Picturesque Speech

A

day

hardly

goes by

without me

thinking how

much life tends

to go around in circles and how much

I'd rather be sailing on my boat

on the rolling sea      on the rolling sea     on the rolling sea     on the rolling sea     on the rolling sea

                 on the rolling sea          on the rolling sea        on the rolling sea        on the rolling sea  

Instead, here I am, stuck

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

in my                                                          .

in my                                                          .

in my                                                          .

in my                                              my cube

in my                                              my cube

in my                      _  _                  my cube

in my                      O O                  my cube

in my                        >                    my cube

in my                        o                     my cube

in my                                              my cube

in my                                              my cube

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day,

writing these tediou.....zzzzzzz, writing these tediou.....zzzzzzz, writing these tediou.....zzzzzzz,
um, maybe some coffee will help.....writing these tedious


   
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports


that no one will ever read.  



philosophers
and wise men have tried to
tell us over the years, of course, that
life moves in cycles and in circles, that we
do not travel along a simple, straight path, reaching
our destinations and achieving our goals in a direct way.

We must suffer interruptions and diversions along the way.
That way is bumpy and frought with peril. There are dangers
and demons and dragons to dispatch before we may triumph.
As I am learning, into every life some spreadsheets must fall.
Long distance mariners and pilots know that the shortest way
around the globe is an arc, and not the straight path that the
unsuspecting would suspect. So, I am learning to put up with
the detours, to negotiate the potholes and the bumps in
the road. This time spent in purgatory will serve its
purpose, will make the sweet days that must
surely lie ahead that much sweeter, and
may, perhaps, yet turn me into that
most tedious thing of all, a
philosopher.

                

Sailing Blog Writer

.




Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my blog?
I've been down for weeks, working like a dog,
It's nothing novel, but my boss is here.
I'm on the job, but I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

It's the dirty story of a crew of eight
That's been cut to four, so no time to waste.
Wish that I were working for the Daily Mail,
But I'm working here and I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

Sailing blog writer (sailing blog writer).

I'm a thousand miles from San Francisco Bay,
No sails for me even though it's May.
The days get longer, I don't like this style,
Maybe I should quit cause I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

Today we're sending off some long-time friends,
Will I ever see any of them again?
Too many empty desks, too many empty chairs,
How I need a break and I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

Sailing blog writer (sailing blog writer).

.

Mr. Neptune Visits O Dock

.
I'm down at the boat for the first time in a few weeks, doing the usual maintenance and wine drinking.

We came down late Friday night after work and, arriving in the dark, noticed that something was amiss with one of our dock lines. Not thinking much of it, as there are four other lines securing the boat to good old O Dock, we turned in for the night.

In the light of day, I took a closer look at the 5/8 inch line and discovered this:

Hokey smokes! No noticeable chafe two months ago and now the line was almost shattered.

Then, I looked across the fairway and saw this:

Yikes! Where a finger pier and two boats had been, there was now a big open space and some orange caution cones placed on the dock.

And then that storied little light bulb we read so much about in unimaginative writing went on in my foggy brain.

The Tsunami!

I wrote in a post just last week about how easy it is for those of us who live thousands of miles from Japan to turn away from news reports and return to our comfortable lives. And here was Mr. Neptune reminding me in that playful, ironic way he has that it's really just one big ocean. What happens in one little corner of it, eventually, in one way or another, affects all of us. This may have been just a tiny ripple compared to what happened in Japan, but the message was there.

The wave had crossed 5000 miles of Pacific Ocean, and then another 10 miles of San Francisco Bay. It curled around a rock breakwater, through the marina entrance, and another few hundred yards right up to O Dock, and practically snapped a dock line that had a breaking strength of 10,000 pounds.

But Mr. Neptune wasn't quite through with me. He had another lesson up his watery sleeve.

It seems Mr. Neptune has been reading this blog and all of those wise-butted comments I've been sprinkling across the blogosphere. And, apparently, he has not been pleased. I mentioned that there were four other lines tying my boat to O Dock. Mr. Neptune left all of those untouched.

There was, however, something unusual about the line that he destroyed.

If you're reading this, you probably know that signature photo I use of a Flemish coil. It's not a photo I just swiped from the internet. I actually wound that coil on one of my docklines just so I could make the photo for my Blogger profile.

After I took the photo, I was so pleased with my handiwork that I left the coil in place on O Dock and it has been there for the past two years.

So, which line do you think it was that Mr. Neptune travelled 5000 miles to single out and destroy?

Should I take this as a sign?

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To Caulk Or Not To Caulk

.

Sometimes I think Laser sailors have no imagination at all.

A while back, Tillerman was lamenting having too many regattas and not enough weekends to fit them all in. He asked his readers to come up with excuses for not sailing so he'd have some time for other things.

Frankly, I think the pressure to free up some weekends was coming from another member of his household, but that's just my own theory. And please, don't ask how I arrived at that theory.

But how vast is the sea that separates Laser sailors from those of us with keelboats!

For a keelboat sailor, finding excuses for not going sailing is as easy as falling off a Laser. I have a keelboat, and, because of that boat, I hardly ever go sailing.

In fact, there are some keelboat sailors who never sail at all. They are on the dock every weekend working on one thing or another that needs either fixing or 'preventative' maintenance.

Before I got a boat I thought 'preventative maintenance' meant work you do to keep stuff from breaking. Now I know the only thing it prevents is me from sailing.

The problem is I'm outnumbered. Fighting on the side of good, it's just me. But my enemies are many - an evil axis of rust, corrosion, UV damage, delamination, electrolysis, metal fatigue, and all sorts of other gnarly things with fangs and teeth that go drip in the night.


For many in my position, maintaining a keelboat in itself becomes the primary focus of life. They become gurus - not of sail trim or boatspeed or racing tactics, but of plumbing, electronics tinkering, rig tuning, and diesel engine karma.

Eventually, a hierarchy develops on the docks among those who never sail - the novices (like me), the journeymen, and the masters. But above them - at the very top -  is the most holy and sanctified dock yoda of all, the ultimate high priest of boat maintenance - the Varnish Master.

Every dock has its resident Varnish Master. He is aloof and deigns not speak with the unwashed (guess who). He bestrides the dock like a colossus. His gait is measured and steady. His gaze straight ahead.

Like any other high priest, the Varnish Master is generally a quiet, contemplative individual of few words, closely in touch with both his inner conciousness and the spiritual world. Certain practices of his art may be performed only during specific phases of the moon and alignment of the planets.

Did you know, for example, that critical stages of the varnishing process may commence only two hours after sunrise on days when the relative humidity is below 40 per cent, the temperature below 80 degrees, and the wind not above eight knots and out of the east - the traditional direction of the Epifanes factory?

Varnish Masters serve an elaborate apprenticeship, progressing through ever finer levels of varnish awareness, which are curiously analogous to the grades of wet and dry sandpaper that most of us laymen find so unfathomable.

Eventually, the Varnish Master enters a transcendant state wherein he is at last able to hear the sound of 800-grit sanding.


I realized long ago that I do not have the rigorous mental discipline that is required of a Varnish Master. I have accepted my lot and am content with annual applications of Cetol. But, please, do not reveal this to anyone. I suffer enough humiliation in life as it is.

My Cetol  requires no special gift or intellectual refinement to apply, no incantation of holy texts, no cultivation of sacred brushes, no careful meterological observation, no selfless dedication to a life of endless labor and spartan deprivation. To the Varnish Master, my Cetol is the symbol of all that is base, rotten, uncultured, and morally bankrupt in life.

But in the harsh marine environment, I cling to it for survival.

In a way, Cetol is the touchstone of my slipshod approach to boat maintenenance. I'm just trying to get by - to put off the inevitable for another season. I still hold onto hopes, however slim, of sailing occasionally. And that makes me feel guilty whenever I do manage to sail. I know that somewhere, in the deep recesses of my boat, rust is winning another battle. And it is like any mortal battle - the weak and the unprepared and the uncaulked shall perish.

But unlike the unfortunate Laser sailor, I, at least, can find an excuse to not go sailing whenever I wish.

.

A Kernel Of Truth

.

You must admit that popcorn is one of the great miracles of life.

Scientists know all this absurdly complex stuff about the structure of matter, right down to subatomic particles, but no one has any idea how popcorn works. If anything, a dried kernel of corn, when tossed into a boiling pot of oil, should just burn up or, at best, explode into something you have to scrape off the ceiling.

There's simply no rational explanation for how it turns into those neat little puffs of food that are unlike anything else.

I think God made popcorn when he was either very drunk or absolutely bored out of his mind. It's really one of his best jokes.

So why do I bring this up?

Well, Carol Anne has asked us to write something about food and this is the best I could do. You don't want to hear me sermonizing about sauces, semolina, and saucisses, do you? I don't know the difference between a soufflé and a sous-chef.

It's much better that I stick with something that I know - or that I used to know.

I was munching on some microwave popcorn last week and stopped in mid-bowl (and with popcorn, you know how hard it is to stop in mid-bowl). What the heck was this yucky stuff I was shoveling down, I thought. The crud tasted so much of chemicals that I started thinking back to the halcyon days of my youth when I was actually pretty darned good at making real popcorn.

If you think about it, the sad state of popcorn today is really emblematic of everything that is wrong with us. It is said we don't make anything in this country, anymore. Well, we certainly don't make popcorn. When did it become too hard to measure out some kernels, put some honest to goodness vegetable oil in a pot, set the flame properly, choose some seasonings, and get busy?

Must everything come pre-measured, pre-packaged, sealed in cellophane, drowning in diacetyl artificial butter flavoring, and laced with tocopherols (whatever the heck tocopherols are)?

Are we no longer masters of our own destinies? Can we not pop our own corn?

I marched myself over to the market (well, OK, I drove there), picked up some popping corn (they had only two kinds on the shelf, next to the 342 kinds of microwave popcorn), and vowed that I would start saving America right then and there, one kernel at a time.

Back home, I measured.

I poured.

I waited for my three test kernels.

I spread to the critical one-kernel depth.

I moderated the flame to perfection.

And dammit, I popped!

And, perhaps most important of all, I removed from heat at just the critical moment. No burned and pungent embarrassment for me, thank you.

I may now proudly report that I am once again master of my own kernels!

But what about you? Are you a slave to that wimpy, oily bag of pre-packaged mediocrity? Are you content to let the heirs of someone named Orville call the shots for you from their power base somewhere in Nebraska?

Throw off your chains! Take charge of your life and season to taste!

And please, if you know where I can find that spicy, yellow-colored popcorn seasoning I used to get when I was a kid, tell me, please.

That's still driving me nuts.

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The Stuff That Never Moves

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This remarkable photo needs no caption.

We all know where it was taken.

We all know how a 25-foot keelboat ended up on the roof of a two-story building.

After weeks of watching video of natural catastrophe we never imagined possible, we are too numbed to be surprised or shocked by such sights anymore.

But most of us can turn away from the screen and ease back into the comfort of our daily lives. We can let ourselves be distracted by more recent news - from Libya, Syria, and from the gas station pumps in our home towns.

In Japan, though, there is no escape. Even if you managed to avoid physical injury, even if there was no personal tragedy in your immediate family, even if your home is still intact, the industrial, economic, and political bedrock of Japan have shifted as much as the geological footings that caused the terrible quake.

Those aftershocks will shake the country for months and years to come.

Over on the Sweet Bluesette blog, Pandabonium is starting to give us a taste of what 'ordinary' life is like in his shaken homeland. Far enough from the primary centers of the quake's worst damage, he is still close enough to be surrounded by its effects everywhere he turns.

In his latest post, a simple trip to see if his favorite Italian restaurant is still open turns into an opportunity to show us how daily life has been disrupted for thousands of Japanese who weren't struck directly by the quake or the tsunami.

This followed an earlier post where he described how such widespread trauma can affect one's mental state and the emotional tenor of an entire nation.

As I commented there, living through such times must make you wonder if our journey through life isn't just a perpetual search to find the stuff that never moves - the things that we can count on no matter what happens to us. Most of us will navigate life's waters without ever suffering a shipwreck, so we tend not to think about what we will use for a liferaft if a tsunami overtakes us.

If you haven't already, check out Panda's blog for a fresh take on what these frightening times look like through the eyes of someone who is there.

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Two Relatively Unrelated Stories

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I should have been all over this story more than a week ago when it was first reported in The Examiner, San Francisco's ultimate source of truthiness in journalism.

(Intrepid blogger Doc Haagen Dazs beat me to it).

But, there are really two stories to tell here and I have been too swamped at work to write this and to figure out how to make the two stories work together in one blog post.

The first and most important story, of course, is the one that lets me thump my chest and say, "Ahah, I told you so!"

You may recall that about a year ago, in a ground-breaking post so long and so long-winded that it required its own intermission, I rambled on about what the future of long-distance travel might be if fuel prices continued to rise. I came to the unlikely conclusion that travellers of the future might actually return to crossing oceans the way that oceans were crossed for centuries - in sailing ships.

I even ended with this pithy paragraph of prophetic prose:

And, ironically, was there something useful and practical after all in those preposterous boats at Valencia? Will carbon fiber multihulls and high-tech solid wing sails be the technology we'll need for long-distance travel when the pump finally runs dry?

Ahem, where was I? Oh yeah, that article in The Examiner last week. Well, it seems someone is proposing to the San Francisco Port Authority that the key to slashing costs for San Francisco Bay ferry service is to switch to high-tech sailing catamarans, with solid wings modeled after the one used on Larry Ellison's AC 33 boat.

Once again, with wisdom bordering on clairvoyance, O Dock was right on the money!

Of course, the odds of this actually happening anytime soon are about as good as Larry asking me to helm his AC 34 boat, but it's kinda cool that someone is actually trying to float this idea for real. According to The Examiner, which is never wrong, tests on using a sailing catamaran for ferry service are actually scheduled to begin next month! (And please note that I don't often use exclamation marks in this blog.)

The Examiner doesn't make much out of the fact that the guy promoting the idea operates one of the more popular catamaran charter fleets on the bay and so just might be trying to drum up more business for his other enterprise.

They also don't dwell on how the numbers would crunch, either.

The boats would still have conventional diesel engines for lots of practical reasons that scheduled ferry service requires. So, they would probably be a lot more expensive to build and maintain than regular ferry boats. And The Examiner seems to be just accepting the promoter's number of an estimated 40 per cent annual savings in fuel costs. The initial tests will be run from Sausalito to the city, straight across the Bay's windiest strait - the famous or infamous 'slot' (famous or infamous depending on the cajones of the sailor). Ferry runs in other, less windy, parts of the Bay might not benefit from fuel savings nearly as great.

Too, the promoter is counting on getting federal money from the EPA to fund the prototype and we know how easy it is to get money out of Washington today, unless you're an impoverished banker or auto company CEO.

But it is still neat to think there's even an outside chance of being able to catch the 8:10 am boat over to the city for your morning commute - on a boat that is actually sailing. I wonder if there will be discounted ticket rates if you're willing to grind winches or just be rail meat.

But, hold the phone, I said there were TWO stories here. What's the other one? There's something of a clue in that Examiner clip in the photo above, but you'll just have to wait until after intermission to find out.

///////////////  Intermission  \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Ah, how was the popcorn?

You may have noticed, in the clip from the Examiner above, the photo they used to illustrate the story.

The caption under the photo reads,

"A Napa company says catamaran-style ferries can accomodate 750 passengers and travel about 20 mph..."

So, since The Examiner is San Francisco's ultimate source for truthiness in journalism, that must be a photo of a sail-powered catamaran ferry boat, right?

Well, if you know anything about sailing, you'll recognize right away that it ain't

And, if you know anything about San Francisco sailing, you'll recognize right away that the boat is Maltese Falcon - the biggest, baddest, ballsiest wonder or monstrosity ever to sail the Bay - depending on your point of view.

No matter what you think of it, though, for better or worse, that boat has probably gotten more international attention than any other Bay boat in the past 25 years, except maybe for Ellison's AC-winning trimaran, which has never sailed here and may not ever.

Many people think the only reason Maltese Falcon was built at all was to attract attention. At 289 feet overall, it's not terribly practical for a quick day sail or for Friday night beercan racing, especially since you need a licensed bay pilot aboard before you can leave the mooring. (And licensed bay pilots never bring cookies.)

So, you'd think that over at San Francisco's ultimate source for truthiness in journalism someone would have noticed that the photo of Maltese Falcon had nothing to do with the story about catamaran ferry boats.

How could the leading mainstream rag in a sailing town like SF make such a goof?

Well, my personal theory is that Max doesn't work there anymore.

In days of yore, every newspaper had some old guy named Max on the copy desk. Max's job was to know everything about everything.

Max knew the difference between lie, lay, laid, and lain.

Max knew when to use 'which' and when to use 'that'.

Max knew all of the amendments to the US constitution and why they were amended. Without googling.

Max knew who JFK's Secretary of State was. And who JFK's poet laureate was.

So, when the young, green kid, fresh out of school, grabbed the first photo of a sailboat he could find to slap on the page next to the story about the sailing ferry boats, Max would have been watching.

From his desk across the way, Max would pretend not to be watching, but Max was always watching.

"Yo kid," Max would have said, "are we doing another story about Maltese Falcon? Didn't we just run that photo last week?"

"And can't you find a photo that's got something to do with the story - one that isn't going to make us look like a bunch of dopes?"

Max even remembered what the Maltese Falcon was named for.


Some of us will miss Max a lot (not alot).

There is no longer a place for Max at most newspapers today. With 30 years under his belt, Max was drawing twice the pay as the new kid. And, in the eyes of an accountant, they were both doing the same job. (There will always be a place at every newspaper for accountants.)

Besides, a sailboat is a sailboat, right?

Who's going to know the difference?

And who really cares?

Two weeks ago, as everyone else in the newsroom was informed that Max had regretfully decided he needed to spend more quality time with his family, Max was called into a small office that used to be called 'Personnel' when Max started but that is now more efficiently called 'Human Resources'.

Max was handed an unmarked manilla envelope by a nicely groomed young lady whom he had never met, and, after 32 years of keeping the newspaper from looking like a bunch of dopes, was quietly laid off.

Or, is it layed off?

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