Ready to Cruise · 1575 days ago
Both Marge, and a new Skipper, Simon!
Well, ok, Simon’s not all fancy-dancy certified by the ISPA, but we finished the last lesson on Wednesday, or at least, my whole agenda for same. We’ve now covered sailing terms, boat handling, points of sail, trim, knots, weather/lee helm, fancy maneuvers, heavy weather, rules of the ‘road’, local navigation…you name it. This last week, we finished up with spinnaker use (fun!), and capsizing (wet, cold, lots of bailing!) Always eager to learn, he’s got it all down now.
Anyhoo, the point is he’s now fully competent, and I’m almost out of things to teach. I’d think up a graduation thingie, but I think the dunking he got in capsize recovery practice & after-hot choc will have to do.
Weekend before last, we went out with Christa, but before that set up a bit of gear, which is what we’re up to in the photo above.
That included new custom-made oars (Simon’s Idea) that push ol’ Marge along at 2.5-3 kts (measured by the time old method of counting alligators while bubbles float by from bow to stern), rather than the sucky old 1.5kts under paddle. And, best of all, it turns out that both crew can row them at once, one to an oar! No deck-flowers a’ be goin on any boat a’ ours!
8-D
The bunnies were out that day tho. Scary things. Fangs like steel, they chase the dogs like nothin’ you’ve ever seen. I think the Jericho staff give em’ beer while nobody’s lookin.
Back to our regular program: So, the oars let us get out of being becalmed, or row away from a rocky lee shore if all else fails. Ah, but what of the other end, winds too strong to handle? You can fisherman’s reef (flatten the mainsail and let it luff a bit), but it’s less than controlled, and you can hardly go to windward that way. So, reefing points! (a 36% reef, if you must know Jess. We’re good to go in 30kt wind now I think!). Here she is reefed down:
It turns out that punching a needle through up to 8 layers of sailcloth is beyond my machine. Has a bit more in common with rivetting than sewing, IMHO. Took forever, a whole Saturday and part of the day before (tho that was mostly making the oars). Anyhoo, it’s done, and we also got a some nice red spinnaker-cloth telltales up all over the main and jib. Makes trimming way easier.
Christa at the tiller, whose camera took these photos (it became overcast as the day wore on, if some seem a little muted). A fisherwoman extraordinaire, of whom all crabs live in fear. She caught quite a large old-man crab, at least to my eye (and his barnacles).
Of course, some take a more leasurely approach to Sunday afternoon:
But me, I’m looking forward to the “Small Craft warning” for tommorow. A skater-guy friend from the physics program and I are going out to Gambier. I’ve lured him with promises of cute kayaker chicks; he has the added benefit of a standard complement of performance-enhancing substances at the end of the voyage. Here’s hoping for wind.
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Life goes on. · 1600 days ago
So. Updates.
As it turns out, I have one more evening course to take at UBC in the fall. Luckily, employer’s don’t seem to care so long as it doesn’t inferfere with the workday, and my mental state is as if I’ve already wrapped up the degree. 98.5% of the way there!
In other news, I’ve started up a sort of second blog to keep my glider project “fan base” up to date (scary, isn’t it? There actually is one), while being a bit coy about myself personally.
Summer, on the whole, is shaping up to be ok. “Marge the Barge”, as Colin has re-christened our Albacore (bad luck, says Simon), is up into cruising shape now. That’s thanks partly to a few days work to get all the bugs out and spruce her up, but also due to the generous donation of the old Fireball’s centreboard and rudder by Colin and Jess, and a seemingly random gift of a huge yellow spinnaker from a nice older guy who knew Marge in a former life as “Summer Wind” (the name explains the powder blue paint job). The last bit of work left is to add a reef to the mainsail, for safety while cruising in heavy weather.
Today, Simon and I went out for a sail / sailing-lesson, which must be about the 6th or so for him. Since he decided he wanted to keep his share of the boat and learn to sail properly, he’s been just about an ideal student, and I’ve found I really enjoy teaching sailing. Ditto Ryan, who’s on around trip 3 (less video games, more water action, Ryan!) Both are eager to learn, and becoming stalwart sailors who need little babysitting at the tiller. Plus, teaching really helps clean up the rough spots in my own knowledge, and I’m actually learning a few new things, both about Marge, and about sailing.
For example, we’ve learned that Ol’ Marge isn’t really that pokey, at least compared to a Laser, Laser II, or most keelboats up to 30’ in length, all of which she passes with ease. (Colin’s just comparing her to the wet, narrow, tippy, Firewood :-D that went about a whole 20% faster with the same load. Take that, for besmirching Large Marge’s honour!)
And today, Simon and I found that Marge isn’t slow at all in 20 knots of wind and waves, in fact a 25hp outboard would be hard pressed to push the ol’ girl faster. She planed at high speed, and beating over the waves hard and fast, just the way she likes it.
That is, until the high loads caused the lower attachment point of the rudder to shear off its pin, and we were out in the middle of English Bay with no apparent way to go to windward or get back to Jericho at all.
Luckily, the next part of the lesson was to be how to steer just by using the sails to control weather vs lee helm. We almost, but not quite, even got to practice capsize recovery!
Anyhoo, if you’ll excuse me now, I have to go to bed, so I have time to fix a rudder tommorow morning, and take Tera and Owen out later in the day. That is, without moving them rapidly to lesson #6.
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Maybe Kyoto's not such a big deal... · 1670 days ago
Or rather, maybe it just won’t matter if we’re at the crest of the crude oil production curve . Of course, happily the financial industry is always there with a much cheerier outlook , and the International Monetary Fund has send out a calming memo
Now, you may say this sort of thing has been said before, but the guy behind the theory, Hubbert, predicted the 1973 oil crisis in 1956, and has a geology school named after him for it. Of course, he was believed to be a fool right up until to that year…
As the physicist Richard Feynman said about the shuttle program,
“The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time…When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next.”
And hey, if our governments were holding their breath for the now-and-forever peak of oil production any year now, you’d think they’d be, oh heck, maybe quietly working on an emergency response plan or really detailed studies about how to transition to an oil-short world without resource wars breaking out for the last of the black stuff.
I mean, even a chimpanzee would be smart enough to see that after running up a credit card with China – their biggest up-and-coming competitor for the remaining oil – it might be best to lay low. After all, all China would have to do is just divest themselves of their dollar reserves, to cut the value of the $ to 1/4 its present value, and knock the US on its ass without firing a shot.
Apparently their dollar’s still overvalued by 20 to 40%, even in present day conditions. That, combined with their incredible real estate bubble , well, it’s not lookin’ so good.
Oh, and, just in case you thought we were immune: North America’s natural gas supplies are already declining in production, and even Canada’s crude oil production is past peak. Down to the dirty tar sands of Al-berta! (oops, you need cheap natural gas, to turn the tar into oil. DAnG. And they thought Kyoto was the big problem!) Nuts, and then there’s that pesky NAFTA, that says we have to sell to the USA before meeting Canada’s consumption.
Of course, there’s also coal – if it were to replace oil, it’d last about 60 years. But then the atmosphere’s kind of totally fucked, isn’t it? Crude oil is worse than natural gas, Tar sands are a lot worse than that, and coal is…well, Florida might want to get some Dike engineering pointers from the dutch.
For a physicist’s take on this issue, and possible replacement energy sources, check out this interview
Why isn’t this front page news, like the gas hikes? Dunno. Sometimes I get the idea that world isn’t run by adults.
Well, at least I can stop being pissy about irresponsible idiots who bought giant SUV’s. The price of oil will bob up and down…but average up…and then, one week some day soon, no more SUVs on the road! Weee! Err, and a lot less jobs, and a collapsing US dollar, and….um….huge interest rates on my student loan…uh…
So Jess, how about that 4-month hike?
8-D
Ya, I know…my blog’s kind of a downer lately. Well, the last exam is this Saturday, and I’ve got pictures and shite to put up after that. Real life stuff. Oo, and this is the start of a glorious sailing season. Too bad the power boaters won’t be able to afford much gas! Such a shame.
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A day late and a marble short · 1680 days ago
Turns out there are some climate scientists out there expressing doubts about the approach of spring
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Green with something or other... · 1702 days ago
This is just wrong
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