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  • Class Afloat talk at Interesting Vancouver

    Last night I gave a talk at Interesting Vancouver. This picture is the one I used to start the talk - me at 18, half a life time ago, on the S/V Concordia.

    I was really nervous about the talk. I’ve told the story of my Class Afloat trip many times, but it’s so long ago that it doesn’t often come up anymore. In fact, I’m kind of reluctant to bring it up - because it was so long ago.

    But it’s been nice thinking about the time and thinking about the experiences I had.

    I called the presentation Places on a Map. There are so many stories to tell, but with only 10 minutes, I ended up telling a general arc of not only the trip, but what the program is about. Calling it Places on a Map is to have you think about the fact that we have access today to a ton of information about far away places. Wikipedia has highly detailed facts that can let you go as deep as you wish.

    But unless you’ve actually been there, and experienced that place, that’s all they are: places on a map.

    I also talked about regret a bit at the end. Having done this voyage - however long ago - it is a part of me. I can’t go outside myself and think about what might have been if I hadn’t gone. And that’s how I mostly treat regret. You’re on the path you’re on, and you may think about paths not taken. But that’s a different path: the you that is in the here and now is the sum total of all those forks in the road, and only the forks ahead of you are ones you can change.

    One of the many stories I didn’t tell is how I made it on the trip. It’s all thanks to my parents. They supported me in doing this thing, this once in a life time experience, and ultimately supported me financially so I could go. I also fund raised from my local community of Bowen Island, but it’s my parents that I have to thank the most. They were in the audience tonight, so I was glad they got to see my talk, that that experience still resonates with me so many years later.

    Thanks to everyone that came to Interesting Vancouver. If you’re interested, I have  a handful of photos uploaded on Flickr, but I am going through all the photos and will be putting together a mini-site (that link is an older work in progress).

    I’ve also set up a Class Afloat 93 - 94 alumni group on Facebook - you’re welcome to join if you were an actual alumni or a friend or family of alumni.

    → 12:22 PM, Sep 29   •  Personal, Vancouver, Museum of Vancouver, Class Afloat, Events, Interesting Vancouver, IV12, presentation, speaking, Blog
  • Intro to Class Afloat Yearbook (and GitHub pages)

    Do you remember sun-drenched Wotje, with the little girl who presses a pretty shell into your hand and laughs? Do you remember Typhoon Kyle, and furling sails in 50 knots of wind and 40 foot waves? Do you remember a week out of Honolulu, already part of the family, when friendly Roger sailes out from Palmyra, sharing his island paradise? Do you remember sailing under the Golden Gate bridge, seeing parents waiting, and having the family scatter across the country, around the world?

    Turn these pages, and remember the ports. Remember also the people. Your roommates, your watchmates, your teachers, the crew, your friends. Remember the ship, her tall masts towering above you. The sails filling with a snap and proud maple leaves billowing out as she leaps forward, dolphins and blue, blue waves her only companions.

    You scurry about on deck, acid-washing your fingers to the bone. Scuppers, deck scrubbing, rust-picking, priming, painting. Scrubbing pots and flipping stir-fry, serving tables and being the juice-person.

    Remember those endless nights on watch? Struggling to keep awake, keeping your eyes glued to the red glowing compass. Staring off at the horizon, watching the first faint rays of the sun creep up.

    It's all in here, so you'll never forget. The voyages of the S/V Concordia, 1993 - 1994.

    via beta.bmannconsulting.com

    I'm revamping bmannconsulting.com. Right now I'm experimenting with putting flat files up on Github pages.

    This is an example of me putting up my Class Afloat Yearbook, which I scanned in many years ago.

    This is a transcription from the scanned image of the first page. I was the yearbook editor, but through a series of mishaps, never ended up with my own copy of the yearbook, so I only have these scans.

    I obviously didn't have much room, so there are no line breaks. I've put some in for readability. And I'm pretty sure "rustpicking" isn't one word, so I added a hyphen.

    Casting a critical eye on this writing, which is now 17 years old, written by my 19 year old self, it's…OK. I'm not emotionally removed enough (still!) from the memory strings it's tugging. As with most of my writing, it's very conversational; and by that I mean, I use the same cadence when writing as when I'm speaking.

    I still haven't applied to speak at Raincity Chronicles, but if I do, it will be about some part of this Class Afloat voyage.

    Cue the switch to tech talk…

    Github pages? Well, it's a funny throw-back to be writing HTML directly in a lot of little index.html pages (never mind having a bunch of files all called the same thing open in your text editor). I need to learn Jekyll to actually build a site.

    It DOES feel great to be "crafting" a site, with the links and organization of naming, file structure, and links all selected, rather than auto-generated. And it feels like work, in a good way.

    → 11:28 AM, Sep 10   •  Personal, Class Afloat, Raincity Chronicles, GitHub, Blog
  • Guavas

    I bought guavas last night. When I bit into the first one, that flowery perfume flavour wafted out and teleported me back about almost 20 years.

    When I traveled around the South Pacific on a tallship as part of Class Afloat, we stopped in Suva, Fiji. There is an orphanage and school run by Canadian nuns there. We visited and brought some gifts - school supplies, books, etc. - as well as playing the muddiest game of soccer I have ever played in my life. The teachers asked the children to bring in something for us - fresh fruit! So, they gathered tons of fresh guavas. We ended up with giant plastic garbage containers filled with guavas. Nothing like these pale imitations I bought in the store yesterday, but just that little whiff of perfume hinted at that long ago time.

    Even for a boat filled with frsh fruit starved teenagers, we couldn't eat our way through all of the guavas. I spent a lot of time helping out in the galley, and I ended up making a kind of guava jam. I never did get sick of having it for breakfast pretty much every day until it ran out.

    → 9:21 AM, Jul 1   •  Personal, Class Afloat, Fiji, guavas, Blog
  • A sanctimonious diorama about the folly of late-period humanity /via @mezzoblue

    Later on I will stand in one of these stores in front of a pyramid of Coke Zero bottles and consider the fact that a whole infrastructure exists for bringing this substance of no nutritional value from wherever it's bottled in Europe up to a place like this. I happen to love Coke Zero and whatever cyclopyrimidines or butylated phenols give it its weird fake sweetness, but seeing it stacked in quantity after coming off an island where everything has to be carried in by hand gives me pause. I feel like the Burfjord grocery store will someday form part of a sanctimonious diorama about the folly of late-period humanity in someone's well-meaning, sustainably-built museum or alien terrarium, and the thought fills me with irritation in advance. I buy a large bottle of the stuff as my way of shaking a fist at the future.
    via idlewords.com

    Found via @mezzoblue, and wonderful reading.

    Reminds me of when I was on a small atoll that is part of the Marshall Islands. There was one cinderblock construction supply store for both visitors and locals. We all lined up to pay $1USD for… …a cold can of coke. It also seems that $1 is the universal price for a can of pop.

    → 12:54 PM, Jul 13   •  Personal, Class Afloat, Coke, Coke Zero, Blog
  • S/V Concordia sinks off Brazil

    The Canadian tall ship SV Concordia, a sailing school vessel, heads past downtown Halifax in this July 24, 2000 file photo.
 The Canadian tall ship SV Concordia, a sailing school vessel, heads past downtown Halifax in this July 24, 2000 file photo. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

    A Nova Scotia-based ship carrying dozens of students has sunk off Brazil, but everyone is safe and there were no serious injuries, officials say.

    The Brazilian navy said the tall ship SV Concordia went down about 550 kilometres southeast of Rio de Janeiro in rough seas.

    West Island College International of Lunenburg, which runs the Class Afloat program, said all 64 people aboard were rescued from four life-rafts by merchant vessels early Friday.

    The 48 students, eight teachers and eight crew had to abandon ship and spent the night in the life-rafts equipped with blankets and some food. A Brazilian navy helicopter spotted the rafts and dropped medical supplies.

    via cbc.ca

    I went on the Class Afloat program right after I graduated from high school, in 1993 / 94. I spent 11 months on board, starting from Vancouver and then sailing around the north and south Pacific Ocean.

    It was an incredible experience, and one I've always encouraged other people to take part in.

    The ship was custom built in Gdansk, Poland, specifically for this program. They're going to have to raise millions of dollars to try and replace it, if they intend to continue.

    → 5:24 PM, Feb 19   •  Personal, Class Afloat, Concordia, Blog
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