time you see a ordinary city bus driving down the street try to imagine it driving along a 90 kilometer long white sand beach! That's what we went on! It was great!

Back in the van we drove to Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands. We visited some old historical buildings around the bay. At Opua we meet lots of old friends including "Capaz" from La Paz in Mexico, "Plum Crazy" with Jason from Whangarei and many others. We went on a ferry to Russell and had dinner at the good old "Russell Boating Club" where we meet lots more good friends. We stayed at the Russell "Top 10 Holiday Park" were dad used to work. Dave, dad's former boss, greeted us with "It's the weekend, mate, your not workign today!" The next day we were back in Whangarei with the "Circe of Aeaea" crew helping us unload the van.

Well I think that's all you will be interested in about our first inland trip in New Zealand and I'm sorry I haven't written sooner. We are in Vanuatu now., Hope you're all well and I can't wait to hear from you.



Bradley Clements,
Box 2346,
Princeton, B.C.
Canada V0X 1W0
Age 13

Since I'm so behind on my letters, I'll be sending this from Australia. This is about our second trip in New Zealand. Our first stop again was Auckland. We went to the War Memorial Museum where there were an amazing amount of artifacts. I was especially interested in the artifacts from the Han dynasty, Egypt and the Middle East as that is what I have been studying in my history which is my favourite subject. We also went to the Auckland Art Gallery where there was an exhibition of Qin Shehuangidi which had life-sized terracotta warriors from his tomb.

After leaving Auckland we went to Rotorua which is an active volcanic area. We saw bubbling mudpools, steam geysers, hot springs and much more thermal activity. We went to The Buried Village which used to be one of the wonders of the world, famous for the natural terraced pools going from icy cold and the bottom to boiling hot at the top. There was still some of the ruins of the village after it was buried by a volcanic eruption. We saw some tall trees planted in a perfect row which used to be fence posts. We then drove towards Wellington stopping at Lake Taupo and Paraparaumu where Grandpa and Nana had some friends from when they sailed to Auckland in 1974. We went to Wellington, the capital of NZ, but did not stay long. We went on a big ferry over the Cook Strait to the South Island.

We got off at Picton and the next day drove to Nelson. We went on a very scenic road with lush jungle on one side and Marlborough Sounds on the other. In Nelson we met up with friends on "Sailfish" who we'd met back in Tonga. Little Taj, Xiao-Li, Harry and I built a fort on the island near where they were anchored and explored the swamps and forests. We also met our friends on "Manaroa III" who we met in Canoe Cove before we left Canada and didn't think we were going to go. We went to Abel Tasman Park where there were beautiful forest and lots of green grass and nearly dried up rivers and lots of birds. The tui is one of the most interesting birds there are and it can make almost any noise from a car horn to a dog bark and are extremely funny to watch. I saw one here that spun right around on a branch still holding on with its feet, but went from right side up to upside down and back up on the other side. We then went to Farewell Spit which is the northern most part of the South Island and is further north than the southern most part of the North Island. The spit probably used to go all the way across Cook Strait making it a bay. Now there are lots of sea birds living there as well as being on a migration route. We also saw gigantic sand dunes and there were two gigantic pinnacles of rock inhabited by a colony of seals. In one the adults all slept in a long,low cave which had a tunnel going out to the other side where there was the perfect swimming pool for the seal pups. We watched them for a long time as they played around in the pool and their mother watched from up on a ledge.

Our next stop was at Pu Pu Springs, which has the second clearest water in the world. The clearest being under the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. We drove on stopping at Totaranui where we picked up a hitch-hiker, Rewaka Springs, an old train-tunnel, Murchison and Westport. In Westport we stumbled upon some old friends from U.S. that we met in Mexico who where also driving through NZ, off a boat called "Ragn Dragn". Our next stop was a seal colony where Harry and I had fun playing with the wekas which are a type of land scavenger bird. We then went to Hokitika where we met up again with the "Ragn Dragn" crew. Dad bought a sketch pad and a mechanical pencil and has started drawing again. We went to Mitchell's Gully which used to be a goldmine and has been passed on from father to son to the present owner. As he cannot find any more gold, he has decided to turn it into a tourist attraction. His wife hopes that he'll never find any more gold because she hates goldmining. We drove on through rocky hills and green pastures like Swiss cheese from all the goldmines. We stopped at Bullock Creek which I read about in a book by a famous NZ author.

We then went to the Pancake Rocks which is another famous NZ tourist site which is not quite so exquisite those in Niue. We went to the Ross goldfields. All the historical goldminers houses have been dug under by modern gold seekers. Harry, Dad and I found lots of old pieces of pottery including part of a old clear jug with the word "vegetable" written on it.
We then went to Franz Josef Glacier and then to Mathison Lake which has an amazing forest surrrounding its water is like quicksilver. Then we went to the Fox Glacier which was named after one of the NZ governors and then through the Haast Pass. After crossing the longest one-lane bridge in the southern hemisphere and a few car-train bridges (train on top, car underneath) we drove through the forest which covered the alpine pass. We stopped at a waterfall called Fantail Falls. As most of the water had dried up the falls where not very exciting, but what was lying on the rocky dry river-bed was. To our astonishment the entire river-bed was covered with amazing statues made by stacking loose stones one on top of the other into impossible-looking formations!

Our next stop was Wanaka. We went to "Stuart Langsfeld's Puzzling World" which was full of optical illusions such as water flowing up-hill, 3-D illusions and masks that watched you. There was also a life-sized walk-through maze. The next day we went to the "Wanaka Toy and Transport Museum" which is the most worthwhile museum I have ever been to. The whole former hanger and airstrip was occupied with everything from old Austin automobiles to WWII Scorpion tanks, the Kiwi Solar Racer to an original San Francisco street car, gliders to bombers, model test-planes to the first McDonalds Happy Meal toys! The most interesting of the lot was probably was a WWII officer transport plane called "Flew the Coop!" which had been used to take officers to and from their bases. After the war
it had been sold cheap and some smugglers bought it and used it to fly from the U.S. to Mexico. It
was confiscated by the Mexican government and then some jetliners pilots who were on holiday flew it
to New Zealand.

Our next stop was the Bendigo goldfields which was a typical goldmining town with the ruins of an old miner's shack and desertous cliff landscape. We drove up a narrow dirt road on the side of the cliffs past old mines and ruins of other shacks. We then went on to Cromwell where we had a delicious icecream made with two flavours of icecream, fresh fruit, cookie crumbs and caramel and things in a waffle cone. We also had some delicious fruit such as blueberries, raspberries, strawberries etc. We went through Glenorchy to Double Barrell falls where we picked up a hitchhiker on the way back to Queenstown. A few miles before Queenstown the engine started to splutter. We made it and a mechanic replaced the fuel pump very promptly and we continued on to Arrowtown. It is an old Chinese goldmining settlement. We continued back to Cromwell and to Clyde and on to Dunedin on the east coast of the South Island.

We visited to old train station and the Cadbury chocolate factory. In the chocolate factory we saw how chocolate bars and Easter eggs are made. We also saw a chocolate "waterfall" and we got lots of "free" samples. We went to the yellow-eyed penguin colony and then we went to Waimate where we stayed two nights with Wendy and Noel who are friends of Grandpa and Nana's from when they sailed to NZ in 1974-6. With them we went to the clay cliffs, Benmore Dam and saw Maori cliff paintings. Then we drove to Christchurch and went to the Antarctic Centre which is the closest departure area for the Antarctic. On our way back to Picton we went to a seal colony and camped a few rainy nights. Back in Picton we stayed the night at our friends' house whom we'd met in a holiday park a few weeks before. They were very kind and trusted us to stay in their house while they were both at work. Then we took the Cook Strait ferry and crossed the strait in a storm. The ferry's bow lifted out of the water and came slamming down with everybody whooping and yelling except the sick people who were groaning and puking. The drunks were having a great time trying to hold dozens of glasses of beer from falling off the table. The next day we went to the Te Papa Museum in Wellington. We saw the "Lord of the Rings" exhibition.

The stop of interest was a playground which took up several cities along the Whanganui River which includes go-cart tracks, bumper boats, swimming pool, tunnels, train track, castle, pirate ship, water fountains to play in, etc. We stayed a night with our friend, David, in Te Kuiti, and the next day we drove through Auckland and back to Whangarei where we were welcomed back by our friends.

So that's our New Zealand story. Sorry it took so long.


Fiji

Bradley Clements
Age 13

We left New Zealand on May 3, 2003 and after a few days of sea-sickness (due to no sailing for a year) had a pleasant trip to Fiji. We were accompanied by Captain Comeback and his crew of welcome swallows who perched on the life-lines and groomed their ora1nge chest plumage and black wing feathers. Once Captain Comeback himself flew right down the companion-way, all round the cabin, searching for insects, and back out again! We also saw a monsterous white whale-shark basking in the sun as we passed close by.
After 11 days at sea, we came in sight of the Fiji Group. We sailed all night through the Koro Sea and reached the "lighthouse" at day break. The small atolls around the entrance to the reef where very characteristic. One looked like a ship wreck and one had a palm tree which looked horribly like the "golden arch". We were called by "M.V. Curliz" who asked if we would like to take a Waitui mooring and the long, white-bearded Island Cruising Port Captain, Curly, came out and helped us tie up. He brought the officials out to Silent Sound. It was hot even for the locals and as we had just come from New Zealand, we were sweltering. The day we arrived the Waitui Marina had a Fijian Feast dinner which we attended. We met lots of friends there including "Zee Otter" with Ken, Peggy, Kenny and Will; Samuel, the 12-year-old Indian boy; and others. After a month we left with "Zee Otter" to go east. Our first stop was Fawn Harbour after a day sail. We caught a small barracuda and called "Zee Otter" to tell them. They were notorious as the best fishermen in Savusavu. but had not caught any lately. Peggy replied saying, "We caught fish too. Two 50 lb. yellowfin tuna." Dad and Ken took one of the tuna ashore across the mud flats - one with the head, the other with the tail. The next day we went to the village going through the jungly creek which was like a tunnel through the underbrush and trees. We did the sevusevu ceremony with the mayor. After we few days we left for Dakuniba.

Most of the hills were cleared of forest except for close to the water. When we went ashore, we found that the mud flats which had ooked orange were actually black. The black mud was entirely covered in "yellow-nipper crabs", small crabs with one massive orangey claw. They had riddled the whole beach with holes spaced about an inch apart. Kenny, Will and Harry raced around the beach attempting to catch the crabs, but no matter how fast they ran they remained in the centre of a perfect circle of black mud which was surrounded by scurrying orange crabs who dartd down their burrows if they couldn't scamper over their peers in time.

We crossed the stream on the coconut palm-trunk bridge and followed the short path to the village where we did sevusevu with the chief. A lady named Mariel was our guide and she led us through the village pointing out interesting places. We walked through the jungle until trees abruptly fell back and we were standing on the edge of an expanse of granite through which a rivulet flowed. The stream had carved the smooth grey rock delicately and intricately forming a network of waterways, pools, waterfalls and waterslides. Mariel removed her flip-flops, sat on them and zoomed down a waterslide into a deep, narrow pool. At the bottom of the natural waterworks was a large pond next to which were three massive, oval-shaped boulders, each balanced on its tip and leaning against each other. How they assumed such a precarious position is unknown.

We crossed the granite and plunged into the jungle again on the other side. We climbed the crumbling dirt slope a short way until we reached a small clearing whose floor was cobbled by thick angular stones. On a closer look I could se that each was like a puzzle piece and could easily be fitted into each other to achieve a single granite block. These "puzzle pieces" were not to widely scattered to the left or right, but widely spread angling downward, hinting that this block must have fallen from an upright position, shattered and scattered down the hill. My estimation of the original height of the megoliths is pehaps 20-25 feet and 10-15 feet wide. The only masonry work supposedly achieved by the present natives of Fiji was the large stone foundations of their bures. This megalith would equal any Carnac standing stone, if not surpassing it. As if this were not extraordinary enough, the stone pieces were spangled with symbols - not one was next to another eliminating the possibility of alphabetical characters. but none resembled a likeness of anything I can think of which also made the possibility of petroglyphs or pictographs unlikely. The only representation to these characters that I could see were Phoenician and Greek, as strange as these possibilities may be. Mariel told us there were more stone pieces farther up the hill, but the jungle was too thick to reach them.

(Note: this letter is unfinished)

Vanuatu



Bradley Clements
Age 13

The sun was just setting as "Silent Sound" pased the wreak of a 50' super yaught and into Port Resolution after a week-long crossing from Lautoka, Fiji. The sunset enhaced the beuty of the blood red cliffs and dark green jungle. Children's shouts echoed around the bay from the black lava-rock shore where NiVanuatu children played in outrigger canoes and in the water. Presently a wooden outrigger was paddled up to "Silent Sound's"
hull. We envited the three shy boys abord and I gave them my guitar which they strumed skillfully.
The next day went ashor and were greeted by the hospitable chief. He kindly aranged a trip to the town for us to checked us in along with the "Velala", " ", " " and " " crews.

(Note: this letter is unfinished)

Australia

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Bradley Clements
BOX 2346
Princeton, B.C.
VOX 1W0
Canada

silentsound2000@hotmail.com

Age 13

We are all in Bundaberg, Australia, as you may already know. I am very sorry about not sending any news letters for so long.

Bundy is a nice town, but we often miss the palm strewn tropical isles. When we sighted Aussie we were already very close due to very low land. That was before sunset. Dad called us and said that there were two humps on the horizon. According
to the chart they were the Double Sloping Hummocks. We sailed up the river by night as our transmission had failed on the trip after spending a lot of time and money in Port Vila, Vanuatu trying to fix it. We followed the lights and anchored outside the Bundaberg Port Marina.

The next morning, November 28, a work boat came and towed us to the end of the dock. Customs and Quarantine officers came aboard and we did paperwork and showed Quarantine through our lockers. One of the funny things was that we arrived in N.Z. on Thanksgiving Day two years ago and arrived here on Thanksgiving as well, but this time we missed the turkey feast by a few hours. The next day we went to a free Australian BBQ including sausages, meat patties, onions and salads. A 9-year-old Chinese girl, Emma, who we'd met in Port Vila was on the hardstand and she, Harry and I searched for lizards around on shore. We found a foot-long Eastern Water Dragon basking in the sun on a rock. It is a sort of grey to greenish brown with darker spots on its back. We also saw some geckos and other common lizards and two half-foot long lizards in the rocks near the water.

There is a free bus which takes marina members to town and we often take it. On Sundays we take the bus to the market outside the Slalom Catholic College where there is everything from fruit and vegetables to used books and electric cars. I had my knife sharpened and bought a history book. We saw free kittens and pups as well as swords and clay sculptures, plants, herbs, tools, etc., etc. Harry and I went with Emma and her parents to the turtle rookery one night and saw a turtle trying to dig a hole to lay her eggs in . However one of her fins was injured so she was digging two separate holes which were too small. It was a loggerhead turtle.

After a week so of perfect weather we had several days of thunder, lightning and rain. Another boat with children arrived called "Xhabbo". Harry and I went with them to the Sugar Museum (sugar is Bundaberg's main export product) and the pool. The way sugar cane used to be cut was by hand with cane knives like in Fiji and on a good day 10 tons of cane could be cut, but now a large machine is used. On the way back to the marina on the bus, the road and sugar cane fields were all flooded. For this reason, most of the houses in Bundaberg are built on stilts. The day before "Xhabbo" left, we all played music together. The lady on "Xhabbo" played guitar, Emma's dad played flute, Tui off "Xhabbo" played recorder, Rose played violin and Mum played keyboard.

We went to a Christmas party 6 days before Christmas. Three days later we set up the Christmas tree and Harry and I made lots of paper chains.We were invited to go to a Christmas party at a man named Ivan's house.

Christmas morning I woke up in sweltering heat (Christmas is in summer here) and covered in mosquito bites. I got a new guitar case, a book of guitar songs, a mechanical pencil , two calligraphy nibs,some books and a jaws harp. W had a great party at Ivan's and saw kangaroos, snakes and kookaburras.

Hope you have a great holiday and never forget the meaning of Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year



S/V Silent Sound
Noumea, New Caledonia
June 23, 2004
By Bradley
Age 14

I must beg for forgiveness as I have not written my newsletter since Christmas. I also much regret not having time to write in Fiji or Vanuatu and if I can find the time I will try to catch up on that.

Here are some notes of the highlights and most adventurous and enjoyable parts of our trip between Bundaberg and Sydney, Australia. We left Bundaberg, but, finding conditions bad, returned. Harry and I rowed ashore to visit our friends on "Sea Star" (from B.C., Canada) and "Xhabbo" (from South Island, New Zealand), much to their surprise. In the next few days we sailed on the Fraser Island and anchored off the "Kingfisher Resort". "Sea Star" and "Xhabbo" were also there, but due to the rough anchorage we left the next day. In Garry's Anchorage, we found our friends on "Monte Cristo" who helped Harry and I much with our music. My guitar could not stay in tune and, although we could not solve the problem, I must thank "Monte Cristo" for their experienced help.

On shore we were much surprised to find regiments of organized soldiers in blue uniforms patrolling the mud flats - each about 3 cm tall! In fact these "soldiers" were tiny, blue crabs with dome shells, minute pinchers and long legs. They stayed in "regiments" and when surrounded they could burrow into sand or mud in less than 5 seconds! In Mooloolaba, we body surfed in the huge surf. The next place, Tangalooma was full of old wrecks which we where unfortunately unable to snorkel on.

Our next stop was Brisbane which is Australia's 3rd largest city. We stayed there for Australia Day. Some of the crazy Aussie events were: cockroach races, lolly (candy) drop from airplanes, giant Barbie (BBQ), mud crab races, "saucie sizzle" (sausage BBQ) and much, much more. Every day and night was at least one horrific electrical storm. The blasts of thunder were deafening, the bolts of lightning blinding and more violent than any other storms I have seen. We celebrated my birthday by visiting art galleries.

Next stop was Peel Island. As we sat on "Silent Sound", each of us at our own projects, a "damaging wind warning" was announced on VHF. Being that these warnings were often forecasted and never came, we gave it no heed. However, we soon heard a "whoosing" noise in the distance and "Silent Sound" began to heel. Soon we were heeling so far that the port portholes nearly submerged and the fenders which were hanging from the stantions were soon at a right angle to the hull! Things began to fly to the port side as we continued to heel and then we began to heel in the other direction as the wind shifted and everything flew back again. Outside was a complete white-out and nothing could be seen. When we could finally see we found we were dragging anchor towards the rocks. Dad started the engine and Harry promptly forgot his former fear and asked to play on the computer (we only have power to use the computer when running the engine). When the wind stopped and we hoisted anchor to move back to where we were before we dragged, we found the anchor polished to the metal and it had been painted white before!

Our next point of interest was Southport (which you may know as the "Gold Coast" on charts of Australia). Here we met Brian on "Charlotte" of Georgia, U.S.A. who we met in Savusavu, Fiji; Ryan and Jackson on "Keemar III" of Aussie who we met in Mooloolaba; Rory, Alex and Nikki on "Manuhiri" of New Zealand who met in Russell and Whangarei, New Zealand; and Jordan and his sister on "La Passarola" of Aussie. We stayed in Southport five weeks. In the first part of our stay we spent all our time in a fort in a bush with full headroom, five rooms, five entrances - many secret - and much more - proving the size of the bush. However, we got over excited and ran all over the bush and another kid ripped up the entrance so we left it to recover.

For our second interest, we swam from dawn till dusk as it was 45 degrees C and too hot not to. As the heat slightly descended and the breeze freshened, we rigged the sailing dinghy and Brian and I zoomed around (vainly pursued by Rory or Alex who were too afraid to haul in the sheet!) A man on shore kindly observed my guitar as to why it was not tuning and found the tuning machine's screws loose. Aso Brian's dad told me about the octaves on my tuner (I did not know it was an octave tuner! -Special thanks to him).

Brian invented a game which we named "Quest" which was amazingly fun and imaginative which we spent the remainder of our time playing. Ryan and Jordan where extremely funny and added much spice to the game. Brian and I drew up maps, listed spells, characters and weapons till March 5th when a hurricane headed toward Southport and time was spent battening down. Fortunately it bounced off the coast and gave Southport no more than 45 knots, a missing beach, flash flooding, boats dragging onto beach and several tangled anchor chains. The day after the storm we swam and the water was fresh from all the rain! It was also very murky and we took turns pushing each other underwater to see the colours change from orange to red to black then back again like some abstract painting with bubbles flitting around! Some funny things about Southport's beach is that it has a sudden drop off so you can dive and even if you only land a few feet out you still don't hit bottom! Also there is a sort of basin in the middle of the point of the beach so that the tide comes in in about 5 minutes! At the right tide this basin is so sensitive that you can tell what the swell is like at sea because of the slight rise and fall of the water in the basin! Brian and I wanted to sail the dinghy on the Broadwater, but the wind was too strong till the weekend when the Broadwater was like an Auckland traffic jam of stinkpots! We were always dreading the weekends as it brought with it a tidal wave of blind jet skis, snow white tourists, rich locals in teak launches with huge engines, sun bathers, cob webs of fishing lines and other horrifying spectacles. (Special thanks to Shawn on "Manuhiri" and Brian for making a fool of a few of them having to do with jet skis and amateur sailors.)

A few BBQ's and packages of marshmallows later we left Southport. We sailed through swarms of butterflies, dragonflies, flies, mosquitos and other strange insects several miles out to sea. In Iluka (on the Clarence River) we stayed a few days and ate fish and chips, time passing slowly for Harry and I as our friends of "Sea Star" and "Xhabbo" were directly across the river in Yamba yet we could not get over there. We sailed up river to Maclean, a Scottish town then to Grafton - so far up the river that a cruising yacht only went up there about once a decade. There we got a new sink and new arborite for our counter. We took some locals for a cruise down river to Ulmarra (a little town like a ghost town it's so dead). Next we went back to Maclean then finally to Yamba. In Yamba we stayed in the marina which Kay Cottee, the first woman to sail solo unassisted around the world, had recently bought. We rigged the sailing dinghy and planned a regatta which we never sailed, but still had lots of fun. We boogie boarded on the beach and got a few good surfs. We had a sing-along on "Xhabbo" with Ross (Possum) playing recorder, Patsy (his mum) classic guitar, Rose violin (very good!), Harry bongo drums and myself my acoustic guitar. On our first sing-along we had in Bundaberg we also had two keyboards (Mum and Emma), a flute (Emma's dad), and two more recorders (Bee and Tui). We hauled the boat out and the name of our Fijian friend, Vilipe, who helped us scrape the bottom, was still scraped in the growth on the hull!

We went back to Iluka with "Xhabbo" and explored the rainforest. We found many huge cicada shells. The strangler vines were killing the trees then holding up their trunks after they were dead. Each tree had a hole in the bottom with a ramp of sawdust leading up to it. Patsy reached in one and found lots of dead bugs. We climbed up to a look-out and saw the green extent of rainforest to the west, the blue Pacific to the east, other strange, misty bays to the north and Yamba, Iluka, the breakwater, long beaches with white breakers which looking like smudges and the Clarence River to the south.

Next stop of interest was Broken Bay. After Pittwater we went to Hungry Beach then America Bay. The latter was amazingly calm, tranquil and peaceful. However, when the first stinkpot, blaring out rap on its ghetto blaster came blundering in. I wished I had a rocket launcher handy.

We met a violin player from the Sydney Opera and her husband and she gave us tickets to a concert which she was to play in the the Sydney Opera House. We took a bus from Pittwater to Manly, then a ferry to Circular Quay next to the Opera House. The point which hides the House is called Bradley's Head so naturally I should have some credit for it and be made rich and famous. Anyway, we explored town, visited several art galleries then went up to the House. We met Julie, the violinist. She told us that the composer of one the pieces was once her violin student. The first piece was my favourite. It was light and moving. There were also a few short ones then one that was harsh and violent depicting the life of ANZAC troops in Japanese prison camps of WWII specifically the Burma March which was written by her student.

About three weeks later we left Sydney en route to New Caledonia. I will tell you of this trip in my next letter. Hoping to hear from you soon.



LORD HOWE ISLAND
By Bradley
Age 14

How are you? We are now in Vanuatu. After leaving Sydney, we sailed to Lord Howe
Island. The first night-shift was mine and I could see many ship lights and the green smudges
of light from Sydney just under the horizon. After four days of sailing, we sighted Lord Howe
Island. It was my shift, but dad was still up. It was an amazing spectacle. The sunrise was
just bradking through the clouds and sending down beams of light and iluminating the
cliffs of the two great mountains in many brilliant colours! We were guided into the pass by
Gower Wilson and afterwards took a mooring. The water was crystal-clear and when we rowed
to the jetty, it was surrounded by sting ryas, turtles, sharks, blue fish, coral and other ma-
rine life. We met some"ridgy didge" Aussies at the 'shower shed'. The shower she was once the
seed packing shed for the Kntia palm which is native only to Lord Howe. Francis Chischester
had used the shed as a hangar as well as what is now the Town Hall to rebuild his wrecked
Gypsy Moth sea-plane. Our first stop after wandering through the lush vegetation was the
"Plane Crazy Post Office". I believe very few post offices are as unique as that one! The
walls were plastered with magazine and newspaper clippings, model racing yachts, model WWI and
WWII fighter planes, model gliders, and glass cases full of model tanks, planes, jeeps and
ships. We met Peter (we've met more than a dozen Peters in Aussie) Philips who runs the post
office. Dad asked who built the models. "I did," he answered. When Mum asked what to do on
Lord Howe he said "snorkeling's good, should go to the fish-feeding at Ned's Beach, renting a
bike is a must or you can take a car tour, climb Mount Ligdbird, Gower or Eliza, watch our
historical movies and slide shows, etc. etc. "Who runs those?" "I do, except for bike hire
and fish-feeding". I bought some postcards which Peter had taken the photos for, as a
photographer, and Harry bought a cookie from a cafe which he ran! He had also written a book
on aviation history of Lord Howe and he was also a sailor.

Next we went to "Wilson's Hire" and rented a bike for Mum and I and a trailer bike for Dad
and Harry. After pedalling through a lush tunnl of foliage and pushing our bikes up a
cliff-like hill we parked them and walked to the beach then rode back to the bike hire to
see about Dad's gears. Harry decided he wantd his own bike and learnt to ride in less than
half an hour!! To save time, I will not go into this much detail about our stay. We
watched Peter's slide-show which explained about how the island was formed, why it had so
many unique plants and animals, the aviation history and lots of boat wrecks (I put those in
for you", said Peter, we were worried about an approaching low.)

We went to see the fish feeding at Ned's Beach. IT WAS AMAZING!!! A man threw fish carcasses
for the schools of sand mullet, king fish, one parrot fish and a black-tip shark to pounce on!
The sand mullet (about one foot in length and a colour almost camouflaged in the sand) would
charge into the shallows to make an attack at the scraps then knock against everyones's legs
in their mad rush not to be stranded on the shore when the waves went out. The fish feeder
must have had an evil sense of humour as he threw huge carcasses into a shoal of unsuspecting
king fish (about 5 feet long and 2 feet around, silver, blue and gold) and they would pounce
at once and bang heads showering everyone with spray!

We rode nearly as far as we could go towards the gigantic trunk of Mount Lidgbird stopping
at Blinkey Beach and the Bureau of Meteorology. The beach was amazing, being made of flourey
sand with turquoise waves crashing on it. The surf was as clear as a sheet of glass and we
could see the bright colourful coral on the bottom clearer than any aquarium, but just before
its crest begins to break it abruptly turns turquoise.

On the last day of our stay on Lord Howe Island, we went ashore on th Old Settlement Beach
and waded through th cow pastures to nthe wreck of the "Catalina", a WWII flying boat.
The plane had a fuel leak so they were forced to land at Lord Howe. They skimmed the ridge
when trying to reach the lagoon, tearing off a prop then came down again and was torn apart
sliding down the deforested, but boulder-ridden hillside. The remainder of the fuel
immediately caught fire and only two of 19 survived to be rescued by two locals (later
given medals). We saw the four engines as well as parts of the wings and fuselage.

We returned the bikes and went to the museum. We collected a garbage bagful of clothes
to be given to natives of Malekula Island in Vanuatu from the locals then rowed back home
(the clouds had already begun to burst). We sat on board for the next four days bashing
around in the lagoon, the pass impassable and the wind and waves too high to rwo ashore
and the gunwale being torn up by the manhy ropes (nearly chafed through) and chains
holding us to the mooring.

FACTS ON LORD HOWE ISLAND -HISTORY

Lord Howe was entirely uninhabited by humans until it's discovery by James Cook who named it
Howe Island. It was colonized by four New Zealand Maoris until the British gave it more thought.
It, along with Norfolk Island, was given to Australia. Francis Chichester was the first person
to fly to Lord Howe in his bi-seaplane, Gypsy Moth (although it was capsized in the lagoon)
after which the steamer route to th island was abruptly converted to flying boats. During WWII
several British flying boats as well as a German Messerschmidt crash-landed at Lord Howe.
Also during the war a famous German U-boat was destroyed by depth charges from a British
flying boat despite engine trouble.

According to Peter Phillips of Lord Howe Island, it is a British tradition to have a naval
vessel wrecked on Wolf Rock off the island every century as one was wrecked there in the war
and anothr nearly sunk 100 years later.

FAUNA

Lord Howe has many unique beetles and two unique birds - the mutton-bird and the ling-bird.
The ling-birds are so tame they will walk right up to you for which they nearlly went extinct
when British seamen collected them for food. The mutton-bird on the other hand has done the
opposite and the population has had to be lowered.

FLORA

Lord Howe has over 30 undfique species of mosses growing on the cliffs of Mount Gower which
are so sensitive that when lowered several hundred feet they are crushed from differing pressure
levels. The island also owns the only palm tree that will grow healthly over 40 degrees North or
South, the kentia palm, and is the islands's major export.

P.S. You may be interested in reading about the island in Chichester's book, "The Lonely Sea
and the Sky".

New Calidonia

Bradley A. Clements
BOX 2346, Princeton, B.C.
Canada
VOX 1WO

Age 14

New Caledonia
June 7, 2004 - July 17, 2004

After four bouncy days in Lord Howe, we had a thorough wash-off on our way out the pass, but were rewarded by a day of pleasant downwind sailing. As the sun set we broke two hanks as a result of not lowering sails soon enough. On my shift, I used Dad's watch which was something I will never do again! When Dad cheerfully relieved me it read 8:00 and I was meant to stay up till 9, but inside I found why I could barely keep my eyes open. The watch was wrong and it was half an hour after relief time! One night Harry stayed up on Mum's, Dad's and my shift - all night!

The next day the wind picked up to over 30 knots and swung onto the bow forcing us to head for Dumbea Pass into the lagoon which encircles New Caledonia rather than Boulari Pass which we wanted to enter so we had to bash a mere 20 miles in about 15 hours. We nearly mistook an evil- looking wreck for the white column of the lighthouse. It was dark when we got to the pass, but we went in. In the middle of the pass some combination of current, wind and sail setting prevented us from steering closer to the wind in order to follow the leading lights. Immmediately we doused sails and powered through. Mum repeatedly plotted our position on the chart and changed our course, Dad had his eyes peeled for navigation lights and I was calling depths. Although I had been allowed to skip my two shifts, I was still exhausted and hit the sack as soon as I got half a chance.

I woke up before everyone else, as I usually do after a landfall. Soon we hoisted anchor and moved to the Port Moselle Marina. Mum wrote frantically as an avalanche of officials crowded aboard. When another fleet of boats flooded in for clearance, they each had the same experience almost before they had tied up. However, we soon escaped and got first priorities settled - milkshakes, baguette sandwiches, fresh guitar strings, etc.

Soon it became apparent that we were back in French territory as Mum came home with several long baguettes, a bag of croissants and pain au chocolat and (of course) Dad's bottle of French wine! Harry ran across his friends off "Bifrost" who we presumed were still in Aussie and I met an ex-guitar teacher on "Xephyr", a boat from the U.S.

We visited the local maritime museum and the Museum of New Caledonia.

After a week or so pain au chocolat and croissants for breakfast, we left Noumea and went to Ilot Uere. Harry played with "Lev's" visiting grandchildren and we watched military "frogmen" half-drowning themselves at practice.

Our next stop was Baie de Prony which looks exactly like part of Broken Bay near Sydney. It is so protected the 40 knots outside is converted into a breeze! It is completey uninhabited due to a fierce war which took place here before the arrival of whitemen causing the locals to believe it is severely haunted. We swam in the river with "Amber Nectar", "Antares", "Constant Bay" and "Lev" crews. We went for several hikes and it took us at least a month to get the stain of the notorious orange mud off our feet.

After Ilot Casey, we went to Ilot Bailey. Mum snorkeled and was dive-bombed by an angry sea gull for scaring the fish away. We also saw a meter-long barracuda do a 100-meter tail-walk! "Xephyr" arrived and I got another helpful lesson from Becky.

Back in Noumea we found to our annoyance that Customs regulations had been changed. Before we could have checked out, got duty-free fuel etc., then gone to Ile des Pins and stayed up to a month before leaving the country. However, after about a week of generosity during which we were in Prony, they changed the regulations again. We had the choice of going to Ile des Pins and then checking-out in Lifou and no duty-free or duty-free and no stopping till Vanuatu. We chose the former and provisioned. In the market as we bought grapefruit from the same lady as usual, she gave us four extra and as Mum explained we were leaving and she would have no more business from us the lady filled another sack of oranges to give us!

After living in French luxury (four course breakfast - grapefuit, pain au chocolat, croissants, and filifili), baguette sandwiches for lunch, sweet and sour chicken for dinner and hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream for dessert we pried ourselves out of Noumea.

On our way through the reef-ridden lagoon , the jib sheet got away from Mum and as it had no knot in the end, it zipped though the blocks and when Dad hauled on the furler it wrapped around the extra forestay and the furler. The wind abruptly picked up. The sail which was partly unfurled was promptly wrapped up in knots with a big balloon near the top which luffed violently. After vainly attempting to untangle the sheet, Dad suggested removing the forestay. We went up on the heaving deck and I held the taught stay so that it wouldn't spring back and hit Dad in the face when he undid it. However, when it did come undone my thumb was clamped tighter than a vice and increasing as the entire force of the wind in the sail squashed down on it. Dad quickly wrenched it out before I got out of the shock and onto the pain and it soon recovered. With the jib now in order we swiftly sailed through the lagoon catching two wahoo (YAHOO!!), passing a breaching humpback whale and through a pod of dolphins to Ile des Pins.

The French figure Ile des Pins is the most beautiful island in the world and they say the same about Fatu Hiva in French Polynesia so I reckon they have at least one "most beautiful place in the world' in each of their colonies!

Mum put out a call on the VHF and asked whether anyone in Kuto Bay would like some wahoo. Anthony on "Amber Nectar" quckly popped up and began boosting about the fish he had caught but said that a little more wouldn't hurt. Bob on "Antares" answered in his old timer's Aussie accent and slang. Tom on "Ultimate" just wanted to know whether we had caught them on old fashioned rapala lures or sensible hoochies.

The next day Mum and I went ashore with Bob and Anthony for the "bread run". We walked up the flour-like sand beach, past the ruins of a convict prison and followed the road to the store. Anthony got the last grand pain so we got several baguettes then waited with Bob while Anthony talked with the Kanak shop lady until she told him that her boss was bigger and stronger than him and that he didn't change his wives every ten years at which Anthony sprinted out the door.

We climbed up the tallest hill which was covered in thorny little bushes and dried up shrubs; looking a lot more like the Baja than the most beautiful place in the world. However, when we reached the top (panting and sweating), the view was amazing! We could see the brilliant colours of the coral beneath the crystal-clear water, the tall, skinny pine trees which Ile des Pins is famous for, the white-sand beaches sprinkled around the shores and the lush, green vegetation.

The next day we rented motor scooters and drove around the more interesting end of the island stopping at many sites. We saw some fine statues and beaches and a huge canoe being built. Dad zoomed quickly down the long highway with me hanging on tight and Mum and Harry trailing far behind. The first stop of major interest was the caves. A single massive hole in the side of the cliff with the lush, wet, green jungle crowding around it. A stream with crystal clear water trickled merrily from its mouth. Awesome stalactites hung from the ceiling, some low enough to hit your head on, dangling from the roof far, far above. However, rather than stalagmites there were muddy holes in the ground beneath the stalactites as the ground was no more than dirt. The clear stream disappeared under the solid rock of the cave and became subterranean. A group of French girls gave us flashlights and Dad charged off with the only one which worked causing me to step ankle-deep in a mud puddle.

Again we zoomed on stopping at several places then set off on the way home stopping at the ruins of a French convict prision which was cracking and being overgrown. Banyon trees had perched themselves precariously on the roofs and had set themselves to work proceeding to tear up the ruins. The one thing which struck me was - what sort of loony would chuck convicts in the most beautiful place in the world? for a holiday?

We then zoomed around the place getting the most out of our time then dropped off the scooters back at the rental.

The next day we left for Lifou in the Loyalty Islands and arrived there early the next morning. "Mandara" and "Brisa" were also there. We rowed ashore and asked the way to the chief. The village seemed to be having a siesta and there was no noise or sign of people outside the grass huts. We found a lady and many children and Mum asked the way to the "grand chef's maison". The lady sent us with her older son who was about nine or ten and he guided us through the village with his younger brothers yelling at us in the Kanak language trailing behind. Most of the houses were of custom Loyalty Island style. They look like the houses that little children build with building blocks, a cylinder base with a cone on top. They are entirely thatched so they look like fluffy gray hay stacks and are always topped with a roof-top spear - a carving mounted on the top of the cone - to ensure waterproofness. By and by we reached the "grand chief's" house and there was certainly no mistaking it for who it belonged to!!!

It was a huge, white, marble-floored mansion! When Jack (our young guide) knocked, the chief, who have been listening to rock and roll and watching TV, came to the door and began mumbling French with Mum. He wore thin glasses, an undershirt and shorts. We have him the "kastom" which unlike the Fijian sevusevu - consisted of one meter fabric, one packet of cigarettes and five hundred francs!

The day after we hitched a ride with the chief's wife and son in their rattly pick up truck to We, the town of the opposite side of the island. It was Bastille Day, a French holiday, so there was a big market with ladies selling anything from pancakes to breadfuit and paws-paws to flying foxes (bats) and shishkabobs to land crabs. After a delicious shishkabob each, we watched the soldiers of Lifou (all six of them) raise the French tricolour.

We stayed at Lifou a few days and swam explored the village quite a lot. All the kids in the village would come down to the beach when Harry and I went swimming and we would jump off a high coral stone into the water.

When we left along with "Mandara" and "Brisa" - us for Vanuatu - we heard them speaking to
"Xephyr" on the VHF who was in the next bay! We had only just missed them!

In my next letters I'll try to catch up on Vanuatu and Fiji. Hope to hear from you soon.

Vanuatu

BOX 2346
Princeton, B.C.
Canada
V0X 1W0Bradley A. Clements


Febuary, 2005
Hilo, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Vanuatu Islands
July - September, 2004

To:


When I wrote this letter we were in Port Vila on Efate Island for the third time after an amazing trip through the upper islands. Our first stop was Nguna Island as the major cruiser stop, Havannah Harbour, was being used for a television show called "Survivor". They dump a bunch of helpless whitemen on a "remote" island, in this case a few miles from Vanuatu's capital city! Mum had to snorkel around to find a sandy patch in the coral for the anchor. An outrigger came out to greet us with several kids. After playing guitar with them we went ashore to meet the chief and go for a walk with a swarm of laughing children. We left late the next day and did an overnight trip to Epi. Lamen Bay on Epi is famous for its tame dugong. Unfortunately we were unable to snorkel with it although we did see it. I met a lady called Benington there who taught me some sand-drawings from Ambae (I had already learnt a few in Port Vila.)

The next day we sailed to Ambrym to see the Arts Festival. We thought the 1500 vt ($16. Can) per adult and 1000 vt per camera per day was expensive, but our Dutch friend on "Aju" added it up and it equals only 400 vt per dancer not to mention all the other people for one day! We did not get to take many pictures as our camera broke the first day. We saw some amazing sand-drawing, listened to traditional bamboo flute and saw Custom Dancing. Only traditional clothing was worn, for men a "namba" and women, a grass skirt.
On the second day, the famous Yeng Dance was performed in which everyone dances in formation and sings amazing chants. Several dancers detach themselves and prance around - but not unorganized - they run, but only touch the ground when the drum is hit! I was officially announced to do sand-drawing and the lady off "Aju" who understands Bislama told me the announcer told the Ni-van kids to come and see the whiteman who could do sand-drawings they couldn't! Next was magic which Ambrym is notorious for. People down south warned us against going north as they believe we will get cursed. I participated in two tricks. The first was performed by a bunch of volunteer cruisers in which men sat in a circle and chanted while they tried to hold a club still - it fought uncontrollably! In the next, several wild taro leaves were stacked one overlapping the other and sprayed with the sorcerer's spit. Next I lay stomach down on them and was carried around on them. According to tradition if you open your eyes the spirits will go away, afraid to be seen and not use their magic on you. However I heard the announcer say while I was carried around not to open my eyes, but did not hear right and opened them! Nevertheless, I did not fall. The Ni-vans were very excited.

The women did a demonstration of the funeral for the high chief. They sang and chanted and about a quarter of the way through sounds began coming out of the jungle all around us! Sounds like thousands of birds flying overhead, but not a single bird was to be seen! On the third and last day, the Rom Dance which is extremely famous along with the Torres Islands' Snake Dance was performed. Before whitemen came, people from other islands were forbidden to see the dance, but I'm sure that if they did see it they would thoroughly believe they had seen the ancestral spirits dancing before them! The dance begins with the dancers slowly proceeding out of the jungle chanting in their astounding hymns, stomping rhythmically together. The masks of the Rom Dancers (there are about a dozen men wearing them) are each unique although at a glance appear to be identical. The other dancers must pull and push the ones wearing masks to get them in order, but they still do their part perfectly. I noticed as I watched this dance that Vanuatu dancing, weaving, carving and sand-drawing all use the same flowing motion. The Rom Dance is performed on the harvest of Ambrym's most essential product - the yam.

The next dance of major interest was the Namanki Dance which is performed for the grade-taking ceremony. The dance began with the dancers chanting and swiftly walking in circles. Suddenly the two chiefs climbed onto a shelter and began dancing on the frail roof! Then all the dancers who had been carrying yams, taro, coconuts, sticks, etc began winging them at the chiefs!!!

After, we left Ambrym loaded down with carvings given to us by our friend and guide, Abraham. I collected over twently sand-drawings from the island. Our next stop was Wali Bay on Pentecost Island. On shore we swam in the river with many children. One wove a toy ball about four inches around out of palm frond, and after playing catch another was made. Next I asked them to make a bigger one - first they were the size of golf balls, then tennis balls, then throwing balls, then soccer balls, etc., etc., etc.,.... Next we went to Batnavni and enjoyed a delicious traditional dinner at Chief Allan's house. The school had built an amazing guest house only of traditional materials, but extremely characteristically - bright coloured patterns were carved into the gables, a driftwood staircase led up to a porch and a second level and the roof was very zigzagy.

During the night the wind picked up so hard we began to heel without sail, like in Australia. Soon huge waves were rushing straight into the bay! Chief Allan was on the beach waving and yelling, "GO! GO!" We bashed our way to Loltong which was protected by a reef. Next day we took Ericson, a man from the village to Batnavni and collected some things we had let the village borrow. Chief Allan was very pleased that we had returned. His eight-year-old son, Iky, and I played some guitar - myself playing chords, him strumming. He was amazing! All South Pacific Islanders are natural artists in music, carving, drawing, etc.

We sailed to Asanvari on Maewo Island where Chief Nelson and his son, Nixon, greeted us in the yacht club they built. We went to the Island Night which Asanvari is famous for. We saw shortened custom dances which are completely different from those on Ambrym. Rather than stomping and chanting the villagers here prance, shout and leap! The string band began to play as soon as the dancing stopped. The South Pacific Island music is entirely unique and is very good. Soon the entire village, particularly the kids, were dancing. I had to drag Harry out of hiding to dance, but once he got into it he wouldn't let me stop. Soon I had to collapse panting and sweating into a chair with Harry hauling on my arm. The kids in most of the islands are very shy and would never get up and dance on their own accord, but these ones sure aren't!

Dad painted the boot stripe and name on Chief Nelson's new boat, "Malon Boy". A few days later (when the sun finally came out - Maewo has the most rainfall of all the Vanuatu islands because of the southeast trades), we left Asanvari with the chief's other son, Goddie, on board with a tooth ache. We only stopped at Lolowai on Ambae so I got no sand-drawings. Early next morning we set off for a rough trip to Luganville. Goddie moved to "Cormorant", an American yacht who had been helping Asanvari for a long time.

A day or two later, Mum and I participated in a trivia quiz. Most of the questions I was useless at like "What is the "Scrabble" word with the highest score that you can make with the chemical abbreviations for tin, mercury, silver and copper?", but some I got and was amazed that no-one else did like "Who was the archaeologist who found Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb?"!

A rather bumpy trip took us to Vao Island. We did not go ashore as we had heard that the villagers were greedy. The beach was covered in more than thirty outrigger canoes! (Vao and Atchin are Vanuatu's main canoe producers.)

Early next morning we left for Atchin Island. It is a very small island with five villages (each with its own language, of course!) Almost before we were anchored outriggers began coming out with trading items. Shells, carvings, baskets, hats, paw-paws, yams, lemons, etc. began pouring aboard! The items they wanted in return were mainly clothing, newspapers (which we did not have), tools, glue, paint, stationery, etc.

One man, Tasso, carved Dad a walking stick which all the villagers admired as Dad had introduced the sandpaper. We were given tours by Tasso, Gregi and Mariel. We also flew Harry's stunt kite for the first time. Next stop, Wala Island. A man named George gave us a tour of the island and all its historical and legendary sites, telling us many myths. He taught me several sand-drawings. He was an amazing storyteller and his memory of mythical and historical events was wonderous!

In Blacksands Bay we ran down our first coral head. That was scary. We got off OK, but we won't trust that cruising guide again!

In Banam Bay after coming home from a walk on shore, I felt stiff all over. That night it got worse and worse till it felt like I had a cramp from head to toe. Next day it wasn't much better so Mum read up on it. It looked like I had malaria, a disease common in Vanuatu - carried by mosquitoes. (I was lucky that at the time I knew nothing about the entire Portuguese army which as killed by malaria in Africa a few centuries ago!) Amazingly enough a huge schooner, "Ranui" loaded with seven medical students doctors and crates of medical equipment arrived the morning I felt the symptoms! Another yachtie zoomed Mum and I over there in his dinghy and they said they would do a malaria test on shore.

The village at Banam Bay is on the floodplain of a nearby river so when the last hurricane came through here the village was devastated. However, Banam Bay is a famous cultural - tourism - yachtie spot, so, the world knew. Since that hurricane yachts, ships, etc. have been loading in huge amounts of expensive, but unhelpful stuff. This was one of those ships. As I sat in the clinic (a clinic with broken down waiting benches and uncovered cement walls and floor and corrugated iron roof), the doctors began unloading sacks of stuffed animals, lollipops, plastic toys, books, etc. How is a village going to stick to its culture when every time a hurricane comes another ten tons of plastic toys and lollipops are loaded in? There was medicine, etc. which is good, but --there is not a single person within at least fifteen miles of the village who knows how to use it!

As the doctor examined me and asked me gruesome questions, the whole village leaned through the huge windows for a closer look. In the middle of the questioning, I was seized by an attack of sweating, fever, dizzyness, etc. and felt like I could no longer sit up straight. Fortunately the clinic had a bed which I lay down on. The doctors rushed around yelling, slamming windows, and throwing medical equipment around in search of a malaria test. Eventually they unloaded a test from the ship and the doctors questioned and discussed and contradicted and commented about the instructions. As they tickled my thumb with the needle I talked to a lolly-sucking, teddy-carrying local. Eventually, after a long discussion about what part of my thumb would yield the most blood, the doctors proceeded to stab it contnually. Finally, after the doctors concluded that I did have malaria, we zoomed back to "Silent Sound".

At our next stop, Port Sandwich, we saw a "regiment" of sharks patrolling the entrance. Dad went ashore to hike to the nearest clinic for more malaria medicine. and I had my first real malaria attack. This attack was a regular one which lasted about 4-8 hours. However, the next day, I had a day-long attack! Luckily, that was my last severe attack and I began recovering from there although I was very weak. Our next stop was Avok Island where we delivered a huge bag of clothes from Lord Howe Island. We were given a tour around the island and left the next day to Sakau Island. Here there was a clinic which our friends off "Siome", sister ship to the "Ranui" (who helped me with my malaria) had helped to build. The lady off "Siome" is an artist and she made a mosaic sculpture which was placed on the path to the clinic. After visiting the chief and his two kittens, we took the British doctor to Uliveo with us to see a custom dance.

As we landed on a small coral beach, we heard the loud sound of ankle rattles and two natives wearing war paint, nambas and head-dresses, one carrying a spear and the other a bow appeared. After threatening us for a few seconds, the warrior with the bow asked what we wanted. However, upon hearing that we wished to see the custom dance, they seemed much relieved and the first warrior asked us to follow him. He led us along a coral-sand path to a rectangular pile of sharp coral stones. "This," he explained, "is where our ancestors ate other people, after which he quickly added, "We don't do that anymore." He explained that if you where fat enough you would be cut up on this "table", cooked, then eaten. However, if you were scrawny (like myself!), you would be tied to a certain coconut palm, killed then cut up and fed to the sharks in the nearby creek. Next our guide took us to a narrow, mangrove-edged creek where he told us that turtles were once kept to be eaten during feasts. Finally we reached the nasara. The dancers were all dressed in only a namba except for the last who wore a tall clay mask. They danced the outrigger dance in which they marched in a line jabbing the air with their hands as if paddling and the masked dancer leapt about at the stern with a stick and raised a lot of dust. The dancing did not last long and afterwards we ate pamplemousse and talked with the dancers. It sounded like they certainly respected their culture as to become a "custom-man", which all the dancers were they must give a pig with its tusks at least in one spiral which could cost as much as 200,000 vatu (about $200.) - more than a village savings for most of these people!

We went to the village and I drew sand-drawings on the beach with the local kids. Every island has a sort of sand-drawing protocol and the one for Malakula was to erase the drawing when it is complete. Harry loved this rule and as soon as Mum let go of him he would mash all the drawings in sight by leaping up and down on top of them.

After it got too dark to sand-draw, Dad drank kava with the locals. Vanuatu kava is infamous for being made the strongest in the world. Unlike Fiji where they simply put the powder in a fabric bag and strain it till it tastes like muddy water, here they chuck a load of powder in the water, then grind it and squeeze it until the water is as thick as cream. I just dipped my tongue in a bowl and if I ever wore socks, it would knock them clear off! I'd be able to drink a bilo of Fijian kava easy, but not a drop here! A bowl of Fijian kava would keep two people going for at least 20 minutes whereas a bowl of Ni-Vanuatu kava would last 15 people an hour (that is, if they weren't white men - one bowl would last a hundred whitemen a month!)

The doctor got a outrigger ride back to Sakau (lucky him). A boat which we had met in Aussie, "Gold Sabre" was in the bay and they had made a fibreglass canoe factory at Uliveo so we went and had a look. There were moulds for some pretty big outriggers there! However, I think the basic, traditional, wooden outrigger is far easier to make, far more longlasting, far cheaper, far more efficient and far easier to use. The only major disadvantage of wooden outriggers that I can see is the fact that as the hull is a hollowed-out tree trunk, it leaks slightly (sometimes not so slighty!) through the grains at the bow and stern after it gets older.

Next we set off for an overnight trip to Epi, but the wind would not permit it so it was straight to Port Vila. It took us all day to get around the despised Devil's Point and we reached Vila in the evening when we should have in the morning! Most of the boats that had been here on our first visit to Vila where here again on our last visit such as "Gentoo II", "Siome" and many others. Now on our 3rd visit all the ones who weren't here last time where here this time like "Santanea", "Musique", "Time Wise" and others as well as most of the Mexico gang such as "Icicle", "Rag'n Drag'n" and many other old friends.

I found a book of 210 sand-drawings, 20 of which of which I knew. I photocopied the lot. Apparently this was the only copy in the country and there was no way for the villagers to have access to it except by going to Vila. Overall, besides the drawings in the book, I had learnt 80 in the islands.

A white Hawaiian lady who has been living in NZ taught me to scrim (scrimshaw) and I sold a pastel drawing to "Time Wise" for $25 Aussie, so my hobbies can't be doing that bad along with the guitar. We spent lots of time with "Santanea" and celebrated Mum's birthday. We also visited the circus and a university open house.

Sorry this has taken so long.

Your friend,

Bradley A. Clements
Deck Hand
S/V "Silent Sound"

Fiji

Bradley A Clements
Age 14

We arrived in Lautoka on the 1st of October. I had forgotten the beauty of the tropical islets of the Yasawas after a year away and with their white-sand beaches and swaying coconut palms reflected in the crystal-clear lagoon and the soft, blue, cloudless sky as a back-ground they were breathtaking to behold. Lautoka appeared to have changed a lot since our last visit and a long extension to the shipping wharf was being built. We had arrived on a Friday in the early afternoon - just missing the week-end during which you must pay overtime to check-in - and we waited for the officials to show up as agreed. Eventually they called us up an asked why we had not come ashore so we rushed to drop in the dinghy before overtime was mentioned. After settling with the grumpy Indian Customs Officer, we waited a long time for the Immigration Officer who had a mysterious fee we had to pay for which we got no receipt. Next we waited even longer for the Quarantine Officer who wanted mom to go to the bank for a unknown additional fee, keeping dad hostage in case we seized the chance to leave the country to avoid the $40 charge, while threatening him with overtime charges.
Finally, having trudged through that, we went home. The Japanese man on the next boat began shouting at us.
"Are we anchored too close?" asked dad. The man continued to yell. "I'll paddle over in the kayak in a minute," Dad suggested.
"No! No! Dyndy!" the man insisted, so dad rowed over. Presently he returned.
"There's a sea-snake in the kayak," Dad said.
The man had been observing our wind-vane when he spotted the snake and left a message which we found the next day. "SNAKE! SNAKE!" one side read, and "SNAKE! SNAKE! SNAKE!", the other.


Samoa

Samoa Islands: November, 2004
Bradley A Clements
Age 14

Our trip to Apia, Western Samoa, was a fairly enjoyable one with calm seas, lots of sun and OK wind. The first sign of wild-life was a pod of lazy humpbacks who were sun-bathing on the calm surface. We past them less than 90 meters away and they poked their noses out to stare at us with mild interest and waved at us with their long fins. Later an equally lazy school of dolphins and a shark cruised by. After _ days of sailing we sighted Savai'i, the highest of the Samoan Islands. We saw thousands of leaping fish and birds and caught two large Mahi-Mahi (one got away) to add to our prize tuna.
We passed through the strait betuen Savai'i and Upolu during the night. While on shift mom observed a fishing troller shining their spot-light at us and doing strange manouvers so she called them on the VHF. They answered in a heavy Aussie accent which mom thought was a strange language and did not understand it!
The next morning it was flat calm so we dived over-board for a swim. Once inside the bay we were in for a surprise. Anchored there was a double-masted steel boat, a miniature catamaran, a alien looking motor-sailer, and a big, wooden, traditional ketch - "Sailfish"!
"Long time, no see!" called dad.
"You're supposed to be in Japan!" cried mom.
"We decided it was to cold up there in the Aleutians," Jaki called back, "we're going to Hawaii."
"Us too!" said mom.
"We got your e-mail," replied Jaki, "I guess you left Fiji before I could answer."
We anchored and soon Taj, the little Negro boy from Saint Lucia, and Xiao-Li, the Chinese girl, were swimming to "Silent Sound". "Look Xiao-Li!", Taj would squeal, then dive underwater and emerge puffing and blowing.
Jaki, Digger and Scott and Alison off "Whatever", the steel boat from to U.S. came aboard. We had met "Sailfish" in Vava'u, Tonga in 2001. They are from B.C. and Jaki's dad owned the store mom's family usually shopped at in Pender Harbour. Dad's brother was also a friend of Jaki's as a kid. Small world, eh?
We slogged through the formalities all day and the one guy we had given up looking for showed up just as the lines were being cast off!

(Note: this leter is unfinished)


Kiribati Islands: December, 2004 - January, 2005
Bradley Clements
Age 14

We were accompanied on our crossing from Apia to Fanning by a massive pod of spinner dolphins. During their daytime rumpus hour, they would perform in their playground before the bows of "Silent Sound" more energetically than any dolphins I have ever seen. When they sighted us in the distance they would turn at a right angle to head directly for us and put on a burst of speed, uttering joyful squeaks as they came. They would always swim in family groups, normally a mother and a father with a baby in between, but some times the groups numbered up to half a dozen. These groups always stayed in neat rows and leapt with perfect timing. The babies, of which there were many, were the most playful and would zoon through the crowded waters, weaving in and out between their comrades with extraordinary dexterity and often make a flying leap straight into the air and do a tail wave, roll or head-over-tail pirouette in mid-air. Once a second pod of dolphins approached in the same way as the first, eager to join the fun and was greeted with excited squeals of joy. Soon the water was so full of dolphins, upon looking down over the pulpit there was no open space of water larger than a foot in diameter.
One night, while I was on watch, the dolphins came for a visit and set off huge explosions of fireworks as they hit a mass of previously-undisturbed phosphoressence.

We caught several skipjack tuna which were, of course, cooked with lolo (coconut cream). The main event of the trip was Dad's birthday. Knowing the importance of the occasion, the dolphins put on a birthday performance and a young gannet landed on the pulpit to wish him "Many happy returns of the day". Soon he took off and landed on the davit solar panels where he delivered his birthday gift. Soon he became bored with the procedures and, anchoring himself to the high side of the panels, tucked his head under his wing and went to sleep. After much debate, we settled on naming him "Squally" for no real reason, but that it sounded good. Squally, having sampled the shipjack leftovers and judged them as off by violently shaking his head, watched Dad lower a life-like rapala lure over the stern. Dad lectured him not to attack it. "It's dead!", he insisted, flicking the plastic. "No good. See? Pointy bits. Get stuck in your mouth".

When Dad thought Squally was convinced, he tested by holding over the side and Squally quickly reached for it, open-beaked. Dad let out a sigh. Worn out he gave in and lowered it, Squally leaning vertically over the edge of the solar panels with his tail in the air and beak down, watched it go. Dad then held the tugging, transparent line before Squally and he carefully reached out, grasped it in his beak and sat sucking thoughtfully. This procedure was repeated several times before the line was finally out.

After dinner we ate a cake Mum, Harry and I had been baking which was decorated with icing, cocunt and sprinkles. Then Dad opened his presents. He got a Samoan shirt and lava lava, a Samoan coconut-shell fish-hook necklace, and also a ruler and pencil sharpener from Harry (a very practical-minded gift-giver).
Although this trip was so slow - not on one single day did we travel as far as a hundred miles - it was compensated by all the things we saw and did. On the 20th day we sighted Washington I. This lonely litte outpost of the Line Islands is inaccessible by air as there is no flat ground for a strip. There is no bay and the huge swells break on the rocks the whole way round. We thought Lord Howe was bad!

The next day we sighted Fanning I. This did not haoppend until we were very close as the highest bit of ground is less than ten feet above water and the palms are seventy feet or so at the highest. It looked like a thin bright green stripe across the horizeon. "Wait a minute," said Mum who was using the binoculars, "Is that the lighthouse? No, no. Is it some sort of rock? Hey, there's smoke coming off the top. Have they got heavy industry? Then she realized. "Hey, Bradley, it's a cruise ship!" "Oh, no!", I groaned.

(Note: this leter is unfinished)


Hawaiian Islands: January, 2005

We left Fanning Atoll on the 5th of January, 2005, headed for Hilo, Hawai'i. The first portion of the trip was in the equatorial counter-current. This current, located just north of the equator, flows east at a speed of approximately 2 - 4 knots. While we were in this favourable current we had calm seas, good wind speed, lots of sun and as good of a wind direction as we could hope to get. However, after we got north of the counter-current it was a different story.
One day we were sailing in our favourable weather. For the past few days we had seen several cloud banks, but had hit none. On the horizon a huge, smoggy low haze appeared and we hit it in the late evening, entering a crazy maze of dark clouds, some with nothing but drizzle and gloom, others with sudden squalls of 30-knot winds and torrents of heavy rain.
One day two lonesome pilot whales joined us swimming alongside, then around the bow like dolphins, then (rather hair-raisingly as pilot whales have been known to hole boats) torpedoing directly at the bow then swerve off at the last second.
Latr some happy porpoises came to play, but finding us boring as we were moving so slow moved off.
We caught two fish, a small yellow-fin tuna and a massive Mahi-Mahi - the latter gave a fight, but they both tasted great.
One morning, as I was on shift, the sun rose with no colour - as a hideous cloud hid it with rain. The rain was dyed red by the sun. We had just missed two monstrous rain clouds. As it grew light the clouds began sculttling independently across the sky. There were masses of ugly clouds behind us, but ahead was a large open space, but the clouds were hurrying along the horizon line on each side to cut us off from it. It was a desperate chase and we were powering as thre was not a breath of wind. But then wind ripples sprad out across the watr in squadrons leaving glassy calm patches trapped in the sheltered wave troughs. There was a very unusual thing on the western horizon - a many-rayed sun shape etched in dark blue and surrounded by the orangy-blue sky. Then I noticed what I was positive must have been a reef as it was calm inside with a thick, white outline withlooked like huge breakers - very close! Quickly I disabled the tiller pilot and haded "Silent Sound" around. "What ar you doing?", asked Dad, climbing the companion way. "Look," I said pointing dramatically. "Why, that's only a calm patch in a trough! Let's get back on course."
When I had seen it I hadn't stopped to observe further, but still it looked distinctly like a shallow reef. Then suddenly the menacing clouds split up, deteriorated and disappeared leaving us with blue sky over our heads, and the sun shining down on the oily calm sea. That day Mum showed us the weather fax she had printed. Along the top and bottom were dozens of wavy lines, like the life rings of a tree indicating rainy, windy, squally lows. But all the way down the center was one, big high with no windlines and three A's (Anticyclone) down the middle, marking its' numerous centers. "I hope we've got lots of fuel," Mum said, "it'll be like this the rest of the way to Hilo." Dad checked the fuel and said that we might just have enough (we hadn't refueled since Port Vila!)
On my morning shift a few days later, it was not light yet, I nearly jumped as I saw something scuttle quickly across my note pad (in which I was writing this letter) out of the corner of my eye. The thing eapt onto my jacket and crawled up my arm. Then I saw that it was a gecko! This little stowaway must have come on either the bananas Bwebwere had given us or the coconuts which Daniel had. Soon I found another, but could not catch it. I took the one I had below and put him in the galley, - we had a problem with weevils, maggots, moths and earlier, cockroaches and I know that a gecko or two would help. In Savu Savu the lady on "Mundaca" had nearly a dozen geckos. In Apia, "Whatever" also had a few and when we had been talking with them about the geckos I felt I could give up hoping for a tame gecko as we were leaving the South Pacific. The one I "caught" we named "Leaper" after his quick-as-a-flash pounces he made and his friend who continued to live outside was "Creeper". Once we watched Leaper hunting a weevil on the cup-shelf. He stalked it, weaving slowly between the mugs then suddenly bounding forward grasping it in his mouth then letting it go. I think he was playing it a lot as he had had no chance of hunting live food since he had been ashore on Fanning. A day or two later I brought Creeper in too.

January 13th found "Silent Sound" sailing wing-and-wing with the whisker pole out. When Dad asked Harry if he wanted to hang off the end, he shrieked and hid. After awhile I agreed and we pulled the sail in, swung the pole over and attached the bosun's chair and I got in. As "Silent Sound" rolled to starboard, I went soaring through the air and as she rolled to port my feet dragged a foot or two underwater. From there, next to the water, I could see all sorts of sea life that I had never known was there - krill, tiny fish, etc. A few days latter as I was on my eavning shift I saw sevral ships, airplanes, bouys and a masive strangly shaped ship covered in lights.
The next morning we all were eagerly scaning the horision before our bow. We were about 50 miles away and sailing wing-and-wing. The day wore on and from 40 miles away Hawaii was still inmvisible. After lunch we were still staring when, at 25 miles away, Mona Loa and Mona Kea, the twin snow-capped mountains, suddenly blosomed out of the clouds.

(Note; this leter is unfinished)


Canada

B.C. Games Report
By Bradley, 16

G'day!I'm just back from the B.C. Summer Games! We (the Zone 6 (Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast) Archery team) left at 5:30 a.m. meaning getting up at 4:00 a.m.) on a big charter bus with several Synchronized Swimmers, a couple of Lacrosse players, a Baseball umpire, and a team of raudy Roller-Hockey players. After a seven-hour drive (including the ferry trip) we got to Kamloops and piled off the bus into the blazing heat. When we parked the driver inspected his bus and found that all the fluid from his power-steering had leaked out and had he been on the highway for another minute he would've lost control of the bus. Kinda scary. Being that we were dangerous war-like archers we had to sit and wait for a big truck to come and lock up our bows and arrows and drive them away. After registering we got another bus to the school where our dormitories were and found that the other archers had all doubled up the "famous B.C. Games foamies" and there was none left for us, so we went and got some more. When we came back we found that somebody'd come and delivered some for us, so we decided it was a good excuse to follow our coach's experienced advice and double them up. However, just as we'd made our beds, an official entered the room (dun dun dun...) and said that there was only enough for everybody to take one each and she drug our stolen foamies away. But after a few seconds she drug them back in and said that we could keep them until somebody needed one, then she'd know where to find them. Apparently somebody needed one because I found that night that I was the only one with a very thin mattress... We then went off to dinner and were surrounded and attacked by an army of elderly ladies with bottles of hand-sanitizer (which sanitizes your hands by making you wash them quite voluntarily). After dinner we headed off to the opening ceremonies an hour ahead of time to check it out. Lots of other people had the same idea, and none of us intended to sit in the blazing sun for an hour to wait for the procedures, so we all headed for the gate. At the gate were three marshals who told us we were not allowed to leave the field, but there were three of them and about two hundred athletes who weren't willing to comply, so soon we were lying on our backs in the grass under some shady trees in our pure-white uniforms. A little after it was time for the ceremony to start and after much frustration of the poor marshals we went back into the field and sat down. And then we waited another two hours or so before we paraded onto the track-and-field field were the bleachers were full of overjoyed parents, grandparents, etc. After several speeches by the sponsors, presidents, mayors, ext., ext., the flame was passed along the field by assorted Olympic athletes and up onto the stage where the torch stubbornly refused to light, so the mayor said that nothing would be fun if it weren't for technical difficulties and that the skier from the Torino Olympics (forget her name) would just have to hold the flame there until the Games were over. After that a milling throng of athletes poured towards the gate and the three unfortunate marshals while us archers found a trail up and out a different way that nobody else knew about. Then we had three marshals telling everybody to do three different things and going awfully horse in the process, but we eventually piled into a city bus and got back to our school. The next day it was off to breakfast after a little skirmish with the hand-sanitizers, then back up to the range to set up our equipment. Our equipment was inspected, the rules were announced, and practice began at fifty-five yards. I shot quite well in the practice ends, but, as usual, such was not the case for the actual competition. I was surprised that there were far more barebow recurve males than sighted recurve males (of which there were two). At the end of the day I came out with a score of 225, more than fifty points bellow average. Everybody else reported shooting above average. We packed up our equipment, went down to dinner (the hand-sanitizers pinned us, yelling and kicking, to the ground as they thoroughly sanitized our hands) and had showers. After our showers the archers all watched the synchronized swimming that was happening at the pool and agreed that it should be mandatory for all archers to learn synchronized swimming. Then we went to the "Party in the Park", a thing going on for the athletes, and wandered around for a maximum of fifteen minutes before getting on a bus and going back to the school. The next day it was the same routine - get on the bus, get ambushed by a pack of elderly ladies with hand-sanitizer bottles, have breakfast, back to the school, get equipment ready, start practice. This time I doubled yesterday's fifty-five yard score at 61 points, squashed yesterdays forty-five yard score with a 130, and beat my previous thirty-five yard score by twenty with a 125. One of the compound girls on a butt further down Robin Hooded one of her arrows in the X. One of my fletches was torn off by another archer's arrow that came a bit close for safety. We were on our second-to-last end of arrows when the trees to our distant left began to bend, the safety line blew down, and clouds of dust announced the arrival of a powerful wind gale. Everybody stopped with their arrows nocked, waiting for it to pass, when a butt further down the line tottered onto its front legs and fell slowly onto its face with the sickening crack of two twenty-dollar arrows that were in it. There was a moment of silence, then another butt toppled, and another's target-face tore loose and blew crazily held on only by the arrows. We all kind of looked at each other, then a panicked stampede of archers set off at a run to save their arrows, collectively tripping over the arrow line. The arrows were scored, marked, and pulled, and we lowered the butts onto their faces so they couldn't blow over. Then we all ran back to the shooting line and lowered our tents, one of which had blown away, lowered the bow-stands, two of which had blown over dropping sighted compounds onto the ground, and we held on tight. After a forty-minute break the wind had lowered enough that we could set the butts back up with the help of nails driven through their legs and into the ground and ropes tying them down, and shooting resumed. We shot the remaining five arrows, most of which were carried away in the wind, but on the next butt over there stood a lone arrow in the center X. We all went forward and fetched our arrows with an applause, and came back to check, sign, and hand in our score-cards. Then we packed up our equipment and took it down to the strong room. An archer that was hit in the head by a wind-blown gate was suffering a concussion. We went back up to the field and several speeches were made and the music began and the medal winners went up to the podium. Jon Russel, who had been on my butt, won gold for boy's barebow; Katie-Rose Rolls, who was on our team, won gold for girl's barebow; Allison Weick, also on our team, won silver for girl's recurve; and Josh Fyfe, also on our team, won gold for boy's recurve. I came in fifth out of six and won nothing, but had a good time nonetheless. And then we went down for dinner, got seriously sanitized, had our showers, watched some diving, went back up to the school, and went to check out a dance that was going on for the athletes. After having our bags checked for drugs, alcohols, etc., we went in and looked around. About three hundred people were milling around in the dark like ants in an ant-nest to a constantly repeating three-four rap-beat, played by a lone bored-looking disc-jockey on the stage. "What do you want to do?" one of us asked. "Go back to the school?" someone suggested. So that's what we did, and played on the teeter-totters a bit before packing up and going to bed. The next day we were expected to go down for breakfast at 6:00 a.m., but we thwarted that plan and had brought muffins up from dinner the day before for breakfast. And we didn't even wash our hands! After that we went back up to watch the Match-Play in the pouring cold windy rain (Allison was the only one competing because she was the only one to get a high enough score and to happen to be in a category with enough people). First was the boy's barebow semi-finals, then the bronze finals in which a kid who'd been on my butt yesterday won bronze against the archer who won it in the 900 Round. Then came the Gold finals, which were very exciting as the two archers tied the final at 70 points and a tie-breaker was needed, putting the former gold-medalist into silver and the former silver-winner into gold. Then was the girl's recurve in which Allison went into the bronze finals and won bronze with one less point than the gold-medalist won in the gold finals (89). After the medals were handed out we packed up all of our stuff, somehow shoved all of it along with forty or so wet archers into a school bus and down to the showers then to the closing ceremonies (which we skipped), and then we were on the road home again. We barely made the ten o'clock ferry (and nearly left the girls and the coach behind) and managed to get home by 11 p.m. instead of 1 a.m. So, that's that for all (if any) who were interested, I think I'll go to bed now.Bradley


Montreal Newsletter, 2007
By Bradley, 17

I was awoken at 6:00 a.m. by Dad pulling my foot. “Wakey wakey!” I groaned, rolled over, had my leg tugged a few more times, then got groggily up. “If you want to come to Montreal, you’d better get ready,” Mom reminded me as I sat staring blankly.
Ah yes. Montreal. Mom was going there for a work exchange, and I was tagging along.
I got dressed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, ext., and packed my toothbrush and a few other last minute things into my suitcase. By the time I was bundled up in my warmest clothes Mom and Dad had already packed the car, so I dragged my useless self up to the car. As we drove through downtown a few early birds were beginning to head for a coffee before work. As we approached the airport the sky was growing pale, and by the time I ruefully got out of my seat the early sun was lighting the world with her reinvigorating rays.
We unloaded our luggage onto a trolley and trundled it into the so-far short line while Dad parked the car. After we had reached the end of the line we let several people go ahead of us as we filled out our luggage tags. We then got our tickets, put our cases on the conveyor belt, and headed down to the gate. Dad arrived back and we exchanged hugs and good-byes, and then went through the gate. We put our carry-on luggage in the trays to be scanned and were told to put any coins or keys in as well. I put my wallet in and walked through the metal-detector. And of course it had to go off. Something about me and security checkpoints… I had had my hands in my pockets which I realized now had been a bad idea. I walked back and unloaded the remaining contents on my pockets into the tray, which included a pen and my glasses, as the guard instructed me, and walked through again. No beep, thank goodness. I was glad that I had remembered to leave both of my pocketknives behind, as had not been the case when we had been checked in the government offices in Juno, Alaska.
Soon our flight arrived and we walked out onto the pavement and up the steps to our small flight with everyone else that was going to work in Vancouver for the week. Soon the doors were closed, our seatbelts were on, the flight attendant had given the safety speal, and we were speeding down the runway. Suddenly the aircraft jerked its nose upwards and began lifting into the air. People and cars, buildings and airplanes, shrunk and disappeared before our eyes and the coast became a map below us. We could see ferries scuttling through Active Pass, areas of whitecaps and those of calm, forested and deforested areas, and the early morning mist rising from the cedar trees on the hills. We began descending until we were close to the waves, when suddenly there was no longer any water beneath us and we were on the runway. There was a ‘bump!’ and our bodies strained on our seat belts as we quickly slowed in velocity. Then we all were crowding out onto the runway and into the shelter of the airport building. The halls of the building were lined with glass cases containing a vast collection of Inuit scrimshaw carvings. The bone, stone, and horn sculptures depicted amazing of bears, caribou, owls, mythical beasts, humans, and other creatures, using smooth, rough, bulky or spindly forms to exaggeratedly express the physical or emotional texture of what they were portraying.
After stopping for breakfast, we then continued on our long walk to the plane, occasionally assisted by long conveyor belts, which carried us along. I, however, could not resist walking on the out-going conveyor, which took a great deal longer…
Eventually we reached the gate we were headed for, piled our burdens on a seat and sat down to wait for our flight. We were in front of a large window that had a view of the landing strips, so I watched the many strangely shaped vehicles scurrying about like ants on their wheels of varying number and size. An East Indian gentleman with a fine vocabulary and a business-like laptop, cell-phone, and attire, sat next to us. He had been bound for Ottawa, but the snowstorm that was beleaguing the area had canceled his flight, and would likely also cancel his flights to Chicago and Pittsburg that he had planned on making in the next two days. He was now forced to take the plane to Montreal and from there drive to Ottawa. Fortunately Montreal was not experiencing the same storm. The plane was delayed, so I had time to sit and read about the etiquette of dueling, and to look at the West Coast Native artwork adorning the walls. One of the ladies at the desk at the gate was using the time and her colleague’s advice to puzzle on the question of weather she should vacation in Mexico, China, Africa, or elsewhere. Eventually the plane arrived and was immediately surrounded by fuel trucks, safety inspectors, luggage trucks, and battery chargers. The passengers began to depart, and Mom claimed that the first looked a lot like Ralph Cline, the Premier of Alberta. We presently began to colonize the depopulated aircraft, which was a lot larger and roomier than the one from Victoria. Our seats were situated right over the starboard wing. Another Indian man sat next to us, wearing a suit and shuffling through papers. It turned out that he was the pilot of the next flying. The captain announced that we would be arriving a little late as there was an unusual tail-wind. After the pre-take-off routine we were again leaving terra firma behind and soaring into the heavens. Soon there were wisps of clouds flitting over our wings and everything outside the porthole was obscured by grey nothingness. We were still rising at about a twenty-degree angle, and soon the blankness became a paler and paler shade of grey until we burst out into the open and brilliant warm sunshine poured through the portholes. We were sailing over a soft pure-white landscape, its curving horizons unobstructed by any protrusion. As we flew over this brilliant unearthly nothingness, which had never cared to open its gates to any beast until this great grey monster had received grudging entrance, I sat with my nose to the glass and the sounds of Taffelmusic playing Baroque Concerti Virtuosi and Ben Hepner singing Wagnerian Arias, punctuated by Cuban Flamenco, in my headphones. However, said warm sunshine was soon perhaps a little too warm, and said landscape became kind of boring, so, sweating like a pig, I closed my porthole curtain and went back to my dueling book. I continued to take glances out of the porthole, and eventually the clouds broke and revealed a flat snow-laden countryside. As the sun began to lower it carefully blended its brilliant orange paint across the prairies. From our high vantage point the sky ahead of us was dark blue with night while the sky we were leaving behind was still pale with the setting sun. Soon the geographical map changed to an economic one as the lights began flicking on in the human inhabited specks. Soon a sea of light was shimmering ahead of us and we were announced to be about to land in Montreal. I began continuously yawning and swallowing, and one ear began continuously popping, but the other refused to, until it began to get painful. I told Mom about this and she suggested a few more things to try, but they only released my left ear, until I was nearly deaf. Then Mom motioned for me to try holding my nose and blowing. I tried this, and the ear popped twenty pops in one long, loud, painful squeal, followed by a few more spontaneous pressurizations. The ear hurt, but I was relieved.
We flew in low over a residential area and bumped down onto the runway. Our neighbor put on his uniform and headed for the cabin while Mom and I put on our shoes and coats. I noticed several small whiskey bottles rolling about under our seats, then heard a man’s drunken voice in the aisle. We deboarded the plane and headed off towards the luggage carousel, which was surrounded by a large crowed of people. After a few minutes our luggage speed by and we frantically snatched it up and put it on a cart. We had two suitcases and two carry-on bags each – my suitcases weren’t too heavy, but I had all my books in my carry-on bag, so it made up for them. We made our way to the doors and as they automatically opened we were greeted by a cold gust of nicotine smoke and diesel fumes. Once outside, an African man confronted us and asked us if we needed a ride. Mom told him where we were going and asked how much.
“Le Résidence de Marriott?” he asked, “Fifty bucks.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“Pour un taxi?” asked Mom, astonished.
“Non, pour un limousine.”
“Oh! Non, merci.”
We got tickets for a bus and, after our baggage was loaded, we boarded and took our seats. After the bus was free of the grasps of the throngs of people who were crossing the road we were speeding along the Autoroute, dipping and rising over and under the many suspended roads, or going through long labyrinthal tunnels. Eventually we arrived downtown, drove in circles dropping people off at various hotels then to the bus terminal where we unloaded our luggage from the bus and onto a shuttle. After driving a few more circles we arrived before a double glass door. We thanked the driver and gave him some loose change as a tip, because we were nearly out of material money. Once inside the hotel I helped a porter load our stuff onto a trolley, then joined Mom at the desk as the many complementary services were explained. I was impressed.
After disposing of our stuff in our room we headed off to a casual smoked meat restaurant that the man at the desk had suggested. The meal was quickly served and eaten, then we returned to the hotel, had a complementary hot chocolate in the Mezzanine, and returned to our room. We phoned home to tell Dad, Harry and Cato that we made it all right, and got ready for bed. Although I’d got up at 6:00 a.m. and was going to bed at 11:30 p.m., I had only been up for about thirteen-and-a-half hours, but was going to bed two thousand five hundred miles away from where I had got up, the longest distance in so short a time that I had ever traveled. It would have taken ‘Silent Sound’ approximately twenty-five days to travel the same distance.
Mom got me up at seven the next morning and we went to the Mezzanine for breakfast. There were a couple of waffle irons, so Mom poured the supplied batter into one and closed it. Whereupon it began beeping loudly until someone directed her to flip it over. After breakfast I went back to the room and did school for most of the day, going to a Subway restaurant down Rue Peel for lunch. There was, by the way, about one and a half or two feet of snow on the ground where it had not been shoveled, as it had been on all of the roads and sidewalks, but there was a blue, nearly cloudless sky. I checked my e-mail (internet is also complementary) and found a reply from David Shefsieck and one from Timothy Vernon, the Executive Producer and Maestro of Pacific Opera Victoria. Mom and I had gone to the Canadian premiere of the opera ‘Daphne’, by Richard Strauss, and I had been so taken by it that I had written a lengthily letter to David Shefsieck to complement the POV. In Timothy Vernon’s reply he said that he thought the three of us should get together for lunch sometime in April. I was quite flattered!
I logged on to my Renaissance Class, the first time I had done so on-line. With several technical difficulties and the careful direction of the teachers, I was eventually able to get into the class. When Mom got back from work we walked to the grocery store to buy some previsions and made ravioli for dinner. From what I saw on the walk, Montreal appears to have some fairly reckless drivers and pedestrians equally so.
The next day I again went down to breakfast and did school until 3:00. I then went for a walk up Rue Peel, passing the McGill University and some nice old stone-work buildings, after having gone by the sky-scrappers. The road began ascending Mount Royal until it made it’s way to the Mount Royal Park. I continued up the path, ice-climbing my way up the short flights of steps. The path zig-zagged slowly up the mountain, and wound through the naked oaks, silhouetted against the pureness of the snow. There were many skiers, joggers, bikers, and people walking along the path. I reached a long wooden stair that climbed the cliff-face and mounted it - by the time I had reached the top I was obliged to remove my hat and unbutton my coat! Continuing up the path I came to a beautiful Old-World stone-work building with stained-glass windows and an Oriental-like tile roof. I continued up the slope, which was now much more gradual. There were several bird feeders situated along the trail, and I noticed two tourists stopping to take a picture at one. I looked to see what strange bird they had found and saw a fluffy grey creature pecking at the ground. I thought it might be an owl of some sort, until it raised its head and I realized it was a squirrel. The giant cross at the summit soon came into sight and I walked up to it so that I could say that I’d reached the top, and went back down. Kind of like the Grand Old Duke of York. I was back at the hotel exactly an hour from when I’d left, in time to join another on-line class. However, we decided to cancel it as there was a lecture on cyber-bullying going on, so we joined that instead. The constable giving the talk was telling us how someone on the internet could be anywhere and we wouldn’t have any way of knowing where, when I proved her point by stating that I was in Montreal. She was surprised and asked if we had any snow. “About two feet on the ground, but none falling,” I reported.
“Well,” she said, “it is here!”
Darn – that lost my boasting rights to Harry.
When Mom got home she wanted to go for a walk so I went with her up to the look-out point on Mount Royal, from whence we could see to the river and across it.
The next day I somehow managed to sleep-in till 9:30 and missed breakfast. After pouring over charts of chemical abbreviations and mathematical equations, I worked on calligraphy a letter using jury-rigged equipment until I was shamed to the point that I called for a ruler. After filling a full page with closely packed Gothic Semi-Uncials I was ready to stretch my limbs and headed for Mount Royal again. This time I decided to take the long route which was even more scenic – rocky out-crops overshadowed the path at some points, and at others the hill sloped down steeply of the edge of the path, giving the passer a view of the beautiful simple and tranquil landscape. I took an inviting side-trail and began choosing turn-offs at random until I was hopelessly and pleasantly lost in the labyrinth of forest trails. Every trail on every fork looked most appealing, and my yearning to explore every one could have kept me out there all day. Eventually self-discipline reigned, and I eventually found my way out by continuing along every down-hill-leading trail.
When Mom got home she told me that there was a contemporary-classical concert happening that evening at eight. Contemporary-classical isn’t my most preferred music, save Phillip Glass, Karl Jenkins, Marian Mozetich, and a few other individuals. However, the price being only $5, and having nothing better to do, we made our way to the concert-hall. According to the program, the concert was a pantomime 1927 German science-fiction film, ‘Metropolis’ which was receiving its North American premiere with live orchestral accompaniment conducted by the composer. I noticed happily that there was a much younger audience than I was familiar with seeing at most classical concerts. After a brief speech by the Executive Directors, the lights dimmed and the conductor signaled to the film crew to set the projectors rolling. The film was a depiction of the year 2012 with blimps and bi-planes soaring between lofty skyscrapers and units of foot-dragging factory-workers shuffling to their stations. It was interesting how the music seemed to pull the black and white pantomime into a post-modern spectrum, while some how the music sounded more primitive despite its modern structure and instruments. By the time it was over it was 11 o’clock and we were ready to get to bed.
The next morning Mom woke me up and turned on the radio to be sure I wouldn’t sleep in. The snow was swirling heavily diagonally down and the road and side-walks had disappeared. I went downstairs and had a large breakfast – scrambled eggs, round sausages (round as in been-run-over-by-a-steam-roller round, not cylindrical round), hash browns, a croissant, and yogurt – and, yes, you get the routine, did school and calligraphy. At 11:30 I bundled up and headed off in search of a Redpath Hall in McGill University. The snow did not turn to slush where it had been well trodden, rather it was sifted into clumps like muffin batter. I mingled with the crowds of other young people on their way to the University and eventually found the Hall. I was going because I had heard that there was an Organ Recital Series on for free admission, and how can you turn that down? I eventually found the building and my way into it. I was very early and there was but one other man waiting. When the doors opened there were three of us, but then people began arriving in the nick of time until the seating was about half full. The hall was much like many I had seen in medieval manuscripts – high vaulted ceiling with ornately carved flying framework, arches, tall gorgeously stained glass windows, wooden floor, a dais on one end of the Hall and a minstrel’s balcony on the other. It was on the balcony that the organ was installed – its spires of columns of pipes encased in wood carefully carved into vine-like lacework completely hid the organist. The hall was shrouded in silence until the lights abruptly dimmed and the spine-chilling music suddenly poured forth from the silver pipes. It continued with only brief pauses between pieces, covering several composers, all with their birth-dates in the 17th Century. When the majestic sounds ceased the organist walked out from behind his instrument, bowed once, and walked away amidst his applauds.
When Mom got home we had dinner, then headed off to yet another concert – a Baroque concert, again at the University. We made it there just before it was about to start and took our seats. On the stage there was a small portable baroque organ (minuscule in comparison to the one I had heard earlier in the day) and a harpsichord. Soon the musicians came on stage – an organist, a soprano and a tenor who, in the baroque tradition, sounded more like an alto. These were followed by a series of other trios and quartets including harpsichordists, baroque-violinists, theroboists, recorder players, and many other singers. All of them were students, I suspect, but they played with a rare unison and clarity, and I was very impressed. They played relatively known songs by the likes of Telemann, Monteverdi, Handel, Torlelli, Purcell and others.
The next day Mom woke me at 6:30 and I grudgingly got up and dressed. After breakfast below we headed off for the train station and Quebec. It was the weekend, so we had the opportunity to go and see the neighboring city. We descended below the earth into the catacombs of Montreal and found our way to the station. We boarded and stoad our luggage, and presently the train slowly began to gain velocity. We traveled through the city, over the partially frozen river, and through the countryside. We stopped at another couple of stations, then continued on. The flat, snow-covered landscape was at intervals forested with beach and oak, and there were occasional punctuations of rivers and canals, or small human settlements. As we drove on the snow appeared to get deeper. I looked out the window for long periods, read, and talked with Mom, until we were crossing another (or, rather, the same) river and into Quebec. We took a taxi into the Old City where our hotel was. “Are you coming to see to extreme skating?” asked the taxi-driver.
“I didn’t know there was such a thing,” said Mom.
“Oh, you have to see it,” the driver insisted, “it is an international competition and there are over fifty-thousand people coming from all over. They have spent four weeks setting up the tracks. Like speed-skating, skiing, and demolition derby all in one.”
“Oh. I guess we’ll have to go then.”
We got to the hotel and went in after buzzing the innkeeper. We took off our boots, as directed by the bilingual sign (I was beginning to like this place already!), and waited for the innkeeper to arrive. She bustled cheerfully into the room and began talking to Mom in French while I looked around. “How come he’s so quiet?” she asked.
“He doesn’t speak French,” Mom explained.
We got the key to our room, dropped our luggage there, and headed back out. There seemed a great number of small hotels around the place. We wound our way through the cobblestone streets between the elegant colonial buildings, took a short-cut through the courtyard of the Chateau Frontenac (not a small hotel), and to the street of restaurants. We had lunch at a small and very French restaurant and headed for the citadel. The glimpses of fortified gates between the masonry buildings excited my Old World likings. We climbed the hill to the citadel and through the gate to a tourist gift-shop where a tour was supposed to be leaving from soon. When the tour commenced we had a complete crew of Canadian tourists from all parts of the country. One of the more elderly ladies, with what sounded like some knowledge of military history asked the question that had been on my mind for quite some time. “Why did the French leave the security of the fort to fight on the Plains of Abraham?”
“Well, every stone tells a story, if you know how to look at it,” the guide began to reply, “There are some that are rough-faced, some smoothed faced, some of unique shape, like bricks, others more or less naturally shaped. Each type was in common use by different people at different times. If you look at the masonry of the fortifications you will see that they are generally rough-faced and naturally shaped, which was used by the English in the mid- to early-19th Century…”
It clicked.
“Yes, yes, but you haven’t answered my question!” she insisted, “Why did the French leave the security of the fort to fight on the Plains of Abraham?”
“Yes he has,” I replied for him, “they didn’t leave the security of the fort, because there was no fort. The English built it after they captured Quebec.”
“That’s right,” continued the guide, “infact it wasn’t built until after the War of 1812, in 1817, and has, fortunately, never yet seen action in all its days. However, it is not useless. It is the headquarters of the Royal Canadian 22nd Battalion, known as the Van-Doos…” He went on to explain to us the lore and history of the citadel, both recent and distant, of why each building was named after a battle that the Van-Doos had won, of why their patron was a goat named Batisse, of why the French designed the fort and the English built it. One building, a small, square, two-storied blockhouse with loopholes aiming level with the surrounding ground was our next stop. “The block-house was originally built to stand as a stronghold in the case of a French up rising,” explained our guide. It had then been transformed into a military prison, and it was the place that the Allied leaders met to plan D-day. When they left they forgot a strategic map on the table, which the cleaner found. He was locked up in solitary confinement until the war was over. We walked out to a commanding corner of the fortifications, overlooking the city and with a large cannonade that could fire as far as the bend in the river. We could see far down the river and far across it, and over the whole of the city. We returned down to the city, and found the ‘Red Bull Crashed-Ice’ racetrack. There were large jumps and steep slopes that wound through the streets of Old Quebec, between old colonial buildings, under bridges, and down the hill to the river. We wandered around the city, enjoying the architecture for several hours. There were a lot of hotels, restaurants, antique-shops, and galleries, mostly selling tourist art. “ORIGIONAL ACRILIC PAINTINGS!” shouted one sign, above a few dozen small pictures. They all had the same snow-covered landscape with the same A-frame house in the middle of it, but in a slightly different place in each. “False advertising,” I thought. Oh well, not quite as bad as Lahina.
As night began to fall we headed for the restaurant district and found a none-to-cheap place that was having a special for the Skating, so it was temporarily affordable. After dinner we walked the short distance to the starting line of the race and found a large box to stand on. There were colored lights flashing and spotlights criss-crossing on the walls of the Château Frontenac. There were apparently around fifty-thousand spectators, most of whom where making enough noise to account for the ones who weren’t. Next to the large inflatable Red Bull arch over the starting line was a screen on which they flashed advertisements. Eventually the racers began getting sorted onto the starting line. After champing at the bit for a few minutes they were off and we saw them above the heads of the crowd as they flew off of the top of the first jump. The screen showed them zooming down the track – jumping, crashing over each other, getting up again, and doing a three-sixty or something off of the last jump to please the crowd. There were lots of contestants from Canada and the States, and a fair few Europeans.
A sliver of the moon appeared next to the screen. As the night progressed the thin slice began to grow as it slowly came out of eclipse, until only a small bite was missing at the edge, as if obstructed by clouds. We were lucky to be in Eastern Canada, as there would be nothing left to see by the time it reached our home.
The Semi-Finals began, becoming more exciting, and then we were onto the “Petite Finals”, in which those who had come in Second in the Semi’s now competed. The winner was a Quebecoise boy whose last name was Papion. He seemed to be the darling and hero of the locality and was pet-named “the Butterfly”. Close behind him, perhaps only falling behind due to a suitably picturesque crash, was the champion from Austria. The “Grand Finals” came next. The final race was swift and exciting, and the outcome was a boy from Saskatchewan winning the cash for first prize, with two kids from B.C. following close behind.
When all to be seen had been, the fifty-thousand strong horde began pouring down into the restaurant district. Our innkeeper had told us that the construction of the track had taken four weeks, and that the restaurants had been complaining of lack of customers during that time, as it was difficult for cars to get there. They were certainly being re-paid in full now! Mom and I had already eaten, but we thought we might like some desert, but no restaurant’s would let us in unless we were going to pay for a full meal to use their table-space.
The next morning our innkeeper greeted us as we went out, talking to Mom in French. We left our bags with her and went to the Musée du Fort. There was a model there depicting Quebec’s military history, and a show that went with it that explained the battle maneuvers in the third dimension. Although there was no fort before the English arrived, that is not to say that Quebec was unfortified. Cannon batteries were in place on both sides of all of the converging rivers, and these successfully blocked the passage of the English. Eventually they got through at night, when the French believed that they were friendly supply ships. They silently captured most of the cliff-face, but were attacked by a cannon battery, which alerted the French. Messengers were sent to Montrone and his army, who began the over-fifteen-kilometer march and river crossing to the Plains of Abraham. Just like every other battle between England and France – it happened in near every one in the Hundred Years War. The French are caught by surprise and are forced to march fast over long distances to find their adversary ready and waiting in a defensive position. And, as in the Hundred Years War, the French, despite their weariness from their march, charged aggressively, firing at will. And, just as in those medieval battles, the English held their fire till they could see the whites of their opponent’s eyes, fired a volley, and ended the battle. Both Wolfe and Montrone were mortally wounded, and the battle had taken but twenty minutes, giving England Quebec. More battles were fought, and won or lost, but the fate of the governance of Canada fell to England’s ability and willingness to send quick reinforcements.
We went then to the site of the battle, the Plains of Abraham, and went through a very funny, although only semi-true-to-life, presentation of the history of Quebec. After that we walked out on the Plains, where people were skiing and tobogganing, and Mom and I relived the battle as fought with snowballs. We walked back into town below the fortifications, on a walkway situated on the cliff. When we were nearing the Old City again, we came across a massive wooden ramp that was covered in ice. People were sliding down it on toboggans. We watched for a bit, then I asked, “Can we go?”
“Maybe YOU can, I’m not!” Mom said.
I talked her into it.
We paid $2 and grabbed one of the long classic wooden toboggans and I proceeded to haul it up the slope.

(Note: this letter is unfinished)


2007 Newsletter
By Bradley
Fisherman’s Wharf, taken from the deck of the Silent Sound in her current birth.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Yes, it has been a long time since I last wrote - much has happened in the meantime so I apologize for not having kept you posted. I fear I have had little time for important things, such as writing, since re-entering “Western Civilization”, and cannot give you a full update on everything that I have been neglecting to tell you over the past few years, but I will try to fill you in on 2007. It is early October now, and the leaves here in British Columbia are turning golden and falling to the ground, so I’ll see how much I can type (check, hunt-and-peck…) in between now and when I hope to send this in the Christmas Season.
Firstly, a brief fill-in on what we’ve been using our time up with since we landed in Victoria, B.C., Canada. Mom didn’t have much trouble regaining her job at Citizenship Canada in her office overlooking the Legislature Buildings and the Inner Harbour. She and I have been subscribing to Pacific Opera Victoria and see three operas a season. She has also been helping her brother grow a garden at their sister’s ranch, which has been overwhelmingly productive. Dad has made several attempts at acquiring an art studio, but this has proven challenging and for the meantime he has joined a house painting company for pay. Harry has found his passion in sports and is now in little league baseball, his school’s cross-country running team, Scouts, the Victoria Bowmen archery club, and is learning golf from our friend, Bill Sherlock. I too am in the Victoria Bowmen, shooting traditional barebow recurve, and am one of the junior representatives on the Board of Directors. I am getting back into calligraphy and have been making and selling cards under the Silent Sound Publishing Company label, and am learning bookbinding. I am still playing my guitar, but must now also make room for mandolin, violin and penny whistle practice besides. I am working to catch up on my school grades with the South Island Distance Education School (SIDES) and have been on their student council and participating in their Renaissance advanced learning program. Besides that I have also been learning medieval style dance and swordplay with the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).
For Christmas last year we crammed ourselves, our cat, Cato, my guitar, two bows, and a bunch of other stuff besides into our Volvo station wagon and drove the treacherous road to Princeton where our grandparents live. We (or at least I) sang heartily along with Handel’s Messiah as we drove through the snow-draped pine forests that grew over the mountainous terrain. Being back in direct contact with family has been the chief delight of being home and we had a great Christmas with Grumpa and Nana and Uncle Rick, Aunty Lisa, and their new daughter, Alice. We skied, tobogganed, shot arrows, built snow forts, went to Nana’s church where she plays the organ, flew Grumpa’s model airplanes, and had a great time. We celebrated my seventeenth birthday at my Aunt’s ranch in Goldstream with my Gran and Uncle John from Sechelt on January 23rd, something which has been becoming a bit of a tradition now.
Nearing the end of February, Mom went to Montreal for work, and I, feeling the need to travel, accompanied her. It was the first time that I can remember flying and it was quite the experience to fly over the clouds and, when they parted, to see the landscape spread out like a map. We stayed in a hotel and went to Early Music concerts, organ, piano, and chamber recitals, cathedrals, museums, and art galleries pretty much every day of the week for minimal costs. Besides when there was sometimes unbearable cold, I enjoyed hiking the labyrinth of scenic trails that criss-crossed Mount Royal, and one day Mom and I skied it.
We took the train to Quebec City where we stayed in an original hotel in the Old City near Le Chateau Frontenac. It was gorgeous – built in terraces under the strategically placed citadel with stone buildings and cobble streets dating back to the seventeen hundreds. We explored the old citadel, hiked the Plains of Abraham where the battle was fought to decide the ownership of Canada, meandered the alleys of the Old City, and ate French food. Athletes from across the world, Austria, France, the U.S., New Zealand, across Canada, and elsewhere were converging upon the city for what they called Crashed Ice Extreme Skating. A track was erected down the steep hill between the old buildings – jumps and all – and then coated with ice. The skaters would then race each other in heats of four down the steep slope, crashing dramatically along the way. We spectated in the crowed from the starting line where we could see them begin and watch their progress on the massive screen and the moon which was slowly eclipsing at the same time. We returned to Montreal and attended a local SCA event, their first Investiture feast, with a great feast, music, and a fencing tournament. I flew home a few days ahead of Mom and was greeted in the airport by Dad, Harry, and Bill.
Our SCA branch in Victoria celebrated its thirtieth investiture in the end of March, which included an archery tournament. Harry and I shot in it and Harry came in third out of seventeen archers, which earned him the nickname of “Weaselbait” among the archery community. He celebrated his eleventh birthday on April 28th, and we set up a tent in the park and played soccer with his friends. However, when Mom tried to pre-heat the oven to bake his cake our oven cut out. We eventually got a new galley stove.
In June our SCA branch hosted the ‘Sealion War’, a re-enactment battle between the Barony of Seagirt (Victoria) and the Barony of Lionsgate (Vancouver). Our baronies camped in Sooke and competed in an archery tournament, fought battles, and compared homemade siege weaponry and armor. I fought as an archer in the battles, shooting wrapped and padded arrows, wearing full armor, and drawing my rattan sword when the enemy grew too close or when I exhausted my supply of arrows. We arranged in early Saxon fighting formation – a wall of shields to protect the pikemen who stood behind and delivered blows, while us archers fired around the flanks of the regiment. Our forces were, however, woefully outnumbered and we did not have nearly enough pikemen to use this formation to great effect, and we lost all of the battles, though there was one that we fought literally to the last man.
On the 24th I traveled out to Cowichan with a fellow junior rep archery friend and her Mom to shoot in the B.C. Outdoor Junior Championships. We shot a full outdoor tournament, at 55, 45, and 35 meters distance. I shot only moderately well, but was awarded Junior Barebow Champion.
In July, Dad and I took the train down to San Francisco, California, where we met our life-long friend, Pan. Pan took us to a little town named Hollister where we volunteered in the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival. We had a great time, made lots of friends, and listened to and played some great country music. We had come from further away than anyone else, and everyone was eager to meet us and were appreciative for our volunteer work. Penny, the bass player, 90-year-old Yodeling Lady Lolita, and all of the volunteers made us welcome and comfortable. We slept in Pan’s tent, a tarp strung up to a chain-link fence over our sleeping bags on a tarp. I played with the ‘Kids on Stage’, a little band of kids who were all younger than me, and all better musicians, but we had a great time and did a performance on the main stage. I also played solo on the “tweener” stage, between the main stage acts. Dad bought me a mandolin from a man selling mandolins, guitars, dobros, banjos, and other musical commodities. After a three-day stay we headed back to San Francisco, saying good-bye to our new friends. We took the train up to Washington state through some gorgeous scenery which we watched go by through the big windows of the dinning car as we talked to a freighter captain, an airliner pilot and a Korean student about their, and our, many adventures. We also socialized with a New Zealander, an Australian, an Englishman, and an American. “So how is it that I, a Canadian, find myself at a table with a Yankee, an Aussie, a Kiwi and a Pommey?” Dad asked.
“Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it?” said the Aussie.
“Well,” said the Pommey, “we’re all going to the same place so we might as well get along.”
We got off at Kelso, Washington, were we waited at the station to be picked up. Eventually a green Ford drove up to the station and Mom and our good friend Ken, captain of the ‘Zeeotter’. The car broke down as we were pulling out of the lot and we called for a tow. We didn’t expect a 2007 model flat-bed 2000 horse-power shiny red truck, but that’s what we got! The four of us sat in the cab with the driver and recalled good times (and some not so good times) from our time together in Fiji. We reached the Zeeotter’s new cottage at around midnight and went to bed. Mom, Harry and Cato had driven down from Victoria and over the following week we had a great time playing music with Ken, digging a giant hole in the beach with Kenny and Will, eating Peggy’s great dinners together, watching a re-enactment of the Louise and Clarke expedition. The unfortunate side was that Cato went out one night and did not come back. We later got a new kitten who we named Clouseau.
In August we left Fisherman’s Wharf for our annual cruise up the coast, making our first destination Sidney Spit. There we met Uncle John, Aunty Mary, and our cousin, Carter, on Uncle John’s boat, M/V Carlisle, the vessel that he, Mary, and Mom had traveled the coast on with their father when they were children. Our next port was Ganges on Saltspring Island where we had dinner and listened to live music at the tiny 19th Century restaurant, the Tree House. We visited one of Dad’s art school friends, Margie, and her boyfriend Martinus at Martinus’ goldsmithing studio. He is a master goldsmith with over eight years of German apprenticeship. Mom’s finger had become too large for her wedding ring, so Martinus sawed it off and enlarged it and set two more diamonds into it in exchange for a piece of art from Dad. We made our way up the coast to Bargain Harbour where Uncle Rick and Aunty Lisa are care-taking a German couple’s mansion and grounds. Uncle Randy brought his sailing vessel into the harbour and Rick, Dad, and I spent a day making and setting a mooring buoy for him – a massive navy anchor on heavy chain that would take a hurricane to move it. We had a bit of a family reunion with Rick, Lisa, Alice, Randy, Sandy, Shendra, Gran, John, and friends.
After provisioning Rick’s boat, the Orithyia, and Rick’s Quebecois friend Daniel, of the Babita, we raced each other under sail out of Bargain Harbour, across to Lasqueti, and up the channel between Lasqueti and Texada – against the wind – to Skerry Bay. The Orithyians with Harry as crew won, as usual. I might mention here that the Orithyia is a very light ketch and was sporting full main, mizzen, jib and stay sails, while we were under main, genoa, and, for the occasion, our jib as a secondary headsail. Babita finished last, but considering that Daniel was single handing, and under only a jib and main, he deserved a handicap. The following day we visited the Jones brothers, going ashore to their mussel and algae farm. The flotilla sailed on to False Bay, stopping along the way at Scottie Bay, and we all rafted up. Rick had put netting all around the Orithyia to prevent Alice from falling overboard, but it was also useful in keeping Rick and Daniel’s spaniels, Lily and Shirley, away from Clouseau who very much enjoyed mocking them from our boat. I crewed aboard the Orithyia to Tribune Bay on Hornby Island. As I was at the tiller - steering us at a good six knots - Rick took off his clothes, dove off the bowsprit, and grabbed onto the towed dingy as it went by to climb out. “Missed my morning swim,” he explained, grinning, as he climbed over the weather cloth. Then he climbed up the slope of the main sail and stood on the spreader to take some photographs of the Babita. Dad, on the Silent Sound, was meanwhile powering upwind up the coast of Hornby, then raised the sails to fly back down-wind to Tribune. Boy, I haven’t bothered to write this much about a day-passage in a long time – I guess I’ve been deprived. After a day of skimboarding for Harry, sand-drawing for me, and courting the surfer dudes for Alice, we broke up the fleet and sailed early the following morning as a wind began blowing into the unprotected bay. There was a rough chop and strong winds, as we sailed up to Campbell River, with rain and lighting squalls bearing down the channel. We left Campbell early the next morning to make the rapids at the Seymore Narrows, and sailed at an exhilarating nine knots with the wind and current at our stern. We stayed the night at Port Neville and visited with our friend Laurna, the local post mistress and only current resident. The following morning found us again zooming along with the wind and current, wing on wing with genoa, drifter and main. As we were sailing along Robson Bite our wind gave out and we slowed to a near halt. A zodiac powered up to us, and its crew, a polite young man and woman, informed us that we were inside the bounds of the marine sanctuary, and could we please head out from shore. We obliged, and invited them aboard for a coffee and conversed until their headquarters radioed to ask what they were up to. We continued up to Alert Bay and saluted our friend Dorothy as she waved to us from the beach.
Jamie Taylor, a singer-songwriter who is world famous in Alert Bay, was celebrating his birthday and we went up to the party with Dorothy. There was a great potluck with lots of salmon in all of its variety and, of course, many musicians. Every one was great singers, and we all took turns with the four or five guitars, and I brought out my mandolin. We played everything from Celtic to Country, Rock to Medieval and Folk to Jazz and went to bed rather late. Dorothy lent Harry and I a violin which she had once given to one of her husbands, and Jan, a violist, gave us some basic instruction. During our stay we took Dorothy and Jan for a sail to Sointula, picked berries, played music, shared many lovely meals with Dorothy, and visited Drew the turkey who was kind enough to give me a very fine calligraphy quill. After our time in Alert Bay we began the more labourous passage South. We returned to Port Neville where the B.C. Mission boat was moored and had a wonderful evening of rock and gospel music making at a potluck in the old store.
We continued on down to Lasqueti to False Bay where we met up with some friends of Dad’s whom he hadn’t seen in some twenty five years, Tony Seaman, who was the local postmaster, and his wife Deedee. They lived on co-operatively owned land in a beautiful hand-built all wooden house on the beach. It held great influence from the buildings of Indonesia, where they had spent a lot of time, and of the local cultures. As we explored the island we found many other gorgeous structures which were of particular interest to me as I had done much study of their architecture, history, and building techniques, including cob, cordwood, and earth sheltered buildings. We had a great time conversing with Tony and Deedee about art, history, and the islands heritage. Tony and his brother had been personal friends of Allen Farrell, the sailor and shipbuilder who is renowned for his entirely hand-crafted traditional wooden sailing ships. Tony’s brother, Greg, was building a gorgeous replica of Allen’s China Cloud, a beautiful Chinese junk-rig, and we observed as he preformed the incredibly tedious task of shaping and fitting the bilge keels. The smell of the fir and yellow cedar and linseed oil was lovely, especially in comparison to the epoxy dust, metal filings, and ablative paint fumes of the average modern shipyard.
After leaving Lasqueti we traveled on to Silva Bay where we visited another wooden boatyard, in search of Fredrick Amore, the designer of Silent Sound. Although we had heard that this was where he was working, no one at the shipyard knew of him. We sailed from the shipbuilding town to Ganges where we spent some more time with Margie and Martinus, and continued on to Sydney Spit where we had a campfire on the beach and roasted sausages and marshmallows. Our holiday nearing its end, we returned to Victoria from the Spit where work and school awaited…
We threw a surprise party for Mom’s fiftieth birthday, adjoined with Grumpa and Nana’s anniversary, aboard the S/S Beaver, a replica of the original sail and steam ship, with over a hundred friends and family traveling from all over the province.
We took Dorothy’s violin to a German master violin repairman who did a great deal of repairs. I joined the Esquimalt School Strings Program, an orchestra of first and second violins (I’m a second), violas, and cello and bass(s). The complete Victoria Strings Orchestra went on a retreat to a camp by Shawnigan Lake for three days of intensive practice. After the retreat we preformed a large concert in which we played Dvorak’s 8th Symphony in G major, Bizet’s Carmen Suite, and Bach’s Arioso and 3rd Brandenburg Concerto. We all wore black tuxedos and bowties.
For Halloween, Harry dressed up as a wizard, complete with a grey beard, cloak, pointed hat and staff. All of the little kids loved him and called him “Dumbely dore!!!” We carved pumpkins and hosted a funshoot at the archery club.
Well, I know that was brief and sketchy (at least for me…), but that is what time permits. I am currently coaching beginning archers, making a documentary on early music for Renaissance, and rehearsing period medieval Christmas music with a trio of musicians (recorder, bodhran - Irish drum, and mandolin, all three of us also sing tenor). I will be playing guitar at a Citizenship ceremony on the 6th, and our Strings ensemble will be playing a holiday concert on the 18th. We will be staying in Victoria this Christmas with Mom’s family – Gran and John will probably be around. We had our first snow yesterday, but now it’s raining again (we’re probably the only place in the country with it – everywhere else has snow storms).
Anyway, I don’t think I can drag this out much longer other than to say we’ve had a fairly good year, and hope you have too, and wish a very happy holiday season and New Year to you and yours.

Your Friend,


Bradley Clements
Midshipman
S/V Silent Sound


2008 NewsletterBy Bradley

Newsletter 2008

As our great Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young once sang: “One of these days… I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter… to all the good friends that I have known…” Well, if you’ve been on my mailing list for very long you probably know that the key phrase there, in my case, is “one of these days…” I don’t know when this will be sent but at least I’m writing it now. Since I sent you my last letter we have undergone – and are yet undergoing - many great changes. Primarily, Mom has been accepted for a higher level citizenship job in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. Due to this we had to put Silent Sound and our car up for sale so that we could move to the other side of the country where we have had to become landlubbers again… I’ll tell you about all of that, but first I’m going to go back to where I left off my last letter, in December.
We celebrated Christmas in Victoria, putting up our miniature imitation pine tree on the chart table and surrounding it in gifts. On Christmas Eve we went to a party with one of Dad’s former painting teachers, whose daughter and grandson shoot archery with us at the Victoria Bowmen. There we were involved in a hair-raising gift-giving/taking game called – wait for it! – “the Haggis Game”. Everyone brought a wrapped gift and placed it under the Haggis Table and in one of them was a disguised can of haggis which had done many circulations through many generations of Haggis Kings and Queens, and was now long past its ‘best before’ date. Everyone drew numbers and chose gifts in the order that their number dictated, and could trade/steal anyone else’s gift in exchange for theirs. We shall now draw a curtain on the scene which followed, and let it suffice to say that we all had a great time. The following morning I found that Santa had brought me a brand new Simon and Patrick Luthier guitar, handcrafted in a village in Quebec, and it sounded beautiful. We went out to Aunty Mary’s and spent the rest of the day with family, including Mary, Matthew, Carter, Uncle John and his friend Hale. We feasted heartily on turkey and other holiday fare, and exchanged gifts.
A new interest of mine has been composing music. I’ve written a few folk-style songs before, but I’m starting to get into classical-style composition, so at my 18th birthday party I premiered a trio for guitar, violin and piano which I called ‘Tempest and Sunrise’. I was fortunate to have two very skilled musicians to perform with, the first violin of the Victoria school district Festival Orchestra, and an award winning pianist of the Victoria Conservatory of Music who is in SIDES. We only had one rehearsal – the day before – but we still preformed (though I say so myself) exceptionally well. I also gave the first performance of a song which I had started writing for Dad at the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival, called “Daddy, Won’t You Buy Me a Mandolin?” The party was at Mary’s with lots of family and friends.
On Valentine’s Day the Victoria Festival Orchestra had a fundraiser called Valentunes, for which we divided up into duos and chamber groups and traveled around the city playing music for people. I arranged an Elizabethan lute dance, La Volte, for guitar and viola which my girlfriend Allison and I rehearsed and preformed around town, including at my Mom’s and her Dad’s workplaces.
In March Esquimalt High had and arts event, at which I displayed a piece of illumination of the text of Vivaldi’s Gloria that I had done. I also played in the orchestra as we preformed Mozart’s ‘Eine Kline Nachtmusik’ and (for a bit of a digression) ‘Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space’. Mom, Uncle John, and Hale were in the audience.
Dad and Harry (Henry the Small) and I (Yanthlos Catesby) went to Daffodil, an annual SCA event for the anniversary of our local Barony. Harry and I shot in the archery tournament and both ranked among the top four finalists out of the seventeen archers who competed. Dad displayed the model Norse longship which he had been building and was inundated with interest and compliments. I was called before the Baron and Baroness in their court and was awarded jointly the award of the Silent Harp and the Silent Hammer, the baronial awards for excellence in the medieval arts and sciences. We had a gigantic delicious feast, most of the dishes in which were made following authentic period recipes.
Mom went to Ottawa for her job in March. She was there for a couple of weeks, then we met her in Pender Harbour when she flew back for the long weekend. Dad, Harry and I drove up island to Comox from whence we took the ferry to Powel River where we spent the night with Uncle Randy and his girlfriend Sandy in their apartment. The following day the lot of us drove to Lund to check out the house that Uncle Rick is building there, then Dad and Harry and I took the ferry to Sechelt. Mom, Grumpa, Nana, Rick, Lisa and Alice were all at Bargain Harbour where we stayed at Uncle Ricks; we on Orythia and Grumpa and Nana with the others in the house. I got my annual haircut, which it is customary for me to have at Uncle Rick’s place. We had a big dinner together with Shendra and Gran and her new dog [Mini] Max. We had a great feast and Shendra and I discussed opera and other music. On Easter Sunday we went to a community breakfast and egg hunt for Alice and Harry. We drove home via Vancouver and Mom flew back to Ottawa.
Fisherman’s Wharf celebrated her 60th Birthday on March 30th with a large party put on by the houseboat people. It was complete with cake, singing, gum boot dancing, tours, and free dinner at Barb’s Fish & Chips. The next day we sailed ‘Silent Sound’ to the broker’s (sound’s like knacker’s…) in Oak Bay. Perhaps our last sail on her. After a week we were no longer permitted to live aboard, so Dad and Harry moved to Bill and Maureen’s house, our friends in Esquimalt, and I moved out to my Aunt’s ranch in Goldstream.
In April we all flew to Ottawa to look for a new house. The Ontario landscape was extraordinarily flat and colourless – almost like Australia. We were there in the springtime – all 48 hours of it. There was still heaps of snow on the ground, but it was melting swiftly in the +20o heat that had everyone in short sleeves, and by the time we left the grass was becoming green. Mom and I went to two concerts, one with Pinchas Zuchreman conducting the National Arts Center Orchestra with soloist Angila Chang playing Kaprowsky’s new Symphonia Concertante, Mozart’s 25th Piano Concerto, and Shubert’s Symphony #5. Afterwards there was an informative and amusing discussion with Zuchreman, Chang, and Kaprowsky. The second concert was with the Ottawa Bach Choir, a Baroque period instrument string orchestra, and some renowned soloists from around the world, including Victoria’s Benjamin Butterfield. They performed several of J.S. Bach’s Cantatas very well, and I latter had a chance to have an interesting chat with Benjamin Butterfield and the orchestra’s second violin. I accompanied the family on one house-hunting trip, but found it too depressing. I spent most of the rest of the stay wandering around the amazing architecture of Parliament Hill and the Museum of Civilization – amongst the greatest examples of Gothic Revival and Post Modern architecture that I have ever seen.
Harry had his birthday party back in Victoria on April 27th and went swimming at the Esquimalt Rec. Center. Dad somehow managed to have me end up with all the kids on my hands, but it worked out alright. Harry opened his presents at Bill and Maureen’s house, and we ate some sickeningly sweet cake.
In May we drove up to Alert Bay in our new car. We were delivering the four foot long Norse longship model which Dad had made, to our friend Dorothy. Her husband had passed away and had requested a burial at sea in a burning longship, as legend has it that the Norse chieftains received, so the model was for his ashes. We took the ferry to Alert Bay from Port McNiel and stayed with Dorothy and her grand-daughter, who made wonderful hostesses. The Alert Bay May Day festivities were in full swing, including a modest parade, a dance, baseball games, soap-box racing, and native dancing. Harry competed in the soap-box derby and received a trophy for third place. We watched carvers working on a mortuary pole which would be erected in the burial grounds within the week, and attended the dancing at the big house. The dances were mystifying and took one back in time as the dancers in their beaded capes and symbolic wooden masks stomped and swirled to the beat of the many drummers at the tamtam. The smoky bonfire which they circled illuminated the giant thunderbirds who supported the colossal cedar post-and-beam structure of the ceremonial house. The following day we test sailed the longship from the beach at which it was destined to have its final departure. After a wonderful stay we took the ferry back to Port McNiel, on which our friend Jamie Taylor was now captain. We had the opportunity to visit him on the bridge. We drove down to Chatham Point to visit our friend’s Steve and Alice, the keepers of the lighthouse. Steve had to escort our city car along the rough logging road which cut through the disgusting devastation of clear-cut logging. Once at the light Alice made us a great dinner and we had a fun visit. The next day we proceeded on to Powell River to visit Randy and Sandy, then to Pender Harbour to see Rick, Lisa, Alice, and Gran. We went home via Vancouver where we visited Dad’s art dealer, Paul Kyle, at his new showroom.
Silent Sound was a long time in selling, largely due to the Canadian dollar being on par with the United States, causing people to go boat hunting in California where marinas full of pristine yachts were being practically given away. Eventually she went to an adventurer named Cameron Dueck who intends to sail her over Canada through the Northwest Passage. I was glad to hear that he would keep her name and keep her cruising on new adventures.
We had a big going away party for Mom, Dad and Harry at the hotel where they were staying, and many friends and family came out to eat, socialize, play music, and say goodbye. The next day they were off to Ottawa, and Bill, Nana, Grumpa, Uncle John, and I saw them to the airport. Clouseau was yowling to be let out of his carrying case, but Harry was happy as a lark.
Aunty Mary rescued a little colt and his parents from a family who couldn’t feed them. The colt, who we named Hawkeye, was only a few weeks old and was the cutest thing ever! His mom and dad were named Be and Harry, and were very underfed.
I went to Ottawa for two weeks for a visit in the beginning of July, flying via Calgary. The day after I flew in was Canada Day which was, of course, a big deal in Ottawa. Mom, Dad, Harry, and I boarded a crammed bus into town and sat in the middle of the crowded intersection of Wellington and Metcalf – right in front of Parliament Hill – to view the ceremonies. We saw the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP – aka ‘Mounties’) perform a musical ride, including group maneuvers, trick riding, and lance exercises. Many politicians gave speeches, including the Lieutenant Governor and the prime minister (who the crowd didn’t care to quite down for). We sang the national anthem, and the Snowbirds, Canada’s elite stunt-pilot team, came roaring out in a fan-shape over Parliament Hill in perfect timing just as we finished the last “O Canada we stand on guard for thee.” Afterwards Blue Rodeo came on stage to entertain us with country/Celtic/rock music. We went over to Hunt Park for performances by Murray MacLauchlan, Garnet Rogers, Haily Sails, break dancers, and Native drummers. There was a lot of police presence downtown to keep an eye on all of the young partiers who were getting into street fights. We got the bus back out to Barrhaven and, contrary to our fears, it was practically empty.
We went to a reenactment village out of Manotick called the Upper Canada Village where many colonial buildings had been moved to be saved from flooding after the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway. It was a fully producing village, complete with a blacksmith, tinsmith, stables, church, Masonic lodge, and water powered lumber, flour, and textile mills, all manned and operated as they were in the mid 1800’s. Everything there was vastly interesting – I found myself talking for hours with people of professions which had never before interested me particularly, to say nothing of those of the ones which did. The production levels were surprising, considering the technology. The tinsmith would custom make your order while you waited, the lumber mill would convert a massive oak into ready to use planking in four hours, the flour mill ground flour of a nutrition level far surpassing any commercially produced flour, the textile mill raised its sheep in the pasture out back, sheared them, washed and combed the wool, carded it, dyed it, spun it, and loomed it.
Mom and I went to a concert at the National Arts Center. Pinchas Zuchremann conducted and played the solo part of Beethoven’s Romance for Violin and Orchestra with amazing fingered double stops. They also preformed one of Mozart’s great piano concertos with a young soloist and Beethoven’s 1st Symphony.
Dad and I made several visits to the National Art Gallery where we saw works by masters of the Renaissance, Monet, Van Gough, Pollock, Newman, Carr, the Group of Seven, and other greats. As Dad is now a member of the gallery we attended the Member’s Evening when there was free entrance, lectures, and gourmet dinner. We went through the temporary surrealist exhibit with works by Dali, Picasso, and many others. It featured pre-WWII works which sickeningly prophesized the coming war.
Mom and I went to a Medieval Festival in Osgoode which was fun, though it made not the slightest attempt at authenticity. The local SCA group was involved so I socialized with them, teaching one another dances from the other’s Barony, and I criticizing their fighter’s swordsmanship. Their dancing was impressive, their fighting was not. Mom and I stopped to pick raspberries at a plantation on the way home.
Harry and I worked for a few days for Dad’s painting boss, delivering advertisement flyers around the city with his younger brother in the broiling sun. I also worked with Dad for two ten-hour days painting decks. After the first day of prep-work I could hardly stand, as I didn’t have knee-pads, but the painting itself went much better.
The house that Mom and Dad bought is in Barrhaven and is an artistic design with a cathedral ceiling in the living room and varying levels, and Dad has his magnificent art collection adorning the walls. It still needs maintenance, however. Clouseau and Harry and I had fun tearing around the place in pursuit of eachother, and Clouseau has managed to find many hiding places and short-cuts to take advantage of us two-leggeds. His other playmates are the chipmunks who live under the deck, but they are perhaps less willing to be caught.
I flew back to Victoria via Vancouver. Allison and I went to the Moss Street Paint-In, a street-long art event near the Gallery. I recognized some of the artists, and saw a lot of work, some innovative, some run of the mill. I went with my friends Berry and Carmen to an event on the Matson Lands Ecological Reserve in Esquimalt, and we pulled invasive broom plants to allow breathing room for the native species. The saving of the beautiful Garry Oak ecosystem from development was spearheaded by my friend Carmen. We all had a great time pulling broom, and complete strangers made good friends before they even knew eachother’s names. When my partner and I felled an imposing broom-tree we hauled it into the open brandishing our gardening implements and uttering victorious war whoops, to the great applauds of all, then turned to eachother and introduced ourselves. Berry and I went to Paliachi’s, a restaurant downtown, to listen to our friend Chris Fry and his friends jamming. He on guitar, and his friends on sax and bass were all amazing and they played a great variety of improvisational music, mostly classic rock. They did not rehearse, they just jammed.
A friend of my Aunt’s – a Celtic harpist and Lakota elder – came up to visit and played a concert at my Aunt’s place. She also put on a Lakota ceremony in a sweat lodge and we drummed and sang and blew our prayers into the peace pipe. One still misty morning the gigantic cottonwood tree in the llama paddock came down with the sound of gunfire and tore gaps in both the field and paddock fences. The llamas were happy because they got to escape from their paddock, the horses were happy because they got a load of fresh cottonwood leaves to eat, and the adults were happy that it didn’t come down on the house, and my cousin and I were happy that we could climb up on the trunk to pick the blackberries from the top of the bush.
My Uncle John asked me to crew with him on the Carlisle from Pender Harbour to Goldstream, so on August 1st I caught two buses out to Swartz Bay ferry terminal and walked on the ferry. I listened to a wildlife talk on the afterdeck and watched the beautiful west coast shoreline go by. When we reached Tswaassen I caught a city bus to a bus station then transferred to go downtown. I got on the wrong bus and very nearly ended up going back out to Tswaassen, but realized my mistake just in time to get across to the right bus before it left. Downtown I transferred out to Horseshoe Bay, my Dad’s home town, and caught the ferry with perfect timing. Gran and Max met me at the Langdale terminal, and I stayed with them for the night. The next day we went to visit Aunty Lisa and Cousin Alice. As we were waiting for traffic to pass so that we could turn into the driveway we heard a sudden ‘ScrEE-BANG!!’ and were pushed back into our seats as a black convertible squarely rear-ended us. Neither of us felt injured, and Gran pulled calmly into the driveway. There was a long dent down the rear bumper of Gran’s car, but the trunk and lights were safe, and the man from the convertible said that he and his car were okay. He and Gran exchanged insurance information and I went up to visit Lisa and Alice. Rick was up in Lund working on the house. Next we went to Uncle John’s farm, and John and I rowed across the harbour to Madeira Park while Gran drove. There was a wooden boat festival on with some very beautiful classic boats on show, some with quite a story. One of them was Ballandra, my Great Aunt’s lovely little sloop which she was about to donate to the SALTS society in Victoria. She invited me aboard and we had a visit. John and I had dinner at his place and watched the big owl which sat outside his kitchen window. He went and slept at the nieghbour’s house which he was sitting and I slept in his house. We headed down to the bay at 5:30 in the morning. We cast off the lines before 6:30 and the 30’ classic powerboat puttered out of the forested bay with morning mist rising from the water all around us. After breakfast I took the helm and we surfed the swells across the strait to the Lasquitti side where we entered calm waters. The weather was beautiful, and we made record time with the wind and tide behind us. John read the tide book wrong, mistaking standard and daylight savings time, so instead of catching Dodd Narrows at the last minute, as we had predicted we would, we caught them right as the tide was slacking. We stopped at Crofton to visit some of John’s friends, then continued on to Saltspring where we had dinner and anchored for the night. The next morning we completed the last leg to Finlayson Arm and anchored. We rowed the skiff ashore with all of our stuff (besides my shoes – being shipboard had reawakened my barefoot self), hauled the dingy up the mudflat (we were very grateful for the high tide) and hiked the overgrown path up the hill to the road, then along to Aunty Mary’s.
I spent the remainder of August camping with friends, hiking, shooting archery tournaments, and helping Berry renovate his house. I also played in a medieval music competition in the SCA. My friend Dylan, Bill and Maureen’s son, came home for a visit from China where he had been traveling for the last few months. He stayed in Canada for three weeks to dodge the Olympics, then went back to Shanghai to study in a university there. Bill and Maureen volunteered to host a couple of participants of the Canada World Youth Victoria/Ukraine exchange program: Melissa from Calgary and Yulia from the Ukraine, who attempted to teach us to speak Ukrainian.
In September I re-joined the Strings orchestra at Esquimalt High and went back to coaching children in the archery classes at the Commonwealth and Pearks Recreation Centers. We celebrated Mom’s birthday from afar, talking over the internet, and Yulia also celebrated her 21st birthday in September.
Uncle John came over to Mary’s from Pender Harbour to work on the garden and help Dee with her cabin, and I crewed with him on the Carlisle when he went home. We left at 7 am on October 5th, the day after gale-force winds had drug the Carlisle’s anchor across the inlet. We had a fine cruise up the inside waters to Nanimo, stopping at Saltair to visit John’s friends off of the Coastal Messenger. Dodd Narrows was running 2 knots at its fastest, so we didn’t need to time the rapids, but we arrived in Nanimo three minutes after the fuel dock had closed. We anchored the night off Newcastle Island and set our alarms for 6 am as the marine forecast was for gale turning to hurricane force winds the next afternoon. We powered out of harbour the following morning at 5:30, navigating by lights and radar, and were already halfway across the smooth Georgias Strait when the sun rose an orangey red. We stopped in at Bargain Harbour and rafted up to the Orythia to visit Rick and Lisa, then continued on to Garden Harbour to moor at John’s space at Edith Dalley’s wharf. We went up to John’s place and harvested some kale and collards, then I got a ride into Sechelt with John’s neighbors. Gran and her friend Jamie met me there and we returned to her place for dinner, and I stayed the night. In the morning I got a ride with one of the other residents of Gran’s co-housing community to the 6:20 ferry from Langdale to Horseshoe Bay. I found my way across Vancouver by public buses to Tswassen and got on the 11:00 sailing to Swartz Bay. Once there I made my way into town, again by bus, even in time for the Strings practice which I had expected to miss.
I hardly bothered to unpack my bags, for the very next day I was off to Shawnigan Lake for a retreat with the Victoria District Festival Orchestra. As per tradition, our bus had a mechanical failure en route, so we had to stop and switch buses. We stayed at Camp Pringle on the shore of the lake for three days playing music like Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins, Brahm’s Hungarian Dances and Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony in an orchestra of sixty strings players with world renowned artists such as Yariv Aloni, conductor of the Galiano Ensemble, the members of the Lafayette string quartet, and Norman Nelson, conductor of the Sooke Philharmonic and former concert master of the London Symphony Orchestra. We had a great time and also watched and performed in a fun gag show, saw a movie, and performed a concert for the camp staff who had made us many great meals (which we could not eat until we had answered a music trivia question from our teacher, Mr. Luniw).
After the retreat I returned to the ranch. We had a wonderful potluck to celebrate having the most volunteers in a single day than ever before – around 15 or 20. There was baked chicken, salad, vegetable stir-fry, and, for dessert, a double chocolate cake, cookies that I baked, ice cream, and two pies made from apples, pears and blackberries which were picked on the property. All of that sugar kept us up ‘till past 11 strumming, picking, fiddling, drumming and singing. The next day was Thanksgiving Sunday and Matthew, his girlfriend Veronica, Carter, and I went to Bob and Asha’s for a feast. The power went out for all of southern Vancouver Island right before dinner was ready, and when it came back on again the oven began to smoke and set off the smoke alarms. At long last however, we sat down to a very fine meal, celebrating both Thanksgiving, and Matthew’s 17th birthday. I went to Bill and Maureen’s the next day and enjoyed yet another wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with them and Yulia and Melissa.
The following day was that of the Federal election in Canada, the first one for which I was of age to vote. Maureen had taken Melissa and I to the advanced polls previously to try to get us registered on the voter’s list. Melissa had been unable to do it there, since she was from Calgary, but it appeared it would work for me. We went through the checking of ID at one desk, then the man sent us to another, Maureen swore an oath that I resided in the riding (as I had no ID with my address on it), and they handed us our ballots. “Oh – we didn’t want to vote right now, we just came to get on the list so that we won’t have to do it on the day,” I explained.
“Well, we’ve struck you off of the list…” they said. I had no idea who to vote for yet, but they were able to simply destroy my papers and make me re-do the procedure on voting day, but Maureen had been struck off of the list and had to vote prematurely. At any rate, on October 14th it turned out all right and I cast my ballot without trouble. When the results were announced we were disappointed to learn that very little had changed – the Conservatives still had a minority government, now slightly stronger. It had been a tight race in our riding – the Liberal MP passed by only 65 votes over the Conservative.
I had a third wonderful Thanksgiving dinner a week later with my girlfriend and her extended family, and a fourth the next week when Eric – a friend of Bill’s and Dad’s – and his year old daughter came over, having been invited but sick on Thanksgiving. The leaves fell and Halloween’s proximity could be seen by the decorations which Bill and Maureen’s two neighbors competitively accumulated. On Halloween evening I, enrobed in the garb of a Renaissance gentleman, caught the bus downtown. For a drunken Halloween party? No, for a lecture on book history! Ten times more fun. Allison and I organized a funshoot at our archery club the next day, to great success, thanks to the uncustomary co-operation of the elements. We had a good turnout and shot pumpkins, balloons, armed skeletons, poisoned apples, bats, and other spooky things. I competed in a low key SCA fencing tourney, in which I won but a single bout. However, it was very fun with some epic duels. Lord Vincent, who emerged victorious, fought the entire tourney armed with only a dagger.
In mid-November I volunteered at the launch party of the Conscious Centered Community, a new organization in which I have several friends. I did some calligraphic work and music performance. I and several other very talented performers played for the large and enthusiastic audience, and when we wrapped up with an impromptu choral performance of “This Little Light ‘O Mine” we got everyone singing, dancing and clapping, and an audience member sat at the piano in the corner and gave us a jazzy accompaniment.
Now it is beginning to become more chilly, though it it has been a gorgeous November (especially in comparison to the last few). The Christmas decorations are already beginning to emerge on a few eccentric’s front lawn’s, and I am anticipating flying to Ottawa to spend the holiday with my family. I hope that this has not been a too excruciatingly boring letter to endure – not so many ‘adventures’ as in previous years, but many changes and much busyness. My plans are to complete high school this year here in Victoria, then do some traveling, probably move East, and enter college.
Please stay in touch, and I apologize if I have been a poor example. My new e-mail address is svsilentsound@gmail.com, and my mailing address is 1225 Carlisle Ave., Victoria B.C., Canada, V9A 5C7. If you want to contact Mom and Dad, their e-mail is silentsound2000@hotmail.com, or you can write them at 20 Aldgate Crescent, Ottawa ON., K2J 2G4.
Merry Christmas to you all, if that’s when you receive this, and I hope that this finds you very happy and well. I will try to continue to update you on where life’s adventures lead next.
Yours truly,

Bradley A. Clements



2008 Newsletter
By Stella

Valentine’s Day 2009. Here I am at the Ottawa Airport with 2 hours to wait for my flight to Toronto and then on to Port of Spain, Trinidad so I thought I'd get started on a very late 2008 newsletter.

If you're on Bradley's mailing list, you'll have been well-informed by his timely, newsy newsletter. Otherwise, I will try to recap an eventful 2008 without going on too long.

On January 2, 2008, I received a phone call offering me a position as Case Analyst in Citizenship Case Management Branch, Citizenship and Immigration Canada in Ottawa. We were living in Victoria at the time and I had applied for the position in June of 2007 just for the heck of it. Obviously I accepted and flew to Ottawa on March 10 (on the heels of the last big snowstorm of the winter of near record snow fall). Ray, Bradley (then 18), Harry (then 11) and Clouseau, our latest kitten stayed behind. The Senior Director wanted me to start as soon as possible as the office had been shortstaffed for quite some time.

I flew back to B.C. for Easter from a work trip to Sydney, Nova Scotia (almost the entire width of Canada) and every 2-3 weeks after that till mid-May when I made a last trip back to supervise loading all our possessions including car onto moving trucks for their trip to Ottawa. Ray had moved everything from our sailboat, Silent Sound, and other people's basements and crawl spaces into a 10'x20' storage locker. The movers couldn't believe all this stuff came from a boat, which of course it hadn't, and that we had virtually no furniture! A very unusual move! The movers were great unlike my experience with the company contracted by the government to organize the relocation and the people in the deparment responsible for relocation. That part was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. The bureaucracy was unbelievable and that's coming from a life-long "bureaucrat"!

Ray, Bradley and Harry came to Ottawa on a househunting trip in mid-April and were met with snow still on the ground and 20 degrees plus C weather! Crocuses, daffodils and tulips following each other in quick sucession during the week they were in Ottawa. After a fairly extensive search following my earlier search with a realtor and three offers on three houses, we became proud owners in our 50's of a heavily- mortgaged single family house in the Barrhaven suburb of southwest Ottawa about 10 miles from downtown where my work is. One of the major incentives for this move was the ridiculous price of real estate in Victoria where even a bachelor condo was out of our reach. Ray, Harry, a loudly-complaining Clouseau and I flew to Ottawa on May 26. Clouseau clawed or chewed two holes in his carrier, which was under the seat in front of me, by the time we changed planes in Toronto!

Bradley had decided that his newly--planted roots in Victoria were too deep to dig out and stayed behind. He has come to visit for Canada Day and half of July and three weeks over Christmas and New Year's. He is staying with our good friends, Bill and Maureen, in Esquimalt close to his girlfriend and bus routes to his Aunt Mary's ranch, archery coaching, archery,fencing, Strings orchestra at the local high school and continues his high school by correspondance with graduation scheduled for June 2009.

Just before leaving Victoria in May, we took a car trip to Alert Bay, Chatham Point lightstation, Powell River, Sunshine Coast and Vancouver to visit friends and relatives and had a good-bye party in a hotel in Victoria.

After a couple of weeks in an Ottawa hotel, we got possession of our house and the movers arrived with everything intact. Since then we have pretty much just been working and doing regular everyday stuff. Harry went to 8 days of Grade 5 in Ottawa having missed over a month and already being passed by teacher in Victoria. He is now in Grade 6 at Cedarview Middle School taking the school bus and enjoying mandatory music class on keyboard and the digital keyboard we bought in December. Harry has a new best friend and they were inseparable all summer (and since). He is now in Scouts here and has been to a camp on an island in the St. Lawrence in New York state and to a winter camp on the banks of the Ottawa River in the deep snow. Their group is busy fundraising and planning a camp called Peak to England in July 2010 including several days in London. He has also started playing Futsal, indoor, five a side soccer in school gyms. Unfortunately the baseball season was lost due to the move and archery has gone by the wayside for now.

Ray has worked for three housepainting companies in Ottawa after being laid off in Victoria in January which was timely as he had so much to do to prepare for the move particularly in my absence. He has made the garage do double duty as a car garage and wood working shop and the biggest basement room is now his art studio with a small window and bright new daylight fluorescent fixtures.

We didn't take a summer vacation due all the other travel and upheaval, but went to Parliament Hill for Canada Day, visited Upper Canada Village, an historic site on the St. Lawrence Seaway, Gatineau Park in summer and winter including Mackenzie King Estate - all with Bradley. Bradley and I also attended a few classical music concerts during his visits and got to meet Benjamin Butterfield, opera singer living in Victoria and have a nice chat. It seemed like Bradley had followed him to Ottawa for concert and then back to Victoria! Ray and I attended outdoor opera in summer and we’ve been to Canadian Museum of Civilization a few times, the Canadian War Museum and Museum of Science and Nature and he joined the National Art Gallery and we’ve been several times. We had visits by Josie, my long-time supervisor from Victoria, now retired and Ray’s long-time friends, Jim and Chris, from Kelowna.

On Feb. 6 we saw ice carving, Murray McLauchlan (also on Canada Day) and trampoline show on the Rideau Canal during first weekend of Winterllude. The canal has since been closed due to above freezing temperatures and rain! It should be open for skating again as it's been well below freezing for the last couple of days.

I am now in Toronto with another hour to wait for next flight so I will continue. In July, I received an e-mail at work announcing a new program to train employees who were not immigration officers in non-immigrant processing in order to fill demand for temporary duty officers in missions overseas. I applied immediately with permission of two levels of management and was very lucky to be selected among the first group of 20 trainees for a two-week training program just down the street. I was among about half the class to pass the 3 hour exam and went on the two weeks of on-the-job coaching at the Canadian Consulate General in Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. A collegue and I went together, stayed in a hotel in Windsor, Ontario and took the bus through the tunnel under the Detroit River to work each day. It was a great experience and allowed us to be tourists in Detroit on the weekends and Windsor in the evenings. We both passed, but others from our class and subsequent have not. So the next step in the process is six weeks working as an Immigration Officer in Port of Spain, Trinidad processing applications for visitor, work and study permits to Canada which is why this is being written in airports en route to Trinidad. I know the work will be gruelling, but Feb. 23 and 24 are culmination of Carnival and the office and everything else will be closed for the celebrations.

It’s now February 28 and I haven’t touched this letter in the two weeks I’ve been here. I’m at the Kapok Hotel in the Port of Spain suburb of St. Clair on Trinidad. I can see a small part of the Sea of Paria (the sea between Trinidad and Venezuela the 8th floor restaurant of the hotel.) The rainy season is hanging on, but seemed to end on Carnival Tuesday Feb. 24 after getting the masqueraders wet! I’ve been walking about 15 minutes each way to and from work since getting a ride the first morning. I’ve been told not to go out alone after dark so I don’t. There have been at least 100 murders in Trinidad and Tobago so far in 2009 (4 of which on Tobago). Work has been busy for me although not the busy time. As I’m new at this kind of work, it takes me longer than an experienced officer to make a decision. We provide same day walk in service for visitor visas to go to Canada and study and work permits. My supervisor on arrival left on maternity leave at the end of week 1 and I now have a new supervisor and work with a locally engaged officer whose files I have to make final decisions on as she hasn’t written exam required for full authority yet (the one I wrote on the course last August).

On my first day here, a Sunday, Gordon Lepage, who is now my supervisor, took me to Maracas Beach with his family and we all played in the surf after the rain stopped. Luckily it was still cloudy so I only got a minor sunburn despite sunscreen. They introduced me to bake n shark – a deep fried bun with a piece of shark meat and lots of condiments of your choice from ketchup to pineapple and coleslaw etc. We later went to a restaurant called Sails in the Power Boat Marina. I believe the restaurant is owned by a sailor. A few sailboats in the marina.

For Carnival, for which Trinidad is known as the best in the Caribbean, we went as a group of 12 to the kiddie parade and visited a mas camp where band sells costumes to those who you wish to “play mas” which is parade with the bands on Monday and Tuesday. Later on the Saturday we attended Panorama which is finals of steel pan orchestra competition where the 8 finalists vie for 1 million dollar first place prize which is equivalent of $200,000. Cdn. They are allowed up to 100 players and take about ½ hour for each band to set up before playing one piece so very long evening. I walked to watch part of the parade on Monday and Tuesday. It goes on all day and view is better on TV with costumes and themes explained but you have to see it in person at least part of the time. Carnival Monday starts with Jouvert at 4 a.m. when people parade around the streets, costumed, plastered in mud, splattering poster paint all over the place and waking up everyone and then keep going for 2 days! No wonder absenteeism at schools and work is a big problem on Ash Wednesday! So it was a 3 day work week after that.

So four more full weeks and then back to home in Ottawa on March 28 and work there on April 1. We have just started to discuss a driving vacation to B.C. this summer to see friends and family.

As some of you know, I have just put some Carnival photos on new Facebook page and got an incredible response of over 40 friends and relatives who are on Facebook. I f you’re interested and haven’t seen them there on by e-mails directly, let me know and can e-mail some. Also for those who may have lost touch with Bradley, his new e-mail address is: svsilentsound@gmail.com as someone got his yahoo password and used account for a scam. I hope no one was taken in by the request for money to be sent to Western Union. Bradley would never do that or the rest of us either for that matter. Thanks to friends who questioned it and brought it my attention.

Ray has started a new blog for his art work which he is starting to do again as he hasn’t been housepainting since just before Christmas. The address is: www.clementsgallery.blogspot.com Please check it out and let him know what you think. He keeps changing it so don’t forget to look again later.

It’s now March 14 – four weeks since I arrived and yesterday evening the Immigration Program Manager called and asked if I’d stay another week. I haven’t decided yet.

I’ll try and bring this to a conclusion. Things have settled down since Carnival. Lots of parties with staff at various collegues homes including Pool Lime (pool party) yesterday at the High Commissioner’s residence to celebrate with staff her recent official appointment to the position followed by a staff birthday party later. I have been to beach again and museum and Asa Wright Nature Centre which were pictures other than Carnival that I havae e-mailed and put on Facebook. I don’t plan to drive here as the driver’s are clearly insane and crossing the street as a pedestrian is a dangerous enough exercise or being a passenger. The infrastructure is sadly inadequate to handle the population and traffic and traffic jams are the norm on many roads including the one in front of the hotel even now at noon on a Saturday. They are probably all going to lime (party) at the beach.

I think I’ll stop there and try to send this. Very belated Season’s Greetings and hope to keep in touch with our cruising and other friends and family through e-mail and otherwise. I anyone does Skype our home address is: aldgate20 and mine here on laptop is: stellarayharry

Stella, Ray, Bradley, Harry and Clouseau