|
|
Spent the night on Walkabout. Jay and Barbara invited me and Zsanic to stay on their boat while we were up in southport instead of staying on La Bon Vie. Being a bigger boat and with less people spread out it was nice. 🙂 also the air conditioning didn’t hurt.
We helped Jay bring Walkabout to the fuel dock in the morning but had issues with the prop. He just about didn’t have any maneuverability because of the oyster and barnacle growth on the 3 bladed prop. The water is very clean compared to the Cokina Harbor back in little river so I volunteered to go look at the prop after we got to the fuel dock. It was bad. There was about one inch of solid oysters on each side of all the blades. Instead of pushing the boat forward as the blades cut through the water it was more like the prop was a rough club just beating the water. We couldn’t find a decent scraper so jay handed down the stainless barbecue spatula. It actually worked better than any other scraper I have ever tried to use. The big long handle gave you a good grip and allowed you to keep your hands farther away from the oysters, and the big spatula end did a great job of scraping the oysters and barnacles off and stood up the the hard pounding of driving it along the blades and against the hard shells. Afterward the difference in maneuvering and handling was amazing.
Spent the day motoring to southport for the race on saturday. We had hoped to sail but the wind was just not there. Most of the day the ocean was so flat you could see the clouds reflected in it.
Permanent link to this post (41 words, 0 images, estimated 10 secs reading time)
It took me a while to get to where I could write about this. It still leaves me feeling sick, stressed out and enraged.
Friday was Zsanic’s birthday and I took her, my sister and mother to see “Get Smart” at the Coastal Grand Mall In Myrtle Beach, SC. We parked at the far end of the row right in front of the movie theater entrance. Three hours later when we came out my car was gone. Stolen.
It’s a strange feeling, maybe the best description is surreal. Zsanic and my Mother had ridden with me and my sister brought her car. So we walked out of the mall and hugged my sister good bye and then the three of us walked to my car… well where my car had been.. as we were standing there looking for it I didn’t really think “oh my car has been stolen”. Instead it was “I thought my car was here. I must have parked it one row over.” So I walked over a row and looked. No car. I came back and thought real hard about where I had left it and remembered to within a couple of spaces where I thought I had parked it. When I came in to park another car took the first space I was going to park in and I ended up parking a couple spaces down and across from them. It left an impression on all of us in the car about where we had parked. finally after about 10 minutes of searching just in case we were all crazy I admitted to myself that the car had been stolen. 30 minutes later Zsanic was still denying that it could have been stolen. She kept saying “were just looking to hard and missing it”. I can’t deny that emotionally I felt the same way. It just couldn’t have happened therefore I was missing it. Logically though.. well the car had been stolen.
I went out on Valkyr with Angela and Zsanic yesterday. We were planning to go sailing but everyone on the boat was tired and the weather was really kicking. I would have been an challenging time sailing so we all voted to just anchor out behind Bird Island and grill some steaks and sausage. 🙂 It was the right choice!!!! The wind started out about 20 knots and we were gusting to 30 knots by the end of the day. It would have been some fun sailing but a lot of work.
We spent most of the day at anchor watching the antics of the power boaters out there. To be honest they just about stressed us out a few times. Several came real close to cutting our anchor line with their props. A group of 3 and then 4 boats that were rafted up drug their anchor about 40 yards and never even noticed till will told them. They finally stopped dragging after three of the four boats put down an anchor.
Another topic on a web forum that I got to thinking about had to do with regulation of pleasure boats to protect people. This conversation ranged rather far abroad into topics of gun control and personal responsibility. I defiantly have opinions on these subjects and ended up writing a little mini response. It is not complete or comprehensive but I wanted to keep it around. One day maybe I will come back and expand on it some.
The attitude that we should protect people from themselves by creating
laws is becoming a huge problem in just about every 1st world country
I’ve heard about. It is slowly taking away our right to participate in
activity’s that have any risk at all.
I was recently reading a yahoo group post about kindle etiquette in looking at books in a local bookstore such as barnes and nobles and then purchasing the book on your kindle from amazon.com. I really got into my musing about the appropriateness of this and wrote my musings down for what they are worth.
The mega book store chains have just about killed the smaller book
stores at this point. Used book stores are just about gone in general
though I will admit there are exceptions. When I was a kid 30 years
ago we had 4 or 5 used bookstores in my area, there are none left now.
We used to have about 5 different chain stores in this area 15 years
ago.. Now only Barnes and Noble and Books a Million are left. The
kindle and the generations of devices that will follow it will kill
the big chains also unless they somehow capture a piece of the market
and change with it.
This is a preview of Kindle, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and how it all mixes up. . Read the full post (923 words, 0 images, estimated 3:42 mins reading time)
These are saying that I have coined over the years. As far as I know they are original to me. If you know me some of them are funnier than is apparent, usually at my expense 🙂
I never grew up, I just learned how to pay bills.
I’ve cashed enough fun checks to cover the blame bill.
No games just life
Individuals seek simplicity and structure
groups seek structure and create complexity
Over time complexity increases geometrically
Ok everyone.. the mythical 2007 Stede Bonnet video that I have been talking about is finally done. After 20+ man hours of editing, weird technical difficulties etc… it is finally here. So enjoy. For those of you that were there if you want the large high quality version let me know and I will get you a cd or dvd with it on it. That version is a little big to stream from the web.
Update.. later the same day… ok I really didn’t like the small version of the film.. to much detail and quality was lost and it was still 26 megs in size.. given that only people with broadband are going to be able to see it anyway I’m bumping the quality up significantly. It is now 640×480 and 30 frames a second and 68 megs in size.. much much better. If you have a dial up connection and want to see this then you should probably just click the download link before going to bed and watch it on your computer in the morning. With middle of the road DSL it streams very well for me. So anyone with a decent cable modem or DSL connection should be able to view it fine.
Well it’s mid December so it should be winter.. but with average temps in the 70’s it has been feeling like very nice spring/fall weather. I just couldn’t resist the invitation to go sailing on Valkyr. Not a lot of wind today but enough for a steady 3.5 to 4.5 knots of boat speed. The ocean was almost flat with just a few ripples from a stronger gust or two. We just set the sails and balanced her out and didn’t really even have to touch the helm for long periods of time. We lazed around on deck with the warm sun on our faces. The perfect day with just a bare hint of cool in the air with enough sun to warm us while we watched the dolphins jump out of the ocean under a clear blue sky.
We had a great day sailing back on Sunday. Broad to beam reach with winds 15 gusting to 20.. Valkyr was moving like a freight train.. nothing could stop her. Jerry on his Catalina 36 was having to work just to keep in sight of us. We gradually pulled away from them over the course of the day.
A pirate boat isn’t a pirate boat with out its own pirate flag.
101191
Independence at the beginning of day lead us out the shortcut on the south side of the capefear inlet.101206
Well the sad truth is that I didn’t take a single solitary picture out on the water during the race. 🙁 however here a few from before and after the race.
Angela talking to Jerry and his crew of pirates on Independence his catalina 36
101025
Miriam the pirate babe on the dock.
101065
Miriam and Dave
101035
101030
the dread pirates Carle and Simms in a standoff.
101045
Pirate Captn. Batchelder.
101005
Friday I went up the ICW with Angela, Zsanic and Sailor the cat, on Valkyr. First thing before leaving the dock we had issues with the engine not pumping raw water again. It was looking like we were not going to go for a bit, but Richard came over and saved the day. He found that the anti-siphon valve on the raw water cooling side of the engine was no good. So we bypassed that quickly and were ready to go. We still left the dock in time to make the 10 o’clock opening of the Sunset Beach bridge.
It was a rainy overcast day with us all bundled up in foul weather gear the whole way.
|
|
Recent Comments