A Swedish Jetty

Midsummer

Annalisa: So hot today, thirty-five degrees. 

Sven: Feels like forty. 

Annalisa: Lucky we’re close to water. A picnic at Kungfiskare Bay?

Sven: Under the trees? We could do that. Let’s take the boat.

Annalisa: Is the motor fixed?

Sven: I wouldn’t row it in this heat. Put lunch in the hamper and I’ll carry it down to the jetty.

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Voice-over

A jetty (from the French jetée to throw out) is a landing stage for boats to dock jutting out into the water. They look good in wood. Even more picturesque and summery if tree branches overhang a dinghy. But jetties can also be bigger, made of steel or concrete, for ships to discharge cargo as in Namibia, or even as a sculpture like the Spiral Jetty in Utah.

Archivist of Navigators: John Dunmore

Reminiscing on a mentor from 40 years ago...

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Jules: He interviewed me for my first academic job. He mentored me in research, suggested what I should do in the way of bridging courses, who I should approach as supervisors. I got where I went in no small part by his guidance.

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Adèle: I remember him well. And it seems he’s not finished yet. Still writing in his mid-90s, after 30 historical accounts, novels, articles, book chapters and radio dramas.

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Jules: He encouraged me. He gave me a place to work and study undistractedly in a quiet university town. Through him I appreciated Palmerston North as an academic and artistic feeding ground before my own migration.

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Adèle: Research as the measure of a life. Multiple awards and honours. It was un honneur to have known him.

Massey News 2008: JD

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Voice-over

John Dunmore, professor at Massey University 1966 to 1985, also publisher, writer, playwright. After downloading his book on Dumont d’Urville, From Venus to Antarctica, Jules sets off on a google journey following the digital trail of this explorer of French navigators such as Jean-François-Marie de Surville and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

...

Refloating a Boat

Anchorage Aftermath

A Post Man encounters an Ancient Mariner …

PM: It sank?

AM: Too right it did.

PM: At sea in a tyrannous and strong storm? Spinning round and round then going down like lead?

AM: Just while at its moorings. No ice, no waves, no wind, no albatross. Merely a slow seepage of water gurgling in under its planks.

PM: A rather untheatrical ending. The planks look warped, will you refit and refloat her?

AM: This naked hull and rotting deck is a challenge. But I will make her sail again. Come by next week, and you’ll see us put to sea.

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Voice-over
Would that we could speak as Coleridge wrote, our stories might be as bright as the silver sun on the silver sea and our conversations might lilt like a lyrical ballad. But we wonder whether even a minor unmourned hulk like this, will ever sail again and that it might become an albatross around the mariner’s neck.

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Collaborative Narrative: Yavari Ship Story

Yavari on Lake Titicaca

Two travelers discuss ships…

Graham: Just as travelers have stories, ships have even bigger stories.

Somerset: Titanic was a huge story. Grandeur. Romance. Adventure. Irony. Tragedy. And all the passengers had their own stories.

Graham: Even smaller ships have their own stories. When I was traveling with my aunt last year, I sailed on a short voyage on quiet waters.

Somerset: No drama there. Or was it that you were traveling with your aunt?

Graham: It was on Lake Titicaca. No storms, no. No shipwreck, no. My aunt was not in the least bit outrageous.  The story lay in how the ship, the Yavari, a hundred-foot lake ship, got to Titicaca.

Somerset: Wasn’t that the one that was carried up the Andes on a mule?

Graham:  Simply put, yes. Built in 1862, in London, then disassembled into 2,766 pieces. Shipped to Peru, then mules carried the ship pieces 220 miles up the Andes to Puno on Titicaca. Reassembled there by riveting the bits together.

Somerset: Riveting account! A hundred-foot boat built of a kit of parts.

Graham: And get this for a bit more local adaptation. The ship's steam engine burned dried llama dung.

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Voice-over
Storytelling construct: Somerset knows something about the Yavari but Graham knows more. A collaborative narrative.

The Yavari has been restored and is now docked at Puno Bay.