More Dark

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After goofing off for two weeks, I had finally written a post for today, but then I read Edward's great story about a night watch during the recent Pacific Cup. It was on a night that was darker than the inside of Johnny Cash's wardrobe trunk.

After reading Edward's post, I decided to declare this Dark Week in the blogosphere.

Photo of The Dark courtesy of EVK4

Edward's story struck a nerve, or rang a bell, or did whatever stories do when you hear one and think, "Oh wow, I know that feeling."

I, too, had a memorable few hours of hoary darkness on my boat one dark and not-so-stormy night. It wasn't in any big-time sailboat race. It wasn't a zillion miles from nowhere. There were no giant swells swelling, or awful winds blowing, or icy spray spraying.

But cripes, was it dark.

Dark in a way you can't believe until you look behind you and discover there is no behind you.

We were working our way down the coast to Monterey last summer, harbor hopping one day of sailing at a time.

Our long hop was from Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz - about 50 miles - and to promote domestic tranquility I thought it wise to make sure we got into Santa Cruz before the shades of night were falling. I figured a few hours of night sailing would be better at the start of our day than at the end, so we left HMB at 4:30 am.

The thing about Half Moon Bay that is most consistent is the fog. When it is clear up and down the coast, it can and probably will be foggy in Half Moon Bay. Day or night, rain or shine, summer or winter. And that morning, foggy it was.

We made it to the outer breakwater within sight of a few shore lights which painted fuzzy cotton candy circles of yellow in the fog and, while I didn't quite realize it yet, those fuzzy circles also lent a sense of up and down and left and right. Oh alright, port and starboard. I was relying on the GPS to find our way through the gap in the breakwater, then around the scary reef, and through the entrance buoys about a mile away.

About 100 yards outside the breakwater, a very spooky feeling settled in. Someone had turned out the lights. All of them. There is nothing darker than being in a thick fog on a moonless night. And unlike Edward's raucous swells and wind and spray, this night was still. Very, very still.

We were motoring out into the murk. Except it was too dark to see if it was actually murky. This must be what one of those sensory deprivation chambers is like. No up, no down, no forward, no aft, no left or right. Oh alright, dammit, no port or starboard.

There was almost no sense of motion at all. I was in a little world of just me and the GPS.

And then, it was just me.

The unthinkable had been thought. Like everything else around me, the GPS went dark.

After a few moments of thinking that divorce court might not be so bad, I realized the GPS must still be working. It was just the backlight that had shut off after a preset time delay. All I had to do was work my way through 16 menus to find the one that would keep the little backlight on.

While keeping the boat off the scary little reef that was somewhere very close by.

Which I had no way of doing without seeing the screen on the GPS. Hmmm.

I decided to keep pushing the little backlight button every minute until we cleared the reef and made it out past the entrance buoys. Then, I could deal with the 16 menus without fear of munching the hull. Although, at this point, divorce court was still a definite possibility.

The next fifteen minutes flashed by in what seemed like merely hours, but finally we were past the reef, out in deep water, and I could find the damned backlight menu on the GPS.

To make things easier (I thought), I got us pointed to our next waypoint and flipped on my trusty autopilot (familiar to regular readers of this blog) to hold that course. I set to work fumbling through the 16 menus, everything taking a whole lot longer than it does when you do this stuff on your dining room table.

Finally, there it was, 'Backlight Timeout - None'. Click 'OK'.

What the freak do you mean 'Am I sure?'.

With one last click, the backlight was on and the GPS was back to the main display. But I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

We were humming smoothly along, but the GPS had now gone beserk. The happy little arrow that always points calmly to our next waypoint was now doing complete circles all the way around the dial. Our course was now North West South East North West South East North West South...

This couldn't be happening. The next thing I expected to hear was Rod Serling doing a voiceover.

Or maybe Alfred Hitchcock would peer up out of the companionway. If I could see the companionway.

I froze for a moment and then thought of what a pilot friend had told me about learning to fly by instruments. Forget about your instincts and believe the instruments. In zero visibility, your instincts are almost always wrong.

I switched off the autopilot and started turning the wheel in the direction that would have slowed the wild spinning of the GPS. The spinning needle started to slow.

More steering and it slowed some more. Finally, I got the needle to stop and gradually was able to steer us back on course. It was then I realized the autopilot had slipped out, the wheel had gone hard over, and just as the GPS had been telling me, we were turning in tight little circles - round and round and round.

The really bizarre thing was that, without any visual references, out there in the Pacific Ocean sensory deprivation chamber, there was absolutley no sense of turning at all. It's something you just have to experience to believe.

We motored on in silence for a while. I realized I could buy my wife a nice dinner once we got to Santa Cruz, as I wouldn't need to hire a divorce attorney, after all.

I had learned a few more lessons about GPS and about autopilots and about boats and about voyaging.

And about the dark.

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Guess Who's Hosting America's Cup 34?

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Wow, I don't know how so many east coast bloggers missed the news yesterday, but it's almost a cinch now that the next America's Cup will be held in an American city that's actually known for having some decent wind.

The Ellison camp and the Golden Gate Yacht Club, which, if you'll recall, currently hold the cup and thus get to choose the site for the next competition, announced that San Francisco is the sole American city still in the running to host AC 34.

Eliminated were Long Beach, San Diego, and some town in Rhode Island whose name I forget, but which is mainly known for fickle winds, a winter frostbite Laser fleet, and a bunch of old summer cottages with high-maintenance lawns.

The only thing puzzling about the announcement is the actual location in San Francisco that will host the AC teams, their boats and support facilities, the crush of international media expected for the high-profile event, and the hordes of jet setters and glitterati that always seem to congregate at the AC festivities.

Yesterday's press release mentioned only a location "south of the Bay Bridge", but if you have a look around there, the only thing you'll find is Red's Java House. And, while Red's burgers are justifiably famous, this may not be the cool place to hang that the glitterati were expecting.

Red's Java House, hospitality center for America's Cup 34

Red's features a complex and varied menu, with influences from the cuisines of Polynesian, Caribbean, and New Jersey cultures - sure to appeal to the international yachting community. Red's prides itself on cleverly garnished yet understated presentation, as seen in the popular fried pile of stuff amuse bouche.

As the sole eating establishment onsite - in fact, as the only establishment of any kind onsite - Red's will probably need to extend their back patio to accommodate the expected rush of humanity. And they will have to get busy improving their dock facilities, which are currently non-existent.

Oh well, we still have a few years to get ready, and SF is the city that knows how, right?

At least the wind machine is already installed.

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You Are What You Drink

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Tillerman has posted about a recent night of Laser racing and the more eventful aftermath of Laser racing at his local watering hole.

He mentions his choice of personal lubricant for the evening - Long Trail Ale - a regional ale I wasn't yet familiar with. Since I'm naturally curious about worldly things, I asked Mr. Google what he could tell me about Long Trail Ale and I clicked on a web page that turned out to be one of those snooty know-it-all beer connoisseur sites.

Holy crap!

Those people are worse than the wine nuts with their oaky fruity pear and plum overtones and their noses and their finishes. Can't they just drink a brew and quietly burp like the rest of us? Do they have to interpret a beer as if it were a Jackson Pollack painting? If you like the beer, give it five stars and order another. If not, give it two stars and let it go at that.

Why must you be obsessed with how long it took the somewhat moderate but not overly frothy head to settle back to three-quarters of an inch? Why would you study the pattern the foam makes on the side of a beerglass? Why must you invent more jargon to describe a simple glass of beer than phrenologists have for the bumps on your head?

While looking for the lowdown on Long Trail Ale, I had to endure descriptions like this:

 "It's slightly sweet, but not overbearing or cloying at all"

Cloying?

Who the freak worries about whether his beer is cloying or not?

I think someone who uses words like 'cloying' probably should not be drinking beer at all.

I read on through a dozen or more of these very serious reviews of Tillerman's beer, and then it hit me. They could just as easily have been describing Tillerman's blog. See for yourself:

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- a light to moderate touch of floral and earthy...

- a crisp edge to it. It's refreshing.

- anytime, anywhere, any season, any occasion. ... there's a lot of flavor here.

- There's nothing in your face about it, but the balance ... is spot on perfect.

- Quirky enough to be unique...

- leaves you satisfied and wanting more


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So, can you judge a man or his blog from his beer? Has Tillerman become what he drinks? Has his beer made his blog what it is today? Is that his secret?


Tillerman - the blogger that made Tiverton famous.


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I Actually Go Sailing

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I actually went sailing Saturday.

Well, I had to.

The next item on my endless list of boat maintenance projects was 'calibrate the autopilot', and, there's no getting around it, to do that you actually have to take the boat out of the slip and go sailing.

So, in yet another example of how irony is everywhere in my life, my obsession with boat maintenance finally forced me out of the slip in which it usually imprisons me.

It turns out that, as bays go, this one we've got in San Francisco is quite a fine one for sailing on.

Being in the silicon valley, it has a very web 2.0 menu-driven system for selecting windspeed. First, you ask your crew what wind speed range they would like, enter that in the web page, and up pops a chart of where to go to find that.

Today, my crew suggested, "If you put the rail in the water, thunderbolts from atop Olympus shall smite thee." I entered that in the web page and the flash animation spelled out "wind shadow of Angel Island".

So, off we went.

Of course, to get to the wind shadow of Angel Island, you must first traverse the Evil Berkeley Circle, site of Tillerman's 2011 West Coast Laser Slamdown.

Bwahahahaha!

We got an early start through the mild 25-knot gusts before the chop had built to a height that eats Lasers for lunch.

Bwahahahaha!

It was somewhere around here that my wife snapped this amazing picture of me. What's amazing about it is that I'm actually smiling - an open-mouthed, genuine, unforced toothy grin. That is actual joy on my face - a miraculous rarity.

Actual un-Photoshopped close-up view showing genuine sailing-induced joy on my face

I am normally a dark, brooding sort, caught up in the sobering social and economic dilemmas of our times, or trying to figure out why some computer user at work is seeing images from the Hubble telescope on their screen instead of today's stock chart.

But I'd managed to find the perfect balance of sail plan and trim to keep us punching through the chop at a good clip while fooling my crew into thinking we were in a 10-knot zephyr, not the raging gale that was hitting us. You have to be a sailor to understand that joy.

Eventually, we found the Angel Island wind shadow, things calmed down and warmed up. Sandwiches were eaten, and another spectacular San Francisco Bay afternoon smiled upon us.

If I were the CEO of some badass oil company that had just visited a plague upon mankind of biblical proportions and wanted to put all of that out of my head for an afternoon, I think this is exactly where I would choose to be.

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Some Blogs Are Just Evil

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Some blogs take too long to read,
but still you muddle through.
Some blogs make you guilty
for exercise you didn't do.
Some blogs make you read them
When you should be doing laundry.

And some blogs are just evil.

Some blogs make you say things
you regret you ever said.
Some blogs say some things
that you regret you never said.
Some blogs make you read them
And then miss your morning train.

And some blogs are just evil.

Some blogs make you wish
you hadn't stuffed your mouth with cornflakes.
Some blogs make you laugh
until your belly starts to ache.
Some blogs make you read them
When your boss is looking on.

And some blogs are just evil.

Some blogs make you want
to sell off all your assets.
Some blogs make you want
to sail off in the sunset.
Some blogs put a song in your head
they never should have written.

But some blogs are just evil.

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Dear Abby:

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I'm trying to make some sense out of the story of Abby Sunderland, the sixteen-year-old who was recently dismasted in the southern Indian Ocean while attempting a single-handed circumnavigation.

I wonder if the worst part of Abby's ordeal isn't ahead of her.

The swirl of controversy and media attention that awaits her when she gets off the fishing boat that rescued her may be worse than anything the Southern Ocean was able to throw at her.

I'm always amazed, when something unfortunate like this happens, at the number of experts who materialize with opinions about what should or should not have been done.

Of course, this is not just the story of a shipwrecked, single-handed sailor. There are the questions of whether Abby was too young to attempt such a voyage, of whether she did this freely or was pressured by parents with egotistical or commercial motives. There's even the question of whether writing a simple blog post like this just contributes to the hype that encourages such things.

You certainly won't find any expert opinions here, though.

I'm writing this to sort out my own thoughts. I've wavered from one side to the other since this all began. Should we leave Abby and her family alone to do what they want, or should we join the chorus saying any such attempts are foolhardy and just endanger lives, including those of rescue crews?

At the bottom, and I think what is almost always forgotten, is that none of us know Abby or her parents. None of us was on that boat and can know whether she handled the situation as well as she might have. We can make all the generalizations we like about whether sixteen-year-olds should be out on the ocean alone, but none of us knows if this is that one extraordinary teenager who just might be up to the task.

Abby was able to get half-way around the world on a high-strung 40-foot racing boat. She handled 60-knot winds and seas that were at least 30 feet high for several days before she was dismasted. She had the presence of mind to keep the boat afloat (presumably she secured or cut away the damaged rig), keep herself warm and alert, and summon help.

Many boats with full professional crews have fared far worse than that in the Southern Ocean.

When I was sixteen, I had all that I could manage just trying to learn algebra.

Doc Haagen Dazs has brought up the argument of single-handed voyaging itself being unseamanlike. Technically, he's right. The single-hander can't maintain the perpetual watch that good seamanship dictates, which includes having someone on the helm to best manage the boat in the really nasty stuff.

But, going all the way back to Slocum, some of the most inspiring and encouraging achievements in sailing have been managed by single-handers. Should we have forbidden Chichester or Robin Knox-Johnston from attempting what they did?

There's also the matter of self-determination. Sailing is one of the few things left us that allows us to escape the bounds of what is safe, comfortable, and regulated. It lets us test what we've got against the worst that nature can throw at us, if we are willing to face the risks that we know are out there.

It may be absurd to suggest that this applies to a sixteen-year-old attempting a circumnavigation.

But, with today's technology, maybe it's not so absurd anymore.

If sixteen is too young, how about eighteen? Or twenty? Where do you draw the line? I know that we should be very careful when we start drawing lines. Are other factors more important than age? Training, previous sailing experience, physical strength, formal certification?

I still don't know how I feel about this. I know that I don't know enough about Abby to be making any recommendations to her or to her family. Joe Rouse links to a dark story about what the family's true motivations might be, but I don't know if that has any bearing on the larger issues I'm grappling with.

Abby, I hope that you are resting well tonight. You're going to need your strength to weather the storms that lie ahead.

I suspect that you're a better sailor than I will ever be.

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Bon Appétit!

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It's long been my conviction that having a view like this before you will transform whatever is on your plate into the best meal you've ever tasted.

Maybe that's why San Francisco has such a reputation as a great food town.

You don't have to work very hard to find views like this, here. I snapped this last week, walking back to the boat from a restaurant not far from O Dock. It's one of my favorite places because it's so close to my boat that I can find my way back even when somewhat inebriated.

Restaurant?

Doesn't my boat have a fully functioning galley? Yeah, but when I've been scrubbing the deck all day and am dog tired, sometimes I want someone else to do the sauté. And I'm pretty much the same after a long day's sailing.

Carol Anne over at Five O'Clock Somewhere has asked that we do some fantasizing about food. No, not that kind of fantasizing. She's asking what we would serve a bunch of hungry water-borne interlopers if they showed up at our dock at the end of an active day of sailing, surfing, or paddling.

As I've already hinted, I'd probably serve some wine or beer, some canapés and watercress sandwiches, and then suggest we all go out for a real meal.

Somehow, for me, sailing has always been about navigating to someplace at the end of the day that has great restaurants. I can't help it. I'm a city kid.

I almost freaked out at Baydog's response to this writing project. Before you could say Tony Bourdain, there he was with a cream reduction and a basil chiffonade. I have no idea, nor do I want to know, what a basil chiffonade is. I'm almost certain, since it must have something to do with basil, that I wouldn't be very good at it. I'm not even sure you can say 'basil chiffonade' on a blog that might be read by women and children.

But, I do not go hungry.

If pressed, I will assemble some sort of O Dock sideboard from black olives, rosemary olive bread, soft cheeses, green olives stuffed with almonds, hummus, and a suitable merlot, riesling, petite sirah, or brown ale.

Followed by reservations at 7:30.

If you happen by O Dock at happy hour, the odds are good that I will take you out to dinner. Unless you all show up at once.

Then, it's separate checks.

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