frogma

Sunny Today, Hot Tamale

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Had a wonderful, splendid, and delicious paddle today, courtesy of the Paddling Chef (and my brand-new very favorite neighborhood tamale vendor, too)!

Hooray!

More details tomorrow.

Arrival of the USS New York

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:43:00 +0000

The USS New York, the new USN ship which was built, in part, with scrap steel from the World Trade Center, has arrived in her namesake city, where she will be commissioned on Saturday, November 7th.

Tugster Will was fortunate enough to be invited to ride out to greet her on the USCG cutter Sturgeon Bay, and has done a marvelous series of posts about the day.

Enjoy.

My favorite of all the pictures was this one. The background is where the WTC used to stand.

NYC Halloween from the Sidelines.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:30:00 +0000

Ah, quick, just popping this up on my lunch break, before it's too late, this has been sitting in drafts since Saturday!
************************************

Sidelines? Maybe even more like out by the refreshment stands. Ah well.

This is a city that loves Halloween. The heart of the NYC Halloween hoopla is always the big parade in the Village. The costumes are amazing and creative & run the gamut from sublime to the ridiculous, tons of fun to watch, but it's always a jam-packed mob scene of exactly the sort that, combined with being very fond of heading home after work & not leaving Brooklyn on weekends, makes me tend to skip the whole thing.

This year, since I had to work, I did bring my camera. Figured that if I could wrap up enough, I'd reward myself with a photographic foray into the freakiness.

Didn't happen, too much work to do - but even without going after it, I still saw a good bit of Halloween fun just getting to & from work.

People sure have fun with it here.

On the subway. The demon was pushing a stroller, btw.

In a shop window. Actually this could just be a normal weekend attention-getter at Lululemon, local funky cosmetics vendor Ricky's had various men walking in high heels on a treadmill in their window for weeks this summer, but I bet the guy is not normally wearing a lucha libra mask.

The party's over...

Antipodean Blogging!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:49:00 +0000

Hey, I've been tagged!

I'd like to say I can't remember the last time I got tagged, but I can, because I still feel bad for just plain not doing 'em. I wanted to, but my life just gets a little crazy from time to time - hardly have time sometimes to do the posts I think of & would like to do myself, let alone the posts somebody else would like me to do!

But when somebody reached out to tag ne from far away in Australia (hi Chosha!), and it turned out to be a pretty simple tag, I decided to play!

The way it works is basically this: Excluding the person who tagged you (because that would just be silly) you find the person on your blogroll (or if you don't have a blogroll, the blogs you like to browse) who is the farthest away from you. You can use one of the myriad distances-between-cities tools you can find on Google (I liked this one) to do this.

You link to them, and you link back to the person who linked to you.

You give a few statistics, and that's all there is to it! Not bad!

The idea is that a person could follow the links back to the originator of the game (who I think may be just a couple of states south of me here in NY).

I was pretty sure that for me, excluding Chosha, that was going to be FH20, the Kuching Kayaker himself.

But I was wrong. Turns out that Singapore is a hair's-breadth (speaking on a global scale) farther away, and that's the place that Full Moon's Huey calls home.

But alas, Huey hasn't posted since July. Looks like work was getting tough for him. I can sure understand that.

FH20, on the other hand, posted last week. Mwahahahaaaaa.

So I'm going to tag the runner up! FH20, want to play?

I'll just close with the requested statistics:

The distance from Brooklyn, USA, to Kuching, Malaysia is:

9,517 miles
15,316 km
OR
8,270 nautical miles (that wasn't part of the original request but since FH20 & I are both boaters, I thought that was appropriate).

Distance now traveled by this tag:

29,328 miles
or
47,200 km

Now I just wish I had the know-how to set up a shared map where the progress of the tag could be tracked. That would be pretty cool. Something like this, I guess.

Oh, and in case you were curious - the actual winner won by all of about 50 miles. Singapore is around 9570 miles from Brooklyn.

New New York State Life Jacket Law In Effect TODAY!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:27:00 +0000

And now, time for a Frogma Public Service Announcement:

The period of the year during which NY State's new life jacket law is in effect begins today, Sunday, November 1st.

From today until Saturday, May 1st, 2010, if you are venturing out in any pleasure craft meauring less than 21 feet in length, you must be wearing a properly fitted life jacket.

I just noticed an odd inaccuracy in the press release I had posted here in September. It stated that the new law was that "starting Nov. 1, kayakers, canoeists and all those aboard motorboats under 21 feet must wear Coast Guard-approved personal flotation devices while on lakes, the ocean or other waterways."

They actually got it right in the first paragraph, where they referred to the law as applying to "everyone in all small pleasure craft". The law also applies to rowboats, sailboats, Adirondack guide boats, pirogues, sampans, sculls, punts, coracles, curraghs, chokkibune*, etc. - if it's a boat and it's under 21 feet, it's included.

And wearing your PFD during cold-water time isn't just the law - it's a really good idea, and it could just save your life.

Here's to a safer winter on the water!

*"Chokkibune" is the only name in that list that I didn't pull straight from my own head & is probably unfamiliar to most readers (with the possible exception of Pandabonium). A Chokkibune is an Edo-era Japanese water taxi, and I got the name out of a fascinating article, Building Traditional Japanese Boats, which I found on AmateurBoatBuilding.com.

Happy Halloween!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:11:00 +0000

later note - check out the scary one at Love and Coconuts! EEEK!

even later, Note #2 - Total seagoing arachnoid bizarreness at Proper Course). What the heck is that?

Note 2a, same time as Note #2: Yes, I am checking in on the blog quite a bit today. I'm actually at work, sigh, having a terrible time concentrating but finishing what I came in to do will make next week infinitely easier.

Small (and HIGHLY entertaining) World!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:49:00 +0000

Janna Cawrse Esarey!
Janna Cawrse Esarey!
Janna Cawrse Esarey!

I've been seeing that name a lot lately, as she's been promoting her book, The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife & was recently spreading the word about a reading she was doing in the Bay Area among some of the sailing bloggers around there (and Tillerman too, although she realized pretty quickly that he was on the wrong coast).

I thought this sounded like a book I'd enjoy & on a whim, I left a joking email on her blog at the Seattle P.I. asking when she'd be reading in Brooklyn. I then posted a post about a kayak race held on a fearfully windy, cold, and rainy day, then grabbed my bag and my green tomatoes (I had a bunch from my garden & TQ has some good recipes I wanted to try) and headed out to hop on a westbound Greyhound.

Didn't spend a lot of time online -- TQ & I see a little less of each other than we used to when we were 2 hours apart -- but I did see it when Janna left a comment asking if I'd like to get a copy of her book to review.

Well - heck, yeah! was my immediate response, but I didn't email her back right away. Figured I'd do it when I got back. And then I got back, and had to hit & hold a breakneck pace at work to make up for being away, and there was little food poisoning episode one night just to make life even more festive (3:00 am and I'm up for an hour while every ounce of stuff that was in me came back out - after which I was fine & had no excuse for staying home), and somehow emailing Janna just completely slipped my mind.

Good thing my college alumni association sent me a reminder today!
*****************************
From: Whitman College
To: "Whitman College Alumni, Parents, and Friends"
Subject: Whittie News Correction
Date: Oct 30, 2009 3:18 PM

The link from the previous Whittie News email for the author reading by Janna Cawrse Esarey '94 will misdirect you to a past event in Portland. The actual event is November 7 in Seattle at Elliott Bay Books.
****************************
I graduated the year before she started.

Funny enough to take a quick break from my forecasting & share here!

Of course, I emailed her right away, and one of these days, yes, there will be a book review.

I bet it's going to be good, too.

Big Elmer, Leroy, Mark A. and Charlie H.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Noooo! Don't Scoop!

Just a few more pictures from the Allegheny River tonight. Nothing like milking an entire week of posts out of a half-day paddle!

That's the clamshell grab from the dredge barge Big Elmer that's threatening (not really) TQ in that picture.

I'd mentioned that there was still a little industry up here, although not enough to warrant locks being open on Thursday -- this outfit, Glacial Sand and Gravel, looked to be the main one on a stretch of the Allegheny that's primarily lined by the locals' summer cabins. Well, summer trailers, really, this isn't the wealthiest part of the country - nice trailers, though, clean, well kept -

Oh, here, in fact I'll show you. Here's a picture I took because this was, hands-down & by far, the grandest place we saw on this stretch of the Allegheny.

Take a closer look at the neighboring place, though:

That's pretty typical of places that line this section ("pool" is what they call the stretches between dams) of the Allegheny. Not half bad, huh? Doesn't it look like a fine place to go kick back & relax in the summertime? I think so. Porch swing. Big tree. River right there. Mmm. Nice. Not everybody had quite this much land, but they all looked pretty appealing.

OK, back to the industrial bits -

In the first picture, did you notice the recycling? There's a whole stretch along here that's bulkheaded with barges that had outlived their usefulness as floating goods transport. Ran 'em up on the bank, sank 'em & there they stay.

Some of them had some good sized trees growing on them, they'd been where they were a while.

Leroy. Brown, but not the one with the song. This one's a gravel barge. Still in use, and not as a bulkhead.

Tugs Mark A & Charlie H, tied up to Leroy. Maybe ready to head downstream on Friday, when the locks are open.

And that's it for tonight, and I'm just about done with my Allegheny River pictures. I just get such a kick out of paddling someplace totally new and different.

Although I'm also excited that I might go to paddle in an old familiar place this weekend - the club is doing a trip up along the NJ Palisades. That always used to be one of my favorite paddles back when I was storing my boats on the Hudson, especially in the fall. Had a great hike there with TQ last fall, and it would be awfully nice to get back there in a boat again.

Only thing that makes it a "might" is I'm having a very very very long week at work, and I don't know if I'll be able to roust myself out of bed to meet at the club at 7:30 am - even with the clock switch.

Wonder if anybody could be cajoled into a stop for Japanese goodies on the drive home. That would be quite a motivator. Somehow, though, I doubt that would be quite as appealing to the rest of the gang.

Dam dam dam.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:28:00 +0000

Low tech lives!

Small Craft Signal Line, Lock 7 on the Allegheny River.

Sadly, though...

We were there on Thursday.

And last weekend marked the last days of operations for locks 5 though 9 for 2009.

Ah well.

Maybe next year.

DAM!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:46:00 +0000

(nyuck nyuck nyuck)

speaking of empathy...

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:56:00 +0000

And as long as I'm being cranky -

Boy. Can you even begin to imagine what it would be like to be a Jewish kid at this school?

I actually don't think I can.

Midwesterners are nicer than New Yorkers.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:06:00 +0000

Where did that come from?

Well - very sadly, DaveO, of The Lake is the Boss, and Silbs, of Silbs Says have both been posting about a local paddler - an actual paddling companion of Silbs', and a paddler who knew what he was doing - who disappeared one night last week on Lake Superior. His car was left in the parking lot where he launched & his kayak & lifejacket washed ashore.

I'm not going to go on much about this because what can you say about something like that. Always gives me the chills a bit to read about any boating accident, especially a kayaking accident - it's true that there's nothing like messing about in boats, but boy, there's always some risk there & something like this just drives that home, doesn't it? My heart goes out to all his friends & family & I hesitate to say more for fear of saying something dumb.

But it really hit me, as I was looking at some of the comments attached to articles -

Maybe Midwesterners really are a little more decent that New York people in some ways.

Seems like any time you see an article about a boating tragedy in the Daily News or Post here (not so much the Times), you end up seeing some just shockingly mean comments. Schoolyard bully namecalling. "Idiot", "moron", and worse. Words that just shouldn't be left there on a public forum, where maybe people who cared about whoever's been lost can stumble over them & hurt themselves even worse. But there they are, and there the editors let them stay.

The commenters in Minnesota? Well, I think it was DaveO who once used the term "Minnesota nice". Or maybe Silbs.

Yes, there were comments questioning the safety of solo kayaking, etc., etc. But I didn't see ONE SINGLE COMMENT in which the sort of derogatory language that you see so much of in the online comments of the NYC tabloids was used.

I don't know if it's the posters, or if it's that midwestern newspaper editors pay closer attention to who's saying what in the comments - either way, it's just nice to see a little old-fashioned decency when it's really, really needed.

Anyways.

Terribly sad story going on up there. I hope...well, of course it would be wonderful to read that he made it to shore & was waiting for a rescue all along. Don't we all always wish for that ending when we hear of something like this?

But if it doesn't end up with that happiest ending, I do hope that at least enough can be found out to answer the questions that the people who cared for him are left with.

Seeing Spots!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:54:00 +0000

Or,
Ladybug, ladybug,
ladybug, ladybug,
ladybug, ladybug,
ladybug, ladybug,
You'uns all fly away home!

(btw Dennis G, thanks for the end of the folk rhyme, I never knew it went on past "Your house is on fire, your children are gone". Acturally I think the version I said ran "Your house is on fire, your children alone".

Anyhow - as I mentioned, it was the time when ladybugs are looking for a warm place to spend the winter.

According to the Ladybug Lady website, they are drawn both by warmth & light colors - both of which houses provide.

Here's a foot or so of the foundation of TQ's place out there.

The variety of spots really amazed me. No, they don't actually indicate the age of the ladybug - it's all just variations on the same theme.

Sort of fun seeing them all together like this! Couldn't resist trying to do a Spot Spectrum:

Spotless Lady

Almost more black than red!

These are all probably one kind, but there are other species & some of them are actually black with red spots, or even all black - pictures of those are, of course, available at Ladybug Lady!

Careful...

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:58:00 +0000

When they spread their elytra like that, it means they're about to...

AIIIIEEEE!!!

Just kidding. Multitudinous opportunities for ladybug close-ups this week, visiting TQ in PA & it is Ladybug Swarm Season, when they are all desperately looking for a nice warm place to hibernate.

Inside the house would suit them fine. Running joke all week -

"Oh, wow, look, a ladybug!"

"NO! That's impossible."

Hey, we are easily amused.

Mayor's Cup Photos

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Album now up on Picasa.

Mayor's Cup Starts

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:51:00 +0000

The weather was EVERY bit as nasty as forecast. The Coast Guard & the NYPD Harbor Patrol wouldn't let everyone race, but the elite racer were permitted to go.

As you'll see, these were really some amazing paddlers.

Even some of these folks didn't make it around. No shame in that, though. It was really filthy out there!

Here are the starts - my station on the course was at 23rd street on the East River so I did have time to watch before I headed out!

Tandem start. BTW, you know how I'd said there were only 3 women in the race? There had to have been at least a few more than that - the outrigger canoe is actually a 2-woman team. One of the more fun moments of a course marshall stint that was VERY long and wet and cold, several hours of sitting on a dock at 23rd street on the East River was when a friend of theirs turned up by bike (in that weather!) to cheer them on.

Here's the surfski start. The guys in the front row, with the identical Epic V12 surfskis, are Team USA (red-tipped bow, blue deck, white star graphics), and Team Holland (blue tipped bow, orange deck, white windmill-sail graphic).

Greg Barton is in there somewhere!

I did end up using a lot of the extra stuff I brought - I'd said I was bringing them for cold wet paddlers, and we did have one paddler come out who didn't say no to a mug of hot cider while the course marshall with the car went to retrieve his vehicle -- but I also definitely used them for cold wet me!

yikes yikes yikes - Mayor's Cup Forecast, v2:

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:08:00 +0000

GALE WARNING IN EFFECT THROUGH LATE SUNDAY NIGHT

TONIGHT
NE WINDS 10 TO 15 KT...BECOMING N 15 TO 20 KT AFTER
MIDNIGHT. GUSTS UP TO 35 KT. WAVES AROUND 2 FT. RAIN. VSBY 1 TO 3 NM AFTER MIDNIGHT. TIDAL DEPARTURES OF AROUND 2 FT EXPECTED DURING HIGH TIDE IN THE EVENING.

SUN
N WINDS 20 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 40 KT. WAVES 2 TO 4 FT.
RAIN. VSBY 1 TO 3 NM. TIDAL DEPARTURES OF 2 TO 2 1/2 FT EXPECTED DURING HIGH TIDE IN THE MORNING.

yippee yippee yippee

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:23:00 +0000

Just around midnight...

Just finished tying up the last of just about a hundred loose ends...

Just putting my sneakers on...

just getting ready to leave the office...

VACATION! YAAAAAY!

Mayor's Cup Forecast

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:33:00 +0000

Well, ick, yesterday's way-up-the-Hudson report from Dennis G. Moonstruck was that it was SNOWING. We have a gale warning today. A trip to the Norwalk Islands that the Sebago cruising committee was planning for Saturday was called off yesterday, and here's what our Mayor's Cup racers & volunteers have to look forward to:

SUN
N WINDS 15 TO 20 KT...DIMINISHING TO 10 TO 15 KT IN THE
AFTERNOON. WAVES 2 TO 3 FT. RAIN.

Highs in the upper 40's, lows in the lower 40's.

I'm bundling up. I don't know yet if I will be at one of the spots where racers can pull out or not, but I really do think I'm going to take along a couple of thermoses of hot cider - a little one for me, and a big one just in case I have any cold paddlers coming off the water in desperate need of a hot drink.

Brrrrr. So much for my visions of a pleasant morning sitting by the river, watching all the boys go by.

Wo bist der wahine?

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:17:00 +0000

Well...there's lots over there, of course.

But I was thinking more of here, in NYC, this Sunday, in the Mayor's Cup.

I'm volunteering this year, and it's a pretty awesome field, I may even go get a new camera in honor of the event (I've been playing with the idea of upgrading anyways), and I'm looking forward to everything except getting my non-morning-person self into Manhattan by 5 am.

But I just found out that although the mens' field is spectacular (particularly notable - Team Holland & Team USA slugging it out in honor of the Henry Hudson Quadricentennial) -

Of a field of 135 racers -

3 are women, and none of them are coming from a distance that can't be measured in city blocks. They're all good paddlers, but I guess I'm a little bummed out to find out how little pull this race seems to have for women racers.

Remember my September post, You Go, Alex? I didn't go into a lot of depth there, and I expect that post probably didn't make a lot of sense to anyone who wasn't familiar with surfski racing - but it's been a pet peeve of mine for a while that an awful lot of coverage of kayak racing really sort of doesn't mention women, even though there just have to be some good female racers out there.

So it was just really neat to see an Alexandra in there among the usual boyz.

I guess this time I won't complain too much when there isn't a lot of coverage of the women, knowing that all of 2% of the field is female -- although hint hint hint to any journalist stumbling across this, hmmm wouldn't that be an interesting take on the Mayor's Cup, what it's like to be one of 3 local women competing in a field of international elite men?

Still, I am a little bummed out to find out that I'm not going to get to see an Alex, or a Nikki Mocke (US surfski champion), or our own noted local speedsters Elizabeth O'Connor or Stefani Jackenthal in action. Would be fun, too, if a couple of the racers whose blogs I sometimes follow, like Sandy Bottom, a Purple Mirage, found this to be something for which they'd like to turn out - always fun seeing your home waters as seen through someone else's eyes.

Ah well. It's still a young race. Maybe down the road.

My First Dinghy Race!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:18:00 +0000

note to Tillerman & any sundry Tillerheads who might be stopping by - This is NOT a "less is more" post. This is more like a "More is more" post. Or maybe just more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and blah blah blah blah blah. In short, it's long. There, now that I've cleared that up:

So yes, as I mentioned, I went in my very first dinghy race yesterday.

How did I do? I didst suck mightily! Yea, verily, forsooth!

But somehow I still had fun, and an inkling that there might be a lot more fun to be had if I gave it another shot sometime.

First & foremost, I was just thrilled to get a third sail in before it gets too cold for me. In the past, the Sebago Cup, held in early September, has been the traditional end of the general sailing season. A few of the hardcore Laser racers would keep going for a bit longer, but as far as organized, scheduled stuff, it was Sebago cup & then done.

But this year Holly & Jim found themselves co-chairing a sailing committee that went through a growth spurt, and by popular demand, the racing season was extended into the fall with a Sunday series.

So when a Saturday morning plan fell through & left me with a free day for catching up on sleep & housework, and I started thinking that Sunday would be a nice boating day instead, there was that option.

I did need a very little bit of arm-twisting. The folks who've joined the sailing committee this year have been really enthusiastic about the racing. I had 2 concerns - 1. I didn't want to be the knucklehead who doesn't know the rules & fouls everything up & 2. the new sailors have not only been doing a lot of sailing, they've been doing a lot of work on the boats, and if enough of those people turned up, I sort of feel like they should have dibs. Besides, I was also thinking it would be a lot of fun to go out in my kayak & take pictures.

I got the arm twist I needed, though (thanks Tracy!). Today's picture was taken on board the good sunfish Love Child (so named because she's circa 1970-something), heading down the Paerdegat & out to the racecourse, and that was the only picture I took until I got back.

I was too busy getting my okole wallopped after that. Literally & figuratively. Literally, because Love Child hasn't got a hiking strap, and it was pretty windy, so I was hooking my toes under the coaming & I'm just the right height, hiking that way, the gunwale hits right at the sitzbones. I had plenty of "reminders" of yesterday's fun today - especially every time I sat down. BTW, I think I just figured out, halfway through this paragraph, how I managed to bruise one of my big toes. I was puzzling over that all day.

That was all expected, though. I usually come back from sailing on a nice breezy day with a crop of bruises I have no recollection of actually getting.

But I wasn't expecting the figurative okole-walloping. At least not quite as badly as it happened.

I wasn't expecting to be spectacular. But I've done cruises with these folks, and done a reasonably good job of keeping up, even though my inner kayaker always makes me pinch (inner kayaker can't let go of the notion that the best way to get to someplace is to point the boat at it and go, works great in a kayak, not so good upwind in a sailboat).

But somehow - sheese - yesterday I just ended up feeling like one big Sail Fail.

The course was simple - 2 marks with a starting line right in the middle. The first 3 races were all just once around, upwind/downwind/upwind to finish, last race twice around.

My first race wasn't really all that bad. OK, my start was laughable. People thought I didn't realize we were starting, I was so far back from the start. But really, I meant to be exactly where I was. The beginning of every sailboat race I've ever watched (or even been in) has been a source of mystifying wonderment to me. Here's all these boats sort of sailing around, in no easily discernible pattern -

and yet as the time ticks down, order begins to emerge & when the final horn blows, boom, there they are in a line as neat as half a flock of migrating geese.

start demonstrated by the Cedar Point Yacht Club frostbite fleet, who are just getting warmed up (so to speak) right about now!

Well, I haven't been sailing that much this summer, I've never really practiced manuevering in close quarters with other boats, and I didn't want to be the wrong-way honker who "fowls" everything up, so I took the chicken's way out & just started way, way back.

But it wasn't a bad race after that. I didn't get to the windward mark as efficiently as everyone else, but I got there; I did fine on the downwind leg & in fact caught one of the other novices who'd had something go wrong in his leeward mark rounding. Woohoo, my very first dinghy race & I wasn't DFL!

My starts got better after that.

Unfortunately, everything else got worse!

It wasn't even not knowing the rules. I was never close enough to anyone at the mark to worry about that; all I needed was the basics. Those, I do know, although you know what Tillerman was saying about DINGHY SAILORS SHOUTING in the comments? Well, I did get shouted at once but it wasn't quite the sort of shout that Tillerman was describing. One of our more experienced sailors was flying towards me on her Laser at a clip & trajectory that, if maintained, was going to result in a spectacular T-bone. Now, she is a good sailor & rationally, I knew she wasn't going to hit me, and I should have known that being on a starboard tack & her on port, I had right of way, but she was closing fast enough that I got a little rattled & started falling off - well, she saw me flinch & yelled "YOU HAVE RIGHT OF WAY!"

Oh. shoot. yeah! I knew that!

Actually that was a good shout because I'd gotten a little disconcerted about all the other boats around me & that got me to remember that, right, there are rules, and everybody out here knows them & as long as I was following them too, I could trust them not to hit me (and me not to hit them).

And as I said in the comments, I did manage to not break anything, or crash into anyone, or anything.

No. It wasn't the rules. I knew what I needed to know for where I was.

It was getting to the @*#&in' windward mark that was my problem!

As I said, the first race, I went a little wide. I thought I'd get better at judging where & when to tack. I didn't! Not one bit! I would be sailing along thinking "OK, I will sail to up there, and then when I tack I should be able to make it to the mark without tacking again", and then I would tack, and then by the time I got everything properly sheeted in...ARRRRGH!...I'd find myself on a course that was going to take me, like, fifteen boatlengths to the wrong side of the mark.

I would have suspected some clever hazing ritual for the newbie racer except that the role of the elusive windward mark was generally being played by Green Can #13, a channel marker unlikely to move unless encouraged to do so by a Coast Guard buoy tender with a large crane on board, or possibly a hurricane. Neither of those was present, so the conclusion I was forced to reach, as I found myself having a worse and worse time getting to it each time we went around, was basically the one I announced this morning -

i.e., I suck.

Certainly a different animal from a nice cruise around the bay, this racing thing.

I did actually manage to come in not-last twice. The second time involved someone capsizing right before the start.

My last start was actually encouraging. I was getting a little better sense of how fast the boat covered distance, and when we were down to the last minute, and I was heading towards the starting line & feeling like I was going to get there too soon, I just fell off a little bit & then came up & was across the line within a few seconds of the starting horn. Whee! I did something right!

But then, dunno, maybe it was the shock of finding myself somewhere towards the front, or the disorientation of finding myself without a lot of people to follow for the first minute, but somehow I managed to get more discombobulated than I had in any of the other races. This was the twice-around, and everybody else was heading in by the time I was trying to get to the blasted can the second time, and without other people to follow, and getting more and more frustrated, it took me forever to get there...and then there, I thought I was going to finally get it, just one more frickin' tack...and I looked over my shoulder to spot the leeward mark & discovered that Jim had hauled anchor & was heading over to pick up the mark. Oops. Yup, all racing was to end at 2, and it was 2, and so my last race of the day was converted from a big fat DFL to a big fat DNF (Did Not Finish).

And then it took me ninety-seven years (or maybe it was ninety-seven tacks, it was a LONG time, though) to sail back to the club. And I walked my boat under the bridge. See that bridge in the first picture? It's something of a point of pride among Sebago sailors that they like to SAIL under it. Downwind it's no problem, but upwind is challenging. Well, the wind was blowing pretty much straight down the basin, and the ebb was kicking in too, and I was tired and getting cold and decided that stupid Green Can #13 had provided quite enough challenges for one day and so I sailed over to the side, stepped out in the shallows & walked under the bridge, then jumped back in and tacked ninety-seven more times (or more years, or something) & FINALLY got back to the dock, feeling very, very Poky Little Puppyish.

But I did get back.

And you're probably wondering where the inkling of fun was in all of this?

Well, there was one half-decent race at the start.

There was one half-decent start at the end.

And in between there were some moments when I had the boat moving along quite nicely. As often as not, they'd end just as they were beginning (felt a bit like the Millennium Falcon not quite making it into light speed - oooh, oooh, here we go, here we GO, HERE WE chungchunkchugclunk...awwww rats) but the snippets were fun.

There was the realization that the rules of the road actually work. Not that I didn't know that they did, but it's a little different knowing that in theory & then actually seeing how they work when you're in the middle of a bunch of boats operating in close quarters.

And did I mention that it was a GLORIOUS day?

And then, at the end, there was an explanation of why everything had been so freakin' weird out there!

First clue was when Jim & Holly met me on the dock; Jim had been thinking of coming out to see how I was doing & Holly told him to just let me slug it out, and he did (and I'm glad), and Holly's comment upon my return was something like "So you made it, and now you've learned to curse the northwest wind".

And then there was a post race discussion, where Jim proceeded to describe the conditions & the sort of misery they could cause a sailor who didn't quite get what was going on - while Holly illustrated it on the chalkboard - and the amazing thing was how perfectly what he was describing, and she was illustrating, correlated with the absolutely baffling problems I had been running into trying to get to the windward mark!

Apparently the northwest wind is known around here for being one shifty bastard.

I had picked up on it being puffy, and hard to read, but you know how I'd said that the role of the windward mark was being played by green channel marker #13 at times?

It wasn't for the first race. For the first race, the windward mark was a Neversink race marker buoy.

For the second race, Jim decided to switch to the channel marker, because the wind had shifted.

Before the third race, the wind had shifted even further. Jim went out & moved the Neversink marker on past the channel marker to try to keep the course properly square to the wind. By the time he got back to the starting line, he said, the wind had shifted all the way back to where he'd had the mark in the first place!

So the green can just ended up being the windward mark for that one & the next one.

And that's why I was so completely fouled up. I was the unaware sailor & the course Holly drew on the board, showing the course taken by the boat of someone who lets the shifting wind draw them onto a course that won't work so well? That was the exact course I had sailed again and again and again until I just wanted to spit.

And then they talked about how a sailor who DID get what was going on could react to minimize the bad effects, and how a sailor who was really aware could actually turn those conditions to their advantage.

They didn't make it sound easy.

They did make it sound like something learnable, though.

Rough racing.

Great lesson.

Sure makes wish my Sundays weren't tied up for the rest of October, but there's always next year!

Hey Mister Tillerman!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:56:00 +0000

I raced this weekend!

Yes, in a dinghy!

And guess what -

I SUCK!

but...

(to be continued)

(ps toned down the shouting in the title - better, Tillerman?)

Cosmos

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:52:00 +0000

Garden's winding down, but it's not quite done.

Fall.

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Ready or not...

Ferry and Barque

noreply@blogger.com (bonnie) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Fisher's Island ferry Munnatamket and USCG cutter Eagle (training barque for the USCG Academy)
New London, Connecticut
3pm, Sunday 10/4/2009.

For some lovely close up shots & a key bit of the Eagle's history, pay a visit to Soundbounder.

I couldn't remember where I'd seen them, but a quick Google of "Horst Wessel" in blogs did the trick.