8:00 PM local time, Thursday, November 21 (2000 Nov. 21 UTC) 28 28 N 016 14
W. Temp. 75, Humidity 63%, Cloud Cover 20%. At a slip at the Marina del
Atlantico, Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Islas Canarias (Canary Islands), Spain
(Espaņa)
Greetings from the crew of Maverick.
We arrived, as the reader may remember, at the harbor in Santa Cruz,
Tenerife, on the second of November. Your reporter spent a day or two
grinding fiberglass and doing glass work, and soon thereafter, Theresa showed
up and she and the Captain rented a car and buzzed off, leaving Mr. Shrode to
deal with some non-trivial problems on Maverick. In our absence he rebuilt
the top swivel on the furler, re-fueled, rebuilt the foot-operated water pump
under the galley sink, rebuilt the traveller blocks, rebuilt the carburetor
on the outboard, installed a new tach to replace the one damaged by
lightning, and replaced the key in the prop shaft that connects it to the
transmission. This last was not only a difficult job that must be performed
in a cramped and uncomfortable position, it's pretty important. The key had
been improperly installed by the yard in Athens, and had worked loose. If it
had gone unnoticed and uncorrected, one day, when we put the transmission
into reverse, the prop would have pulled the shaft right out of the boat,
sinking to the bottom and leaving a big hole in the hull. It happens.
Our tour around Tenerife was sybaritic, but more of this was due to
Theresa's presence than the island. Tenerife is, however, a beautiful and
interesting place, despite actual freeway traffic jams and tacky bits crammed
with holidaymakers. Mount Teide, the centerpiece of the island that every
guide slightly disingenuously calls the "highest mountain in Spain," is the
third largest volcano in the world, after Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. It sits in
a caldera that is at an altitude of 7000 feet, and the peak is 12,198. In the
large caldera the feeling is of the high deserts of Nevada and Arizona, the
air crisp and clear and fallish. You can take a gondola up to about 600 feet
short of the summit, as Theresa and I did, but you can't hike up to the top
without a permit, which I forgot to get in Santa Cruz. The view is
spectacular, but as the prevailing winds come into contact with the mountain
they rise and cool, forming a sea of clouds that on most days obscures the
island and sea below about six thousand feet. On the day we went we were able
to get a peek through the clouds at the island of La Gomera to the west,
where we plan to sail in a few days. For the last two days of her visit,
Theresa and I had the coolest room at the Parador Hotel in the national park
that surrounds the peak, a place not unlike our Ahwanee at Yosemite. We had a
balcony view of the mountain and also cable TV where the best thing on was
"The Simpsons" dubbed in Spanish, which makes Homer sound a little smarter,
if, like the Captain, you don't understand Spanish.
Tenerife is a great spot for stargazers, given the lack of light
pollution and the clear air on the mountain, and amateur astronomers are
numerous. The night we checked in was the peak of the Leonid meteor showers,
and we had the desk awaken us at 0330 to take a look. We were surprised to
see scores, maybe hundreds of cars, traveling back and forth along the park
road, trying to find a break in the clouds and getting tips from other points
on the mountain by cell phone. Theresa went down to the parking lot and
managed to see dozens of shooting stars, but because of the haze and full
moon they were really no more dramatic than the ones we see at home.
The bird called the Canary (Serinus canaria) is named after the islands,
not the reverse. They're native to these islands, as are the Canary Palms
(Phoenix canariensis) that San Franciscans have imported to festoon the
Embarcadero. No one knows for sure where the islands, and therefore the palms
and the birds, got their name. A species not native to the islands is the
human being, but therein lies a tale.
In the great days of exploration, the Spanish and Portuguese sailed to
the Canaries, and about the same time discovered the Azores, Madeira, and the
Cape Verde Islands, the other volcanic islands in the eastern Atlantic. Only
the Canaries were inhabited. Aside from speculation that the islands were
mentioned in Hesiod or Homer, and legends that the Phoenicians or
Carthaginians may have found them, the first actual report of them is by
Pliny the Elder, who mentioned an expedition here by a North African king in
40 BC. Although it is clear that the islands were inhabited during the first,
if not the second or third millennium BC, no one knows where the people came
from. There is circumstantial evidence that the first settlers arrived before
the Bronze Age, which started between 1900 and 3000 BC in various places of
the world. This is based on the facts that no metal implements have been
found in archaeological digs, and that the people discovered living here in
the 14th century had none, either. There is no Clovis-type site to absolutely
prove inhabitation before about 200 BC, but there is every possibility that
people were here in the Neolithic Period. An odd thing about the people the
Portuguese discovered in the middle of the 14th century was that they were
tall, blue-eyed, and fair-haired. No one has any evidence of who they were or
where they originated. But how did they get there?
You can't see the Canaries from mainland Africa. The highest point on
Fuerteventura, which is the island nearest the coast, is 2372 feet, and this
peak is sixty-four nautical miles from the mainland. To find how far, in
nautical miles, the peak can be seen from a small boat before it drops below
the horizon, we multiply the square root of the height in feet times 1.15,
which in this case gives us about 56 miles. (This is the same formula that,
turned into a rule-of thumb, allowed mariners in the great days of sail to
estimate how far away an approaching ship was. When a sailing ship is spotted
"hull-down," with only the sails visible, from a crow's nest, say, forty feet
above sea level, and we begin to see the hull so it becomes "hull-up," the
ship in question is about 12 miles off, or farther away from a point higher
above the deck.) So if a stone-age sailor was about 56 miles from the
mountain, or eight miles off the shore of Africa on a perfectly clear day,
and he sailed northwest, he'd begin to see something pop up above the waves
once in a while. Since the peak is twelve miles inland, he'd then have to
sail 56 minus 12, or 44 miles further, to make landfall. He would have hoped
all the way that the mountain didn't disappear into the haze, which would
have been all too likely. To complete the voyage, unless he could make more
than about four knots, he would have to continue his navigation by the stars.
Now, it might be argued that no navigation was necessary, and all that
was needed for discovery was that a fisherman got caught out in an offshore
breeze, made landfall on an unknown island, and then waited until the wind
turned around to take him home. The problem is that on this scenario just one
man gets here, or at best a few. If you want to start a community, you need
women, and supplies, and tools. You have to make a few trips, so you have to
be able to find the place. Even in the Stone Age when men and women were
out-doorsy sorts, I'm sure there were plenty of women around, who, like
Theresa and Caroline, would have said, "No way I'm getting in that thing,
even if you do have a GPS." Or maybe it was men saying that to the explorers,
who were women.
So what we have is evidence that at a bare minimum of 2200 years ago, and
very possibly as long as 5000 years ago or more, sailors in Africa had
navigation skills and seaworthy vessels that could manage a crossing of 52
miles. This doesn't match up to the great voyages of the early Polynesians,
of course, but it happened at about the same time and is nothing to sneeze
at, as Bay Area sailors who have sailed to the Farallones, which is only half
as far, can testify. Strangely enough, the people discovered by the
Portuguese in the Canaries had lost the ability to sail anything but
rudimentary dugout canoes, and had no knowledge of navigation. They rarely
traveled between islands.
The real champions of early exploration by boat remain, however, the
Aborigines of Australia, who were there by at least 40,000 BC. There's no way
to explain their arrival, no matter how much you speculate on sea levels,
except to assume that they were blue-water sailors. I've already argued, back
when I saw the "oldest boat" in Egypt, that it is a strong possibility that
hominids earlier than homo sapiens sapiens had watercraft. I see no reason
not to believe that sailing is one of the oldest technologies on earth.
In a day or two we'll put ourselves out there once again for a short trip
to La Gomera, about 65 miles, just slightly longer than our stone-age
counterparts who first came to these islands. We'll be using a boat and
techniques that have the benefit of over 40,000 years of development and
trial and error, so we've got a lot of help.
ADDENDA
One of our cruiser friends, who shall remain anonymous for reasons that
will make themselves clear, spotted the famous and venerable Don Street,
veteran wooden-boat sailor and author of many books, in a local shop. When he
spotted Street, our friend was in the middle of an embarrassing and illegal
process: he was photocopying a sailing guide, the author of which, by
unfortunate coincidence, was none other than Mr. Street himself. He didn't
ask for an autograph of the copy.
A follow-up on the Howard Tate gig at the Sweetwater in Mill Valley: Ry
Cooder and Jim Keltner didn't show after all, but there was an even rarer
occurrence. The great Jerry Ragavoy himself was in attendance, and sat in for
a tune or two. Tate is the last surviving member of Ragavoy's awesome stable
of singers, which also included Garnett Mimms, Lorraine Ellison ("Stay With
Me"), and Irma Franklin, Aretha's sister who died recently and who sang the
original "Piece of My Heart," later covered by Janis Joplin. Tate, who is now
a minister, was reported to have lost none of his voice.
Another piece of history from Mr. Austin deLone, who reported the above:
He recently did a gig with Joe Hunter, the first house piano player for
Motown records. Among his many other credits, Mr. Hunter played the piano
part on the original recording of "Money," a hit by Barrett Strong in 1959
composed by Berry Gordy, that helped Gordy start Tamla, Gordy, and finally
Motown records. "The best things in life are free, but you can give them to
the birds and bees..." "Money" was released on the Anna label, and Anna was
Gordy's sister who was married to Marvin Gaye. Anyway, Mr. deLone relates
that Mr. Hunter had forgotten the piano part to "Money." This song has been
butchered by every frat and garage band since it was released, up to and
including the Beatles, because none of them ever bothered to learn Mr.
Hunter's actual part, but instead substituted an impotent, feeble guitar
line. Mr. Hunter's part, together with the corresponding guitar line on the
record, was a work of funk genius. It so happens that the Captain was the
member of a very popular band from San Diego in the sixties named "Sandi and
the Accents" who were a little more careful in their studies of the great
music of the time. As a result he happens to know the exact piano part on the
original record, though he was the drummer in that band. A few years back,
when performing with Mr. deLone, the Captain showed him the correct original
piano line, with which, after the slow but inexorable turn of the great wheel
of time, he was able to refresh Mr. Hunter's memory. With Mr. deLone on
vocals, the song once again achieved a close, and rare, similitude of past
glory.
Congratulations to LuAnn Rogers, who has been named by the Marin
Municipal Water District as a Waterwise Landscape Contest Outstanding
Achiever. But I believe the Captain should also be a recipient of the award,
as I have used no water at all on the weeds in my backyard since I left it in
its natural, native, organic state upon my departure. Where is the justice?
Next report form this location: "Christopher Columbus"
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