Alizée

Alizee, projects and Southwinds Magazine ...

2012-02-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks Alizee has been at Sailor's Wharf boatyard getting and ten-year check up and having some minor repairs completed. Meanwhile, I've been in the garage varnishing the cockpit table and cup holder, which were getting pretty worn, as well as making some wine storage boxes from some teak that Penelope's deceased husband Bill had squirreled away in the garage. I'm not much of a wood worker, but creating something of your own design is a pleasant way to spend time.

I know that I would have loved Bill. He was a sailor, lover of British comedy, guitar player and all around good fellow. It almost seems uncanny, but Bill had a Venture 21 (built by MacGregor) at one time, and a Venture 21 was my first boat back in the early 1970s. Bill also owned an Islander Bahama 30, Will R B Dan *#$&!, almost a sister ship to my Islander Bahama 28 Dog Days. When Penelope came aboard Dog Days on her first trip to see me in California the end of 2008, she literally wept at the familiarity of being again on an Islander Bahama. Anyway, I'm not just amazed at these similarities but grateful to Bill for leaving behind some useful tools and the unfinished teak with which I am now able to dabble.

Another activity of mine when not aboard Alizee is writing about sailing. If you're a reader of this blog, you know that recently I had a review of Dog Days published in Cruising World Magazine in the fall and an article just published in Sail magazine. I am happy to say, Southwinds Magazine, just published my owner's review "Alizee, 2001 Cabo Rico 36" in its February 2012 issue (pp. 49-51). You can read the entire article on-line or download a pdf file of the magazine issue for free. Many thanks to Fraser Smith, CEO of Cabo Rico Yachts for going over it before publication.

"For want of a cotter pin"

2012-01-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

Last year we brought Alizee around the Keys from Daytona Beach to St. Petersburg. Along the way we experienced a could-have-been-catastrophic rigging failure. With such things there is often a bright side, and in this case it is that Sail Magazine accepted and just published our account of the experience.

It's not on line, so you'll have to buy a copy of the magazine, or if you've got good eyesight, you can read it here.

Boat show week ...

2011-12-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

After our Thanksgiving cruise, I stayed on Alizee for the next week. Originally, I had hoped that Jeff Grant would have finished stripping and sanding the exterior teak so I could start varnishing, but he had not, so I figured I might do some of the stripping along with other boat chores. The Thanksgiving sail provided me with my first boat chore: rebuilding the head. This accomplished within hours of Penelope and her sister Pat leaving for home after our cruise.

Sunday, I arose to do a bit of housework ... cleaning all the port lights, running our little vacuum, stripping the bed and gathering up laundry. I saw Jeff on the dock and borrowed a spanner wrench with which I opened and cleaned out the AC sea strainer, fixing that little problem. After breakfast at the cafe, a chat with Penelope on the phone and spending an hour editing an article for ICON: The Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology, for which I have just assumed the job of editor, I turned next to getting the shower sump discharge lines cleaned out from all the lime residue that I chipped and washed out of the head pumping mechanism. That took disassembling the plumbing and thoroughly cleaning the lines and the strainer which was a two-hour job. Then it was laundry time and finally I cooked up half the left-over spaghetti and meatballs from our Thanksgiving dinner. I'm so glad Pat left it for me, and it provided yet another meal for me later in the week.

A cold front pushed through on Monday, and around 1300 the rain started, lasting until evening. I should have done my out-of-the-boat chores in the morning, but instead I worked again on the editing project. I also spent quite a bit of time coming up with a list of items to be repaired and/or inspected on Alizee. She's in her eleventh year, and things are beginning to need attention: a crease in the boom from whacking against shrouds during a couple of bad jibes, which means the boom needs to be replaced; replacing smelly sanitation lines and worn-out fresh water lines; reseating starboard chainplates that have started letting water seep into the boat after colliding with a marker post on the ICW; repairing the inverter; putting new bearings in the KISS wind generator. These and a lot of little things need attention, so I set out in the afternoon rain to interview a couple of nearby boat yards. After a long conversation with the yard manager at Sailor's Wharf and a good look at their facilities, I decided to set up an appointment with them to take Alizee in on 14 December and leave her their for a month, assuming they don't charge me a docking fee at the yard while they're closed ... I'm awaiting an answer on that. After a swing by the grocery store for a couple of things to fill out the pantry, I returned to dry out and do more editing.

Next morning the front had passed through and the sun came out. By 0900 Jeff Grant and his helper (also Jeff) were starting work on stripping the rest of the Cetol off Alizee's exterior teak. Since two of them were at it, I confined my efforts to removing the hardware on some of the teak in the cockpit and getting it ready for their heat guns. I enjoy varnishing. There's a sort of Zen quality to applying varnish and seeing the teak sparkle through. But the prep work is really tedious work, and I will avoid it if I can. Wednesday saw the completion of Cetol stripping, while I edited a second article submission for ICON. Jeff and I agreed to hold off sanding until Alizee is back from the boat yard in January.

It really turned cold, and I warmed up the boat by cooking dinner. But early in the morning, I got up and turned the diesel heater on to take the chill away before I got up. I discovered yet a third article for the journal awaiting me on line, which gave me an unexpected editing chore for the day. But Thursday was filled up with other chores as well: remeasuring the space for the teak wine storage case I'm constructing, removing the cockpit table and cup holder from the pedestal to take home for sanding and varnishing, going to West Marine for a couple of items as well as shopping for some groceries. The cold front lifted and temperatures climbed into the 70s, and I finished the day off barbecuing a small steak and baking a potato for dinner.

Penelope arrived Friday after lunch, and we went to the boat show followed by David's dinner party in Clearwater. The next day we returned to the boat show and attended a couple of seminars as well as saw exhibitors we'd missed on Friday. The St. Pete "Strictly Sail" boat show is a pretty small affair compared to its San Francisco Bay Area counterpart, or for that matter the ones in Chicago and Miami. This was our second year, and it was pretty clear the economy reduced attendance and made this show seem just a bit less exciting. A seminar on winter fishing the Tampa Bay area was interesting, as was one on heavy-weather sailing, but a third we attended on weather was deadly. The presenter had an wealth of experience and knowledge, but he did not have a clue as to how to present complex information in an understandable and engaging fashion. Alas, that's probably the way of too many of these show seminars.

But the most disappointing aspect of the boat show is that it didn't live up to the "Strictly Sail" reputation. In order to attract gulf coast folks, the show organizers brought in more power boats, runabouts, and fishing skiffs than sail boats and cruising trawlers combined. Moreover, the sail boats were all familiar to anyone whose been around boats lately: Hunters, Catalinas, Jeanneaus, Beneteaus, Island Packets, and a used Tartan and Choy Lee. Hake Yachts, a Florida builder of very shallow draft boats did represent something different, with their 26, 32 and 46 foot models, all which have retractable keels and rudders and can sail in 15, 20 and 30 inches of water respectfully. They do very well in Florida waters and as coastal cruising boats. And, Com-Pac had its little 23 foot pilothouse on display on its trailer ashore, which is very cute but seemed a bit impractical to us.

We are already planning a road trip north for the United States Sailboat Show in Annapolis next October. After that, I'm not sure we'll ever go to a boat show again. We'll see.

January issue of Blue Water Sailing

2011-12-05T15:39:00.001-08:00

From Blue Water Sailing, January 2012, p. 6.

Thanksgiving on the water ...

2011-11-29T07:51:00.001-08:00

What to do for Thanksgiving. With just a couple of exceptions, I have always spent Thanksgiving with family of some sort somewhere. This year, however, neither Penelope or I wanted to fly off somewhere for the holiday - our children live in Colorado and California - so we thought we might sponsor a Thanksgiving cruise with the Dolphins. It was a good idea, but since we are so new to the club and really don't know the ropes, we finally withdrew the plan. Nevertheless, what to do for Thanksgiving still remained the question, so we finally decided to invite Penelope's sister Pat to join us for a week on Alizee and then arranged to meet Penelope's daughter's father David and his friend Melissa for a Thanksgiving celebration mid-week.

On Saturday, 20 November, we drove over to St. Pete, taking two cars since I planned to stay aboard the boat for another week to do some boat chores and then go to the St. Pete Strictly Sail show (Penelope would drive back and join me for that). On arrival we filled out our week's provisions to supplement what we'd brought from home and stowed everything. It was a bit warm in the boat, so I turned on the AC and, low and behold, it ran just a little and then shut down. The error message indicated it wasn't getting enough water. The sea strainer was clogged. And I didn't have a spanner wrench to open it up. And it was cocktail hour. The saving grace was that the temperature was splendidly cool outside, and with open hatches and lights Alizee soon cooled off and we fixed a nice chicken-cashew stir fry.

We started our cruise the next morning, after taking off sail covers, bringing the spinnaker up on deck and having breakfast at the Bayboro Cafe. I also made a quick trip to West Marine for engine coolant, topping it off before we left our berth. By 1100 we were out of the slip with our first stop the pump-out station, which the marina had repaired since we were last here. By 1200 we had the spinnaker up in light air and sailed to Egmont Key on the east side of south Tampa Bay. On our way a power boat cut across our stern just as we were going under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, taking our trailing fishing lure with him and damn near taking the pole. He ignored passengers in his boat yelling at him that he was about to take our pole, too.

At Egmont Key a minor mutiny was threatened because the Captain keeps taking so many photographs, which explains why there are not many of this trip. Then it rained most of the night, the shower sump strainer got completely clogged and we consumed Penelope's excellent clam linguini for dinner.

Tuesday morning we arose to a day which clearly will be in the running for the Dolphin's annual "inconvenient floundering folly" or WIFF award. Since we were awarded this just a couple of months ago for adventures experienced in early 2011, I'm trusting the events described here will not earn it for us again. We'll see.

We weighed anchor and I went forward to raise the spinnaker for another light-air day. We had pulled it down easily the night before, so it was just a matter of hooking up the halyard, raising up the sock, attaching the tack and making sure no lines were tangled. I discovered that the sheets needed to be taken off and reattached to the clew so the sail would come out of the sock properly. So I did that, checked to be sure the lines were all led properly again, and then raised the sock. Whoops! Half way up it was plain that the spinnaker was badly twisted. I looked like a "Mae West" parachute opening, with a big twist in the middle. I couldn't even bring the sock back down once the breeze caught it, and I had to lower the halyard and pull in the sail at the same time on deck.

How to get the twist out? Well, Pat was at the helm and unsure how to keep a course at idle speed. Penelope was trying to help me sort out the sail but decided she'd better take the helm. Pat then tried walking the sail head back toward the stern so I could get the twist out. That was working it seemed and I was trying to redo the sheets on the clew, when suddenly the sheet was being pulled from my hand. It appeared Pat was trying to winch it in. I asked her not to, and she stopped, and when I pulled on it to get some working line the whole sheet suddenly sprang toward me. She had not been pulling on it, but it had gone overboard, gotten wrapped in the prop and then sheared off. I had half the sheet which on one end now was grossly cut. The other half was partly wrapped around the prop and trailing 20 feet or so behind the boat.

We killed the engine, raised the main and genoa, and stowed the spinnaker and remaining lines. But the wind was almost non-existant, perhaps 3-4 knots at best. We were drifting across the main shipping channel, which took an hour to cross completely. Once across we sought some shallow water and dropped the anchor in 12 feet. Penelope wanted to go overboard and see if she could get the line off the prop. The water at 66 degrees or so was much colder than she anticipated, but she gave it a valiant try. Problem, of course, is our knife was not up to the job, the line was too hard to cut away and with the swell (very little but seemingly a lot when diving the boat) and without the lungs of a 20-year old, Penelope couldn't do it. She finally cut the trailing line off as close in as possible, and we decided to raise anchor and try sailing up to Boca Ciega inlet. We knew we'd need to have someone dive the boat to get the line off, and I wish I'd rushed out and bought the hooknife that Guillermo Cintron had used just a month before on the club cruise to Cayo Costa.

Our luck changed. We motored slowly with hopes that the line was too short now to seize up the prop, and then the wind began to pick up. I plotted a course that best took advantage of the wind and we killed the engine. I decided that if we could get to John's Pass, we'd only have one bridge to go through and very little distance to motor to an anchorage, and the wind now cooperated. We arrived at Johns Pass at 1530, four hours after crossing the shipping channel, pulled in the Genoa and motor-sailed through the bridge. I double checked the charts and headed into an anchorage that lies outside the channel across perhaps 15 meters of 5-foot deep water. I figured, even if we went aground going in, the tied was rising and while we waited for it, I could take my turn at diving the prop.

Of course, we went aground, dropped the mainsail, and dropped the anchor. I went overboard to try and cut away the line, but like Penelope, without the lungs of a 2-year old and without a hooknife, I had no chance. But, as every American sailor knows, this is why you have BoatUS insurance, the triple-A for boaters. I radioed BoatUS and then over the telephone told them we needed a diver to clear our prop. It appeared we wouldn't get help until the next morning, which meant we might be late for our dinner with David and Melissa, but when I came up on deck Penelope and Pat pointed to a BoatUS boat anchored with folks fishing on it just 1000 meters away. It had come by us and they had waved at us while I was on the phone with the dispatcher. About ten minutes later, I got a radio call from the boat's captain: "Are you the one's needed a diver, and are you aground?"

"Yessir," I replied. And he said he'd be over soon and unground us. "I also think I can have a diver for you, too," he added.

So, twenty minutes later he arrived with his girlfriend and her son aboard. They passed Penelope a line to attach to the bow cleat and easily pulled us off. I told him where I was headed when we hit bottom, and he said "you were just a hundred feet south of where you would have been fine." He towed us into the anchorage, while I plotted the course on my chart, we anchored, he tied up along side us and we waited for the diver to arrive. The diver, a young 20-year old who seemed fearless and very professional, arrived around 1730, and after about six free-dives with a good knife, he managed to remove the line from the prop. While the diver was working, BoatUS regulations required the BoatUS captain hold our engine keys, and we were all so eager to have done with the thing that he left with them and had to make a trip back. But all ended well.

Wednesday, 23 November, we arose at 0700, made coffee, weighed anchor and were on our way north up the ICW to Dunedin by 0800. We wanted to get into the anchorage outside the Bon Appetit restaurant before low tide that afternoon. As we motored north it was increasingly evident that the weather prediction for a cold front moving through was accurate, and we dropped anchor in Dunedin just as the rain began at 1130. As the front moved through, we relaxed, read and all finally had showers. At 1700 cocktails called to us, and at 1745 we were in the dinghy heading ashore to meet David and Melissa who hailed us from the municipal dock.

Now the municipal dock at Dunedin does not have ladders and the tide can be two plus feet. So I decided to drop off Pat and Penelope at the ladder on the restaurant's private dock. They had made it clear to us on an earlier trip that we were not to tie up there, but I thought the ladder would be safer for Pat and Penelope and then I'd go around to the municipal dock to tie up the dinghy. As Pat was climbing the ladder, out comes a young manager very much in heat over our outlandish transgression. "Can't you read the sign that says private?" he screamed at us. "You can't be on this dock!!!" He was red faced and apoplectic, I'm sure not able to hear my explanation. Since Pat was on the dock now, I simply responded, she's not getting back down the ladder, and Penelope and I cast off and went to the municipal dock, where David met us and helped us tie up. A passerby said it all to the young restaurant manager: "Oh for God's sake, it's Thanksgiving!"

Turns out the young fellow is the son of the owner and clearly more afraid of his father than being tactful with customers at the restaurant. Ironically, they advertise on their web site their outdoor eating area as "the marina cafe" and have a photo showing small boats tied to their dock. But apparently they no longer carry liability insurance, so their dock is only available to the owner. Sadly, not very friendly to boaters.

We nevertheless had a wonderful dinner at Bon Appetit, feasting on rack of lamb and taking lots of doggy boxes of food back with us to Alizee.

Thanksgiving Day, we anticipated a wonderful day of sailing. Following the cold front, we expected two or three days of good east winds and flat seas in the gulf. We raised our main, weighed anchor and sailed out of the Dunedin anchorage in 12-15 knots of wind. In order to get onto the gulf as quickly as possible, we motor-sailed to Clearwater Pass and were out on the gulf by 11:00. We had to sail wast on starboard broad reach for about three nautical miles, which was a bit unpleasant because the swells were coming from the west, but when we tacked we fell onto a perfect port beam reach course for Johns Pass and had a wonderful smooth sail at hull speed (6.8 knots) all the way to the pass channel. Along the way Patricia was thrilled that seven or eight dolphins joined us is a pod, three of them staying with us for easily 15 minutes. That made up for losing yet another gold spoon to a mackerel. I know I should be using steel leader, but the damned fish can see it as well.

By 1515 we were anchored in our newly found anchorage 1000 meters east of flashing red marker #6 inside Johns Pass. We discovered when leaving the anchorage the day before that perhaps the best depth in and out is just to the north of the marker, although the BoatUS captain guided us in the first time just south of the marker. Almost nobody was on the water Thanksgiving Day, on the gulf or the ICW, and we were the only boat in the anchorage. But for a couple of kids on skidoos for a hour or so, it was truly the most peaceful spot in the world. We called our families to wish them a happy holiday, and Pat treated us to a Thanksgiving dinner of "mom's spaghetti with meatballs" and a special family salad. As the sun went down, the birds took over on the nearby shoals, and then it turned out to be a windy night and a bit cold, however the 15-20 knot east wind was still not sufficiently strong enough to overcome the tidal current.

Friday morning we had to wait for the tide to come in before we could leave the anchorage. Finally, at noon, after lounging about reading and having breakfast, we weighed anchor and went through Johns Pass to the gulf. We found a wonderful port beam reach just outside the inlet which took us south to a near shore pass across the shipping channel, thence southeast across south Tampa Bay to the Manatee River. We maintained hull speed with all sails out past the shipping channel, then the wind shifted and rolled in the staysail and sailed close to the wind. By 1630 we were anchored in the Manatee anchorage, a second marvelous sailing day done, which we celebrated that evening with a glorious sunset that illuminated the shoreline and barbecued rib-eyes and baked potatoes.

At 0930 Saturday we raised the main and drifted lazily out the Manatee River channel. Along the way, the head "crapped out" when trying to flush it. Yuck! Since we were going to heel on this our last sail back to the marina, Pen and Pat courageously bailed out the toilet with a bucket, leaving the bucket in the head in case anyone needed it along the way. It was a good thing they bailed the head, because the wind picked up to 20 plus knots and we sailed the whole way to the marina entrance on either a beam or close reach, our speed over ground reaching 8.6 knots at one point and maintaining 7-8 knots much of the way. We were at the dock and tied off by 1300, making the trip in three-and-a-half hours. Along the way we enjoyed left-over steak sandwiches.

Since the head was out of commission, Penelope and Pat decided that it would be really uncomfortable to stay overnight and, perhaps worse, watch me disassemble and rebuild the head. So they packed up their stuff and departed a day early for home. I washed down the boat and turned to the dirty work of rebuilding the head, which I accomplished by 1700, after which I showered thoroughly, fixed a martini and called Penelope to celebrate completion of the job. Despite the mishaps, though, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving cruise. And it turned out to be with some of the family, too.

Dog Days in Cruising World ...

2011-11-17T07:18:00.001-08:00

Selling Dog Days was very hard for me. I loved that boat. When Rochelle Dicker of Sausalito finally purchased her several months ago, I think I felt just the way Wally Bryant felt when he sold her to me a decade ago. I wanted to stand on the dock and weep. But Wally is happily sailing his C&C Landfall 38 Stella Blue on the west coast of Mexico, and I'm happily sailing my Cabo Rico 36 Alizee on the gulf coast of Florida.

Nevertheless, Dog Days has stayed in my heart and I was determined to celebrate her in some way in honor of her transition to yet another owner. And here it is, my review of this "proper little yacht," just published in Cruising World (December 2011). You can also read the article will be on the CW web site's "classic plastic" page.

Ten days on the water...

2011-11-10T09:10:00.001-08:00

We launched the beginning of a new cruising season with a ten-day jaunt with some members of the Dolphins Cruising Club of Tampa Bay. While we've done some exploring of the Tampa Bay area, this was a chance to get the viewpoint of sailors who've sailed the area for a long time as well as do some nautical socializing.

We arrived at Alizee in the early afternoon Friday (28 Oct), transferred our bags of clothing, computers, books and miscellaneous provisions we brought from home to the boat. Then we set out to finish our provisioning at the local Publix supermarket. Turns out that the work of provisioning for a short cruise is almost as hard as doing it for one of two or three months, and we weren't done stowing everything until sunset. And what a sunset it was. They don't call this part of Florida the "sun coast" without good reason. After a chicken stir-fry dinner, we sat back and enjoyed a night of rain in Alizee's cozy quarters.

At 1300 the next day, we left the slip and headed for an anchorage on the Manatee River at the south end of Tampa Bay. For three hours we had a comfortable 4 knot downwind sail with just the Genoa, but at 1600 we rolled in the sail and motored into the anchorage on the north side of the river. We were anchored by 1715, and no sooner than we had settled in fellow Dolphin Guillermo Cintron swam over from his boat Un Bel Di to say how nice Alizee looked and introduce himself. Turns out he and his wife MaryAnn would be on the same cruise we were taking.

We also discovered that our anchoring spot was probably not the most favorable choice we could have made. Free Spirit, a large motor sailboat, cranked up its generator, which was mounted above deck just under the boom and forward of their cockpit. They left the hatch cover open to vent the diesel generator's exhaust and along with it the non-muffled sound of the infernal machine. For the next two hours, right through the nicest part of the evening, we tolerated the racket, trying to remind ourselves that charging batteries was something every cruiser had to do at some point. We barbecued a couple of rib-eyes, baked a couple of potatoes and made a nice salad, but around 2030, no sooner than we had finished eating, they started up the damned thing for another hour and a half. I suppose we could have weighed anchor and moved further down the anchorage, but in the end we must have enjoyed bitching more about the inconsideration of these sailors than anything else. Certainly they could have picked another time of the day to run their generator!

Sunday morning we weighed anchor at 1015, rolled out the Genoa in a northeast wind of 15 knots and followed Un Bel Di across a short stretch of south Tampa Bay to the ICW above Anna Maria Island. We caught up to Un Bel Di at the Anna Maria Bridge, pulled in the Genoa, let out the stay sail and twenty minutes later also went through the Cortez Bridge. By 1230 we were anchored to the starboard of our cruise leader Bill Cullen's Catalina 350 Triumph, who soon dinghied over and joined us for a beer. We fixed some lunch, relaxed for a couple of hours and while Penelope napped, I changed the element on our floor-pumped Seagull IV water filter system. It was long overdue for a change, and the change in water flow was incredible.

Cruises with groups always result in a lot of happy hours, and we joined in our first Dolphins happy hour at 1600 on Gene and Jo Weatherup's 47-foot Herreshoff Golden Ball Shenandoah. A classic Herreshoff boat, she's a three-foot-draft centerboard ketch, and Gene and Jo keep her in wonderful condition. Here we got to meet others on the cruise, including Joe and Kathy Mansir, MaryAnn Cintron, Bruce and Kris Holtman and Bill Cullen's wife Elaine. By 1730 we were back on Alizee, but only for a short time since everyone reassembled on Triumph for a spaghetti dinner courtesy of the Tampa Sailing Squadron of which Bill is a member.

Next morning we had another heavy rain from 0630-0730, but my check of our Sirius weather radar made clear it would be gone by 1000 ... in fact, the last of the rain was gone by 0800, leaving behind the promise of good winds. Around 0900 we saw Shenandoah and Halcyon, Joe and Kathy's 37-foot Island Packet, sail out of the anchorage and turn south on the ICW toward Sarasota. A half-hour later, we followed Triumph to the Longboat Inlet, where a bascule bridge opened on demand to let us out on the gulf. Then we turned south to head for Venice. The winds started out at 15 knots but built as we moved south along the coast finally reaching a steady 20 knots with gusts to 28 knots. Although the seas were flat, as the wind came from the land side of the gulf, it still was a rollicking sail on a broad reach. Our top speed-over-ground (SOG) reaching at least 7.2 knots. We average hull speed of 6.85 for the entire four-and-a-half hour sail. Penelope took the helm most of the way, which is probably her favorite thing about sailing and we arrived at the Crow's Nest Marina just inside the Venice Inlet at 1400.

We had showers, napped and did some reading, but when 1600 rolled around, we decided to beg off the happy hour, which was being held at the Venice Yacht Club on Shenandoah. We just weren't eager to walk from our marina to the yacht club a few blocks away, and we figured we'd see everyone at our group dinner at the Crow's Nest restaurant later that evening. Unfortunately, the Weatherups and Mansirs, who took their boats to the yacht club, begged off dinner, and we were sorry to not have seen them since family matters led them to cut short their cruise with us and turn back to Tampa.

Tuesday (1 Nov) we left the marina at 0900 and headed off shore again. We had a beautiful sail. The wind settled in at 17 knots with gusts to 22 and came across our port beam. We hit 7.6 knots SOG and simply had the best sail ever. When we neared the Boca Grande Inlet, we followed a waypoint Bill had given us to lead us through the Swash Channel, which takes one very close to shore and into the inlet rather than going out three miles to the marked channel. We found about seven feet of water at low tide, which was not a problem at all. Then once in the inlet which opens on to Charlotte Harbor (really a large bay), we turned south down the ICW and had a lovely sail to a wonderful anchorage off Useppa Island and across from Cabbage Key.

Now our little fleet comprised just four boats. We were first to arrive at the anchorage, followed by In the Groove, a Hunter 54, and then Triumph and Un Bel Di, a Canadian Sailcraft 33. Soon we were on In the Groove, starting happy hour a bit early but knowing it was five o'clock somewhere. Perhaps around 1800 we all finally decided that we would return to our boats for the evening, and Penelope and I charged up our barbecue and cooked up some lamb chops for dinner.

Wednesday we spent at anchor. Some of our friends went into the restaurant at Cabbage Key for breakfast, while we ate on Alizee. Shortly after noon we went into Cabbage Key, had fresh shrimp at the restaurant and then walked the nature trail and climbed up the water tower for a view. It was great fun, and we especially enjoyed watching the turtles around the little marina and restaurant. There are several rental cottages there, and we're already thinking about suggesting it to a friend or two who might want to come visit.

We returned to Alizee to make her presentable for happy hour ... it was our turn. It was also a bit of a farewell party for Guillermo and MaryAnn, for they were heading a bit further south for a couple of more days at Tween the Waters, while the rest of us were returning to Venice and then Tampa Bay.

We weighed anchor on Thursday (3 Nov) at 0920 and had a wonderful close-reach sail up the ICW to the inlet and Swash Channel. Once through the channel, again without a problem, we sailed a couple of more hours until the wind died and shifted from the northeast to northwest. We motor-sailed the rest of the way to Venice and docked for the night. We had called ahead to the restaurant and booked a table for 1930, not knowing if the Cullens or Holtmans were coming to Venice. Turns out they did stay at the marina as well, but our dinner plans didn't fit with their plans to spend the evening on In the Groove. We had a wonderful dinner and celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary which was coming up just a couple of days later.

The next morning we bid farewell to the Holtmans who decided to sail off-shore back to St. Petersburg. We worried about them all day, for the wind was west-northwest and rising, which meant the gulf sea would be roiling ... we talked to them later that evening by phone, and Kris confirmed that it was a horrific sail. Meanwhile, the wind was pushing us hard on the marina's long dock, where we were side-tied. They had booked all their slips for that day with another club, so we had no choice but to leave. We managed to get off, but not easily, and at 1015 we motored up the ICW. Triumph caught up with us just below Sarasota, and Bill told us he was continuing across Sarasota Bay to Longboat Key. We decided we didn't want to motor into headwinds, so we peeled off and anchored for the day and enjoyed a wonderful sunset just off O'Leary's Tiki Bar near Marina Jacks' in west Sarasota Bay.

On Saturday we awakened to check the weather and to our sadness we discovered that Andy Rooney had died. We both loved him and his years of commentaries on 60 Minutes. Bummer. ... But the day looked good, and after adding a quart of oil to the engine, we weighed anchor and had a beautiful sail at 6.0+ knots in 12-14 knot NNE winds across Sarasota Bay and on up to Longboat Key. From there we motored a couple of more miles to an anchorage on the SE side of Cortez Bridge, where we spent a comfortable afternoon and evening and cooked up a great mushroom spaghetti dinner.

The next morning we put a reef in the main and went north through the Cortez and Anna Maria bridges with the idea of sailing up to St. Pete, but when we got out of the ICW and into south Tampa Bay the winds were hitting 24 + knots and the bay waters were roiling up. Since we didn't have to get back and because the weather looked like it would be much better on Monday, we diverted back to the Manatee River and anchored there again, this time a far piece from Free Spirit ... looks like they just live there. Since we had the hook down by 1100 hours, we made ourselves a couple of Bloody Marys and spend the afternoon reading and relaxing. Penelope made a great chili for brunch, and later that evening I cooked pork picatta for dinner.

November 7th ... HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!! ... we are very grateful for our happiness!

We weighed anchor at 0800, sailed out into the bay in 12 knots, and then as the wind built to 17 to 20 knots (with no gusts), we closed hauled our way across the south bay and tacked back and right through the Sky Bridge. In Tampa Bay proper the winds lightened to between 11 and 15 knots, and we made three long tacks across the bay to reach the channel into Harborage Marina. On our arrival, after dousing sails, we went to the pump-out station only to discover that both pump out machines were not working. Damn, spit!! Alizee went back to her berth with a full holding tank, which we'll have to empty on our next cruise in a couple of weeks. This left laundry, boat cleaning and a clam linguini dinner. Our cruise was done.

More photos

This Powerful Video Clip Explains Exactly Why Penelope and I Support OccupyWallStreet

2011-10-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

Look at it here!

Oh, I wish I'd created this ...

2011-10-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

Memories of sailing the bay...

2011-10-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

I just read through the Nov/Dec issue of Sailing and was came across "Bedlam on the Bay," describing this year's Big Boat Series, which was started almost 50 years ago by San Francisco's hoity-toity St. Francis Yacht Club. It's always a great racing series, but what caught my eye was the almost full-page photo of two of the competitors sailing past Hyde Street on the waterfront. It's a particularly wonderful image for me because triggers my earliest memories of the City.

I spent most of the first four years of my life in the Humphrey House, a marvelous old house at 976 Chestnut Street on the northeast corner of Hyde and Chestnut on Russian Hill. At the time it was the oldest house in San Francisco, built by William Squires Clark in 1852, in part with materials brought around Cape Horn. A sea captain named Humphrey bought it, and in 1880 it was moved to the corner lot, a bit west of its original location. The Hyde Street cable car line was constructed during the following decade and is still operating as one of the City's only three remaining lines.

My maternal grandfather Frank Carroll Giffen rented the Humphrey House from about 1910-1928. Then, after some ten years in Hollywood where he taught singing to emerging movie stars, he rented it again from 1938 until his death in 1948. A few months later, my grandmother Sarah Jesse moved across the street into a large apartment on the northwest corner of Hyde and Chestnut and the old Humphrey House was sold and razed and replaced by the flat-roofed apartment building which I've circled in red on the photo above. There was an effort to save the old house, and although some monies were raised to move it, the wrecking ball got it before the deal could be done. The photo to the left was taken by the Historic American Building Survey in 1936 and looks north across Chestnut Street at the front of the house.

After my birth in Stanford University Hospital, then located in the City, my mother Elizabeth brought me to her family home at Hyde and Chestnut. I recall playing in the front yard with my slightly older cousin, Boone, and because I was fascinated by the cable running under the street right outside the gate, I apparently managed to escape and sit in the middle of the street and gaze at it more than once, only to be rescued by a passer by or family member. And, among my earliest memories are the fog horns that blew regularly on the bay during the 1940s.

This view of the house, also taken by HABS in 1936, is looking east across Hyde Street at the back and side of the house. You can see the cable car tracks going up Hyde Street in the foreground. My grandfather drove a Model T during the 1920s, and because the fuel was gravity fed, if he came down Hyde Street to far, he had to back up and into the garage, which you can see on the right of the photo, or back up to reach Chestnut Street from the garage.

Perhaps the loveliest thing about the old Humphrey House was the view it had of the bay and Alcatraz. This 1990s photo which I found on a calendar captures the view wonderfully, and not only shows the cable cars, but you can see in the upper right quadrant the apartment building that took the place of the old Humphrey House

When I began sailing the bay in 2000, I made it a regular occasion to sail past Hyde Street and look up at the same view captured by Daniel Foster in this Sailing photo. I'm sorry to this day that I did not start sailing years earlier so that my mother could have joined me. She would have loved it so!

Ready for sailing ...

2011-10-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

San Francisco lad that I am, I'm still having problems getting my arms around the idea that sailing season in Florida begins in October, just as sailing season in northern California is starting to wind down. And, of course, Florida's season ends as the heat builds and the hurricane threat emerges in July, just as it is hitting its stride on the west coast. Nevertheless, here it is upon us, and Penelope and I spent the past four days on Alizee, preparing her for some sailing ... in two weeks, we take a week long cruise with some of the members of our new cruising club the Dolphins.

So, this weekend was cleaning up our food storage, throwing out items that were expired or simply rancid, and making lists of what we need to restock. We found that in two months (when I'd last checked it) our dry storage had been consumed by bugs and even a couple of beetles. We chucked all the dried goods, cleaned the storage bin out thoroughly and, then, the next day found yet more microscopic crawly things and re-cleaned with 409. That seemed to get them.

We defrosted the fridge and freezer, cleaned and vacuumed the interior, got our repaired head sails out of the loft and put them up and got a new zipper on the canvas binnacle cover. We got our dinghy out of dry storage, ran the motor a bit as we re-explored the estuary near Fish Tales restaurant, washed it down to get crud out of the inside and pulled it up on the davits. We washed down the topsides, took in all the storm lines that I'd rigged in August in fear of Irene.

Our four days ended with open-mike night at the Bayboro Cafe, just outside the gate of the marina, where I was invited to play keyboards. Quite a change for me, playing rock and folk-rock, but Penelope tells me I was great, and several young musicians and listeners came up and told me so, too ... and by young, I can tell you they were twenty-somethings. All in all, a very nice weekend on the boat.

Now, for sailing!!!

Le Boating the Garonne Canal ...

2011-10-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks of September, we joined friends Tony Kay and Lin Hullen for a week-long canal boating trip in the Bordeaux region of southern France. We met in the Montparnesse district of Paris, on the Left Bank, and then caught the TGV - France's fast train - down to Bordeaux and thence to the village of Le Mas d'Agenais on the Garonne Canal.

We had a quick check-out on the boat during which they failed to give us any on-the-water instruction. That was too bad, for a bit of advice on approaching and going into the locks would have been helpful, particularly since we're all sailors and used to keel boats rather than flat-bottomed buses. Oh well, we had insurance, so the dents and torn-up fiberglass would be their problem.

Once we'd signed away our first-born child for the boat, we hiked up from the canal to the village and shopped for provisions at Max Lespine's small grocery. Mostly wine plus Tony's favorite drink Ricard and a bottle of bourbon for Pen and me, and actually food: cheeses, meat, bread, condiments, vegetables and fruit, which they kindly delivered to the boat for us. Chef Lin prepared our evening meal and we had a wonderful time imagining the days to come and solving all the political problems of the world. Thank heavens we're all of the same political persuasion.

Not too bright and early in the morning, at 10:30 and after James had hiked up to the bakery from some fresh croissants and a couple of more baguettes, we let go the lines and pulled out on to the canal. Our overall trip was 123 kilometers and through 42 locks and we six days to do it, so we were confident the days didn't have to be that long in duration. At six kilometers per hour, the speed limit on the canal, we went about ten km to a pretty little spot just below Pont la Folotte, where we tied up for a sort of picnic lunch under the umbrella topsides on the boat. On a walk along the canal's tow path (now a bike path), Penelope fell in love with the giant Sycamore trees, and we could barely tear her away!

Another ten km and a third lock brought us to Buzet-sur-Baise, where we side-tied in front of the Aquataine Navigation Capitainerie for the night. We had hoped to be able to just stop in some quiet and beautiful spot along the side of the canal some of the nights we were on the canal, but once on the water we discovered an intermittent short in the boat's charging system, so we decided to spend nights only where shore power was available. No matter, it was quite nice at every little marina, and they are indeed quite small. Perhaps if we'd been there at the high season (July-August) we wouldn't have found berths, but we never failed to find a spot.

In Buzet-sur-Baise, we went down to a market in town, and had a wonderful dinner at Auberge du Goujon qui Fretille. The dock master called to see if they would be open and then recommended it to us as well as three other boat groups. Turns out we were the only ones being served that night (Sunday), and more it was one of the best meals we had in France.

Next morning we shed our mooring lines and slipped out on to the canal under threatening skies. As Captain, I put on my slicker, pulled up the hood, and enjoyed the crisp air topsides at the wheel. It misted off and on through the morning, and the weather no doubt explained why we only saw a couple of other boats this day. Just before our third lock of the day at l'Auvignon, we pulled over to a small dock next to an apple orchard laden with the most delicious looking grapefruit sized apples. We had a nice lunch and then the crew set out to pick and buy some apples. Alas, there was nobody home, and clearly apples needed to be picked, so the stealthy crew loaded up a bag with it turns out far to few apples, while the Captain revved the engine for a fast 4 kmph getaway.

One, two, three, four, five locks or ecluses and about 18 kms away, our boat Clipper crossed the Pont-canal d'Agen, taking the canal over the Garonne River, and into Agen. We headed for the Port de la gare du Pin, Agen's marina, and after unsuccessfully trying to back the damned bus into the slip, we gave up and nosed her in bow first. We got there just in the nick of time, for the dock master was about to close up shop ... it was 17:45, and she closed at 18:00.

Here we enjoyed a lovely sunset, got some great photos of other canal boaters tied up along the shore to our north, and enjoyed another evening of spirited political and economic debate about life, the universe and everything. (All in all there were 42 locks on our trip, and you'll probably remember that the answer to the question "What's the meaning of life, the universe and everything" in the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy is 42.)

If it's Tuesday we must be somewhere in Bordeaux. We departed at 11:00 - we seemed to be sleeping later and later every day - and puttered our way down past Bon-Encontre and Boe, the latter a tiny marina looking like a very pleasant overnight spot. But we had ecluses to pass through and kilometers to putter, but we'd made a late start so at ten km and our first lock of the day, we decided, once through it, to tie off the boat on the canal bank and walk back a hundred meters to L'Auberge de la Poule a Vilo, a picturesque little restaurant in the old canal keeper's lock house at Mouynes. Run by a mother and daughter, among several customers we were the only non-native, almost a guarantee that the food will be excellent. And although we had a terrible time figuring out the menu, what we ended up with was truly wonderful.

The afternoon cruise down through three more locks was lovely and peaceful. Beautiful Sycamore trees lined the canal in so many places, we got a steady view of the region's nuclear power plant cooling towers and we arrived at Valence-d'Agen at 17:15, in plenty of time to walk up into the village for baguettes and to replenish our liquor supply - we got a deal on some St. Emilion bordeaux wine and got six bottles - as well as food supply and still return for a sunset.

It was such a nice night that Tony, taking air on the poop deck, decided to fall in. "Man overboard!" We all rushed out to fish him out, which took about five minutes. No ladder on the boat and no ladder on the pier, so we had to get him around to where we could get a good purchase under his arms and lift him up. He was very wet and embarrassed, but in good cheer. He just needed some more Ricard to warm him up! Or was it too much Ricard in the first place, Tony?

Four the next three days of our trip, there were more ecluses each day, it seemed. Wednesday brought twelve ecluses and one drawbridge (the only one on the canal). After replenishing bread and a couple of other things at the bakery and supermarket, we set off through farming country. Lots of apple orchards, lovely fields of produce lined the canal. At one point Penelope, who would go ashore at each lock to be there to handle lines when we came in (we were going up stream, so the lock walls were over our heads), probably walked three or four km, never getting back on the boat. I don't know why it never occurred to us to take one of the bicycles down so she could ride the pathway rather than walk. And, to think that only James rode once (at our next stop). Renting the bikes was unnecessary.

Along this stretch we saw a couple of sailboats heading from the Mediterranean up to Bordeaux and the Atlantic. They carried their masts on frames and no doubt had a boatyard on the Med take them down and would have another yard in Bordeaux raise them back up. We went through four ecluses a bit later with a sailboat, and they did have quite a time holding her steady when the lock started filling - the keel apparently really captured the turbulence and buffeted the boat around.

As a side note, the locks were all automatic, and an electrical switch was activated by twisting a rubber-covered rod hanging from a wire suspended over the canal (the woman on the right has it in her hand). There were three lights in front of each lock - red, green and yellow - in a triangular pattern. Once you turned the rod, the yellow-light would begin flashing, indicating the lock process was beginning. The red and green lights were on, and boats waited until just the green showed, which was your signal to enter the lock. There was quite a bit of eddying in the water at the lock entrances, so you had to go in at a couple of km/hr to avoid being thrown on to the sides of the lock or lock doors. Hence, all the boats had dings despite their heavy rubber bumpers and being lined with fenders. Once in the lock and tied off on the bollards, one of your crew had to push a button ashore to complete the lock cycle - that was almost always Penelope.

Our destination on Wednesday was Castelsarrasin, where we knew they had a market on Thursday morning. We were very eager for that, for we had miss-timed market days in two previous spots. At the marina we had to parallel park the Clipper, which I say as Captain we managed very deftly. We all enjoyed showers, and after cleaning up we went to Le St. Louis Restaurant, just a couple of blocks walk in toward town. What a wonderful meal! The best escargot we had in France and perhaps anywhere. And wonderful steaks! Yum, yum, yum!

Next morning we had our market! Oh how we wished we'd found this at the start of the boat trip, for we would have bought so much. But now, with only a couple of days left, we held back and feasted with our eyes. They had every imaginable bit of food from meats and fish to vegetables and fruit, they had a live-animal section, they sold shoes, clothes, mattresses, furniture, household goods of every imaginable type. Cafes were crowded with happy folks and every old friend in the world was meeting every other old friend. It was a potpourri of goodness!

After we'd had our fill at the market, we moved onward through the next eight locks and on into Montech, the little town where we would leave the Garonne Canal the next day and go to Montauban, our final stop, at the end of the Montech Canal. Going through Moissac, we had to pull over and wait ten minutes for the draw-bridge tender to come back from lunch. We pulled ahead of four other boats, to find a spot to stop, and then let them go past us when the bridge finally opened. I was a bit fearful they'd all be heading for Montech, but all four stopped in Moissac's marina and we went on.

At Montech we pulled in beside a couple of Brits who were settling in to spend their fifth winter there. They were most friendly, and wechatted a bit, then Tony and Lin walked into town, I took care of business with the Capitainerie and then I road one of our bikes into town to explore. As luck would have it, the chain came off have way through my ride, and I returned with greasy fingers. After cocktails and good conversation with the other boaters, we went to a little restaurant at the end of the marina quay, Maison Eclusier. Of course, the food was splendid!

Our final day on the water started around mid-morning. We had only ten km to go, but had to pass through nine ecluses. Turns out that we were now on a down stream course to Montauban, which meant that Penelope could stay aboard through all the locks. Actually, she got off and walked between one set - they were all pretty close together - so she could take some photos of us on the Clipper. We arrived at Montauban around midday, a Le Boat boat boy backed us into the appropriate slip, we arranged for a taxi for o-dark thirty the next morning (our train for Bordeaux and then Paris departed at 0720), and we set off on foot for downtown and a fashionably late lunch, which we found around 14:15 in the old city square. This was followed by a lovely final evening on the Clipper.

On Saturday, the TGV took us back to Gare Montparnesse, where Penelope and I caught a taxi to our new hotel on Rue de Monge nearer the Sorbonne. That night we returned to join Tony and Lin who were joining us for my birthday celebration at Le Beliere Welcome, a well-known small jazz dinner club, where happily I got to play music a bit. (See photos here.)

The next four days we spent wandering Paris, a couple of those days with Tony and Lin, the rest on our own. We did all the logical spots: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Jardin des Plantes, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur on Montmartre and of course another wonderful market at the Place Monge, near our hotel. We got caught up in and marched a short ways with the French teachers, who were demonstrating by the Sorbonne against the Sarkozy government. And we had more Recard, more good food, more good wine, more good company ... and then it was over. If you get the chance, you should try it, too. :)

Don't miss Penelope's slide show

Update on Alizee's forestay incident...

2011-10-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

As we reported in "Last leg to St. Petersburg" in April, we experienced what the Dophins Cruising Club calls an "inconvenient floundering folly" when Alizee's roller-furling forestay came loose at the foot on our sail from Key West to Florida's west coast.

In July, the Dolphins put out a call for candidates for the WIFF Award, given annually to the boater experiencing the worst folly of the sailing season. As a newly joined member, I thought it would be fun to submit something, so I wrote up our forestay adventure.

We went off to Scotland and later France on summer travels, and I was stunned when at their opening-of-the-season potluck and general meeting -- the very first Dolphins event I had attended -- the WIFF Award was presented to me by John Lenhart, last year's award winner. I was called upon to tell the story of our adventure, and then write it up again for the newsletter. Wow, what a way to be introduced as a new member to a club of a couple of hundred sailors.

Penelope had decided not to drive over to St. Pete for the gathering, since we had just returned from France a couple of days before and she was too jet-lagged. I chose to go because I had to flush the water maker on Alizee anyway, and it was a good chance to meet some Dolphins members. But, I think Penelope was doubly glad not to have gone when I returned home with the trophy, which now has a proud place on our porch!

Birthday in Paris...

2011-10-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

As part of our trip to France, I chose a jazz club in Montparnesse on the Left Bank to have dinner with Penelope and Tony Kay and Lin Hullen on my birthday. Le Beliere Welcome turned out to be a wonderful spot. The food was superb, the service great and, more important, Rene Courdacher's trio played exactly my style of jazz swing.

At my bidding, Tony managed to get me a spot playing during one of the trio's breaks. Rene was cordial about it, introducing me to the crowd, and after I played a couple of tunes the bass player Xavier Dambrun and drummer Christian Laruella came up and asked to play a blues with me.

I think we brought the place up a notch, and at the next break we played a good solid swing tune together before the night ended. Naturally, we forgot to bring cameras, but Tony did have his cell phone and managed to eke out a few hazy photos.

It was the best birthday celebration I've ever had and a night I shall always remember. Thanks to these great French musicians and to Penelope, Tony and Lin for making it possible!

Storm a-comin' ...

2011-08-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

On Sunday morning it looked like hurricane Irene, which was just aiming toward Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, might be on a path that could take it right across the Florida Keys and on up through the state. Jeff Grant at our marina gave me a call and said he'd be getting boats ready for the onslaught starting on Monday, so I decided to drive over and prepare Alizee.

I arrived Monday around noon, and already it looked like Irene's course was moving east of Florida's Gulf Coast, but since I was already there, I went ahead and added lines, put a Jacobs Ladder on the mainsail, hooked up the main halyard at the foot of the boom to give added support to the topping lift, and threw on a couple of more fenders. The head sails are already off the boat and on the shelf in Advanced Sails' loft, after having new sunbrella added to the leaches. The loft's owner Keith is good enough to store them there until we can get them back on the boat in October. The only thing I didn't do was to remove the dodger and bimini. Instead, Jeff agreed to remove them and put them below if Irene suddenly turned back toward the Gulf Coast, or in the event of another storm hitting St. Petersburg in the next several weeks.

So, Alizee is ready for Irene, but Irene seems bent on wreaking havoc in the Bahamas rather than Florida. On the course she's now following, she'll miss Florida completely but is surely going to go right up through the far Bahama islands. We remember anchoring all along Cat Island, one of our favorites, and along Eleuthera, and now we cannot help but think of the residents of those spots that welcomed us so warmly last year. Perhaps Harbor Island and then the islands surrounding the Sea of Abaco will be spared the worst, but they'll still get hit pretty hard as well. Of course the eastern seaboard is on alert, and Irene still remains a really threat to North Carolina, as her track points northeasterly toward Long Island and Massachusetts. I zoomed in on the Stormpulse map and saw that Irene will probably come awfully close to Oriental, where I was when tropical storm Hanna came through in September 2008. That was pretty rough and I can't imagine Oriental Harbor standing up well to even the edge of a category two or three storm. Well, at least I find that our friends Karl and Lucy Lichty have sold their boat Lu Sea, so they don't have that to worry about. But we wish all the best to other sailors in and around Oriental.

Memories ...

2011-08-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

Friend Chris James sent me this photo of Dog Days at rest in the Delta. The scene reminds me of my trip up to the Delta with Paul Poirier, sun-shower hanging from the mast and all. New owner Rochelle seems to be taking pretty good care of her, and has converted her jib from hank-on to roller furler. She also put in a new head, replaced some running rigging, and replaced the fuel guage and sensor, which had recently bitten the dust. I wonder if she's as balanced on a close reach with the new sail?

Glasgow, Scotland ...

2011-08-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

We had a great trip to Glasgow, Scotland for the 38th symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology, for which James is currently serving as president. While Edinburgh, not Glasgow, is usually the first destination for visitors to Scotland, we loved Glasgow. The people were uniformly friendly, the restaurants were all superb and the weather cool and comfortable despite some rain ... a far cry from sultry hot central Florida. We especially enjoyed walking along the Kelvin River that runs through Kelvingrove Park adjacent to the University of Glasgow, and we thought the Kelvingrove Art Museum was one of the most interesting we've ever visited ... very eclectic, drawing very well on the local environs and filled with clever ways to engross the viewer.

The symposium itself was fun. Lots of good papers on a myriad of topics from technology in military history to environment and technology issues to technology and music and technology and play. James's paper was on in the latter session on play, and looked at sailing through the role of consumers in affecting technological change and how the sailing has become a "hedonized" technology, a technology of pleasure and play.

Of course a great deal of the symposium was taken up in meeting with old friends, making new ones and sipping a wee dram or two. Friday night of the symposium was the group's jazz night, an affair that has gone on at each symposium since the 1990s and which is the occasion for the Email Special to reunite and play jazz standards while others find their way to the dance floor.

Photos

Thinking about sailing...

2011-08-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a lovely ten-day trip to Glasgow, Scotland, and the moment I checked my backlog of emails I began to think about stepping on Alizee again for some sailing. To be sure, the trip to Glasgow (for which I'll post an entry soon), but, as my friend Bruce Sinclair said in response to my spotting his photo sailing his little dinghy T/T Aquavit while I was gone: "I would have liked to have been there ... apart from this lovely boating life."

I sailed with Bruce and his wife Gail down from Vallejo to South Beach Marina in San Francisco on their new-to-them Swan 36 Aquavit when I was last in California a month ago. When I looked at the 'Lectronic Latitude edition recapping the bay area's week-long Delta Doo Dah 3D cruise up into the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta, there was Bruce sailing his dinghy in the event's dinghy race. And I could spot Bruce and Gail among the crowd on the bow of Buffalo Spirit (Gail's wearing a black shirt and waving and Bruce sports a white cap and shirt). Had I been there, I no doubt would have wangled my way into playing the keyboard that is almost next to Gail. And, yet a third photo of the four in 'Lectronic Latitude shows their Swan anchored in Potato Slough with their little wooden dinghy floating off Aquavit's stern.

This lovely boating life, indeed, dear friend Bruce.

Another glimpse of the sailing life came in a check in the mail from Good Old Boat which alerted me that they had published my review of Frank Rosenow's Ditty Bag Book, a fun little guide to sail-making and canvas work for sailors of all stripes. You can find the review here.

Finally, an email from the Seven Seas Cruising Association reminded me that Penelope and I have to decide whether we're going to try and make it to the gam in the middle of October which SSCA is holding in Punta Gorda at the top of Charlotte Harbor on Florida's gulf coast. Meanwhile, the Dolphins Cruising Club of Tampa Bay, which we just joined a couple of months ago is planning their cruising schedule for the upcoming season, and we're looking forward to participating.

California for fun...

2011-07-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

Recently returned from a week in California, where I had a chance to see my daughter and her husband. (Here they are, relaxing in their townhouse and probably wondering why in heavens name they let the old man stay for a full week) As well, I got to visit with some old friends, sail on San Francisco Bay, give a paper at a conference at Stanford, and play music with friends in the Silicon Gulch Jazz Band. It was a packed seven days, and I am still recovering ... Penelope says I have jet lag, and I suppose that's probably it.

Although I had planned to make a trip to visit my daughter sometime at the start of summer, the invitation to give a talk on the early history of Silicon Valley at the Triple Helix Conference at Stanford cemented the dates. I had written a paper back in the 1990s that traced the evolution of Silicon Valley from the early electric power and radio communications industries in the Bay Area. (It used to be on line through American Heritage: Invention and Technology, but it is no longer available.) I revised it and cut it down to fit into the requested 20 minutes with a power point presentation, and offered just about the only bit of history on the subject of how the synergistic interplay of university, industry and government (the "triple helix") evolved in the Bay Area into what we know today as Silicon Valley. Others have written on the subject since I did, but of course you must know they stand on the shoulders of a giant. :)

I spent a morning traveling up to Vallejo via BART and the Vallejo Ferry to sail back down to South Beach Harbor in San Francisco with Bruce and Gail and their dog Lulu on their "newish" boat Aquavit, a really nice 1988 Swan 36, which they had just bought in Seattle and had trucked down.

With an almost seven-foot fin keel, Aquavit simply cut through the water and with a reef in the main and in the Genoa, we sailed at over eight knots in the 17 to 20 knot breeze across the back side of the Slot. And, although it was sunny at the start of the sail in Vallejo, fog was prevalent for most of the way through San Pablo Bay and down to the Bay Bridge. Foolish me, I did not have sunscreen on and the fog magnified the UV rays and I got a major burn by the end of the my sailing that weekend.

The next day I hadn't planned on sailing. Rather I drove up to Alameda to have a late breakfast with my longtime friend Rob Bastress, boat builder extraordinaire, but the sun was out, a light breeze was blowing on the estuary, and he talked me into a couple of hours aboard his little 27-foot sloop before I headed out to San Francisco to spend the afternoon and have dinner with some of the Cowan family clan. We puttered about in light winds and I continued to bake my face, which I can safely say I am still regretting.

It was truly a treat to see Ruth Cowan and her daughter Sarah and son-in-law Andy. Ruth's darling Neil died in March, and neither Penelope or I had really talked with Ruth much since then. She was in good spirits and, although Penelope hadn't come with me on this trip, we had a conference call for almost an hour that Pen said made her feel like she was with us. It was all by chance that she was in California when I was (she teaches at Penn and her home is on Long Island), but she was there for a conference on genetics and technology in Pacifica (right on the ocean below San Francisco). Rather ironic that we both were out for conferences, I thought.

Finally, after all this I went to the conference at Stanford and gave my talk in the opening session on Monday afternoon. The next morning I went in for a "meet-the-authors" breakfast ... the organizers had gotten copies of all the featured speakers books and had them for sale ... and I briefly commented on my book, Energy and the Making of Modern California, and how I had discovered the history of electric power on the Pacific Coast and how it evolved quite distinctively from electric power in the midwest and eastern part of the country. It was this that led me to understanding the early significance of university, industry and government in the creation of what would 80 years later become known as Silicon Valley. And, my goodness, at least one copy was sold to conferees, because I was asked to sign it! Hey, and Akron Press has it on sale now for only $7.95. That's a deal.

After having a late lunch that day with my De Anza buddy, Ben Kline, I relaxed a little and then made my way up to the Swing Door Pub in San Mateo to hear the Silicon Gulch Jazz Band. Henry Etzkowitz, organizer of the Triple Helix Conference, had asked me if I knew of a band to play at the event's banquet, and since I'd played with the Dave Kawamoto who leads the Silicon Gulch Jazz Band in my own group, Article 19, I suggested his band. Well, they hired him, and I was to play with them the next night at the banquet, so I thought I'd drop in and see how everything was working out at their regular gig. As luck would have it, another fellow had brought in a keyboard and was more than happy to have me sit in for a couple of sets, which was a nice warm up for the banquet gig.

Our gig at the banquet turned out wonderfully. They are all such great musicians and I truly love playing with them. Joyce Taylor and I actually first played together back in the pizza parlor ragtime days of the 1960s, as a piano-banjo duet for a time, and later with a fellow who played clarinet (and who's name I've long ago forgotten). Over the years, Joyce and I have crossed paths occasionally, and discovered we had somewhat similar interests: she had a career teaching and she also has been a sail boater and now power boater ... we bumped into each other in front of the Oakland Yacht Club several years ago, when I was walking past it to go to my club, the Encinal Yacht Club, just down the street.

Well, enough of that reminiscing. The California trip was great fun, but I am so glad to be home in the arms of my sweet love, Penelope. It's where I know I'm supposed to be!

More photos

Short, hot weekend at the boat ...

2011-07-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Pen and I went over to St. Petersburg on Saturday, after celebrating her and her twin sister Patricia's birthday on Friday night. Drove part of the way through a driving summer thunderstorm ... this is the rainy season in Florida and you can almost count on afternoon storms ... but otherwise it was a nice scenic drive. We didn't plan to go sailing, since the temperatures are in the 90s and the humidity makes it feel much hotter, but we did have some hurricane preparation to do: removing the headsails and taking them into a loft for new leach sunbrella, taking the dinghy Bertha off Alizee and putting her in dry storage for the duration of hurricane season, flushing the water maker (which must be done monthly), and making final arrangements with Jeff of Ohana Sailing Services to prep the exterior teak for varnishing in the fall and to wash, wax and polish Alizee.

Meantime, during the heat of the day, we did a lot of reading. Pen has been scanning and transcribing her father's War two letters home (over 150 of them) and we've both been doing research on his experiences. He served in the 60th Field Artillery, 9th Infantry Division from 1941 to mid-1945, landing with Patton in Morocco in 1942, then in Sicily in 1943 and in Normandy in 1944. He was just a dog face, not winning awards but always there, steadfast through four years of war. He rarely talked about it and when he did only talked about hi-jinks and his getting busted from corporal to private and getting the rank back more than once. But we've found an amazing amount of material on the web and gotten in touch with another daughter of a fellow who served in his battery in the 60th and kept records which she's shared with Pen.

All this led us to read the first two volumes of Rick Atkinson's history of the European theater: Army at Dawn, the north Africa campaign (which won a Pulitzer Prize in history), and The Day of Battle, the Sicily and Italy campaigns. His third volume, on France and northern Europe is not scheduled to be out until 2013.

Anyway, we spent the weekend on the boat reading the first two volumes and cooking some nice meals. It was quite wonderful.

If you're a fan of really good writing and interested in War two, then you real should treat yourself to Atkinson's work. You'll find a nuanced understanding of all the big names from Churchill and Roosevelt to Patton, Eisenhower, Clark, Rommel, et al., and you'll be stunned at what a cluster-fuck the whole thing was from start to finish. For our parts, we're wondering anew why anyone ever wants to fight wars. What a dreadful waste!!

Summer Sailstice at the EYC ...

2011-06-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

I am envious beyond words to find that my the Encinal Yacht Club, my old yacht club, is one of the hosts of this year's Summer Sailstice on San Francisco Bay. More I wish I could join my buddy Tony Oliver who'll be entertaining with jazz guitar and Mike Serpan's group who'll be playing as well. Summer of my fondest times ever were playing piano at the EYC ... on Friday evenings, for special events and with other musicians. Have fun you guys!

Just in case you missed it ...

2011-06-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

... June 14th was Flag Day. First celebrated 150 years ago in June 1861, amidst the Civil War, the holiday's popularity seems was greatest in the years from World War I to War II and the early cold war. During the 1960s, it became more or less the epitome of square: a vaguely embarrassing grade-school memory to be filed alongside duck-and-cover drills and mandatory prayers. It has never much regained its former cachet. And yet, holiday or no holiday, this June 14 — as on all other days of the year — the American flag still remains ubiquitous and venerated.

Just thought you might like to know.

A hot week on Alizee ...

2011-06-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Drove over to St. Pete on May 24th to spend a week on Alizee while Penelope flew off to Colorado to spend the time with her daughter Erin. Initially we'd thought she might join me for a couple of days on the boat, so she flew out of Tampa International, but logistically that didn't work out. She still road over with me to the airport, and after I saw her off, I headed down to the boat. Wouldn't you know it, I arrived to find the electric power had been joggled lose at the dock and that batteries were critically low (since the refrigerator was on). I got it going again, defrosted the refrigerator/freezer, and settled in for the evening.

Next morning I was up at 0700 and discovered that I couldn't get my Aircard to work on my new Mac notebook. After futzing with it for an hour, I decided to head off to an AT&T store nearby and then provision the boat for the week. Our friend Jon Amsden was coming over from Daytona Beach to spend five or six days sailing with me while Pen was gone, and he appeared as I walked to the car, about three hours earlier than I'd expected him. He was up for a vacation! He joined me for the ride to AT&T where I got zip help; they just passed me off to Apple, but I didn't have time for that trek across town, so we provisioned instead.

At 1400 we had everything stowed and left the slip. First stop, the pump out station, and by 1445 we were sailing to Picnic Island (locally called Beer Can Island) at the beginning of Big Bend Channel in north Tampa Bay. A nice sail got us there by 1730, and we anchored, the only boat there except for some day-trippers in small power boats ashore. Jon did some casting off the boat while I cooked us up a dinner of lamb chops, zucchini and salad. A nice night, not too hot because of an evening breeze, but unfortunately a breeze from the west that brought bugs from the island right on to the boat. I got pretty eaten, despite putting on repellant, and the next morning Jon had what he called a "DEET" hangover.

Thursday, May 26th, we weighed anchor at 0800 and departed Picnic Island for the Manatee River off south Tampa Bay. We had a nice sail with an 8-9 knot east wind on the beam down to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which died out for only about an hour or so. Along the way we caught a Spanish Mackerel on the trolling line, which I filleted and put on ice to use for sushi in the evening. By 1530 we had reached the Manatee River and anchored south of Emerson Point. No bugs this night, and a nice evening breeze until about 2200. Jon did a little more fishing off the boat, without any success, while I made up the sushi rice and put together a roll. I was amazed at how sweet the Mackerel was for sushi and sashimi, which we followed with some barbecued chicken thighs and salad. When we finally called it a night and went to bed the wind died and it became stifling, smothering hot ... at least for me. Jon lives on his boat in Daytona Beach and has no air conditioning, so he's a lot more acclimatized than I am.

Friday, the start of Memorial Day Weekend, and I am figuring on a hoard of boats out over the holiday stretch. Alizee's batteries did not get fully charged on shore power before we left, and we'd only run the engine for 4.4 hours the first two days, so I'm thinking we should motor. Since the wind was light and predicted to be that way all day, I rigged the spinnaker and once out of the Manatee River channel raised it. We sailed on a pretty close reach for using just the spinnaker, heading northwest-west across south Tampa Bay, across the main shipping channel, up to the Boca Ciega inlet, thence inland and up to the ICW. I finally turned the motor on to go through the Structure C bascule bridge, but only as a precaution, for as soon as we were through I shut it down and sailed the rest of the way to the anchorage off Gulfport on Boca Ciega Bay. With Jon at the helm we dropped the spinnaker and motored the final few hundred feet to drop the anchor.

Jon is less experienced than I though he was, based on his telling of his sailing exploits up and down the coast of Florida. Turns out he really is a novice, which I really discovered a couple of days later when I was down below filleting another fish we'd caught, leaving him at the helm. Alizee was on autopilot and we were flying the main and the spinnaker on a beam reach in 12 knots of wind. Then the wind picked up to 14 to 18 knots and Jon yelled down to me that we were getting "big seas." I replied I'd be up very soon, so he should deal with it. Alas, when I stepped into the cockpit, he hadn't taken it off autopilot, we were rounding up and he was reeling in a fishing hand line. I quickly took the helm, let out the main and straightened us out, soon to discover he hadn't been aware that dumping wind from the main was the first thing he should have done. Ah well, he learned a lot on the course of the trip.

After we anchored off Gulfport, I rigged up the wind catcher for the forward hatch ... I was not going to suffer the heat again as I had the night before ... and took a short dip in what turned out to be 80+ degree water. It hardly cooled me down. But with fresh clothing I felt better and we decided to dinghy into shore and get drinks and dinner at O'Maddy's. Later, I ran our Honda generator for a couple of hours to charge the batteries and we sat on the foredeck and enjoyed the night sky and evening breeze.

Next morning, at 0800, we decided to motor up the ICW to Dunedin. There was little wind, although I raised the spinnaker after going through the first of four or five bridges (two had 20 minute opening schedules, while the rest opened on request). We arrived and anchored at low tide in barely five feet of water (Alizee draws five feet) outside the Dunedin municipal marina. This evening Jon bathed off the boat, and once he'd cleaned up we dinghied into the transient dock, tied off and went to the outdoor Bon Appetite cafe for appetizers: tuna tataki and French Onion soup. Later I barbecued two nice steaks and made a salad for dinner.

Since Pen is in Colorado, we've got a two-hour time difference, so we didn't get much phone time in. Seems like she would call me just as I was going through a bridge or handling sail trim or such, and I would call her when she was out of phone range while driving to some adventurous spot with Erin. Anyhow, this night she called around 2230, and even though I had just drifted off to sleep I insisted we talk for a while. Turns out she was up in the Rockies at a park rollicking in the snow, while I was sweating profusely in over 90 degree heat. Damn, spit! But, it was wonderful to hear her voice ... I miss her!

Sunday, May 29th, I was up early, made coffee and read. Around 0900, after Jon had had a cup of coffee, I said we should push off, expecting a long day sailing back down to Boca Ciega Bay. We raised the main, tot the spinnaker lines laid out for a quick raise later, and set off for Clearwater Inlet to the south. The motor-sail down to and out the inlet was nice, and once we got out and turned southwest, we got the spinnaker up and a light breeze propelled us at 2-4 knots on a very comfortable sea. I got out my iPod and played a few sets of songs and then pulled out my battery-powered Yamaha keyboard and played for another hour or so. About that time the wind shifted a bit and Jon got us on a better course. Eventually, the wind picked up to 9 knots and we averaged about 4 knots.

About 1600 we turned in toward John's Pass, lost a Blue Runner just as I was about to bring him over the rail and then caught another one. It was while filleting this one that the wind came up and we had our round-up experience. ... We pulled down the spinnaker, leaving just the main up, and motor-sailed into and through John's Pass (which has an on request bascule bridge right at the inlet). It took perhaps another hour to get down to Gulfport on Boca Ciega Bay, where we anchored in a strong east wind of 15 knots with 20 knot gusts. Too windy to barbecue the baby back ribs I'd thawed out, I cooked them in the broiler and the wind kept the boat cool.

Monday we took the ICW over to Tampa Bay and up to the marina, arriving around 1330. We had to pump out, and then I maneuvered up Salt Creek to the fuel dock, which was incredibly cramped, before putting Alizee in her slip. We dinghied back over to Fish Tales on Salt Creek (near the fuel dock) for lunch, then washed down Alizee. Jon said his good byes around 1700 and I fixed a strong drink! We'd had a good time, but I was ready for some alone time, and I had a lot of cleaning to do on board before picking up Penelope at Tampa International on Tuesday. ... Then it's back home where I've got some writing to catch up on.

Musing ashore ...

2011-05-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

Largely such musings tend to be about the state of our world and our society. Lately, we have been extremely riled up about the absolute failure of Republicans to live up to their campaign promises of 2010: "jobs, jobs, jobs" and by attacking Democrats on Medicare "death panels" their implicit promise to seniors that they would "protect Medicare." So, what do we see instead?

Nothing at all about "jobs," a budgetary plan on which virtually all the Republicans in Congress approved that would turn Medicare into a voucher system and essentially end it within a decade or so, all out attacks on women (via women's health issues) by trying to kill any funding for Planned Parenthood, at the state level, an all-out assault on public employee unions and workers' rights, and atop it all a blatant attempt to protect the wealthy and corporate America by condemning any thought of tax increases (or elimination of corporate tax breaks) by screaming "the deficit, the deficit, the deficit" over and over again.

Of course the problem with the deficit is that most of it is a result of Bush's tax breaks, the two wars he launched without funding them, and the Medicare drug plan which also wasn't funded. Then the deficit was exacerbated by the economic meltdown (caused ultimately by the long-term effort of Republicans to deregulate everything in sight), which led to government spending to stop the economy from tanking completely. Just take a look at the deficit projection:

Now, you might note that the TARP and Fannie and Freddie "bailouts" have largely been repaid and, along with the recovery measures (Obama's stimulus spending), add little to the next decade projection. But not at all so with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the economic downturn and, worse still, the Bush tax cuts.

The Republican mantra to reduce spending in non-defense and Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is not going to solve this problem. It depends entirely on blind faith in the growth of the American economy, and since we've outsourced almost all our manufacturing and other high-wage work, any growth by American corporations is going to go outside the country anyway. The days of growing bigger and bigger are at an end, to be replaced with small gains but nothing to solve these problems.

Therefore, there is only one answer. Get rid of the Bush tax cuts ... on everyone ... raise the marginal tax rates up into the 40% range for people in the top 1% to 2% income range, restructure corporate taxes by eliminating all the tax breaks and setting the rate at a flat 20% to 25% that also includes revenues earned overseas. At the same time, take a large knife to the Pentagon budget and adopt a universal public option health care system.

Well, that's what we've been musing about, and I'll tell you, as we watch the ideologues who have captured some of our state governments (Rick Scott in Florida, Scott Walker in Wisconsin ... hey, what's with the Scotts?) and are after unions, the environment and doing everything possible to support the wealthy and large business community, we are about ready to go sailing again.

Ten days on the boat ...

2011-05-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

We made our first trip back to Alizee on Tuesday, April 19, and spent ten days doing some boat work, sailing and fishing. We are convinced our decision to get a berth in St. Pete was the absolutely right thing to do. The weather is wonderful, the sailing spectacular, the fishing good and the atmosphere just what a sailor would hope for. We've heard a couple of places that Tampa Bay with its enormous Sky Bridge is like the San Francisco of the Gulf Coast. As one who sailed San Francisco Bay and sailed under and watched many a sunset through the Golden Gate Bridge, there really isn't that much of a comparison, but then again one doesn't have to put on foulies to sail Tampa Bay in 15-20 knots, and you would never characterize it as a place where summer is "the coldest winter" you've ever experienced.

Our first morning aboard Alizee had us up and busy, washing down the hull and straightening things out down below. Rob Mundell, our sailmaker from Port Orange on the east coast met us at 1100 to deliver our long-overdue new cruising spinnaker and, as a favor, to check out our mast head and our two roller furl headsails. Using our windlass for power, I saved him from having to pull himself up the mast with a block and tackle. He inspected the foresail fittings, shot a bit of lubricant into the masthead wind sensor, and then check out the roller furling gear on the way down. By this time it was clearly time for lunch, so we sauntered up to our new favorite breakfast and lunch spot, the Bayboro Cafe, right at the entrance to the marina.

By 1330, we had rigged the spinnaker and left the dock to test it out. One of the nicest things about the Harborage Marina is that we can be raising the sails within five minutes of leaving the dock and under sail in ten minutes. With light winds, we couldn't really give the spinnaker a full try out, but even in two knots we moved along. The wind finally picked up to perhaps eight knots, and we had some nice spinnaker sailing. Rob loved playing with the lines and adjusting the sails, Pen loved that Rob did virtually everything she otherwise would have done and I enjoyed having another crew member while we sailed along. The afternoon sail turned out to be about four-and-a-half hours in duration, so we were late getting back and I had to reschedule with Ron of Everafter Marine to run a new coaxial cable for our Sirius Weather system.

Thursday, April 21, we did more boat work, cleaning out and remounting the exterior fixture on the head vent, replacing a half inch fresh water hose under the galley sink and changing the oil and filter on the engine. These tasks took much of the day, involving also two trips to West Marine and a bit of last minute provisioning ... we'd done most of it when we first arrived, Tuesday afternoon, but it seems we're always coming up short on some item. In fact, we may have been better provisioning for a month or more cruise than for just ten days, for the next morning I found myself making one last trip down to the grocery before we could depart for our planned six-day cruise.

Our little cruise route

Day one in red, two in black, three in green, four (fishing) a dotted line, five in orange, six in blue

A little after noon on Friday, we pulled out of the marina, hoisted the main and once past the Coast Guard station in the harbor entrance decided to raise the spinnaker. We had a time getting it up, for we had gotten several twists in it on our last dousing with Rob, but Penelope has a good handle on the spinnaker and once the twists were gone it flew nicely. The wind was quite light and the main appeared to be blocking the spinnaker, so we dropped it and coasted along down Tampa Bay making for the Sunshine Bridge for about three hours in six knots of wind out of the northwest. When the wind shifted to the west, we dropped the spinnaker and raised all sails to tack to the bridge, going through it at about 1800.

Our initial plan had been to go under the bridge and turn west and thence north to Boca Ciega inlet and spend the night in Boca Ciega Bay (by car this would have been less than thirty minutes from the marina), but our late start coupled with light winds and the westerly shift of the wind meant we needed to find an alternative anchorage. We decided to go to Egmont Key, which lies on a north-south axis about four nautical miles southwest of the Sunshine Bridge (the red line traces our first day's route on the map), and after a tacking south of Egmont we turned back northwest and arrived at the anchorage just at sunset. We were met with a cacophony of birds, literally thousands settling in for the night a creating a mighty racket. Some cruisers had mention this in notations about the anchorage on Active Captain, and most of them felt the noise of the birds intrusive, while we actually enjoyed it. We cooked up a rack of lamb on the grill and watched the gulls attack the fat trimmings that we threw overboard. Both they and we had a marvelous dinner!

About an hour after midnight, I was awakened by the feel of the keel hitting bottom. Gaining consciousness, I realized the wind was blowing pretty hard and clambered out of bed to check out the situation. The wind had clocked all the way around to the east and we were being pushed on to the lee shore. Indeed we were abeam of the wind, so we need to move before we were aground. I roused Pen and we raised anchor in the moonless night and pulled away from danger. It took us a couple of tries to re-anchor, and by the time we were settled in, two power vessels that were also anchored had decided to leave the anchorage entirely. I suppose their local knowledge and their speed underway would lead them to better spots quickly, but there was no way I was going to try and find another spot at 0200 on a very dark and windy night. So, we settled in for the rest of the night in roily waters, me taking anchor watch for a while to be sure we were in solid. It reminded us both of nights we'd experienced in Cat Island and Eleuthera in the Bahamas last year.

We finally awakened and made coffee at 0900 on Saturday morning. The wind had died down to a reasonable ten knots, Pen decided to continue scraping away at remnants of Cetol we've been removing from the exterior teak (her new favorite activity on Alizee it seems), and I caught up the log book and checked over charts and mileage for the next couple of days of our trip. Finally, we weighed anchor and made sail for Boca Ciega Inlet, thence up to the ICW, through the Structure C Bascule Bridge, and into Boca Ciega Bay to anchor just off the extant but extinct "casino" at the town of Gulfport (black line on the map). It was an easy sail, and fortunately not a long one. We anchored shortly after 1300, took the dinghy ashore and had a great late lunch at O'Maddy's, clearly the most popular place in town. Then we took a walk up Gulfport's quaint main street, where residences have been converted into art shops, cafes and restaurants. We bought a bag of ice at a small convenience store and hustled back to the dinghy and to Alizee before it started to melt. Then we sat down to cocktails and set about grilling some baby-back ribs, which as almost always were excellent! A nice sunset, and a nice night.

On Easter Sunday morning we motored quietly up the ICW and out into the Gulf at John's Pass. No one was on the water, a truly unique experience, and the ride up through three bascule bridges that all opened on demand for us was one of the most quiet, peaceful and beautiful rides we've had on the ICW anywhere. It is a picturesque area. Once on the Gulf we set the spinnaker and headed north under warm and pleasant skies and light winds to the Clearwater Inlet (green line on the map). There we rejoined the ICW and turned north to anchor outside the municipal harbor at the town of Dunedin (a bit of Scotland in Florida). We caught a Blue Runner along the way and so dined on sushi followed by clam linguini. And, we talked with David, father of Pen's daughter Erin, on the phone and finalized our plans to go fishing with him and his friend Melissa the next day.

At 0930 David and Melissa arrived in the anchorage in their fast little fishing boat. Zoom, zoom!! We headed north to Hurricane pass at 25 mph, a far cry from our pokey speeds on Alizee. At the Hurricane Pass inlet (one I probably wouldn't take because of shallow water), we headed out about 10 miles to Veteran's Reef, a fishing haven created by sinking concrete blocks and such into 40 feet of water (dotted line on the map). We dropped anchor and bobbed about while getting fishing lines baited. David had poles for us all, and we dropped the lines over with shrimp as bait and started hauling in Grunts, Grouper, Hogfish and bait fish. During the course of the few hours at the reef, David hooked a couple of King Mackerel using a live Sailor's Choice as bait. We all saw one four-foot guy jump high out of the water as he ran away with David's hook and the Sailor's Choice. But Pen caught the biggest of the day, an enormous Blue Runner, which we took back to the boat with us along with a couple of Grunts.

After David and Melissa dropped us off at the boat at about 1630, Pen fileted the Blue Runner while I made sushi rice and then we cleaned up a bit. They then drove down to Dunedin's municipal marina from the marina at Hurricane Pass, where they left their boat, and we dinghied in and met them at the Bon Appetite Restaurant and Cafe where we had a great selection of tapas. A thunderstorm drove us into the bar for about thirty minutes, where we shared a bottle of wine, and then when the rained passed we all climbed into the dinghy and went out to Alizee for Blue Runner sushi rolls and sashimi. They had been using Blue Runners for bait, and I think we convinced them not to do that in the future! It was a great day and lots of fun!

Tuesday morning we were up by 0900 and thought at first we'd just motor down the ICW to our earlier anchorage at Gulfport, but the wind seemed so nice that we settled on going outside into the Gulf and back down through John's Pass. We found a shoal that extended some twenty feet into the channel whilst turning off the ICW to the Clearwater Inlet, but quickly dropping the mainsail and backing down got us off. Once we raised the mainsail again, we went out the inlet and found a nice 8-10 knot breeze that put us on a nice reach to a point about twelve miles off shore, and after a tack back in the direction of John's Pass, another beautiful reach in to the pass. We coasted along at four knots average, lost a very big fish (we'd like to think a King Mackerel), and then found our way down through the ICW and Treasure Island Bascule Bridge to Boca Ciega Bay and Gulfport where we anchored and cooked up a nice turkey pasta dinner.

In the morning after looking over weather information which all indicated 10 to 15 knot winds, we decided to go out the Boca Ciega Inlet to the Gulf and then sail southwest to the main shipping channel into Tampa Bay, turn east along the shipping channel to the Sky Bridge, thence north and under the bridge to our marina at St. Pete. We counted on a brisk and invigorating sail as we motor-sailed out of the bay and down through the Structure C bascule bridge. We passed through the bridge with three other sailboats, one of them Bachue, a Hanse 54 which the skipper Tito Vargas was single-handing over the same route we'd chosen. He was taking his vessel around to St. Pete for the Friday morning start of the 2011 Regata del Sol al Sol from St. Pete some 455 nautical miles to Isla Mujeres, Mexico (as I write this on Monday, most of the competitors in the race have crossed the finish line already).

As our good fortune would have it, the winds did not stay at 10 to 15 knots. Rather as we put Alizee on the trail of Bachue, who pulled easily ahead of us, the winds began to build quickly, and we found ourselves in 30 knots with gusts to 35 before we reached the shipping channel some six miles from the Boca Ciega inlet. We tacked and I found it almost impossible to control Alizee with our full sails out, so we reefed the Genoa and the main and still found control difficult. I would have continued had we been in clear waters, but the shipping channel has a series of shallow shoals which would have been on our lee side going down it, so I decided rather than risk slipping into one of them and fighting another couple of hours of 30 knot winds to the Sky Bridge, we would just turn around and take a fast downwind sail back to the inlet. (Our route for this day is in blue on the map.) Once back to the inlet, we took in the Genoa, left out the staysail, and with minimal motor power (only to get under the Structure E bascule bridge), we sailed along the ICW to Tampa Bay and then up to Bayboro Harbor and our marina in 20 knots of wind. Feeling just a bit abashed at turning back from our outside sail (it's the first time we've ever turned back), wouldn't you know it, we fouled our prop with an old piece of three-strand line that was floating in the harbor. Fortunately, it didn't completely foul the prop and we were able to dock under power. Once in our slip I cut off 30 feet of the line and left the rest for our diver who cleans the bottom to remove.

Thursday, April 28, was a workday on Alizee. We'd been gone for six days, used the engine only 13.1 hours in the course of the trip, and had some great sailing as well as a few scares. Now we had to clean up: laundry to be done, washing down the boat, drying out and furling the sails properly, putting on the sail cover, stowing the spinnaker down below, etc. We made a run to the grocery for a couple of essentials and stopped at West Marine and picked up two new dock lines as well as some fishing lures and Gulp. I had ordered a repair kit for our BottomSider cockpit cushions, and I spent a couple of hours gluing cuts in them and applying the vinyl patch coating over the cuts. At lunch time we took our dinghy Bertha around through the canal to Fish Tales, where we had the lobster salad special and a couple of Anchor Steam beers (on tap, just like SF Bay), and we progued up the canal after lunch and got pretty up close and personal with a couple of Blue Herons and Egrets.

During the course of the day at 1430, perhaps it was when the Captain put his feet up and relaxed so the First Mate could swab the salon sole, Rob Mundell called. "Hey, would you be interested in taking a crew spot in the Regatta Sol al Sol tomorrow? One of our crew, coming down from Chicago, has bailed out on us and I thought of you." Damn, spit!! Me without my passport, me exhausted with my feet up and thinking of work yet undone on Alizee, me with the electronics guy coming the next morning to run a new cable. "Geeze, Rob, would I love to, yes, but can I do it. Damn, spit! No, I can't."

Now, I can hear all my sailor friends out there (yes, you Rob Woltring, Keith Rarick, Tony Shaffer, Steve Waterloo, John McCartney, Mike Pernitzke, Charles Hodgkins, Steve Katzaroff, and more) saying: "What!?!? You didn't race across the state, get your passport, throw something in a bag and go?!?! What we're you thinking????" In answer to which I guess I can say nothing, but the grilled steak dinner we had that night was pretty damned good!

Maybe in response to my declining the offer to crew on Twilight, a Lafitte 44, Captain Bligh (my alter ego at times) awakened us in the morning with to small cups, two brushes and a quart of Spotless Stainless cleaner. "Arghh, all hands on deck! Just a half-a-cup of coffee, maties, then to work!" And there we were brushing on the cleaner gell and, after it sat for thirty minutes, washing it off from the bow to the stern. "And what's for breakfast," he growled. "Gruel," said the first mate. Work, work, work! "And what's for lunch," said Bligh. "Tuna friggin' fish," retorted the first mate. Work, work, work!

A break came only when Ron from Everafter Marina appeared to run the new Sirius Weather system coaxial cable (the old one gouged by a fishing pole holder on the rail), and the first mate went into hiding for the duration of that, while Bligh got his comeuppance and had to tear apart cabinetry to find the path of the old cable and help pull the new one.

So this was the story of our six-day cruise. On Saturday morning we arose, packed up what we wanted to take with us, adjust the lines on Alizee and hit the highway for our land base, leaving Bligh in the bilge to arise another day.

Last leg to St. Petersburg ...

2011-04-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

We escaped "spring break" weekend in Key West and started our crossing to Florida's west coast at, sailing a close reach out the channel and against the tidal current at a little over 4 knots. Although the winds were NE, which precluded doing a quicker crossing to Marco Island, we had a good sail for eight hours toward Fort Myers. As the sun began lowering in the west, Pen decided to cook clam linguini and went down below. Perhaps ten minutes later our hand line snapped, and I pulled in a Yellow Jack while Pen pointed out forcefully that she had her hands tied cooking ... it was a bad time to catch fish. Because jacks often carry ciguatera, a food borne illness caused by eating certain reef fish whose flesh is contaminated with toxins, I released it, turned back to be sure that the autopilot was holding course and then turned to reel in our pole line. It had been pulled over, a sure sign that a fish had struck it as well, and as I reeled it in it was clear we had another fish. This one was a Blue Runner, and I was not about to throw it back, so we stuck it in a large baggie and threw it in the freezer to deal with it later.

Cooking clam linguine turned out to be a pain, but we enjoyed it with some wine as we watched the sun set. Then the wind shifted to NNE and we rolled in the Genoa and began motor sailing with the staysail and main still up. Doing our shifts (three hours on and three hours off), we went through the night. When the moon finally rose around 21:30, Pen was at the helm and she said it was an OMG moon rising. When I did the midnight to 03:00 shift, it seemed as bright as day, and you could barely see stars out.

After sunrise, Pen went below to catch needed sleep while I took the helm. Around 08:00 the wind began shifting eastward a bit and I decided to roll out the Genoa. It looked like we were right on course to reach Fort Myers Beach at about 13:00, are estimated time of arrival. Suddenly all hell seemed to break loose. Crash!! The cotter pin holding the pinion at the foot of the forestay (on to which the Genoa is rolled up) pulled out and the pinion slipped out releasing the foot of the forestay and Genoa roller furler. With the Genoa out, the wind pulled the whole thing up and over the bow pulpit in a deafening screech of metal on metal. I yelled down to Pen to come topside, but awakened by the grinding and crashing, she was already on her way.

The forestay, roller furler and Genoa were flying almost horizontal to the water off the port side, being held by the top by the Genoa halyard and forestay pinion and at the bottom by the roller furling line which was held on to the boat about two-thirds of the way back on the starboard side by a stop knot caught in a furling block. Pen took the helm while I moved forward to assess the situation and see what I could do to get the sail and forestay under control and back on the boat. At first she turned the boat into the wind, which was blowing at between 17 and 20 knots, but it was quickly clear that this just put more wind on the Genoa. While I tried my best to slowly pull the sail in with the furling line, Pen experimented and finally found a downwind heading that took the pressure off the Genoa as the mainsail blocked it. I managed then to wrestle the forestay and Genoa into the port shroud and tie it off. It was tenuous, but it held momentarily, long enough for Pen to grab our camera and take a couple of photos of me wrestling it and tying it down.

Without the forestay, of course, and with the mainsail up, a lot of pressure is on the mast and remaining shrouds, so the next step was to drop the main and take in the staysail, which we rushed to do with the Genoa and forestay temporarily secured. I'm glad we have a fixed staysail, for that inner forestay certainly played an important roll in keeping the mast securely in place. Once that was accomplished, I went forward and tried to lower the Genoa, but it was jammed at the top of the mast, and I could not see the problem. Consequently, I tied the Genoa and forestay more securely amidship, and we tried to motoring a bit on our original course. It became evident very quickly that any forward gain on a course with the wind off our bow was going to simply catch the Genoa. The sail had to come down.

After a bit of investigating and puzzling over the situation, I saw that our spinnaker halyard had been caught by the forestay when it broke loose and pulled into a position which pinched the Genoa halyard. From deck I was able to free the spinnaker halyard and get it out of the way, and then I could start to pull down the Genoa. Gradually, I got the Genoa down, over the life lines, between the shrouds and on deck. Pen and I then stretched it out and flaked it as best we could along the gunwale from the bow back to the cockpit, tying it to the stanchions with one of our preventer lines. Then together, we manhandled the roller furler and forestay up to the bow and over the pulpit, it slipping only once right down on to Pen's foot. We were lucky she didn't break a bone nor cut her foot, but she surely yelped loudly.

We managed to tied the forestay and roller furler to the staysail, but realized after we had it secured that the foot of the forestay would inevitably be gouging the fiberglass at the bow. This was not the solution. Somewhere I dredged up a memory of a forestay roller furler being pulled between the cross pieces on a pulpit, and I suggested we try that. It worked and we got it tied off nicely and finally managed to get under way again to our destination. All in all, it had taken us only about and hour and a half to bring things back in order and get under way, but we were exhausted and frankly it seemed like an entire morning.

While floating about two or three boats went by, but no one hailed us to see if we were in trouble. The only help we got was spiritual, and it was given freely and for almost an hour by a pod of curious dolphins who found us. Once underway, they cavorted and swam with us for ever so long, and we were thrilled at their company for it was a sure sign that Neptune was on our side this time. And, amazingly, we were only about two hours off our ETA when we dropped anchor in San Carlos Bay. Once anchored, I called a couple of marinas and finally found one willing to help us out with repairs the next day: Olsen's Marine Service.

Olsen's Marine put us in their haul out slip, reattached the forestay with a replacement pinion, and help us sort out things and we were out of there within an hour and a half. Since it was barely noon, we took the time to motor through the Fort Myers Beach mooring field ... we don't do too well with moorings, but one of these days we'll work it out ... and I almost put us hard aground again on a shoal. Thankfully, I was able to rock Alizee off and back into the channel in just a couple of moments. At any rate, we decided to go and anchor out again in San Carlos Bay and leave the next morning for Boca Grande Pass, the inlet into Charlotte Harbor.

The sail up to Charlotte Harbor was uneventful and easy. No fish to be caught, lots of lobster pots to watch out for, and light winds that led us to motor sail the last portion. The inlet is wide and deep and we went through easily, aiming to anchor in Pelican Bay, just to the south of the inlet off the ICW. When we got within sight of the bay and could see into it, we discovered there were already a number of boats anchored there. As I looked again at the charts, I decided that since it already seemed crowded in there and the entrance depths were not much over the 5' that we draw, and since there was another sailboat anchored just off the northwest shore of Cayo Costa (the key in which Pelican Bay lives), why not just anchor a bit above that boat. There was lots of room. Well, it turned out to be a great spot. We anchored just off the beach along the inside of Cayo Costa, where lots of birds were searching for dinner. There was virtually no current nor were there many boat, despite the fact that the ICW ran north-south just 500 meters to the east of us.

This anchorage like so many others was so peaceful that we simply laid back and enjoyed our life, and as with so many other late afternoons and evenings, we pulled out our books and read. Pen found herself particularly engrossed by Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit. It's the story of Louie Zamperini, a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero, and it is truly captivating. I think I lost her to it for several afternoons. Meanwhile, I worked my way first through The Rebel, the first novel in a trilogy about the American Civil War by Bernard Cornwell, who is best known for his series several novels following the life of British soldier Richard Sharpe in India and through the Napoleonic wars (it was a very successful PBS series, too). It was quite good, but even better was True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel by Peter Carey. Set in 19th Century Australia, it is a wonderfully told story of the people in this criminal colony of Great Britain. We also read Frank Howard Mosher's novel A Stranger in the Kingdom, a wonderful tale of racism and murder as told through the eyes of a young thirteen year-old boy in Kingdom County, Vermont, an old-fashioned rural community. This was my favorite, but all these novels are a step above the popular pulp fiction you see in airport news stands.

On March 24th, we hoisted our newly repaired Genoa and had a nice short sail (perhaps three hours) part way up Charlotte Harbor to the Burnt Store Marina, where we had made a reservation the day before. Here we found a really nice, welcoming marina crew, did our laundry, showered and generally rejuvenated ourselves and ended up having dinner at the outside bar of the marina restaurant and listening to locals do karaoke. Louis, maybe 85 years old, who sat next to us at the bar, was the first singer up and had a ball singing Old Man River and later a couple of more songs. But he was the best, and those that followed convinced us to go back to the boat after we finished eating and have a drink in the cockpit. Unfortunately, we missed Louis when he joined a group of three or four other octogenarians reprized the Soggy Mountain Boys (from "Brother Where Art Thou") doing In the Jailhouse Now.

Next morning we left the marina and sailed up Charlotte Harbor to Punta Gorda. It is really a bit of a misnomer to call this body of water a harbor, for it is really a good sized bay. It's a full day's sail from the inlet to Punta Gorda where the Peace River begins. We had a light wind largely behind us sailing north, but it was very light and coasted for the first couple of hours until it picked up about a third of the way along our route. Then we had a nice sail the rest of the way. A local sailor in a 30' sloop was out shaking his sails out before a regatta the next day, and he came along side and sailed with us for a couple of tacks near Punta Gorda. He invited us to join the Leukemia Regatta party at a local yacht club the next afternoon, if we were still around, and told us where to anchor if we wanted to watch it.

We anchored off Fishermens Village, a local heritage site in Punta Gorda, and had a pleasant evening. In the morning we weighed anchor around 10:00, and the boats in the regatta were mulling about awaiting a start. Apparently they were to have started at 10:00, but because of light winds did not get underway until almost 11:00, just after we passed by the starting point. I took us away from the course, keeping on our tack as long as I could before tacking back across the bay, and our second tack brought us just below the mark where the racers were turning back. It was fun to watch them make the mark, turn round it and then pop their spinnakers.

Leaving them behind we continued south down Charlotte Harbor making four or five tacks and arriving north of the inlet as the sun was beginning to go down. Our plan was to go up the ICW the next day, so we proceeded a couple of miles north of the inlet along the ICW to an anchorage in Peekins Ranch Cove, which was not marked as an anchorage on any of our guides but which I could see from the charts would have the right depth and some protection. Except for a handful of lobster pots, it was just fine and we got the hook down just before the sun set, and it was a very pretty one at that.

Morning brought some good winds, and we decided that rather than having to go through bridges up the ICW to Venice, why not just motor back down the couple of miles to the Boca Grande Inlet and sail outside up to the Venice Inlet. Since there was only one anchorage shown near the Venice Inlet, and not a very good one according to ratings on ActiveCaptain.com, the on-line interactive cruising guide, I called ahead and made a reservation at the Crow's Nest Marina. Just inside the inlet, it boasted a first-rate restaurant, and we thought that would be nice to try.

So, we motored south for 45 minutes, raised the sails and in a brisk 20 knot wind made way to and out the inlet. Turning north the wind fell behind us, and we sailed our course to the Venice Inlet wing on wing. It was another day where I wish we had our spinnaker, especially because sailing wing on wing demands the helm person's attention. You don't want the wind to get behind the mainsail and cause a gybe, and you want to keep the Genoa on the other side filled. We helped control the mainsail by employing a gybe-preventer line attached to the mast and down to the deck forward of the sail, but we don't have a reaching pole to hold out the Genoa, so it required our attention to keep it filled. I must say, though, this was the longest wing-on-wing run I've ever sailed - almost four hours - in which the autopilot held virtually the entire time and the sails remained in position once set.

Only one incident occurred during the sail, one that could have been very serious, but turned out to be just a close call. One other sailboat was out on the water with us. A ketch-rigged cruiser, it was actually about a half-mile off our port when we turned north, but a third of the way along our route its skipper crossed our stern and put himself approximately a half-mile off our starboard. We were on a starboard tack, wing-on-wing, meaning that our mainsail was on the port side of the boat and the wind, ever so slightly coming from the starboard stern. We were also downwind from the ketch, since it was now off our starboard side. This simply meant we had the right of way should he want to cross our line of travel again, and with only two boats in sight on the sea, we watched him less and kept our eye out for lobster pots, which were almost everywhere.

At one point I looked up and saw that the ketch had closed its distance to us and seemed to be heading to cross our line. I took note, and then went back to looking for lobster pots. It seemed only a moment or two later and I saw the ketch closing on our starboard side in a direction that looked like he wanted to cross our bow. Still feeling sure that he knew where we were, I didn't try to raise him on his VHF radio, and watched him. But suddenly he seemed to veer closer to us, sailing a port-broad reach and picking up speed. No time for radios now. I had waited too long, so I yelled as loud as I could at the captain, who leaped out of his seat on the port side of his boat, looked ashen faced at us, realized he would hit me if he did not take action and turned just enough to pass our bow, oh with perhaps ten foot clearance, maybe less. As he turned port and came down our port side, he said to me sheepishly: "My autopilot malfunctioned." To which I replied: "I think your real pilot failed." He gave no apology at all.

The experience reinforced for me the old adage that one should never ever trust that the skipper of another boat is paying attention to what they are doing. I should have tried raising him on the VHF radio long before he got within hailing distance of Alizee (assuming he had his radio on, which legally he is supposed to), and then if I could not reach him via the VHF, I should have adjusted my course to avoid him. But I was so nicely set wing on wing and had the legal right of way ... well, if he'd hit me, in the end, it would have been almost as much my fault as his. One may have the right of way and still be mashed, and who's fault is that? This says it all:

         "This is the grave of Mike O'Day
       Who died maintaining his right of way,
         His right was clear, his will was strong,
         But he's just as dead, as if he'd been wrong."

When we reached the Venice inlet, the ketch, which had headed far out to our port side after the near miss, now closed in and came in the inlet perhaps 500 meters behind us. We slowed, radioed the marina and got instructions, and turned into our berth there. I was so busy bringing us in to the berth that I didn't see where the ketch went, but if he had planned to come to the Crow's Nest Marina, he changed his mind when he saw us go in.

The Crow's Nest turned out to be a wonderful spot. Despite a strong tidal current, we got in easily, and later were complimented by some other sailors who had had to make a couple of tries to get in to their berth. We took showers, and I tried to get us a reservation at the restaurant but was told we could not get one and would have to sign the waiting list. The hostess suggested that, if we were on a boat, we could sign up an hour before we wanted to eat, take the paging vibrator to the boat and wait. That sounded good, so about two hours later I went up and got it, walked back to the boat, and before I even got there it was vibrating. I went back: "hey, you said we had an hour's wait." The hostess replied that "a table just opened up," and I responded: "well, we were just pouring cocktails on our boat and we'd like the hour. Can you do that?" So, we got our hour, and when we finally got paged, we found ourselves seated in a window seat overlooking the marina and the Venice Inlet, and we had probably the best meal of the trip. The Crow's Nest Restaurant was truly first rate, with white linen, truly professional staff giving excellent service and wonderful food.

Our plans changed the next day because a weather system came in that night with lots of rain ... we had to hop up and close up the boat, but still got pretty wet. Since the chance of more rain during the day was 90% according to the forecasts, we decided to stay put for another night. As it turned out, the rain held off until around 18:00, but once our decision was made that was the end of it. We chatted up neighbors on Manatee, a Gozzard 36 to our starboard, and invited them over for cocktails around sunset. Then we took two of the free bicycles at the marina (very worn out, but free bicycles) and rode a couple of miles to downtown Venice where we had lunch at a local eatery and then returned to spend the afternoon reading.

By 18:00 the rain was starting and we wondered if our new friends Rod and Evilene Crist would still come over. Indeed, they did and we discovered we enjoyed each other very much. They are perhaps a bit younger than we are, but not much I think. Evilene is French and met and married Rod while he was stationed there in the military. As we talked the rain did not seem to be wanting to let up, but indeed was worse, so we finally asked them to stay and share our dinner. I had a meal already to go, and after a little arm twisting they agreed. It was such a fun evening, and they finally managed to slip back to their boat in a brief lull in the storm around 21:30. The next day, they went on south, heading to the Bahamas for a brief cruise there, and we headed north. We'll be seeing them when they return from their trip, and we may be joining them in the Dolphin Cruising Club of Tampa Bay, about which they told us.

Our trip up the next morning after the storm had passed took us through Sarasota and across Sarasota Bay. The ICW between Venice and Sarasota was very picturesque, and we took almost two hours to drift pleasantly across Sarasota Bay in hardly any wind at all. We'd aimed to anchor at Longboat Pass, but tried three times to drop our CQR and hit grass each time. There were already a dozen boats there, so perhaps if it had not been so crowded we would have found a spot without grass. Rather than keep trying, since it was crowded, we decided to go north to Cortez Bridge, just a couple of nautical miles away. Rod and Evilene had told us they like to

anchor to the southeast side of the bridge, so we found our way into that anchorage and hooked on the first try. It seems there were four or five derelict boats that were being salvaged there, and soon after we anchored two fellows in a small power boat pulled up the anchors on a trawler and sailboat that were anchored together and towed them over to another spot where other derelicts had been anchored. That opened up a nice shoreline view for us, for which we were grateful. We also had a very picturesque view of an old boat house and dock with a derelict sunk next to it, really one of the nicest views we saw on the trip during the late hours of the day.

On our last day of the trip, we departed Cortez Bridge with winds at 20 knots and building. We had two bridges to go through, and had to wait for each of them for several minutes in the wind. Not pleasant. Then we followed the final portion of the ICW into Tampa Bay and had a romping sail at 7+ knots with just the Genoa out in now almost 25 knots under the famous Sky Bridge and on to our marina at St. Petersburg. We motored in the channel to the marina at barely 4 knots, and they tied us up on a side tie. They felt wind was too much to get into our slip, and I was fine with that. Pen's first husband, David, father of her daughter Erin, came over with his friend Melissa and we had dinner at the nearby Fish Tales, a nice welcome to our new boat home.

It stormed that night, with winds as high as 40 knots, and we were damned happy to be securely tied up at a dock rather than at anchor. Meanwhile, I looked at the slip we had originally leased, saw some other open ones and asked the harbor master if we could change our assignment. He said sure, just pick out the slip you want. So, the next morning we chose a slip (C-26 at the Harborage Marina), took Alizee around to the pump out station and then brought her into her new berth. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon washing her down, cleaning out and storing jerry cans and getting things ready to leave for home. Pen's sisters Patricia and Vicki drove over from Deland to pick us up - Vicki had come down from Ohio and sat our cats while we were on the trip. We took them to dinner, also at Fish Tales, and then we loaded our stuff in the trunk of Pen's car and drove home. It took 28 days to sail around Florida and the Keys and two and a half hours to drive back. You gotta love it!

Well, we'll be heading back soon ... actually tomorrow, since it's taken me so long to get this posting done ... and we'll stay for about ten days, doing a little boat work and getting some more sailing in. So look for the next blog post in a couple of weeks.

All the trip photos

Down through the Keys...

2011-04-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

After a pretty nice trip down through the ICW from Daytona Beach, we arrived in No Name Harbor on Key Biscayne, just below Miami, on March 10th and spent a very nice evening. The next morning, we arose for morning coffee and around 0900 weighed anchor and began our journey down into the Florida Keys. Our route initially was almost east, and had we continued that path we would have found ourselves in Bimini and the Bahamas. I think that would have suited me just fine, but that trip won't be done again for a while. So, once we passed the Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne and

Stiltsville, a cluster of houses built on stilts in very shallow water in Biscayne National Park (hurricane Andrew in 1993 reduced the number from twenty to a mere handful today), we turned south into what is called Hawk Channel.

Hawk Channel is the body of water between the Florida Keys on the west and off-shore reefs on the east, beyond which lies the Atlantic. It varies in width from one quarter mile up to two miles at some points, and has an average depth of 15-20 feet. Channel markers appear about every mile or so, making it rather easy to navigate, and with a chart plotter it is no problem at all. We had a lovely downwind sail once we turned south, catching our first fish, a Southern Sennett, along the way. By mid-afternoon we found the narrow channel into Caesar's Creek, at the
bottom of Elliot Key and sought out a place to anchor. This is part of the Biscayne National Park, and we were the only boat to anchor there this night. The mangroves were deliciously beautiful and in trying to get close to them we found the water shallowed out very quickly. We actually pulled up anchor and moved a bit further out so we wouldn't go aground if we swung on the anchor. The tidal current was very strong, but Alizee held her spot and we had a wonderful, peaceful night.

The next day we motored out the narrow channel to Hawk Channel and turned south again to Rodriguez Key next to Key Largo. The wind was lighter than the day before and out of the north east, making it another wonderful downwind sail on the genoa. We had ordered a new spinnaker six weeks before we left, and it was promised us, but it did not arrive before we left nor did it appear while we were headed down the ICW. To say I was irritated is truly understating my feelings. I could have strangled the sail maker, despite the fact that I like him very much. Anyway, the day was absolutely perfect for it, and we were quite jealous of another cruiser who was flying one. As our trip went on, we could have flown the spinnaker several other times, which continued to be a frustration. We finally heard from our sail maker as we were leaving Fort Meyers Beach on March 23rd, and we finally arranged for him to bring it to us in St. Petersburg. That turned out not to quite work out, because a nasty storm system came through the day he was to drive over with it, so to date we still don't have the spinnaker. If all works well, he'll deliver it to us in St. Petersburg on April 20th.

Griping aside, we anchored in good water on the northwest side of Rodriguez Key around 13:00, and I persuaded Penelope that we should take a dinghy ride into Lake Largo to find Calypso, a Cuban/Spanish restaurant recommended by our sailing friend Robyn Joiner. It turned out to be one hell of a long ride - probably two or three miles as we took a circular route in order not to be going right into the wind - and when we got into Lake Largo the first thing we saw as a Tiki Bar with no name. We tied up, went in, ordered a beer and discovered we were at the Pilot House. I asked where the Calypso was located and walked down to it, but we ended up eating lunch at the Pilot House anyway, since all the good specialties at the Calypso were on the dinner menu only. Too bad. After we ate, we took a fruitless though healthful mile plus long walk looking for a small grocery. Alas, the Keys are not the Bahamas where small stores are almost everywhere and the supermarket was another four miles round trip, so we returned to the dinghy for the long downwind ride to Alizee empty handed.

For our third sailing day in the Keys, we decided to go under the Channel Five Bridge just south of Islamorada on Lower Matecumbe Key and follow the ICW route on the Florida Bay side of the Keys. The water was 7' deep well outside the ICW channel, so we could sail the whole way and not be restricted to the narrow ICW channel. Because we were late leaving Rodriguez Key, we decided to spend another night on the hook at Jewfish Key, just below the Channel Five Bridge on the west side.

The next morning, our fourth in the Keys, we took a a wonderful light air sail, coasting our way south to Vaca Key, the location of one of the Key's largest communities, Marathon. Here is located Boot Key Harbor, which is home to over 250 moorings which are generally all occupied with boats anchoring wherever there is a bit of space left over. It seems like a KOA campground for boaters to us, and we made a pretty early decision not to join the throngs of boaters already there.

Perhaps if we were up for a party and meeting lots of cruisers, we would have, but since we were not on the east side of Vaca Key in Hawk Channel, where we would have had to have been to easily get into the harbor, we decided to find a marina on the west side. This turned out to be a lucky move, for we found a sweet little marina, the Black Fin, which was just a half-mile walk to Marathon's Publix grocery and was extremely peaceful.

We ended up spending two nights at the Black Fin, did our grocery shopping, showered twice (always a treat), and did laundry. And on our first night, after showering and relaxing a bit, we took a $5 taxi ride down to the Sunset Grille and Rawbar at Seven Mile Bridge on lower end of Marathon. Here they boast the best sunsets on the key, and we have to concur it was pretty nice. There was a great local folk singer doing his thing in the bar, a happy crowd of people, and George, an old cruiser who pretty much had made Boot Harbor his home, sitting out front weaving all sorts of things out of palm fronds. He gave Pen a fish on the end of a pole, which hangs proudly now in her berth on Alizee.

Our time at the Black Fin brought us some very sad news, though. Our dear friend Neil Cowan, who had been fighting lung cancer for over a year, died. It was really devastating, and we found ourselves thinking about him and Ruth constantly, remembering with tears in our eyes our race to get to Georgetown in the Bahamas last year to spend a week with them at the Emerald Bay marina and resort area, the week we spent with them at their house in Glen Cove, Long Island the end of summer in 2009, and all the other future plans we'd talked about. We'd been talking with Neil on the phone whenever we got a chance, and while he knew it was coming and we knew it, too, it was such a painful experience for us. When we left Vaca Key on March 15th, we took only three hours or so sail in light air to Horseshoe Keys, located in the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge.

This could not have been a more perfect place to have been at the time. I felt like I could see Neil in the clouds passing over and Pen captured this same feeling in a poem she wrote. We could feel his spirit in the great white herons along the shore of Horseshoe Key, the ospreys hunting their dinners, the kingfishers, the manta rays in the shallow waters close to shore and the myriads of little white butterflies flitting about the mangroves. We anchored and took the dinghy in and spent at least an hour exploring the shoreline and getting a close-up view of the life there. We tried fishing and caught one tiny little fish, maybe a snapper or grunt ... I couldn't tell, which we threw back to live a longer life. The little fish just nibbled away our squid bait as fast as we could get it on the hook. Except for the Southern Sennett, we were not doing too well with our fishing. We need to learn the techniques for Florida waters, I think. Anyway, we loved Horseshoe Key so much and found it so peaceful that we decided to spend the next day at anchor there and another quiet night. We were the only boat there, except for a couple of fishermen in small boats who stayed away from us. It is a spot and an experience I know neither one of us will ever forget.

We left Horseshoe Key with some regret and wound our way through an unmarked channel to Florida Bay. Here we turned south, winding our way through lobster pots (they were absolutely everywhere on the Florida Bay side of the Keys), and caught two fish along the way. The first was a Blue Runner, which makes for wonderful sushi, and the next was a Crevalle Jack, a fighter on the hook but not the best eating. Since we aren't big fish eaters, we threw it back. But we had our Blue Runner, and so not long after we anchored at our next spot beside Tarpon Belly Key, still in the Great White Heron refuge, I made up some sushi rice and we enjoyed this wonderful treat as our appetizer that evening.

Tarpon Belly Key was a beautiful little key, but Cudjoe Channel, in which is is located, is easily accessible by small power boats from the settled area on Cudjoe Key and Summerland Key through which the Overseas Highway (U.S. Route 1) runs. So we saw lots of day trippers as well as fishermen during the daytime hours. Once the sun started setting, though, they all skedaddled for home and we were all by ourselves and that's when the place came alive. Dozens of great white herons appeared in the mangroves, ospreys flew out to catch dinner for their nestlings, and the place was transformed. When we awakened the next morning, some early bird fishermen were already about, but we weighed anchor and moved on before many more appeared.

Our next destination was Key West. We had already decided that we'd take a slip at a marina there, so that we could spend time in the historic town and really see it and also so we could avoid what everyone said was a long and sometimes damp dinghy ride from the anchorages to the town. We had a good sail and were joined by some dolphins part way. It was a nice downwind coast until we hit the southwest channel into Key West and turned east, and then we had a beam reach all the way into the harbor, managing to hit over 7 knots, probably because the tide was with us.

As we neared the end of the channel, a couple of gaff rigged schooners carrying paying sightseers sailed by us, para-sails floated along pulled by power boats, and a massive Disney cruise ship dropped its lines, turned around and headed out toward the Caribbean. Because of the ship traffic and not really having local knowledge of the waters and winds in the harbor, we lowered our sails and motored into our marina berth.

The Conch Harbor Marina is located in the heart of the historic port of Key West. Originally named Cayo Hueso by the Spanish (Cayo is also thought to be the origin of the words "Cay" and "Key"), it was claimed by naval officer Matthew C. Perry in 1822 and within a year was the site of a custom house and a naval depot. Over the past 190 years, Key West metamorphosed several times, hosting a variety of maritime activities, attracting a wide array of colorful figures from Hemingway to President Harry S. Truman and ultimately becoming a tourist-driven community. The historic port walk starts at the Conch Harbor Marina and winds its way past waterfront restaurants and bars, shops, the docks for schooners taking out tourists and eventually around to Mallory Square, where tourists (and maybe a few confused locals) gather each night to watch the sunset.

After getting tied up, a DJ at the pool-restaurant at the head of the marina pier cranked up his rap so loud we found it really uncomfortable to sit out in the cockpit, so we gathered up things to take a shower. Turns out we had to walk through the restaurant and hordes of 20- and 30-somethings debauching in the pool and at the bar. I guess we're just not quite used to such overt public displays of affection. Damn, getting old is weird. Nevertheless, we discovered that at 18:00 the music would be finished, probably because there is another expensive restaurant right on the landing above the pool that had outdoor dinner seating.

Showers revived us, and we decided to walk down the historic waterfront and explore a bit. Talk about crowded. Wow! It reminded me of Pier 39 and the Fisherman's Wharf area in San Francisco at the height of tourist season ... a place to be avoided for sure. We finished our walk and sat in Alizee's cockpit with a drink, watched the pelicans assembling on the marina's dock posts and admired an enormous private motor yacht off our port stern. The pelicans suddenly all flew off their posts and behind a charter fishing boat that was coming in to tie up down our pier near the pool-restaurant. Since we were hungry we decided to go on back to eat dinner at Turtle Krall's, just a hundred yards down the historic boardwalk, but we stopped short at the fishing boat to watch the pelicans being fed the waste as a boat hand deftly fileted the catch for the paying customers. It was a sight, indeed, and Pen truly admired how fast those fish were fileted.

Eventually, as the pelicans drifted away, we moseyed on down to Turtle Krall's, which was well recommended in our cruising guide. Outside on the waterfront dock perhaps 60 or more dinghies were tied up, which was a good sign that other cruisers were afoot, either here at TK's or next door at the Half Shell Raw Bar, also highly recommended (and it turns out, operated by the same folks that run TK's. Well, the food was okay, but nothing to write home about (so I won't describe it), and their band was almost as loud as the pool DJ, but still making every tune they played a rap tune. After dinner we simply decided to retreat back to the comfort of Alizee, where we sat in the cockpit with a drink, watched the sunset and life slow down, and admired (and puzzled) the fact that the luxury yacht crew was still washing down the boat well after sunset (turns out the owners arrived at o-dark-thirty and the yacht was gone when we awakened.

In the morning we wandered over to Pepe's Cafe, which boasts that it is the oldest continuously operating cafe in Key West. Boy did they live up to their reputation as having the best breakfasts in town. Crowded it was, so we snagged two seats at the bar and supped on Bloody Mary's until it was clear our wait for a table was futile. So, we ordered at the bar, and since it was almost noon, we had BLT's which were the best either of us had ever eaten. If you ever find yourself in Key West, then eat here! Period! The best! And, then, if you want a second meal at dinner time, go across the street to B.O.'s Fish Wagon, a dumpy looking little on the corner of Caroline and William streets. We had a first-rate fried fish dinner there in the evening, and rate it also as a must-eat place.

Although this will sound tres touristy, we had a great afternoon taking the two-plus hour historic "train" tour of Key West. The city is home to street after street of wonderful historic buildings representing almost any style of architecture you could imagine. We saw Hemingway's house, past by Harry Truman's summer "white house" and saw a number of little spots we thought would be fun to visit again. We also discovered why Key West seemed so damned crowded. Spring Break! Key West's best known avenue, Duval Street, was mobbed with dare I say thousands of party-animals, some literally climbing lamp posts, others pub-crawling and holding a late-St. Patrick's Day celebration. Noisy, raucous, smokey (seems like everyone was smoking) and happy crowds filled Duval Street all day and well into the night (although we weren't there to see it after dark).

After our train ride, we walked through Mallory Square, had a cocktail at a hotel bar overlooking the anchorages to the west, and eventually found our way to the fish wagon and then home. We decided that was enough, and laid our plans to get up the next morning, pump out the head, go out and anchor for a couple of hours in the anchorage, barbecue some chicken thighs for our crossing to west Florida and then leave sometime mid-afternoon. All was accomplished as planned, and we departed the anchorage and Key West at 14:00 on March 20th.

Next post: "Last Leg to St. Petersburg..."

All the trip photos

Daytona Beach to Biscayne Bay...

2011-04-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

We are back in Deland after our almost month-long cruise from Daytona Beach to our new berth at the Harborage Marina in Bayboro Harbor, St. Petersburg. We found it pretty easy to post short comments on our "geo-tracking" blog Sailing Alizee, but we didn't get to share as many adventures as we'd have liked to. So here is the first of three posts about our trip, filling in what we didn't have the energy or time to put down before.

We left Halifax Harbor on March 3rd, well supplied with provisions. Sufficient wine, beer, rum, gin and miscellaneous liquors to keep an army squiffy for a month. Frozen meats to last us through the month, and loads of canned and dried foodstuffs. Turns out we've learned pretty well what to and what not to take and what will last. Alizee has a great freezer and refrigerator, which makes things much easier, but fresh vegetables are always a problem, and we love to cook with fresh things. Nonetheless, we only had to stop once on the trip to restock our fresh things, which we did in Marathon, about half-way through the trip.

Our first destination was the anchorage just southeast of the railroad bridge at Titusville, where we had stayed on our last trip down the ICW. Along the way we had a bit of weather, and got a lovely video of Alizee motor-sailing with the staysail (we'd just pulled in the Genoa during a squall). Dean Lucko aboard Rich Jadczak's Pomalu, a 35' Island Packet Cat, took it with his I-Phone and emailed to us a day or two later. They were on a fast trip delivering Rich's boat to the west coast of Florida, and Dean kept in touch with us along the way ... they made it two weeks before we did.

We had a nice night at anchor and the next day continued south to a new anchorage for us just northwest of the causeway bridge at Eau Gallie. We had a threat or two of thunderstorms along the way, but never really got any weather.

The ICW can be a slog, for one must mostly motor sail but it's a busy place with occasional interesting things to see. We passed a number of cruisers in trawlers and sailboats heading north along with myriads of small fishing skiffs and the occasional sport fisher, either heading to their favorite fishing ground along the ICW or toward one of the few inlets along the way that will take you out to the Atlantic. We saw ospreys nesting on the markers and lots of dolphins, who were generally feeding and ignored us, though a couple of times they'd come a swim along with Alizee.

And then there are the sunsets, like this one at our Eau Gallie anchorage, which are often spectacular.

The next couple of days saw the sun shining more brightly and the threat of thunderstorms pass on. We were going to try and go outside on the Atlantic to miss the bridges, which become numerous below Jupiter, but the wind just never seemed to build sufficiently or shift to a favorable angle, and offshore swells and the period between them would have made it a choppy ride. So we stayed inside and did our best to not let the bridge schedules upset us. Sometimes we just coasted along, other times we sat and waited for openings, and once or twice we ran the engine hard, which served the purpose of blowing out any deposits building up as well as catching a couple of bridge openings on the fly.

You really have to plan how far you're going each day, especially if you're anchoring out, because anchorages along the ICW in southeast Florida are few. On our way down from a nice anchorage behind a spoil island north of St. Lucie Inlet trying to reach Lake Worth, we got stuck without an anchorage at the PGA Bascule Bridge, which shut down because of hydraulic problems. The bridge tender suggested that we try and get a slip at the Soverel Marina, just northwest of the bridge. It was mid-afternoon, it was either that or backtrack several miles and through two bridges we'd already been through. It turned out to be a nice break from anchoring. We got showered, washed the boat down a bit, walked around and found a nice little outdoor bar on the ICW in which to eat, and the next day we were refreshed and ready to move on.

On another occasion, while waiting for a bridge to open on our way to anchor at Boca Lake in Boca Raton, Pen was at the helm slowly bringing Alizee from side to side in the ICW channel and stopping her from drifting with the current toward the bridge. After 20 minutes our so of this, as it neared time for the bridge to open, she gave the helm to me, and I promptly put Alizee aground on a shoal to the northwest of the bridge. Sadly, passing power boats leaving wakes behind simply pushed us more on to the muddy shoal, and I couldn't budge her out. I had to tell the bridge tender we wouldn't make the opening, and then I pulled out my trusty Boat U.S. Captain's Card and called for help. About an hour later, Boat U.S. appeared and the captain pulled us off the shoal. But now the sun was starting to wane. We had perhaps an hour of daylight left and two bridges to go through before reaching Lake Boca, which was a new spot to us and a bit tricky to get into. The Boat U.S. captain suggested that he could tow us to the lake, which meant he could open the bridges off their schedules. Since my coverage made it all free, I agreed, and we had a nice little ride all the way to the lake and a nice anchorage. "Yes-siree," said Pen, "just give the captain the helm and he'll show you a good time aground."

Next day we continued south to Fort Lauderdale, where we anchored in Lake Sylvia, one of the nicest anchorages in southeast Florida. Pen's nephew Tony, as it turned out, lives in an apartment with his wife Lynn that is just off the ICW and less than a mile dinghy ride through a couple of canals and a short jaunt along the ICW. So for the first time on our trip we took Bertha, our dinghy, down from the davits and took a ride over to visit with them. We all piled in their truck and drove over the ICW to one of their favorite eateries, where we enjoyed a nice meal.

Lauderdale is, of course the place where every multimillionaire who wants to build a second, third or fourth mansion has landed. The houses are obscene displays of profligate wealth, and naturally Penelope and I were just thrilled with the idea that the Republicans decided that these poor slaves to free enterprise should not have to pay more than 35% in income tax. Really, what would they do? This is the epitome of the trickle-down economic theory that conservatives love to tout. I shudder to think of all the gardeners, housekeepers, boat boys, and other day laborers who would be out of work if the tax rate on the top 2% went up. But, I digress...

The ICW from here on through Miami and into Biscayne Bay is not much to talk about. Lots of wealthy enclaves along its shores mixed up with high-rise condominiums. We were joined at a bridge just outside Maule Lake, where we'd spent a night at anchorage a year ago on our way to the Bahamas, by a fellow in a little 27 foot Pearson, chugging along with an 9.6 Yamaha 4-stroke outboard. (Hey, that's the motor on our dinghy!) We chatted a bit while waiting for the bridge and found out he was taking his boat down from Palm Beach near Lake Worth to Coral Gables, where his family was going to meet him for a short vacation. He was having problems with his Yamaha, which was hard to start at times, and I suggested he put in an ethanol treatment to stop the build up of plaque in the carburetor. It had solved that problem for me, and he admitted he didn't think about the ethanol in gasoline these days.

While we were sailing along with him and yet a third small sailboat, we all got caught in a sudden thunderstorm while waiting for Venetian Causeway Bridge (right in the center of Miami). Our friend threw out his anchor, while I decided to ride it out and get through the bridge on the opening. The wind hit 40 knots, I was soaked through, and Pen battened herself down below, but I made it through the bridge and within about 30 minutes the storm passed and we found ourselves heading out on to Biscayne Bay and on our way to our final anchorage before heading into the Florida Keys, which is No Name Harbor. We spent a couple of days here in 2010 waiting on weather to cross the Gulf Stream to Bimini in the Bahamas, and it brought back a lot of memories, plus one of the most beautiful sunsets we experienced this entire trip.

Next post ... "Down through the Keys"

More trip photos

Follow our trip through the Keys to St. Petersburg ...

2011-03-22T06:16:00.000-07:00

We've been winding our way from Daytona Beach down the ICW to Miami and thence through the Florida Keys since March 3rd. Normally we'd make posts here to log the trip, but this time we've just posted on our geotracking blog Cruising Alizee. So please follow it for now. We'll be posting photos and more stories here later.

Just another little comment on American literacy...

2011-03-01T09:37:00.000-08:00

A Harvard business prof and a Duke University behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s much more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable. Too bad Americans don't recognize reality and base their politics on it!

To see much more on this topic surf over to Mother Jones - Plutocracy Now, and read "It's the Inequality Stupid."

Now, back to sailing!

Thoughts about Wisconsin...

2011-02-26T07:25:00.000-08:00

The awakening of workers in Wisconsin and its spread across the nation over the past several days seems to be in stark contrast to popular uprisings in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East. As others have noted, middle eastern people seem to be running to more democratic societies while in America we seem to be turning our backs on democracy in favor of an oligarchic society.

While Mubarak and Qaddafi are being demonized and driven from power, America's mega-wealthy on Wall Street, at the head of America's banks and mega-corporations are handed trillions of dollars in tax cuts by our elected officials, nothing more than pay-off for monetarily supporting their elections to office. While the international community is considering legal actions against Mubarak and Gadahfi and other Middle Eastern autocrats are beginning to worry mightily, America's legal system has let go all those guilty of the numerous financial crimes they perpetrated on the American people over the past decade ... well, except the poster-boy Madoff who really was the least of the problem.

Then comes Scott Walker, newly elected Tea-Party Republican governor of Wisconsin whose election campaign was significantly funded by Charles and David Koch, the oil-rich billionaires who were the principal financiers of the Tea Party. Like every other governor in America, Walker is faced with tough budget times in his state, tough times brought on by the Wall Street and banker created recession. And, like all Republicans, his solution is to cut government expenditures rather than consider any tax adjustments (except for extending breaks to the wealthy and corporations). And on who's back will the cuts fall? Of course, the working middle class! And what little is left of the working middle class are public service employees, who enjoying the wages, benefits and working conditions that make middle class life possible because they are unionized, and the Republican solution spearheaded by Walker is to make the unions powerless by abolishing collective bargaining, which, of course, the oligarchy has virtually succeeded in doing in the private sector.

All of this is a direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted as international law by the United Nations in 1948 and to which the United States is a signatory. Article 23 states that "everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." Article 24 states that "everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." Article 25 states "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

You tell me, how well does the United States of America do in meeting the agreed upon human rights laid out in this Universal Declaration? And, my friends, you can thank the Republican Party and their oligarchical big money supporters for this.

A night in St. Augustine...

2011-02-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's Day we treated ourselves to a trip up to historic St. Augustine. We drove up Florida's state route 17, which goes along the St. John's River in places, and stopped by Green Cove Springs, where my permanent address is located. It's just a store front for forwarding mail, so not much to see, but there was a lovely little Episcopalian Church right down on the St. John's River that was a lovely site inside and out.

When we finally arrived in St. Augustine, we checked in the Powder House Inn, a reasonably priced and really wonderful bed and breakfast. From there we could wander through the historic town, and made it from one end to the other of St. George Street, where there are sufficient bars and restaurants to take care of a small army of visitors, and of course boutiques galore.

We wound up around 1600 hours on the ICW waterfront sitting in the veranda of the Casa Blanca Hotel at the Tini Martini Bar, where we soaked up the view and a couple of martinis. Then arrived Bob Fraioli, a piano player, who set up in the corner just next to us. When he discovered I played too, he immediately had me sit down a play. It was great fun, in part because I haven't had the opportunity to play like this for a while, but also because he turned out to be a great guy in addition to a great piano player.

We had an early dinner reservation (1730) at Collage Restaurant, advertised as the most romantic restaurant in St. Augustine. Not only romantic, but wonderful food as well! Quail and oyster appetizers, excellent salad and carrot soup, rack of lamb and veal tenderloin, not to mention a good California cabernet. Yum, yum!!

Then it was back to the Tini Martini, more piano playing, martinis, Irish Coffee, and more. Met a young couple from Jacksonville, Florida there, and we had great conversations in between the music and amidst the libations. Finally, over-beveraged as we were, we made our way back to the Powder House Inn. ... The next morning, the breakfast was scrumptious and the ride home, down the coast highway A-1-A, delightful.

Now we're beginning to get final preparations made to take Alizee around to Tampa Bay. Our departure date is 3 March, so only nine days to go.

Getting ready to sail to Tampa Bay ...

2011-01-22T14:45:00.000-08:00

We took a quick trip over to St. Petersburg and Tampa this weekend and had quite an adventure!

Our first stop was the Harborage Marina in St. Pete, located in a deep harbor from which one can be sailing on Tampa Bay within minutes. We first discovered the marina when at the St. Pete "Strictly Sail" show the first weekend in December. After we decided we'd like to take Alizee around the Keys to the gulf coast, the next step was to see where we might find a marina. We'd looked a couple of marinas in December, but the Harborage had a great introductory offer (three months free plus 5% off with a year lease), so we decided it was worth a quick visit.

Well, we were almost sold on arrival. It's a great facility for boaters, floating docks, really clean and well maintained, two nearby restaurants, three or four top-rate boat yards within a stone's throw ... exactly the thing we'd been longing for. Kirby, the harbor master, and his staff is wonderfully hospitable, and after we had a great lunch at Fish Tales on with a $25 gift certificate from the marina, we decided to go for it and take out a year's lease. And, talk about accommodating ... since we won't arrive until about the first of April, we got the slip we wanted effective that date. Ya think the recession has something to do with that? Hmmm.

After finishing up at the Harborage, we drove to the Courtyard Marriott in Tampa, where we napped for a couple of hours before heading out to have drinks and dinner at Tampa's Davis Island Yacht Club.

We were met by Hank, on the club's membership committee, with whom I had been in email correspondence and talked once with on the phone. He couldn't have been more cordial, taking us on a tour of their docks and other facilities, introducing us to a number of club members and joining us for dinner. DIYC (sometimes referred to, said Hank, as the "do it yourself yacht club") is pretty good size with over 400 members. Their clubhouse is only three or four years old with a nice swimming pool and they have a very active racing program, a cruising program, a woman's dinghy racing group and a large summer youth sailing program. I was greatly reminded of the Encinal Yacht Club in Alameda, which, by the way, I do miss a lot.

After a great evening we found our way back to the Marriott and a good nights sleep. Next morning our plan was to meet up with a realtor in Dunedin, a quaint coastal town we'd been through back in December. We just wanted to look at three or four houses ... the market's really good there, now ... to get a sense of what's available. Alas, as we were on our way following the GPS route, the car seemed a bit noisy. I wondered if the starter pinion had properly disengaged, and suddenly I saw smoke pouring out behind the car. I pulled off at the first driveway, into a small strip-mall, stopped, got out and was struggling to get the hood up when two fellows came running out from a tiny little used-car dealership at the other end of the mall. Quickly one of them got a tool box, and with a screw driver we got the hood latch undone and looked around. We agreed it was probably the starter, and when the smoke had dissipated, I tried to turn over the engine and we knew the starter was gone. It is about 10:00.

Talk about nice! They took us into their office, sat us down on their couch, got us coffee, recommended a couple of mechanics and got in touch with one who said he could probably have it fixed in an afternoon (unless the wiring harness was damaged). I called AAA for a tow, and another one of the nicest guys we could have ever met arrived with the truck within 30 minutes. Bidding farewell to Jayson and Ryan at "Florida's Best Car Deals," we rode with Greg in the flatbed two truck to T&W Auto Repair, perhaps 15-20 miles away. Tony and William were expecting us, directed us to the nearby Cuban Sandwich Shop, a little place that was packed with locals, so we could have something to eat while they checked out the starter problem.

What a great restaurant! Family owned since 1975, they had the best bean soup and Cuban sandwiches. We couldn't have found a better meal on our own, I'm sure. And, when we got back, Tony and William said it was the starter, not wiring, and they'd have it for us soon. So, we settled down to do a couple of crosswords and some reading, and at a little after 13:00, they pulled the car up to the office entry way. They had checked it out and installed a new starter in under two hours, gave a life-time guarantee on the starter, and charged only $400. We were on the road home by 13:30, and arrived in Deland at 15:30.

What could have been a terrible, lousy experience turned out to be an uplifting and actually enjoyable one. Literally everyone we met in the course of our visit to St. Pete and Tampa put smiles on our faces. It was a trip we'll long remember!

A comment on the state of college education ...

2011-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

A recently published book on lower-division education in American colleges, Academically Adrift, reveals some pretty startling stuff about what students do in college and what they are getting out of the experience. In a typical seven-day week, students on average spend only 7% of their time studying and 9% of their time in class. Since college is expensive, one might jump to conclude they spend so little time on studies because they are working, but in fact they only spend 9% of their time working. The bulk of their time is spent socializing (51%) and sleeping (24%). Truly, this represents the pathetic state of lower-division college education, and my 30+ years of college teaching reflect it.

I began teaching at the college level in 1971. Students read four to five books per quarter in my general education history classes. I gave three to four essay examinations (blue book and take home). Occasionally some complained, but in the end they worked very hard and I'm sure learned a lot. Thirty years later, general education itself was generally gutted of serious requirements in the liberal arts, students refused to read the books assigned and complained bitterly when they received poor grades on essay exams. They sought out other faculty who gave objective tests and didn't require reading. The deans, espousing "success for all students," jumped on me because I gave more C's, D's and F's or had more student drops than other faculty. I'm glad I had tenure, or I would have been pushed to enter the faculty popularity contest.

We live in a society where parents indulge their children, where children rarely are allowed to experience failure, where students think they are owed success in classes and are largely allowed to take only classes they want to take, where college deans don't support faculty who seek work from their students, where faculty in response seek to be popular with their students, where politicians and political parties refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, where corporate leaders indulge themselves with no sense of propriety, and the list goes on ad nauseum.

And in poll after poll, John Q. Public says education is among the most important issues facing our society, if not number one. Duh?

A trip to the boatyard ...

2011-01-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

Pen and I took our cars to the Seven Seas Boatyard in Port Orange, about five miles south Halifax Harbor in Daytona Beach, dropped off one car, and then drove the other up Halifax Harbor. We had double dock lines on Alizee, which tells you we hadn't taken her out since hurricane season ended in November, and we had to empty out some stuff in the refrigerator, but within an hour we had her out of the slip and motoring down to Seven Seas. A bit of a wait for the tide, and then the boatyard folks hoisted her up and out of the water. Over the next couple of days she got a new bottom job and I had a damaged rub rail replaced on the starboard side. Good guys at the yard, and tomorrow we'll have her back in the slip at Halifax Harbor.

Starting the new year ...

2011-01-02T14:35:00.000-08:00

We've been on extended shore leave for the past six months, and I'm beginning to look forward to getting back on Alizee, if only for a couple of weeks at a time. During the last week of December as a Christmas gift to myself, I hired my marina friend J.T. to thoroughly clean and polish the hull and topsides. He did a beautiful job! Still have to do the stainless and the bigger job of re-varnishing awaits as well, and for the varnish I may get J.T. to help me out a bit. And, in a week, I'm taking Alizee in for a bottom job at Seven Seas Marina on the ICW.

We had a great Christmas, with Penelope's daughter Erin and her fiance Creig coming out from Castle Rock, Colorado to share the season with us, and Erin's dad David joined us for Christmas dinner as well. Pen loves to decorate the house, which she did to the hilt, and we both enjoyed having a fire every evening during the cold snap in December. Santa was good to all of us, perhaps even more than we deserved. Life is good! Our health is good! We are blessed with family and many wonderful friends!

Plans for the coming year are beginning to settle in. We're going to move Alizee around the Keys to Tampa Bay and spend the rest of the year taking one- to two-week sailing vacations there while keeping our home base in our house in Deland. Having three cats sort of holds us down for now, but we're thinking we'll enjoy this sort of sailing anyway. And we've some other trips planned -- to Colorado sometime before summer starts to see Erin and Creig again, perhaps a trip to California in June, one to Glasgow for my annual history of technology symposium in August and, then in late September or early October a week with friends on a boat in the Canal du Midi in southern France and another week in Paris. I'm already tired thinking about it and I know Pen is as well.

More photos

Another California journey...

2010-12-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

We headed out to Mountain View for Thanksgiving with Lisa and Matt last week. Despite all the hullabaloo about security pat-downs and the new imaging machines at airports, we had no problems. We left on Wednesday at what the media had said was going to be the busiest time at the Orlando airport, but the place was almost empty. There were more TSA agents standing around than passengers. And, a week later, coming home, it wasn't any worse in San Francisco, though Penelope got directed through the imaging doohickey for no explicable reason. Oh well, no wrecks, no drown-dings, in fact nothing to laugh at a' tall.

Wednesday night found us at Akane's sushi bar, where we took Lisa and Matt for dinner. Can't visit California without sushi at Akane, without question the best sushi in the state! Thanksgiving Day was peaceful and relaxing. Lisa had gotten a pre-cooked turkey from Whole Foods, which made dinner preparation really easy. She made up her Granny's turkey gravy, though sadly without giblets because the pre-cooked turkey didn't come with any. The Whole Foods dressing was the best Penelope said she'd ever had, I whipped up the candied yams, Sandi (Lisa's mom) contributed a great tossed salad, and I ate so much that my tummy was bursting by early evening. Nobody had room for the amazing 7" high apple pie that Lisa had gotten from the fund-raiser at her job - Gunn High School in Palo Alto. So, we had to have some for breakfast on Friday.

Friday was a busy day for us. We had lunch with my old history consulting buddy, Tony Kirk, who drove over from Santa Cruz and met us at The Left Bank in Santana Row, San Jose. He is a wonderful story-teller and we had lots to catch up on. After a couple of hours of rest back at Lisa's, we headed up to Palo Alto to meet Ben and Julie Kline for dinner. We ate at Evvia, a Mediterranean (really Greek, I think) restaurant, devouring the best spring lamb chops ever (so said Penelope), and other delicious dishes.

Saturday, we slept in late, and then stayed around the townhouse in Mountain View, visiting with Lisa in the morning and settling in to relax in the afternoon while she and Matt went off to do chaperon a student activity (parking cars at Stanford's football game). But we soon were to restless to just sit around, so we went up to the Palo Alto Square movies to see Fair Game, the Valeria Plame story. What a good movie! Almost the entire audience actually applauded at the end! If you haven't seen it, you really must.

That evening we met old friends Bob and Laura Miller along with Sandi at a new (to us) restaurant in downtown San Jose: Fahrenheit. Excellent food and very good service, though the ambiance left a bit to be desired, what with the dining area and the bar not really separated from each other. The next morning we said goodbye to Lisa and Matt, heeding Benjamin Franklin's warning that fish and company begin to smell after three days (and we were there three nights).

The second half of our journey began when we checked into the Marina Village Inn in Alameda, right adjacent to the marina gate where Dog Days is located. We were met by Tony Kay and Lin Hullen, friends from the Encinal Yacht Club, with whom we had lunch at Pier 29 overlooking the Ballena Bay marina and then went off to tour the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier, a museum for several years now on the old Alameda Naval Air Station.

Later that evening we went down to Tony and Mary Oliver's Cal 39, Chance, which is docked just near Dog Days, where we had a bottle of wine and then went off to the Mint Leaf, a new and very wonderful little French-Vietnamese restaurant nearby. If you're ever in Alameda, don't miss it. We liked it so much we went back the next evening by ourselves.

On Monday we took a mid-morning ferry from Alameda over to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. The ferry building has been turned into a major attraction with shops where you can get the best organic meats and produce, cheeses, chocolates, cooking ware and other wonderful things as well as eat at any number of top-rate restaurants. Tony and Lin had said we should eat at the Slanted Door where the sushi is excellent, but we got pulled into the Hog Island Oyster Bar for two dozen oysters -- some from Tomales Bay just north of San Francisco and some from Puget Sound. We love oysters, and had shared a dozen at the Left Bank only two days before, but we can't get enough.

Then we walked up the Embarcadero to Pier 39, where we ended up having sushi at Hana Zen, second story, end of the pier, overlooking Alcatraz and the bay. Then we wandered over to catch the ferry back to Alameda around 3:30 pm, and spent a bit of time listening to a steel band playing nearby. It was one of the most beautifully clear days I've ever seen in San Francisco. Truly breathtaking! ... That evening, after dining again at the Mint Leaf, we went over to the Encinal Yacht Club, where the Monday Night Football crowd was gathered. We weren't sure who we would see, but were pleased to see several friends -- Lance and Sue Bateman, Tony Oliver, Rod Kidd, and Rob and Carol Woltring, with whom we spent quite a bit of time catching up.

Tuesday was our last day in the bay area, and after we checked out of the Marina Village Inn, we drove up to Napa Valley to do some wine tasting. After stopping in the town of Napa and picking up some great maps showing real detail about the valley's 400+ wineries, we started up the Silverado Trail to our first stop, Luna Vinyards, where we sampled grapes from the vine. Their sommelier was a wealth of knowledge and we ended up leaving with a couple of bottles of 2007 Sangiovese and a 2007 Cabernet. He told us where we could find some good Zinfandels, which we dearly love, so our next stop was to the Robert Biale Vineyards, only a few minutes away, where not only did we taste some wonderful Zins but we decided to buy four bottles as well as take a year's membership in the Black Chicken Society, which cost a bunch but will give us four shipments of excellent wine through next year. (The Black Chicken name comes from the nickname for wine during prohibition -- if you wanted a jug of wine from the winery, you called and ordered a black chicken.)

Our next stop was the Steltzner Vineyard on Silverado Trail, where we hoped to get some Malbec. Unfortunately, they were fresh out, so we settled on a couple of other wines and got three more bottles there. We also sneaked into the wine cave, which was open and unmanned, and got a glimpse of wine being aged in barrels. By now we were hungry, so we searched out the Brix restaurant in Yountville, where we had a wonderful lunch and another good glass of Napa Valley wine before heading to our last stop, Jessup Cellars, to buy two more bottles, completing a case. Now about 4:00 pm, we drove to Buffalo's Shipping in the town of Napa and shipped our case of wine back to ourselves in Deland.

After an hour-and-a-half drive to San Francisco Airport via the Golden Gate Bridge, we collapsed into our bed at the Marriott and had a good nights sleep before entering the long silver tube to take us home on Wednesday. But good times were not entirely over. On our way out a week before we'd stopped in DFW at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen (terminal A adjacent to gate 25), where we had a great New Orleans style meal. So, on our way back, we made a beeline for it again, and, naturally, had a dozen oysters as well as other good stuff. Don't miss it when you fly through DFW. It's the best airport food you'll ever eat -- because it simply is not airport food.

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A California weekend visit ...

2010-11-10T11:50:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I flew out to San Jose and spent the weekend with my daughter Lisa. The trip was prompted by a special event at San Jose State University, where the Department of Humanities honored four pioneer faculty of the Humanities Honors Program, which was started in 1954 by my father and three other colleagues. The idea was pushed to fruition by Maxine Fink, wife of one of these pioneers, who also had the wisdom to honor the spouses of the four faculty members. Lisa and I attended the plaque dedication at a

small gathering of Humanities Program faculty, students and friends and relatives of those being honored on Monday evening. Maxine Fink and Nancy Burbank were both there, the first time I had seen either of them since my father died in 1998. It was a heartwarming gathering, for sure.

I also took advantage of the trip to drop in on Dog Days, my Islander Bahama 28 in Alameda. After a lot of soul searching, I decided that I would put her back on the market. Since I'm not using her and the chances of my using her more than once or twice a year are slim at best, it doesn't make sense to hang on to her. Just the maintenance and berthing costs made me think hard about this, but more she is bound to deteriorate from disuse, not something any sailor would wish on a good boat. So, I dropped in on Klaus Kutz at Passage Yachts and we reactivated the sales contract that I had signed with him back in June.

Dog Days is a really nice boat, so if you know anyone who is in the market for a solid, classic sloop, give Klaus a call or drop me a note.

Sailing Dog Days on the Petaluma River, Summer 2008.

A long awaited essay ...

2010-08-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Four years ago over a weekend in early June, I participated in an NSF-sponsored workshop with several colleagues at the University of Maryland. Our task was to review drafts of essays that each of us had written during the previous six months which we hoped to pull together into a book tentatively entitled The Ties that Bind: Environment and Technology in History, which was being prepared under the auspices of Enivrotech, a special interest group of the Society for the History of Technology, which I had co-founded with historian Sarah Pritchard in Munich, Germany in August 2000. The workshop was quite wonderful, and then it was left to each of us to finalize our essays, have the collection's editors Steve Cutcliffe and Marty Reuss carefully edit and critique them, and eventually get the final manuscript prepared for press.

Projects such as these often take a very long time, and this one was no exception. But, at long last, the book has finally been released. The title changed a bit, now Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History, but the initial purpose of the book has not changed at all. Anne Greene, author of Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America, suggests the importance of Illusory Boundary: "An exciting collection of essays elucidating the 'Envirotech' approach to history. This important work not only challenges a traditional nature-technology dualism, but stakes new intellectual ground. It demonstrates the meaning of 'Envirotech' through essays that address matters of historical interest and debate -- industrialization, the American West, cities, food, agriculture, science. This volume is an original, substantial, and significant accomplishment."

I am flattered that my contribution, "Understanding the Place of Humans in Nature," is the lead essay in the book. I can hardly wait to get my hands on it and read the other contributions.

Fun in Finland ...

2010-08-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Although not on Alizee or any other boat for that matter, we had a lovely two-week trip to Helsinki and Tampere, Finland. As you may know, if you've been reading Newsweek magazine, Finland is first among one-hundred nations in a number of categories, making it the best country in the world in which to live. Well, say we, indeed it's probably so for the summer months, but we'll take a pass on the snowy rest of the year, even if they do have saunas to warm you up.

We landed in Helsinki four days before my annual history of technology symposium started in Tampere, which gave us plenty of time to recover from jet lag. Our first stop was the Hotel Katajanokka, which served for a century as a prison and was converted to a Best Western hotel two years ago, keeping as much of the original prison interior as possible. After a day or so of recovery, we had plenty of time to wander around this beautiful city on the archipelagos of southern Finland. There are multitudes of lovely sailboats along the quays, from traditional Baltic fishing and freight schooners to modern fiberglass boats ... and for those of you who sail in more moderate climes, remember every one of the Finnish boats must be hauled and winterized at the end of the relatively short sailing season. But they were certainly a treat to look at.

Even better, I found the boat I want after I'm done with sailing ... a wonderful old fishing boat with room for my baby grand piano in the salon. What fun!!

Penelope and I agree that one of the best things about Finland in the summer are the wonderful markets. The fresh produce is amazing. Berries, berries, berries - the freshest raspberries, blue berries, lingonberries, cloudberries. Fresh chanterelle mushrooms. The most wonderful variety of lettuces and greens. And every other imaginable item. And gourmet meats - my mouth watered at the lamb tenderloins and wonderful little racks, and the reindeer, which we had in a restaurant in Tampere, was wonderfully tender. We're ready to let a place for a month or two and just spend our time cooking and eating!

The symposium itself was great fun. I gave my paper on "Sailing as Play: A Case in Technological Possibilities," which focused on the role of fiberglass in making sailing available as a sport and pastime for the middle classes, and I heard several other very interesting papers on a variety of topics. Of course, I had to attend a couple of business meetings, but most of the time was spent meeting up with old friends, meeting new friends, and otherwise socializing. My band, The Email Special, played its gig at a wonderful location in a technological museum, and we were joined by a couple of young Finnish back up players on drums and bass.

Pen and I missed the sauna night, but we did go for dinner with the symposium group on a nearby island, so we got a boat ride. And the banquet on the last night was really one of the best we've been to ... no rubber chicken, that's for sure. Maybe Finland is the best country in the world after all ... although the Swiss are challenging the Newsweek tallying of points.

After a week in Tampere for the symposium, we returned for two more days in Helsinki and enjoyed dinner with some friends we'd not been able to connect with at the symposium. Then it was off to the elongated silver tube of transport for the trip home. And, here we are!

More photos

The shady side of sailing ...

2010-07-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

Seems like life is either keeping us on our toes, throwing us off balance or knocking us to our knees. Fortunately the changes in our lives since we got back from the Bahamas have mostly just kept us on our toes, but that’s turned into a real balancing act for sure.

A few weeks ago I was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma on my forehead just along the hairline after a routine dermatological check-up. And while, in the scheme of things, it’s not such big deal, all I wanted to do was run for cover—literally and figuratively. You know that old rule that says when uncertain, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. Well, that’s what I was doing. Even though I’ve learned that that basal cell carcinoma is the best kind of skin cancer to have since it doesn’t get into the blood stream and so it’s not life threatening, I’m not one those sailors who thinks that giving up little chunks of herself is a fair price one to pay for the cruising lifestyle. To add to my chagrin, it took two surgeries to excise the rather deep invader, so I’m sufficiently convinced that even the best cancer can be a painful and potentially disfiguring experience. Call it vanity, cowardice or prudence, I’ve become sun shy.

While there are many practices to protect yourself from the sun like frequently slathering on sun screen, wearing a hat and protective clothing, and staying in the shade whenever possible, at some point it becomes impractical and almost impossible to avoid the sun in a lifestyle that is lived so blatantly in it.

Although my cancer was probably a result of exposure a long time ago, today’s exposure is likely to snag me if I live long enough. (And I hope I do that.) From what I’ve read, the odds are I will be struck again within the next five years with another basal cell carcinoma probably on the face or neck. I’ve also learned (don’t you just love the internet) that skin cancer is known as the sailor’s disease and for good reason given a sailor’s exposure to the ubiquitous presence of the sun where it gets a reflective boost from the water especially in the tropics. And for some people like me with fair skin and green eyes the risk is even greater.

So fear and a knee jerk reaction drove me to tell James, “I don’t want to cruise anymore,” throwing us both into a tailspin. Just a moment before I had been dreaming along with him of our next season’s cruising in the Bahamas and possibly on to the Caribbean, then, wham, I was bailing out. Fortunately, James in his constancy and flexibility was able to convince me that this isn’t the end of our dreams, that we can rethink the how, the where and the when of cruising, that we can out smart the sun, that we don’t have to jump ship … either alone or together. And I have to believe him. The captain’s word is law.

Moving ashore ...

2010-07-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

We're finally moving ashore. Pen has been cleaning the house for a week, rearranging furniture, and doing a myriad of other chores. I've been trying to finish up a paper for my conference in Finland next month as well as get odds and ends done on Alizee. I got Bertha the dinghy off the davits yesterday and got it into an inflatables shop for some work ... having the bilge pump repaired tomorrow.

So, Alizee is becoming a "second home" of sorts, which we'll visit whenever ... probably more visits in the Fall, when the weather cools off. It's in the 90s now, and sometimes with the humidity feels like the low 100s ... not something this California bred boy is used to, for sure.

It is bittersweet moving off Alizee. Both Pen and I have really enjoyed the closeness we've had on the boat, and we've had such wonderful times while cruising the Bahamas this year. But things change ... I think that is the greatest constant in life. Anyhow, more later.

A political observation...

2010-06-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

So, John Q. Public is all consumed by the Gulf oil spill and by who is going to command the troops in Afghanistan, and while so involved this stalwart citizen has a shiv slipped between his shoulder blades. The financial package which has been working its way through the Senate and which would extend unemployment benefits to 1.5 million unemployed and help support state and local governments that are on the edge of bankruptcy was defeated by 41 votes against 57 in favor. And you thought we had "majority rule" in our democracy ... not really, it's minority rule!

So, who, pray tell, would stick that shiv in John Q? Well, 40 Republican Senators joined by quasi-Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska, that's who. And meanwhile, they want to extend the tax breaks to the wealthy that Bush and congressional Republicans granted a few years ago, decrying letting them run out as a "tax hike." What balderdash!

The worst of this is the short-sighted reasoning of those who suddenly are worried about the national debt, for their concern for deficits is bound to prolong the recession and perhaps make it worse. Congress pushed Franklin Roosevelt into trying to balance the budget in 1937, and it plunged the country even deeper into depression. In the end, it was World War Two that turned things around, but since we've already got a war on our hands, indeed one that is contributing mightily to our deficits, we won't be bailed out by another war.

In the end, if you are earning less than $150,000 a year and you go along with this reasoning, you are simply acting against own economic interests. Think about that when the November elections roll around.

Dog Days for sale ... (not any more) ...

2010-06-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

You can ignore this post ... I've changed my mind. Dog Days stays in the family for now.

Well, it's time. Dog Days, my 1981 Islander Bahama, is on the market. She's served me well on San Francisco Bay for a decade, with wonderful sails to Petaluma, Vallejo, the Delta, and virtually every destination on around the Bay. I've kept her up with regular engine tune-ups, bi-monthly bottom cleaning, annual waxing and polishing, and done a number of major maintenance projects, among them stripping and putting barrier coating plus bottom paint on the hull just two years ago. And, I added a one-off wooden dinghy, Pup, which my boat builder friend John Tuma built specifically for Dog Days. If you are looking for a good bay boat, a wonderful easily handled sailing boat, then you couldn't do better. She and Pup are priced to sell, so check her out on her own web page.

Sailing with Bruce ...

2010-06-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I drove up to Vallejo to join Bruce Sinclair on his lovely little Gary Mull-designed, Hank Easom-built thirty-foot sloop, Pretty Penny, for the Vallejo Yacht Club's "Two Bridges" race. The race starts just west of the Carquinez Strait at the mouth of the Napa River (the Vallejo Yacht Club is just a mile up the river). We crossed the starting line second in our class but 40 seconds after the gun (a slow start), sailed west into the wind to the first mark, which we rounded with the mark on our port side, and then began a the long downwind sail up under the Carquinez Bridge, through the Carquinez Strait, past the historic town of Benicia and to the Benicia-Carquinez Bridge where we rounded another mark and tacked our way back to the finish line, which was set up just above the entrance to the Benicia Yacht Club and harbor. Altogether the course ran about 10 statute miles.

Winds were strong at the start, probably around 20 knots, then as we sailed the downwind course, they fell off considerably, which meant nobody made great speed against an ebbing tide. Bruce and I decided we needed to change out the 90 blade head sail for a 125 head sail, which I agreed to do and once we got it up we managed to pick up some speed and time, ultimately sufficient to take second place in our group. It's been a while since I've sailed on any part of San Francisco Bay, and I enjoyed it enormously, despite the spray of cold water which really got us after we'd finished the race and were tacking upwind back to the mouth of the Napa River.

On our return to Bruce's slip, we put Pretty Penny to bed and Gail joined us at the yacht club for a celebratory drink. They asked me to stay for dinner and for the night, which I agreed to do, and Gail cooked up a magnificent meal while Bruce and I polished off a bottle of Zinfandel, enjoyed Bruce's parrot Lorenzo, who is 30 years old, and were entertained by their new dog Lulu (maybe a poodle, but they think a "puddle"). It was great fun, and I look forward to the next time we get together. Perhaps they will come east!

Leaving California ...

2010-06-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

Pen is back in Florida, while I'm in California at my townhouse, which my daughter Lisa and her husband Matt are leasing from me. My first task here is to take care of their three cats while they are in Japan for a week with students from Matt's Japanese language program at Silver Creek High School in San Jose. This is not so bad a task, although Obi, the black cat and the oldest, is a bit of a paranoid-schizophrenic creature. The other two, Phoenix (the orange cat) and B.J. (a long hair), are very well behaved, and I hardly even see them. But Obi is always under foot, it seems ... well, now he's just curled up on the couch sleeping, but this is truly an exception, for usually he is stalking me or howling at shadows.

Other tasks here are to put Dog Days on the market and arrange to ship all the stuff I have in storage out to Florida. I went up to Marina Village in Alameda yesterday, took a lot of stuff off of Dog Days, discovered the batteries were not charging, arranged for my friend Rob Bastress to trouble shoot the problem and signed a contract with my friend Klaus Kutz at Passage Yachts to broker the boat. Meanwhile, Laurie Elliot, who I'd talked to on the phone a few days ago, had already gotten a couple of pieces of the exterior canvas covers to make repairs. I may have a local fellow wax Dog Days, but I am reluctant to put too much money into her, and she looks nice and clean. Klaus said he was most impressed by her when he went by to see her a week ago. I'll go up again on Friday and finish getting stuff off her, possibly have to get new batteries and decide whether to have her waxed.

This is one of my favorite sailing photos, on the Petaluma River

Whoever buys Dog Days also gets an added bonus: Pup, a one-off wooden tender. My boat-builder friend John Tuma designed and built Pup especially for Dog Days five years ago. She's a gorgeous little rowing pram that will take two people around the anchorage easily, stows on the foredeck and tows nicely behind Dog Days. If I could use her in Florida, I'd definitely take her, but she really belongs with her master.

I thought getting my things in storage shipped east was going to be a big task, because there are three or four items I'd rather not ship and would just as well sell or donate out here. The problem is that they are buried at the back of the storage unit. Initially, I thought I'd hire a couple of day laborers to help me take everything out and pull these items to the front, but I've finally decided that that's a waste of energy and it's just as easy to ship them out with everything else and then decide what to do with the items in Florida, and it certainly won't add that much to the overall moving cost. So, today I met with an estimator from one van line at the storage unit, and signed a contract, stuff to be picked up on July 8th and delivered in DeLand between the 15th and 21st. Glad that is set up. Now I just have a paintings to pack in mirror boxes and the contents of some file cabinet drawers to put in boxes.

I'm also trying to finish up a book review and get the bulk of my paper for my summer history of technology conference written on this trip. At least I should have the review done and a good start on the paper, but it's not all work. I've had a chance to visit with a couple of old friends ... my old history colleague at De Anza, Ben Kline and his wife Julie; Bob and Laura Miller, who I've known for 40 years; and Lisa's mom Sandi. Batu Berkok, with whom I took sailing lessons back in 1999, had sushi last night at my favorite sushi restaurant, Akane, and Saturday I am driving up to Vallejo to crew on Bruce Sinclair's little Gary Mull designed boat, Pretty Penny, in the Vallejo Yacht Club's two-bridges race. That will be great fun!

Abaco and on to Daytona Beach ...

2010-06-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

We've had so much fun in the Abaco, we completely forgot to post all our doings. Suffice it to say that Pen's sister Patricia joined us for the last couple of weeks of May and made the 37 hour crossing back from Great Sale Cay in the Abaco to New Ponce Inlet, just south of Daytona Beach. We are now safely ensconced in our slip at Halifax Harbour in Daytona.

On our trip we caught lots of fish (4 Mahi-Mahi, 25 or so Yellow Tail Snapper, half-dozen Mutton Snapper, three or four Yellow Sennett, Bar Jack, and a couple of Blue Runners). We are finally done with fish for a while. We want pizza and other substantial, meaty stuff.

We've been even worse about posting pictures, so here's the link to all our latest which are now on Flickr.

All our Photos

Fun in the Abacos ...

2010-05-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

We've had a great time in the Abaco for the past three weeks, working our way up from Little Harbour to Marsh Harbour, Guana Cay, Green Turtle Cay, Manjack Cay and back down to Guana and Marsh Harbour. Along the way we've caught several Yellow Tail Snapper and enjoyed a lot of good sushi, some Mutton Snapper, which we've shared with friends and made Ceviche ... very, very good. We've heard some good island music at Grabber's in Guana, we've continued to devour book after book and haunted the book exchanges, and we've shared time with other cruisers.

In Guana Cay, a fellow cruiser saw my Encinal burgee and came over asking if I was a member of the Cottage Park Yacht Club in Boston. "Huh?" I replied. He said his burgee was the same as mine, and went back to his boat and showed it to me. My goodness, it seemed to be the same. I checked it out on the Yacht Club registry and discovered the burgees are almost identical ... you can see the white triangle on the EYC burgee is a bit smaller than on the CPYC burgee. Moreover, we are both James's. Few clubs have almost identical burgees, and who would have thought that a member of one from California and a member from one in Boston would connect on a small cay in the Bahamas.

Certainly a connection that could lead to friendship, and since our meeting we've gotten together for drinks, then dinner on our boat, and later dinner on their boat, and I'm quite sure there is more to come. As you can see, Robin and Penelope hit it off nicely, as have James and James.

We're off to catch some Yellow Tail today (we hope), and spend a couple of nights at Matt Lowe Cay, a small nearby cay. Then we return to Marsh Harbour to pick up Pen's sister Patricia, who is coming over to spend a week and then join us on the crossing back to Daytona Beach. This will be fun!

Return to the Abacos ...

2010-04-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

Our stay in Spanish Wells was quite wonderful, particularly in connecting with Peter and Dianne on Pearl. We had them over for dinner the night before we left for Harbour Island, and also invited Reg and Teri from Blue Topaz to join us for drinks before we had dinner. We all had a wonderful time and quite unbelievably Teri came from Morgan Hill, California, where I lived for some time while teaching at Gavilan College in Gilroy. We even knew some of the same people ... six degrees of separation for sure. Reg and Teri were heading south the next morning, ultimately aiming for Antigua in the Caribbean, but we promised to keep in touch. Meantime, we had a fine dinner with Peter and Dianne, and we promised to get together in the Abacos.

To get over to Harbour Island, one has to navigate what is called the Devil's Backbone, and narrow passage through the reefs at the top of Eleuthera. We hired Jock "Bandit" Morgan, from whom we rented the mooring at Spanish Wells, to pilot us over. He made the trip seem easy, indeed, and I can vouch that it was tricky, for coming back when we left to go north to the Abacos, I grazed a coral head when I drifted off the track just a few meters. No damage but a gouge in the keel, but it was a good warning about paying close attention.

Harbour Island is a refuge for well-to-do and celebrities seeking anonymity. One of my cousin's family owns a house on the north end, which they've had ever since I can remember. In our wandering about on a rented golf cart, we met an old-timer named Anthony who while now farming and running a produce stand made his career at sea as a charter boat captain and fishing boat captain. He remembered my cousin's family quite well, and that's how we found where their house was located ... we were beat though, so never got up to see it. We did have a wonderful lunch of truly unique "Cheeseburgers in Paradise" and really fine conch fritters at Ma Ruby's ... she had been recommended to us by Jock Morgan. And, we got over to the "pink sand" beaches, which seem to be quite famous. Lovely, yes.

After a couple of nights at Harbour Island, we took a weather window and had a wonderful sail north the the Abacos. After finding our way out of the Devil's Backbone (barely), we caught a Yellow Tail going out the cut to the ocean, and then 45 minutes later caught our first Mahi Mahi on a hand line. Very exciting! Pen did her usual masterful job of filleting both fish, and our freezer was full when we pulled into Little Harbour in the Abacos that evening. We celebrated with sushi and while in Little Harbour we had two wonderful Mahi Mahi dishes that Pen found amongst her recipe collection.

Our first day in Little Harbour was sunny and quite nice, and while talk of a cold front coming through the northern Abacos on Tuesday was on the weather internet and single-side band radio, our in-house meteorologist, the Captain, predicted a non-event for Monday. It's a good thing he didn't suggest going north to Marsh Harbour on any other destination, though, for a poured buckets and buckets of rain all day and into the night. We apparently dragged anchor sometime in midday when the wind clocked around to the north. We were down below and didn't notice until we realized we were aground, and thankfully we went aground at low tide and before really getting into shallow water. We floated free pulled in ten feet on the anchor line, which reset the anchor, and then the wind shifted south again.

The next day (Tuesday, April 27) brought a stupendously nice sailing day ... sunny, warm, 12-15 knot winds ... and we sailed all the way up from Little Harbour to Marsh Harbour. It's a bit of a circuitous path, going around a couple of major sand banks and around some small cays, and we also had to tack our way down the home stretch into Marsh Harbour, but it was well worth the sail. And, we caught two Mutton Snappers and a Yellow Tail along the way. On arrival we discovered Peter and Dianne at anchor. I stopped off just to say we'd arrived, and they were all apologetic ... they were going to leave in the morning for home, taking advantage of a big weather window to get to Florida, and they'd already made dinner plans for the evening. We did have a chance to have a sundowner with them and catch up a little, and Peter promised that he'd make good on the dinner he had promised us when back in Spanish Wells.

Today we did some errands in Marsh Harbour, had lunch at Curly Tails, a favorite hang-out, and got our toilet seat repaired with new brackets (it broke down in the Exumas somewhere). Now it's relaxation time, and the Sea of Abaco is the place to do it. Lots of nearby destinations and lovely scenery. It's a full moon tonight, and we got a sample of it last night. Gorgeous! We're very happy to be back.

Alizee's geotrack

Rock Sound to Spanish Wells ...

2010-04-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

Time continues to fly by without our reporting much. Internet connection is partly blamed, but so much fun is more to blame. But now, in Spanish Wells at the top of Eleuthera where we're spending five nights on a mooring, we find the time to catch up on the blog posting.

We had a wonderful three days in Rock Sound Harbor in the bottom of Eleuthera, dropping laundry, having a chance at the internet and doing some shopping. We met John, Rick and Mark on Candace Rose on the first day, and when we saw them in town later, they invited us for a farewell dinner for Mark aboard their boat. It was a crew change for them, with Rick arriving and Mark going home (to the Pacific Northwest). We took over ceviche (made with fresh snapper), a couple of sushi rolls (also fresh snapper), and homemade peach chutney; they provided a pork loin and side dishes.

While consuming appetizers Mark said: "Okay, aren't you going to ask us what we do?" What a leading question. We bit, and he responded: "We're all OBGYNs," which led to a hilarious and wonderful conversation that flitted from topic to topic the rest of the evening. The next evening, after Mark had gone, we invited Rick and John over to Alizee for dinner and had the most wonderful baby back ribs with all the accompaniment and another great evening of conversation. We haven't connected with them since ... they were going south and we north ... but we hope they keep in touch.

On April 8th, we weighed anchor and sailed with the Genoa north to Pineapple Cays, anchoring in Pau Pau Bay. We caught a Southern Sennett, a very edible type of Barracuda while passing the village of Tarpum Bay, and over the next couple of mornings had pan fried fish and eggs for breakfast. The Sennett was the most tender and tasty fish either of us have eaten! ... Pau Pau Bay was a wonderful anchorage except for the no-seeums. The winds died completely our second evening there, and Pen got eaten alive ... some 75 bites everywhere, and she was miserable for the next three days. Ugghhh!

We sailed up to Governor's Harbor, the first capitol of the Bahamas they say, and anchored there for a couple of nights. We bought some conch from a local fellow and I experimented preparing it. I made a tasty conch salad, and then the next day simmered the conch for an hour and a half and then diced it up to make a conch stir fry served over rice. It was wonderful, and we won't be shy about getting conch again.

Staying a Governor's Harbor with no other cruisers in sight seemed to put us off the beaten path again, which is really something we like, and we moved even further off the beaten path by heading further north to James Cistern. This is a little village with lots of room to anchor but on a bottom that has a lot of grass and rocks. It took us three tries to finally hold, but it was worth it. We got some wonderful fresh island grown produce at a little roadside stand and had the pea soup to end all at Lee's cafe. They people were the friendliest, and we really enjoyed the stop.

On April 13th, we made an invigorating beam reach sail up to an anchorage south of the Glass Window toward the top of the Eleuthera bight. We passed Hatchett Bay, where lots of cruisers go, and elected to anchor out alone ... well, not quite alone, because a half-mile north of us was a 200+ foot luxury yacht, but they were in the distance and of no bother. The winds came up to 25 knots for the next day or so, and we didn't even bother to explore the shore, electing to read yet more books. The luxury of reading book after book has been wonderful, and we've read some great books. Geraldine Brooks, March, which is the story of the husband in Alcott's Little Women, is a masterpiece. So to is Annie Proulx's Postcards, which is a superbly better novel than her Pulitzer Prize winning Shipping News. Another good one is Tony Horowitz's Blue Latitudes, in which he traces the journey of Captain Cook (inspiration for Captain Kirk of Star Trek). Interestingly, he is and Geraldine Brooks met while working as foreign correspondents for the Wall Street Journal and married. We've also read a couple of Nelson DeMille's adventure novels, Plum Island and Lions Gate, and his character John Cory is the best ever male hero. Well, the list continues with John Grisham and Lee Childs, but you all probably know about them.

At anchor we've finally figured out our SSB and are now regularly listening to the weather broadcasts of Chris Parker, who covers the Caribbean, Bahamas, and eastern seaboard. And we've checked in with the Cruiseheimers cruisers net on the SSB as well. The weather is a good thing, because my record of predicting is a bit marred. The Sirius weather subscription which displays on our chart plotter is good, but it's never more than three days out and very slow to load. We're not always in internet range, so Windfinders.com, which is generally right on and gives seven to ten day forecasts, is not always available. So having Chris Parker works out well.

On April 15th, we had a very brisk downwind sail with just the Genoa over toward Royal Island from Glass Window, with 20-25 knots from the east and making 6 knots speed over ground (SOG). We had to sail off our course to the Current Island Cut (half way to Royal Island), and when we jibed the Genoa to make the Cut, the tack blew out on the sail. The shackles simply wore out and we lost the pendant and both shackles. We rolled the Genoa in right away and put out the stay sail and then put a second reef in the main and raised it. We lost our momentum and couldn't go much faster than 4.5 knots, but we made it through the Cut with the ebb (at 6.5 knots SOG), and then beat our way up to Royal Island. Pen didn't think we should have left Glass Window, but when the weather worsened the next day, she agreed we'd made an okay decision.

That afternoon about a dozen cruisers came into Royal Island, most from Spanish Wells, a couple of miles north, and three or four from Hatchet Bay. All were staging to go to the Abacos the next morning (April 18th). We listened on the VHF to their conversations about what the weather would be and so forth, and we agreed that we didn't think the next day would be the best day to make the 60+ nautical mile crossing. But then, most were eager to get going, and Chris Parker seemed to suggest that the optimum day would come for a week or so. By 0800 the next morning they were all gone, and we motored up to Spanish Wells and picked up our mooring from Bandit (Jock Morgan). Picking up the mooring was Pen's first time, and it didn't go well ... but we were rescued by another cruisers and had our after-action debriefing later.

Spanish Wells has been wonderful. I got to see my first Manatee, of which there are many in Florida's ICW and few here. But this pregnant female has become the darling of Spanish Wells, and everyone feeds her volumes of cabbage and lettuce and awaits the big day.

Monday, April 19, says Penelope, was a "near perfect day." We succeeded in getting Chris Parker on all his broadcast channels, enjoyed a blueberry pancake breakfast and reading while some rain passed, and then we went into town. We got shackles to repair the Genoa at a marine store, found some wonderful fishing lures and two "old hickory" knives (like those we saw Nestle and Cracker using in Arthur Town on Cat Island), went to Jean and Tom Goldson's "book exchange" in their cottage, got a couple of pounds of Stone Crab claws and two lobster (crawfish) tails at the fish store and shopped at the big market for some groceries (and more baby back ribs). We had lunch at a little restaurant and had the best ever lima bean soup plus tuna and cracked conch. Jean and Tom invited us to "happy hour" at their "Done Reach" cottage at five, so we cleaned up, made up some salsa, and joined our now friends Pete and Dianne on Pearl, a Bristol 40, to go to the happy hour (we'd had Pete and Dianne aboard Alizee the night before for drinks). Penelope wrote in her journal: "What an amazing group of people! The best time we've had socially for a long time. We sate on the cottage porch with Pete and Dianne, Linda and Ed and Tom off the trawler Lady Brookhaven, and Jean and Tom,with appetizers, wonderful conversation and laughter in the most natural and authentic exchanges. The head discussion was hilarious, especially with Tom Goldson's descriptions of use and misuse. Jean gave us the name, address and phone number of some cruisers who live in DeLand that they know well and made us promise to get in touch when we get back. Then Jean brought out p0asta in plastic cups (what a good idea), which made dinner back on the boat unnecessary. A grad time was had by all, after which we came back to Alizee and had the most stimulating conversation about Annie Proulx's Postcards and then graphic violence in books and movies as we sipped wine.

A perfect end to a perfect day!

Alizee's geotrack

Cruising the Far Bahamas ...

2010-04-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

My goodness! Almost a month has gone by since we've posted anything about our cruise. We must be having so much fun that the idea of spending time at a keyboard just hasn't been appealing ... perhaps it's guilt that forces the fingers to the keys now.

So where have we been? At last posting we were in George Town, the Exumas, where we ended up spending a full week. We were in large part waiting for mail forwarded via UPS, which finally arrived after sitting in Nassau for a full week. I can safely say, never use UPS in the Bahamas. Go Fed Ex or DHL, because Big Brown has not gotten its act together in these islands. Of course, finally it did arrive and we rejoiced, but it was not without great frustration for a week and many wasted trips into the UPS agent. This is Island Time at its worst, but the only really answer one can give to a problem like this is "no problem, mon."

In George Town we met with friends we'd made in Stuart, FL, who were on a 52 foot ocean-going trawler Peking. They had us over one night to meet some other cruisers, one couple who had twice circumnavigated, another couple who had just come back from two years in the Caribbean and a third couple, Ken and Leigh Parrot whose boat was named One Eyed Parrot in honor of the fact that Ken and Leigh each only have one eye. It was a wonderful evening and we really enjoyed everyone.

Over the next several days we moved anchorages a couple of times, having burgers at the Chat and Chill on "volleyball beach" and also at the Hamburger Beach Bar, shopping in George Town for fishing lures, good Kalik beer and always for fresh produce. We attend the ARGH! meeting, standing for "alcoholic research group" on Hamburger Beach and had a jolly time with more cruisers, among them Pat and Doug on Scalliwag. The next day, relocated back to Kidd Cove in Elizabeth Harbour, Doug made me a conch horn, which at last I've learned to blow quite nicely at sunset.

On March 19, we departed George Town for Long Island and had a wonderful spinnaker sail to Bains Bluff, where we anchored all be ourselves. The next day we moved a bit down the coast of Long Island to Miller's Bay, where we spent a couple of days, changed the engine oil, tangled fishing lines in the dinghy motor and lost a lure (well, we've lost a lot of lures), unexpectedly found internet connection, and had an unwelcome adventure. Sitting in the cockpit reading around 1100 hours, I looked up to see our dinghy floating 100 yards away and ... escaping! I donned fins and snorkel and dove in after it, finally breathlessly catching it after twenty minutes of swimming ... she floated away almost faster than I could swim. Naturally the gas tank wasn't in her and I didn't have the key to the motor anyway, so I climbed aboard her, pulled out the oars and started rowing. Rowing a rubber dinghy, even with a hard bottom, is hard, and I was making little headway against the swells, when I thought of holding the key switch out and at least using whatever fuel was in the motor lines. That got me about a quarter of a mile toward Alizee, but soon the motor sputtered and died. Out with the oars again, and no sooner did I have them out but the starboard oar lock popped out of the fitting and went overboard ... gone! Oh shit! So, I put on fins and snorkel again, went in the water and started swimming, towing "Bertha" behind me. Boy, was I tired and making slow progress.

Meantime, Pen is on the boat. She had the idea of swimming out to me with a couple of long lines tied together. She put on a life vest forgetting it would self-inflate, then discovered the ladder was not down all the way and had a hell of a time getting back on. She had the presence of mind to turn on the VHF, thinking I'd call her on the hand held, which was in the dinghy, but I didn't have the presence of mind to remember it was there. Eventually I got within hailing distance and got her to weigh anchor and maneuver Alizee over to me, and I got on board, we secured "Bertha" and re-anchored. The whole episode to an hour and a half, and we were both exhausted physically and emotionally.

Next day we went down to Thompson Bay where we spent a couple of nights, did laundry at the Island Breeze, had the best coconut shrimp ever and bought some more fishing lures. A day or two later we returned to Miller's Bay and went into Chez Pierre's for dinner (I jury rigged an oar lock on "Bertha", just in case ... oh yes, "Bertha" comes from the bumper sticker on her bow that reads "Eat Bertha's Mussels," in reference to the best fresh mussel restaurant in Baltimore, "Bertha's). The dinner a Chez Pierre's, was fabulous ... scampi, veal Marsala, fresh Gorgonzola salad ... and we were the only boaters in the bay. The other guests were all from Pierre's cottages. This is truly a hidden treasure, and Chef Pierre and his wonderful waitress Orame were fabulous. We had a nice bottle of Bourdeaux and we so incredibly happy not to have the typical Bahamian deep fried fare.

On March 26, we had another wonderful spinnaker sail up to Calabash Bay, where we spent the night before pushing on to Conception Island. Alas, the spinnaker blew out along the seams just as we entered the bay. This is a great disappointment, for it has made light air downwind sailing just an incredible treat. We will buy a new one as soon as we are back stateside.

Fishing has had us baffled this year. Last year we caught many yellow tail and mutton snappers in the Abacos. This year we seem to lose lures and fish every time we put the line out. On our way to Conception Island we hooked and lost a couple of nice fish as well as lost a couple of more lures, and we decided to put back on the 100 lb. line that a fishing shop "expert" said really was too heavy. Well, so much for his expertise. Since we put back on the 100 lb. line we haven't lost a fish because of the line breaking. After leaving Conception Island, we started catching yellow tail snapper ... eight so far, plus a nice small bar jack that was the sweetest eating. Sushi has become our staple again, and Pen has cooked a couple of wonderful fish fillet dinners using Mark Bitman fish cook book recipes.

Conception Island was pretty, but the mangrove interior and creeks were a bust. The tide was not high enough to really get in there, and we spent most of our time on the boat at anchor. On March 29, we arose to weigh anchor for Hawks Peak, Cat Island, and I discovered that the fresh water pump had sprung a pinhole leak in the body of the pump. We were losing water, but decided the flow wasn't that great and we'd make the sail and then fix it. Unfortunately, the wind didn't lay down when we finally arrived at our anchorage in New Bight, Cat Island. I ended up changing the water pump (we had smartly bought a spare before we left), and amazingly I didn't get sea sick, although the rollers in the anchorage were four feet and the boat was hobby-horsing worse that we've ever experienced. We stayed in New Bight for a couple of days, met some cruisers there who we'd seen in Conception, and we hiked up to the Hermitage atop the highest hill in the Bahamas (206 feet).

The next couple of days we spent by ourselves along the coast of Cat Island, first at a quiet anchorage off Curry Murry Bluffs, some remarkable iron shoreline bluffs. The next day we went to Arthur's Town, the boyhood home of Sidney Poitier. ... Well, let's let Penelope tell the story:

We hopped in the dinghy almost immediately to go to town for ice and eggs, hoping a store would be open. Now such luck. The store looked like a tiny cabin, shut and locked tight. With no ice and eggs to carry back we decided to sop at the little tiki bar. "Cocktails by the Sea" read the sign. We made immediate acquaintance of Sharon, the bar keeper, a vivacious mother of three whose husband Sidney was out fishing. She filled us in on a lot of local lore such as the fact that the Bahamas don't map uninhabited cays and islands, Cat Island has an underground water source, Sidney Poitier's daughter Pam lived close by on Cat and there's some controversy as to whether her father has done all he could for his boyhood home. Her husband Sidney owns the bar, and only returned to operate it in January after his mother-in-law, who has diabetes, was injured when a car ran over her foot and she could not continue running the bar. So he left Nassau, where Sharon and the kids live. Sharon loves the "space"!

We met two colorful locals, Nestle and Leroy who tells us his English name is "Cracker." He was born to a bi-racial couple and is the blackest in skin but evidently demonstrated some white traits early enough to earn the name Cracker. He was a sweetheart. Of course it was Friday (Good Friday), so both had been nipping the bottle but were in no way pickled. As we were having a beer and tequila shots, Sidney and crew arrived with the day's catch and dumped it out atop a flat piece of concrete atop the rocks, which became the local gathering place. Wat a hustle bustle of scaling, gutting and filleting and what a variety of fish: yellow tail, red snapper, yellow fin grouper, something called Bahamian catfish, and sturgeon (which they called turgeon). And who knows what else. It was probably 150 to 200 lbs of fish and, oh my, the scales were flying! And the people were gathering!

The town chef and his wife showed uyp and finally the chef went home and brought his cleaning tools, a machete-like knife, a scraper and a smaller knife. Cracker did most of the scaling and Nestle did the gutting and cleaning. He let me try it and I think I will be able to cut back the head while leaving it attached and scraping out the gills and the entrails. It was one extraordinary experience that so many cruisers miss by staying on the beaten path. As they cleaned, they joked with each other and us and seemed happy to answer all my questions and then some. We learned that most Bahamians don't own boats and don't know how to swim! Of course, we don't know what "knowing how to swim" might mean, because Nestle didn't seem to think going after lobster in shallow water had anything to do with "swimming." Sidney said they would share the catch with the community so there would be some darn good eating in Arthur's Town over the Easter weekend.

We went back to the boat for sushi and our own fish dinner (even though we'd been invited to return that night for the fish fry). And, after sunset, a spotlight from shore seemed beamed right at us on Alizee. Were our new friends keeping an eye on us?!? Probably just the light at the basketball court, but it was a nice thought. The next morning as we left the anchorage, we passed by "Cocktails by the Sea" and hollered and waved goodbyes were shared with Nestle and Cracker, who were out there on the deck.

April 3 was spent sailing over to Little San Salvador Island, and we caught a couple of nice fish along the way. The next day, just as a cruise ship came in to "Half Moon Bay," the cruise ship day camp spot on Little San Salvador, we left heading for Eleuthera Island. We had a wonderful sail, caught a couple of more yellow tail, and arrived at the Rock Sound Harbor anchorage in the late afternoon. And, here we are. Enjoying every sunset and sunrise, every bite of sushi and loving life to the fullest. Really, we wish you were here!

Alizee's geotrack

More photos

2010-03-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

We are finally in George Town, anchored in Elizabeth Harbour, just off the settlement. My heavens, so many cruisers! There must be three to four hundred boats here scattered between three large anchorages on Stocking Island, across Elizabeth Bay from George Town, the Red Shanks anchorage a bit south of the settlement, and the anchorage we are in. Many more boats than we want around us, but we’ll probably stay in the area for three or four days. We have to plan our next move before venturing off, and then we’ll hope the weather is right.

Our trip here was a fast in the sense that we skipped several Exuma Cays which we would have loved to spend some time at so that we could join our friends Ruth and Neil at Emerald Bay. We left Stanley Cay on Friday, March 5th, to position ourselves to go out Galliot Cut the next morning. Our sail was about twenty nautical miles, and we had a fine time sailing with the spinnaker for almost the entire day. Later at Emerald Cay another cruiser came up and said he’d seen us sailing that day; it seems that sailing with a spinnaker is unusual among cruisers in the Bahamas, which is odd, since there’s a lot of downwind sailing.

After a night at anchor in a little bay on the west side of Big Galliot Cay … a truly idyllic spot … we watched a lovely sunrise and sailed off with a single reef in the main. We had a brisk sail on a broad reach in a northeast wind of 17-20 knots and had to hand steer because the autopilot couldn’t adjust quickly enough to hold the course with a 6-8 foot swell coming at an angle with the wind. After a time, Penelope decided she wanted to try the helm, something she’s been reluctant to do in general, and she had a great time once she got the feel of it. She steered a more consistent course than the captain, so she may find herself assigned helm duty more often.

Making good speed (six to seven knots), we entered the Marina at Emerald Bay two hours by sail north of George Town on Great Exuma Island and got tied up in a slip by noon. At 1400, Ruth and Neil came down to the boat and we began five days of shore leave.

They had rented a very nice villa at the Grand Isle Resort, which was just a ten-minute walk from the boat, and they threw it open to us for showers, laundry, lounging about, and cooking. We spent one day on a gorgeous walk around the Sandals Resort Golf Course, which actually goes around the Grand Isle villas as it meanders around the point that juts out into the ocean. We spent a day on the beach at the resort, sunning ourselves and snorkeling. And, another day we rented a car, shopped in George Town, and drove to Williams Town on the southern end of Little Exuma Island, which is attached to Great Exuma Island by a small one-lane bridge. On the way back, we stopped for an hour or so at Tropic of Cancer beach, one of the prettiest beaches any of us had ever seen, and Ruth and Pen gathered natural sponges and other treasures. That night we treated ourselves to a dinner out at Big D’s Conch Place, a bit north of the resort. We agreed that the meals that Pen and I cooked in the villa were generally better, and indeed we cooked all but the one dinner out.

Alas, too many good things end. We bid farewell to each other after breakfast at the resort on Thursday morning, March 11th, Pen and I packed off the left over food, and we set sail for George Town at 1130, while Neil and Ruth packed there things to catch an early afternoon flight back to New York. We had the wind on our nose for the two hour trip to Conch Cut, the entrance to Elizabeth Bay, and we didn’t get anchored until 1430. Expecting mail forwarded via UPS, we went in on the dinghy to see the agent in George Town. The package was delayed in Nassau because customs thought there were import items in it, but one hopes it clears and arrives in a day or so. We celebrated our arrival at the Peace and Plenty Hotel pool bar, and great little sheltered spot overlooking the bay, then while Pen shopped in a boutique, I went back out to the boat, picked up our empty propane tank (we have two), and took it back in to the UPS agent, who also handles propane.

Today we washed salt off Alizee, Pen made apple sauce and fresh salsa and cleaned the interior. I went in a signed us up for internet and picked up the propane. Still no UPS delivery, so I'll check again tomorrow.

More photos

Alizee’s geotrack

Bimini to Staniel Cay ...

2010-03-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

We are two days out of Georgetown, resting at anchor at Staniel Cay in the Exumas. We've had three days of almost pure sailing since we reached Alice Town in Bimini, and we've spent a lot of time at anchor in winds of 25-30+ knots waiting out weather fronts. Frankly, we're getting tired of that part of it, and we're waiting for it to warm up. We can't believe that we are further south than Key West, Florida, and the temperatures are barely reaching into the low seventies. It is crisp, indeed!

In Alice Town we met Jerry and Richard, who were berthed next to us at Blue Water Marina, and we enjoyed their company very much. Our last night we had them join us for dinner on Alizee, and told sailing stories and other lies. Sadly, they were waiting out weather to go back to Florida ... we wish we could have continued on with them to the Exumas. Anyhow, we also connected with three other cruisers heading toward Chub Cay and on to Nassau, shared a dockside happy hour with them and then ended up crossing the Great Bahama Bank with them in sight most of the time. We all anchored out on the bank for the night (it's shallow all the way across) rather than go on to Chub Cay or Nassau at night.

The crossing on the bank was gentle. Winds were light and we flew the spinnaker for the first time. It was incredibly peaceful and pulled us along at 5 knots or more in under 10 knots of wind. I'm looking forward to such sails again! But we ended up motor-sailing to the spot we all anchored the first night. Then, next morning, the winds picked up and we headed out early to make Nassau by nightfall. This was a ride across the "Tongue of the Ocean" which separates the Great Bahama Bank from New Providence, and we had an "exhilarating" sail in 20-25 knot winds. We did put in a single reef in the main and the genoa, and we arrived well before sunset in Salt Bay.

We spent a night at anchor in Salt Bay and had winds reaching 30+ knots. It was an uncomfortable night, so the next day we went in and treated ourselves to a marina and got fuel. Problem was that all the cheap (well, reasonable) marinas were full up, so we ended up in Hurricane Hole Marina, a "yacht" marina and paid a lot of money for very little. I suppose it was worth it to get some fresh produce at the market (had to take a bus and then a taxi back) and to do our laundry.

The next morning we departed for Allen's Cay, famous for the iguanas that live on that and a couple of adjacent cays. We had to motor the entire way with a light wind on our nose, but it was comfortable enough. Once there, for the first time, we felt we were in the Bahamas. The afternoon was warm, the water crystal clear, the winds light. We went ashore to see the iguanas, dinghied about in the sheltered waters, and enjoyed a nice dinner on Alizee. Then the weather front started passing through, and we spent the next two days at anchor waiting it out and watching the people on the other boats ... the long-haired biker dude (he should have been on a Harley) and his partner on a really nice cruising boat (a Pacific Seacraft, I think), a catamaran with eight (count them ... eight) people aboard, "the boys" (we fantasized they were a gay couple) who had troubles with their dinghy engine and had to re-anchor during the night, and "Semper Fi" and his wife, an older couple on a little 27+ foot sloop with hank-on sails and only a two-person kayak who spent most of their time down below with the hatch boards in. We cruisers are an interesting lot.

We left Allen's Cay after a couple of lovely sunsets and after the front passed, but the waters were still mixed up. Going out the channel and on to the Bahama banks to head south, we both wondered if we were making an error ... it was rough, but once we turned south, the wind of 20 knots was good enough to push us along on a broad reach at 6-7 knots and we arrived 40+ nautical miles later at Staniel Cay by 1545 in the afternoon. Here we anchored, enjoyed a cocktail and appetizers in the cockpit, and then settled down for dinner, a nice lamb and spring vegetable stir-fry (the last of our fresh vegetables). Alas, the tidal currents acting against the wind started pushing boats around in odd directions and we shortened up our anchor chain in concert with another boat next to us. Mid-way through the night, we realized we were slowly dragging into the boat channel, so we were up re-anchoring ourselves. I think this is the first time we've ever dragged, and I'm sure we wouldn't have if we hadn't shortened chain earlier.

Anyway, here we are. Today we'll push about 18 miles further south to an anchorage near Case Cut, and tomorrow we head out to Emerald Bay Marina, north of Georgetown, where we are meeting Ruth and Neil Cowan, who decided to take their spring break in the Exumas. This will be great fun!

Alizee's geotrack
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Crossing to Bimini ... Pen's account ...

2010-02-24T07:10:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are, by God, in Bimini, and it looks like we'll be here for a couple of days until another front passes. It turned out to be an uneventful passage but physically uncomfortable because of the wave motion and little wind to help the sail steady the boat.

We left No Name Harbor at 0345 and wafted through the South Florida Channel in the mist illuminated by the lights of greater Miami. A couple of hours out and the motion got to us. James was over the rails, heaving his little guts out and I was splayed out in the cockpit trying not to feed the fish. I so wanted to go hold his head and hand him a towel. He just seemed so vulnerable. Of course, I was also thinking, omigod, what will happen if neither of us can function? What if he falls overboard? What if, what if? I am not cut out for adventure, I guess.

But once our tummies quieted down and the sun rose directly ahead of us, I was refreshed and comforted. It's the dark that feeds the fears. Having slept a few hours myself, I relieved James at the helm. I was really enjoying the ride and listening to my I-pod as we motored sailed. Then I looked up at the mainsail and saw a batten sneaking out of its sleeve ... well, more than sneaking out ... it was on the march. I hated waking James but knew we had to get that sucker back where it belonged, which required lowering the main and wrestling with it amidst the rolling swells. When the batten was finally back where it belonged, we secured the main and rolled out the genoa. James is not happy with the sail maker who refurbished the sail and did such a poor job of securing the battens. Another batten is trying to work its way out, as well, and we don't have the proper tool to really get them back in tightly. Oh well, we'll figure something out.

We arrived around 1300 at Alice Town harbor in North Bimini and by the time we got to the slip Blue Water Marina, we were exhausted by James was beyond that. He checked in at immigration and through customs while I straightened out the mainsail and chatted with a couple of good old boys on a boat next to us. Then we took showers and explored greater Alice Town (it took ten minutes) and had lobster and fries at C J's Deli on the hill. It stretches the definition of "deli" to the nth degree. It was an L-shaped counter. The one part had two or three stools, and the other section separated the cooking area. The third wall held a cooler with soft drinks and beer. Room enough for five people at the most, James and I and three Bahamian women, all friends, but I couldn't tell who were actually employees. How more than one could operate in the kitchen was beyond me. But we had our lobster and fries and shared a Kalik beer (our islands favorite) under a tree overlooking the beach and the Atlantic, sitting on an auto seat and eating our food on a table that slanted so much down toward the sea that we had to be careful to catch our sliding plates and beer. Idyllic as the sun waned in the western sky. Here at last!

Alizee's Geotrack