Once upon a long time ago, at least it felt so, felt so for me, I spent a full day sailing upon the Salish Sea, tipped a sailboat over so much the outermost lip of the starboard-side gunwale dipped underwater, and I ended up rocking a porta potty across the deep inner sea. It was a perfect summer day blessed with happy yellow sunshine and cool breezes. Sublime views of mountains, islands, and sparkling seas reaffirmed our decision to move out here to Cascadia. Gwen Hughes, my wife at the time and one of my exes today and still a dear friend, had moved together with me to Seattle from our native Virginia. We had previously been out here for parts of 1986-1987 and wanted to get back West. After living in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and briefly even Vermont, we said farewell to the East Coast with our 1991 thruhike of the Appalachian Trail. In January of 1992 we returned to our beloved Pacific Northwest.

Gwen had worked for a small, model toy sailboat company during her earlier time in Cascadia. Tippecanoe Boats was founded in 1983 by a lovely, wackyfun couple from places back East. These were anti-electric motor toys back in those days, too, real sailing model sailboats, not merely whirring, radio-operated, mechanical robots. Years later, however, the company evolved into making exquisitely crafted, stunningly gorgeous, radio-controlled model sailboats. Back in the 80s, tho, Gwen helped cut and sew the sails from real nylon spinnaker cloth, pack and load up inventory, help sell the boats at art fairs, craft shows and outdoor festivals, and lots of grunty-grunt work.

Even I did some work for a few short weeks, soldering rudders plus a few other things. I was a lousy solderer, however, as too much made the rudder too heavy. Such distortions left the toy model sailboat off-balanced, and while my clumsy efforts became more refined as I progressed, even earning an occasional kudos, Will, the primary owner, and I realized I wasn’t playing to my strengths. The cool thing was Chris, one of our other T-boat workers, also worked at the magnificent Honey Bear Bakery. Occasional treats came our way, and even more as the primary owner of Tippecanoe disliked ingesting yummy bearilicious refined white sugar products. Aye, those were halcyon days for us early migrants to the then-Emerald City. The worldwide Cold War had ended, the forever Global War on Terror was a ways off, smartfone and socmed addiction was yet to be, and there were mountains to climb, trails to hike, and seas to sail! Continue reading →