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