Sternpost The antidote to spiritual malaise Martin van der Wal ponders on his illusion of solified energy - his yacht, in other words
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parrowfart!” On 19 May, 1924, Physicists tells us that matter is an Charles Hayes walked into his illusion of solidified energy. So my boatshed hearing the clatter of timber humble vessel is a manifestation of all on timber from the lean-to on one side. the energies gathered in her ancient “Morning Mr Peel!” “Aye Mr Hayes” the structure. Solar, atmospheric, magnetic, other Charlie replied, as he examined a sub-atomic, heat from the Earth’s core, stack of rough-sawn kauri. Planking stock and finally human energy that ended was required. A city stockbroker with a form in one life, only to resurrect and use sailing reputation wanted a new yacht. The it in another. “Enough, enough!” I hear sweet scent of the kauri filled their nostrils. you cry. “Clap a stopper on this Were they aware that all smells are Blavatskian babble!” I’m sorry! I agree particulate? Volatile molecules released from with that wise old sailor Albert Einstein, the fine honey-coloured sap lodged in who famously said the world is divided olfactory receptors just millimetres away into two types of people: those who from the cerebral cortex. That sap had think everything is miraculous, and those begun its journey skywards at about the who think nothing is miraculous. What time Saladin rode triumphantly into does a person of my temperament Jerusalem. That sap had held its breath as require in a world whose heartwood is the forest shivered from Krakatoa’s shockwave. The tree had being hollowed out by a teredo worm of ecological distress? Just reached for the sun for over 1,000 years. Now particles of this one example will see the Amazon reach a likely tipping point, history wafted on the autumnal breeze and congealed in the transforming a large part of this major lung of our planet into dry seasoning timber. Hayes eyed each flitch expertly, no shakes or savannah. Such a person requires an antidote. run-out grain here. Plenty to pick from for the full-length What a paradox! My antidote is owning, restoring, and sailing planks the well-heeled owner had commissioned for a hull 30ft a collection of timbers with a millennium of collective growth years (9.1m) between the perpendiculars. Over 20 million years of in the grain; ripped from trees constituting now-destroyed ancient evolution on Planet Earth had provided one of the best forests. The Danish physicist philosopher Niels Bohr once said: boatbuilding timbers money could buy. Critical eyes and sharp “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have judgements will accompany her first races. some hope of making progress.” My romantic soul somehow Cruiser Class rules stipulated that a comfortable interior believes vessels fashioned from living organisms are on some must be supplied. “What have we got for the bunks, Peel?” quantum level continuously absorbing the characters of their “Expecting redwood from California any day now!” came the fellow travellers, all the while carrying forward the seeds of their reply: very wide boards cut longitudinally from the vast girth genesis. of Jurassic giants. Queensland coachwood for the cabin, a Hoana, like most old wooden boats, has a tenuous monetary species stranded after the break-up of Gondwana. ‘Red Gold,’ value. Humanity’s notions of progress place little value on the for the interior from the now-extinct cedar ecosystem that thousand-year-old particles in her veins, even less on her vanished had graced the entire east coast of Australia for millennia. forest ancestry. However this priceless artefact responding to wind Tough, resilient spotted gum for her steam-bent frames and and wave beneath my feet has already seen off a few human structural timbers. The shapely basket of copper-fastened generations. For 36 years her tiller has been in my hand as I too sticks which a year later slipped into its element journey towards inevitable decay under time’s represented an organic core sample of at least a relentless gaze. When that hand becomes too feeble to “The shapely millennium of history. Her first start line in 1925 take her forward I can rest content knowing she will basket of was set by volunteers of the same club flag she go ahead rejuvenated by the countless careful races under today. But what a varied history she interdictions, major and minor, undertaken under my copperhas had. Cruised across the Tasman to New fastened sticks stewardship. Let’s hope coming generations will also Zealand in the 1960s. On her return she set off prize the miraculous antidote to spiritual malaise represented on a two-handed circumnavigation of the world. resulting from the sensual pleasure of her paradoxical an organic Homeward bound three years later, she survived timbers giving a spritely toss of the head at the first a Pacific cyclone. She was wrecked, written off, hint of a zephyr then leaning into it with a warm core sample and rebuilt twice by owners, one of them myself, chuckle as her resonating bow wave leads the music. of at least a who refused to let her die. Raced and cruised by A defiant chant of wood, wind, and water, as she millennium boatbuilders, yacht designers, sailmakers, carries her way towards the hazy horizon. of history” dreamers and doers; not one has let her slip away without a feeling of regret.
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CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2022
