Rainbow Goes to Sea - by Roger Miles

Rainbow Goes to Sea is available in printed form or as an e-book (downloadable PDF file)

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When I started to put the words down on paper, I began to fear that perhaps it wasn't so dramatic after all. For one thing, we made it safely. No tragedy. No pirates, collisions (serious ones anyway), stowaways, capsizing, or anything of that nature, only a year and a half of sometimes marvellous, sometimes downright miserable, experiences aboard a very ancient, thirty-foot sailboat; experiences we shared with a cat named Gypsy, who liked swimming.

But maybe that, in the end, is what makes it worth the telling. My wife, Evelyn, and I were fairly representative of a good many young couples no different from today. We began this venture with no money, no definite goals in this life, no special talents, just lots of dreams. We plunged without much thought - and it changed our lives. Interestingly, although Evelyn and I are no longer sharing our life's journey together, we can never be truly apart because of the experiences of that time aboard our boat, and the twenty five years that followed.

"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolute nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame

It is only now, with thirty years hindsight and a new perspective, that I can evaluate the experience. I see now the hand that sculptured our circumstances and experiences along the way, I feel now the Presence that gave us the courage, and I have come to know the gentleness of the wings on which we sailed. While the basic and obvious story is in itself an amazing adventure of courage and determination, now I can tell it from the higher perspective, sharing the unravelling through these pages, of what the voyage and our adventure was really all about - a complete metaphor for life, all packaged into one circumstance of time and space, and our human relationship with all things, including an old wooden boat.

I offer this story to the reader, and especially in tribute to my beautiful partner in this adventure, my now ex-wife, who at the time, like me, unknowingly participated in an awakening in consciousness, the full effects of which are only just now being truly felt at the level of the soul, some 30 years later.

Since the year 1587, when Sir Francis Drake sailed a small fleet of ships to fight the Spanish in Cadiz, there has been a Rainbow in the British Navy. That tradition continued to include the light cruiser, HMS Rainbow, built in 1891, which was sold to form the Canadian Navy and take up station on the west coast of Canada, based at Esquimalt on Vancouver Island.

Part of our story deals with: escaping the 'rat race', how we came to make the voyage, the places we visited, and the multitude of amazing circumstances that happened along the way. Perhaps you, the reader, will enjoy the tale and be inspired one day to also drop everything and do something equally outrageous and rewarding; and perhaps, like me, you will come eventually to see the hand of God upon whose palm you journey without any awareness that you are at all times held - even on an old wooden boat in the middle of the ocean.

Mostly, this is the story of the Rainbow, a converted Royal Navy ship's pinnace, built in Newcastle on Tyne in 1891, that became the magic carpet for a couple of young people who were willing to forgo a life of safety and security to find themselves through a voyage to the land to which we were delivered, the Real World, shimmering beyond boundaries, here in the South Seas.*

Come join with me, to scheme and plan and voyage together - to the South Seas - in this tale of youth, adventure and old wooden boats.

View the Chapter List and outlines - click here

View some original sketches from the book - click here

Trace the Journey Rainbow took from Canada to New Zealand - click here

This strange and familiar land
calls to me
across the veils of illusions
I once drew 'round myself
in expanding circles of amazing complexity.
In that land I once lived, with you.

If we dare answer the Beloved's call
will not the veils be shattered and dissolved
in the last tears of the Imposter?

Then the ocean between this dream-world
and the Beloved's Garden
will be crossed in an ark made for us, but not by us.

Not of wood or steel is our vessel made
but of Love.

And the land to which we are delivered
is the Real World, shimmering beyond all boundaries,
Here.

From Jayem's book, Recline in My Soul