A year ago at this time, I was spending a glorious warm and sunny day on Saunders Island in the West Falklands. On this island about the size of the city of Boston with a population of six (that’s people – there were thousands of sheep and penguins), our film crew was packing for departure the next morning.

It had been a good week here a few hundred miles north of the Antarctic Circle, having followed Cape Cod’s John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition to their landing spot on the first-ever voyage ‘round the world.

The next day, Friday, we were to catch the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS) bush plane back to the capital of Stanley, and then the weekly LAN Airlines on Saturday for the journey home. Friday was my birthday, too.

Departing on Friday.

Friday the 13th.

So that didn’t work out. Fog crept into the Falklands, and FIGAS used to flying in the prevailing weather of high winds balked at doing the same in fog.

We were stuck, missed the LAN flight home and were stuck for one more week in the Falklands. Over 7,000 miles from home. Happy birthday.

I really do like my birthday, though. It’s May and typically the tulips are all out here on the Cape. Except for this year when they bloomed soon after St. Patrick’s Day. I heard that while I was gone, the weather here was similar to that in the Falklands, the seasons being reversed so that down there it was like November here. Except here was like November here. Or perhaps more like May here, which usually involves week-long nor’easters that blow the blooms off the trees and have us back in our winter parkas for a week or more.

There’s annual town meeting, too, which I have always been pleased Chatham tries to schedule for my convenience. As a student of political science, my point of view was informed by the purest form of direct democracy in the world. And who doesn’t want to cut short their birthday dinner to go sit on a hard chair or bench for four hours of discussion – less than five minutes on a multimillion dollar budget, but perhaps an hour for an article of a thousand dollars or less? Except as a single parent, the real imperative in recent years is to get nine-year-old Sofie to bed on time.

Well, at least there’s a town election we can go to. She loves elections, and always asks me why I chose the person I did, and what job each person is seeking. Having been a selectman, I can kind of describe what it is, but it usually comes out sounding less important than it is. “We sit around a table and talk and vote to ask people who work for the town to do things.” No wonder only three people are running for two spots. It is still three, yes? It’s hard enough to explain all this to her.

But while other people get free drinks on their birthday, fate often conspires against me. Aside from being stranded far from home last year, when I turned 16 a Winnebago hit me in a VW bug in front of the Cape Cod Mall, and years later someone hit me and tried to run me over while I was already on crutches. I was thinking that this year I just ought to wear a helmet and hole up in the basement with some delivery pizza. Except there is no delivery pizza in Chatham, and I’m not so sure about taking the risk of heading out to pick one up.

I’ve been hoping that bad fortune used up all its firepower last year with the stranding. Some years, all I do is sprain my ankle. But that’s more of a sure sign of spring. With big feet and small ankles, I only need to get out on uneven pavement after months inside for me to soon end up face down in the street. Doesn’t count.

Same goes for the recent profile of me in this year’s Chatham Magazine. Written by The Cape Cod Chronicle’s Jennifer Sexton, her words were later changed at the editorial offices of the Hyannis-based publication to claim that I am “currently a Chatham selectman.”

In reality, it has been 10 years this May since I was on the board of selectmen. If it weren’t for the fact that this erroneous correction reflects poorly (and without merit) on Ms. Sexton, or that they misspelled Sofie’s name wrong despite having the correct spelling also provided by Ms. Sexton, I would almost laugh. Could I use this to get a better table at CBI’s Mother’s Day brunch?

But absurdities don’t count. I’m watching out for something seriously bad.

The suspense has been killing me. I really have grown fond of all 10 fingers and all 10 toes, and seeing through both my eyes, and more often than not having the ability to put a couple words together coherently enough to order that pizza. I’d hate to lose any of these.

Especially the pizza. Deliveries gratefully accepted at my bunker through Monday. Drop it and run for your life.

On the breezy, sandy shores of the Straits of Magellan, a man in brown coveralls is smoking a plank. One end sits in a repurposed oil drum and slowly the other end of the wood is being pulled in a lateral direction. Warped, the plank is, to sheath the sides of a schooner.

www.avaandsofie.com

A century or two ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a young Cape Codder to head off around Cape Horn to China.

Multi-year voyages, these were as much education as employment, setting the stage for a career on the sea. Go out as a cabin boy, come back as a an able-bodied seaman, then leave as a seaman, come back as a mate, and then mate to shipmaster.

For a three-year voyage, that’s nine years right there. It is no wonder that sea captains typically retired, if they survived, in their 30s. With the capital they had accumulated, they might set up a store to support themselves and their families. So it was a young man’s game, a very young man’s game. But exclusively for men.

How times have changed.

Last spring, my daughter Sofie and her friend Ava took to skies, flying across the globe to visit China’s Pearl River Delta. No pleasure trip this was. That is unless your idea of relaxation is two girls, age 7 and 8, exploring and filming for 13 hour-days of nonstop movement.

Like the ships of old, this young crew were looking to bring back a valuable cargo.

In this case, the cargo was their experiences, to be shared after months of studio work, with voice-overs and film editing. Through My Eyes premiered their China series on WGBH last October as the centerpiece of their Kids’ website. Sofie and Ava’s cargo were 10 videos, documenting their firsthand encounters with the one area of China open to their predecessors centuries earlier. Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau.

I had the honor to participate, and to watch my daughter visit the same places I had 13 years earlier. She had seen pictures of the Five Story Pagoda in Guangzhou, Victoria Peak, overlooking the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and swirling tiles of Senado Square in Macau. I have to admit I still get a little choked up watching the episode in the Foreigners Cemetery in the Pearl River. Having grown up exploring the cemeteries of Chatham, she learned her alphabet reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Now here she was in a place I had found hidden in the jungle a decade earlier that told the stories of the sailors who nevercame home.

She and Ava got to convey their own personal observations of the people they met and the places they visited. For the elementary school classrooms watching all across the country, what these two girls were saying and doing was gripping. Much more so than if an adult had been on-camera or off, spoon feeding the information they deemed important. Kids see things we don’t.

For centuries, those who have grown up on the Cape have learned to survive by their ingenuity. A seasonal economy in a place with few resources means you have to remain flexible, act on opportunity, and often take those skills elsewhere if you ever wish to have a life here. Yet those houses down on Lower Main Street in Chatham are a testament to the hold of the place on those who would span the globe for their livelihood. It is a good place to live, once you have the means.

That is Cape Cod’s creative economy at work. It was in evidence when Matt Griffin and I set off to tell the story of the Columbia Expedition, and its commander, John Kendrick. It continued when our Hit and Run History crew dove into Cape Verde during the dengue fever epidemic as we followed the Columbia’s track. And when we were stranded in the Falklands for an extra week last year, by making the most of it by getting deeper into our story. We seize every opportunity to increase the value of our cargo.

So these two girls, age 7 and 8, left as globetrotting newbies and returned as an experienced travel show crew. Fittingly, they’ve set their sights now on a trip around Cape Horn this spring. Natural science will be at the fore as they explore the fjords, glaciers and penguins at the very end of the Earth.

And perhaps just as fittingly, Sofie’s added another option to her career plans. Besides wanting to be a veterinarian, she told me, “Once Through My Eyes wraps up, I think I want to open a store. But when I’m older because we still have lots of places to go. Like when I’m a teenager.”

Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

Following on the success of their China series as the centerpiece of WGBH’s Kids site, Cape Cod’s girl adventurers have been given a great opportunity. Their friends at Hit and Run History, headed down to the tip of South America this spring, have offered the girls cabins for a cruise around Cape Horn with Cruceros Australis.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these girls to share the wonders of glaciers and penguins with classrooms across the country. So many topics can be explored: from marine life to environmental science to culture and maritime history. Just imagine the sorts of adventures Ava and Sofie can share with children in schoolrooms back home, meeting penguins and navigating ice fields.

In exchange for the cruise, TME‘s part of the bargain is to raise the money for the airfare for us all. That’s a fair trade and an excellent way to continue our series. Plus, with HRH‘s professional camera crew, the quality will be even better.

The brick measures roughly two inches by seven inches by threeand- a-half inches. Typical red, well-weathered and with a couple chunks taken out around it. It bears the stains of having been submerged in the sea at times, which is only right because of the location where I picked it up.

The flight from Port Stanley Airport was in a two-engine, eight-seater puddle jumper. From the capital of the Falklands, we skimmed around the eastern edge of the islands in the far South Atlantic and west across the treeless open country and rocky outcroppings from field and water.

Ever since arriving here a few days prior, our crew of Hit and Run History kept remarking how cinematic the landscape was. But that was from ground-level. Now, from a couple hundred feet up, we could grasp the immensity of the place. West Falkland is about the size of Rhode Island and has maybe 90 people. Fewer trees. More cattle. And tens of thousands of sheep, at least.

The journey to Saunders Island in the remote west of the Falklands took less than an hour, giving us the time to separate from the coziness of our experience back in Port Stanley.

We were able to witness the sort of treacherous waters that our subject had encountered two centuries hence.

Never having sailed these waters, John Kendrick led the Columbia Expedition – the first American voyage ‘round the world – here in February 1788. Having left Cape Verde a couple of months before, the ship Columbia and sloop Washingtonsought a respite before the treacherous round of Cape Horn. Port Egmont, on the eastern edge of Saunders Island, offered one of the finest harbors in the world according to British explorers.

Touching down on the grass strip on Saunders, we were met by two Land Rover Defenders. The Pole-Evans family owns the entirety of Saunders, which comprises about the same land mass as the city of Boston. They told us the regular population is six. With the addition of our crew of five, we nearly doubled the population.

Soon after getting settled into our cabin, David Pole-Evans, who has lived on the island all his life, showed up to offer a ride to Port Egmont. It was just over the hill from their settlement near Sealers Cove.

Within a couple hours of boarding our flight from Port Stanley, we were standing amidst the tumbledown ruins of Port Egmont. Although the Brits had established a settlement here – their first in the islands – in 1765, the Spanish had forced them to evacuate within a decade, and eventually demolished the place. But due to the natural protection of the topography and abundant fresh water, game birds and anti-scurvy greens, Port Egmont remained for decades a popular place for sealers and whalers from both England the U.S. to use on a seasonal basis.

In the early months of 1788, Kendrick, who grew up on the shores of Pleasant Bay, felt his way toward Port Egmont. Unfamiliar with the area, he overshot the entrance and instead ended up in Brett Harbor, on the backside of Saunders. No one was here.

Making the best of it, they took on the supplies from the countryside they desperately needed. Several of his officers took the chance to make the short trek overland to Port Egmont. We were walking literally in their footsteps.

Having thoroughly documented our time all over Saunders, ranging across to Brett Harbor and down to the natural dry dock where they would have landed their water casks, we were doing what historians need to do. Getting out in direct contact with our topic. If Kendrick was the first American here, we were the first to follow him here to tell his story.

In the Age of Information, one can easily view documents from libraries across the world, or sample photos of an area. But the smell and touch of the place, and the chance to talk with a man like David Pole-Evans right on the shores of Port Egmont, is of a completely higher order. We could see where the warehouse was right on the waterfront, the dock nearby where boats would have landed, and the spot where the tripots were set up for the grisly work of boiling down seal carcasses for oil. The shore, in fact, was littered with cobblestones and the remnants of bricks.

Surveying the area together, David mentioned the bricks here were not of the same dimension as British bricks. Those are flatter than those made in the U.S. It had been determined these bricks were from American ships. Knowing that the American whale and sealing fleet had originated mostly from New England ports like Nantucket and New Bedford, we realized yet again that our path had circled back to home.

This is just the kind of discovery that we feel honored to share with our series on WGBH. This kind of natural storytelling is in the blood of Cape Codders who for centuries, like John Kendrick, ranged across the world. We are happy that we have inspired a new generation as well in the China: Through My Eyes series which premiered a couple weeks back to great public acclaim.

Bringing back stories is one thing, however. Filming our discoveries brings the story of Columbia to a global audience. But before we left Port Egmont, I asked David if I could have one of the bricks. He owns the whole island, after all, and he agreed. The most intact example traveled back 8,000, via Santiago, Chile, and JFK, home to my bookshelf on Cape Cod.

It is possible we could find out where this brick was made, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and the United States Merchant Marine Academy. This simple amalgam of mud, stones and sand has gone more places than most people have. It has an amazing story to share, and we’re looking forward to finding it out.

Read this and Andy’s other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

* * * * *

Hit and Run History is the centerpiece of WGBH’s History page.  Their forthcoming Falklands Ho! series is the third installment following the voyage following John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition around  the world. Hit and Run History thanks LAN Airlines, Turismo Chile and Ocean State Job Lotfor helping make this possible.

Local Adventure-Travel Show leads on Kickstarter

Heading into this long weekend, we here at Hit and Run History thought we’d challenge our fans — especially those on the Cape — to help raise our profile on the online fundraising site Kickstarter.

After all, if you are working to follow the first American voyage ’round the world and you’re looking to head down to Cape Horn, you don’t turn down the offer of a South American cruise lineCruceros Australis to take you through the Straits of Magellan.  So we’re just looking to raise the funds to bring our crew down there.

It’s no accident that we received the first-ever Social Media Outreach Grant from the Massachusetts Humanities Foundation recently.  On Thursday, we went to work using Facebook and Twitter especially.

Now, thanks to the help of dozens and dozens of our fans, in just 48 hours we have doubled the amount of money pledged and tripled our number of backers.

And having just checked on Kickstarter’s “Boston Projects” page, you can see Hit and Run History is THE TOP FILM PROJECT IN BOSTON.

That’s right — your scrappy band of New Englanders is taking on the world and making a name for itself.

But like Captain John Kendrick and the rest of the crew of the Columbia Expedition, we still have a long way ahead of us.  So please, take a moment and pledge a buck.  Yes, just $1.00.

Help us keep the number of backers growing and push us to the top film project in the country.  That will take grassroots support.  We’ve proven this works, and we’re looking to get the attention of the larger underwriters.

Give us a look…

On Tuesday night, I was at the New York Yacht Club when the Argentine Consul made sure to say goodbye to me on his way out.

That’s a hell of a revelation. How did a simple clammdigger from the Common Flat off Monomoy Island get here?

It was a 5:15 AM wakeup, a two-hour drive to Providence, the 4-hour express bus ride into Manhattan, and a short walk over. That’s literally how I did it. And it would be followed by the 10 PM ride out of the city, getting home at 3 AM.

That’s the sort of determination it has taken over the past three years to get Hit and Run History noticed. To get us to in the door at WGBH. To get over 1,500 fans worldwide. To get me invited to a reception for Cruceros Australis, the South American cruise line that is offering to take us from Patagonia to Cape Horn.

And to end up talking with the Argentine Consul for New York about what the American sailors of the Columbia found in the Falklands. “Malvinas” he corrected me, most diplomatically. But he wanted to know more about these tough Yankee sailors like John Kendrick who attempted the near suicidal rounding of Cape Horn.

It’s our third chapter of our story. In following the Columbia Expedition around the world, every other location will be relatively easy: Vancouver, Hawaii, China and Japan. But just try to find a flight to the Falklands. Once a week, and pretty expensive at that.

Then throw in the End of the Earth – Cape Horn – and Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile. Now multiply by the number of crew we need to do this. 3, 4 or best at 5.

We can do this. We can get to all these places. We can get on the ship before season ends and the offer is gone.

We can show the world, and the networks, what a scrappy band from the coast of New England can do. Just like our story.

But we’ve just got to get your help. And we need it right away.

As a fan, you’ve probably noticed our posts about our Kickstarter campaign. For travel and production, we only need $19,500. That’s peanuts compared to most hour-long episodes of a travel, history or reality show.

But my experience as a commercial fisherman has taught me that you can make up for a lot with hard work, tenacity and creativity. And the tides wait for no one. Get out, get what you need, and move on.

Now we have a chance to show the angel investors and talent scouts who pay attention to Kickstarter that we have real support. Sure, it would be great if every one of our fans went to our page and pledged $25 (which also gets you a digital download of the film when complete).

If that happened we’d surpass our goal easily. Even $10 by every fan would put us within striking distance.

But instead, I am writing to ask you today to go to our site and pledge $1. Just one dollar.

It’ll get us nowhere near our goal. But if we get 500 pledges over this weekend – from just one out of every three of our FB fans — we will zoom up into the list of most popular projects on Kickstarter.

And then the right people will notice.

So please, go to http://kck.st/hbmoKk, click on “Back this project” and pledge a buck.

If you get the chance, please, forward this to your friends ask them to do the same.

I have been very blessed to have so many talented and hardworking people to work with on Hit and Run History. We’ll be stopped dead in our tracks if we can’t tell this part of the story – the most dramatic and challenging chapter.

Asking for this doesn’t come easy. We’d rather just share our stories with you. All we’re asking for here is the equivalent of a cold drink on this long, tough road. You’d do that, right?

Many thanks,

Andy Buckley

“It’s OK to look.” That was the slogan of Match.com, the online dating site. A little creepy, I thought when I first saw their ads on TV. You know, it’s not OK for some people to look. Like if you’re married. Or in prison. But the ad didn’t discriminate. Clearly, the idea was if they could get people to look, they might find someone attractive enough to prompt an initial membership – paid by credit card set on auto-renew.

Last summer, when Hurricane Bill was approaching on through, Matt Griffin and I headed out to see if we could cover the upcoming story. The story in this case being the pre-storm hype. That and all the news trucks camped out in the half-hour parking spaces in front of the lighthouse and none sporting a single orange ticket on their windshield of a violation for overstaying the half-hour limit. Never mind the network camera equipment set up on the same beach that the local yoga class has to pay hundreds of dollars for a permit to use.

The lesson being, we supposed, that you can do whatever you want in the New Chatham as long as you are a) from out of town, and b) famous.

Poor locals are expected to follow the rules and pay. A perverse reverse logic.

Fittingly, the media machine that seems to have become much too familiar with Chatham during the summer, and the non-stories that can be inflated in order to rationalize a long weekend here (sharks, storms, a house painted green), was duly skewered in our film on the pre-storm frenzy. Likewise, when Bill failed to materialize as any real threat because, as predicted, it was 300 miles offshore, we went out again the next morning. Assessing “storm damage” for this installment, we were able to interview CNN personnel from New York about, well, the whole bunch of nothing they came here to cover.

Then they were back the next weekend for Tropical Depression Danny. That turned out to be just a whole lot of rain. From what I could tell, the worst it did was to deposit in my skiff a couple inches of rain and, somehow, a large rotting horseshoe crab. For the media, I’m sure the breakfast brunch at Chatham Bars Inn was impeccable as always. That’s a commitment to the news.

But with such a low opinion of the media and those who believe them, I felt it was only a matter of time before they would be, at long last, proven correct. This broken clock had to be right at least twice a day. And so I came to wonder if that would be Earl.

This wasn’t because of anything I saw on television or observed locally. Rather, it was far from the coast, at over 6,000 feet above sea level in northern New England. For our end of the summer trek, like last summer, Sofie and I drove to the top of Mount Washington. We timed it just right, as the highs in the surrounding area were forecast for the mid-90s. The day before the observatory at the summit was reporting 54 degrees and gusts of 76 mph. I was wondering if the narrow, windy road, free of guard rails or shoulders with drops down sheer cliffs, would be closed. No.

It was a brilliant day, with temperatures in the 60s. Gusts were up to 50 mph. We took a hike 1,200 feet down to the Lake of the Clouds. The whole time we remained above the tree line.

Following our way back down, we made the necessary stop at Dairy Queen, then continued our cross-country journey to the coast, ending up in Freeport for some lastminute back-to-school shopping. Passing through Naples, Maine, I saw an LED sign out front of the fire station with “101 F” in glowing red. I assume it did not mean one hundred and one feet.

Record high temperatures down belowand with hurricane-force winds combined with sunny, mild temps at the nexus of four weather systems high above gave me pause. Perhaps, yes, this time this might just be the storm we’ve been looking for.

The next day, following our day at Water Country, I stopped at the Wal-Mart in Portsmouth, N.H. to pick up several packs of D batteries. Not so much because I thought I would need them, but because I had been informed that they were now non-existent in Chatham. I imagined myself in a bulky sweatshirt, hood up and skulking darkened street corners while people slowed down their cars and ask, “Hey man, you know where we can get some D?”

After all, those fall dresses from LL Bean and Peanut Buster Parfaits weren’t going to pay for themselves.

Once home, we moved furniture off the deck and waited for the rain to start. It was forecast for noon. I felt lucky that I was able to squeeze in a run up to Sofie’s pediatrician in Wellfleet. On the way back, the rain began, and followed us down to Orleans. Once in Harwich, it stopped. Back in Chatham, it was almost sunny. But oppressively humid. I considered for a moment that my last column about a rain shadow surrounding Chatham might not be as far off as I had thought. But I saw the radar. Something big coming.

Yeah. The rain here finally hit at 8 p.m. Yes, it was heavy. But we still didn’t get as much as Yarmouth. And the wind was barely more than a breeze for most of the afternoon. Although I read in the Boston Globe of “a deafening wind” down at the Chatham Lighthouse, I can report that a mile away on the Oyster Pond the wind was not audible from inside our home. That is pretty unusual for any windy day.

So, having partially succumbed to the belief that this could be a real hurricane, I looked back at the real weather indicators. We were on the weak side of the storm. It was a Category 3 off North Carolina, and as it moved north it was likely to be a Category 1 by the time it got here. The barometer (remember that, National Weather Service?) was not dropping precipitously.

The “Better Safe Than Sorry” crowd really needs to take it on the chin this time. Are we to go on alert for any level of risk? Well, crying “storm” one too many times undercuts credibility. We want the public to listen when the threat truly is serious and credible. And saying it is hard to predict these sorts of things when we can send probes to Mars and stuff powerful handheld computers into tiny little phones strains credulity. It seems that as the ability to accurately predict weather increases, so does the need to be frighten Americans with the greatest extremes of it. So it would be refreshing to use our best intelligence in making smart choices next time a hurricane or snowstorm heads our way. Perhaps weather forecasters and public officials could set an example by noting the words of Edward R. Murrow: “We are not descended from fearful men.”

In the mean time, if your flashlight’s batteries are dead I’ve got a nice supply of high-grade Copper Top.