VOICES FROM THE PAST, PART TWO
Jim’s most illustrious client, Mark Hassall, reads a long quote from the movie actor and consummate seaman Sterling Hayden to explain Mark’s philosophy of how, “A voyage, like a life, should be based on a firm foundation of financial unrest.”
Then Mark faces almost certain death as a castaway in the Indian Ocean, and Jim inserts his own vignette of using the “debris field” tactic of recovering seven people who have been swept overboard by a single wave.
Jim asks for listener response to these Voices cessions, for he has a trove of such audio in his OutRig Collection.
VOICES FROM THE PAST, PART ONE
By mining old video footage for its sound tracks, Jim brings us the actual voices of the several seafaring pioneers whose stories he has told in previous Capercasts.
In this first cession of a two-part series, he includes the voices of Woody Brown, Arthur Piver and James Wharram with his mate Hanneke Boon. She explains the logic of the polygamoust relationship James maintained, at considerable cost, with up to five women at once, all equal partners in their catamaran design enterprise enterprise.
GRABBING THE BOTTOM
Three more anchoring episodes illustrate the tenuousness of Grabbing The Bottom, with some conclusions about the weight of ground tackle and the crew’s the ability to retrieve the anchor.
Jim asks for feedback as to how much “how-to” information, relative to straight storytelling, listeners may want.
HIJACKED AND SHIPWRECKED
There are two contrasting anchoring predicaments here: Jim's boat and his family crew are hijacked by a "sea monster" and towed out to sea.
How they get free. Then, a different vessel is embayed and destroyed, its crew stranded on a desert island. How they sail again.
THE DINGHY THAT TRIED TO CLIMB THE MAST
In this anchoring fiasco, Jim tells of how even an experienced sailor can get so screwed up so fast in a boat ... even if he designed and built the boat himself and has sailed it for forty years.
This begins a three-part series on anchoring in which some sessions do not have a happy ending, but some conclusions are drawn.
Storm Coming...
Sailing past the tip of Baja in the dark, with no lighthouse operating, we find ourselves crossing to the Mexican Mainland, a passage of about 300 miles, with a chubasco obviously approaching.
There being no protection from such storms at Cabo, we head back there anyway, hoping mainly to get Jo Anna ashore safely. We are met again by a troupe of gracious Mexicans who solve all our problems.
However, this leg of the voyage ends here, and we return to California overland for the arrival of our firstborn son Steven. A chronological jump occurs here. I mention a bit about what we’re jumping over, to which we shall return if listener feedback so indicates, but we shall proceed in Caper # 7 with more recent stories.
Losing and Finding a Trimaran...
The cultural influences of the 1960s, fear, paranoia and escapism, stimulates the owner-building of cruising-type multihulls. Survival aspects of yacht ownership discussed.
Continues the the voyage of JUANA, wherein the vessel disappears from its anchorage at a remote location in Baja California. With the gracious help of threadbare Mexicans, JUANA is recovered, and we continue south…into changing weather and different circumstances.
Sailing dynamics of the Piver Nugget trimaran at sea.
We now begin to understand the differing dynamics, and the disorienting sensations, of running downwind in a craft capable of equaling or exceeding the speed of the seaway.
Our trip down the Big Sur Coast offers us “the most terrifying thrill on this planet,” but the boat keeps telling us that all is well.
Surfing at night, rounding Point Conception, and the joy of getting on the boat in northern California and getting off in Southern California, Summary of multihull events yet to come in the early sixties. Piver disappears at sea.
Arthur Piver and the Modern Trimaran
About ten years after Woody Brown launched the first truly modern catamaran, a San Francisco man named Arthur Piver succeeds in developing a three-hulled vessel that delivers the all-round performance and maneuverability that the catamarans of the day do not.
I just happen to be there at the right time – late 1950s – and am so consumed by this revelation that I build two of Piver’s early boats and, together with my bride Jo Anna, take one of them to sea.
Modern nautical lore "capercast" with multihull pioneer and historian Jim Brown.
This is oral narrative # 1 featuring Jim sharing about modern seafaring watercraft, their concepts, creators and crews.
In this episode, Jim shares part one of the story of Woody Brown, the designer and builder of the first modern sailing catamaran.
Modern nautical lore “capercast” podcast with multihull pioneer and historian Jim Brown.
This is oral narrative # 2 featuring modern seafaring watercraft, their concepts, creators and crews.
In this episode,Jim continues the amazing story of Woody Brown, designer and sailor of the first modern catamaran.