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Monsoon DervishOn a 31-feet home-built steel Chinese junk that had no engine, electricity, radio, GPS, not even a compass, Kris Larsen, a middle-aged carpenter and navigator, criss-crossed the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific for seven years, from Australia to Madagascar and Japan, covering a total of 45 000 miles. Excerpts from Monsoon Dervish:"I have read many sailing books, and I have always been intrigued by the things that were left out of them. Most of the voyagers were chronically short of cash, a condition I was familiar with. They had to use their cunning ingenuity to get their dreamboats afloat, but very few of them ever devoted more than a passing paragraph to describe their efforts. Some followed, in detail, the actual building process, but that you can find in any boat-building manual. Their books are full of repetitious weather facts, endless sail and wind changes, and other boring details. For a would-be adventurer, the most important thing is to get his boat to sail, on a minimum budget, and then stay solvent without returning home all the time, to a boring job, to refill the cruising kitty. Few authors mention this aspect of cruising. That was the original idea behind this book, but as I went along, I extended the scope of its contents and it grew into this rambling narrative about everything; a piece of honest writing without the usual censorship. Monsoon Dervish is not about a sailing trip. It does not describe a journey from point A to point B. Its self-contained chapters can be read at random and in any order, the fragmented rambling trying to capture the spirit of the lifestyle chosen by the author." |
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"I made my first million in Tamatave, Madagascar. In the marketplace, selling old clothes. The fact that in real money it was equivalent to one weekly wage of an Australian carpenter didn't cloud the excitement of making a million. The thick wad of colourful bills was there, so was the smell of profit and success. It was the first time in my life that I made money by trading. And a million Malgash francs go a long way in a place with average wages around 50 000 FMg a month ($12)." "Madagascar coast is utterly black at night, no lights. Arriving in the middle of night I sailed past the dark sentinels of the entrance and deep into the Baramahamy Bay, anchoring near the mangroves for a few hours of sleep. I had no time to rest after the crossing. Malgash are direct, inquisitive and not shy at all. Wherever you anchor, there will soon be a dugout coming to see what they can get out of you. The usual combination is an old man and a young boy, both in tattered clothes, paddling the most derelict canoe they could find in the village. They come a-begging, with the opening moves of what I call the Malgash Gambit. - "Cigarettes? Fishhooks? T-shirt as a gift for my boy?" - "Sorry mate. No cigarettes. No fish hooks. No gifts. I do have some clothes, but that's for sale. I want money." - "How much?" - I show him some choice pieces and tell him my price. Reaction is always same. Shock. - "Hay, man, that's cheap!" - Gambit accepted. - "Hang on, mate, I am going to fetch my missus with money, I'll be right back!" They always come back, a crowd of them, in a bigger, better canoe. I make my first sale and I have free advertising. Mama is quick back in the village, showing off and bragging what a buy she made. I descend on the village an hour later. I need no introduction. They are all waiting for me, unrolling a reed mat on the ground to spread my wares. I have never met an ill will or animosity when bringing merchandise. Bypassing import duties, wholesalers and tax, I can undercut anyone. I sell only quality goods, no rubbish." |
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"As a trader you cease to be an outsider. You become part of their economy; you enter the fabric of village life. Tourist remains an observer. Trader becomes a participant. You eat their food, you drink their water, you sleep with their women, you take away their money. People deal with you differently; they tell you things you'd never expect to learn. I like to sit back on a veranda in front of someone's hut, keeping an eye on my wares, gossiping with the old folks, absorbing the lazy atmosphere of the place. It's fun." |
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With Mermaid up a Moonberry TreeA beach on a tropical island. Sapphire water of a coral lagoon, coconuts swaying in a breeze, warm sand trickling between your toes. There is something primal and satisfactory in this image. You believe that if you can go living on a beach, you could easily forgo the amenities and conveniences of the big cities. You think, just give me a simple fisherman's shack, bowl of rice with fish, and a dusky partner to share my time with and it will be enough for the rest of my days. |
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Excerpts from the book:"Cuyonin believe that when you move to a new place, local spirits come to check you out, they call it "nabati" (derived from a word "greet"). It manifests as a travelling sickness. You come down with flu or gastro, or something. You can also call the spirits in by flattery. When you see a cute kid, and you start admiring it, mother will ask you to dip your forefinger in your mouth and touch the child's forehead with your saliva, removing the spell you cast by your praise, otherwise the spirits will come and the kid will get sick. When Mermaid first took the job with Marina, Tina took her all over the place, to Manlag, to the bush, up the river, showing her how the Marina worked. It is all malarial country and fortnight later Mermaid came down with falciparum, a particularly ferocious kind of malaria. She took to bed, and she spent 5 days lying delirious on the island, while the locals refused to give her any medicine, claiming it was "nabati", spirits welcoming her on Malapacao. Falciparum is not always fatal, and by her ordeal Mermaid developed a total immunity to the El Nido strain of it." "Some days we had too much coffee and we would sit at night on the top step in the doorway, without light, yakking. About a fortnight after Indita died we were sitting like that in the darkness and silence on the doorstep, when we sensed a commotion on the far end of the beach, below the Santican hill. It was close to midnight, and several paddle boats silently landed, several powerful torches cut the darkness in short bursts of light, a lot of men were murmuring. We were confused. It was not like a normal Cuyonin landing. Eight strong torch lights, no giggling, no cursing, and it sounded very organised. They landed at the place where Tulo dropped the big tree last year to turn it into a casco of a new boat. At the strike of midnight, on a dot, a big crowd of men passed Rocking House in an orderly procession, carrying long narrow red objects on their shoulders, with a white banner in front of them, and a muffled rhythmic chant, as if to keep in step. We were mystified. It looked like a powerful Tagbanua ritual. Indita just died, a Cuyonin witch. Anything to do with her? Or taking home Tulo's casco? None of our suggestions fitted in, but the impression they made was magnificent." |
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"I woke up in a terrific gust of wind. I scrambled and rolled up the vertical tarpaulin blinds before the house was blown away. Deluge followed, but the wind dropped to gale force. On an impulse I walked up the road, watching the developing landslides. I spent three years at Uni studying geomorphology, science dealing with development of the landforms, and a landslide is a geomorphology personified. I was standing on the road below the latest landslide, craning my neck to see the top end of the cut where the forest was outlined against the grey sky. The cut was good 150 feet high, and still active. Suddenly there appeared a horizontal crack running the full width of the hill. In a slow motion the crack widened to several feet, the whole hillside detaching itself from the top. Massive landslide in process, directly above me. I turned down the road and ran like a hare. Cuyonin mama and her three kids were slowly plodding uphill along the road, dragging the typhoon spoils on their shoulders. I yelled at them to run, run. Mama glanced to the top of the landslide, saw the huge hill slowly sliding down, and they ran as fast as I did. They did not drop their spoils, though; she was still lugging a tree trunk when we stopped at the culvert to watch the devastation." "Then, as not to make the life boring, in the middle of the foulest weather, in approaching new typhoon, a gang of young guys started digging on the rocks at Silaga Point, at the end of our beach. Every time I approached the place, they all ran off. But they were digging. Finally on the third morning the gang boss appeared there and he stood his ground. I came to have a look. "What is your purpose of coming here?" he barked at me instead of greetings. I was taken aback. "I live here. I came to have a look what you are doing at my place. What are you doing here? Digging?" - " We are doing our best." - I looked at him in silence. Obviously a two-way communication will not come about naturally. "So why your men always run away when I approach them?" - "We are not running away, we are Philippinos, this is our country." I was not following his reasoning at all, anymore. "So tell your men to come back." They never did. They always kept 50 metres away from me, no matter how much he yelled at them. |
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Bicycle DreamingDedicated car-hater, author finds himself on the wrong side of 50, and his body unwilling to ride a conventional bicycle. So he builds himself a comfortable recumbent bike out of scrap from the city dump, and resolves to fulfil his old dream, to ride his machine across Australia on a dirt road, from ocean to ocean. Excerpts from the book:"I don't like cars. I do not like what cars do to people, especially what it does to their heads. Without cars our western society would cease to exist, but just because something seems to be essential does not mean that I have to like it. Cars made people lazy, arrogant, obese, blind and deaf. Car defines our modern life as nothing else does, from oil exploration and refining, car manufacture, highway construction, to demographic distribution, spread of suburbs and megamarts, international politics of oil wars, down to global warming and climate change. I love cycling. It's the only time I have completely for myself, when nobody can reach me, and my mind can whirr undisturbed. I feel that not having a car, I am definitely ahead. I am not preaching the gospel according to pedal. I do not perceive world's salvation through riding a pushie, but somehow today people seem to be running around much more, just to stay on the same spot. All that car have achieved is to move faster, but it did not save any time." |
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"I've been collecting snippets of cycling history for years, but it was only mid-way through one of the trips I will be describing here that I sat down and started scribbling. After four days of hard slog on Gibb River Road in the Kimberley, in WA, during the heat of the day I was looking for a shady spot to hole up for the afternoon, when I bumped into this marvellous billabong. I propped "Kraken" against a spindly tree on the side of the road and waded into tall grass. 50 metres in I discovered a clear patch of water with sandy bottom and rocky ledge. I was parched and tired. I sat down under the first tree at the edge of the water, had a feed, long drink and a short nap. |
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"South of the Granite mine the true face of Tanami desert shows. Not a tree in sight, not a shrub either, not even a dead one for firewood. Mile after mile of totally flat treeless plain. If there was a place to be called Nullarbor, central Tanami it is. Nullarbor is not a local name of Aboriginal descent, it is a pig Latin for no trees, "null-arbour". Tanami feels old, weathered, worn down by time, your only company are low distinctly lumpy termite hills, and omnipresent spinifex. Most travellers complain of spinifex, I admit I like the bastard. 90% of Australians have never seen spinifex, even though it is our most abundant grass and it covers a quarter of the landmass. It lives only in the driest, harshest, most barren and weather blasted country. I like spinifex for its flammable properties. Travelling through spinifex you never doubt your ability to light a fire for cooking, no matter how hard it rains. Spinifex will burst into flame if you look hard enough at it." |
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"From the lookout above Lake Eyre I walked down to the shores. A thin white crust, about 3mm thick, covered soft damp sand underneath. At every step you break through the crust, but your feet sink only an inch or so. Several strings of footprints run a long way out towards water, but they all turn back. From the top of the hill you can see the sump in the centre, full of brown glittering water. |
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It was crazy, it was insane, it had absolutely no meaning, there wasnt even anyone watching the comedy unfold. I was alone at Lake Eyre and I loved every minute of it. It felt like the essence of this whole trip. I was not playing at Stuart the explorer, I wasn't retracing wheeltracks of Murif the overlander or aping Freddie the speed supremo. I was playing myself, Kris Longrass, ageing carpenter and navigator, having a time of his life. This whole ride from Darwin had no meaning for anyone besides myself. I achieved nothing worthy, yet it filled me with pride. Its a shame that these days you cant just put on your shoes and go on an expedition any more. It has to have a socially relevant goal, it has to be in support of some charity, dedicated to some noble cause, well connected, word has to spread out, blog, website and school curriculum informed regularly by satellite phone, sponsors roped in. Why can't you just stand up and say: I am going because I feel like it. Because I've been dreaming of it for years? Instead of hiding behind an eight-letter acronym starting with UN? As if everything we do needed logical reason behind it, as if pure wish of doing something or going somewhere wasn't a justification enough." |
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Out of censusThe first volume of an autobiography, the making of Kris Larsen in his various guises. Growing up in Eastern Europe under communist rule, as a tramp and a rockclimber, his escape into the West, then going half way around the world on other people's papers, an illegal alien overlanding to India and beyond. A humorous take on the life of a would-be refugee that nobody wanted to know, showing how little you really need in order to do the things you always dreamed about. You want to get on an expedition? Put on your boots and go. Excerpts from the book:"If I could choose one thing to take with me on a round the world trip, I would take a warm sleeping bag. If I was allowed two things, I would add a good passport. In that order. I formulated this doctrine 35 years ago on the road, as a hungry illegal refugee from Eastern Europe, hounded by cops from country to country, feverishly learning basic survival skills I needed when it became clear that nobody wanted me. |
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"Mermaid has been saying for a while that I should write down my early years. She is right, but it will not be easy. I have no records, and my memory is capricious. It likes to gloss over inconvenient. And as I am ageing, it is starting to resemble a Teflon pan. Nothing sticks to it. There are other problems. I was young, dumb, naive, but I was always resourceful. I am not ashamed of my mistakes. But sometimes those mistakes led me into situations which offered no honourable way out. To survive, I took a dishonourable way. I am not ashamed of that either, but I am not going to brag about it here. I am leaving that out altogether. Every real man who lived his life in full can dig up moments he is profoundly ashamed of. Often it was not his choice, when life forced his hand. That is not an excuse, though. If a bloke tells you that he has nothing to be ashamed of in his whole long life, he is either lying, or he never really lived. I am an average red-blooded male, with an average hormonal process which periodically needs readjusting to reach a balance. I love women. I love their company, I love their bodies, I love what they can do to you. I know that they are crafty manipulative bitches, who can be perfectly happy if they made you suffer in your private Hell, but that makes the life interesting. For most of my adult life there was a woman somewhere around. Sometimes they played important roles in running my life. Often it was not easy, reconciling my lifestyle with domestic harmony. Yet you will find no juicy bits in this book, no sordid revelations, neither bitching nor soppy rhapsodies. I subscribe to the old fashioned school which holds that private affairs ought to remain private. Sex sells anything, from toothpaste to politics, but writing about who sucked your cock twenty years ago and what it felt like is a cheap way to beef up a poorly written biography. If you have to stoop that low, you have nothing interesting to say and you may as well shut up. So, this will be a selective memoir. No bragging, no airing of dirty linen."
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Excerpts from the book:" I am growing old. I am turning 60 in a few days. Being old means half a time you feel like shit, but you have no idea why. Was it too much of something? Or not enough? In the past few years I've been watching my peers, guys my age, wrestling with heart attacks, diabetics, allergies, emphysema and every form of cancer imaginable, not always successfully. It would be a supreme arrogance to presume that I alone will be spared. I still had five years left till my old age pension but then they raised the threshold by two more years and I decided to go sailing. I am going now, before I am too old to lift my own anchor, too weak to drag that dirty big rag to the top of the mast, before I lose my periodical zest to hop on a bicycle and ride out into desert for the simple joy of riding in a desert night. Gentlemen sail down wind. Sailing around the world it means heading west, down the Trade Winds, unless you want to freeze your arse off in the high latitudes of the Southern Ocean. How do you sail around the world? Have a last drink in your bar, lift the anchor, and sail off into the sunset. Keep sailing off into the sunset. If you do it long enough, you are bound to arrive back to the place where you started, more or less. Circumnavigation completed. The best time to go is now. I've been working for a living for too many years and I am tired of working. Humans are the only animals who work for a living, all the other creatures live for a living. I am going now, to live for a living, like all the other sensible critters in the world. And I went. My love flew out and joined me for the South American part of the journey. We had fun together for a couple of years." |
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"Riding my bike to the Botswana border elephant devastation became appalling, forest ruined, trees uprooted or broken, vandalism on a big scale. At the bottom of a gentle descend I saw the border post itself,striped bar across the road, flag on a pole, several trucks parked off the road. I slowed down, searching for a private nook where I could duck in and change into decent border clothes. There was a nice big acacia tree across the road from me, under that acacia tree I could under that acacia tree was standing an elephant. I nearly fell off my bike. A real fully grown African elephant, 20 metres form me, with no fences between us. Motionless, completely camouflaged by standing still in the shade of a tree. How did I miss him looking his way from a distance, I do not know. Almost black, size of a house, in a bare savannah with no undergrowth, on a clear day. A lone young male with short tusks. He was upset about something, his ears extended wide, flapping furiously fore and aft. Flabbergasted I stopped the bike. My hands were trembling with excitement. I was awed speechless. No amount of photos can convey the experience of meeting an elephant in the wild for the first time, face to face this close, with no obstacles between us. 20 metres is a bloody close encounter. His ears were still fanning when I realised he was upset about me. I was baring his way across the road, towards the river. I wheeled my machine a bit further and turned to watch him. He calmed down, waited a bit, then crossed the road and tramped into scrub. In that time several tourist coaches sped by, on their day trips to Chobe National Park in Botswana, hoping to see some wild life. Yet right here, on the road, they had an elephant, closer than they will ever get to one in a park. None of them noticed him, the way I at first did not see him, none of them slowed down for a look. He was my private elephant." |
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" After I passed the dunes of St. Lucia I kept lookout for the new landmark, a fresh shipwreck in the entrance channel to Richards Bay. I heard that a year previously a large bulk carrier sank between the breakwaters, and its nose was still sticking out of water. How can a large well equipped commercial ship founder so near a port, in 21st century, with all the electronics and safety gear around? No amount of sophisticated gadgets can help you if you put an idiot in charge of the operations. In August 2013, 150 000 ton bulk carrier "Smart " took on a full load of coal in Richards Bay, bound for China. Greek skipper expressed concern about weather, SW gale was blowing at 40 knots, swell in shallow water outside of the breakwaters was running at 9 metres. Harbour Master sent him out, as the berth was needed to load another ship. Captain again questioned the weather conditions, particularly the monstrous swell in the shallows, but he was ordered to leave. Harbour Pilot guided his ship through the port, and he was taken off the ship at the breakwaters. Sea bottom near Richards Bay is very shallow and outside of the dredged shipping channel there is not enough water for a laden bulk carrier. As the huge ship stuck its nose from behind the shelter of the breakwater, the first big wave picked up its bow and lifted it up. Next the bow crashed down into the trough of the wave, starting a rocking motion along the ship. Second wave lifted the bow even higher, pushing the stern deep under water. Third wave rocked the ship so far that stern bottomed out. Rudder hit the sea bottom and broke, as did one propeller blade. Ship was without steering and propulsion, and it was quickly driven by the gale out of the channel onto the shoals where it grounded. Crew were all taken off the ship and nobody was hurt, but the 230 metres long hull full of coal quickly broke into three parts. " |
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"In the crowded Highlands of Guatemala it isn't worth the trouble hitchiking, towns are so close together and bus fares so cheap. Backbone of public transport are "chicken buses ", a deprecate sticker applied by some early American traveller. After certain number of miles all school buses in USA have to be sold and new vehicles purchased. After 150 000 miles, while the vehicle has another half a million in it, Blue Bird from Indiana is sold down to Guatemala. Bigger engine is installed, together with a split dif and a mountain gearbox, brakes are beefed up. Body gets a colourful paint job, some Jesus stickers, original hardback seats are compressed to squeeze 71 people sitting, plus 20 standing on one leg in the minuscule aisle in the middle. Highlands are so crowded that every few minutes there is a brightly painted chicken bus thundering down the road, all filled to capacity. Fares are dirt cheap, people tolerant and operators helpful when you are not sure where exactly you are heading. Just don't drag a big backpack with you. Sure, they can tie it on the roof rack, but getting it down is a fast manoeuvre. Buses don't dawdle, not even on the major stops. Brakes squeal, people hop off, their bags are dumped from the roof into the dust of the road, meanwhile new passengers were pushed in and the bus roars off, conductor sprinting behind it at a fast clip. Screaming along the mountain stretch of 4-lane Pan American highway, taking the tight bends at 3G, gas pedal flat on the floor, big Caterpillar engines roaring in the thin air of 10 000 feet altitude, all the adrenaline for a price of a dollar. My kind of travelling. " |
Books can only be purchased directly from the author. Sorry, no international orders. Thanks to ridiculously high postal charges for international deliveries, books are for sale only within Australia, at AU$27 plus postage, in our on-line shop, www.monsoondervishbooks.edsy.com |
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Interested in buying a book?Click here
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Manual of Sextant NavigationMany people asked me to teach them mysteries of sextant, but I noticed that moment I started talking about celestial mechanics, their eyes would glaze over and my explanations went right over their heads. A lot of sailors are not interested in the theory of astro-navigation, they just want to learn how to use the sextant in practice. And they have a point. You can become a proficient navigator without knowing anything about its theory. So I wrote a 19-page practical manual. Illustrated with 15 diagrams and excerpts from the tables, it explains how to take a sextant sight, and how to calculate latitude and longitude from it, traditional noon shot and a position line. Level of mathematics is Grade 6, addition and subtraction of angles, nothing more complicated. I dispensed with learned definitions, equations and technical gobbledygook, which you can find in any manual of seamanship, if you feel like it. Manual is available as a pdf download from our ETSY shop, for US$5. All major credit cards accepted. |
Interested in purchasing the manual?Click here |
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Contact us on monsoondervish@mail.ru
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photos Yonemitsu Motomi(2), Ed Tadjik, Hasna Mendoza, Alina Uhing, Nat Uhing(3), Peer Hammerschmidt |
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For more artwork by Kris LarsenClick here
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