-- Ye Shippe's Log --

April 28, 2018   01:10 GMT (Update).

We are now 3,727 days into our HMCS KKDHS 50's FRIENDS voyage from home port:  KKDHS, ('The Pond'), Kenora, Ontario - which translates into 37,982.5 cybernautical hours (1,582.6 days) of work on this nostalgic KKDHS 50's website Voyage.

Since our departure and moving to WARP SPEED we have received news out here in CYBERSPACE, due to relativity, our KKDHS home port launch site long since ceased to be KKDHS, changing into Lakewood Elementary School and since changed again to the indigenous SEVEN GENERATIONS EDUCATION INSTITUTE

(Click 7GEI's title to view their website and the exciting educational activities they've implemented).

During this voyage we have lost several Members but also gained several new Members, remarkably maintaining KKDHS' Membership at the same original 40 souls aboard.

Time and Providence Willing, we will be adding more content to each of our KKDHS sites.

Don't give up on our voyage!  Keep your support coming!

-- 'Cap'n Norm Drew

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March 27, 2015

We are now 2,632 days into the voyage of HMCS KKDHS 50's FRIENDS.

We have circumnavigated the cyberworld 297,589 times and have 40 alumni souls aboard.

This past week we have taken on enough fuel to enable us to continue charting exciting new cyberseas and cyberlands for the next year.  

Heave To, Me Hearties!

Norman G. Drew,

Captain, HMCS KKDHS 50'S FRIENDS.

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January 22, 2009 - 12:35PM GMT

We are now 442 days out of home port, averaging 71.5 hours (unpaid labor) per week which translates into 4,504.5 cybernautical hours of work on this nostalgic KKDHS 50's website Voyage.

We have 27 souls aboard, 12 of whom are photo identified; but we fear by our next port of call the remaining 15 may be classified as cargo due to being unidentified ghost images.

Storms and Misadventures:

One complete webjam site deletion by accident, an estimated 35 pages deleted by accident, though the Wizards of Navigation at Webjam Admiralty swiftly restored our journal pages; several thousand course corrections and cyber repairs were required during the voyage so far.

4,504.5 bells and all's well aboard HMCS. KKDHS !

-- 'Captain' Norman Drew

Calm seas postcard view of The Eagle, belies the 40 foot waves experienced!

Beyond sailing and navigating the Lake of the Woods, my other sailing adventures have been sailing aboard a 40 foot yacht in the South China Sea and swimming (stupidly) in mid Pacific Ocean offering myself as potential sharks' lunch; and in 1972, in MID WINTER (!!) sailing aboard the EAGLE, a large car-ferry ship on its last sailing of the season to winter moorage in Lisbon, Portugal, from Southampton, UK.

Unbeknownst to me, it had been in dry-dock for 3 months undergoing repairs. When it finally slipped it's moorings to get underway, it moved about 30 yards from the wharf and the engines stopped.

Electricity was off so I left my cabin. Only dim ceiling battery powered lamps were aglow.

Nobody in the passageway.

Went up a deck.

Nobody there.

Went up another.

Nobody there either.

Went out onto the outer deck and heard heavy boots running along the overhead with shouts of "THROW A LINE MR. MATE !!"

Looking over the side I saw the ship was drifting back toward the outcropping end of the wharf, pointing at the ship's side like a giant dagger. A 'navvy' ran up the wharf straight toward me carrying a huge bundle.

He threw it over the end of the wharf, now 10 feet from the ship's side, and yanked on the rope. Instantly it inflated into a huge life-raft; his intention being to use it to cushion the ship's impact.

The ship pressed against it, bursting the raft like a tiny toy balloon. The wharf punched a hole in the ship's hull above the waterline.

Just as I was about to abandon ship leaping down onto the wharf, the captain (reading our mind) announced over the p.a., "All ship's crew, personnel and passengers are confined to the ship!".

So much for that idea!

Rather than confront gun-toting crew, and a spell in the brig, exhausted from the train ride from London, I went below to my cabin for some shut-eye or a watery grave.

A few hours later I was awakened by the noise and vibration of the ship's engines. Looking out the porthole I could see it was night with land lights passing by. We were heading down the English Channel with a holed ship bound for the Bay of Biscay and the North Atlantic,  fondly known as "Graveyard of the Atlantic" -- especially in winter, due to the many ships it swallowed throughout history..

The ship had gyro stabilizers, so with techno-confidence, they set it to run at an angle to the sea all the way to Lisbon to minimize shipping water through the holed hull on the leeward side – in FORTY FOOT WAVES!

98% of the crew and passengers were seasick and absent. Meals were minimal as refrigeration outage had spoiled food. I took seasick pills, but knew I'd only avoid seasickness by getting my mind around the 40 footers. I was convinced it was largely a psychological challenge.

Sitting on the stern looking out past the tarpaulin-covered, empty swimming pool, watching the ship rise and plunge over the aquatic mountains, I realized it was 'the same' as riding out 4 foot waves on the Big Traverse on Lake of the Woods in a small freighter canoe with a 2 1/2 hp engine. This was just a far bigger freighter canoe on a far bigger Lake of the Woods.  (Continues after Bay of Biscay 20 foot waves below). >>

After that moment of enlightenment there was no stopping me! I enjoyed every moment, every explosion of waves over the bow, all the rock and rolling.

That part of the stern was a bar and 'disco' lounge area with rattan chairs, slippery lino floors and numerous thin pillars.With each rise and fall of the ship, the chairs slid from one end of the floor to the other like bump-'em cars. It looked like fun.

So I sat in a chair and went around for several rides, reaching out and grabbing pillars as I slid past, which, timed right for the next opposite move of the ship, would swing the chair, and me in it, around a pillar for the return ride across the floor.

It soon became boring-- besides, I was feeling bad having fun while the barkeep was throwing himself with spread arms against the wall of bottles and glasses in his losing battle against the stock crashing to the floor in explosions of glass and showers of 12 year old malt whisky. I hated to see a grown man weep!

Instead of the usual instinct to seek a lower center of gravity by going below to cabins, I climbed the rising and falling stairways (one moment you're stepping into space as the stairs fall away, next you're crawling on your hands and knees as the ship rises up) to the top observation lounge above the ship's bridge, hoping to climb to the crow's nest if I could, to max the rocking and rolling experience !

The luxury observation lounge was of course deserted. BLISS !!! JOY !!! Wandered around sitting in any plush easy chair of choice looking out 360° at the entire ocean landscape of mountainous green, turquoise, navy blue, lime green, sunlit, surging, exploding waves and foam while writing postcards home (try writing while swinging in arcs of hundreds of feet!) in 'splendid isolation'; as Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King used to rhapsodize about Canada.

This was before the ubiquitous cellphone, though it was possible to send cables and even phone calls from the ship even then, it was astronomically expensive, certainly light years beyond my hitchhiking animator's budget. (Think: Leo DiCaprio's artist Jack Dawson in movie Titanic).

Apart from the constant soul-wrenching howls of a pack of greyhound racing dogs in the hold which sounded like The Hounds of The Baskervilles because they instinctively knew we were inches away from Davie Jones' Locker; and the intermittent p.a. announcing license numbers of cars in the hold which were crashing together with each ship's lunge, after one night, a day and half, and another night we arrived in Lisbon.

It took a week before the mosaic decorations of Lisbon's sidewalks ceased rising up and down and swaying side to side.

On my first day in Lisbon I thought the ship had strayed off course and landed in South America as everything looked South American: the tile rooftops, palm tree lined, mosaic decorated boulevards. I wouldn't have been surprised had we landed in Rio de Janeiro!

Here's a sample of mere 20 foot waves in the Atlantic. Am still searching for a video showing 40 footers. Maybe nobody else ever lived through 40 footers to tell about them! Here on the edge of the Pacific Ocean ('pacific' as we know means 'peaceful'), nobody believes my story about 40 foot waves.

They've obviously never sailed the North Atlantic in winter.

-- HMS. KKDHS Captain Norm

Excerpt from forthcoming book: My Animated Life
© Norman Drew, 2008