Do you remember the Theory of Rolling Balls, described in this blog back in January of 2015? There I acknowledged that my romance with Richard Baila included admiration, and a desire to learn from him how to work effectively. He was my guru of productivity, and still is, in fact. The Theory of Rolling Balls was one of his operating principles:
There's a lot to do. What has to be done first? What’s the correct order of doing things? Which task is most important? The many tasks at hand are like balls of varying size. The competent manager sets them rolling, one or two at a time, attending to the balls as they roll, adding new balls, keeping the old ones rolling, moving from one to the other as needed to herd the flock of balls along. At some point, one ball might be retired, its function completed. Then a new ball might be added. A large-enough ball contributes its own momentum; the effort to keep it rolling is almost leisurely. Smaller balls, more intensely needed for the growth of the enterprise, must be herded quickly to ripen in time. The balls represent the veins of creation ... all leading toward the intended new organism ... whether that is a boat, or a novel, or some other expression of WHAT YOU WANT.
May, 1981: The weather was still too cool and wet to cork the boat’s new deck, but there were plenty of other balls to keep rolling. Richard put in a thru-hull fitting for the engine. He built the cockpit floor, and began talking about how he would shape the cabin sides. He invited me to stand in the area that would become the galley, so he could decide on counter heights and cabinet specs and where the cabin top would have to be.
Meanwhile, I subbed for the Social Studies teacher at Bellingham High, and scraped dolfinite in my spare time. We drove to Seattle one weekend to help empty Hank Baila’s house so the sale could be finalized. We hauled a lot of stuff from Seattle to Bellingham, planning to have a garage sale.
Back in the new boat’s imagined galley, we tested the space again: what if I had to wedge myself into the corner between the sink and the aft counter while the boat sailed on a starboard tack? Could I reach forward easily enough to where the wood stove would be mounted?
There was never enough time for all the different rolling balls we had in motion … and then Bernard Moitessier came to town with his film, “The Long Way,” which he narrated live at the Mt Baker Theater on May 17, 1981.
All the balls stopped rolling. Everything came to a halt, for me, after watching that film. “The Long Way” and Moitessier’s presentation terrified me to the depths of my soul. I wanted to abandon the whole project: the boat-building, the marriage, the working for a wage, the writing toward a novel, the political activism, and the watery beauty of Bellingham. I wanted to run back east to Pennsylvania, to my Dad’s very solid earth farm, far from any ocean swell.
Moitessier had sailed his 40’ steel boat Joshua, non-stop and solo, around the world in 1968. From Plymouth, England – entering a round-the-world race sponsored by London’s Sunday Times - he’d rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of Llewelyn, and Cape Horn, returning into the Atlantic Ocean. He could have sailed north back to Plymouth to claim credit for completing the round-the-world race, but he chose, instead, to continue sailing … east around the Cape of Good Hope again, east beyond Cape Llewelyn again, and on into the South Pacific. He anchored, at last, after ten months alone on that boat, in Tahiti. He loved being alone out on the sea. He loved it.
Such immense expanses; so deep the troughs of those majestic swells; so ominous the massive weight of water heaving! The sea, the fickle, tyrant sea, could decorate a wave crest with flumey spindrift, and then slam your boat with a salty surf-fist powerful enough to take down a barn.
I didn’t like it. I couldn’t comprehend that this man I’d
married, this man beside me watching, transfixed, was loving every minute. Richard appeared to be longing to be
on that ocean, clearly approving of that solo sailor who climbed to the top of Joshua’s
mast to film a view of blue ocean sparkling on every horizon.
What was I doing allied with this
man? I had no sailing experience,
really. A silky-smooth glide on
Chesapeake waters from a private dock to a nearby yacht club when I was
sixteen. A sweet ride, when I was 22, on
a friend’s sailboat on Lake St Clair on a summer evening when the sun set on the
western shore while a full moon rose from the east.
I’d lived aboard the schooner, Sea Lark for
almost a year with Captain Richard, but we had not sailed much. Once, we took our friends Jay and Marianne on
an easy drift across Bellingham Bay to
Inati on Lummi Island. We anchored for
the night; and after the morning coffee a fish boat came by to collect Jay, who
had to go to work. Marianne and I hauled
the anchor while Richard had the helm.
Suddenly he shouted urgent orders to “hoist that foresail!” while the
boat was already heeling to a brisk wind in the main. I collapsed and hugged the deck, dissolving in
tears of incompetence. Or
unwillingness. Or just plain shock at
the demanding situation!
Moitessier’s film, The Long Way, The Long Way - Part 1
gave us lovely moments of classical
music while sea birds soared in the sunlight and Joshua passed a distant shore. He gave us some fine poetic sentences about “meeting
the dragon,” “saving his soul,” and “finding moments of grace.”
But. But.
But …
What is a sailboat for? This new boat was going to be my home. My silly vision of the new boat was a cozy nest, snuggled to the dock in Squalicum Harbor … where electricity came in on a cord, and water flowed through a hose to fill the tanks. Moitessier blew away that domestic illusion.
He answered questions after the film. “How did you get any sleep?” “You sleep like a fish: when the boat is rising on the wave, you have to steer. When the boat is riding down the backside, you close your eyes and sleep.” Or was it the other way around?
Reporters from The Sunday Times, sponsor of the round-the-world race, had offered to give him radio transmitters. Moitessier preferred his old friend, the slingshot. He would use a mirror to signal a passing ship, and then lob a hand-written message to the ship’s deck: his position for Lloyds Insurance, his condition for his wife.
~~~~
In the days after Moitessier’s presentation, my trauma faded, of course. Soon enough, Richard and I were back into the rhythm of rolling those balls. He assured me that his dream was to sail the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska, “gunkholing” along the convoluted coast of British Columbia with its many miles of magical anchorages, glorious fjords, and secret coves.
Through the years that followed the launching of Abrazo, once our new boat was whole, I learned to haul on a halyard, sheet in a main, and tie a bowlin, among other nautical tasks. We made a 1984 voyage north along the coast of British Columbia, exploring Desolation Sound, Princess Louisa Inlet, Johnson’s Pass, Grenville Channel, the old cannery at Butedale. We sailed across Dixon Entrance to Ketchikan and then northwest to Sitka, with many adventures over the course of five months; and many more adventures on the way back south to Bellingham. In 1986 we voyaged outside the coast of Vancouver Island to Barkley Sound for a long summer of play amongst the Broken Islands. We lived aboard Abrazo for eight years and logged many miles on coastal winds before moving to a house on dry land.
Eventually, Richard did the solo thing, too, after he sailed Abrazo to Mexico’s Baja in 2008, then across the equator to the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia, in 2009. He single-handed through the Tuamotos to Tahiti, and south to Rapa Iti for the Southern Ocean crossing to Chile. He sailed south through Patagonian waters and through the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, Argentina with crew. But half-way back to Puerto Montt he was solo again. I enjoyed being the stay-at-home scribe, maintaining email and phone correspondence with my captain with occasional visits to wherever he was moored.
In 2019 we worked at home together on our urban farm while Abrazo’s new captain sailed her north again to her new home in Sitka.
As for Bernard Moitessier and Joshua,
the boat was wrecked in a storm … 1982 … at Cabo San Lucas Mexico. What Really Happened to S/V Joshua?
And then, as it happened, Port Townsend’s Joe Daubenberger, younger brother of Jim Daubenberger, who had been Richard Baila’s sailing guru in the Port Townsend days of ’67 to ’73 … bought Joshua. I don’t know what happened next, but according to the Internet, the boat is now in France, at the “La Rochelle Maritime Museum, where since 1990 she has been scrupulously maintained and exercised on a regular basis.” Moitessier died of prostate cancer on June 16, 1994.
In an interview with Latitude 38, 1981, Bernard Moitessier told a story about his fruit tree project … an effort to promote the planting of fruit trees along city streets for beauty, fruit, fine wood, and a symbol of humanity evolving towards a higher form, something he seemed to have contemplated deeply during his many days at sea. Latitude 38 - 1981 Interview w. Moitessier
As it happens, Richard has taken up a fruit tree project of his own on our half-acre urban farmette here in Bellingham. With eggplant and peppers in the greenhouse, corn and garlic, peas and potatoes in raised beds, chicken for eggs, meat, and fertilizer … we grow almost enough to feed ourselves year-round. We also have plenty of time in the sunshine and fresh air to contemplate the progress of humanity on this planet.
My friend Janna recently asked Richard, “Do you miss having a boat?”
His answer delighted me: “Susan told me about Odysseus … How he returned after many years on the sea, and his Goddess advised him to put an oar over his shoulder, to walk inland till someone asked him, ‘What is that thing you carry?’”
Richard is evolving into a farmer every bit as knowledgeable and productive as he was a sailor and a shipwright. Tasks now include turning compost, feeding chickens, pressure-canning tomato sauce, fencing the crops and pruning those fruit trees … and the Theory of Rolling Balls is as useful as ever.
Next time, back to the Construction Log: Cabin sides and corking the deck.
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