To Sand, To Varnish, To Wax, Perchance To Sail

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Today is another work day on the boat.

Well, tomorrow, actually. My boat will get its regular haulout, bottom job, topsides buffing, cutlass bearing inspection, and other expensive attention from people who actually know what they're doing.

I'm down on O Dock late today to get the boat ready for the move over to the yard. As I leave the gate to run an errand, I look out across the bay towards the Golden Gate and see this:

And it occurs to me that I see this view so often that I've become a bit jaded by some of the remarkable sights that surround me constantly on San Francisco Bay - sights that some people travel half-way around the world to see.

In other parts of the country, boats have been hauled out for the winter for weeks now. Determined dinghy sailors are gritting their teeth and diving into frostbite sailing seasons.

Here, we're seeing some of the best sailing we'll have all year. The summer's boisterous winds have relented down to the 10-15 knot range. On a clear day like this, temperatures can be in the sixties. All across the bay, reluctant spouses are being coaxed out onto boats to see what sailing can be like. No foulies. No chattering teeth. No icy spray. Pleasant conversation in a quiet cockpit as the city front glides by.

Well,  for some of us, maybe. So much of my time on O Dock is spent working on the boat, not sailing it, I sometimes forget why I'm doing this at all. Some have given up on bigger boats and returned to the simplicity of dinghies that you can sail pretty much whenever you want to.

But, I'll have my time on the water, too, just like these sailors on one of the sailing school's J24's this afternoon. Doing penance in the boat yard or in the engine compartment makes you appreciate the time on the water that much more.

And on the bigger boat you can sail out that gate and keep going, chasing that sun. It's looking like next summer, we'll sail to Monterey again. There's something very primal about sailing a boat out of sight of your home port and arriving at a completely different place. You can't really describe the sense of satisfaction to someone who's never done that, but anyone who has will understand.

For today, it's enough knowing that at least someone is out there enjoying the freedom you feel under sail.

My day will come.

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Type The Characters That You See In The Picture

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What is going on with the Blogger verification words, lately - you know, the little supposedly 'nonsense' words you have to read and then type in when you post a comment on someone's blog?

Everyone is noticing they're starting to get really weird. Yesterday, Tillerman left a comment on my pottery post (yeah, sailing blogs are getting pretty weird, too), and his verification word was urnal, as in referring to an urn.

Coincidence? I think not. I'm starting to get really pissed at the guys who make up these verification words.

What? You still think they're generated automatically by some computer program? Well, I thought so, too, at first, but I'm now convinced that can't be so.

First of all, these are obviously not just random strings of letters, or you'd end up with totally unpronounceable things like xrfjzmx or kqrlmn or, even worse, actual Welsh words.

What we get instead are 'words' that are friendly to English speaking mouths but still have no meaning - groups of letters like wanam or moopy. It would take some serious programming time to write a program to do that. Today, it's much cheaper to hire a roomful of people in India and have them just punch up some letters on the screen whenever you open a comments page in Blogger.

I was skeptical at first, too. Nah, can't be, I thought, - I'm just being paranoid. No wise guy in India is watching what I type and then making up some curveball of a verification word.

Until a few months ago, that is. I'd read a post on JP's blog about a program that lets you do full marine GPS navigation on an iPhone. This was pretty cool. I made some sort of reply about the software and then, there it was, the verification word:


iMatey

iMatey, fer Chrissakes!!! I swear to Tillerman, I'm not making that up. I'm not clever enough to make that up.

But my point is that no Blogger software program is clever enough, either. Here, finally, was proof positive that some drones in India actually are reading our comments and making up verification words on the fly.

Besides the requisite lower case 'i' that's de rigeur for an iPhone app, 'matey' is a word that's both nautical and cutesy in a marketing kind of way. iMatey would be the perfect product name for the GPS iPhone program in JP's post. There's even the play on words of 'aye, Matey'. It's just too damned perfect. There is a human mind at work here - I'm convinced of it. Some guy in India is bored out of his tree and is messing with me.

After that, I started doing screen grabs of this guy's witticisms.

Here he is having some fun with the old Dan Quayle potato misspelling:

Sometimes, he lowers himself to adolescent bathroom humor:

I make the mistake of revealing in a comment that I work for a newspaper, and he throws this at me:

And just a little too much flip alliteration in a comment on Tillerman's blog and he starts getting critical:

One of my brilliant remarks goes completely over his head, and he tells me this:

But about two weeks ago, he must have had a really bad day. When I left a comment on JP's blog, my jaw dropped at the verification word. This guy is very good. He knows there's no way I can track him down and he knows that Blogger would deny, deny, deny that there is any such room full of Indian word verification typers.

So, he's gotten really brazen. He wasn't cute or witty anymore. He was just crude. There it was, in red and white, sticking it to me in no uncertain terms, the verification word of ultimate defiance:

If this continues, I'm switching to Wordpress!

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It's Pottery Wednesday

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This is a full-service blog.

We try to be very responsive to customer complaints around here.

Joe was whinging unmercifully yesterday about not seeing enough posts about pottery on O Dock. Well Joe, I've got your pottery, right here.

Now this isn't a classy antique Greek wine mug with a painting of Dionysos like you posted. I don't have a vast collection of antique wine mugs like you do.

And this isn't a pedigreed metallic-overlayed lustre painted 15th century bowl from the freakin' Victoria and Albert Museum, like Tillerman posted, either.

Joe, mark my words. Tillerman is up to no good with that bowl. He posted and then sat back, practically mute, just waiting for us to make fools of ourselves in the comments page. I'll bet there's some very clever story behind that bowl, with a real 'gotcha' ending that he's just waiting to spring on us.

I'll bet someone like Anna Tunnicliffe got dragged to the Albert and Victoria Museum when she was eight years old, and the sight of that bowl with a sailboat on it was a religious experience for her, and she started sailing Lasers the next day and grew up to become an Olympic champion because of that bowl.

But, at any rate, my pottery isn't as fancy as yours or Tillerman's. I swiped it from my mom's kitchen the last time I visited her. It may not look like much, but it happens to have very special significance for me.

When I was a young brat, around five or six years old, back in 18th century Philadelphia, these were the plates they served me dinner on. They didn't trust me with the good stuff, figuring I might toss them on the floor.

And they always told me, "You can't leave the table until you clean your plate, children are starving in Europe." I never understood how cleaning my plate would help the starving children in Europe at all. But then, they added the kicker line: "You can't get up until you can see the sailboat.

I swear, I'm not making this up.

So fast forward several centuries. I'm all grown up, or as grown up as I'm ever going to be and I'm wondering why I have this obsession with sailboats.

Last summer, I visited my mom, and, in the back of her cupboard, there it was - this old plate from when I was five years old. Joe, I found my ROSEBUD!!!!

This plate! That's it! That's why I'm obsessed with sailing the way I am!

I can't get up. I can't leave the table. I can't do anything. I am thoroughly, completely paralyzed.

Until I can see my sailboat.

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I Want Details

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The last post here on O Dock got quite a few comments, most of them from Mr. Tillerman, who, for some reason, decided to delete all of his comments after I replied to them. I'm not quite sure what he was up to, but I think it was one of the following:

• Expanding the envelope of avant-garde commenting
  
  
• Paying further homage to his minimalist guru, Mies van der Rohe
  
  
• Just giving me a hard time, something he seems to take a certain delight in
  
  
• Getting even with me for all of those times I've left nonsensical, off-topic stuff over on his blog
  
  
• Practicing his sailing knots - in this case a knot popular with many sailors - the elbow bend

There were some complimentary comments about the post, to be sure, and I certainly appreciate those. Thank you, very much.

But, oddly, there were no replies about the topic of the post. No one volunteered any of their own tales about building trust with a spouse or significant other.

I realize I've been extremely lucky to be getting the kind of response I have been in the comments pages here since I started this blog. Many bloggers who are far better at this than I am have taken a long time to attract a readership that's interested enough to leave comments.

But, to be honest, I was expecting to hear from at least a few folks who had faced similar challenges with their spouse/GF/BF/SO while sailing.

I know many have been through nautical sturm und drang with their mates - I've been a sometimes embarassed, sometimes amused witness to much of this on-the-water drama.

In particular, I remember sitting with my wife in the cockpit one day, comfortably moored in the BVI, when an older couple came up to the open mooring next to ours on a small charter boat, she obviously nervous on the bow with an unwieldy boat hook, he firmly in command at the easier job, behind the wheel. What followed was one of the greatest performances of nautical theater that I've ever seen.

It's easy to muff this simple mooring maneuver if you haven't had a little instruction in the basics, and this couple obviously hadn't. So, on their first attempt, they missed the mooring completely. But, what turned this into theater was that they missed on the second attempt, too. And on the third. And on the fourth. And on the fifth. And on the sixth. And on the...we all lost count, eventually, but it went on for an hour, and for the poor couple it must have seemed like it lasted for their whole two-week vacation.

At first there was some squabbling, which escalated with each missed attempt. Frequent hand gestures were employed, but not the ones I see discussed in sailing books. As act followed act, the audience grew throughout the mooring field. Heads started popping out of companionways like so many meerkats. The couple finally gave up, motoring off to another anchorage, I guess, on what had become a very quiet boat. I'm sure that day has been a frequent topic of conversation at their family gatherings ever since. I think I can guess which one of them brings it up.

But, my point (I did have a point, didn't I?) was that I know couples have been known, from time to time, to have shall we say 'differences of opinion' while sailing together. I think this watery battle of the sexes is probably a reason why many of those abandoned boats at most marinas lie idle. What once seemed like something a couple could share happily together, eventually drove them apart.

So, I wonder why there have been no volunteers here at the O Dock confessional or counselors offering sage advice. Is this subject too touchy-feely for a sailing blog? Or just way too sensitive to even discuss? Did my post put everyone to sleep, or are you all smarter than me (my leading theory for now), and wisely choosing to hold your tongues? Or choosing at least to put your tongues to better use than writing comments here? And yes, you can take that however you like.

As George Costanza once said, I want details, and I want them right now.

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Who Do You Trust?

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Blogger Greg, of Love and Coconuts, posted a while back about a sail in his new dinghy. He's just learning to sail it and, at the same time, trying to convince his young daughters that sailing is a survivable experience. It seems they are having some doubts.

It dawned on me that it's just that issue of trust that's bedeviled me throughout my whole sailing career. And, I suspect, Greg and I aren't the only ones.

From the beginning, I've wanted to share this whole sailing thing with my wife. She loves being by the water - you know, beaches, sunsets, a glass of merlot - but anything technical is just not her thing.

I remember how jazzed I was the first time we sailed a small dinghy - the acceleration as the sail was sheeted in. For me, this was some kind of impossible magic. But all my wife could say was:

"Be careful, you'll poke your eye out!"

Well OK, maybe those weren't her exact words, but the message was more in her tone. She just wasn't 'getting it' the way I was. She was happy to be along for the ride, if that's what I wanted to do, but she was just humoring me. And could it be she may have been just a little bit scared, too? Is it possible she may have doubted that I knew what I was doing?

Over time, we moved from rented Lasers, to a more stable 'family-style' daysailer, to a sailing club with keel boats, to chartering in turquoise water. At each step, the boats were more comfy and my wife's confidence in me was growing. One incredible day, she actually suggested it might be nice to have our own boat.

Thirty seconds later, there I was at the boat broker's, signing my life away for a slyly smiling 20-year-old Catalina 30 that knew more than it was letting on.

I declared victory - finally we had a boat that was substantial enough for my wife to feel safe on. But little did I suspect the battles that still lay ahead, some of which are still raging today.

What it's taken me years to figure out is that it's not the boat that inspires confidence. It's the skipper. And it's not enough to know how to trim the jib or how to steer through waves. Putting your crew at ease comes from a million little things.

Like knowing that the big wind is coming and getting a reef in ahead of it, sailing off the jib, before anyone goes sliding to the low side of the cockpit, while casually keeping up a friendly chat with your companions as if there were no other way to tie in a reef.

I think the casual chatter is a big part of it. If you can manage that while making the important stuff happen, seemingly all by itself, then you are truly a master of your vessel, in every sense.

A million little things.

I think I'm about half way there. I have just another half a million things to learn.

While others are working on their rolltacks, reading the shifts, and staying ahead of the deathrolls, I am learning when to just say "no" to sailing. When to say, "Today we shop, tomorrow we sail." How to make my wife feel that this is her boat, too. And that she has a say in how it is run. These are hard lessons to learn. Just as hard as backing down from a setting anchor, holding the bow up into the wind. Or figuring out what is exactly the best position for the jib fairlead.

Learning these lessons and failing to learn them has resulted in some of the best times my wife and I have shared together.

And in some of the worst.

One good thing about the small confines of a cruising boat, though, is that there is no place for either of us to run away. There are no doors to slam. We've both learned to face the little calamities and to deal with them, right then and there.

I think we've both learned that sailing together can be something so good that it's worth figuring out how to do without killing each other. I think she's learning to trust me and I think I'm learning to trust her.

How about you? Who do you trust?

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Could Someone Please Explain This?

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I think I'm starting to get this blogging thing worked out.

But, so far, two things have absolutely baffled me.

The first is this photo I posted as part of a Support Your Local Rivers post:

I haven't posted too many photos so far, but this is probably the least remarkable of them all. It's an image I swiped from someone's web site, just like anyone else could. And, keep in mind (this is important - it will be on the test at the end of this post), I found it by searching for 'Levi's logo'.

What I can't figure out is why I am getting hits from all over the world for this Levi's logo. No hits from the good ol' U S of A, mind you, but from Mexico, Asia, South America, and Europe. And practically every day. Over and over. If I were anal retentive like some bloggers are, I'd probably put all of the numbers in a spreadsheet and figure out what percentage of my total hits are a result of the Levi's logo. They must be adding up.

Am I being used by those cartels that make all of that knockoff stuff - you know, Rolex watches for $19.99 and Levi's jeans for $8.99?

The weird thing is that I've tried finding this photo on my blog by doing every Google search I could think of:

- Levi's
- Levi Strauss
- Levi's logo
- Hot babes in Levi's
- Hot babes not wearing jeans

Well, OK, I wanted to be thorough in my research. But zip, nada, nothing. I have no idea how all of these people are finding this photo on my blog. And I don't have a good feeling about it at all.

Are the feds going to show up at 3 am and confiscate my laptop? And how do I tell them it's all Tillerman's fault? He's the one who got me into this blogging thing.

Of course, I may have discovered the magic bullet for drawing traffic to a blog. Maybe you just need to post photos of corporate logos and the world will click a path to your door. That would be a lot easier than actually having to write stuff.

The other thing I can't figure out is the guy or gal in the Bahamas who keeps visiting this blog - apparently to actually read the blog and not just download the Levi's logo. If I were in the Bahamas, there's no way I'd be wasting time reading this blog.

I mean, I'm trying to picture how this would work. You're lying on some pristine, white, sandy beach, which is being gently lapped by wavelets of 80-degree turquoise water, your bikini-clad companion by your side. Rainbow-colored fish are playing in the shallows just waiting for you and your bikini-clad companion to snorkel over and join them. The ice in your rum drink crackles as it slowly melts.

And you get up, brush that pristine, white sand off your shorts, walk back through the baking sun to wherever you keep your laptop, and fire it up to read some cockamamie blog that's pretending to be about sailing in San Francisco Bay?

Mr. or Ms. Bahama, if you're reading this, please leave a comment here and explain how this could be. And if you have a boat there, I'd be perfectly willing to swap with you for a few months or a few years, if you find O Dock to be such an exotic, desireable locale.

There are some mysteries in life that I think are just not meant to be solved.
 
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Another Misunderstood Husband

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This is turning into Janna week in the sailing blogs (and even here in the pseudosailing blog).

Bonnie featured Janna's book - The Motion of the Ocean - a few days ago, and Tillerman is making noises about doing a full-on review this week. I just got my review copy a few days ago and have only gotten through the first chapter, but like what I have read so far. Janna is not a sailor who decided to write a book about her adventures, she's a writer who went sailing. The difference is apparent right off. I'm looking forward to reading the book and to seeing Tillerman's take on it.

Janna's book is not mainly about sailing, although I guess you could read it just for the sailing bits. She's really looking at the realationship she's had with the guy who's now her husband but who was for many years 'the boyfriend'. And I suspect she gets into the lessons one learns about life and about one's self after spending two years with someone in the tiny space of a cruising boat.

Here's that someone, by the way:

His name is Graeme, which is pronounced like 'Graham', which is pronounced like 'gram'.

I met Graeme at a stop on Janna's book tour in the San Francisco Bay area a few weeks ago. (There's a short video from Janna's reading at the end of this post.) I'm afraid that poor Graeme has been sadly maligned by his wife in the interest of promoting her book. She begins by calling him a butthead (although she uses a more anglo-saxon term) and leads you to believe that that's her final assessment of him. I'm guessing that if you read the whole book, her opinion eventually changes.

My take was that Graeme is a nice, unassuming, mild-mannered, down-to-earth guy. Just the kind of temperament you'd want in someone you were going to go blue-water sailing with. Calm, and not overly-excited in the face of adversity. Why do our wives never see the good in us?

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned Janna's last name yet. That's because it's extremely tough to get her whole name right all at once. Tillerman has called her 'Jenna'. Bonnie has called her 'Janna Cawrse Esaley'. I know her correct name is one of the following:

-Janna Of Course
-Janna Off Course
-Janna Causes Easterlies
-Janna With The Light Brown Hair
-Janna Janna Bo Hanna Banana Fanna Mohanna
-Janna Cawrse Esarey

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