Drill baby drill... How's that working out for you?

As, what just may be the largest oil spill in history, reaches the Louisiana coast it's funny how those who have pushed for offshore drilling in a big way are... silent.




Not so silent way back when...

A great idea...

The readership of Boat Bits seems to have its fair share of new-to-cruising folk but what most folks may not be aware of is I am very big on reading various new-to-cruising blogs myself as they are often an excellent source for out-of-the-box ideas!

Sadly those who have been doing this gig for awhile tend to fall into the groove (I almost called it a rut) of the same old same... Newbies look at things with new eyes and that is a resource I am more than happy to mine!

Case in point... Zero to Cruising just made my day with their mod of a workmate. Simple, smart and such an obvious solution to adapting it to life on a boat that it is almost impossible to see it from the depths of the rut ...um, groove "So It Goes" is in...

Awesome!

AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH...

I woke up at 5:30 to the sound of a steady rain and reflected on the general idiocy of building a mast in a parking lot. Since I was reflecting on idiocy, my thoughts spiraled in a general "It's 5:30 in the morning and I can't sleep" kinda way...

They drifted to the state of Arizona, currently the leader in the idiocy poster boy contest, but that made me sad so my thoughts wafted towards that oil spill in the gulf which is visible from space and the idiot oil companies who fought to lower safety standards on rigs as they cut into profits... Which made me muse over just how much losing an oil rig and pouring 42,000 gallons of crude oil into the sea everyday is going cut into their profits...

That led me to President Obama's Eulogy for the coal miners who perished and how that the miners were "living the American Dream" but no one seems to mention that the owners of the mine were also living that "other" American dream of "profit over everything" ...

Man, I hate it when it rains...

A case where classic plastic makes sense...

As someone who suffers every once in awhile from cutting edge and go fast envy, I understand the appeal of wanting to go cruise in something high tech and FAST... Luckily these bouts only last a day or two before the go slow mode returns and all is Happyville!

The point is, I understand...

The truth of the matter is that slow is often faster than that ULDB with the canting keel and all the high tech goodies when it comes to the real world.  Don't believe me?

Over the years we have crossed paths with a very large number of Westsail 32's (called by many  WestSnails) and they, as a class have a pretty impressive collection of circumnavigations and pretty impressive passages. Built like tanks and conservatively rigged, they have a surprising habit of leaving port with much faster boats and ARRIVING with much faster boats... Hardly makes sense!

In my jaded view of things, I feel that if people would pay a bit more attention to their fairy tales and fables, we'd all be a lot better off as almost all needful knowledge of a practical nature is there for the taking. The fable that makes sense in this case is the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. The Westsail being the Tortoise and for the Hare simply insert whatever go-fast boat is flavor of the month...

It's as simple as that.

Speaking of go-fast flavors of the month... Abby Sunderland's Open 40 on the surface seems a clear winner as it has all the toys in one serious go-fast package while Jessica Watson's S&S 34  (a 1967 vintage design) is so... Well, the word pedestrian does come to mind.

These days an Open 40 will cost you in the vicinity of a couple of hundred thousand for a POGO which, while a great boat, is not really competitive in the sense that Open 40's are meant to be, to four or five hundred thousand for an Open 40 with some serious potential.

S&S 34's on the other hand, can be found for $10K to $60K, a small fraction of what an Open 40 might cost... Fact is, I'll wager that the spar on Abby Sunderland's boat cost quite a bit more than Ms Watson's whole boat and campaign.

The fact that Abby Sunderland has dropped out of the running by stopping for repairs is not much of a surprise as her boat has had various system problems most importantly the autopilot...

Jessica Watson and "Ella's Pink Lady" while somewhat bruised and battered have held up surprisingly well and are now on what I suppose is the home stretch...

Kinda says a lot that!

An awesome resource for cruisers...

One of the nice things about the USA is that in a lot of areas if we pay for it we get to get it for free... Charts in the US of A are public domain as well as NASA images, NOAA weather and suchlike because our tax dollars paid for them in the first place.

Sounds kind of fair...Though the last band of thieves in office made some serious efforts to make this free stuff we paid for (like NOAA weather) very expensive (given free to folks they liked so they could sell it to us)... Something to keep an eye on!

The US Government also has done much in the way of language education with its Foreign Service Institute and all of the official language courses and materials are also public domain. Many of them are available from FSI Language Courses. How neat is that?

As it happens, I like listening to language tapes mixed in to the iPod on the nightwatch mix. They help keep me awake and being able to ask for a beer in Thai, for instance, when we get to that part of the world opens all sorts of doors that are closed to folks who feel that everyone else should learn their language.




And you can hardly argue with FREE...

Oops... Best laid plans and a WTF... Mast project day 9

The plan was to line the various mold stations with double sided tape...

Cunning!

Well, not so much... The problem is it simply did not work as the tape did not stick to the molds very well or stick to the strips very well either. Well, unless you wanted them to not hold as in being able to shift a strip in which case they held like a Rottweiler on steroids.

Bummer! Did the unhappy dance and kicked stuff...

The trick to successful boat building and wood butchery is not to get too attached to your chosen plan of attack if it is not working for you. Over the years I have seen boatbuilders reduced to tears trying to get something that was obviously not happening to work. The thing is if it's fighting you go with a way where it does not...

So once I realized the tape was not helping I ripped it all off and went with the tried and true plastic sheeting at the mold stations and while it did not dispense with the need for clamping and adds a certain head banging element it does work.

Fiddly to be sure...

Barter... Or making money while you cruise... the chicken chronicles

Way back, when we first got into this sail-away-into-the-sunset gig, there was much discussion of helping make ends meet doing the barter thing. The idea that with a stock of fish hooks, fishing line and a cornucopia of t-shirts you could trade for the needful things in life and even make a profit process.

Over the years the subject still comes up from time to time with newbie folks and armchair sailors, but in truth, I have never met anyone who pulled it off. Maybe it is a different world, but when you are in the San Blas islands and they paddle out to sell you Molas the fact that they also come equipped these days with a credit card machine and take AMEX kind of puts a damper on trading a few fish hooks for the Mola idea...

A whole different world...

Then again, some folks in the USA think it is no bad idea to bring barter back in a big way as a way of dealing with the out of control health costs by putting it back on a barter level... Sort of a chicken standard.

As it happens, my brother-in-law has been raising chickens and building a chicken coop which is a project I've found very interesting and the odd "cunning plan" of livestock on "So It Goes" has flitted through my thoughts the last week or so...

The feline crew (Buffy and Willow) I think would be all over the idea as they are big fans of c-h-i-c-k-e-n and with the price of cat food being what it is, I can see a certain appeal in the overall budget.

Of course, figuring out the right size of chicken coop is no small feat as if it is going to provide for meals, trade goods and health care it becomes a rather significant project... scarily so!

As it turns out, the average cost per person of health care in the US of A is $7681 and as the current average cost of a chicken is $5.02, that means we would have to raise 1,530 chickens per person just to cover health care... YOWZA, we are going to need a bigger boat! For more on the cost of the whole chicken barter thing you might want to read it here.

So, obviously, turning "So It Goes" into a chicken farm would only work if I apply a Republican mindset to it and take collective leave of my senses... Damn, I was really looking forward to building a chicken coop.

Then again, I suppose there is still Chincilla Ranching

Earth Day...

Hmmm...

I noticed that my email today had no shortage of "Earth Day" come-ons of a nautical nature as Cruising Compass and others ran some content of a "green" nature... Well, if you can call running a couple ads touting sort of green stuff as content. The one bit of content which really was content was of the simplistic don't-throw-stuff-overboard sort of thing.

Of course, anyone dependent on advertising is not going to be doing any "get-in-your-face-don't-consume-more-than-you-need" hard hitting journalism or editorials, as that would fly in the face of selling you stuff and that, my friends, is what journalism is all about these days... getting you to buy stuff.

Getting you to buy stuff to be green is sort of... well, the words COUNTER PRODUCTIVE spring to mind.

If you really want to be green and do something good for old Mother Nature, try not replacing anything on your boat that does not need replacing... and by needing to be replaced means it no longer works and is really, really needed.

Yeah, I know that means you will have to have a GPS that does not also work as a DVD player, a VHF that does not keep phone numbers in memory, or that bigger display for the radar that doubles as a 3D entertainment center or whatever...

This whole sailing gig is not about buying stuff and consumption... Or at least it should not be. Some time ago, MadMariner/NavaGear did an article about good blogs to read and he included Boat Bits which I found both pleasing and depressing. The fact that he included me as a "boating gear blog" has made me re-examine what Boat Bits has been doing and to tell you the truth depressed me as the last thing Boat Bits wants to be is just another "go-buy-this-gear" sort of place to hang out. We can do better than that...

We need to do better than that.

The sad fact is that considering the sorry state of the world and the clusterfuck of problems facing us that we should be doing a whole lot more than rolling out the "don't throw stuff overboard", "use bio-degradeable soap",  and "use our advertisers folding prop" articles once a year on Earth Day and then pimping non essential gear and practices the rest of the 364 days of the year...

As the great Sam Cooke often sang, "A Change is Gonna Come" ... and things won't be the same old same down the line. If you think that we can all continue to have our cake and eat it too, I have a steel tower for sale in Paris you might be interested in.

On the other hand, if you are not as dumb as nails, get smarter about the very real problems and do the right thing.

Rant over for the moment...

Rain... Mast project day 7-8

So the mast mold is sorted out...

and today it is raining...

Bummer!

Books for the boat butcher/builder...

I really love good cookbooks and it occurred to me yesterday that I use boat building books much like I use cookbooks...

Which is to say that I use them more as a jumping off place or a thinking aid rather than an actual guide. A good boat building book or cookbook gets me thinking. Truth be told, I can't remember the last time I actually made a recipe to spec from a cookbook or did a project from a boat building book as described.

When I'm doing a boat project it is a normal state of affairs that the various books come off the shelf and as I leaf through them the actual project comes into focus and new ideas creep in which expands the horizon... Sort of a serendipitous approach if you will.

Bruce Bingham's "The Sailor's Sketchbook" is just such a book. Crammed with ideas of all sorts, it's almost impossible to thumb through the book without having a EUREKA moment or two. My copy has helped me build three boats and countless rehab and improvement projects. Fact is, I really have to get a new copy as the one I have is now held together with tape and epoxy... It's been used that much!

The next most used books onboard are the various Phil Bolger books on design, which always have a way of solving problems by simply not being the same old same...

Fred Bingham's "Boat Joinery and Cabinet Making" always gets a look through where most projects are concerned, as does George Buehler's "Buehler's Backyard Boatbuilding" and Parker's "The New Cold-Molding Boatbuilding" whose epoxy stained pages give silent testament to their needfulness.

The fact that I'm on my third copy of "The Gougeon Brothers On Boat Construction" I think pretty much says how often this book gets used...

Astute readers may have noticed that none of the various books mentioned are on the same page or even agree very often... and that, dear reader, is where they make you, the boatbuilder, THINK, which is after all the whole point of the exercise!

Fiddly bits... Mast project days 4-6

What most people don't realize about boat building projects is that the hard part is simply getting on with it when nothing much seems to be happening...

Case in point, the ongoing mast project which is more or less on schedule but nothing much seems to be happening. The process of making big planks into skinny strips followed by making them pointy and then gluing the pointy bits together to make long skinny strips (or scarfing, as we boat butchers like to call it) is a boring process and worse for it as when all is said and done, not much seems to happen as what you still have on the bench is a whole lot of skinny pieces of wood that don't look like a mast!

Which is made worse by not taking up much time as a whole lot of the process is waiting for glue to dry, which take my word for it is not nearly exciting as watching paint dry!

Such is boat building...

A friend who was helping me was some kind of impressed with my little SurForm which I take for granted as my go-to-tool for cleaning up epoxy and glass and is easily one of the most used tools in the tool bag... I thought everyone knew about them. They really are great and at just a few dollars it's worthwhile to have a few handy.

Mr Zip is still your friend... apparently Mr Knot not so much.

Since we are doing the new rig in Dynex Dux, I have been loading up on all of the various books I don't have on my shelf which includes info related to splicing Dynex and suchlike...

One of my sources for all things rigging has always been Brion Toss (otherwise known as Mr Knot) who has taught me just about all I know through his books of a rigging nature, as he really is a seriously smart dude rigging-wise.

As Mr Toss has a book I don't have, and as he recommended the book as covering more Brummel splice stuff, I decided to buy it and as Amazon did not have the book in question, I bought it through his website. When we tried to order it, we found his online order system had shipping at an astounding $74.23 for a $24.95 book, which is simply silly.

So we called and asked if they could send it via US Priority Flat Rate Mail as the $74.95 seemed somewhat excessive and as you may recall my experience with working at UPS and having been on the receiving end of UPS service in the Caribbean, I would never order anything that needs to be delivered by UPS (I mean who needs to wait long, pay more, and more than likely find it got lost or broken in the process).

When checking our credit card statement we discovered that the book had been sent but apparently with $17.50 shipping which is way high if you are using US Mail to send something to the USA (The price for a Flat-Rate envelope is $4.90) ... Off hand, I have no idea how they actually shipped it but as it was not how we requested (and they agreed to) color me not best pleased!

Which brings us to a little advice for cruisers who can stop in and get mail at places like the USVI from time to time and who are able to avail themselves of the EXCELLENT US Mail system... BE VERY CAREFUL as far too often folks in the USA who take your order will tell you they'll send via US Mail but then send it via UPS (or UGH those dropped hard and lost folks, DHL) and you can spend weeks waiting for UPS/FEDEX/DHL and more than likely when you get it you will be unhappy.

Of course, a lot of people at stores in the USA will tell you they can't send via US Mail because it does not work and the package will get lost which is BS. What they won't tell you is that UPS/FEDEX/DHL gives them a kickback on shipping and their concern is more about a little extra profit for themselves rather than concern for you getting your stuff in a timely manner.

Now I have no clue how Brion Toss sent it but that one of his minions told us one thing and then did something else which puts them on our "won't-buy-from-again"  list.

Just as an aside, we bought the Dynex from Defender on the same day we ordered the book from Toss and Defender sent nearly $1000 worth of Dynex Dux down to us in St Croix via US Priority Mail for $42 and change (insured & weighed 15 pounds) and we got it a couple of days later... We are still waiting on the book!

So, for cruisers able to stop in at US ports, Mr Zip is still your friend and a huge help to keeping your cruising kitty happy! Spread the word...

On sounding like your Dad... Bummer

There is a day when you find yourself sounding like your parents... Too often these days I hear myself saying things like "corporate greedheads" and "bought-and-paid-for" where elected officials are concerned.

Just like my dad... Sigh.

A good friend has been complaining that having recently sailed a couple of thousand miles, that he had only caught one smallish Mahi Mahi. If he watches "End of The Line", he'd realize that the problem is more than just lure choice.

A chance to go sailing and garbage...

I've been reading about the big garbage island in the Atlantic and while not as big as the ones in the Pacific it's only a matter of time I suppose... I could rant and moan about it all, but what's the use?

Speaking of the Atlantic... A buddy of mine will be sailing up to New York from down here on his Catalina 38 in a month or so and he has a couple of free berths for someone wanting to get a long ocean passage under their belt and learn about sailing by actually doing it. This is a great opportunity and if anyone is interested drop me a line...

Thought process... Boom brakes

Since we have been in the wait for rain to depart mode the last couple of days on the mast project, I've been giving some thought to the boom brake arrangement for the new rig...

The Simplicity rig has twin boom vangs and Mark Smaalders is a fan of having a very controlled boom situation and the twin vangs are a great way to do that. Of course, there is more than one way to skin a cat and a twin tailed boom brake does pretty much the same thing. For most, the cost of boom brakes is somewhat off-putting as the prices for what amounts to simple friction are somewhat ouch making.

On "Loose Moose 2" and "So It Goes" we used a Heinson boom brake (apparently no longer available) which worked just fine and made gybing such an easy operation that it became simply a maneuver rather than something to be dreaded.

The various systems available (Walder, Dutchman, and Wichard) all work and work well but when looking at them it is very obvious that they just may be a bit pricier than need be... TFH!

Really, if you look closely at the various systems they all amount to very little investment if you were to go the DIY route... Well, truth be told I would suggest you DON"T try to DIY the Wichard sort as it is simply more than the average home builder can deal with but I might point out that the Wichard is simply a figure eight descender on steroids and as figure eight descenders are very cheap ($15-$25) why would you want to?

On the whole, I'm not one of those you-must-have guys but I'll make an exception in the boom brake or suitable means of controlling the boom... You really do need one!

What just could be the future of water making on boats...

The folks at MIT have a very interesting approach to purifying water and desalination that could be available in just a couple of years.

The postage size chip is made out of a soft silicone and uses  a strong magnetic field to separate the water from contaminants. The chips are small enough that 1600 of them could be mounted in an array on an eight inch disc which could produce as much as fifteen liters of water an hour... Which is just about perfect for a cruising boat... Best part, as far as I can tell, is that the "chips" are self cleaning!

Yowza! So much for that home brew watermaker project...

More about it from MIT...

Almost time to get out of Dodge... "H" season

Jeff Masters with some worrying news about the coming "H" season...

Making sawdust... Mast project day 2-3

One thing I don't like about doing single projects (like the mast) is that unlike building a boat you wind up wasting a lot of time waiting for stuff... Now, with a big multifaceted project while waiting on one project you can pick up another and so on. It's a lot easier to be more productive with several projects running than just doing one. Well, if you are somewhat organized it works...

Day two was mainly spent ripping strips for the mast and cutting out molds, not as productive as I'd like but workable within our two week build schedule.

Day three was (being Sunday) a late start (I blame the waffles) but we were able to cut most of the scarfs...

Today we woke to wind and a deluge of sorts. Rain is good for making the island green (there has been something of a drought this year) but not so good when you are building a mast in a parking lot without any rain cover. Not too problematic as stuff like this is simply par for the course... So it goes!

What $396 worth of wood looks like... Mast project day 1

So, yesterday was spent mainly waiting for the lumber to be delivered and sorting out the work area...

The total cost of wood for the project comes to just under $400 and, surprisingly half of that won't be in the mast at all but will be the spar bench and molds for the mast. Which is something to keep in mind for would be builders that a lot of the expense and time building a boat is not in the boat at all but goes for stuff that enables you to build the boat.

I was very impressed with the sheet of 3/4" form ply I bought for building the section molds as it was of a higher quality then a couple of sheets of "marine" ply bought the other day for another project at seriously silly prices. This sort of ply makes a lot of sense for some types of boat building and for a sharpie hull or say a Buehler schooner where planking could be in 3/4" would work out very well at a fraction of what marine ply is going for these days... Something to keep in mind!

Now, of course, comes the bad part (and folks, there is ALWAYS a bad part) of the job making two 20-foot planks, eight saw horses into something sturdy and level to bolt a bunch of female station molds to... The problem is that the yard I'm building in is anything but level and the job for want of a better word is fiddly... I hate fiddly!

Half of today will be fiddly level spar-bench making while the other half will be ripping all the lumber into 1/2" X 3/4" strips which is not fiddly but simply boring (good thing I have an iPod!)

Tomorrow is back to fiddly and boring as scarfing is the order of the day...

Light at the end of the tunnel... Mast gets started!

A lot has been going on while waiting for all the various bits for the rig to come together... Sorting out the new sail plan with Mark Smaalders and deciding to beta test the Simplicity rig for "So It Goes". Then sitting and waiting for stuff like epoxy, glass, carbon, kevlar, and the all important Dynex Dux for the rigging. It's all here and Thunderbirds are GO!

Of course, the hardest part of the whole exercise was finding a place to actually build the mast and now that is taken care of I can actually get to doing and build the sucker! It will be nice having "So It Goes" a proper sailboat again...

That said, building the mast will be cutting into the blogging a bit so for the next couple of weeks expect sporadic and just a bit more half-assed than the norm (as if that is possible...).

More soonish come...

To wheelhouse or not...

I've never been a big fan of pilot or wheelhouses for a variety of reasons. The first and foremost for me is that on a sailboat when you are sailing there is no better wind instrument than the combined power of the human senses. Lock yourself into a climate controlled box and you lose a whole lot of needful input.

Even at my Luddite worst, I'll have to admit that modern wind instruments are pretty good but they still don't give you that edge that actually being in the elements do and it is a whole lot more than just wind speed and direction...

Most people don't mention it much but sound is a powerful indicator of wind. The subtle change in the sound of the breeze or rig often allows you to know what the wind is about to do before it reaches your boat.

For that matter, the ability to smell a slight change in the atmosphere whether it be a whiff of seaweed that was not there before or that slight hint of ozone that signals a squall is needful input that makes the brain a better indicator than even the most advanced wind indicator...

Of course, having hand steered for hours in cold and wet downpours, squalls and full on storms, the appeal of a warm and dry pilot house does not escape me (I might be a quasi-Luddite but I'm not that dumb). More than once I have admired the idea (more often than not when wet and cold) of a wheelhouse but then when later on a sunny day, always decided against them simply because... well, in most cases they looked dorky.

Not so in the new Simplicity wheelhouse version drawing from Mark Smaalders... The wheelhouse really fits into the design and no dorkiness in sight! It looks good! Fact is, if we were to build this boat I'd most likely use the overall design of the wheelhouse but leave off the sides and back to make a very integrated looking hard dodger which would still give my various senses the ability to better mesh with my environment as well as offer a reasonable amount of protection from the elements.

A new blog of note... The INTERVIEW WITH A CRUISER Project

I get a lot of mail here at Boat Bits about the various aspects and reality of cruising or living on a boat outside of the comfort zone that is home...

A new blog/website is The INTERVIEW WITH A CRUISER Project which looks like it is on to something much needed for those considering a life afloat and voyaging...

Check it out!

On just doing it... The Moose mindset

I get a lot of email in the vein of "what is the perfect boat to cruise/build/buy" and most of the time I get the distinct feeling that the folks asking are disappointed with my answer...  So to save some folks time and effort here is the stuff they don't want to hear!

There is no perfect boat!

Not only is there no such thing as a perfect boat but you cannot make an imperfect boat a perfect one by pouring money into it. As no matter how much you pour in, it will still be a boat.

Money does not work! 

Neither will the new flavor of the month gee-whiz-flash-bang new technology make your boat a thing of perfection... Sure it's fun to keep an eye on the cutting edge of high tech but adopting it willy-nilly will just give you high tech problems...

Avoid High Tech!

No one type of boat will be easier to sail and design is no substitute for actually learning how to sail. Sailing is easy and most folks can learn all the needful stuff in a weekend! That said, no matter how long or how far you sail, you should keep learning as there is no end to the learning curve on boats... Learning is GOOD!

Learn to sail

Bigger is not better or more seaworthy but it is certainly more expensive. Over a certain size threshold, if you are dealing with forces where you need "help" to do basic things that is a way a boat tells you it is too big for you.

Smaller is better

Building your own boat is not so easy. It takes time, money, and more than likely you can spend less and have a much better boat by going the Classic Plastic route. Classic Plastic is also the most eco-friendly way of getting to sea as it is reusing resources and in my mind that is something of a slam dunk. So, unless you really need something really specialized or love the actual craft of boat-building, you should seriously consider Classic Plastic...

Classic Plastic Makes sense!

Way back when we decided to retire and go cruising with Loose Moose 2, the fact that made us decide to go then rather than wait till we had the perfect bank account, the perfect boat and all of the stars in the sky were aligned perfectly was this...

We had joined the SSCA and while reading each issue filled with people having wonderful adventures in faraway places, we noticed a certain constant in the obituary section of the newsletter of people who had waited till they had the big boat, the right amount of money, the kids all through school, and all of their various stars in the sky aligned just right only to have a heart attack or stroke at the beginning of the long planned dream cruise. Seriously big bummer that...

Life is far shorter than most of us would like and if there is a certain thing you dream of doing ... Well, the phrase that comes to mind is "Get to doing"

Just do it!

The almost perfect boat saw...

Some time ago I talked about my desire for a table saw and how a table saw and other bench tools were some kind of problematic...

Skil just came out with a specialized flooring saw for doing... well, flooring! To say I am in some kind of lust with this tool would be an understatement as it combines the functions of a table and miter saw in a very small, portable and affordable package... What's not to like?

Well, since it is limited to dealing with planks that are eight inches or less and no thicker than 3/4 inch. Not a problem if you are doing hardwood flooring but a bit problematic for most boatbuilding stock.

That said, the geometry of the unit is very cool and I hope that some enterprising person or company will do an upsize on it to allow for at least two by stock. In the meantime, this could still be a very neat tool to have on board and would lend itself to a great many boat projects... Color me seriously tempted!

Erskine Childers is much missed... Good reads on boats

It's a little bit gray today and a sorta/kinda holiday here in the USVI and I really should be doing something of some import but what I'd really like to do is kick back and read some fiction of a nautical bent...

The problem is, unless you are into the costume/historical series ilk, there is not a whole lot of fiction available for the present day nautically obsessed. You'd think that someone would do the odd adventure novel or detective series that takes place on or around boats or cruising. Maybe a present day sort of "Adventures in Paradise" or some such?

The few books I do tend to pick up with a sailing sub theme of sorts almost always hit the bulkhead with a resounding WHACK when I come across those author-has-no-clue passages...

 ..."John raised the staysail on the foremast and then steered his sloop through the breech in the reef..."

Yeah, I know I'm picky... but the truth is, it is ALL about suspension of belief and when they throw dumb stuff at you it just up and poofs away!

Fact is, with all the free time most sailors seem to have, you'd think at least a few of them would be working on the odd novel or two instead of yet another cruising guide or how-to-cruise tome. Where are the literary heirs to Erskine Childers and why don't we have a modern day "Riddle of the Sands"?

To me, it's even more surprising as sailing folk are by and large very avid readers. Even the merest hint of a sailboat on a book cover will zip out of the book swap faster than a politician can make a bribe disappear... Which tells me that there is a market just waiting to be tapped!

In the meantime, you might want to take a look at "The Voyage" which while not set in present times, is a pretty awesome novel which did not hit the bulkhead even once or the sometimes silly yet somehow OK guilty pleasure inducing "The Ripple Effect" or the bulkhead banging but still sorta/kinda entertaining "Sea Hunter"...

Now if only Robert Crais would get into sailing... Can you imagine the mayhem if Elvis Cole and Joe Pike went sailing?

Nope not a Poisson D'avril... Congress is simply dumber than nails

A congressman worried that too many people on Guam will capsize it...



Scary that our collective future is in the hands of folks like this...

Various projects... Spring cleaning!

April is our month for getting rid of stuff... All those cunning plans and seemed like like a good idea at the time purchases which for various reasons are not getting used and just taking up space. The rule is, if we have not used it in the last year we either take a look at our priorities and work out why we are not using it in such a way that we start using it or more often we simply take it to the next cruisers flea market and exchange it for someone else's cunning plan that THEY never used...

Case in point... We've had a GlobalStar satphone since 2003 which worked ok but really came into its own when we added the remote antenna kit which made it work a whole lot better. But, as cell phones got better and cheaper our usage became less and less till the other day we realized we had not used it in over a year.

So we sat down and weighed the should it go/stay conundrum and decided that we could use the extra space more than another method of talking to folks while mid-Atlantic other than the SSB as our SPOT (also by GlobalStar) gave us a means of letting folks know we were OK while making passages.

The upside of all this is that it helps keep "So It Goes" a lean machine, reclaims a locker or two and recycles gear to folks (the GlobalStar is now for sale) who might actually have a need.