Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

much account. He had a little studio in the back. It was at South Colby, a little community, just a
post office and store a mile from Harper ferry that ran to Seattle. It was just an unincorporated little
community on Yukon Harbour opposite Blake Island. Ron kept his boat in Yukon Harbour.
The first thing he did when he got the boat was get some letter heads printed - Ron was good at
getting letter heads printed - and he always used the best Bond paper. The heading was Yukon
Harbour Marine Ways. There was a harbour but no ways, but using this letter head he could buy
stuff for the boat at wholesale prices from ships' chandlers.
It was a 30ft Libby hull - Libby was a food processing company packing salmon in Alaska, which at
that time had to be caught from the boat without power, so they had 30ft double ended hulls used to
catch salmon. He got it and had an engine put in it and changed rigging. It was nice and
comfortable, a rugged well built boat. It was called Magician, also known as Maggie. It had a cabin,
which could get four in at a squeeze. It was not luxurious living. He was a pretty good sailor. He'd
been sailing on the East coast. When he was at Georgetown he'd organised some kind of a cruise
and got a bunch of fellows from school, chartered a boat and got stranded some place - a standard
operation. He'd sailed and been flying gliders and a guy-wire had snapped one day smoothing off
the ends of his fingers which left them very sensitive. He had to use an electric typewriter - this was
in the days when they were hard to come by.
He was a pretty good sailor and I expect he was a pretty good pilot. He got me sailing, I'd had
couple of small boats but I didn't sail much until met Ron. I don't know how he got the money for the
boat but he'd just had a book published, Buckskin Brigades, and I presume he got some money for
that. He'd been doing some screen writing in Hollywood, because we'd been to see the movie
Stagecoach, the original one with John Wayne, and he told me he'd worked on that script. That's
what he told me, I didn't the see his name on the credits, but I don't disbelieve it at all.
They weren't living very high on the hog and boats weren't too expensive in those days.
Hudson Bay Company had sent him a case of scotch, which was very good of them because he
had been very critical of Hudson Bay Company in his book Buckskin Brigades - it was about
mistreatment of Indians by the Company - but they'd sent him a case of scotch and the Blackfeet
Indians sent him a beautiful beaded bag. I saw the bag and drank some of the scotch. He was
never very flush but they ate and he had credit from grocers to a certain point. He'd turn out one of
these novelettes in 2-3 days, mostly nights. He was a night person, he liked to work at night. I used
to go over and play chess with him by candlelight drinking oriental tea. It was lot of fun. He had a
beautiful oriental chess set with carved pieces, the pawns were all warriors holding swords. He
was a good chess player - he was a sharp guy. He was fascinating to be around, very stimulating.
We got started thinking about different ideas for boats. The problem with a small sail boat is that
when heeled over, the keel is at an angle and you're slipping sideways. What would happen if you
made a very shaped keel, and got little more drag but an approximately vertical keel when you
heeled over? We made one and put it on a small boat although it was difficult to know if we'd
improved it or not. We tried it out with models in a washing machine, but it was difficult to measure
the drag. (My first wife's name was Nancy.)
We decided we'd do something about the sails of the Maggie because they were mounted on
hooks, we didn't have track in those days. There's dead air space 3.5 times diameter of the mast
before the wind starts to take effect on the sails. We tried to figure out what we could do about it. We
finally conceived the idea of putting sleeve on the sail, sewing it on around the mast, about three
quarters of the way round the mast and a short sleeve on the other side. Then we wrote to a zipper