Keeping Alive an Ancient Art

This is a traditional Carolinian proa under full sail in Apra Harbor, Guam. I took this picture a few weeks ago from the bow of a small power boat.

My next book, once the last novel in the fantasy trilogy is finished this summer, will be about this--an adventure novel, maybe for young adults, and concerning the skill and courage it takes to sail a delicate craft such as this across hundreds--even thousands--of miles of open ocean using only the stars and wave patterns to navigate. It was in such vessels that the original island peoples spread themselves across the Pacific from Southeast Asia three or four thousand years ago.

This proa, or canoe, is made pretty much from traditional materials: a hand-hewn breadfruit log for the hull and no nails, screws, or bolts. Instead, it is lashed and sewn together using tuna cord. Sailing a proa for days or weeks at a time between far-flung islands requires a navigator of consumate skill and the ability to tolerate great discomfort and fatigue. In this photograph, the man on the stern steering the proa is Manny Sikau, a seventh generation master navigator from Puluwat. His father, in fact, built this canoe. As a thirteen year old boy, Manny once sailed a canoe similar to this from Puluwat to Guam, a distance of some five hundred miles, with his grandfather. Again, they found their way without a compass, without charts, without a sextant. There are things in this world that people accomplish that defy belief and such voyages must be included in that category.

Book II is Ready

It looks like the second book in the Eye of the Stallion trilogy, The Mirrors of Castaway Time, will be coming out soon. The publisher plans on having manuscript proofs and cover art ready in August and then a date for the actual publication can be set.

So what is The Mirrors of Castaway Time all about? It's a fantasy, of course, the sequel to the first, but it will stand alone as a story if you haven't read Book I. You'll find my willful, stubborn, warrior-heroine, Sonoia is still conflicted by her love for the dark and dashing Dag-gar, while Dag-gar cooks up a black-magic, Time-twisted plot to gain absolute possession of her wild soul. Meanwhile, the love battle between these two "small gods" has "upset the applecart of Time," as the eccentric old wizard Scraps would say. This has released into the world an implacable evil bent on destroying life simply because it lives--and it is doing it all by turning the fabric of Time inside out with mirrors--lots of mirrors (Have you ever held two mirrors up so they face each other and looked inside of them? You'll see what I mean.). There is also the wise and ancient sorceress, Mother Mar, and Sol, her young student in the art and science of herbal remedies and life. Mar sends the youthful Sol out into the world with the sad-faced donkey, Admiral Penance, to try to patch things up between Sonoria and Dag-gar and thus save the world. Poor innocent Sol--he soon finds himself caught up in dangers and adventures he could never have imagined including having to try to bring a badly wounded Dag-gar back from the brink of death.

It's a complex, fast paced book and the ending even surprised me. So, keep checking back here to see what's happening with it and I'll keep you updated.

Getting Ready for a Typhoon

It seemed to develop quickly. A few days ago, there was nothing, and now there is a storm developing and heading for us--tropical storm Kong Rey (where did that name come from?) It's predicted to grow into a typhoon sometime today before its closest approach to Guam tonight and tomorrow.

Because we live on a boat, people often ask Terry and I what do we do during storms. So now we're doing it. We spent yesterday, all day Sunday, getting the boat ready. Off come the sails which involves taking the big jib off the roller furling system on the forestay and getting the mainsail off the mast and boom. This takes a while and is a lot of work. The sails are balled up, tied into an awkward package with a line, and then swung off the boat using the main halyard. Then we take them to a grassy spot and fold them up properly and put them into storage.

Next, the one-inch storm lines need to be checked and the chaffing gear adjusted. I had to make a new, one-inch storm line for the port stern quarter which involves cutting off the old rusted shackle with a grinder and splicing a new thimble into the line and putting it all together with a new shackle.

The bimini and dodger come off, the sea cocks are closed, the shore power turned off and the power cables disconnected and brought ashore. The refrigerator is turned off and everything removed and either thrown away or brought with us to the friend's house where we will be staying.

Right now, I'm in my classroom at school. The island is scheduled to go into Typhoon Condition 2 at 2:00 this afternoon and we have been told we have to stay here until 11:15 a.m. We still have a few things to do like take the air conditioner off the main hatch and put it in the back of my truck and pull the boat out from the seawall a little more. Then, on the way to our friend's house, we'll stop at the store and stock up on typhoon party supplies. The weather man tells us that tonight and tomorrow will be interesting so we need to be ready.

Writing On A Boat: Developing Characters, Navigating Plots, and Rolling with the Sea

This is what it looks like when I write--at least to my wife and our cats. The Sailor@60 in his place, trying to focus on the characters/plot and the music of the prose while Terry shuffles and clanks in the galley and the cats wail to go out or to come in. To my right in this picture is the little navigation/chart table. Inside are all sorts of navigation-related stuff like dividers, pencils, protractors, parallel rulers, erasers, instant glue, staplers, star charts--it's turned into a catch-all, I'm afraid. Above it, on the bulkhead is a weather fax and a single-sideband radio (SSB--I'm a General Class HAM). I installed a splitter and can use the SSB's antenna for the fax. There are also a few marine GPS's lying around in there. But the $2000 sextant is safely stored in my classroom at school. Don't really think I'll ever have to use it other than for the challenge of it.

All in all, this a great place to create books. In this picture, I really was writing. I was on page 211 in The Time Drifters, the 3rd book in The Eye of the Stallion trilogy. Usually I'm in this spot on Saturday and Sunday mornings by 6:30. Terry and cats are still asleep in the big pullman berth that is right across from the nav table. The morning light comes in through the portholes, the coffee maker works its magic and fills the boat with that wonderful aroma. The boat is usually rocking, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, depending on the weather. I've written three or four books right here, on this spot. Don't know what I'll do when I have to move off and live in a house. Guess we'll adjust.

My novel, The Eye of the Stallion: The Face in Amber is a fantasy/adventure I wrote for young adults (it also crosses over easily into the adult fantasy market). It is partly a horse story and, in some respects, runs along the common theme of other girl-loves-horse stories. My heroine, Sonoria, is a rebel, a tough rebel just coming into her young womanhood. She is bound by her nature to challenge authority and the status quo--as all young people should do. And she loves a stallion named Spiritus that is just like her: indomitable, willful, and independent.

But enthusiasm for horses is not limited to girls. Here's a photo of me when I was about eleven years old. I was part of a horse 4-H club in my home town in Massachusetts and eventually became a pretty good horseback rider. As I recall, I was pretty sick when this picture was taken. I had the flu and a fever, but didn't want to miss riding in the local horse show. The horse's name was Pete and, to be honest, he was a sad, spiritless creature. We got along fairly well, though, except he was afraid of snow drifts and would occasionally throw me when we went on winter trail rides. I don't think I ever won any ribbons with him. I was a pretty timid rider and Pete would rather have been back in the barn. But, never mind; by riding Pete and later lots of other horses, I learned a skill that I've been enjoying all my life and acquired a love of horses--their smells, their sounds, the way they look, and the way they move. I've been able to incorporate that love into my writing.

A Mighty Strange Few Weeks

It has indeed been a mighty strange few weeks. Started out with what anyone has to go through as we muddle through modern life: the brakes on my truck failed and the part had to be ordered from "off island." Read: three-week wait. Then the air conditioning in Terry's car disappeared and it's 87 degrees here every day (Yeah, sure, that's tough, Doug). So we're down to one hot vehicle.

Then, there is a big storm way up in Japan. It's maybe fifteen hundred miles away, but, this means that after a while, a few days, the ocean swells from that system reach Guam. This sets up a large surge in the harbor where we live aboard our sailboat. This in turn translates to a boat that is being heaved and rocked and thrown about and resulted in a crushed self-steering vane when the stern of the boat was smashed against our boarding plateform.

Then, the wind changes and starts coming in from the North. A few days later, the air is filled with smog--smog! On an tiny island in the middle of the ocean? Turns out it's from China. The Chinese industrial economy is booming, there is little control of pollution, and when conditions are right, the stuff comes our way and fills the sky so that we can't see the mountains a few miles away. The air is nearly unbreathable.

Then: Irony sets in and the Chinese economy burps. I think they are now calling it that--a burp. So stock markets crash all around the world because now China is pretty important, economically, to the world.

So, what do we care? Here is a picture of Terry and I, in clear weather, up on the neighboring island of Rota in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. It's a great island. Just wonderful. Isolated, empty beaches, gin-clear water, one dusty little town, and very friendly people. We had sailed up there--this was last spring--and were enjoying the seascapes.

The writing is going well. I'm 206 pages into the 3rd novel in this possible trilogy (Terry thinks I ought to just call it a series and let it go on and on--we'll see). I've got the plot and characters (Scraps, Sonoria, Dag-gar, the donkey called Admiral Penance, Astral the Ancient Boy) so twisted up with Time travel and magic that I've had to slow down and really think things through before moving on. I think I have a handle on it now, though. Hope to have this book done by June. As to the publication of the second book, The Mirrors of Castaway Time--who knows. I've heard nothing.

Traditional Sailing in the Western Pacific

One of my great interests here on Guam is the traditional ways of sailing and navigating used by the ancient sailors and a handful of modern islanders to find their way among the far-flung islands. This is a photograph of me at the tiller of a traditional island canoe. As a sailor of fiberglass and aluminum sailboats, it's almost beyond my ability to imagine going to sea for days at a time in a vessel like this one. The Quest was built on the island of Puluwat in the Caroline Islands by a master canoe builder, and sailed the nearly 500 miles of open ocean to Guam.

And, as if the sailing of such a canoe in the open sea were not challenging enough, the way they navigate is utterly beyond belief for a western sailor who uses GPS. They carry no GPS, no sextant--not even a compass. They rely soley on the stars, the ocean swells, and sea life to steer across the vast expanses of sea. For food and drink, it is a mash of taro root, fishing, coconut milk, and rain water.

I'll never be a true traditional navigator. I'm too old to master that mystical art, but I do want to understand it as well as I can. I'm working on a book, an adventure novel, that will deal with this and the conflicting demands of maintaining traditional cultures while acknowledging those aspects of the modern world that cannot be avoided.