But Charley, what are you going to do if my co-worker and his family need to take their vacation late in November instead of early. I left it up to him because he has to plan for family travel. He and his wife are a little distracted right now because she is about to give birth to their third child. It may be a week or two before they are able to plan for their vacation. And we both cannot be out of the office at the same time.

What a day I have had. My family have always complained that I have the weirdest friends. But then they've said that since the year I brought home the prison inmate who was out for the holiday. In the years since I have been perfectly at home with people in the SCA, muzzleloading buckskinners, and even, God forbid, folk musicians. Today I went forth into the coutryside to extend my record and I came up with aces.

Last Tuesday I had been invited to visit the deep sea canoe that group is repairing. I found it in the front yard of a house in a little neighborhood high up on the side of the hills overlooking Agana Bay. It was under a canopy and covered with a tan tarp. Dr. Cunningham greeted me and introduced me to the sweetest looking 22 foot red and black outrigger canoe. She is gorgeous. While we were looking her over Manny showed up. He was wearing a Budweiser T-shirt and blue Hawaiian print shorts. I could see a ritual tatoo on his leg, three parallel symbols on his calf. These tatoos were no casual decoration. There was meaning there, written in their simplicity and position. Here was The Navigator. This man learned to navigate by the stars from his grandfather, one of the last of the old time navigators. He had been through the rituals and ceremonies and carried within himself the magic passed down through the generations.

The canoe was beautiful. She is 22 feet long and very narrow. Her hull is asymetrical, mor curved on the outrigger side than on the other. Dr. Cunningham explained to me that the hull acts in the water like an aerofoil. The shape of the hull offsets the pressure of the wind on the sails. In other words the Micronesians figured out how to counteract leeway using fluid dynamics instead of a keel. These canoes are sailed with the wind always on the outrigger side of the boat. To tack the merely shft the mast, swing the sail end for end and the bow becomes the stern and off they go in the other direction. The outrigger is not intended to be used as a float. It is intended to the a counter weight for the wind pressure on the sail.

The canoe is built of seeded breadfruit tree. The seeded breadfruit is called dokdok while the seedless is called lemmai. The lemmai is worthless for building canoes, and from what I gathered, pretty much anything else. The bottow of the canoe is carved from the trunk of the dokdok and then the bow and stern are lashed on afterwards as well as the planks that make up the rest of the hull. The boat is calked with coconut fiber and hot breadfruit sap. With the hull and outrigger in place a little house of cocnit frond and sticks is built on top.

While we talked Manny worked on the canoe. He was carving a new thwart piece for the end. When he is done the piece will carry the weight of the rudder and will act as chainplate for the stays. He worked with adze and chisel.

The canoe was used cruelly by the typhoon. Ponsongwa was supposed to miss the island but instead it nailed them hard. The canoe still needs a lot of work but they hope to get it into the water soon, Their big handicap is getting the wood they need to make certain parts. Much of the trees they need to harvest were destroyed by Pongsonwa and Chata'an, the last two typhoons.

There is more about this day but I am very tired. I will add more in the morning.