The Brendan Voyage is also half sailing yarn and half archeological text. There is, apparently, a medieval Irish text, Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, that tells of a voyage St. Brendan took in the North Atlantic in a leather boat, what we now call a curragh. It is, in fact, conceivable to interpret the text to say that St. Brendan and a crew of Irish monks reached Newfoundland around the sixth century, long before Leif Erikson’s boys and WAAAYYY before that poser Columbus. Scholars, of course, disagree about the extent to which it is factual or fantasy. One of the grounds for skepticism was that a leather boat could never make such a voyage. Severin set out to build a replica, using sixth-century technology, and sail it from Ireland to North America, specifically Newfoundland, Canada. Given the subtitle, I don’t think I am a spoiler to say that the crew proves the hypothesis and completes the voyage, adding evidence to support the Irish being the first Europeans to hit these shores.
The latest issue of Outside Magazine includes a great article titled “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” about a six-person crew’s voyage in a hand-made, 21′, open sloop from the southern coast of Haiti to Florida. The goal was to trace the route of refugees in a native craft. This is one of those voyages that gamely straddle the boundary between bravery and hubris. The voyage was successful, but it easily could have gone the other way. It was poorly equipped and used a boat that may be fine for coastal fishing but was not designed for open ocean crossings. I love that they used a traditional boat and I’m glad they made it, but the story reads as a bit too much tempting the sea.
I got out in the kayak last weekend for the first time in a few weeks and followed in my paddle strokes from our first and only outing in PEACE OF THE PUZZLE a couple weeks before that. The spot? Mattaponi Creek, off the Patuxent River in Maryland. The canoe trip served to discover this sweet tributary. We went some of the way up and had to head back. I resolved to finish business as soon as I could.
The creek meanders through a gorgeous marsh with abundant wildflowers, bird, and butterflies. Both voyages gave close encounters with bald eagles, along with the usual herons and osprey. The paddle ends where the beavers have gotten to the creek – there were a couple of obvious lodges along the way. Spectacular find. Anyone in the Mid-Atlantic should check out this area (see directions here).
I actually had the crazed idea to read a book recently. Doesn’t happen much – I am lucky if I can clear my magazine rack in a given month. Long on my to do list, though, had been reading some of Tim Severin’s works. Severin is an Irishman (at least he lives there) with an fascinating joint interest in history, archeology, and epic voyages, mostly maritime ones. Sound intriguing? It gets better. Severin’s shtick has been to identify an unproven or poorly understood historical journey, build a traditional boat, if a maritime one, that represents the type of that era, and then recreate the journey to see if it could have happened as theorized. Oh yeah, I am IN! I have known about him for a while and only just got around to checking him out.
A few days before Christmas I got a package from an uncle with whom I have long since ceased exchanged gifts. It was a medium thickness, letter-sized envelope and left me quite curious. Upon opening it on Christmas morn’ I discovered a very pleasant surprise: it was a copy of the log book my grandparents had kept on their honeymoon, a three-week cruise around Biscayne Bay, Florida in a 21′ sloop! I had never seen the original and never, in fact, knew it existed. In further fact, I had not, heretofore, been aware what they did on their honeymoon. I have yet to read it, but it is a pretty cool treasure and so nice of my uncle to make copies for all their descendants.
Gavin over at intheboatshedpointed us to The Invisible Workshop, a nice blog run by a Brit living in Catalonia, Spain. The author, Ben, built a boat, ONAWIND BLUE, to Gavin’s Light Trow design. Ben seems to camp-cruise the boat around the Western Mediterranean. We are eager to understand how he has formed this enviable life.
The blog is also a great source for information on traditional Spanish boats. Ben, you have already contributed greatly to the Iberian section of my Traditional Boats of the World project. There are some really gorgeous boats there and I’d encourage folks to delve deeper into Ben’s posts on the subject as there are many more pictures than the one-of-each I plot on the map. As of this moment, any boat plotted in Spain is courtesy of Ben. Many thanks!
Incidentally, if you want more of a flavor of Fogo Island – or, in fact, if you are in the Chine bLog mindset at all – you MUST go grab yourself a copy of the song “A Boat Like Gideon Brown” off Newfoundland band Great Big Sea’s great album “Sea of No Cares.” Just do it. You will not regret it unless you only like death metal.
I was able to get out on the water this AM, which was, needless to say, a very good thing. I set my kayak in Piscataway Creek, MD, a Potomac tributary several miles downriver from DC. I’ve been there a few times and am always impressed with it. I dropped the boat in the water in thick fog and September chill. I paddled along the northern shore – it is a wide, shallow tidal bay at that point. It was beautiful and still the pictures can’t really do it justice.
Gradually the fog burned off. I headed up the true creek for a while. There was lots of bird life back in there – I got buzzed by a great blue heron at one point – and few signs of people after a few houses by the mouth. A great morning on the water.
Posted on December 18th, 2009
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Apparently there are a group of archeologists who believe (or believed, as of the early 1990s) that there was contact between East Asian cultures and Central American cultures within the last couple millennia. 
I’ve been there a few times and am always impressed with it. I dropped the boat in the water in thick fog and September chill. I paddled along the northern shore – it is a wide, shallow tidal bay at that point. It was beautiful and still the pictures can’t really do it justice. 
There was lots of bird life back in there – I got buzzed by a great blue heron at one point – and few signs of people after a few houses by the mouth. 
A great morning on the water.
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