Outrigger Canoe Sailing in New Zealand spring 2004
Trip Log, Photos, and Digressions
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Gary had offered to loan Ulua to me for some cruising, and here I was to take him up on his generosity.
I planned to try sleeping on board.
The hull has a 1" or so wide longitudinal stringer inside the hull a few inches below the gunwales. The seat thwarts rest on it and are attached with screws.
Ulua also has a little platform of slats that rest on a bamboo pole between the outrigger beams.
This is a place to sit and hold the outrigger down while sailing on the lifting tack. The little platform happened to be just the right width to rest inside on the hull stringers.
We ripped and planed some slats and wound monofilament around them Indonesian style to make "rolltop desk" thingies.
These filled in the rest of the area between the seats and made a full deck to lay on.
I sometimes sleep on an armysurplus stretcher that's exactly 18.75" wide between the sticks.
That must be the exact minimum width of a bed for longterm use by randomly-sized injured men.
Ulua is a little narrower, maybe exactly 18" wide(Gary?) between gunwales, which seemed to fit me just right.
We also put some effort into making a tarp-and-bamboo awning roof for the canoe.
I'd seen and envied such things on the water in Jayapura, Papua.
On this trip however I somehow never encountered the right situation to deploy this structure.
I did use the tarp extensively for catching rainwater, covering my luggage, and for sleeping under on the boat and land. It was the same heavy material as the sail and had bamboo poles in pockets along the two long edges. This made it really quick to set up and well behaved. It was nice to sleep under and didn't cling due to its stiffness.
I also slept under the sail and propped it up various ways to make shelters. It's nice having the yard and boom about the same length for this purpose.
Unless mentioned in the text, biting insects weren't a problem. Or maybe it was cold enough to sleep fully clothed so they weren't a problem.
One of my least favorite situations is a combination of heat, humidity, lots of biting insects, and no proper way to keep them off.
Not a common situation in NZ. Have I mentioned that NZ is really nice? I suppose you've heard that before.

3-23-04
Walked to town, copied Gary's NZ topo maps. Bought muesli (a swiss cereal like failed granola) and peanut butter. Filled up my water bottles.
Tide was out. Dragged the loaded canoe about 1km out across the mud flats and sailed north out of the narrow harbor pass.
 
Trolled a lure and sailed north a few miles to the east side of Waimate Island. Lost my line and lure. Maybe a fish or just the nearest planet.
I spread out my gear, feasted on oysters and made an Indonesian style "jankar pachul" stick-and-rock anchor. Pix and more details on page 11.
Then I walked up the hill to look at the ocean and wait for the sunset.
As I walked up the hill the light, scenery, puffy clouds, the short grazed grass, the rounded shape of the hill reminded me of movie scenes where people go to heaven.
I didn't have any way to be sure that I wasn't actually in heaven.


Scenery and the sunset. I didn't know it at the time, but I still had schistosomiasis from Indonesia, which made me anemic. That probably affected my endurance and judgement.
I certainly found it easer to loaf around than I had in the past. Sometimes I felt shaky and cold.

 
Looking across Hauraki Gulf at the islands in front of Auckland. There were a lot of cattle on the island. Made me nervous at first but they didn't do anything agressive.
There used to be a little creek on the islnad but the cows had churned it up. Now it was muddy and had cow dung in it. It ran down toward the oyster beds.
I figured the cows were on every drug and tested regularly like in the States. So I ate the oysters anyway.
The oysters were beautiful things with lacy frilly skirts. My mind wandered.
I thought about public health and the military. The "don't ask, don't tell" scandal. Despite PR and policy,
the military is probably be the safest place to be gay despite the occasional gay-bashing incident.
Or any other kind of risky philandering for that matter. Regular aids tests and shots to prevent the little stuff.
Where else is the population so risk-controlled?

A digression. My own military experience had nothing to do with sex.
I joined the Marines once.  It seemed like a good idea at the time. Marine Officer Training Corps in Quantico Virginia. Same topo map as the FBI academy.
They started screaming at us and making us walk in formation right in the airport on arrival.
They made us pay for our own haircuts, $4 each, once a week as I recall. The buzzcut on the first day was a big transformation.
We went in as individuals and came out looking very similar.
It was nice to feel the wind on my bare scalp. Many scalps had big scars from head injuries. I wrote a little song:

We ate government cheese.
Now we're in the Marines.
Too bad we hit our heads
so many times as children.

They gave us lots of injections. I have no idea what the shots they gave us were. Every day the other arm and signing papers, huge contracts and waivers, lining up and signing, odd chunks crossed out that didn't apply to us since it was just Marine Corps OCS, not the true slavery of an actual enlistment. No time to read it, no copies for us. Maybe they gave them to us later. It later turned out I'd signed myself into the "inactive reserve" for 8 years. That was news to me.

One morning a guy a few bunks away yelled "I had a boner last night!" "No way!" yelled others. "What did you eat yesterday?"
There was a discussion of saltpeter in the food. It seems saltpeter is an ingredient of gunpowder, a preservative for meat, and a cause of impotence.
It had once been added to navy food to keep the sailors from consummating their lust for each other. The Marines are part of the Navy.
That's why Marines say "secure that port" rather than "close the door". Maybe there was saltpeter in the food to keep us young athletes from rutting.
The concerned parties resolved to watch what the officers ate and stick to that. I didn't hear the results of this research.
Probably the lack of libido was caused by physical exhaustion and constant psychological abuse rather than obsolete preservatives.

I kept wondering how the system was supposed to work. They treat us like crap and then we want to do something for them?
We learn superior methods and defeat an enemy? They had us running up hills yelling "bang! bang!" pretending to shoot.
We learned in class that a Marine doing his job (in combat) lives an average of fifteen minutes. The guys they wanted found that very motivating.
A chorus of barking, our gungho affirmation. We could be the next Presley O'Bannion! (shores of Tripoli- sacked it with rented camels from the land side)
The few, the proud, the Marines.


I sat and watched the sunset across Hauraki Gulf until it was dark. I was amazed that such beauty could exist. The beauty of the setting exceeded my ability to appreciate it.
I fell asleep right there, woke up cold, and retreated downhill to sleep under a tree by the boat.

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