Kairos Time on the Tidal Grid

 

Kairos Time on the tidal Grid

It was 3:30 in the morning at the Fisherman’s Wharf Marina in Campbell River and Timo and I are on his boat, the Sisu, sitting somewhat bleary eyed across the table from one another. We each have a large travel mug full of 454 Horsepower coffee. It is hot, black and strong and very much needed.

We needed to be up that early to catch the high point of the tide for enough depth to move his boat onto the tidal grid at the marina.  Then we planned to scrape and clean the bottom in preparation for re-coating with new anti-fouling paint.

The tide had to be one of the highest of the month to accomodate the depth of the keel on Timo’s 36 foot sailboat. So like it or not, 3:30 a.m. was the right time, the opportune time to be doing this.  

After three years rest at the dock following Timo’s round the world voyage, there was now an accumalation of weed growth, mussels and barnacles below the water-line that would affect the smoothness of the boat’s movement through the water.

My mind has fun playing with the metaphor of that- of how if we don’t tend to the inevitable encrustations attaching to our own lives along the way then perhaps the momentum of our own journeys could slow and more turbulent over time.    

With enough coffee in us to be somewhat conscious, we emerged out into the cold night and set about starting the engine and untying the mooring lines. There was the faint lightening of the sky to the east which gave us hope for day that was approaching.   The water was slick and black as we eased past the other sleeping boats towards the grid.

There was a long day ahead and we’d only had two hours sleep at most. It was nearly one a.m. when I’d left Timo’s boat to go back to my own. We had enjoyed a good dinner and a glass of wine- okay, two glasses of wine and were planning on an early night when Timo got this devilish look in his eye and asked, ‘How about a wee dram before you hit the road....?’

He knew full well that it would be next to impossible for me to leave when there was an offer of a good single malt on the table. Especially a bottle of Laphroaig.

Somehow, there we were- still sitting at the table when one day turned to the next. The bottle of Scotland’s finest was still on the table, though it looked like the level had dropped a little since Timo had opened it. Ironic, because the tide level outside had been slowly rising all the while.

We berate ourselves a little but with good humour. I mean you can’t just get up and call it a night when we hadn’t yet decided whether or not God existed.

Seen one way it seemed very irresponsible to have stayed up so late when we had such an early start the next morning but doesn’t that actually depend on what one feels most responsible to in a given moment?

While it may not have been the right time to do so by the tick-tock clock of chronological time- when measured in Kairos time, it was exactly the right time to continue the discussion and we went with the invitation of that.

‘Kairos,’ from the ancient Greek means the right, critical or opportune moment to act in some way. ‘Kairos Time,’ also happens to be the name of my own boat.

The God image of Kairos depicts a fleet footed bearded man with a long forelock of hair protruding out in front of him and a smooth bald patch at the back of his head.

He represents the fleeting moment, the fleeting opportunity that may come along and to which we must always remain vigilant. To recognize such a moment when it comes one can then seize that moment represented by the proturuding forelock and then inhabit that opportunity. But to hesitate and realize too late that a special invitation is at hand, there is only the futile grasping at the smooth bald patch at the back of Kairos’s receding head where there is nothing to catch hold of. That opportune moment and all that it might have been have gone. Sometimes such a hesitation may turn into the regret of a lifetime.

Timo swings wide to make the 90 degree turn and the boat slows as we approach the grid and its cluster of support pilings. A perfect docking and then we busy ourselves tying lines and placing fenders.

One critical task was to run a longer line from the top of the mast to a steel post on shore giving maximum leverage ensuring that the boat would lean slightly into the pilings as the tide dropped rather than tipping outward and falling over onto its side- which would make for a very bad day.

The paw of my playful mind cannot help but dab at the metaphor of that. Of how I need to know to what and to whom I can lean toward in case some key support in my life suddenly dropped away leaving me precariously unbalanced.

Once the boat was properly secured we still had to remain vigilant as the tide slowly dropped and the bottom of the keel drew closer to meeting the cross-timbers of the grid beneath the water.

Some lines needed to be tightened while other lines needed to be loosened. And at a certain point some needed to be added while others were taken away as they had served their purpose for that stage.

I mused about how our ties to people, places and things can be like that; that also need tending to. As life changes- as it evolve, so too do our relationships with its myriad of component parts.

I had idle time for such musings- as the tide drops very slowly.

‘More coffee?’ Timo asks. I nodded my head gratefully as he went below and I soon heard the sound of the hand-grinder going while I kept watch above.

Soon we are both sitting in folding chairs on shore with fresh coffees in hand watching the tide drop.

The ebbing and flooding of the great ocean tides move at a different pace than that of my normal life- and I felt myself surrendering to the invitation of that slower flow of time.

We were actually doing something even though it would appear to a passerby that we were just sitting around doing nothing. In fact we were doing everything we could do at that particular stage.

A moment of exitement as a seal chasing a fish underwater caused frantic swirls and upwellings on the the water’s surface and then everything went still again.

‘See that?’ Timo asked, pointing at the boat. Yes, I could see. The gentle movements of the boat had changed in some subtle way. There was now and then a slight shudder. Very subtle but there. ‘Yup, she’s touching bottom now,’ Timo notes.

A short time later, the keel of the Sisu was resting solidly on the sturdy timber grid. We made some final adjustments to the lines and then all was good. Nothing more could be done now for at least two more hours until the tide had dropped enough for us to get at the bottom of the boat. Time for a nap and we agreed to reconvene at 8.

I went back to my own boat and set the alarm then drifted off with remnants of the previous night’s conversation still going on in my head. Something about what I have come to call, ‘The Great Mystery,’ still resonated.

When Timo and I met again, the sun and a looming bank of cloud were trying to decide who was going to claim the sky for the day. We were just hoping it wasn’t going to rain as that would make painting a problematic. It wasn’t an opportune time for a heavy rain shower from our perspective.

All we could do was go ahead-hope for the best-and keep going until we couldn’t.

Once we were finished the hard physical work of scrubbing and cleaning the hull, we could then sit down and wait for the hull to dry before painting. Another invitation to enjoy slow time. To watch the tide dropping and the sun rising. We could do that.

Pavel, another sailing friend of Timo’s showed up at ten to help and soon the hull was dry enough. He brought the energy of someone who had had a full night’s sleep with him- and shared that with us. We started taping the waterline to ensure a nice neat dividing line of black bottom paint from the white of the hull above waterline.

Then I worked with brush in hand painting all the awkward edges, curves and corners while the other two used rollers on the larger surface areas. Finally, all the hull is painted, the barnacles and mussels scraped from the bottom of the keel and new sacrificial zincs put on to protect the steel hull from corrosion of electrolosis.

We tidied up, we put everything away and then we sat in the sun eating lunch. There was now no other thing we could except wait for the tide to come in. ‘A rising tide floats all boats,’ they say- and my mind can’t help but play with the richness of that metaphor.

There was plenty of time to do that as the sun continued on its long arc westward.

 We sat in the sun feeling like we had all the time in the world with the job complete and no thing to do but wait patiently for the tide to come back in again.

We were being bathed in the warmth and light of the sun. Bathed in the sun's rays that had traveled some 147.7 million kilometers to reach the place where were sitting. It was the combined gravitational pull of both the sun and the moon that were drawing in the waters of the rising tide to set us afloat once more. I think about that. I think of all those great unseen forces -those energies at work as the precious blue and white orb we call the earth, that we call 'home' spins along through the vastness of space. Following its orbital path with such precision. Surely, I muse, there is some much greater mystery going on around us all the time.

 

Paul Kendrick