those moments

That first time in a Summer that you feel your naked toes on a bobbing deck in the warm sun is a recurring memorable moment over the years if you are lucky. We're fortunate to get the toes on the bobbing deck thing all through the year, but not the naked toes part. Thinking about that, and taking this picture of my blue/pink Winter Toes made me remember some thoughts I tried to express in one of the chapters of the book 'Something About Navigator'. It was the beginning of the chapter called 'Navigator Moments', which was primarily to introduce a small collection of Navigator stories and adventures by other owners/sailors/builders/writers. I hope you don't mind if I include a piece of the preamble (slightly edited) here:

'Sailing is such a compelling medium in the use of our bodies and our senses, for routines, skills and transport but also simply for finding some space. I really enjoy the sensory inputs of a nice trip on the water; the different sounds of water lapping or sloshing or frothing or breaking; or the push-pull simplicity of the balance between tiller and sheet- the hard and the soft, the easing or firming, the one hanging off the other with me flexing and contracting in between.

The lines have a beauty of their own too, whether braided or twisted, rough or silky and the organizing of them can be therapy for an everyday cluttered mind.

A gust rustles fabric and pulls at the boom, so the sound in your ears becomes the rise of your backside and the weight in your hand. These things go mostly unnoticed, but their interconnectedness makes them sensations as worthy as any, to be remembered as special, memorable, and maybe even defining.

And what can give these sensations an edge is the scale and power of the forces you play with, and the possibility of being caught by the very things that are so beautiful. The routines that are practiced make responding automatic, but in those moments when everything is in balance, or your mind is in a state of ‘flow’, process becomes timeless, the goal is just ‘now’ and nothing further, and expectations are forgotten. That is my sort of ‘moment’.

I find ‘flow’ in making things too, when a technique or a process is just beyond me, challenging or unfamiliar to me, but I proceed intuitively, letting hand and eye carry on without my supervision; without logic getting in the way. This idea seems strangely neutral, as though things happen automatically, and yet it involves a very strong feeling of being fully in the experience. Focussed and more than ordinarily aware.

I’m sure that some of us lose something very powerful by not learning to use our hands, although that feeling- of working slightly in new territory, is of course at the heart of any creative project and in the thrill of an expedition too. There is the excitement of exploring the known unknown, and the slight anxiety involved in planning for the unknown unknown.

For this to be a positive and comfortable experience, the anxiety needs to be matched by some confidence in our ability to adapt as the experience unfolds. Working even just a bit too far ahead of our past experience will be stressful. We can certainly learn from that, (some even thrive on that) but most, perhaps aim to avoid it.

All this without mentioning boat designs, location, companionship, weather, destination or refreshments! '

Howard Rice's current expedition project was another motivation for dragging out these thoughts, and I know that many of us- even the armchair explorers amongst us- are watching with great interest and support  in mind.

On the subject of 'moments', this little video is of a very special one I had a while ago, no wind, no shoes, waiting for a puff to arrive, but meanwhile just sitting with my feet dangling over Annie's bow enjoying the peace.                              

a brief encounter

Navigator Book is available

There are two different editions of 'Something About Navigator' available now through one sales channel, with others becoming available soon. The original plan was to make the book as affordable as possible, by keeping production costs low, using a print on demand process, and monochrome printing in the USA on modest paper. I have done that, and it is available at @ $20USD (The 'black and white edition').

But following some encouraging feed-back, I have also produced a more expensive edition that is printed on better paper and with mainly coloured illustrations, in other words, a printed version of the color PDF that will also be for sale later. It is available for $42 USD. This is definitely a more attractive book, but obviously more than twice the price.

Chuck at Duckworks has said that copies will ultimately be available through his online shop, ands I'm a bit unclear how that will be managed, but I think an order from Duckworks will be filled by me and drop-shipped straight to the customer from the printer.

In the next few weeks the book will also come online at Amazon.com, and I'll put up a link when that happens.

In the meantime, it seems that the best way for me to sell the book is by the direct link to my Createspace e-store here for the color edition, or here for the black and white one. ( I have to say that my little 'cut' is much more respectable with this sales channel than an Amazon purchase will be)

This is a very low-key sort of book launch, just me and my computer, but I really need to mention some of the people that made writing this thing so much fun, and who have given their stories to the book.

The book gives a bit of an outline of the development of the design, and a bit of an analysis of the things that maybe have made it such a happy and successful boat enjoyed in so many ways, in so many places, then there are some stories by Navigator owners and sailors and some builders. After that there is a bit of writing about the whole building a boat thing, and a chapter about building a hull. Following this there is a bit of detail about fittings. Finally there is a concise list of resources for enthusiasts to follow up. Those of you reading this on my blog will probably have already spotted those....

The other voices though were given so generously and with such a co-operative and helpful spirit, and the essays they contributed lift this little book off the page and out yonder onto the water. There are some great photos too, although in striving for an economical product I haven't done them their due justice. In no particular order, Steve Parke, Owen Sinclair, Richard Schmidt, John Welsford, Chuck Leinweber, Kevin Brennan, Martin Welby, Dave Perillo, Dave Johnstone Barrett Faneuf and others all made the process an absolute delight and I thank them most sincerely for listening to my idea and jumping in without hesitation to support it.

It is my sincere hope that this little book will give some pleasure, not only to Navigator enthusiasts, but to dreamers, builders and sailors who just want something simple, real, and creative in their lives and who find that thinking about little boats is helpful and maybe even inspirational in all that.