self-portrait in the present sea

Evanston: fragile

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:43:29 -0500

I bought some music from iTunes last evening, something I haven’t done for a while because my 64 GB iTouch, whose true capacity is 58.1 GB, has been full. Deleting movies and music I seldom listen to freed 8 GB.
The albums are both in Portuguese, which I don’t speak, but whose seafarers and music I admire: MOMENTOS by Dulce Pontes and MOVIMENTO by Madredeus.
Among the books I’ve started to write, but will never finish, unless I became an invalid and can live only in my imagination, is a novel, THE PORTUGUESE MOMENT, about the single generation in the early 16th Century when the tiny Portuguese nation became “First in all Oceans,” as viewed from the life of the poet of that explosion of exploration and exploitation, Luis Camoes.
Here is the first page:

“Now I have heard everything. I had already seen everything, or, since Ceuta, half-seen everything; and now I have heard everything. Obviously there is nothing left to do but die.”
The words brought me to an abrupt halt. I was walking past the Praca Luis de Camoes in Lisbon. No one was nearby. The closest was a man wearing a white polo shirt, jeans, and Nike jogging shoes, sitting on one of the green slatted wood benches bordering the sterile open space around the central statue of the poet in the Chaido district. But I heard the words clearly, as though spoken by someone standing right beside me, and, most disconcertingly, they were my words: the opening sentences of a long abandoned novel I had tried to write about Camoes.
A woman bumped me with a shopping bag. A trolley rattled past. I shook myself and thought: you are losing your mind, old man—I would be sixty in a few months—and resumed walking. As soon as I did the words began again. “Now I have heard everything. I had already seen..” My head turned. I suppose wildly. I thought I saw lips moving on the man on the park bench, though he was sitting a good twenty yards away. I walked toward him. Two steps away I heard, “but die.” And he looked up at me and smiled.
At a glance he was short, no taller than 5’3” or 5’4”, stocky, well-muscled, and about ten years younger than I.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
“I’m practicing my lines.” He spoke English with a British accent.
“But those are my words.”
“You put them in my mouth, so now they are mine.”

The setting is the present. Or was eleven years ago. The man is Luis Camoes himself, or his ghost, who spends the evening in a bar, telling me his story. I had forgotten that a war injury left him blind in one eye.
He returned to Portugal, after having spent most of his adult life in Portuguese colonies in India and China, a few years before King Sebastian led the nation into a disastrous defeat in present day Morocco and the country fell under Spanish rule for decades.
Camoes is said to have said, “I returned not only to die in my country, but with it.”

All that is a long aside, for what I intended to write about is Sting’s song, “Fragile,” of which I have two renditions--neither his: one sung by Holly Cole on the guitarist, Jesse Cook’s album, VERTIGO; and the other by Chico and the Gypsies--which I happened across yesterday.
While I like the song, I’ve always taken exception to the lyrics, “Less we forget how fragile we are” repeated several times; and “That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could.”
Having just learned that Sting wrote the song as tribute to an American civil engineer who was killed by Contras in Nicaragua, the words may make more sense. But my reading of history is that much has come from violence and probably always will.
And even now, when my body is somewhat betraying me, I don’t think we are fragile at all. We, like everything that has survived, are tough. We are not flimsy or easily broken or delicate. And although the word is almost invariably used to describe ecosystems, they aren’t either. What is, is strong.
This is not to say that I don’t think we are destroying the planet, I do. See “Last Born.”
What we do have are narrow parameters and balances in which we can survive. Deprive the brain of oxygen for a few minutes; add or subtract minute quantities of chemicals in the body; and we can’t exist.
Life, I wrote thirty years ago, when CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE pitch-poled west of Fiji, can change with the passing of a single wave.
I have since learned that life can change, too, with a single eye-drop.

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I am still itching, but less so.
The weather is perfect.
If I can stop scratching long enough, GANNET sails this weekend.

Evanston: a great match; three months equals one year; a bad reaction

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:19:04 -0500

If you are a soccer/football fan, you already know the improbably dramatic events in yesterday’s English Premier League match between Manchester City and Queen’s Park Rangers, which had City supporters crying in the stands, first because they were certain they had lost the chance for their first championship in 44 years, then a few minutes later because they hadn’t.
The match was carried in the U.S. live over ESPN2, starting at 9 a.m. Chicago time. I watched, and got the exact result I wanted: City won the title and QPR avoided relegation. If you didn’t, you missed a sporting event for the ages.

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After the match and lunch, Carol drove me up to GANNET where I hoped to accomplish seven tasks. I succeeded in four and part of a fifth and made one of the others slightly worse.
The day was sunny and warmer at the marina than I expected. Only a light wind blew from the lake.
With Carol holding one end of the tape measure and recording numbers, I took the dozen or so measurements necessary for a new mainsail cover.
I applied the 2012 North Point Marina sticker to the mast.
I tensioned the backstay and unfurled the jib, which did so more easily than it furled last week. I then loosened the halyard and tried to pull down on the luff. I succeeded in moving it a couple of inches and now have hopes that when I need to I may be able to lower the sail without cutting off the luff tape.
I noted my Illinois registration and bought the required numbers and letters at West Marine on our way home. I’ll replace the old Minnesota numbers on the bow soon.
I remembered the measurements for possible solar panels and determined that two 25 watt panels, 18.5” by 16.25,” will fit nicely on the deck near the stern. Two more will fit on the foredeck before the mast. But a different 25 watt panel, 47.5” by 6”, might be better.
For aesthetic reasons I won’t mount panels on a rail from the stern pulpit. And I may not mount all the the panels permanently. Some of you will recall that only one of THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s three solar panels is fixed.
While installing the full batten luff fittings last week, I dropped a nut from a 10/32 thread bolt. I bought a replacement, but found that while the thread is correct, the nut is larger than those supplied by Tides Marine and too big for the slot on the batten fitting. In trying to make this work, I inadvertently loosened another bolt and its nut bounced once on GANNET’s deck before diving into the harbor. I’ve bought some alternatives.
Last year after viewing online photos of GANNET’s interior, a couple of Moore 24 owners emailed me that she is the first Moore they have seen without a tie rod or line below the deck mounted padeye for the aft lower shroud to a bulkhead. GANNET being the only Moore 24 I’ve even seen, I didn’t know. Normally a second pad eye is used below deck, secured by the bolts holding the eye above deck, then a wire or Amsteel line to a turnbuckle on a U-bolt through the bulkhead.
I took careful measurements of the pad eyes on deck, but have not been able to locate their exact duplicates, and may have to replace them in order to add the necessary support to the rig.
Recently I’ve been discouraged by my slow progress with GANNET, until I realized that while I have owned her for a year, I have really only owned her for three or four months.
She did not go in the water last year until May 21, and my season was over on Sept. 5.

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Although I have never had any allergies, I am having a significant allergic reaction to something, presumably post surgical antibiotic eyedrops, which has persisted despite a change of medication. Once triggered, I have no idea how long this will persist.
It is irritating and distracting.
What work I do accomplish is slowed considerably by itching.

Evanston: Albert Einstein; Sherlock Holmes; grounded

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:48:26 -0500

Walter Isaacson has written a fine biography of Albert Einstein, despite failing to do what is probably impossible: explain in layman’s terms the theories of the Twentieth Century’s most famous scientist.
I understand the words. I even understand--or think I do--the thought experiments Einstein used to illustrate them. But I don’t believe I really understand the theories of relativity, either special or general. I am, of course, not alone.
Einstein’s second wife, when asked if she understood her husband’s theories, replied, “I do not. But the Theory of Relativity is not essential to my happiness.”
And the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, who accompanied Einstein on a ship crossing the Atlantic, when asked by reporters upon arriving in New York if he understood the theory, said, “Albert and I discussed the Theory of Relativity for many hours each afternoon, and I am now confident that he understands it.”
It is perhaps enough that those of us without knowledge of advanced mathematics and physics have some vague idea of the problems and discussions of those who do have.
A clear portrait of Albert Einstein the man emerges from Mr. Isaacson’s biography.
He did all his important work before age forty and noted wryly that he was punished for his lack of respect for authority by becoming one himself. That lack of respect for authority, Mr. Isaacson makes clear, was a key element in Einstein’s success in solving problems that other more respectful peers did not.
In a burst of creativity in 1905, at age 26, Einstein, then working in the Swiss patent office because he could not obtain an academic position, published three papers, among them one outlining the special theory of relativity, that are said to have changed physics more than anything since Isaac Newton three hundred years earlier.
After age forty, Einstein, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., having left Germany upon the rise of Nazism, spent his remaining years trying to punch holes in quantum mechanics and unsuccessfully trying to find a unified field theory that would unify the general theory of relativity with electromagnetism.
As a man he was consistently on the side of freedom versus oppression and totalitarianism, either of the right or the left; and despite his famous letter to President Roosevelt informing him of the possibility of building an atomic bomb, which he feared would be done by Nazi Germany, favored pacifism.
Einstein’s conversations with Niels Bohr, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922, the year after Einstein was, are considered by some to be among the most important in the history of science.
Bohr once met Einstein at the Copenhagen train station and they got on a tram to go to Bohr’s home. They became so involved in their discussion that they missed the stop. When they realized this, they got off and boarded a tram going the other way, again missed their stop; and finally made it the third time.
Bohr was one of the strongest proponents of quantum mechanics.
Once Einstein said to him, “God doesn’t play dice.”
To which Bohr replied, “Albert, stop telling God what to do.”
One of the most amazing facts in the book is that the incoming freshman class of Princeton in 1938 voted as their most admired man, Adolph Hitler. Einstein was second.
This in 1938. Hitler had been in power since 1933. MEIN KAMPF was published in 1925-26. What could they possibly have been thinking?
EINSTEIN is a very readable account of the man’s life and a glimpse for the rest of us of the highest level of physics in the first half of last century.

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Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest literary creations, still going strong a hundred years on, with movies and the excellent BBC series which brings the great detective into present day London and technology.
The first episode of three in the second season, “A Scandal in Belgravia,” was shown last Sunday on PBS. It is available for purchase at iTunes and will, I expect, eventually be available via Netflix.
Well worth viewing.

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Tomorrow is supposed to be lovely: sunny, temperatures in the 70ºs, 0% possibility of rain. A perfect day for the first sail of the season. But, following my eye surgery on Tuesday, which went well although I look as though I just lost a fight, I am grounded.

Evanston: one year

Mon, 7 May 2012 13:38:49 -0500

I’ve owned GANNET one year today.
I haven’t done as much to her or with her as I had hoped in that year for reasons of logistics and disruptions from my right eye, which continue tomorrow.
On occasion I have found myself wondering if I will have her ready to go to sea a year from now. That seems a long time away and with her in California this coming winter will not be lost, though obviously I will not be on her constantly.
I’ve made some telephone calls following up leads provided by Steve Earley, who visited San Diego a few months ago; and slips GANNET’s size are available in Mission Bay’s Quivera Basin from which I began the open boat voyage. Quivera Basin is not far from where my grandparents used to have the beach house where I spent my summers as a teenager. An extra year in San Diego would not be a hardship. All that matters is that I move forward, or have the illusion of doing so.
On Saturday we hauled an SUV load of stuff up to GANNET. Because of other commitments, we didn’t arrive at the boat until 1:00 p.m. 51ºF. Lowering sky. Misty rain that fortunately slowed.
I hooked up the ship’s batteries and got the mainsail and jib bent on.
In doing so, I couldn’t find my hammer, sail ties, or the mainsail tack pin.
The batteries were no problem.
The sails were. I expected that somehow they would be.
Tides Marine did not manufacture the track properly. It was a foot too long and one side of the groove that slides up the mast was rough with burrs of plastic. The dimensions of Moore 24s are not a closely guarded secret, so I have no idea why they got the length wrong. And the burrs, enough of which I removed with a screw driver to get the track up, are inexcusable.
I have a small DeWalt cordless drill. I was impressed and pleased that its battery held enough charge all winter to drill a necessary hole after I hacksawed off the unneeded length of track.
I have a tradition of baptizing new sails in blood. I don’t mean to, it just happens. Yesterday by smashing my left hand a couple of times into the boom gooseneck fitting while shoving the Tides Marine track up the mast. Only a few drops of blood are on the sail. They are hardly noticeable and add character. Or so I tell myself.
The mainsail goes up and down smoothly, looks good, and needs a new cover, which I knew it would, but had to wait until I could take exact measurements.
I didn’t get to the jib until 5 p.m., when I was tired and cold and did something stupid.
The luff tape seemed to fit in the Furlex groove, but the sail went up very, very, very slowly. This happened with the jib I had modified for the furler last year; but the new sail was worse.
About halfway up it stuck and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get it up or down. This despite generous use of McLube.
Deciding up was what I wanted, I did manage to winch it inch by inch to the top. But now I wonder if it will ever come down and what I will do if it won’t.
Well, for a while it doesn’t have to; and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
I didn’t have time to fly the asymmetrical.
Happy first birthday, GANNET. You’re a very likable little boat.

Evanston: oceans and lakes

Sun, 6 May 2012 16:08:57 -0500

At Winthrop Harbor Friday I was aware of increasing wind and fog; but then I caught the 3 p.m. train home and by 4:30 was in the condo, a few blocks from the lake and didn’t think more about the weather.
Ten miles to the south of me what could have been a drama was unfolding. That it didn’t is due to the skill of the sailor in charge of the vessel, a small Beneteau about the size of GANNET.
I have Jeannette’s permission to tell the story in her own words from an email she sent me the next day.

HOT FLASH came through the locks about 5pm. From there it was an edifying trip and offered just enough awe to remind this sailor that one can never count on anything on this lake.
I had 2 crew who have been aboard for 5 years and crossed the lake in that hair-raising (and humbling) Queen's Cup last year. One crew had invited 2 co-workers, each of which have been aboard once, in summery 8 knot conditions.
I am glad I emphasized that all should bring jackets and understand it would feel 15* cooler on the lake.
I am glad I reviewed working river protocol/lifejackets/lock procedures before we cast off.
And in retrospect everything should have amped up by another 20%.

We had a very interesting trip. Set out from S. Ashland on the south fork of the Chicago river in sunny sunshine and fairly pleasant temps (the guys were in T shirts). As we entered downtown it was quite breezy but still sunny. By the time we crossed under Michigan Ave it was cloudy, little foggy, pretty windy, and we all had jackets on.
We went through the renovated Locks (with new "hanging on" ropes) and were aware that when the gate opened to the lake we'd be in a very stiff northerly blow. As we turned north at the end of Navy Pier we disappeared into a world of our own. Thick fog, visibility about 10-15 boat lengths, and navigating for the cut in the breakwater wall by GPS on my phone (had not brought the Garmin with me for such a simple trip). Heading through the cut we saw we would still have the fog, but now the breeze was in the mid- high 20's and there were short, steep waves coming from the ENE (which was curious because wind seemed to have been from the north all day), a few of which were 6'. This caused the mast, which was in horizontal position, well secured to prevent side to side movement, to begin lunging forward when we dropped into a 6' hole. The guys took up awkward positions clasping the mast.
Conditions felt as if we were sailing a couple of miles outside of San Francisco Bay.
I have a habit of keeping a bag of "winter wear" on the boat. Thank goodness. The 2 co-workers who had light jackets dug into it and each came up on deck looking like they had hit the pre-school dress-up closet. But the fleece face masks, ski gloves, and extra layers kept them from shivering.
To my relief as I turned toward where I thought the harbor entrance might be we began to discern an outline of trees and pick out some lights in the park area. I was thinking about the seawalls in that area and wondering how well the 9.8 hp Nissan might shove us away from those walls in the face of the easterly oncoming rollers should I have misjudged. I was disappointed that the harbor entrance navigation lights were not on.
As we entered the harbor the fog thinned and we tied up in Belmont Harbor at 6:20pm.

For those of you who don’t live in this area, there are numerous bridges over the Chicago River which have very limited openings for sailboats. There were none on Friday, so Jeannette had no choice but to move to her slip under power mast down. The distance from the lock opening into Lake Michigan to Belmont Harbor is less than four miles.
In a subsequent email, she told me that during the time they were on the lake in near zero visibility, she began to consider “what ifs.” Such as: what if the outboard died? She would anchor. Who would she call? BoatUS for a tow, not the Coast Guard because there was no threat to life. What if she couldn’t find Belmont Harbor? She’d continue a couple of miles to the next harbor north, Montrose, reasoning that its south facing entrance would have less wave and chop.
Seamanship is common sense plus experience. The problem is that common sense may not be common.
When I told Carol this story, her reaction was,”GANNET couldn’t power into that.” She is right. At least not for very long. So I had better avoid ever being in that situation.
Several times during the past year, sailors here have said to me something along the lines of: “Even though we only sail the lake, not oceans…”
I wrote long ago that conditions change much more quickly with less warning where weather patterns move from land to big bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes and the Mediterranean, and, I assume The Black Sea and The Caspian, than they do out at sea.
At sea I look around at sunset at the sea, the waves, the sky, the clouds, the patterns, the barometer, to decide if conditions are going to change for the worse during the night.
I sometimes have false positives: thinking there might be a change that doesn’t materialize. I don’t ever recall thinking that things would be all right until dawn and they weren’t.
Another great advantage of sailing oceans is sea room, which equals time. Outside help will take longer to reach you, but I consider outside help to be vastly overrated. With sea room, if something breaks you have time to fix it, or jury rig a replacement, and continue on your way.
One of the truer tests of whether one is a sailor is if there is significant doubt about reaching port safely, he/she doesn’t try. He/she seeks deeper water.
When Captain Cook realized that he was trapped inside what we now know is the longest coral reef in the world, which he had discovered with the ENDEAVOUR’s keel, all he wanted after making repairs was to find a way back outside to the ocean.
On the Great Lakes, help may be relatively close at hand, but so is a lee shore. Never more than hours away, not days or weeks.
Shipping traffic and other boats are a constant concern on the lakes and in the Med, whereas in the ocean, away from known shipping lanes, they aren’t.
On lakes, wave action is compressed, choppier, with crests closer together, just as it is inside San Francisco Bay as opposed to outside the Golden Gate.
And around Chicago at least, there can be huge differences in conditions only a few miles apart. Temperature differences within ‘Chicagoland’ frequently are more than 30ºF, with one location having fog, another a thunderstorm, and a third bright sunshine.
I believe sailing oceans is easier than sailing lakes, once you master the difference in scale.

Evanston: floating

Fri, 4 May 2012 21:02:41 -0500

Thunderstorms rolled through here last night with hail, 2” to 3” of rain, lightning and thunder. By dawn the storms had passed east and south.
Wearing my better foul weather parka from THE HAWKE OF TUONELA and with the pants in my knapsack, I rode the 7 a.m. train north. Announcements stated that it was running ten minutes late due to flood warnings.
However, the day was not bad. Cool. Overcast. Foggy.
GANNET was in the water at 9:30 and in her slip ten minutes later.
The vestigial red diamonds of VC17 aren’t visible when GANNET is tied to the dock. Certainly they will be when she is heeled, but I won’t see them.
Once GANNET was secure in her berth, I began moving painting supplies, extra lifejackets, work clothes, the old Danforth anchor, and other stuff to the dock box. Dock box full, GANNET’s interior is uncluttered: at least until tomorrow, when I’ll return with a car full of sails, batteries, and other stuff. Most of this has a designated space, and two of the sails will remain above deck, so, hopefully, some semblance of order can be maintained.
As I sat inside GANNET eating lunch, wavelets lapped at the stern. A welcome sound.
Floating is a superior state.

Evanston: 650,000,000; paradox; Friday launch

Wed, 2 May 2012 13:30:09 -0500

Monday afternoon Central Time, I was one of a television audience of 650,000,000 who watched Manchester City defeat Manchester United 1-0 and move closer to their first league championship in more than forty years. The size of the audience is staggering, ten times greater than the entire population of the UK. Football, which we Americans call soccer, truly is the world’s game.
In English football, I’m a supporter of Queen’s Park Rangers and Arsenal. QPR because I once had an English girl friend who looked like Julie Christie and lived near QPR’s stadium. She was a yoga instructor with the most wonderful abdomen I have ever seen or caressed--but I digress.
I have no such good reason for liking Arsenal, I just do.
Manchester United are the New York Yankees of English football, so I was pleased that City got the victory. They can secure the championship by winning their remaining two matches, something that is not a foregone conclusion. I hope they do. Arsenal is too far back in third place; and QPR is near the bottom, facing possible relegation.

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David MacFarlane doesn’t post very often. Perhaps that is because he has a full time career and babies to deliver every day. Excuses. Excuses.
When he does post, I usually find it interesting, including his most recent on the paradox of why as we become more secure, we also become more fearful.
I have been thinking about that. Perhaps as our wealth increases we have more we fear to lose. Another advantage of being independently poor.

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I have moved GANNET’s launch date to Friday. Thunderstorms are possible. I have foul weather gear.

Evanston: the best piece of junk mail ever

Tue, 1 May 2012 13:47:31 -0500

Yesterday as I was leafing through the mail as I walked back up the stairs, I started laughing. The unique offer on the above envelop was the cause. Although I usually throw junk mail away, I opened this one. As expected they are selling pre-paid cremations and to get those of us who are old enough likely to need their services soon on their contact list, have drawings every once in a while giving one away.
If I die on land I would like to be cremated. I rather enjoy living near a cemetery, whose tomb stones long time readers may recall I once photographed as chess pieces--mostly pawns; but I don’t want a place in one. I’d prefer that my ashes be disposed of at sea, preferably off Cape Horn or New Zealand. The lookout platform on Roberton Island would be good, so long as whoever cast me into the air was, for their own sake, careful to observe which way the wind was blowing. San Diego, from which I began two circumnavigations and hope to begin a third, would be all right. But, really, any body of water would do, including the most convenient one that is found in bathrooms and flushes.
If I die at sea, I’d recycle naturally.
I have no idea what the odds are whether I’ll die on land or at sea, so these people, who made my day, didn’t make a sale.
Most of you are younger than I, so I present this as a public service of what you have to look forward to in your golden years to come.

Evanston: the weight of money

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:57:59 -0500

Albert Pujols is being crushed by forty million dollars. We should all have such troubles. (For background see God and Deidre Pujols.)
I saw the last few innings of a Los Angeles Angels game the other night in which Mr. Pujols extended his hitless streak to 19 at bats, the longest such streak in his career. I think it continued to 20 or 21 before he got a hit. But then he had only three hits all last week and currently is batting .216 for the 2012 season, some .109 below the lifetime average that brought him those ruinous forty million dollars.
Prior to this year, Albert Pujols had career statistics that put him in the top three or four players of all time in many categories and placed his name on lists next to Ruth and Gehrig.
There are other variables besides the obscenely big money. He has moved from the National League to the American and is facing pitchers mostly unfamiliar to him; and he is playing games in mostly unfamiliar stadiums. But it is evident that the money and the expectations that go with it from management, team mates and fans is making him tight.
It doesn’t help that the team he left is in first place without him, while the team he joined is in last.
I expect that he will work out of his slump in time. Maybe after such a lousy start he won’t hit .327 this year; but surely he will improve on .219. Still I expect that not a night goes by when Albert doesn’t lie in bed in his Southern California mansion and wish that he had taken the lesser offer, stayed in Saint Louis, and scraped by on a measly $210 million.
What Deidre Pujols thinks about all this these days, and God, can only be imagined.

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Ginny and Steve’s most recent post from Manaus, Brazil, certainly captures my imagination.
They have been places and seen sights few outsiders ever have and are making one of the most remarkable cruises of our time.

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My new sails arrived last week along with a wagon wheel. I have decided to build a Conestoga wagon and buy some mules and haul GANNET west the old-fashioned way.
Actually the wheel is the Tides Marine Strong System mainsail luff track. Part of the extrusion slides up the mast groove, while most is on the outside. Special slides and batten cars ride up and down a slot in the exterior. I have the same system on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, and the fully battened mainsail has never failed to come down easily on any point of sail. I most decidedly do not want to have to luff into the wind to lower the main or to put in a reef.
I haven’t completely unfolded the sails: a fully battened main; a 110% furling jib; and an asymmetrical spinnaker. But I did have to work on the spinnaker to get the thimbles to fit the Facnor furling gear.
For the record, I will never buy Facnor equipment again. I think Facnor products are fine. Some of you may recall that I also have Facnor gennaker furling gear on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA. But their U.S. distributor offers not bad customer service; but no customer service at all. And there are competitors.
The Facnor furler for GANNET arrived with three set screws instead of the specified four. Despite repeated efforts over months I have never gotten the fourth. Three is probably enough.
My sailmaker told me that Facnor sent him the wrong size thimbles, so he had to make his own. Well, they didn’t quite fit until I spent an hour and a half with a file and electric drill, so perhaps they sent him the wrong specifications, too.
I have a lot of stuff to take to GANNET on Saturday: sails, ship’s batteries, etc.
There is a chance of rain here every day forever--or so it seems. On the good side, it is also supposed to get warmer, and at the moment the chance of rain on Saturday is only 30%. It would be nice to have a dry day to get the Tides Marine track in place and the sails bent on, before my scheduled surgery the following Tuesday.

Evanston: BERLIN DIARY; THE LONG SHIPS

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:13:22 -0500

History in retrospect can seem inevitable.
One of the strengths of the diary, journal, passage log, is conveying the daily uncertainties about what is going to happen and sometimes even what is happening, which proves that it is not.
When STORM PASSAGE was published I hoped I had expressed that uncertainty well enough so that the reader, although by the act of reading knew that the words had survived and so probably had I, would feel how unlikely a prospect that sometimes seemed when I wrote them.
William Shirer, reporter and early radio newsman--he was Edward Murrow’s first hire to help cover Europe in the 1930s--is best known for THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, which I have never read because I believe I know that story well from other sources, although I note that the Kindle edition only costs $2.99, so I still may read it some day.
Over the years I have often come across references to his earlier BERLIN DIARY, most recently in Alistair Horne’s TO LOSE A BATTLE: FRANCE 1940, the third in an impressive trilogy about war between France and Germany, beginning with THE FALL OF PARIS: THE SEIGE AND THE COMMUNE: 1870-71 and continuing with the horrific masterpiece, THE PRICE OF GLORY: VERDUN 1916. (As an aside, that France and Germany are allies leading Europe rather than killing one another is one of the most remarkable and improbable events of our time.) So, nudged by Alistair Horne, I bought BERLIN DIARY.
The first entry is dated January 11, 1934, from Lloret De Mar, Spain and begins: Our money is gone. Shirer, a month short of his 30th birthday, and his Austrian born wife, Tess, had spent an idyllic year in the quiet fishing village north of Barcelona, reading, swimming, loafing, thinking, loving, and living on $60 a month. Now he would have to go back to work.
An experienced newspaper man, he took a job he didn’t like in Paris, moved on to others, including working for a wire service owned by William Randolph Hearst, going in his own pun, “from bad to Hearst,” before ending up in Berlin, working for Murrow, who was in London, and CBS.
He was there during the late 1930s, when Hitler could have been stopped, but wasn’t; and there when the war finally began with the invasion of Poland in September 1939.
Shirer saw Hitler and the other top Nazis close enough to note their ticks and twitches.
During the winter of 1939, he writes of the severe rationing in Berlin, the poor civilian morale, and through lack of sleep of its four million residents the disproportionate effect of a handful of British bombers overhead at night.
There are interesting details about the difficulties of the pioneering days of transmitting radio news, which often took courage as well as improvisation.
Like everyone else, Shirer was astonished by the speed of the German advance and the collapse of France in May 1940. Daily uncertainty is strongly evident in those entries, with most people thinking the German armies were heading for Paris. They were not. The victory was won by their turning north away from the capital and trapping the better part of the French army and the British against the English Channel.
He was permitted to go forward with German forces not long after the breakthrough. He states that he was usually told the truth by German army officers. Less so by the Navy. And given only exaggerations by Goering’s Air Force.
Shirer managed to be the only reporter present at the signing of the armistice between Germany and France, which Hitler insisted be in the very same railway car in the exact location where the armistice had been signed between the two countries in 1918.
While world shaking events fill the diary, and Shirer admits that he wrote it with a view of eventual publication, it is a personal document, too.
Tess has problems giving birth to their first child; and then, after the fall of France, difficulties in finding a way to make her way with their young daughter from Switzerland, where they were living, to a port from which they could sail to the United States.
Finally, late in 1940, due Shirer claims to increasingly restrictive censorship, but I sense also because he simply had had enough, he leaves Berlin himself and the diary ends.
William Shirer’s BERLIN DIARY is filled with some of the most important events of the Twentieth Century, seen not with the clarity of hindsight, but the muddled vision of the present moment.

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Frans Bengtsson’s, THE LONG SHIPS, could be subtitled, “Why Webb Chiles and thousands of others have Dupuytren’s Contracture.”
Dupuytren’s Contracture, of which I have a mild and seemingly non-progressive case, is sometimes called The Viking Disease because it is linked exclusively to genes found only in formerly Viking populations. Recently an acquaintance of mine had surgery to correct contracture of his little finger. He commented, “But no one on either side of my family has ever been Scandinavian.” This is a true failure of the imagination. I don’t know about you, but I can’t trace my family back a thousand years to someone who raped and pillaged his way across England in the first millennium.
THE LONG SHIPS was published in Sweden during WWII, where it has remained immensely popular. The author, who despised Nazism, refused to permit a German translation during the war.
It follows the three voyages of Red Orm. One, in which he is himself captured and enslaved, to the northwest coast of modern Spain; one to England; one through the rivers of modern Russia.
Pillaging was a way of life and the only possible career choice for many in the Viking age. Putting this book beside BERLIN DIARY, one realizes that all that has changed in a thousand years is the speed of advance of the pillagers.
While I can’t vouch for its historical accuracy, THE LONG SHIPS provides a convincing picture of life, mostly in northern Europe, a thousand years ago. Anarchy. Nascent kingdoms. Christianity in conflict with tribal superstitions.
As a sailor I found the details of how the Vikings handled their boats of particular interest. But then I enjoyed the entire book, which is a good adventure and love story.
THE LONG SHIPS is available in a Kindle edition, as well as paperback, from Amazon.

Evanston: white

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:03:03 -0500

I rode the 7 a.m. train north the past two days and got a coat of anti-fouling on GANNET each day. The Petit Vivid really is white, whereas International’s Micron Shark White is gray, although it does become whiter as the surface wears away during an ocean passage.
Monday was cold.
The Petit can says the paint should be applied between 50º and 90ºF. I probably fudged the 50º a bit, but it needed to get done.
Yesterday was warmer, until the breeze filled in from off the lake around noon.
I suppose the main reason I hadn’t asked Skipper Bud’s to prop the boat was that I sensed that they wouldn’t, and I was right.
When I arrived Monday morning I found that GANNET had been moved, but not propped. This was her second move. The first came on a day I was sanding VC17 and I did not welcome the interruption, though in fact it did not take long. She was moved a few spaces down and back against the fence so a boat behind her could be launched. I don’t know why she needed to be moved a second time.
After masking the waterline and wiping down the bottom with mineral spirits, I poured the amount of paint I normally do into a roller tray and started to work with a foam roller and a cheap brush for those places the roller couldn’t reach. To my surprise that one tray covered the entire port side of the bottom and part of the starboard. My rough estimate that THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s bottom surface area is four times GANNET’s was confirmed by my using about a quart of anti-fouling per coat on GANNET while a coat on HAWKE requires a gallon.
The Vivid surface is observably not as hard and smooth as was the VC17. Once dry it can be sanded and burnished, but I doubt it ever would be quite as fast as VC17. Being an ablative paint it will wear down and become smoother as the boat is sailed.
I started working on the bottom on March 28 and finished on April 24. I think the job could have been finished on four work days spread over a single week if there were no other interruptions.
Removing the VC17 was a three day job. Even that first misguided day wasn’t wasted. I got a lot of paint off, and my arms and shoulders couldn’t have held paper towels and sander in awkward positions for more hours a day than they did. And probably not for three days in a row.
With an overcoat time of four hours and a single coat taking little more than a hour to apply, I could have easily put on two coats in one day had I more favorable train schedules.
You may have noticed how clean the parking lot is beneath GANNET. That is not because I am a neat painter. I’m not. But I know I’m not and put down a plastic drop cloth.
When I finished painting, I inspected the red rub rail closely and sanded a section. It seems not to be painted, but to be a piece of solid red plastic.
Some Moore 24 owners have removed the rub rail. GANNET’s appears to be attached by dozens of screws from inside the hull. Far more holes than I want to try to fill and seal. Ultimately I may paint the rail the same color as the topsides, but I have white paint left over from the interior, so this summer the rail will be white.
GANNET is due to be launched a week from Saturday. She is ready to go back in the water now. I may see if Skipper Bud’s can launch her earlier.

Evanston: corrections; observations; an apology; a mess

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:21:53 -0500

In “the sentimental sextant” I wrote that a three second error in the exact time of a sight would mean an error of one nautical mile at the Equator. A reader wrote that it should be four seconds. A small difference, but I like to be accurate. Thanks, Dave.

When I went for my pre-op examination on Thursday, some of the spaces on some of the forms had already been filled in. One of these was: Work Status: retired. I had them change that. A small difference, but I like to be accurate.

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In staring at an image yesterday which the brain eventually transforms from negative to positive, I realized that one of the advantages of being one-eyed is that you can’t be cross-eyed.

My new/old David White sextant arrived yesterday. It seems in good condition, exactly as described.
This is the first sextant I have bought when I was not at sea level--Evanston is about 600’/183 meters above sea level. The first where I couldn’t take a short walk or drive and observe the ocean’s horizon. And the first with which I will have to take observations with my left eye.
I suppose because I am right-handed, I was also right-eyed. I’ve already noticed that when using a camera, I naturally start to look through a viewfinder with my right eye, a habit I’m finding surprisingly easy to change.

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Emails sent to the contact address at this site are supposed to be automatically redirected to my main email address. I believe this generally this has worked; but when I checked the originating email inbox a week ago, about twenty emails popped up that I don’t recall ever before seeing. They all dated from January and February of 2010, and, as is sometimes the gremlinish way of the Internet, subsequently disappeared.
If you have ever sent me an email and haven’t received a response, I apologize. I answer all emails I receive, though obviously not immediately when I’m at sea.
In the future I’ll check the original site inbox more frequently to be certain all emails have been forwarded.

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Even in the long ago and unlamented days when I had what is called “a real job”, which was in fact far less real than sailing a small boat across oceans, I kept a clean desk.
Here my desk is more for storage than work. I seldom sit there. My laptop is a laptop. I’m presently sitting on the living room sofa. Almost always the only thing on top of the desk is a lamp.
Not now.
Without closer inspection I’m not even sure what all this stuff is. Almost all eventually will go to GANNET, the exceptions being the eye medications in the lower left and a UPS receipt for two of GANNET’s sails I shipped to a Moore 24 owner in Seattle.
In the back row from the left are a ziplock bag containing the Go Pro Hero camera and a Spot unit I received for Christmas and have not yet used. I may use the Spot some on Lake Michigan, but have already decided that it does not fit into the way I go to sea.
The white box holds the Dual GPS antenna.
A UBS cable and a piece of sandpaper that remained in one of my pockets and got carried away from GANNET.
A container of Sanyo rechargeable eneloop batteries, charger, and an electrical tester.
A zip lock bag with a waterproof deck connector intended for the tillerpilots.
A brown cardboard box with the Blue Sky SolarBoost 2000e solar panel regulator with its heat connector on top
On the left of the front row, three different eyedrops--two vials are the same--and one eye pill.
The UPS receipt.
A jug of Lipton Green Tea.
The sextant case, on top of which is Mary Blewitt’s, CELESTIAL NAVIGATION FOR YACHTSMEN, one of the books I found useful long ago and was pleasantly surprised to find still in print.
A zip lock bag with the FoxL v2 Bluetooth speaker, earphones and various cables.

I have no idea when order will be restored.

Evanston: a slow learner

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:59:58 -0500

Some of you may recall “the good wife”, a journal entry from last May about a woman who went out in a power boat and rescued her husband and crew after they capsized their small boat on Lake Michigan on a day when severe weather was forecast.
Well, almost unbelievably, yesterday he did it again, this time being rescued by a police boat.
Old dogs can learn new tricks. And if this one can’t, he shouldn’t be sailing.

Evanston: the sentimental sextant

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:51:09 -0500

Last night I bought a sextant, a little over forty years after I bought my first one. Both are the same U.S. Navy WWII model made by David White in Milwaukee. My first was a year younger than I, dating from 1942. This one was made near war’s end in 1945.
I paid $100 for the first, buying it in San Diego from a merchant marine officer who picked up second hand sextants from pawn shops in Panama and resold them in the U.S.
I paid $250 last night to win an auction at eBay. There were other newer sextants for sale there, but I wanted a David White.
I googled the value of $1 in 1970 and found it to be around $5.70 in today’s currency, so this one was even cheaper than the first. From the photographs, it appears to be in good condition; but if the arm has been bent, I may have nothing more than a moderately expensive wall decoration.
I’ll see--or half see--next week.
Of course when I bought that first sextant, google wasn’t a verb, and eBay and the Internet didn’t exist. Neither did GPS.
The decision to buy a sextant evolved during an exchange of emails with a friend in New Zealand about the iPad as chartplotter. Although I haven’t taken a sight in almost twenty years, I realized that I cannot let GANNET be the first boat I take to sea without a sextant. Counting the Garmin eTrex I brought back from THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, I have four handheld GPSs, as well as the internal iPad GPS and the external Dual antenna. They aren’t all going to fail. But the idea of Webb Chiles being lost in mid-ocean because he couldn’t take a noon sight for latitude is unthinkable.
In addition to the two David Whites, over the decades I’ve owned a Zeiss Freiberger sextant and two plastic ones.
My first David White, of which I was particularly fond because of our similar ages and its performance during my first circumnavigation, was lost when CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE pitch-poled west of Fiji.
After reaching what is now Vanuatu, I bought a plastic sextant, which I used for the passage from Port Vila to Cairns, Australia. It was accurate enough; but the index mirror had to be adjusted after every sight, so I replaced it with a metal Zeiss Freiberger in Australia. That sextant went down with RESURGAM.
I’ve owned THE HAWKE OF TUONELA only in the era of GPS. She has a never used plastic sextant aboard.
The problem with good metal sextants is that they are precision instruments expensive to produce for a minuscule market. Googling ‘David White sextant’ out of curiosity, I happened upon the eBay auction a couple of hours before it closed.
I taught myself celestial navigation from text books and developed my own simplified system using sun sights rather than stars or the moon. Even before my right eye’s implosion, I had a small scar on that retina which caused a star to vanish when I looked directly at it; and taking sights at dawn or dusk did not fit into the rhythm of my life at sea.
I learned that despite refraction tables, sun sights could not be trusted until the sun rose 20º above the horizon, which usually was between 8 and 9 a.m. locally. When conditions permitted--and as I approached Cape Horn in 1975, they didn’t for several days--I took a sight then and a second at local noon, combining the two for a running fix noon position.
With smooth seas and a clear horizon, I could trust that my position was accurate, though a pencil line on some charts was more than a nautical mile wide. In rougher conditions, it was acceptable to be within a five mile radius. Compared to a few feet/meters with GPS, this seems enormous; but in practice it only meant that I needed to keep a close watch for an extra hour or two when approaching land, something any sensible sailor would do anyway.
In addition to a sextant, celestial navigation requires exact time. Each three second error in timing a sight will result in a one mile error in position at the Equator.
When I started crossing oceans, precise time was usually obtained by signals received on a Zenith TransOceanic Radio the size of a small suitcase that required, if I remember correctly, nine ‘D’ batteries.
You also need sight reduction tables. I used H.O. 249, the simplified Air Sight Reduction tables developed during WWII.
The yearly Nautical Almanac.
A navigation protractor.
Dividers.
A pencil.
A chart.
And a chart table.
GANNET doesn’t have a chart table or any other kind of table or any flat surface big enough for a chart.
I’ll figure something out.

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Plans to anti-foul GANNET tomorrow have been foiled by the weather--thunderstorms are predicted--and by my evil eye, which is going to require more surgery. I’m delaying that until after GANNET’s scheduled launch on May 5, but have to go for a pre-op examination tomorrow, my third visit to a medical facility this week. My right eye as anchor.

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Having become addicted to sanding, I got my fix yesterday by sanding and water-sealing the deck on our small balcony.

Evanston: peat; jib and mizzen

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:45:59 -0500

I knew there was something else I wanted to photograph yesterday; but it was not until I opened the liquor cupboard for something to sip after dinner that I remembered.
My agents are everywhere, seeking peaty beverages.
Last week, Ron emailed me: sitting in Carmel and saw this: Finian’s Five Provinces Irish Whiskey. Wine Enthusiast Rating: 93. Recommended for peat lovers, as well as peat novices who want to see what all the fuss is about. This blended whisky has a vibrant deep gold color, yeasty, baked apple aromas and a smoky, lingering flavor. More sipping equals more smoke, but it’s still not overdone—it just wafts over the vanilla in an inviting way.
I had not previously heard of Finian’s, but found it an aisle over from the Laphroaig at our local liquor store last weekend and brought home a bottle of each.
To those of us whose favorite liquid is 10 year old Laphroaig, Finian’s is not peaty. But then compared to 10 year Laphroaig, not much is.
I find the vocabulary of wine and liquor criticism absurd. No smoke. No apples. No vanilla. Little peat. And no deep gold color. Finian’s is, in fact, a pleasingly light gold. It is also pleasingly drinkable, and at $27 a bottle in the Illinois flatlands where Laphroaig 10 year goes for almost twice that, may be the best whiskey I’ve tasted for its price. From time to time the west side of the Irish Sea will now get some of my custom.
Thanks, Ron.

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Steve Earley went sailing Sunday in his Welsford Pathfinder, SPARTINA, off Norfolk, Virginia. (Scroll down to “Just What I Needed”) On a sunny day, the wind was a bit stronger than predicted, gusting into the low 20s, and Steve lowered his mainsail and kept SPARTINA moving at above six knots under jib and mizzen, a perfect combination on a small open boat.
I know what that is like. It is wonderful. Sitting here in this landlocked living room, I can feel it. The balance is perfect. The little boat flies.
If I am still around a few years from now, after sailing GANNET around the world, I’m going to buy an open boat--for me it probably should be a Drascombe Lugger--and sail it in Steve’s Virginia waters and along the North Carolina outer banks.