tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58447917445897146382024-03-13T22:30:57.355-04:00The Accidental SailorWherein a guy who isn't much of a sailor yammers on about sailing, and life's associated flotsam and jetsam. Fellow earth travelers be forewarned: The occasional use of salty language may be employed, so you lilly-livered types might want to get off the boat right now. Watch your step as you de-board.Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-25541937470553242552021-05-18T17:47:00.007-04:002021-06-28T19:30:26.339-04:00First One In Looks Like Rotten Eggs<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNO8MIQWROzxkstFcDZ135uoKLKt1cSUzV3ZMoHeUhCnYtoAc-1FfA9mHr-4FCNtVg-SGEnl0JV0mFM5-DjvGO5_-90iXkpUer6rZFtxJw6WhX-Xyp1YNQ4aAvvso9OAt6NFolx6zJsxEc/s2048/IMG_6826.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1405" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNO8MIQWROzxkstFcDZ135uoKLKt1cSUzV3ZMoHeUhCnYtoAc-1FfA9mHr-4FCNtVg-SGEnl0JV0mFM5-DjvGO5_-90iXkpUer6rZFtxJw6WhX-Xyp1YNQ4aAvvso9OAt6NFolx6zJsxEc/s320/IMG_6826.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large; text-align: left;">And we have it all to ourselves!</span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Deb and I have owned our <i>Laura Lynn</i> for something like a quarter century now. Living up here in the Northeast we, as do all hopeful sailors, look forward to the annual spring launch with the patience of children the week before Christmas. As the weather turns promising and we finish our boat chores or promise to once we’re in the water, the anticipation becomes next to unbearable.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I doubt our boatyard is much different than others in these parts. It winters like a hibernating bear, with little evidence of life, quiet but for the slapping of halyards on breezy days. But when spring arrives and one stares at a perfect wind on the bay, or a still day that would be perfect for launching boats languishing on jack stands, nothing moves fast enough. Were an actual bear involved, I think most boaters would be willing to stomp on the sleeping creature’s den to get it the hell up and at ‘em.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Instead we inform the boatyard of our readiness, we pay outlandish bills long before the expenses can be appreciated, we wring our hands, busy ourselves with things we’d rather not be doing, and we wait. And wait.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">But this year something marvelous happened, and I haven’t a clue why. We were in the water close to two months before we usually are, so early in fact that were one to view the expanse of Manhasset Bay, a not insignificant volume of water, we were for weeks the only moored vessel to be seen. What elation! What delight!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">What a mess. For while boaters were virtually nowhere to be seen on the water, the year-round occupants of these parts had never left. I refer specifically to seagulls and osprey. These two avian forms deliver a one-two punch to any boater crazy enough to be first out on the water. They live to eat and shit, and naturally <i>visa versa</i>. Their only concern seems to be to find a convenient rest stop to complete their mission. As our boat was the only perch available, that’s where they went, and went. They fouled the boom, the dodger, the coamings, the winches, the decks, though remarkably I never caught them in the act. Had I, perhaps I could've formulated an effective strategy.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBx_gjx4UrCqJhpqLfq15rN9rKLl2aAFh6oGLCBWYkGXeB6uiHtpfDXURjVZQagQZtV6FnD9AgD_7IFmPq6k2UmVNt08GfRXVRh9ILN_YBtb9K74rdtXbMPHEAi0Q1wb2nb897naI2kvI-/s2048/IMG_6961.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBx_gjx4UrCqJhpqLfq15rN9rKLl2aAFh6oGLCBWYkGXeB6uiHtpfDXURjVZQagQZtV6FnD9AgD_7IFmPq6k2UmVNt08GfRXVRh9ILN_YBtb9K74rdtXbMPHEAi0Q1wb2nb897naI2kvI-/w400-h300/IMG_6961.jpeg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">A little elbow grease is all it takes, before every sail</span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I strung small stuff like spider web all over the boat, at first strategically, then willy-nilly, trying to see if I could divine what would deter them. They scoffed at my deterrents. I began to think they might be appreciating my janitorial services.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">I also mentioned osprey, and it has dawned on me that back in 2009 I did a number on them in a post titled “Look Out Below.” I guess I should be happy it’s taken the osprey over a decade to return with a vengeance. I won’t then waste your time describing what slobs they are when they set a table on one of our spreaders in order to enjoy a seafood meal.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Besides hunger, love does appear to be in the air, and Deb and I witnessed two pair of newlyweds making homes for themselves on separate newly launched power boats nearby. I must admit that I thought more than once about not contacting our boatyard to inform them that a couple of yacht-clubbers are going to have to contest ownership of their boats if they don’t get out to theirs soon. My first thought was, better them than us, but I also noticed one of those boats was listing some to starboard, and it would be shameful of me to turn a blind eye to potential disaster. In any event, the bay is finally beginning to get populated with other options for our foul friends. In the meantime I’ve invested in devices looking like NASA rover antennae, said to ward of flying IFO’s. We shall see soon enough.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-53471942561547798032020-11-27T14:57:00.002-05:002020-11-27T14:57:21.935-05:00Safe Harbor<p><br /></p><i style="color: #202122;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZp6FqIJcr090CAUUczo67rEnzF0bJiZ3GhvqJZTVhcqzFaVvp5CulcKNK7Z6xUkGFkIQTGHRBGk7MP_WsVKiM5aNrYgR6aPCMckmOIBAQEp4Y6ZXc_0yRB2-tflycgTxrIFOS1pPivef3/s2048/IMG_7940.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZp6FqIJcr090CAUUczo67rEnzF0bJiZ3GhvqJZTVhcqzFaVvp5CulcKNK7Z6xUkGFkIQTGHRBGk7MP_WsVKiM5aNrYgR6aPCMckmOIBAQEp4Y6ZXc_0yRB2-tflycgTxrIFOS1pPivef3/s320/IMG_7940.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: times;"><p><i><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"The area that is now the town in Mamaroneck was purchased from Native American Chief Wappaquewam and his brother Manhatahan by an Englishman named John Richbell..."<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i></i></p></span></i></i><p></p><p class="p3" style="color: #202122; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">--Wikipedia</span></i></p><p class="p3" style="color: #202122; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p5" style="color: #202122; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Deb and I have owned our Morgan 34 for close to twenty years now. Built in 1970 and having survived at least three previous name changes, she’s worn for us the name of Deb’s younger sister Laura, whom we lost to Crohn’s Disease a few short years ago. Our </span><i style="font-family: times;">Laura Lynn</i><span style="font-family: times;"> rests on a mooring in Manhasset Bay on the north shore of Long Island, and like many boats launched by hopeful mariners she spends considerably more time languishing by herself than in the wishful company of her crew.</span></span></p><p class="p5" style="color: #202122; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Our boat<i> </i>is still reasonably seaworthy despite her years. Sailboats generally seem to age as well as old sailors as long as there's someone around to care for them. I'm sixty-four now, with a host of my own deficiencies to monitor. Despite my being composed of hardware from an earlier era I continue to manage the myriad issues that have sunk many a sailor’s relationship with his chosen sea siren. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Deb and I have seen precious little time aboard these past few boating seasons since one of life’s capricious currents deposited me on the continent’s Pacific shore. Being seasonally beached in LA thousands of miles from my home port caused me to question the continued funding of a vessel that lives on the East Coast, though she’s given us incalculable pleasure over the years. I'll not bore you with typical arguments for hastening the other happiest day in a boater's life. I <i>will</i> state that as in any cherished relationship, keeping things right between you and your love requires unwavering commitment.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In the midst of these personal concerns everything changed quite dramatically for all of us earthlings, and we find ourselves trapped in a dangerous reality, searching for ways of coping with a global pandemic that can exhibit a host of symptoms, the more benign among them being cabin fever. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Deb has honed her culinary skills to James Beardian levels since the near annihilation of New York City's restaurant industry. Among other diversions, I dug out a birthday gift given to me a decade or so ago by Laura’s daughter Emily. It was a wooden model kit of a Chesapeake Bay Flattie, requiring the kind of skill and patience of which I’m typically in short supply. It took a pandemic to launch the project, but the <i>Emily Ann </i>now<i> </i>rests proudly on my desk.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0hS-nNW-WZy-YCB4cTDcEaimU0PHJIHx3Z33b6ydS1V_ZiuINQXJsq4B_29K4X4wo1adSTZiTYZyoWLs5Pfa3HarUQ50bIhZq20pxERMdjYZ58-_mnEqUHTGS8PSf9kTHrImnBQ-OqnIe/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="406" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0hS-nNW-WZy-YCB4cTDcEaimU0PHJIHx3Z33b6ydS1V_ZiuINQXJsq4B_29K4X4wo1adSTZiTYZyoWLs5Pfa3HarUQ50bIhZq20pxERMdjYZ58-_mnEqUHTGS8PSf9kTHrImnBQ-OqnIe/w305-h406/IMG_4970.jpeg" width="305" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">While Covid-19 has put a virtual stranglehold on my television industry, Deb is back to work, partly from home these last several months. Interestingly it's the “from home" part that has weighed heavily on her. Deprived of the personal interactions that fuel the human spirit whether at work or among family and friends, the absence of normal routine was doing a number on her psyche. Deb figured some fresh air was in order, and our boat seemed a safe method for achieving it.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Scan your harbor on any pleasant weekend and you'll see boaters who've come to your harbor precisely because it isn't their own. Boaters tend to be a tad restless, most of them anyway, though me not so much. But I needed to tend to my relationships, so that meant shaking off the cobwebs, getting serious about boat prep, hauling the big hook out of the garage (we have no windlass or anchor roller) and onto the boat because I can't sleep on a lunch hook, and neither should you. Oh, and looking at the map.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I doubt I'll ever be ready for another big trip like the one we took to the Abacos back when my back was more able. As I age, I recognize the loss of my always questionable capabilities, and I've simply lost confidence in my ability to keep us safe. I've witnessed eminently competent sailor friends lose more than the proverbial step, and on a sailboat things can go from fun to dangerous faster than, well actually faster than sailboats can go. Just recently I spoke to old friends who'd switched from sailboat to trawler, then onto cozy cottage, a common transition for snowbirds. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I'm still willing to hazard the occasional overnighter, and on the local chart I could see an old haunt of ours that goes by the name Mamaroneck, christened so probably by some ancient band of white settlers who'd butchered the sound of the local natives' tongue before ultimately butchering the locals themselves and extinguishing their language forever. I'll offer my own translation of Mamaroneck, which goes something like this: "Place where the big water alternately swallows and spits up parts of our Earth Mother placed by the facetious hand of the glacier gods." It's an approximation.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><p></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I call Mamaroneck a haunt because we were there at least once before, so I kind of knew how to get there and back in one piece. It’s a short sail from home, and a quiet, amenable place to anchor if you pay attention to what the original inhabitants had to say about it.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><i style="color: #202122;"></i></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We went there with enough supplies to stay alive for the requisite period, with some extra stuff thrown in for good measure. Nobody was going to freeze, starve or threaten the bartender is all I’m saying. It was all working out quite nicely and would have continued in such a fashion if I hadn't been stingy with the anchor rode. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This calls for a flashback. When on our big trip back in 2005-2006, Deb and I ran afoul of the formidable forces of nature in St. Augustine, Florida. Our boat was hanging in that tumultuous harbor on a 35lb CQR with a short piece of chain and the requisite amount of nylon rode based on, you know, broadly accepted formulas. While we were doing a beer tasting at the local brewery, it turns out our boat was pirouetting around her center of lateral resistance amidst the tide and wind shifts. Our centerboard then proceeded to knife through the nylon rode, at which point our boat was set free to roam the anchorage until she was fortuitously lassoed by the alerted harbormaster. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Discovering our boat securely tied to the municipal dock at the end of our shore escapade when she should’ve been out there at anchor was a sobering experience. I immediately inquired as to where I could buy an anchor and a bunch of chain and proceeded to do so at a chandlery that caters to professional fisherman. Getting little in the way of advice, I managed to purchase oversized chain, and I've since been burdened when weighing anchor by hand (have I mentioned that our boat has no windlass?) with the weight of all that chain, anchor, and goo typically adhering to it all. It tends to make one reconsider the whole mathematical scope formula nonsense, which is something you should not do.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZk9_PcDEW8_FKtHlxquHJSV8BL0F-2IYjmLjNEcsdDtBTu5oGCyNuH0MYOEyoeqwr4SXWZQ1lXn5DlfGUcCk6u3cvcGQjtVUjTThnN43gQwiRPYi7aJLT6Tp1kHRukTFJT-L0kssZkRrh/s2048/Deb+working+the+lunch+hook.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZk9_PcDEW8_FKtHlxquHJSV8BL0F-2IYjmLjNEcsdDtBTu5oGCyNuH0MYOEyoeqwr4SXWZQ1lXn5DlfGUcCk6u3cvcGQjtVUjTThnN43gQwiRPYi7aJLT6Tp1kHRukTFJT-L0kssZkRrh/w363-h272/Deb+working+the+lunch+hook.jpeg" width="363" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: times;"> Deb manhandles the "lunch hook." </i></div><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Mine is a shameful confession on many levels. It'd been a while since I put the big anchor over the side with all that chain providing an impressive catenary influence. I'd marked the chain with zip ties at intervals but had forgotten what they represented. In any event, the evening was on the calm side and predicted to stay the same, the ground tackle had held us countless times up and down the coast since the St. Augustine debacle, and I was contemplating the aggravation of having to extract all that gack hand-over-hand the next morning when leaving. Which is another thing you should not let your mind do.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJsQRlT5NTtuxk5gKyA17x2JCJK1LwmwUzzSd2kDD9hRhWQ_Lll3UrVnO3w142Z9MuvJva3WnogLh7ngrMtCtyczn_b-VSkRnZV0SMD24-7CzZ4prU8pU5Hak4rKL9BpLoD2iiGOA6n741/s2048/IMG_5220.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJsQRlT5NTtuxk5gKyA17x2JCJK1LwmwUzzSd2kDD9hRhWQ_Lll3UrVnO3w142Z9MuvJva3WnogLh7ngrMtCtyczn_b-VSkRnZV0SMD24-7CzZ4prU8pU5Hak4rKL9BpLoD2iiGOA6n741/w383-h287/IMG_5220.jpeg" width="383" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: times;">What, me worry?</i></div><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It was a lovely afternoon, then a lovely evening, then time for bed. A while later, as is my custom, I awakened to tend to one of my nightly forays to the head. Those trips always involve me taking a look around to see if things are as they ought to be. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Looking around for the visual markers I'd memorized during the day - the dip in Hen Island to the East that splits the island in two at high tide, aligning with the yacht club flag pole on the far side of the adjacent <span class="s1" style="color: black;">harbor that served as a stationary range, and there’d been a</span> moored schooner just off our... what the hell was that rock outcropping doing a few feet from our hull??? ... the view wasn't making any sense to my muddled mind. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Nothing will flush the after-effects of a nice bottle of Gruner faster than the realization that you're dragging anchor. As is my custom, I shifted into panic mode, telling Deb we had to get the boat started and out of there pronto. I didn't know if we were minutes or seconds away from a very painful rendezvous with what was listed on the charts as "Spike Island." The wind had picked up, the tide had risen considerably, and I hadn't paid out enough rode. Once again I felt the familiar trio of urgency, fear and nausea that occasionally visit the incautious sailor.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I'm going to skip a whole lot, because we survived. The engine started, we yelled our confused exchanges over the wind and diesel noise, likely awakening many of the sleeping seaside residents and maybe some of the souls of those long-lost native Americans. I didn't harm myself hauling the anchor up and we didn't wreck the boat, both of which outcomes had a reasonable chance of occurring that night. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We reset the anchor back where our evening had begun, paid out more than enough chain based on the aforementioned formula, set it but good and slept hardly a wink the rest of the night. Morning broke, a lovely sight to behold for creatures unequipped with night vision.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We contemplated the path our boat had to have taken the night before in order for us to have threaded a needle between various rocks and hard places along the shoreline. We watched a gaggle of paddleboarders out for a morning jaunt around Hen Island, which was back where it belonged. I wondered if the town was talking about us. We had our coffee and breakfast. I pulled out my GPS manual to relearn how to set an anchor alarm (I’d been terrified by false alarms in the past and had given up the practice). The manual was glued shut from an old leak at an overhead portlight. Guess I’ll have to print it out someday.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I lifted the anchor, hosed off about five pounds of dense mud from its flukes, lashed it to the foredeck and we drove home. I mean... oh you know what I mean. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhySBrkES5kn83Rvb3cFeQGhY8rRCQSsq9p-6FDmb_VVT1-O75WfO2ZSn8GkdQ7iM_io19kF3Ma0JbTsDXpP3h8Lzd8mIuGmVl6dDFm1sUAe8yJICw0GrTipHO2-wS43jNmPksGXRSUOO6d/s2048/IMG_5613.jpeg" style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhySBrkES5kn83Rvb3cFeQGhY8rRCQSsq9p-6FDmb_VVT1-O75WfO2ZSn8GkdQ7iM_io19kF3Ma0JbTsDXpP3h8Lzd8mIuGmVl6dDFm1sUAe8yJICw0GrTipHO2-wS43jNmPksGXRSUOO6d/s320/IMG_5613.jpeg" /></a></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"> </p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Deb had gotten her well-deserved dose of fresh air while emotionally removed from the monumental stress of a global epidemic. I believe she said that the stress she’d experienced the previous night was a welcome change of pace from the kind she’d been experiencing of late. Deb always locates the silver lining.</span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I myself received another reprimand from our Earth Mother about paying proper respect to her formidable powers. At my age, will I ever learn? Anyway, having returned to dry land we slept that next night in a bed that hadn't shifted from where we'd placed it years ago. </span></p><p class="p7" style="color: #333333; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 5px 0px;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCmoHEM4HklDmJtLEaCmiPTfM9CETR7Gm6vYFcBaJMsNkYHG-R4StYibDNTxqx57eLJ43EvjuUg_6l_IxAsyYSuxnozGecj0RziD7K-CBd90alFvvg4B9DMx-TFVkn2WirJyX0-YhEgLyO/s2048/IMG_7251.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCmoHEM4HklDmJtLEaCmiPTfM9CETR7Gm6vYFcBaJMsNkYHG-R4StYibDNTxqx57eLJ43EvjuUg_6l_IxAsyYSuxnozGecj0RziD7K-CBd90alFvvg4B9DMx-TFVkn2WirJyX0-YhEgLyO/s320/IMG_7251.jpeg" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Calibri; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: times;">The new "manual windlass" in training</span> </i></div><p class="p8" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><i><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></i></p><p class="p8" style="font-family: Calibri; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><i> </i></p>Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-27924428977244554602014-07-18T07:21:00.001-04:002021-04-21T11:09:42.177-04:00Soup du Jour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-pTjb-Fo4rvAZ-ULdNPYkbEQ-X1kX7UJ14Se2bhnvNx1Lk81v3OdqEN0TXQP89iVv4MbYpqsiirmiCd-g0a2o8pwJIAz1vvk2mnqPkPYLPAIqwCOu7Un3-kNAPqb4eKm_nWgNv86HipX/s1600/P1060438.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-pTjb-Fo4rvAZ-ULdNPYkbEQ-X1kX7UJ14Se2bhnvNx1Lk81v3OdqEN0TXQP89iVv4MbYpqsiirmiCd-g0a2o8pwJIAz1vvk2mnqPkPYLPAIqwCOu7Un3-kNAPqb4eKm_nWgNv86HipX/s1600/P1060438.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood</span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Deb and I had been enjoying
some face time with relatives on <i>terra
firma </i>while our Laura Lynn sat comfortably affixed to the anchorage at
Three Mile Harbor on the north side of the south fork of the island called Long
Island for good reason, in the state of New York. I believe only women are capable of
following that description through to the end, but check the map and it’ll all
make sense. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">For me there’s always
something about travel taken on a sailboat that makes me wish I’d taken up flying
planes as a hobby. For several days we’d been tracing a meandering path around
peninsulas and islands, getting further diverted by shoals, weather systems and
equipment malfunctions. But that’s the charm of sailing, isn’t it? I recently
heard from my pal Ron about a trip he and his daughter had taken aboard their
Alberg 35. They’d cut their planned adventure short to circumvent approaching weather.
Upon returning home after two days out, they’d hopped in a car and visited the harbor
they’d just returned from, just to have dinner. Northport really is a cute
town. You should visit it somehow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">During our planned return to
Block Island, we visited Deb’s prized cousins Todd and Kat, and their two
precocious sons. These are authentic water people, Todd having proposed to Kat as
they waited for a nice wave set while perched on their respective surfboards.
He did so wordlessly, letting the banner towed by one of the pilots working the
beach banner ad trade (I’m telling you, a plane will get the job done) speak for him.
If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Todd had recently acquired a
bigger boat, naturally, one with a pair of Chevy engines, so you know we
could’ve gotten somewhere on it right away, but when we considered an evening
of frivolity and the many stages it would take to actually get a crew out onto
the water and to a destination where barbecue was in the offing, we opted
instead to all hop in the family SUV and hightail it to Montauk. Boats are
definitely fun, but an essential nautical skill is the ability to rationally assess
and manage time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">While enjoying shore life, we
were made aware of the impending visit of the first named tropical storm of the
season. Had Deb and I driven out to see our relatives, I would’ve gone, “Well
now, that’s interesting. Pretty early start to the season.” Instead, with our
boat anchored three days from her home port, I went something like, “Son of a
freaking bitch! You have got to be kidding me!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">You really have to admire the
degree to which meteorologists can predict the timing, path and severity of
large-scale weather systems these days. That admiration, however, is dampened
by prognostications that target your present location. Deb and I had to decide
whether to hunker down or skedaddle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I tend to be a hunker-downer
type. Deb is a skeedaddler. She won the battle of strategies, aided and abetted
by swarms of no-see-ums that hounded us as we bid adieu to land and hopped into
the smallest tender ever to have been built by a West Marine vender. I
considered what it would be like to sit for two days on a boat with nothing
much to do except swat insects while waiting for a hurricane to plough through.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We were up at the crack of
dawn, or thereabouts, having worked out the math on how to hit Plum Gut at
slack tide. I was all over that task for the second time, having come through
the infamous slot and into the protective cradle of Long Island’s East End several
days earlier. Once again I was priding myself at my finely honed seamanship,
feeling very much like a sailor who’d done his homework, when the teacher that
is Mother Nature threw in an opportunity for extra credit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Fog started to roll in just
as we approached that swirling confluence of water and boats that is Plum Gut.
As the veil was drawn about us, we began to hear foghorns distressingly close
to our position. I had a déjà vu moment from a trip many years earlier, when
the same sort of thing happened as we approached the boulder-lined breakwater
at Cape May.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFvnMPVD8RVo5xtI3Dfe3qYck5ouuYI8yrJmP_sMkq9QaAcmqyzZKUxvpHmgLzm2WrNHU_yWDU0nw36stwnEa4dBASf97d9m4DfXM-Xxh2JedmFoL7M19Fa0HHeILJsdersDD9RztpISxm/s1600/P1060437.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFvnMPVD8RVo5xtI3Dfe3qYck5ouuYI8yrJmP_sMkq9QaAcmqyzZKUxvpHmgLzm2WrNHU_yWDU0nw36stwnEa4dBASf97d9m4DfXM-Xxh2JedmFoL7M19Fa0HHeILJsdersDD9RztpISxm/s1600/P1060437.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Let me know if we're going to die now</span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Back then I followed the lead
of another vessel that had issued a security<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>call, indicating it’s position, direction and intent. I did the same again
this day, and was greeted by the voice of a ferry captain, who requested I
switch to channel 13, which I did. If he’d asked me to turn around and go back
to where I came from, I would’ve done that too. As an aside, the term “ferry
captain” just doesn’t pack the kind of manly punch it ought to. This guy was commandeering
a vessel that could destroy us in a New York instant. It is big, has limited
ability to maneuver, and carries a payload of humans with time-sensitive agendas.
They might have felt it if their chauffeur had sliced a small boat in half on
the way to Connecticut, but they might not if they’d been snoozing in their cars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Channel 13 is the recognized frequency
used by commercial traffic. I had my conversation with the ferry captain, who
said he had me on his radar, which was soothing. But there were a lot of other
vessels out there, which was not. We had no radar. What we had was a whistle. I
commenced blowing into it, and its shrill pitch made my ears ache. Coast Guard
protocol requires a vessel to issue a warning blast at least once every two
minutes in limited visibility, and the conditions called for more frequent toots.
Jesus, there were horns all around us. I was hyperventilating as this little
whistle vacuumed the air from my lungs after a two-second report. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">It then dawned on me that I
had an option onboard, a conch horn born from our trip to the Bahamas those
many years ago. It had a note much like that which I was hearing from the
invisible fleet around us, and a restricted air passage that let me extend the length
of my warning without passing out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I made a radio announcement
to anyone listening that I’d shifted from whistle to conch horn, figuring this might
help anyone tracking our progress. I was met with radio silence. In retrospect
I suspect the listeners out there were laughing off-mic over my needless
details (I tend toward more explanation for my behavior than less), and I bet that
if one had opted to respond, he might’ve said, “Captain, if you want to eat a can
of baked beans and can fart loud enough, that’ll work too.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">What they look like when you can see them</span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We never spotted a ferry, but
we did watch as the occasional sport fisherman ghosted by. Once we saw several
in a small parade, which I imagine is an effective schooling strategy. Deb
followed our GPS course (you just have to love GPS) through the Gut, and
shortly thereafter the veil began to lift, too late for her satisfaction. She
told me afterward that had she known what we were in for that morning, she
would’ve voted with me to sit another couple days at anchor to let Arthur pass
us by. I have no idea what voter turnout
will be like on future trips.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-72289342557324457562014-07-14T19:22:00.003-04:002014-07-30T09:18:29.074-04:00Block Island Redux<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiR-xIeZP_II_Qqc8SjU0zE2Fb5FprvydIkpCfDvX1u4Go9SQDo7-kRFpMeSNRKLA0nWXhxJ4GR4PYhU8r6Cyy_V2M1c2LK-_XxvuDoSbq1H3mQJa9kQBkyb8lYEscJOsVAXOmMfRbdRHt/s1600/P1060434.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiR-xIeZP_II_Qqc8SjU0zE2Fb5FprvydIkpCfDvX1u4Go9SQDo7-kRFpMeSNRKLA0nWXhxJ4GR4PYhU8r6Cyy_V2M1c2LK-_XxvuDoSbq1H3mQJa9kQBkyb8lYEscJOsVAXOmMfRbdRHt/s1600/P1060434.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">I believe this is an aid to navigation, </span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">but I do not understand the significance of the avian icon</span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Those of you who are regulars
to this site (that would be me) may remember a little trip Deb and I took a
while back, one I partially documented here, in a story that actually got
published in a local boating magazine. When I say partially, I mean I mostly
documented my having forgotten a crucial piece of gear from our sailing
inventory, my fanny pack. The rest of the trip was uneventful, if you don’t
count the many eventful experiences we had after I was once again in possession of my wallet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">So let’s get a few things out
of the way. This time I remembered to clip on the nerd bag. Oh yes sir, I got
that part right this time. And this time we never made it to Block Island. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">But let’s be fair about this.
We all know that cruisers’ plans are writ in Jello, and while it had been some
time since we’d been back in the sea saddle, I soon felt the old touch coming
back, which comfortable feeling lasted for nearly an hour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We’d set aside a ten-day
period once again to get ourselves out East, have some fun, and get ourselves
safely home. Deb had a start date back at work, and I even felt confident
enough in my abilities to announce that if some situation, such as equipment
failure or the off chance an early tropical storm were to strand us somewhere
short of home, I’d get her to the nearest harbor, from which point she could mass-transit
herself back to civilization while I displayed my single-handing skills to the
admiring water traffic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The first equipment failure was
discovered when I plugged in our chart plotter and proceeded to fixate on a
screen that announced the absence of satellites in the sky. Oh great, the
entire global positioning system had picked this moment to crap out. I mean, right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">There are Old Salts petrifying
in dive bars the oceans over who’d be buying rounds over my predicament, as
there’s no place for guys like me in their precious world. If you looked at the
road ahead, it was one we’d traveled before, it was protected on either flank
by welcoming coastline, it was well patrolled, and positively littered with
safe harbors. Furthermore, we had paper charts aboard, and if I really wanted
to sissy out, I could just tag along behind any of the myriad boats plying
those harbors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_zyjxjRLtQsaLYThaqZqV0Z72-mutWvO9PXMQkB4dD7bTzlBI3hNUqd9hf36QZp1_IixhpnpYLWWSdwt5RiyBMT4A0uU30Py9428igToNLx7ZLbO8WK6F_FDrsBDv8zs08maSIQNhpey/s1600/P1060369.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_zyjxjRLtQsaLYThaqZqV0Z72-mutWvO9PXMQkB4dD7bTzlBI3hNUqd9hf36QZp1_IixhpnpYLWWSdwt5RiyBMT4A0uU30Py9428igToNLx7ZLbO8WK6F_FDrsBDv8zs08maSIQNhpey/s1600/P1060369.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Okay, no idea. </span></i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Instead I considered the only
viable alternative for a weak mind. I’d have to use the nav app on my iPhone, a
decision I dreaded, since I really need to get a new prescription for my
glasses. Hell, I can hardly make a call on the thing. I imagined following a
dot on a micro-screen for ten days at sea. No, if we could stumble our way into
a modern coastal town, I’d dump a wad on another gizmo. That’s what the wallet
was for.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">In a panic, I did what any
desperate man would do. I took the gizmo apart, looked around, tapped and blew
on the little antenna thingie, wiggled the wires attached to it, and put it all
back together. And it worked. I’m a regular MacGyver.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Other things went wrong that
first day, but I cant remember what, because of the GPS thing, so by the end of
the day, when we were almost anchored where we might not get fined for anchoring
in an active channel, oh yeah, that was one of the other things, oh yeah, and
neither bilge pump worked, those were other things, I was pretty much as pleasant
a companion as I was at the beginning of the previous trip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Remembering how I’d behaved
then, and remembering how good a time we had after we’d gotten over that first
hiccup, I resolved to pull myself together and deal with whatever happened from
there on in. I was further incentivized by Deb’s encouragement, which went
something like this: listen, if this isn’t going to be any fun for us (read "her"), we might
just as well turn around and go home, and I’ll have my nails done and visit
with people in a good mood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I wish I could say that my
resolve was rock steady. We did have lots of fun in the ensuing days. But there
is something about me that really dislikes it when things go haywire. And by
haywire, I mean something as little as hearing a noise coming from near the alternator
that maybe has been there for years and I wasn’t paying attention, I just don’t
know, but if this alternator craps out right now in the middle of the Sound,
it’s going to be one long ignominious tow to someplace that is still a long way
from home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Oh, did I hear you say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aren’t you guys in a sailboat with sails on
it and everything</i>? Well sure. But let me tell you something about sailing.
When you’re actually looking to get somewhere, sailing isn’t the way to do it.
GPS will tell you that, which is why I like GPS. It will tell you that if you
turn your engine off and enjoy the blissful stillness of the purity of one of
man’s earliest discovery/inventions, you will triple your commute time to that
anchorage you were planning on hitting one hour before sunset, just in time for
sundowners. I have not yet seen any recipes for “sunuppers” yet. I’m thinking
the ingredients would call for some cocoa beans and aspirin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkIjX2xFOxAEcVa22M7HVh36dNd2WY-58Hj2BF7OO_orqcYYwaNfTmc3lGjl3-Z09312BZuveS-W8B2MmNrgWQFPnG9bh95p4Qkpy267mieZcbDogcpuWl6B6DJuFuInw50HfJyLrvsaVu/s1600/P1060457.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkIjX2xFOxAEcVa22M7HVh36dNd2WY-58Hj2BF7OO_orqcYYwaNfTmc3lGjl3-Z09312BZuveS-W8B2MmNrgWQFPnG9bh95p4Qkpy267mieZcbDogcpuWl6B6DJuFuInw50HfJyLrvsaVu/s1600/P1060457.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Red sky at night, sailor's fright?</span></i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-86794586300310235872013-07-17T17:04:00.000-04:002014-07-30T21:23:15.534-04:00Shysters of the Sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSgklXEzKalNsRCuIg69FfpnwPasscEZuzjz3oF1CzlW4VLeJ_nXDIhd95VyjGSS3t8YzrCpjRytGyZ_5yMVtP5X7KZ5lcIfaxc3v_9jTXHC8bwWRnasXBCYwGFYYWrxNfZzA0KCDqgNTU/s1600/Shyster+Boat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSgklXEzKalNsRCuIg69FfpnwPasscEZuzjz3oF1CzlW4VLeJ_nXDIhd95VyjGSS3t8YzrCpjRytGyZ_5yMVtP5X7KZ5lcIfaxc3v_9jTXHC8bwWRnasXBCYwGFYYWrxNfZzA0KCDqgNTU/s320/Shyster+Boat.jpg" height="190" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I know some lawyers. I do. And I actually consider some of
them my friends. In my defense, those litigators I’ve chosen to befriend (it is
hopefully a reciprocal arrangement) are among the rarified kind, which is to
say they own moral compasses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I apologize to those acquaintances in advance then, for what
I’m about to say, for I believe that in a modern society such as ours, lawyers are the
cultural equivalent of hired thugs. They
simply forgo hoodies for the tailored suit, their teeth are bleached rather
than gilt, their shared gang tag the ubiquitous Esq, writ in Gothic lettering
wherever they lurk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Lawyers threaten not with Berettas but with bankruptcy. They intimidate with boilerplate. They crush
the resolve of law abiders with incessant delay. And they bury their victims not
with shovels in the woods but paperwork in the courts. A Glock is a water
pistol compared to the lethal force of an “order to show cause.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Why am I fuming legalese in a boating blog? Because a
sailing friend of mine recently fell prey to the assaults of one such
shyster, though the crime didn’t begin with the legal firm. It began with yet
another scourge of the sea, the certified mechanic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I think most of us have been victimized by the local expert
whose credentials have been passed along by the un-skeptical. Somebody knows the name of the local "Yanmar guy." Or a company like Mack Boring, restricted by its distribution agreement
with the aforementioned engine manufacturer, passes on the number of a business in your
area since they can’t sell you parts themselves. Welcome to the jungle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">It may be that some of these referrals actually know what
they’re doing. They may even be friendly dudes. Here’s the thing: I don’t care
if they’ve graduated cum laude from Snap-On U. I don’t care if they sport prosthetic
torque wrenches for forearms. It’s all a moot point if they don’t show
up for work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Sadly this happens too often in a small community. A couple
guys monopolize a business, saying yes to every job that comes along when
they know they can’t satisfy the demand. I carry in my head a list of numbers I
will not call again, simply because of the likelihood that neither the call nor
the message left will be answered. Entire boating seasons have been scratched while
owners await a response to, “Will you please come do the work you said you’d
do?” And whole businesses have floated on the deposits of those who believe
that a man’s word is his bond. Fat friggin’ chance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I know my friend, and I know he has a legitimate complaint, and he can prove it with copious documentation. In fact he proved it in our local court
system. For the court’s part, it awarded him his money back. The thing is, the
mechanic, utilizing his typical modus operandi, didn’t show for the proceedings. What the
man who took my friend’s money did instead (after my friend’s exasperated wife
turned to the Web with a negative review in the local paper that finally brought
our mechanic to life), rather than attend to the work promised, or return the
money advanced in good faith, or even address the complaint in his own words, instead
this man went and got himself a lawyer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I have to figure one of two things. Either this lawyer was
taken in by the mechanic's song and dance, which would make him one remarkably credulous
lawyer, or he determined that the mechanic was giving him a song and dance, and didn’t care. He may indeed
have coached his client on the finer points of the soft shoe, so as to
defeat a system put in place to protect the citizenry from cheap Vaudevillian acts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">It does however beg the question - Why would a lawyer take
on the case of a man perjuring himself in small claims court for the kind of chump
change high-rolling types use as straws for doing blow?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">We the people submit the following as evidence: said lawyer owns a boat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Ah! So our briny barrister now has a 24/7 mechanic in his “employ,”
and honest boaters looking for any kind of engine work in our harbor will either
have to take a number higher than Johnny Cochran's, or pull out the service manual and socket wrenches. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-77578621746889757662013-07-07T08:49:00.001-04:002014-07-30T21:34:30.899-04:00Taking Back The Holiday<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">A view from the travelift</span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I visited my sailing blog recently
because I was bored, and because visiting my blog registers a visit, an
important consideration if ever I am to reach Internet critical mass. Presently
I’m the only one visiting me, but sooner or later you will too because Google's
algorithms, impressed by my overly frequent visits, will recommend that you give me
a try.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">That's why it’s important to
remain relevant. So it’s with a certain skewed sense of pride that I announce
we are finally back in the water just in time to have attended the 2013
edition of the fireworks display in Hempstead Harbor, one year to the day after we’d
discovered we were sinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">It was on the previous 4<sup>th</sup>
of July, with our niece and a group of her high school friends aboard, that a
distressing amount of water was discovered in the bilge after we’d returned to
our mooring. After pumping the water out that night, I’d checked again early the next
morning to discover it had opted to return. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I’m going to skip over most of the details since they were covered in my last post (which you should also
read along with all the other posts), though I'd like you to know that Emily is now graduated from high school and
onto new adventures. So the lessons to be learned herein are: 1) study hard, grasshopper, and 2) if you have a boat, you will be
working on her a lot whether she’s brand new, or say forty-something years
old. Our boat happens not to be new.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I’ve poked a lot of fun in
the past at boaters who seem to have more interest in working on their rides than sailing them. There is an honorable aspect to the tinkerer, who will always
find something more to do on his project before he’s prepared to declare it
finished. And I must say I’m thankful to our yard that they allow us to do our own damage
to our investments with minimal interference. Yards like ours are going the way
of the local seaside dives, which are being pushed out by what are charmingly referred to as developers. Development
is what happens to an otherwise vital community when people with excessive
amounts of ill-begotten money interfere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">While I worked away these
last few months, sanding and grinding and sweating and swearing, abutting my
stern was the skeleton of a condo development rising from its seaside
foundation. Those nascent parapets will doubtlessly soon house a gallery of blue-hairs, staring
with pinched looks of disapproval (just wait till they get an ear-load of the sound of flailing winter halyards) at the eyesore that has been servicing sailors since long
before they were soiling their cloth diapers. And there will have
gone the neighborhood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">But that will be then. During
the last few months I found myself spending a lot of time amid the subculture
of owner/fixers, an elite group of mostly guys with bottomless to do lists. Even
amid this rarified clique there are distinct subsets. There are, I imagine, more
guys like me, who wish the first item on their lists was “burn this list,” (and
perhaps wonder if a buyer could be found in this anemic economy), guys who religiously
maintain their boats for racing purposes (shysters of the sea, I'll call them), guys like my pal Ron, who
lapse into depression if there is nothing to fix at all, and perhaps the most intriguing, guys like Zoltan, who claim to despise every blood-soaked second of the work,
yet perversely insist on rebuilding every square inch of their boats to Stradivariun
specs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">My punch list consisted of
rebuilding our stern tube, which required the demolition of my aborted attempt
to 5200 back into place the old failed tube. Guys had warned me never to use
5200 if ever I intended to undo the repair. They were right. Also on the list:
refit the new driveshaft and associated components, repair the blisters revealed
by a thorough hull sanding (never thoroughly sand your bottom, as it will
reveal what you are truly made of), as well as grind, fill and fair a
disturbing symmetrical gelcoat crack running the entire length of the keel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Also on the list would be the
cosmetic improvements I could give a rat’s ass about, but which make my mate
happy. And you really need to keep your mate happy, because in truth she is
what makes the boat go. So it was one more go-round of brightwork “varnishing”
(Cetol this time - you fetishists can squeal all you want) and hull polishing,
to spiffy up the sad state of affairs brought on by lack of attention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">George, our yard manager, gave us the call to ask, "Ready to see if she'll float or not?" and I wont deny to a plague of butterflies as he drove the travelift down the tracks to
lower us into the ocean. While our Laura Lynn’s tush dangled in the water, George
let me scamper aboard and check my work. Inexplicably, the repair was holding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">So there we were one 4<sup>th</sup>
of July later, watching the fireworks on the kind of night that'll make a man say out loud to anyone who'll listen, “This is why you buy a boat.” After we'd made it back to our mooring around midnight, I threw the switch on the bilge
pump to hear the satisfying gurgle you get with your last slurp of soda through
a straw. Sweet.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwcyRZsVgiYRgRZ71edhTAkcBSE4LdATLr1KvF8WWNYZ7MWASsEEXJCMu69vEzyWHkPr1c4ipfrokgo0yBtFw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6o4lSiNEh06Y4mlVAcYjM-JcnZGBoSEE0FrYi-BsZwG-jcYDytKzQEdTX7r_2MmCY5qiDXcwTRaY2WMEOoJLUHjooPmq0Rhg9E_gOnT2KQhK4CQMVjlB7nO5NW2Reyru_XjQEWRhZAYHz/s1600/IMG_0902.JPG.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6o4lSiNEh06Y4mlVAcYjM-JcnZGBoSEE0FrYi-BsZwG-jcYDytKzQEdTX7r_2MmCY5qiDXcwTRaY2WMEOoJLUHjooPmq0Rhg9E_gOnT2KQhK4CQMVjlB7nO5NW2Reyru_XjQEWRhZAYHz/s400/IMG_0902.JPG.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i>This is a good idea because why again?</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s the time of year when, comfortably cuddled in the bosom
of winter, a sailor up North can reflect on the fact that he’s in about as much
trouble out of the water as he was in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We had an early reprieve from the travails of sailing this
season when our stern tube, it being part of a quixotically designed driveshaft arrangement,
finally unseated itself from the hull, and we began to take on water at a
fairly precipitous rate. The symptom was discovered on the Fourth of July, at
the end of a carefree visit to a nearby harbor hosting their annual fireworks
spectacle. Thankfully, none of the revelers onboard had become aware of the
fact that they’d come close to having to swim home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We were removed from the ocean the next day, after I’d
pumped a hundred or so gallons out of the bilge for the second time in a matter
of hours. Game over. Or rather, let the games begin. I made the somewhat
energized call to our yard to please pull our boat ASAP, and then spent the
next couple weekends trying to figure out where the hell all the water was
coming from. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We pumped water all over the boat in an attempt to find the
leak. There are myriad possibilities for water ingress on a modestly sized
sailboat, and any boater will tell you that where the water ends up is frequently nowhere near where the water entered in the first place. Usually the most
suspicious looking areas have nothing to do with it, I can tell you that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I finally pumped water under pressure around the prop shaft,
after removing the prop and jury-rigging some fire hose to a water hose. Bingo.
But before you go, “I knew it – the stuffing box!” know that you would be
wrong. I used a small digital camera on
a rod with a flashlight attached, and got video of a trickle I thought I’d
heard, buried below the underside of a packing gland in perfect working order,
thank you very much. See, I know all the damn terminology, so there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The important take-away here is that, having finally diagnosed
the problem, I then proceeded to attempt the repair myself, with the obvious
result. I botched it, and in so doing I squandered time and money, and now
someone who does this for a living is going to have to work harder and charge
me more money then if I were to have walked away with my hands up, credit card clutched
in one of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Along with the serious structural problem, I also noticed
hull blistering for the first time, or rather a boating pal did, the bastard. This
problem is anathema to owners of old plastic boats, and was probably
exacerbated by our having left the boat in the water for two straight winters, for
no good reason. After having employed the dubious strategy of wet storage in
the Northeast, we can retire Deb’s fantasy for good. She’d convinced me that we’d
save a couple bucks and put ourselves in the enviable position of being able to
take to sea should we be visited by a stretch of unseasonably pleasant weather.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjERL3NvWh7r9FpnoqBly7235Aazb3OKS59MhdUz_XZ27BJlSUNgZUxxP92npSjL80sCwAj2XR5Z0wyAiL_PH-7NwFtH56Ae8T7msf2CF35QtjmZAD5pfMVPd_WoQ461yMZtR495WzzpfGC/s1600/P1020379.JPG.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjERL3NvWh7r9FpnoqBly7235Aazb3OKS59MhdUz_XZ27BJlSUNgZUxxP92npSjL80sCwAj2XR5Z0wyAiL_PH-7NwFtH56Ae8T7msf2CF35QtjmZAD5pfMVPd_WoQ461yMZtR495WzzpfGC/s400/P1020379.JPG.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i>Just think, if it warms up some...</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don’t care if global warming brings our bay to a slow
simmer in the near future. The fact that we’d have to re and de-commission the
boat every time we feel like a joyride in January when temperatures soar into
the mid-forties would put a killjoy on my boat jones, you dig? Unless you’re
from South Florida, winter is for winter activities, fruitcake frost-biters be
damned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">With skewed knowledge as to what blister repair involves, and
in an attempt to incite general wharf-side derision, I went at the hull to expose
the extent of the decay. Armed with a borrowed grinder, and a purchased Tyvek
suit, respirator and goggles, I over-abraded about an eighth of the hull before
conceding ignominious defeat. Folks, this is a job left to lunatics, slaves,
and disreputable “handymen.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So, facing the two-pronged assault of rapid and long-term
boat dissolution, I considered with some interest the approach of Hurricane
Sandy. With weather forecasting coming into its own in recent years, I was
looking at a fairly reliable insurer’s report declaring a total write-off.
Predictions of a seventeen-foot storm surge practically assured that our boatyard
would be turned into a giant billiard table, with everybody renaming their floating
investments “Eight-Ball.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We did our best to prepare our lovely <i>Laura Lynn </i>for the coming apocalypse, because we’re responsible
citizens. But the dark lizard brain in me saw an escape route. You feel me? Hey, I paid my premium.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Yet it was
not meant to be. A near miraculous wind shift at the crucial hour staved off
the midnight surge, and virtually everyone in our harbor was spared. Wahoo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Visiting the boat depresses me now, so I rarely do it. As a
result, the seacocks are corroded shut, or open if that’s the way they’re supposed
to be. I can’t remember. Vermin can’t get in; water can’t get out. Whatever. In
any event, you should tend to your boat in the winter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Deb and I passed the yard a couple days ago, on a walk,
because the weather was tolerable. Walks are not to be confused with sails.
Anyway, we noticed one mast conspicuously heeled to port. That always makes a
sailor take notice, so we tacked. Sure enough, a nice mid-sized boat had fallen
on its hip, a victim of high winds, most likely. It shouldn’t have happened, but
it did. The owner is likely going to pitch a fit when he finds out. Us, we’d
had our mast pulled, so as I approached, I did so without any sense of hopeful
expectation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjisf5dVnhZMsY4dBleUVn7QqIoiQMzLLFRIzRC2YLo_0cxzcu7KP2_HC5vQ7FtuqnXZ7ccibbAU6Pf4X1AeuXcM-wVljemdGCD3dpWXKHFN2ssajC6jR1YNqvsNuF-rYeGqlSSaDrQKPPQ/s1600/IMG_1555.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjisf5dVnhZMsY4dBleUVn7QqIoiQMzLLFRIzRC2YLo_0cxzcu7KP2_HC5vQ7FtuqnXZ7ccibbAU6Pf4X1AeuXcM-wVljemdGCD3dpWXKHFN2ssajC6jR1YNqvsNuF-rYeGqlSSaDrQKPPQ/s400/IMG_1555.jpg" width="328" /></span></a></div>
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<o:p><i>There's absolutely nothing half so much worth doing...</i></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-87084864044987104672012-01-08T22:09:00.001-05:002013-05-28T20:39:17.225-04:00An Unrepentant Gushy Love Post<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Anyone who’s had the fortitude to weather this column will recognize a certain recurring... tone. Let's say it can get a bit blustery around here. I could offer up a raft of excuses (chiggers?), but really, who's going to listen? I am what I am, and that is a whiny old coot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But this time it’s going to be different, because tomorrow is my first mate’s birthday. Without posting numbers, this is one of those auspicious ones, the kind that comes around every, oh, half a century or so. I tell you what, though: Deb continues to remain younger than me, and look at her. The girl is one <i>hot tamale.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSyHAjoylr-kJBF-ONkUEnKywHmFcT0ZpNceaEkfq__EdVn5nevjx7KyIFm9m1Io5v_um8spXRl1myRBINXXsJik9iLCSgxdxV4rGruu89B8An6acMyaaYuSAKDop4lpm5I48h-_1VIp2_/s1600/P5290034.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSyHAjoylr-kJBF-ONkUEnKywHmFcT0ZpNceaEkfq__EdVn5nevjx7KyIFm9m1Io5v_um8spXRl1myRBINXXsJik9iLCSgxdxV4rGruu89B8An6acMyaaYuSAKDop4lpm5I48h-_1VIp2_/s400/P5290034.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><i>The Tamale, near Bermuda. She'd been sick for days. </i></div>
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<i> I'd have had myself airlifted off the boat by now.</i><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’ve had some fun at Deb’s expense here in the past. That’s what guys who spend too much time in worthless pursuits do while their women are busy with real work. She may never learn to tie a half-thing around a whatyacallit, but I’d be sitting in a fleabag apartment in New York City right now if she hadn’t rescued me from myself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">See, Deb makes wonderful things happen with a brightness of spirit and a, um, contagiousness of buoyancy. Plus she gets me tongue-tied. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">If nothing takes the place of persistence, Deb is the cause's poster girl. I may approach a shared challenge complaining of the possible consequences, but inevitably I’m wearing a smile on my face for the experience I would have denied myself. She makes me enjoy life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkufzHgVQ-7YoYweQn2G6vc2UVWYkpHSMefovMcXdkN3BjLMSJLKCoCM0mSvQQOPbF8ZynmBEJrBm_Dg0vXKwjW7mb-eSqn9Yrt9CKbYsTFKF3ZkFNuyMH-NG7yDiSJIj-kKFcL8vAnNtm/s1600/100_4188.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkufzHgVQ-7YoYweQn2G6vc2UVWYkpHSMefovMcXdkN3BjLMSJLKCoCM0mSvQQOPbF8ZynmBEJrBm_Dg0vXKwjW7mb-eSqn9Yrt9CKbYsTFKF3ZkFNuyMH-NG7yDiSJIj-kKFcL8vAnNtm/s400/100_4188.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span><i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span>The birthday girl, making me enjoy the Bahamas</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I look out across our bay, I’m again reminded of an early morning there sixteen years earlier when Deb’s enthusiasm spilled over onto me, prompting me to throw unreasonable caution to the wind. She answered “absolutely” to the easiest of questions, and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We’ve been places and done things that arguably Deb needed some help with, but mostly it’s the other way around. No amount of study gets one to the summit. No man is an island except for Tom Hanks, and he had a magic volleyball. Boy did that movie <i>reek</i>. I mean seriously, dude, wait for the surf to settle before you launch that wreck it took you forever to build, you douche. All of a sudden you’ve got to leave <b><i>right</i></b> <i><b>now</b></i>?? Oops, I said I wasn’t going to do this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To say I’d be nothing without Deb is, well that’s pushing it. I know how to use a microwave. But to paraphrase another irascible character from the movies, she makes me want to be a better man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I will refrain from any wisecracks here. I have nothing but love and admiration for this woman. She is the cat’s meow and then some. And just so I get it right this time, I'll appropriate a line from a fellow boater:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wherever she is, there is Eden.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Happy birthday, Deb.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I love you. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-28574839536264520612011-12-17T14:28:00.002-05:002013-05-28T20:39:45.119-04:00Sibling Overboard!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP3LwRniZUZVXf3RlsYmz0A0cOMRCJ-jYVBpwNdzAHPXvOWVn-3Fo0QuLRqSDMB4tWuDsRWUqyH1VzpikHOvgJAABrlRh1EC8rvvu-t_EulJ9SnWVcq_JlUYBA9ZfAg_qWoQoyfy-ey1ty/s1600/100_4331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP3LwRniZUZVXf3RlsYmz0A0cOMRCJ-jYVBpwNdzAHPXvOWVn-3Fo0QuLRqSDMB4tWuDsRWUqyH1VzpikHOvgJAABrlRh1EC8rvvu-t_EulJ9SnWVcq_JlUYBA9ZfAg_qWoQoyfy-ey1ty/s400/100_4331.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Rail meat, happy as clams</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">It was going to happen sooner or later. I’ve been tripping all over boats, docks, and various invisible barricades my whole life. Deb is always having too much fun staring at the rest of the world to worry about where she steps. All her falling thus far, though, has taken place inside the boat. Which is not to say it’s taken no physical toll.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">My brother, who is more graceful than myself despite his prodigious stature, took his freshwater bath a few years back in front of a receptive audience. He’d successfully slipped a vessel he’d been a passenger on after a challenging night-approach off Lake Michigan had prompted the anxious new owner to pass off the controls. That owner was proffering thank-yous as my brother put the final wraps on a dock line, when one of John’s feet chose to test its holding strength. His 360 forward-roll entry garnered generous style points from the judges at the drinking establishment bordering the dock. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbRUpW9GFXCEdpHjiv9eKsNSH3oKCSASsldXArc79h6UiNj99MAr6ZztTago4yAgtvfsfINOpYr24zQMe3YnGhYyOMwc_MhAIGZ6sypvIlVAkLEyPEHmrV9fhhEKnOp4hvK_QxdBOYW5Z/s1600/P6100067.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbRUpW9GFXCEdpHjiv9eKsNSH3oKCSASsldXArc79h6UiNj99MAr6ZztTago4yAgtvfsfINOpYr24zQMe3YnGhYyOMwc_MhAIGZ6sypvIlVAkLEyPEHmrV9fhhEKnOp4hvK_QxdBOYW5Z/s400/P6100067.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Man decapitated exercise conducted on John's boat</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">My sister was visiting us recently from that freshwater state where I was harvested. She and I are alike in that we do not need lots of activities to fill out a family visit. What we do when we get together is involve each other in our day-to-day lives. This has in the past included such chores as home renovations and the like. Her visit happened to coincide with the end of our boating season, so Deb and I involved her in the tasks of emptying the holding tank, topping off the fuel supply, and parking the boat in the wet storage slip that would see our <i>Laura Lynn</i></span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> through the winter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Things went well at the town dock, if pumping human waste out of one’s non-hermetic holding tank can ever be said to go well. Fueling up was accomplished with little fanfare. The nice thing about diesel fuel is that its pervasive odor masks that of the head. Hooray for life’s little victories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Our last stop would be a short trip to the slip, just over yonder. Fenders were deployed, lines run, and the docking process reviewed for those less versed in chaos theory. Deb would be first off the boat with the bow line, followed by Cathy with the stern line. We’d be pulling up to a portside finger dock with a boat to starboard. A dash of reverse would pull our stern over nicely, and a light breeze on the nose wasn’t going to hurt us any. While I’m not a regular slip frequenter, I was expecting an easy go of it. As we pulled in, Deb hopped off and headed forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">It would help to know a detail or two to fill out the scene a bit. The finger docks at this establishment are narrow, and they are free to rise and fall with the tide. One is reminded of lumberjacks competing at one of those logrolling events. What I’m trying to say is they’re not real stable underfoot. I probably should have mentioned this to my sister.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<i>Substitute water for granite outcropping and</i></div>
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<i>look of surprise for smile. </i><i>You get the picture.</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Cathy also happened to be wearing an interesting pair of shoes I’d seen advertised somewhere, hyped for its notable “rocker sole” design, which is supposed to somehow expedite the walking process, I suppose. Interesting concept. Had she been wearing the kind of shoes I’ve seen on kids that sport wheels in the heels an alarm might have gone off in my head. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Human events can occasionally transpire quickly, so we’ll never know quite what happened next. Certainly Cathy had no intention of testing the temperature of the Long Island Sound in late October. She only remembers that for some reason her body chose to keep on going once she’d landed on the dock. For Deb and me there was just a surreal image of my sister continuing on her way… south, as it happens. There was no stumble, no cry of alarm, just a stroll that should have ended sooner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">I generally don’t make light of this kind of event. Those of us with any sense of our own mortality know that terrible things can happen during the course of mundane activities. We’ve all seen videos of the misfortunes of man and beast preserved via smart-phone. We view them knowing (in most cases) that the subjects survived. But there is always that moment when, understanding how the laws of physics work, the groin aches for the victim taking the header into the fencepost, or the golfball in the gonads, as the case may be. So Deb and I were holding our breath as Cathy surfaced, and we searched her expression for signs of serious damage. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<i>Flirting with fun</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">It’s amazing how quickly surprise and fear are supplanted by embarrassment once the all-clear sign is given. It took me a shamefully short period of time after receiving her thumbs-up before I glanced around to see if there had been any witnesses to the proceedings. The coast was clear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Once I’d helped Cathy back onto the dock (a maneuver even less elegant than her exit), the next pressing question was whether she’d ruined anything of value. She would answer that question many times before the day’s end. We Americans have our priorities down. Cathy had removed her cell phone from her pocket as soon as she’d boarded. I know that’s what you were wondering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">My sister’s chief observation afterward was that the water was warmer than she'd expected. I suspect a heavy shot of adrenalin distorted that reading. But it raises another question about the mind, which is, what kinds of questions might it formulate during those shocking, one-off events? Did hers actually go, “Is the water going to be really cold?” in midair? Will mine go “Are crabs going to feed on me before the Coast Guard finds my body?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;">In any event Deb and I, being boaters, had plenty of dry clothing aboard. Cathy used the facilities at the marina to rinse off the seaweed and harbor scum she’d collected, and a short while later we were dining on deck. It all kind of ended up fun in a way that’s hard to explain to the one who’s still in the water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16pt;"> By the end of Cathy’s visit the shoes had dried out and were once again fit, if that could ever be said for them, for use in the proper environment.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<i>All's well that ends wet. I mean well.</i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-81606076241175487912011-10-13T18:22:00.005-04:002013-05-28T20:40:01.532-04:00Caveat Emptor<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
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<i>Please mind your extremities</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On our “to do” list had been the bullet point <b><i>Shovel Off Boat</i></b>. It'd been a particularly wintery winter here on Long Island, and while our <i>Laura Lynn</i> can handle the load (wet-stored, she was resting on her lines despite a foot of snow on deck), we'd wanted to make sure everything below was hunky dory, and to clear the dock and lines for the eventuality of real trouble. Plus, it seemed something akin to spousal abuse to let her wallow so ignominiously. For all I know, leaving a layer of insulation on her might have had a protective effect against the ravages of UV.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While we shoveled we noticed Matt, a local institution, tending to one of his own fleet, the cute-as-a-button water taxi that doubles as a tour boat during the fun season. He was moving ice out from around her on a lazy Saturday. When you’re in the water biz the work never ends. Having said that, I’ll wager there is nobody on the Eastern Seaboard more up to the rigors of the job than Matt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let me say this about the man. If one day he decides to hang up his foulies for good, our town might as well fill in the bay and start building condos. It truly frightens me to consider our harbor without his presence. He annually tends to a swarm of moorings belonging to the municipalities, yacht clubs and individuals of several harbors off the Sound. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I rent one of those moorings, and last summer Deb and I chose to hunker down aboard our boat as a vicious squall we’d tracked on radar tore through the harbor. While we huddled underneath our thrumming dodger I watched as scores of boats got knocked on their beam ends, our dinghy swamped and our oars took flight for the near coast. When it was over I remember marveling to Deb, “Matt’s moorings all held. He saved all our hides.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Matt also oversees our bay’s water taxi service, much of the maintenance and seasonal care of docks, floats, gangplanks and whatever other nautical paraphernalia crowds the shoreline, and offers harbor tours to the less fortunate on the aforementioned scenic vessel. Beside all his other responsibilities he must deal with the likes of us, the hordes of boat owners who care only for our own personal pleasure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One can imagine how hard it might be to book some face time with the guy. But here he was, coming over to say hi as we tended to our singular task. It was a rare pleasure to share in his seemingly limitless joy of being on the water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Matt just seems made for this environment. He works like a dog (a Chesapeake Bay retriever comes to mind), one that wouldn’t have it any other way. The thing is, ways change. It’s been going on in this country for some time now, and some of it just plain turns my stomach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When we asked how things had been going his countenance clouded over, something I doubt an act of nature could wring from him. No, this was man-made, and he proceeded to unload a weighty cargo involving an incident involving one of the town’s moorings. It had occurred a couple years back, but like some bad ideas it had festered inside another man’s poisoned mind. The details had pulled Matt away from the work he loved, immersed him in a foreign world, and the experience was keeping him awake at night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I will now state for the record that anything I print from here on in is my own interpretation of events. Why? Because it involves boaters and lawyers. You don’t believe me? Take a gander at the water from any safe distance next spring. If there is a boat there, there is likely trouble in the offing. And as I love to observe, if I have not shed blood today, I surely have not spent time on a boat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And lawyers? The term “lawyer” requires no explanation. It is as self-descriptive as the term “diarrhea”. What kind of diarrhea? Do you need to see a list? I don’t think so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’ll stick to what I do know. We boaters are a sad lot. Little is officially required of us in terms of experience and know-how, and what policing does exist is marginal. It often appears that the only thing one must have in order to be referred to as “Captain” is the key to the engine and a cooler of brewskies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We captains are jumpy, too. The second a warmish day surfaces in March we expect the bay to be ready for our orgiastic spring emergence. Maintenance be damned; first one in the pool wins. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I’m seeing this guy in my mind’s eye. He’s itching to get his tub floating again, and his mooring ball is out there, having been placed by an experienced crew that has swapped it in for the winter stick that ID’s the strategically positioned and inspected ground tackle, one which serves as the template for Chapman’s Guide To Boating. He’s got this powerful hankering in his loins, but there’s no pennant so he figures he’ll rig something himself. How hard could it be? He tells Matt, and Matt being the kind of guy he is says the pennant won’t be in for a week, but feel free to give it a go, Cap. Just exercise due caution. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So our MacGyver proceeds to mangle a finger in an attempt to pass a line though a mooring shackle. Tricky business, threading a rope through a loop. It’s only done maybe tens of thousands of times a day by boaters who have an iota of common sense. So you know what’s up next, right? Time to call in the legal team. That’s where a real boater shows his metal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In this, the most litigious culture in the history of Planet Earth, no folly shall go undenied. No culpability shall go undeflected. No lapse in judgment shall forego the attempt to reap monetary reward. We are a nation of dufus/whiners who feel no shame in the blaming of someone else for our own failings. Having stumbled on the sidewalk while gawking at the Wonderbra billboard, it is now time to take on the municipality, the concrete company, and the dentist who failed to match the color of the chipped tooth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Matt Meyran once nearly died in a hospital after a routine operation went awry. When I asked if he’d sued for bazillions, he just went, “They were just doing their job. Sometimes things happen.” Yes they do, Matt. And now there’s a numb-nut out there trying to make a killing off his own stupidity, with a money-grubbing legal team looking for a cut of the action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You’re out there somewhere, Captain Douchebag. Next time you decide to try to bust a move from the bow of your <i>SS Guppy</i>, do us all a favor and drown. And take the family shyster with you. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-61231170006045269442011-10-02T10:17:00.007-04:002013-05-28T20:41:11.517-04:00Entropy<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
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<i>Odds are we could beat this guy </i><i>in a match race</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s a brisk Sunday afternoon, the approach of autumn hard on the wind. I’m comfortable in my living room alternating between a laptop and an old trumpet I’ve received as a gift from the estate of a deceased cousin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm thinking this could add a new dimension to my sunset salutes, my having been limited in the past to the single note of the Bahamian conch horn manufactured during our 2005-2006 seabattical. How hard could it be to squawk out a rendition of Taps? I’ll check on YouTube. The answer to everything is on YouTube. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And what must Deb be thinking while listening to my first strangled notes? That her husband <i>could definitely use yet another musical instrument he cannot play</i>? What Deb <i>says</i> is, “I’m thinking I might like to go for a sail.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><i>This girl is no sissy-pants</i><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yeah, but it’s kind of windy, and chilly too. I can see the tree limbs out the window, my attuned senses clocking the gusts in the mid twenties at the very least. I check UConn’s nautical buoy at Execution Rocks for corroboration. Frigging close enough. Let the frost-biters have their sick fun. I return to the laptop and <i>google</i> the proper technique for maintaining a brass instrument. I’m talking about the trumpet again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> What was my excuse the last time Deb suggested we get out on the water and put to good use our marine investment? I believe it was a little <i>too</i> <i>hot</i> out, and there wasn’t <i>enough</i> wind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What’s wrong with this picture? Beyond the fact that I’m a lazy-ass bastard and that sailing involves work, there is an ulterior motive for my avoidance. Entropy depresses me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To go sailing I must collect the oars in the garage, and the garage door opener has been acting up. It’s definitely not the battery in the remote. I think the remote is just about shot. I checked the cost of a new remote online. Ridiculous. I’ll just keep squeezing the old one from positions picked up while watching Cirque du Soleil promos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The oars also need a varnish job before they start to delaminate. Amazing how much two sticks of wood cost at West Marine. The oarlock sockets on our dink need work too. Stress cracks are forming on the gunnels at both fittings. Truth is, the whole dink is falling apart, and my previous attempts at fiberglass repair are a civic disgrace. I tell myself the look adds a level of theft protection. I hear voices anyway, and I trust they’re mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As we row away from the dinghy dock I’ll take a look at the gangplank I maintain myself because the guys who are supposed to don’t. The gangplank tires I installed need air before they flatten out or they will self-destruct, and then the rims will chew away at the plastic floating dock like the old ones did. The dock is a puzzle-lock affair made out of interlocking floating cubes, and when one of them has been punctured, a sinkhole forms around it. From whence follows death and destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr24v8SZxN1sbNYhE5c4-laqOr4DLrbta-iXoEvh_T9uliQNm9w7Kx82FVokFzcSzUlnPA9KLcnETjfxr5PbpEMiQv2HC3vfUxdtdmofIO4zGXlYCsygwFTBcyL_qcuMyOp1hVdPOPlxL7/s1600/100_2932.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr24v8SZxN1sbNYhE5c4-laqOr4DLrbta-iXoEvh_T9uliQNm9w7Kx82FVokFzcSzUlnPA9KLcnETjfxr5PbpEMiQv2HC3vfUxdtdmofIO4zGXlYCsygwFTBcyL_qcuMyOp1hVdPOPlxL7/s400/100_2932.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i> Let's be clear, Vinny is not the problem </i></div>
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<i>with the gangplank</i><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our approach to the <i>Laura Lynn</i> reveals that the work put into making the hull sparkle has worn out its welcome. Pausing at the stern boarding ladder I can just see (the water is foul with algal growth. More on that later…) the rudder sprouting foliage, which means the prop will be even worse, which is bad for engine efficiency. Barnacles will choke off power and cause overheating (I forgot to mention the sea strainer), and the scraping off of the barnacles, which secrete a natural form of <i>crazy glue</i> in order to anchor exoskeletons composed of scalpel blade shards to things you own, will require a ritual swim involving bloodletting and the caking of every orifice I possess with dispossessed crustaceans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hoisting myself aboard, I am reminded by the twinge in my left shoulder that it will one day more than likely require surgery. But the shoulder is the least of my bodily concerns. Let’s not even go there. Let us rather consider the imminent destruction of our planet, shall we? Unless you’re one of those hapless Teabaggers? Because right now my bay looks like a couple of cargo ships dumped their entire Lipton stash overboard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sailing is not the green endeavor one might wish it to be unless you’re the Pardys, and they crap in a bucket. Deb and I employ an eighties-era engine in our boat, and diesel is now going for about six dollars a gallon on the water. I think we’re running low, but we don’t have a fuel gauge. We have to dip a notched stick into the tank to find out. To do that we have to assemble our cockpit table which covers the fuel deck fill when folded shut. Nothing we do on this simple vessel is simple. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Which reminds me: I think we have to pump out the head soon. Landlubbers do not appreciate the miracle of modern plumbing nearly enough. You tap the handle and get pissed if it sticks. Where does it all go? As if you even care. We boaters must carry our sloshing effluent around with us until we run out of space, and we don’t use a dipstick for that measurement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Above deck, the weathering of all the brightwork is demoralizing. <i>Brightwork</i>, for the uninformed, is a euphemism for rotting wood caked in flaking varnish. It was just two years ago that I stripped every board foot of lumber for the second time, and applied too few layers of varnish once again. The elements have returned to mock my work in short order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOLJdzSh8bSJNXSyHQgVzfw2LA4JBgtP7wv0PJIWGTaKjeyRmTvx-WknjgEAelclNehWUQjtvHyJ7o-oWD5zRNT71QZrLKYG8OjLsT8KFnIsIzynnlkB1q0sLXeo9uls6G3X58ZHmven5c/s1600/100_4145.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOLJdzSh8bSJNXSyHQgVzfw2LA4JBgtP7wv0PJIWGTaKjeyRmTvx-WknjgEAelclNehWUQjtvHyJ7o-oWD5zRNT71QZrLKYG8OjLsT8KFnIsIzynnlkB1q0sLXeo9uls6G3X58ZHmven5c/s400/100_4145.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i> As I've stated in the past: a total waste of time</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The mainsail cover is ragged, as is the jib’s UV cover. Deb made great efforts to repair the dodger, which is old enough for about every seam to have been dissolved by the sun. All the canvas should arguably be replaced, but that argument will fall on cheap ears. I’ll just stare at the threadbare material instead of the scenery, and blame our boat’s mediocre performance on blown-out sails. I’ve heard that’s a more than reasonable excuse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Below decks I follow a regimen that reminds me at every turn how old our boat is. I open the main hatch, which now leaks. The Lexan is cracked, but it has been cracked for as long as we’ve had the boat, so the leak is a surprise. There are other leaks as well, as evidenced by a check of the bilge. I have no idea where they originate, since water collects even when it hasn’t rained. I keep a hydrometer from an old aquarium (never ever own an aquarium) to tell if it’s fresh or saltwater, but it doesn't seem to be working. It thinks every fluid poured into it has infinite density. Deb just takes a lick. Seriously, she is nuts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Readying the engine gives me the most angst. I’ve never stopped the slow leak in the secondary fuel filter, which should be changed. I neglected to change the oil last season also, thinking we were going to sail through the winter. Deb did, anyway. I knew better. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I always hope the engine will fire up the first time I push the starter button. More often we get a series of clicks. Having run all the prescribed tests, I suspect there is more than one cause to the problem. I hate when that happens, and it happens a lot. I’ve decided that part of the solution, battery replacement, is overdue. We have three batteries, and they are very heavy. Replacement is a simple process requiring little more than lots of money and a series of lacerations from hoisting dense blocks of applied chemistry into painfully tight compartments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When the engine does fire, it announces its return with a cloud of dark smoke, a perfectly healthy response for a diesel engine. Screw the environment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I recently discovered rotting of the cored deck at the hawsehole. I know! What the hell is a hawsehole, and how did I discover it? It turns out a hawsehole is a thing that needs maintenance. I discovered this from having stubbed my toe on it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My neighbor, an avid sailor who loves trouble, tells me I don’t even want to know what’s involved in dealing with a spongy deck. I already do know, and he’s right, I don’t want to. Searching the sky for succor, I notice the worn halyards leading to ancient winches, and spreaders in need of inspection. I am told the wooden spreaders of the Morgan 34 are particularly suspect, subject to rot and ultimately rig failure. We will have our rig removed this winter for inspection, another added expense.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The obvious issues instill in me a darker thought. There are things I cannot see in the nether regions of the boat that could cause worse problems than poor sailing performance. I suspect the secluded stuffing box, embedded chainplates, buried wiring…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One of the common characteristics I find among sailors like my neighbor is a seeming pleasure at the discovery of problems, which they then get to tackle with perverse abandon. I do not share this trait. My common response to the discovery of common boat problems is pathetic and unprintable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And so the prospect of a pleasant day on the water is inevitably accompanied by the even more compelling concern as to what I’ll discover that will most probably cost me money and aggravation. Last time it was a jammed mainsail car (we should never have bothered raising the main) that will need some sort of attention, I guess. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On the bright side, the boating season will soon come to an end and we’ll have our vessel stored on land, where she belongs.<span class="Apple-style-span"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDhQCd2pu-fZYcy4to-RcM6dIvy3qmFtVX-jdLtZMTyHtnlz5BdxE_ojHEEoQ74pcYIxVtjML6HpYkw7J3i9TOKcTfN1ZCxJDx0ks90RyR8zuTB6SWZ48ZP8pDHMwrKKm4bAA5OErGkUyQ/s1600/100_4666.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDhQCd2pu-fZYcy4to-RcM6dIvy3qmFtVX-jdLtZMTyHtnlz5BdxE_ojHEEoQ74pcYIxVtjML6HpYkw7J3i9TOKcTfN1ZCxJDx0ks90RyR8zuTB6SWZ48ZP8pDHMwrKKm4bAA5OErGkUyQ/s400/100_4666.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i>Day is done</i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-16835738268549797982010-08-22T11:12:00.019-04:002013-05-28T20:44:26.365-04:00Recapturing the Magic<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKLD3CuH3nAkITE-gy71z6dkJANgR0pVmXtI6gWU6PyX0gx9OX-JaYXYKYXvu5XWcNIdo_qn-UIPHBahoaf1LtK11_Ach_j55cqMt3ao5KKbZvPJl1l6x5xkKQAR4J8TsfmydvpZJHdPAN/s1600/P1000094.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="271" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508255336995670818" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKLD3CuH3nAkITE-gy71z6dkJANgR0pVmXtI6gWU6PyX0gx9OX-JaYXYKYXvu5XWcNIdo_qn-UIPHBahoaf1LtK11_Ach_j55cqMt3ao5KKbZvPJl1l6x5xkKQAR4J8TsfmydvpZJHdPAN/s400/P1000094.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a><i></i></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>Isn't it entrancing? Let's take a closer look!</i></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’d had a bad feeling about the trip from the beginning; something down deep in my <i>waddayacallit</i>. Understand that I make no claim to precognitive powers. I just <i>always</i> have bad feelings. On my way to the grocery store I’m figuring it’ll be just my luck one of those automated jungle forest misters in the fresh vegetable section is going to spritz Swine Flu in my face while I’m selecting broccoli crowns. That’s if a text-messaging soccer mom in a Humvee doesn’t take me out in the parking lot first.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So getting back on the boat for a mini-cruise is bound to stir up some mental dust bunnies. But there were Deb and I in the middle of summer with little to do thanks to the economic meltdown, and a favorable weather report “looking forward,” to tax the <i>idiom</i> <i>de jour.</i> I made a lame effort to incite my meager impulsive side to relax a little and take on some real human risk.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Naturally the report began to get more realistic as we approached our week on the water. As the launch date approached, what had previously looked to be an unabated stretch of bucolic weather began to resemble what we’d been experiencing most of the summer: hot, humid, with the ever-present possibility of afternoon thunderstorms. I tried to forget about the recent squall that had taken the life of a local sailor, terrorized others, felled healthy climax vegetation and provided me with footage for my very first YouTube video (search "manhasset bay microburst"). Still I heard the rumblings. They came from the pit of my stomach.</span><br />
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<img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508255171870236930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOrf06p0Oa58Laf1wgtSC9Kb79dlawvmLD9mL3jn-SW6u-WAkz-tynS6M9QWI2q6-0Eo_c4lRSsqWhAJ6eAlGgpNuSMusQvnii0Nkx7j40ikPOGbqMJG6sGU9HJc_nE2swBAXqA7HUkSXQ/s400/P1000147.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /><br />
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<i>Harpies, I think they're called</i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This despite the cheery parade of jerrycan-laden cruisers who continued to pass through on their visits to here and beyond. All were yucking it up despite living in floating fibertubs hundreds of miles from their real homes.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We’d just visited new friends, Susan and Tom, two researchers turned sailors in enviable harmony with their new lifestyle. We’d rendezvoused with them on Long Island’s North Fork, we naturally arriving by motorcar, to enjoy a day of wine tasting, camaraderie and a bonus night on the water aboard <i>Gypsy Soul</i>. The BreatheRight had held fast to the bridge of my nose, and we’d all slept like babies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So off east Deb and I went again, this time by boat, with the thought of checking out the Thimble Islands, or whatever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whatever arrived early on day two, after about an hour of motoring in light wind. I was preparing to try out our cruising chute, a colorful gewgaw that had been roused only once prior a few seasons back, it having then nearly killed me in a rapidly escalating breeze. It had taken me a couple years and near stillness on the water to convince me to give it another go.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then our engine, the same one that had ticked like the watch Leonardo Di Caprio wears all the way to the Bahamas and back (inspiring me to give it its own chapter in my book), started to make a noise. It was like a… a sort of a… Deb how would you… The kind of noise we used to try to make as kids with our bikes using some clothespins and a deck of cards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was below when the <i>clackity-clacking</i> started. Deb was at the helm. We immediately exchanged TV close-up looks. Deb put the engine in neutral. No change. She said white smoke was coming out the back. I opened the engine compartment and saw nothing. The sound continued. I told Deb to kill the engine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is where I typically begin to channel the spirit of Ralph Cramden, doing that “omina omina omina” thing until Deb tells me take a deep breath. Then I go over everything I remember from my Mack Boring diesel engine seminar, which now consists solely of the mandate, “Run your engine hard on a regular basis.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Oh, I tried a few things. I checked the inboard sea strainer. I dismantled the raw water pump. I dove on the prop and outboard sea strainer, I burned my hand on the engine. After we let it cool down I checked the coolant level. Why did I do these things? Because I knew how. It made me feel like I was trying.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While I was pretending to be a mechanic, Deb was attempting to sail with what little wind there was in a homeward direction. Which meant we were actually heading further away from home at a slightly slower pace because of the current pushing us toward Maine. This is pretty much par for the course when you own a sailboat, which is why you should get one with a reliable engine.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After a while, since there was little else I could think to do (please don’t bring up the thermostat), I told Deb to give the engine another try. She turned the key and hit the button. It ran like a top, and has ever since. This fortuitous shift in fortune, however, did not compel me to turn around and resume our original course away from home. What are you, some kind of adventurous type?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508254603962774930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDuCSDXEa-9MEV-IyWSYBVU0H9WtuJi7q0EXBKsBb_WirRxo8Cn4gLaU79RKQe1x-TXW5YASdYw3ccQAZ7TPRBQPlfCK92iUFW40odk3CQNS6tc0mgVYT2pC6Od-JjMbckOU7rH9EuliHm/s400/P1000145.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /><i style="text-align: center;"></i><br />
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<i style="text-align: center;"><i>This actually is fun</i></i></div>
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<i style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over the next several days Deb and I zigzagged our way back toward home. It is very easy to take a long time to get to somewhere in a sailboat if you really want to. We stopped at new locations along the way, visiting places we had no intention of visiting prior to the noise. We island-hopped, explored some new-to-us landmasses, watched sunsets, got mooned once, flew the spinnaker just fine, thank you, and solved all manner of earthly problems over glasses of moderately priced wine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">All the problems except the one.</span><br />
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<img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508254313446558418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilPoIKLrtLqF7rL3dZd9HuLQCue0Hf2RejXx3JQj4H2RmHjiK_is8oQ4A0B_HI5WWqzC7F6-Yb8dzgk0qYx-63wjfpmNWgk4jkQtmCuU9jE0R_EEglZpwUR6y0X73DKK9QqNPAEHL22qZl/s400/P1000080.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">All's well that ends.</span></i></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-13953593955423347982010-07-09T18:39:00.043-04:002013-05-28T20:45:30.782-04:00Starboard!!!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHg-mB1OqHifReb-F1E6d2eDe21g0Nquw1tQOrRQwsXbmI4DsffL7fgLezjN-J0KM0xxZt3GQUfd_p_bja55QbYewZJhxaEepyCE0UDW6E6Jy_cEXXJT2LvFt9IjQxs6Khnzgu23xo1UN4/s1600/100_5564_2_2.JPG"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="259" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5492040088795391378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHg-mB1OqHifReb-F1E6d2eDe21g0Nquw1tQOrRQwsXbmI4DsffL7fgLezjN-J0KM0xxZt3GQUfd_p_bja55QbYewZJhxaEepyCE0UDW6E6Jy_cEXXJT2LvFt9IjQxs6Khnzgu23xo1UN4/s400/100_5564_2_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Aren't they lovely? Now how hard could that be?</i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Deb and I were at a fundraiser for a New York judicial candidate, a very good friend of ours for whom Deb is campaign treasurer. Please vote for her. Her name is Leticia. Always vote for anyone named Leticia.<br />
<br />
There were a lot of legal types in attendance, most of whom I did not know. At some point someone I did know, perhaps sensing I was something of an outcast, pointed out to me that yet another lawyer-attendee also happened to be a sailor. The two of us were introduced, and naturally from then on all moot points of jurisprudence were off the table.<br />
<br />
The young man was engaging, obviously had a good head on his shoulders, and somehow along his tortuous path to the New York Bar he’d gotten the itch to learn to sail as well.<br />
<br />
I know. Boy has he got a lot to learn now.<br />
<br />
A self-starter with little waterborne experience, he’d read whatever he could get his hands on and consulted anyone who’d lend a salted ear. He was told that a wise choice in a boat would be a model that would have reliable resale value, for the day he would inevitably conclude that sailing was for the birds.<br />
<br />
The J-24 was mentioned as a suitable consideration. Grabbing the bull by the horns, he searched and found one for sale. He bought it. He then found a yacht club he liked, and joined it. He took his boat there and put it on a mooring. Next, he took his book learning aboard, along with his lovely, somewhat reticent fiancé. And then, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, on a day with a good breeze up, he allegedly conspired with the prevailing winds to kill the woman. I said allegedly. Anyway, she's fine now.<br />
<br />
I really admired Nico’s spunk. He reminded me of Deb, whose lack of experience on any given subject will not dissuade her from jumping into the fray anytime, full throttle. Thus her present status shift from clothing sales executive to political treasurer.<br />
<br />
His one strategic mistake was simple and direct. He asked me if I’d like to go racing with him. Mine was to say, “Hey, why not?”<br />
<br />
In my defense, I was completely forthcoming as to my racing pedigree, which is virtually non-existent. I prefer the occasional, casual, come as you are, protests strongly discouraged, main and jib affair. Testosterone-laced competition rattles me, as it tends to make men who haven’t been given the chance to honorably acquire PTSD very, very, <i>disagreeable</i>.<br />
<br />
I like life in the slow lane, but a promise is a promise. I know how hard it is for a new captain to acquire a reliable crew, though Nico did say there would be other friends along to help. Then there was his sincere insistence that he didn’t care where he finished as long as everyone came home in one piece after having had a good time on the water. Ditto and sold.<br />
<br />
Still, I believe in trying, and that ebullient effort need not intrude upon the pursuit of good fun. So I prepped for the event. I read over “The Rules”. I watched YouTube videos on spinnaker sets and douses. Oh, have I not yet mentioned that spinnakers would be involved? I really ought to have mentioned that. Spinnakers are those lovely, colorful, balloon-shaped affairs that are an absolute joy to witness from shore. My brother, who is a for real racer, will tell you: the difference between jib & main versus spinnaker racing? Apples and hand grenades.<br />
<br />
So I’m sitting there pretending that watching YouTube will prepare me for a J-24 race, and I wasn’t the only one watching the videos. I packed sunscreen, sailing gloves, kneepads and aspirin. I should’ve added a tourniquet and some finger splints.<br />
<br />
It was never quite clear to me who among our crew had what kind of sailing experience. There were five of us, and I gathered that four of us had virtually no serious racing time. The fifth was maybe going to make it to the boat from a Paris flight after three sleepless nights of European partying. As I interpreted the information, he was to be our ringer.<br />
<br />
We got out on the water with just enough time to try out the borrowed spinnaker a couple of times under light winds (thank you, weather gods) and a 4hp Yamaha substituting for jib and main. You know, I can hear somebody who doesn’t even know what a spinnaker is laughing at me right now. Blow it out your poop chute, Sophocles.<br />
<br />
But in terms of the Fear Factor, the thing that really had me spooked, my personal albatross, was Niko’s proud display of his damn winch handle, a precious artifact forged in the fires of Arian conflict, its proclamation “Made in West Germany” fused forever onto its righteous forearm. I don’t have to explain it to you, do I? I mean I have a piece of the fallen Berlin Wall. I am an authentic Kraut.<br />
<br />
Already knowing the answer to my next question, I asked if his Teutonic jewel might happen to float. I then asked if he had another less historic lever onboard. Weighing my estimable skill sets against the diverse and challenging responsibilities involved on the J-24, I found myself the de facto trimmer. A little voice inside my head went, "uh oh."<br />
<br />
Cut to the chase. The winds were blessedly light, or we would have been in some real shit. No boats were fouled, and the only damage to flesh, mine anyways, was the result of my cut-off gloves, which could not prevent layers of epidermis from being stripped from my fingers within the first three tacks, making it a bitch from then on in to trim. Nico, bless the guy, flew the spinnaker on every downwind leg, assuring us that on principle we would twice finish DFL. Had we forgone the monstrosity, we probably would’ve overtaken a straggler or two each race.<br />
<br />
The real disaster, though, came early in race two on an upwind leg. Despite my intense procedural study on YouTube and my acute awareness of my less than stellar performance during earlier tacks, I continued to foul the just released lazy sheet, sometimes with a shoe, sometimes with my ass, as I concentrated on setting the new working sheet. So our tactition/pit man started to lend a helping hand with the cockpit chores.<br />
<br />
It would be a cowardly, not to mention physically painful gesture, to point fingers at this juncture. Let us just say that somewhere along the first upwind leg of Race 2, around mid-tack and with all the frantic, congested activity that occurs in the cockpit of a small racing sailboat, something happened to the winch handle. I heard it, and then I saw it, sliding down the deck toward eternal rest.<br />
<br />
The rest, as you know, is predictable; a redundant reminder of the destiny of all things natural. Time morphed into slow motion as I went lunging like a table hockey fanatic for a hunk of poured metal. Had I composed myself, charted its likely course, and made one strategic attempt… maybe, just maybe. Instead, I made a series of vain, sweeping motions, like an off-meds epileptic attempting the breaststroke on dry land.<br />
<br />
I half considered jumping in the water for a last attempt. Had it been my boat, and we not racing, and me not wearing a pair of six hundred dollar prescription glasses, my having ascertained with lightning reflexes that my iPhone wasn’t in my pocket, and finally noting that a responsible person was at the helm, I would’ve totally gone for it. I’m a pretty good swimmer, and I had a good bead on the SOB when it hit the water.<br />
<br />
If.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFG5mzJ_pPacTHYJc_F3ZMZ_DnMCmJGCEDXKmrJpP3yAGEU1frPDb7vbtKYOQi72CC0VRIBxwUwxZwCz1jmwUCHly-WCO-j0JQDjqmyBDzJimDrSeKCK75TNlcpjkfx-OOW_44ZGUroHB/s1600/100_1093_2.JPG"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5492040225264330066" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGFG5mzJ_pPacTHYJc_F3ZMZ_DnMCmJGCEDXKmrJpP3yAGEU1frPDb7vbtKYOQi72CC0VRIBxwUwxZwCz1jmwUCHly-WCO-j0JQDjqmyBDzJimDrSeKCK75TNlcpjkfx-OOW_44ZGUroHB/s400/100_1093_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="300" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Now how do we get it down???</i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-84736029170513684062010-07-09T09:22:00.016-04:002013-05-28T20:48:01.083-04:00Labors of Lunacy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDojDFnynfZPYpB-qIICMG7XfhyphenhyphenYTDRQ5YZNhYHwy0xkWGSqCfBMMZEuV1L_gbf0x1uuxCul9La5iXbaSPZQ9awvGSWxHHn851TjEiiQnF7UB8Rb0qICSo-zZKC6blGtKV8smosJ4lwHs9/s1600/100_5085_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="295" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491896990013579058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDojDFnynfZPYpB-qIICMG7XfhyphenhyphenYTDRQ5YZNhYHwy0xkWGSqCfBMMZEuV1L_gbf0x1uuxCul9La5iXbaSPZQ9awvGSWxHHn851TjEiiQnF7UB8Rb0qICSo-zZKC6blGtKV8smosJ4lwHs9/s400/100_5085_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<i>A Promising Fixer-Upper</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In my heyday I could afford frivolous expenditures, like double-dip ice cream cones and subscriptions to boating magazines. It’s interesting to note, by the way, that these two discretionary expenditures are nearly equal in value these days. If you find yourself weighing their relative merits and happen to live by the sea, go with the ice cream.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Like all cellulose-based publications, which are dying by the barge-load from lack of relevancy, boating rags seem to recycle the same information every third issue. Amongst the repetition is the oft-rehashed Shakespearean theme of love’s labor, wherein some wave-smitten business consultant with time on his hands and a languishing 18v drill commits himself to a forlorn hulk with oodles of hidden potential. He then proceeds to dedicate the best years of his life, health, marriage, and if he had any, self respect, to the reconstitution of the thing to near-buoyant status. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Not me. I’m a turnkey kind of guy. In fact she doesn’t even have to start as long as the key turns. Saves on gas. But this one guy (I will not name names) makes Joshua Slocum look like an impatient hack.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was sitting on the pot, where I do my best reading, taking in the story from my Boat US mag, which I get free, mind you, because of the annual towing insurance I happily shell out for. Therein I read of a man who proudly confessed to spending somewhere near half a century, and I don’t know, a hundred times the original value (while I think lopping off a finger or two in the process) to reconstitute a thing he’d found rotting in a field, into a boat.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<img alt="" border="0" height="299" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491896856721767602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLc2TmJcT23jT4sAMn9gbiO7DJ_yHAYdZDkJ9omhgKnoo3rVThMuMy6H5Yga0C_ACkiWddY2uvmiNqeu7i3hULbkNwRPyZCap7qe0qHgwA0Jy3TrTjw9eLafnojqrwItTSotCFpx9gVmU/s400/100_3432.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /><br />
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<i>A no-brainer. For a buck, she's yours. </i><i>All you have to do is pay the salvage bill, the yard bill (ten years in arrears), re-power, redo the electrical system and gut the interior, all destroyed by salt water. Oh, and patch the gaping hole where she's been hulled.</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here’s the kicker. Over the decades he’d regularly exploited the free labor of his father and brother, neither of whom survived the project to completion. It isn’t explained how each met his demise, though there was no overt implication of boatyard accidents or murder. Let's just chalk it up to natural attrition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’m not the sort to denigrate the spirits of those who have passed before me, unless I knew and despised them in life, in which case their legacy is fair game. I’m sure this project had been a satisfying and bonding experience for all. I really mean that. It’s just, a little part of me wonders if the last words of either of the deceased were, “I don’t care what else you do (Son, Bro), you just have to finish this thing and put it in the water and see if it floats. Nothing else in life matters near so much.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Or something to that effect. To which I would naturally have responded, “I’m on it, (Dad, Bro). I will not rest until I’m plying the high seas aboard her or I’m buried between the two of you first.” A little white lie doesn’t hurt once in a while, particularly when it’s told graveside.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then I would have gone out and bought something I could’ve had some fun on right away. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But maybe I’m missing the point. I recognize the occasional perverse need to nourish something back to life from near extinction, which impulse is perhaps an extension of our own deep-seated desire to live forever. That compulsion exhibits itself in droves near water. It’s possible that some folks are truly happier fixing boats than boating in them. I, having once lived on a sailboat for a year and replaced the joker valve not once but twice during the period, recognize that what really makes me happy is living <i>by</i> the water, and occasionally playing in or on it. This is no great shame. <i>Know thyself</i>, is the dictum that comes to mind. Or as Deb likes to say, whatever blows your skirt up.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have feet, not fins. And while I take pride in problem-solving and effecting certain types of repair, I’d prefer those problems surface only rarely and as far removed from the bilge as possible. That’s the way I hang.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By the way, that hopeless cause I’ve been alluding to? You should see her now. She’s a beaut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWA-Q75XnF4OhiSk9yrMalhEZab2Wq_P_fPlfDILLvEGQz4ALE-dhveuSiGQhJu-dJlp_0tal3ujRLHGsNxD40zCT744TPbmXj9Tc-V8tIYQYiNN-PrqqEiU_0TR2HeC12B0hAKAMr8T8Y/s1600/Arizona+stack.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491896507751245826" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWA-Q75XnF4OhiSk9yrMalhEZab2Wq_P_fPlfDILLvEGQz4ALE-dhveuSiGQhJu-dJlp_0tal3ujRLHGsNxD40zCT744TPbmXj9Tc-V8tIYQYiNN-PrqqEiU_0TR2HeC12B0hAKAMr8T8Y/s400/Arizona+stack.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: left;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The <b>Arizona</b></i><i>, looking for a caring home</i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-43924088069195755632010-06-20T19:04:00.038-04:002014-07-30T16:54:16.767-04:00Look Both Ways Before You Cross The Sound<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lTOieZdmXNAakfQsUqJYtvYGeV1DJjiTtdWLdo2kLdb3eJs3mhGsQWTRFgVN6-HicsUCAaF4s1deYRfzpvhr5K5y-UypnNmYU6DAkjOLHeGalx2sINSOw5lVZypwlasnYva6n_Bn7MDp/s1600/P1020825.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lTOieZdmXNAakfQsUqJYtvYGeV1DJjiTtdWLdo2kLdb3eJs3mhGsQWTRFgVN6-HicsUCAaF4s1deYRfzpvhr5K5y-UypnNmYU6DAkjOLHeGalx2sINSOw5lVZypwlasnYva6n_Bn7MDp/s400/P1020825.JPG" height="297" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484998139012117970" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i>Care to take the helm?</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I blame the women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That's a lie. Of course I don’t. It is, after all, a poor captain who blames his Crescent wrench for ruining his manicure. But there were Deb and Jan, gabbing away on the high side with an unobstructed view of the western horizon: the picturesque lighthouse at Stepping Stones, a burnt umber (I'm not really sure if that's accurate. I just like the Crayola name) sun setting over the bridges of Throgs Neck and Whitestone, and the glittering metropolis of New York City beyond. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Did I say unobstructed? Perhaps there would have been one obstruction for someone paying a modicum of attention: a rapidly approaching freighter the size of Rhode Island.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5844791744589714638" onblur=" try="><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQls4R27Dqo9lvkVeCvO_k5ucu5tywgOykIZytZ_98fgFxCYIMVXZAwRG6cmTWZmXOMquOmovCrTesxqXMwtBGL4rPvKxpjyAqByZ8K_rYxH8nftKLp-NTeiiZMdXUEg1gBvXNO0odf0lY/s400/P1020832.JPG" height="264" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485005428493569042" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: 'times new roman';"><i>Did you see something? Nope. Ever been to Country Curtains?</i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQls4R27Dqo9lvkVeCvO_k5ucu5tywgOykIZytZ_98fgFxCYIMVXZAwRG6cmTWZmXOMquOmovCrTesxqXMwtBGL4rPvKxpjyAqByZ8K_rYxH8nftKLp-NTeiiZMdXUEg1gBvXNO0odf0lY/s1600/P1020832.JPG" onblur=" try=" style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></a></span> <!--StartFragment--> <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I think the women were discussing window dressing for the saloon. In any event, the real culprit was yours truly. Jan’s husband Ron had offered me the helm of their Alberg 35, which I’d greedily accepted. Hell yes, I’ll steer your dreamboat too if you’ll let me. And I did okay for a while, poised at the pedestal like a Praetorian guard, alert to any possible oceangoing threat. Assume the helm, sir, and you assume some serious responsibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">After a while of that nonsense I assumed a posture more conducive to the collective vibe, a slouching tuck in the aft corner of the cockpit along the leeward rail. From there I had a duck’s eye view of everything directly ahead and to port, as well as what was left of the topsides not buried in sea spray.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Ron and Jan’s boat has a nice big wheel that lets you to hang out in Ted Turner fashion, one hand on the wheel and and the other available for whatever else one might wish to grip. The problem with this arrangement is that one can easily become comfortable, and so I stayed there. With a good breeze up, my view to windward was obscured by our well-heeled hull, which was capped by the aforementioned chatting silhouettes. Ron was facing me on the low side, protecting our flank, I think, from a surprise flying fish attack. A little traffic help to starboard from the women would’ve been, well, nice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">But then it’s the guys who insist this is the way we all ought to have fun together, right? Come on, let’s hop into a painful plastic bucket, when an arm and a leg (not to mention a well-placed boom to this reporter’s noggin) could have been spared and we could all be enjoying a lovely harbor view from beach chairs. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Still, just a </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">little</i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><i style="font-size: x-large;">help</i><span style="font-size: large;">?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The captain of the behemoth didn’t see any of that coming to the hazard crossing his path. Using whatever stealth technology they employ these days (a pair of eyes, I suspect) he must’ve figured if we were up to anything, it was a game of chicken where nobody wins. I’m thinking of all the paperwork the poor guy would have had to fill out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Part of me would like to have been a fly on his cabin wall as another moron conspired to send him to Rite Aid for more Grecian Formula. On our big boat trip to the Bahamas, Deb and I would stand alert for days on end, occasionally listening to the VHF execrations of container captains as they were forced to deal with oblivious hoards of casual day sailors. More than once we heard the five blasts, and watched as recreational boaters narrowly avoided annihilation at the hands of floating bulldozers.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'times new roman';"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQls4R27Dqo9lvkVeCvO_k5ucu5tywgOykIZytZ_98fgFxCYIMVXZAwRG6cmTWZmXOMquOmovCrTesxqXMwtBGL4rPvKxpjyAqByZ8K_rYxH8nftKLp-NTeiiZMdXUEg1gBvXNO0odf0lY/s1600/P1020832.JPG" onblur=" try="> </a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-_oVK9J_Oem6BAHfu177Db3vpEEcG1FGCjrqbvyoZIFjkzLi7pNeqfsZxmYRJ6RtqPngCQ8iEzeAQHHbSawc90D2h0HbsH-oCpOOwpP6wfq1yUXHnsLjd5WxMzflKcpj3yad3TmYbFxf/s1600/100_3088.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-_oVK9J_Oem6BAHfu177Db3vpEEcG1FGCjrqbvyoZIFjkzLi7pNeqfsZxmYRJ6RtqPngCQ8iEzeAQHHbSawc90D2h0HbsH-oCpOOwpP6wfq1yUXHnsLjd5WxMzflKcpj3yad3TmYbFxf/s400/100_3088.JPG" height="274" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485002034531447218" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a></span><span style="text-align: center;"></span><br />
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Starboard!</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’ll bet this guy never bothered trying the radio. As if the clowns in front of him knew how to use one. And he was right. Back in our home waters Deb and I rarely turn ours on anymore. He could only have been hoping we’d all figure out how to don our Coast Guard-approved water wings prior to deboarding our soon to be minced vessel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No, that captain went straight for the airhorn. Nor did he give the standard five-note alarm recognized by accomplished seamen. Nope, he just laid on one long hard “Get the hell out of the way, you stupid, son-of-a-bitch” salute. Which worked, I might add.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our crew tacked, with plenty of time to spare so that we could compose ourselves and gawk, like a herd of cattle at the fence as the semi rolls down the road loaded with merchandise for some far-off Walmart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t really <i>that</i> close, but I’ll bet that’s not how the other guy saw it. We see these monsters rumble through all the time, and they really have no defense against us other than an angry growl of the foghorn, if you discount their looming visual presence. If we’d kept coming, a lovely sloop named “Weeble” would now be an underwater obstruction near Can #27. Which is why “limited ability to maneuver” always trumps “vessel under sail” in the rule book.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ZUJBGm3UpoxqEhSfC0u0DaJbAF2yrmmns9JICLRG1COYZYbG16FobaCG7YSmfeDcIdNpX_fdZzW7CiOkMGuXFs-Eybi9hURPzTSO-LG2mVXEfscQF8hN7X08XcmMsA43504VpW-4sZ_2/s1600/100_5596_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ZUJBGm3UpoxqEhSfC0u0DaJbAF2yrmmns9JICLRG1COYZYbG16FobaCG7YSmfeDcIdNpX_fdZzW7CiOkMGuXFs-Eybi9hURPzTSO-LG2mVXEfscQF8hN7X08XcmMsA43504VpW-4sZ_2/s400/100_5596_2.JPG" height="311" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485002142089626914" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: left;" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<i>Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?</i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-63431485123752839792010-04-18T19:43:00.009-04:002014-07-30T16:55:35.837-04:00Elsewhere<img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv43d0Q7HUK5OEE62j1Z9C6eMEO8cU-FZYEnR1CzamYZrAqWi3mwSMSFiBa2LwR6YQbEM3w8xLenYuatluTVkLmNlb7zE0udiPQk0Z1VFGryHMjNO0U-mfk8h7_GlsXwiE8VCr92kTmwK5/s400/IMG_0663.JPG" height="299" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461634390504967842" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /><br />
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<i>Take me somewhere else, big guy</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Deb and I had received a call from friends we hadn’t seen in a while. They live on what I like to refer to as “the mainland.” Technically Deb and I are island dwellers since we live on Long Island, a hyper-populated slab of glacial debris more congested than the Tokyo subway system. It’s separated from continental America by the East River, which isn’t a river but a tidal estuary, which is an interesting bit of trivia that is perhaps neither here nor there. The point is it’s enough water to legitimize an emotional detachment from a homeland to which I feel little fealty. See, I happen to value my family’s health over the federally funded destruction of fruit bat habitat in Ubetyurassistan. Steep on that, Teabaggers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To join our friends for dinner in their neck of the woods, we’d have to take a circuitous drive away from our destination in order to exit the peninsula we live on, then circle back and creep over the heavily taxed, ergo socialist, thoroughfare known as the Throgs Neck Bridge. From thence we’d batter our way through a portion of The Bronx. Let me tell you, any place called “The” anything is an awful place to have to pass through. The Hamptons? I’d rather gargle with Sno Bol. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A transit of The Bronx is a caustic slog through commuter hell. Then it dawned on us there was another option, involving a considerably more direct route, less fossil fuel expenditure, fewer traffic altercations, and a more enticing view. So we sailed to New Rochelle, which burned roughly eight times as much off our life clocks, and cost eighty times more in parking fees than what a round trip auto excursion would’ve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here’s the way I look at it. Life is a series of trade-offs that ends with the Big Trade-In: that of one’s questionably led life for eternal peace and quiet. I consider this a fair exchange, and boating helped teach me this lesson.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What the harbor at New Rochelle taught us, once again, is that Deb and I live in a really nice harbor. No anchorage is perfect, but Manhasset Bay, let me tell you, well just come visit and see. And that’s the point. Sometimes you just feel the urge to get out of Dodge, pretty as the local saloon gals might be. You know the feeling. Richard Gere knows the feeling. Brad Pitt knows the feeling. I think you know wherefrom I gather my inspiration, but I’m sure there are feminine equivalents. Kate left Jon to go dancing, right? Even after he blessed her with all those glorious offspring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So Deb and I pulled into a sort of new harbor for us, though her dad had docked and dined us there years ago when teaching us how to sail shamefully irresponsibly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I’ve often said, sailing into a new harbor is exhilarating and dangerous because you’re on fresh turf, and because of that one obstruction just below the surface near Green Can #9, or some other such submerged solid thingy someplace. All the locals are fine with it because they pass it every day, but for newcomers it’s a little scary, which again is kind of the point. Shake things up a bit. Get nervous. Consult the chart overly frequently. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Getting past the mystery rock is a lot like rolling on a rubber for the first time. Then bang zoom, you’re snug inside the harbor, and you’re calling the dock master at the local marina on your cell phone because nobody uses VHF anymore, which seems a shame even though guys who bemoan the demise of Loran are, let’s face it, pathetic dweebs. You’re calling this guy because he undercuts the municipal marina’s rate by a buck a foot, and you have a hankerin’ to find out how he pulls it off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then you find out how, because he and his brother (both escaped bit actors from the movie “Deliverance”) snub you into a slip with the reek of fuel pumps to starboard and the panorama of a three story shrink-wrapped behemoth named “Andiamo” (the largest of three vessels so named in the harbor) to port. To finish out the scene, the view out the stern is a worm-laced field of pre-war pilings held in place by dinosaur ooze. There’s nothing to see forward because we’re on a sailboat (mast, boom, dodger, raised hatch, and if you’re lucky the requisite dockside “don’t do” sign (<b><i>No Displays of Mirth, unless you bring us something from Carvel</i></b>). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Welcome to <b><i>Elsewhere</i></b>. Which is just what the doctor ordered: something N.E.W., as our pal Mary liked to say. So Deb and I sat for a while in the cockpit because we had time to kill, and we slaughtered it by laughing at human folly. The kind that makes people pack their Studebakers to the gills with suitcases and kids who until recently were content fooling around in the back yard, so that everyone can experience The Badlands as a family unit. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Laughing is good for the soul, which if you’re wondering, doesn’t actually exist. But Carvel does, so it all evens out in the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Our hosts were sour-faced dock rats (we have those guys in our harbor too, so there) put off by our ill-timed visit. They had better things to do than make easy money on transient schmucks willing to snort petrochemical vapors in the floating equivalent of a Motel 6. They had real business to tend to, which was the preparation of very large vessels for a season of slip decay while the boat owners billed land-based clients for work done in their sleep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Cuz that’s how you pay for a bottom job. It’s all ebb and flow, Cap. Ebb and flow.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOTx2FNU4Q-JS5jCq3l_8OJ1kUPZ9CuFoSJH-a90Vd2Fp9CYl0B692_LkiQGMir5QWa5C3_OpcEloK0Regv2XekOQASi4boowpEDzcPAs2tO-dUrkwtdDxxxw1jSfzP-33ta3_vvroyqZ/s1600/P1020520.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOTx2FNU4Q-JS5jCq3l_8OJ1kUPZ9CuFoSJH-a90Vd2Fp9CYl0B692_LkiQGMir5QWa5C3_OpcEloK0Regv2XekOQASi4boowpEDzcPAs2tO-dUrkwtdDxxxw1jSfzP-33ta3_vvroyqZ/s400/P1020520.JPG" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461635383207864930" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<i>Let's see, that's a dollar a gallon, for water</i></div>
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Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-45740456295437956782010-03-04T15:49:00.010-05:002013-05-28T20:52:36.656-04:00The Shyster's Cup<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUf3-ySzuOLuapSDflQ5FW4qSVfaVphyphenhyphenic5NNGoar2aDM3xBf-3-AVY-CZ84C4BXVtlpX1ltBVI-hFKgKLQiymH6UALzAySqolmCkHc3RW9WreqJ5OtpNs1VjZLqH7ovlIVPRVzEJU2tl0/s1600-h/America's_Cup.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5444883793713424450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUf3-ySzuOLuapSDflQ5FW4qSVfaVphyphenhyphenic5NNGoar2aDM3xBf-3-AVY-CZ84C4BXVtlpX1ltBVI-hFKgKLQiymH6UALzAySqolmCkHc3RW9WreqJ5OtpNs1VjZLqH7ovlIVPRVzEJU2tl0/s400/America's_Cup.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="227" /></a> <!--StartFragment--> </span><br />
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<i>Care for a spot of tea?</i><i style="font-size: x-large;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We recently invited a couple from our complex over for one of Deb’s four-star dinners. That’s where Deb does absolutely everything except sit around and watch me sound entertaining to myself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jim and Ruth are great folks, and while they have a couple years on us they’re a lively team paddling with panache into their golden years. At least that’s what I was thinking until Jim dropped what sounded painfully like a senior-moment bomb on the festivities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The old coot was insisting that the America’s Cup had recently been fought over and won by America. Surely, I figured, it’d been a restless dream brought on by a prescription malfunction. Jim has had some health issues lately (he’s entitled), and judging by the number of pills I take every night I’m surprised either of us had room for desert. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While I’m not one of your typical zealots, able to recall every historical apex of my chosen sports fetish (Dude, was Arnie’s 1974 Augusta seven iron approach to Sixteen <b><i>money</i></b>, or what?), certain targets always light up the radar screen. I may not have a firm grasp of time, but the America’s Cup couldn’t possibly have snuck past me. I mean, I own a sailboat, and I’ve occasionally kind of raced it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yet sneak past me it did, and it’s just as well. Because long ago the quest for this most ancient of contested grails gave up any semblance of being an honorable, worse still gentlemanly (ick!) pursuit, prone to the tweaking of faux national pride.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the dawn of my professional career as a cameraman I became involved in the Louis Vuitton Challenger Cup Series in Newport, where it was obvious to anyone with assisted vision that this was a jiggered game played by filthy rich white boys with nothing better to do as long as their respective ladies were comfortably engaged in comas. Yes, Louis Vuitton, he of the multi-thousand dollar handbag, aka <b><i>loser swag.</i></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Having been indoctrinated into the popular pastime of robber barons, I recall soon thereafter coming across a bizarre ad, run I think in that august weekly, Time, in which the local sailing consortium attempted to fleece from the most gullible of New World patriots financial support for a “defense” of the gaudy tureen claimed to rightfully belong to Joe the Plummer. You go, Denny, you zinc-encrusted gladiator! Protect our national dignity!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Conner failed miserably, as you may recall, and then succeeded miserably, and then failed yet again, the pudgy, over-baked sea serpent. But you can no more blame the guy for trying than you can any Lycra-encased Olympic “amateur” these days. Somebody’s got to pay for all this technology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">There ought to be a version of Funk & Wagnall that foregoes alphabetization for the logical association of like things, and the Olympic Games would butt right up against the entry for “non-profit” organizations. Because hoser, huge cash money is flowing through those scuppers, like a spring thaw in the Vancouver hinterlands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Which begs the question, whom are we to root for? The American ex-pat living in Lucern and trained by Austrians, or Chinese kids coached by an American in Uzbekistan? And not that I follow hockey (unless Vinnie reads this, and then it’s <b><i>Go Rangers!),</i></b> but there was the coach of my Red Wings leading the Canadians against my America, we done in by the very bastard who, dressed as a Penguin, helped steal that other cup from my Motor City. Holy geez, it’s bound to give a simple man a clinical case of schizophrenia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Back on melted water, no athlete better personifies the nature of modern sport than Kiwi Russell Couts, who finally wrested the cup from “America” for Team New Zealand, then went turncoat and shopped out his resume to Switzerland, for whom he pilfered the trophy from his own nation. He’s since followed the scent of money to Team Oracle, where his contracted talents contribute to the shuffling of overwrought metallurgy from yacht club to yacht club. What’s a fan to do these days but chant, “<b><i>Go favorite corporate enterprise</i></b><b>!” <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Having blinked, I missed the two-race Deed of Gift event that went unnoticed by everyone but members of the engaged law firms. I started <i>googling</i> for the details, and the official America’s Cup site seemed too ashamed to even talk about it. It concentrated on happy thoughts of long ago memories of simpler times when people had servants, and fun statistics like the number of “unique visitors” to its website, which despite my hit I fear fell short of the daily views of Ashton Kutcher’s Tweets. Certainly Demi’s visage still stands a good chance of launching more ships than Valencia did this February. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was that final arbiter of all knowledge, Wikipedia, that weighed in on the matter, in an amicus that was anything but wiki. This was a ground war waged in the wainscoted halls of jurisprudence, and had little to do with boats. It was all about spoiled little boys who’d grown up, but continue to scream “cheater” at each other from opposite ends of the playground. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s ironic that at a time when technology finally exists which would allow the proletariat a view of the once rarified "sport" of yacht racing (with live satellite feeds from micro-cams and gyro-stabilized stealth drones), the game on the water is nothing but an afterthought. But then the pursuit of The Cup has never really been about the sailing, has it, Guv’nuh? </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-57095496326712354512009-10-27T08:23:00.022-04:002013-05-28T20:53:30.961-04:00You Should'a Seen the Ocean Then<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3AcoL2MogN8pAoDlBPKcwRJTosDoQCBERQcL65uRleqvelQO1dGERiLAR3Hr6pwLAdsezGs0OX3sNqbbJu3GT6kAKsG8eOcy3YMpLYxJwvSZnnEJ97swiH-7aRe_7iusZc4wKHmB0K2up/s1600-h/100_2061_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="332" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397323159874716322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3AcoL2MogN8pAoDlBPKcwRJTosDoQCBERQcL65uRleqvelQO1dGERiLAR3Hr6pwLAdsezGs0OX3sNqbbJu3GT6kAKsG8eOcy3YMpLYxJwvSZnnEJ97swiH-7aRe_7iusZc4wKHmB0K2up/s400/100_2061_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<i>There is no substitute for an alert crew standing watch.</i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Every now and then some genius sails into town to bemoan the general decline of humankind as if we're measurably devolving as a species. We no longer, for instance, know how to carve saintly statuary from granite slabs using a hammer and chisel. We’ve misplaced our ability to silently stalk small game for supper. We can't make our way to the killing fields and home again without a GPS-armed SUV. Stuff like that. There is always some noble talent gone stale, the shortcoming dissected by some Grizzly Adams type who often as not would be happy to show you how it's done on his cable show.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> The usual claim is that vital human skills are at or near extinction, the broader implicit message forecasting the inevitable demise of Homo sapiens.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Which is a load of crap. And as much as I might admire the presumed nautical capabilities of a fellow whose recent review of a piece of safety gear I just read, I cringed once again at his yearning for the days of yore when men were men, and the sea devoured those men with a regular vengeance.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Listen, I know what it’s like to have one’s eyes glued pathologically to the chart plotter while coming close to t-boning the freighter right in front of me. But technology does not turn us into chimps. It is our own nature that threatens us, just as an African plain full of tall grass and bereft of lion scent tends to make zebras heavy and lethargic. Succumbing to our indigent nature didn’t start with the invention of indoor plumbing. All animals adapt, some of us remarkably quickly, to an environmental change like a free smorgasbord at the local restaurant. Behavior is pretty predictable that way. Observe the boisterous flock of seagulls debating over my outstretched armload of Cheezos.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Darwin observed that species evolve rather slowly on the whole. The creatures foraging on bagged peanuts at thirty-five thousand feet in business class are virtually identical to the ones who huddled in moldy caves thousands upon thousands of years ago. But knowledge shared by note-taking animals is Lamarckian in nature. It gets passed on quickly, and we respond in kind. Let' s face it, it wont be long before every human is tapping away on an iPhone or Blackberry. These tools empower us to behave in different ways if we see fit, but I dare say if my i-Gizmo were taken from me for good, I would change again. In fact I did for a while on a boat once, because I had to. Then I changed back, because I could.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Here’s an analogy I don't quite know what to do with. Squirrels have been around for a long time, longer than cars, I’m pretty sure. The survival skills that got them this far, which include maddeningly unpredictable course changes as they’re being chased, don’t always work to their advantage on a paved road. Far more frequently than I wish to recall, I’ve watched a squirrel that seemed to be home free inexplicably double back into the road, and from thence into the hereafter. Squirrels could do with a little Lamarckian traffic seminar, I guess is what I’m saying.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">To suggest humans are losing skills that make them essentially human is absurd. We might as well denigrate most honey bees for having lost the ability to procreate. What they did, as far as they’re concerned, is build a better mouse trap. If we weep for the loss of true love among the honeycombs, shall we not also eulogize the passing of good old Loran? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Humans take useful new technology and immediately put it to good use. As a side effect they often divest themselves of older paradigms no longer seen as productive. It also means that difficult chores like circumnavigating the globe on a floating platform become easier, which encourages a larger population to attempt the challenge. This fact seems to irk trained folks from the old school, which I find somewhat ironic. Because if you strip down any process into its component skill-sets, virtually nobody becomes an expert on his own. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">We all stand on the shoulders of others. When I take my little boat out for a joyride, I do so because somebody else developed metallurgy, the combustion engine, fuel refining, textile manufacturing, synthetic materials, aerodynamic concepts, on the list goes, and then showed me how it all works, so I can sit there at the helm and go, “Well naturally this all makes perfect sense! And aren't I the master of my domain!”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I’m quite certain that the old salts who can still shoot a star with their trusty sextants could never actually make a sextant, or conceive of one, or a working watch, much less chart the heavens and develop the mathematical equations with which to locate themselves properly on a planet that looks flat to most of us. In fact, I’m pretty certain that just about everyone of us, were we forced to start from scratch, would place ourselves smack in the middle of the universe based on clear observation.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There’s room for all of us on the water, even the foolish ones. And if they get too stupid, well, Darwin has a place for those souls as well. It’s in the tarry pit I like to call the culling fields.</span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkeO6NsI5lR9EWNMHgp0P1RP1yCV1V2XkDu3ZtSy4p3oOEFZZA4UsoOvXzy5Lrj06GZnb5LltCluziTSgKN0S2hi93W1A0A5uM6Kb2peuRMN1y4o1I9gETXUM8MUt7e9opuD76kBcgoasb/s1600-h/DSCF0045_6_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><img alt="" border="0" height="214" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397323897546814482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkeO6NsI5lR9EWNMHgp0P1RP1yCV1V2XkDu3ZtSy4p3oOEFZZA4UsoOvXzy5Lrj06GZnb5LltCluziTSgKN0S2hi93W1A0A5uM6Kb2peuRMN1y4o1I9gETXUM8MUt7e9opuD76kBcgoasb/s400/DSCF0045_6_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<i>This crewperson is worth all the newfangled</i></div>
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<i> gadgetry found in the catalogs, right?</i></div>
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<i>Looks kind of shallow down there!</i></div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-39514258546005299842009-09-16T15:38:00.017-04:002013-05-28T20:54:34.123-04:00The Enemy Above<!--StartFragment--> <br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ya Mutha Nature</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That’s it. I’ve joined the Dark Side. I have had it, and I don’t mean with all the acquaintances of ours who decided Deb and I had sailed around the world to experience the embracing serenity of Mother Ocean. What we did was cruise the well-worn thoroughfare that is the Intracoastal Waterway, the liquid version of I-95, on a quest for warmer weather and cheaper beer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No, I’m talking about all this wondrous natural life about us. If you want to check it out, it’s all there in high definition on the Discovery Channel, and if you keep your butt comfortably planted in front of the plasma screen you’ll be less likely to get it bit by one of the network stars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Many of the villains are obvious ones. I despise mosquitoes, and I’d be willing to bring down the entire global ecosystem to annihilate every last one of them, by any means. I don’t care if the creature's life cycle is somehow inextricably linked to that of the cuddly Panda. Ling Ling can go take a flying leap onto a sharpened bamboo stick. I say bring back DDT, and hose down the planet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The above goes double for no-see-ums, which you can damn well see just fine as they swarm in on an evening backlit by the setting sun, converging on Paradise to act out a chapter from the Old Testament. And below the waterline lies the demonic barnacle, which species has left me with permanent scars on my arms, new testament to the fact that guys who clean boat bottoms aren’t charging near enough for their work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But these are just the obvious enemies. Far more insidious are the ones we greet with open affection. Indeed, we have protected these menaces with the strong arm of the Constitution, and built them homes to atone for their aggrieved status.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’m talking about the osprey. This “noble” raptor, this poster pet for man’s eco-transgressions. This shitting machine, whose limp-wristed soprano whistle proclaims <i>Hey! Hey! Look out below!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After years of living and letting live, one of these SOB’s has decided that our port spreader is his personal cafeteria, and he (maybe she; don’t know and don’t care) has been dismantling menhaden carcasses with disturbing alacrity from up there, drizzling gutted leftovers and then projectile defecating on our sail cover, dodger and deck below. You think it’s funny? Give me your home address. I gotta take a leak.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This creature, often called a fish hawk because it looks like a hawk and shits fish, is apparently washing its meals down with crazy glue, because it takes industrial solvents and a pressure washer to completely remove its festering offal, once the excrement has cured in the sun for a while. This is not a tidy process. No napkin is used, and there is waste aplenty. The osprey appears not to have yet come onboard with mankind's conservation obsession.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">There is an industry out there catering to my problem, and I’m about to try out a system that would impale any bird attempting to alight on the booby-trapped perch. No, not really, <i>Mother Teresa</i>. The manufacturer claims the device is completely harmless to avian types. Ask me if I care. In a harbor full of suitable targets, this guy has chosen me alone to torment. Oh yeah. It’s one, maybe two birds, it’s personal, and if one of you out there has the gall to attempt to convince me that osprey play some crucial role in the natural management of bunker populations, seriously, I will crap on your car.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFgjoTBiBc9ARIQS3LRpqKUqEkAC-9w_gOFTAXwYuXoTFb24rlinVAQkrSgZAzpmizmMNu7rVFe8loyMSmy0hezJeoK6EJGhAg9DzdVmp-t3m1KYCdOoRYhpNIxLQjcYn1a_JKIA-Z2C0/s1600-h/P7160215_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382153637141691170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNFgjoTBiBc9ARIQS3LRpqKUqEkAC-9w_gOFTAXwYuXoTFb24rlinVAQkrSgZAzpmizmMNu7rVFe8loyMSmy0hezJeoK6EJGhAg9DzdVmp-t3m1KYCdOoRYhpNIxLQjcYn1a_JKIA-Z2C0/s320/P7160215_2.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 210px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><i></i></span><br />
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<i>These are not osprey, but they suck too.</i></div>
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Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-1410136809154816042009-09-03T17:08:00.001-04:002014-07-30T15:07:25.576-04:00An Environmental Book Review<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsH409lS0rSERB8DpGVvN5nmkt8JQR8ADAShv2lbVqsCiQlnsLeC_97R1f3bf8cfOxrsyvLODrpR13bzeX7K9sDR7_q2OLeocjLsjtaqpL9Dqw81-b3QJvzA1ULLnQifE_znsKj1FwUP2o/s1600-h/IMG_0379_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsH409lS0rSERB8DpGVvN5nmkt8JQR8ADAShv2lbVqsCiQlnsLeC_97R1f3bf8cfOxrsyvLODrpR13bzeX7K9sDR7_q2OLeocjLsjtaqpL9Dqw81-b3QJvzA1ULLnQifE_znsKj1FwUP2o/s400/IMG_0379_2.JPG" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388490224068682946" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="367" /></span></a><br />
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<i>The Apocalypse Cometh</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here’s a joke for you: What do you call a book that takes up half the shelf space in your den, and is still smoking from the reader’s last attempt to wade through it while seated too close to the fireplace?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hot, Flat, and Crowded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At ten thousand pages, give or take, or in my case seventeen petrochemically produced CDs, Thomas Friedman has created a carbon footprint capable of sapping the entirety of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. Deb spent seventy bucks on the bored driver’s version, and I want her money back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> It isn’t that I doubt the veracity of this widely respected journalist’s research. In fact I believe all of it, as much of it as I’ve managed to wade through at least, and therein smolders the problem. In Friedman’s Herculean effort to unearth every last scientific fact on the perilous state of our planet, his argument has overlooked the most important one: the attention span of the reading public. Further, in an earnest attempt to convince us of the immensity of our predicament, he has grossly overestimated our capacity to comprehend scales based on the infinitesimal. This is why Americans have collectively shed more tears over the unplugging of one human vegetable than we have for all the souls nuked at Nagasaki. We’re kind of fickle that way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Friedman would have done the world a favor to instead publish a booklet entitled <i>We’re So Screwed! </i>At the very least he would’ve spared the chunk of rainforest he has denuded with his present book. Here would be the outline:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Page 1…. We’re So Screwed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Page 2 … Here’s Why We’re So Screwed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Paged 3… And I Mean Really, Really Screwed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Page 4… I Told You We Were Screwed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Page 5… Have A Nice Day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Shock and awe do not empower; they paralyze. When I make the token effort to pick up after some slob in my neighborhood, I’m not kidding myself. What does one gum wrapper actually mean in the giant scheme of things? But the underlying principle causes us to forge on, with the hope that the snowball has a chance of one day leveling the ski chalet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But not anymore. A snowball doesn’t have a chance in the torched underworld Mr. Friedman has so compellingly mapped out. His statistics prove conclusively that I am what the enemies of conscientious conservatorship would label me: an idiot tree-hugger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don’t know if Friedman believes he is waking the world up with his clinical compulsion to hammer home the breadth of the problem, or if he’s simply hawking wood pulp. Around halfway through the tome, which is where I met my dead end, he refers to an analysis made by a pair of scientists who’ve created a pie chart composed of carbon-related “wedge” issues threatening the planet. It all starts out fun (who doesn’t like pie?) and then heads for the leach field. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of the fifteen wedges listed, we are asked to pick our own “easy eight” to enact were we to desire to save our world. But before we are able to sink our teeth into the challenge, we are told it would take a miracle to enact just one. A miracle? What kind of miracle? A hopeful miracle, or the kind of miracle that only happens on moronic TV shows and in our own childish reverie? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While we are pondering our odds at success, he claims it would be “the miracle of miracles” to make only eight of the fifteen wedge solutions happen. And they must be enacted immediately. If we delay, the task will soon be impossible. Impossible? How impossible? Like winning the Lotto jackpot impossible?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mr. Friedman’s impossibly urgent message reminds me of another human conundrum that hasn’t gone away. The issue of compassionate euthanasia was for a time championed by a well-meaning physician who came off looking like a nut job. The fellow’s name was Jack Kevorkian, and his public persona undermined his cause. It’s more than a shame when a legitimate message is spoiled by the delivery. Thanks for the sermon, Mr. Messiah. Now leave me to my own personal soap opera. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Friedman should have saved seventy-two point four per cent of his stats for an appendix, or the Apocalypse, whichever came first. I’d give the Apocalypse even odds. In fact, I think an apocalypse is the solution. It’s been a long observed characteristic of humans that we subscribe to the “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” policy of problem solving. The poop has to pile up on the porch so high that it’s oozing through the screen door. That’s when folks break out the pooper-scoopers in earnest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We aren’t there yet, so maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to continue to squander what we have in order to jump-start the recovery. Let’s face it: an entire political party and its voting followers don’t believe any of this Goremania. They need to swim through the stuff on the way to their Hummers for it to register.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our boat trip introduced us to just such apocalyptic conditions, as boats do by their nature. On a thirty-four foot sailing vessel, if you adhere to Coast Guard rules and regulations, you are living amid the filth you create. Flush that toilet, and you’re filling a very small plastic reservoir strategically located right underneath your sleeping quarters. That’s what I said. So there, I got a boat reference in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Back on land, I intend one day to pull out CD #17, just to see if Friedman has saved a <i>deus ex machina</i> for us there. With the other sixteen I plan on assembling a shiny mobile for the next arriving infant selfishly spawned by irresponsible friends. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe I haven’t given up all hope yet.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-50716707230130825062009-08-11T09:58:00.034-04:002013-05-28T21:01:26.469-04:00Maine, Ho!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimAE5Y5emd3_5l35Gn6RY5JJdNpibjx8zPz52YnAp8xMf58nrp4DvhNQT6SWJnaEyR2ripcdweXxyxnX76zW5eBMHU58CeZByAaQBRVDiRLPboqTKi0cEPhrMfT_PMXHxmjnN2h0UKK_gp/s1600-h/P7060136.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368706966505277698" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimAE5Y5emd3_5l35Gn6RY5JJdNpibjx8zPz52YnAp8xMf58nrp4DvhNQT6SWJnaEyR2ripcdweXxyxnX76zW5eBMHU58CeZByAaQBRVDiRLPboqTKi0cEPhrMfT_PMXHxmjnN2h0UKK_gp/s400/P7060136.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<i>Lookit! I'm sailing</i>!</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">For those of you who read my last post, we've found the perfect alternative to getting one's hands greasy unless it's with melted butter. We treated ourselves to a week aboard the Schooner <i>Stephen Taber</i>, one of the historic vessels comprising Maine's renowned Windjammer fleet. It was a fabulous trip, and to prove it I attach photos and my own personal log. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A hearty hail<i> </i>goes out to the accomplished crew of this fine vessel, which you can learn much more about on their site: http://www.stephentaber.com/index.html</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One other thing: Captain Noah Barnes's wife Jane is a legitimate somalier, thus the theme of the cruise we signed up for (it was Deb's idea), and my log entries, which are a great discredit to her thoughtful selections, as well as the marvelous fare prepared by ship's cook Cara Lauzon and her assistant Brooke Payne.</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> Passenger's Log</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">of the July 2009 Wine and Chocolate Voyage</span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">aboard the Schooner <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Stephen Taber</span></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">(Scribe’s Note: Dates, times, details, etc, are subject to inaccuracies because, well, you know, wine was served)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Sunday, July 5<sup>th<o:p></o:p></sup></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(All points to Rockland Harbor, Maine)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">All Day: Various strangers make their way to Rockland’s harbor and wedge enough gear into the bowels of the <i>Stephen Taber</i> to lay siege to a small nation. Except for wool socks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCQhNYtr9fR-yq5XbROkBSmJ1wl4MlKljSabPfVt2T8aDw2y1gIsoDldIgY2oY1aiSeAHfVUoxlW3aBbjIzsBEcRWt6Wo_IrD015kKinPB58yyD-FbOilipXT8XAQ9asl9gCTd3Wof1qV/s1600-h/P7110684.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369048675841205074" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMCQhNYtr9fR-yq5XbROkBSmJ1wl4MlKljSabPfVt2T8aDw2y1gIsoDldIgY2oY1aiSeAHfVUoxlW3aBbjIzsBEcRWt6Wo_IrD015kKinPB58yyD-FbOilipXT8XAQ9asl9gCTd3Wof1qV/s400/P7110684.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<i>Welcome Aboard!</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">1800: Captain’s Meeting. Captain Noah Barnes lays down the law, mixing general information with cautionary notes, obscure nautical terms, and threats of occasional crew irascibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Strangers disperse to various eateries in town to digest message and whatever else they might find in the way of seafood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Back at the ship, passenger Holly memorizes everyone’s name in one shot.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Two teachers and an ex-principal are fingered among the passengers (Holly being one of them). Future homework assignments are feared.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">People who are no longer strangers tuck themselves into their quarters for the night, and give up all their secrets to the megaphone-like walls of the <i>Stephen Taber.</i><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Monday, July 6<sup>th</sup><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(Rockland Harbor to Isle au Haut)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">0600: Smell of coffee mixes with odor of low tide. It’s a good thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">0800: Cara (<i>ship's cook; </i>a treasonable understatment) summons omnivores with first of many bells.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">(Scribe’s Note: That’s it for the nautical time BS)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Breakfast</b>: Blueberry pancakes, sausage links and fresh fruit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers make multiple trips to Rite Aid and liquor store for vital supplies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers wash hair on dock. We won't smell this good again for a while.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers skip rope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Captain returns from somewhere, and after sending <i>J&E Riggins </i>on her way, the <i>Stephen Taber</i> exits harbor in hot pursuit (if “hot pursuit” can be likened to the urgency of a four year old on a tricycle).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Lunch</b>: Beef stew, and other good stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Mystery ship <i>Raw Faith </i>is pointed out. Captain Noah, clearly irked by its presence in the harbor, saves that story for later. <i>(Scribe’s Note: For a good time, Google “Raw Faith”)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers get first taste of Maine Windjammer sailing.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQFTWcWe12gj1WmzlSd1kvd5bFrB6QMAFrDTtA97tW6hvjgk-Aucf8QnZIHA5pwZ8ts0LKYUG4C8uUlpClt-Yzz8lwvlk6Zn0V0cyzm19_iMveOHxUnjybgM-0SVHH6lqSLJnAOViNywA9/s1600-h/P7060155.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368706821378288850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQFTWcWe12gj1WmzlSd1kvd5bFrB6QMAFrDTtA97tW6hvjgk-Aucf8QnZIHA5pwZ8ts0LKYUG4C8uUlpClt-Yzz8lwvlk6Zn0V0cyzm19_iMveOHxUnjybgM-0SVHH6lqSLJnAOViNywA9/s400/P7060155.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<i>Rush Hour off the coast of Main</i><i>e</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Stephen Taber</i> reaches first anchorage off Isle au Haut (pronounced something like the last stanza from “Old MacDonald”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Dinner: </b>Stew, maybe?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Jane’s Wine Selection: (Scribe’s note. I have no palate, and have misplaced the published data sheets, yet I shall forge on): </i></b>Subtle, yet erudite. Hints of mollusk.<b><i> <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Sunset is saluted with firing of cannon.<b><i> </i></b><i>Jumpin’ Giminee! Fire in the hole!</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Apple to Apple</i> is played.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Captain remarks that if he had a nickel for every butt that poked into his cabin…(rest of message is lost in the wind).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers retire for night. Two passengers attempt to sleep on deck. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Crew continues duties with no apparent need for rest, ever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Tuesday, July 7<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(Isle au Haut to Smith Cove, near Castine)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Break of dawn: Attempt by two passengers to sleep on deck is deemed a strategic failure. Smell of coffee ameliorates assessment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Breakfast: </b>Scrambled eggs, and much more.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Recon missions to island (pronounceable only through a mouthful of grapes) are launched via sail (S/V <i>Plain Jane</i>) and motorized vessel (M/V <i>Babe</i>). Target sites include church, lighthouse, and latrine at ranger station.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Weather deteriorates. Passengers come to realize how poorly prepared they are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In a spiffy maneuver, the <i>Stephen Taber</i> sails off its anchor, bound for Castine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Lunch: </b>Greek spinach pastry wedges, hummus with pita chips and snap peas. Green salad, freshly baked rolls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers volunteer for galley duty, as it is warmest part of ship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Stephen Taber </i>ghosts through Castine Harbor on way to Smith Cove. Passengers stare longingly at land-based accommodations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Anchor is set, Canvas awning expertly deployed, and lovely lanterns hung. We don’t need no stinking B&B’s.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Dinner: </b>Homemade lasagna, first mate Super Dave’s favorite. His saliva on deck creates a slipping hazard. Where’s Will and his omnipresent mop?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Jane’s Wine Selection: </i></b>Delicious! Particularly the one with the interesting label. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The following comment is heard below decks by an undisclosed source, “I can’t believe I’m taking a vacation in July and I have three wool blankets on top of me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Wednesday, July 8<sup>th</sup><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(Smith Cove to Buck’s Harbor, via day trip to Castine)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Weather continues to remain damp and cold, as per captain’s prognostication. Spirits are girded by rosier outlook for the days ahead, and further bolstered by the first of two scheduled on-deck shower days. We are humans again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Breakfast: </b>Something nice and stick-to-one’s-ribbish.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Stephen Taber</i> ties up at Castine Town Dock. Passengers de-board for a wet slog around town.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Lunch: </b>A hale and hearty soup, as I recall. Probably freshly baked bread too. Scribe smells a Food Network special for Cara and Brooke (Cara's assistant).<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Word gets out that seaman first class Alison has a male friend who is a crewman aboard the <i>Victory Chimes</i>. This rapidly devolves into the planning of a wedding ceremony by passengers with nothing better to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Stephen Taber</i> anchors in Buck’s Harbor, within small cannon range of the <i>Victory Chimes.</i> All hearts are aflutter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A search party attempts to conscript aforementioned male crewman aboard <i>Plain Jane. </i>The valiant effort is thwarted by an enemy with no sense of whimsy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Holly takes sheers to Super Dave’s head. He cleans up quite nicely. Might there be any female crewmen aboard the <i>Victory Chimes</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Someone notices that Brooke is pretty as a peach. What the hell is in this water, anyway? It is recalled that casks were once the property of Jack Daniels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Dinner: </b>All the scribe remembers is he spills oil and vinegar dressing on what are probably passenger Evan’s only pair of warm pants. Scribe considers completing vacation aboard the <i>Victory Chimes</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Jane’s Wine Selection: </i></b>Bold and haughty, with an end note of oil and vinegar.<b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Young able seaman Will, who has been gleefully fouled by all manner of grease, muck, flotsam and jetsam for the past several days, is finally undone by a dab of fine chocolate in his hair. He runs maniacally about the deck, then shoves his head into a bucket of seawater.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">All aboard are entertained by the musical talents of Captain Noah Barnes on lead guitar and vocals, First Mate Super Dave Clemens on Steel Guiter, and Ship’s Cook Cara Lauzon on violin, or fiddle, if you prefer.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIijszvVjuZkxq25UDq9MRWly-sViKVdVAFQAW0X6hisgA6Qyq9pQLTEwVfZzo4ICztZujU-Q8OZC9w6cz4-i2D_GPnBu3FXlwMYKaDSdjPuXPXLdYu77i8DAsd85iCqdre_ljxWMN7mzg/s1600-h/P7080389.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369056441749302818" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIijszvVjuZkxq25UDq9MRWly-sViKVdVAFQAW0X6hisgA6Qyq9pQLTEwVfZzo4ICztZujU-Q8OZC9w6cz4-i2D_GPnBu3FXlwMYKaDSdjPuXPXLdYu77i8DAsd85iCqdre_ljxWMN7mzg/s320/P7080389.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Captain and cook serve up something together</i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Thursday, July 9<sup>th<o:p></o:p></sup></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(Buck’s Harbor to unknown island near Stonington, by way of Wreck Island)<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The weather has broken. The harbor is beautiful. Boats are gorgeous. Alison is still single.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Breakfast: </b>Huevos Rancheros, I think.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Crew continues to encourage group participation for duties the crew are perfectly capable of performing all by themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers hypothesize that Cara is in fact an identical triplet, having been reportedly spotted stoking the galley stove, manning a jib sheet, and commandeering the yawl boat all at the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Initial bull seal sighting is revised to that of a floating log.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Young Will heads aloft to lower the topmast for a close pass under Deer Isle Bridge. Booyah, Will!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvXkWBeCjkBc1J9sdbCckOGSIO9oAJjtC1wLT7YUkaR9QwnKoDR2AzPl08d3J6LZ3vD8jmC0-Z8yo4ka6yn-SZE0-43zkn81kgLMCko-qtwaOZh30eGDdHB58vDvLpfeBJHWkmkTVpM-7/s1600-h/P7090475.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368706632429356706" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuvXkWBeCjkBc1J9sdbCckOGSIO9oAJjtC1wLT7YUkaR9QwnKoDR2AzPl08d3J6LZ3vD8jmC0-Z8yo4ka6yn-SZE0-43zkn81kgLMCko-qtwaOZh30eGDdHB58vDvLpfeBJHWkmkTVpM-7/s320/P7090475.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></span></div>
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<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Shore Leave</i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">All are put ashore at Wreck Island in preparation for crustacean feeding frenzy.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Alison models wedding gown designed and fabricated by Cara and Brooke from recycled petroleum products. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers collect seaweed and lobster-demolishing utensils along shore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers hike to elevated fern grove to walk off expected caloric intake. Nan conquers the high plateau overlooking all of Maine. Dennis plants his ass on an unseen, slippery rock.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Lunch</b>: More lobsters than should be allowable by federal law are consumed. Butter flows freely. No bibs are worn. Next, for heaven’s sake, come the Smores<i>. (Note to captain: Forgo purchase of new anchor chain, and instead look into the acquisition of a defibrillator.)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTN1zu6UUGcjIUNJoeWb5LZOXC0KziaAla4O3jd19oSAo4WEW1rndu_ozjKtRUs-gLGRcwfzzi6pzrkz7-yBsMelMH3QCGOsKGK829AkDk3HiAHQtMhGbbU98FCeUNfiS-lXWcWR_tZoBa/s1600-h/P7090507.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368706518864124386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTN1zu6UUGcjIUNJoeWb5LZOXC0KziaAla4O3jd19oSAo4WEW1rndu_ozjKtRUs-gLGRcwfzzi6pzrkz7-yBsMelMH3QCGOsKGK829AkDk3HiAHQtMhGbbU98FCeUNfiS-lXWcWR_tZoBa/s320/P7090507.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Anyone for thirds?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Stephen Taber</i> leaves Wreck Island, having left only footprints and a devastated arthropod population.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Wind is sprightly. Captain is content. Fred contemplates rigging a trapeze to increase ship speed in heavy air.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After several aborted island approaches (during which attempts captain is heard disparaging the invention of GPS), a suitably uninhabited anchorage is spotted near Stonington.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Dinner: </b>Somebody help me here.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Jane’s Wine Selection: </i></b>Seductive, yet coy. A briny nose mated with a full stern.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Cara creates plastic stemware sunset art. Check this out, Cara: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8602472107022912201<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Friday, July 10<sup>th<o:p></o:p></sup></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(Unknown island near Stonington to Pulpit Harbor)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Second and final communal shower is taken. This risky procedure is again performed without loss of life or limb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Anchor is weighed, sails are raised. Super Dave once again shows why he’s Super Dave. Two-six, six-two, whatever, heave-ho, make it burn, blah blah. Wondering what Jane’s wine selection will be like this evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Breakfast: </b>I can’t remember, but I’m sure I had seconds.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Crew, unsatisfied with grueling workout on deck, perform masochistic health club reps in full view of passengers, in order to shame us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Young Will announces for thousandth time on trip that somebody is standing in a bad place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Several passengers suffer nervous breakdowns trying to keep Alison in sharp focus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Landing parties beach at Stonington Harbor. Passengers storm the well-fortified flea market at top of hill. No prisoners are taken, but all manner of gewgaws are plundered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Certain passengers wait for a taste from the slowest lobster roll vender in Maine. Expecting to be admonished by the captain for holding up ship’s progress, the passengers are instead dressed down for treasonous conduct toward Cara and Brooke. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Lunch: </b>ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS, as per usual.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Debster (not my wife, though it certainly could have been) suffers undisclosed emotional trauma while visiting the head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Captain and crew navigate tight entrance to Pulpit Harbor under full sail, then proceed to show off for an hour or so, maneuvering a giant schooner about as if it were a small racing dinghy as they weave through tight mooring field.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The good ship <i>Heritage</i> shows up, providing an anchor for all. Crews of <i>Stephen Taber</i> and <i>Heritage</i> affect a raft-up that would make NASA space crew gnash their teeth in envy.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhysKfFHD0qfSKZg8NT5LwLPsuL7v5m_4mxrB_2m9h8Fa6MJPBHDx75JALdPi_6ab65kk2DN39LvHb_dk-poFV58vnlENJ__Df4tFj36QCbocU5_qoixLSOYZ43NgUXc_lN-qJndUs9gLGT/s1600-h/P7100620.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369050029159934914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhysKfFHD0qfSKZg8NT5LwLPsuL7v5m_4mxrB_2m9h8Fa6MJPBHDx75JALdPi_6ab65kk2DN39LvHb_dk-poFV58vnlENJ__Df4tFj36QCbocU5_qoixLSOYZ43NgUXc_lN-qJndUs9gLGT/s400/P7100620.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Hardest working crew on the Eastern Seaboard</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We share the harbor with, among others, the <i>Victory Chimes. Hmmm…</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Excessive fun is had by all. Crew let’s hair down. Alison is nowhere to be seen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Dinner: </b>Fabulous antipasti platter, rolled beef with red pepper and basil, string beans. (Obviously scribe’s mate has now become involved in log.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Jane’s Wine Selection: </i></b>Gave me a headache the next morning. Must remember to share in future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Saturday, July 11<sup>th<o:p></o:p></sup></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">(Pulpit Harbor To Rockland)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passenger John emerges from cabin for sixth straight day perfectly quaffed. All aboard continue to be amazed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Breakfast: </b>French toast and bacon; my favorite things. However, wine from previous evening puts serious damper on morning appetite.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Super Dave, having tired of his duties as First Mate, turns to retail on afterdeck. Credit cards are swamped from heavy sea duty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Tensions flare as end of trip is neared. Fisticuffs are narrowly averted due to cowardice on behalf of combatants. I’ll just say this: Fred started it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Barnes family is reunited at the dock, where sexiest kiss since Grace Kelly planted one on Jimmy Stewart in <i>Rear Window</i> is witnessed between Captain Noah and Jane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Boxed wine resembling over-filled catheter bag is surreptitiously left on board for whomever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Passengers of the July 6<sup>th</sup> Voyage gather their belongings and sea legs, and head for home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But not before several ex-passengers have one more lobster roll, the king club sandwich that threw down Bobby Flay at the <i>Brass Compass</i>. Watch for that show in September. In your face, Bobby!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Sunday, July 12<sup>th</sup><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I can’t remember.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Monday, July13th<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Crew of Stephen Taber gets up at crack of dawn and starts the whole process over again with another bunch of clueless landlubbers</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXwUoCOpaSx8PAhzvL4PVtzDrPqKE0evo0tOErWqY8O-d0qSCRspba88znz9OmIE2ENAbgLvG_d1nXIokq1s5Qpx8NFBdQAVWaHGayioif2HLcXsmRapnDucS6kMaoUBaJcMj-3nKtVkVH/s1600-h/IMG_0463_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a></span><br />
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXwUoCOpaSx8PAhzvL4PVtzDrPqKE0evo0tOErWqY8O-d0qSCRspba88znz9OmIE2ENAbgLvG_d1nXIokq1s5Qpx8NFBdQAVWaHGayioif2HLcXsmRapnDucS6kMaoUBaJcMj-3nKtVkVH/s1600-h/IMG_0463_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="446" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368735697998556754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXwUoCOpaSx8PAhzvL4PVtzDrPqKE0evo0tOErWqY8O-d0qSCRspba88znz9OmIE2ENAbgLvG_d1nXIokq1s5Qpx8NFBdQAVWaHGayioif2HLcXsmRapnDucS6kMaoUBaJcMj-3nKtVkVH/s640/IMG_0463_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: left;" width="640" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Fair Winds!</span></i></div>
</div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-24576096623142841172009-08-10T19:04:00.023-04:002013-05-28T21:02:42.786-04:00Pretending To Be Sailors<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUY9dE4oTLSX9m2toPhNKATcN1Hvokw2-heOyH0034uL6vzfTa9nN_9nb8TAHX58dzXD2sBVON_xJ2gEKfa8NGKUF10QsrWZNm3RP0VHzmoZmuMCbwgskcb-ZL2f6ayfTv0c68v_QPjeiI/s1600-h/100_2778.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368693395911208290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUY9dE4oTLSX9m2toPhNKATcN1Hvokw2-heOyH0034uL6vzfTa9nN_9nb8TAHX58dzXD2sBVON_xJ2gEKfa8NGKUF10QsrWZNm3RP0VHzmoZmuMCbwgskcb-ZL2f6ayfTv0c68v_QPjeiI/s400/100_2778.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Laura Lynn</span>, being left alone. Lovely, no?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Deb and I have a lovely sailboat. We really do. And occasionally we motor her out onto the Long Island Sound to prove to our audience (there is always an audience) and ourselves that we really are sailors. If that sounds a little paranoid, it’s because you don’t own a sailboat yet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">These cloth-driven gizmos are a handful. It takes some coordination just to get onto the things without the need for a 911 call, and I happen to be losing my youthful coordination faster than I’m losing hair on my topsides. A stubbed toe is practically mandatory, and at this point I’d rather stub an entire leg, which Deb has done (see photo), than fall off the boat trying to board if someone is watching. But that’s the testosterone talking. There is no better entertainment on the water than watching somebody else pretending to have mastered the art of sailing while I’m catching some rays at the mooring. I may look like I’m relaxing, but the <i>binocs</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> are always standing by.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368695757978171954" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2tFYOPnyyhH09tgCeKSV3eyuuT9h0Zbgg8lk3fUmcFTKiX7W_uRNScdL84gM-SMs9V4NFGu8jcJtQuwUEEnCJkZyY3zzbk47_cbUTCSUL0lb5iPZni2kd1aXOPzFHYBTDeBfFhl2m8n_U/s320/DSCF0001_4_2_2_2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 264px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 240px;" /><br />
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<i>N</i><i>ot quite so lovely</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’ve seen men who have most certainly crushed the empires of fellow titans of industry, stumbling around on their knobby old knees, lunging like special ed students (I’m old enough to get to use the reference) for their pick-up sticks. I’ve listened to trophy wives cut these captains down to size when the gals have finally had it <b><i>UP TO HERE</i></b><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"> with the Captain Bligh routine. Sailboats will reduce your average Ghengis Khan to a simpering Mr. Rogers in a matter of moments, given the right wind conditions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368693203427775490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjap3NHuSr7FZnWCWEUmjCqYdNiY_XWMZ0au1W3w7CYI8dGot_gF9BQTsrpIDdg6_-8cX1Isvls0WbG9vkI0hBuIHiZpkNwD05NXbUJ_rIOV1X-jlOO0IZg-o4WrKLWgdq1-qSaulIOuUQB/s400/DSCF0014_2_2_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: left;" width="400" /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Listen, I'm trying to relax here!</i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The thing about trying to sail is there is so much to do before you’re actually sailing, and so many things that can prevent you from psyching yourself into doing those things, that the far more expedient course of action is to load up two large glasses of chardonnay and walk down to the dock to admire your boat’s lines from shore. It’s a major accomplishment just to launch the dinghy in order to enjoy said vintage from your own cockpit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then there’s the engine and sail prep. Jesus H., whatever happened to <i>place key in ignition, twist and go</i><span style="font-style: normal;">? Here’s what happened, Mario. You left that scenario far away on land. But you can still smell it, can’t you? Over the reek of low tide and bilge rot.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">No, a whole other set of circumstances comes into play out there on the water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now you check the oil (when was the last time you checked the oil on the Chevy?) and the belt tension (both of them), and the fuel filter (for sediment and water) and the coolant level. And your lovely wife, who doesn’t know 10W-40 from extra virgin on land, makes sure you didn’t leave a step out. <i>She’s</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the one who remembers things now. </span><i>Did you</i><i> open the engine seacock, Ahab?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Then, even though on land you’re a rational creature, you cross your fingers in earnest because you need all the help you can get. Because presently you could blow up and sink, or hit something hard and sink, or have a system failure and sink, or just sink right there where you are for no apparent reason, snifter in hand, in seas shallow enough that the salvage costs might just be manageable, given the proper insurance policy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s your call.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z8Lwd3OCyB4UysBZZKWm8734ZQMvPviS3u11D5dNoZGMBJpmKj1QETKtL3SApMJt-l8rh-m6moPoW3ncZUbYnM2uc_EbCyw5Ek6s_v2JgK9KqDlhYZsCReC46Z0taEnMpsfO8bTxo3UE/s1600-h/DSCF0047_3_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a></span><br />
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z8Lwd3OCyB4UysBZZKWm8734ZQMvPviS3u11D5dNoZGMBJpmKj1QETKtL3SApMJt-l8rh-m6moPoW3ncZUbYnM2uc_EbCyw5Ek6s_v2JgK9KqDlhYZsCReC46Z0taEnMpsfO8bTxo3UE/s1600-h/DSCF0047_3_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="364" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368693049401882610" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z8Lwd3OCyB4UysBZZKWm8734ZQMvPviS3u11D5dNoZGMBJpmKj1QETKtL3SApMJt-l8rh-m6moPoW3ncZUbYnM2uc_EbCyw5Ek6s_v2JgK9KqDlhYZsCReC46Z0taEnMpsfO8bTxo3UE/s400/DSCF0047_3_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: left;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Maybe we should just let her b</i>e.</div>
</div>
Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-60315716740581076752009-05-04T13:18:00.009-04:002013-05-28T21:04:03.309-04:00Flying The Colors<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvF96OUq2mgK_CllsSC-WxCAmAcwn4HGVFlkh1kEGDEDWguGXwh-Axc8zVXT_DrGerSdbakYatko5d0tmYIWDBAhDfPVuvW60OCKi6tQxYvidhIgBE5r6vRg54g9ehuesI3QhNS-f60ip/s1600-h/100_2693_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="272" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332024357068713458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvF96OUq2mgK_CllsSC-WxCAmAcwn4HGVFlkh1kEGDEDWguGXwh-Axc8zVXT_DrGerSdbakYatko5d0tmYIWDBAhDfPVuvW60OCKi6tQxYvidhIgBE5r6vRg54g9ehuesI3QhNS-f60ip/s400/100_2693_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">What is wrong with this picture?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-outline-level: 1; tab-stops: 132.0pt center 3.0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Succumbing last season to a lapse in judgment, my wife and I attended our town’s annual Harborfest celebration. It is a traditional cluster of over-baked humanity, out on a pre-summer weekend to test parenting skills, purchase mass-produced driftwood gewgaws, and consume deep-fried food before retiring home to the medicine cabinet to commence aloe vera treatments. Variations of this kind of celebration are set off at specified intervals across the country to prevent the citizenry from lapsing into complacency. There is nothing so charming as a mandate from the town elders to initiate a little traffic mayhem.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
There was much to take in, some of it pleasant if one ignored the bay, which was sporting a red tide rivaling the silky luminescence of Pam Anderson’s Baywatch wardrobe. There was even a celebrity sighting. Rocky Balboa’s brother-in-law, a fixture in our community, was spotted heading for the dinghy dock with a bag of live goldfish. I have no idea what booth had offered them up for sale (The Society of Impulse Pet Owners?), or what he was planning to do with them, but setting some aquatic thing free seemed like a dubious plan for anything other than anaerobic bacteria that day.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Searching for intrigue, I found myself drawn to the town dock flagstaff. It was adorned with all manner of festive flaggery, and while I’m not a slave to formality, I knew something was slightly amiss. Always game to ask a stupid question, I headed off to locate some knowledgeable official, queries in tow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The fully decked-out nautical flagstaff is a curious beast, comprised of a main pole, or mast, the top of which is called the masthead, or truck. It often sports a single crosstree, the two ends sometimes referred to as yards, which no doubt intentionally resemble a set of spreaders on a sailboat. They are identified as left and right from the perspective of a landlubber gazing wistfully out to sea. Finally, a gaff rises diagonally up and out, in a landward direction from the mast, starting at or just below where the crosstree makes its transit of the mast. The outermost end of the gaff, called its peak, never rises as high as the truck, and therein lies something of a rub.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">At the town dock, what I saw was the American flag flying proudly from the truck. Hung from the right yard was our town flag, and from the left, the tragically anachronistic POW/MIA flag. Strung from the peak of the gaff to the halyard cleat near the base of the pole was a set of colorful markers featuring some of the international maritime signal flags, which I knew to represent letters of the alphabet, numerals, and other sundry codes. I was keen on decoding any message present.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I spotted a suitably uniformed and authoritative-looking fellow, and started peppering him with questions. I could tell it pained him to have to reveal the fact that everything was pretty much wrong with the presentation. The national ensign should have been hanging from the peak of the gaff, the place of honor in the maritime world. Instead, from the gaff was strung the aforementioned and purely festive, which is to say meaningless, set of signal flags. Colorful gibberish.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">From our vantage point we could see the flagpoles of two of the several yacht clubs inhabiting our bay, those institutions all playing by the rules. Their three-sided burgees were at the truck, and American flags were properly flown at the honored gaff peak, while flags indicating the presence of commodores and other dignitaries at the club hung from the crosstrees. They were having none of our Harborfest nonsense.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It’s a safe bet a yachtsman doesn’t give a Flying Dutchman what a civilian thinks of his maritime traditions. But at the town dock, official tails were flying between legs as a result of complaints leveled by patriot types irate at seeing the Stars and Stripes skulking below the town’s colors. Here, where storm sewers pump effluent into the bay with startling efficiency, the public had made known its real concerns. Travesty! Put Old Glory up on top where she belongs, goll darn it!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Chapman, that ultimate arbiter of all things nautical, points out that no other flag should be placed “directly above” the national ensign, a rule met by flying it from an entirely different perch, the honored gaff position. Yet our constables had folded to popular pressure, too weary to fight the waves of righteous ignorance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As further concession to those attributes that make Americans great, the town also refuses to fly storm flags from the appropriate left yard, wishing to avoid potential lawsuits. You can guess the scenario: some fisherman stoked on a bunker report heads out with a green flag sighting his sole weather advisory. When a summer squall lands him on some North Shore blue blood’s patio, forget the Coast Guard. The first calls go out to attorneys.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<img alt="" border="0" height="323" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332025664681886818" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIro4Np_dkPJ942PtCNA7o56TcPhin8KsSPJ_WzMEMkteScAjQEg_nXPM9Xe5mE-n1BLofRiMI0LfB7g6vTgTEeTxRKS-w3jEgUJ8ok6IZ7TbH5ft1lM5YyxmlMty1djA-bkUcCyHvi9qo/s400/100_2705_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> Wrong</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Instead, the bay constables see fit to fly the POW/MIA flag, a sad reminder of one of our nation’s darker periods. It is a shadowy thing, like a painful memory, evocative of, if anything, the forced confession of a vanquished pirate. You’d think there’d have been at least some resistance to its presence, but then doves are easier to fend off than hawks.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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</div>
<div>
<img alt="" border="0" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332026807147451346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZTmvU7uaZriydLJ4miZWjy2T_ffoshKbGWOj73PpJeQmTGW7rIrGbmzRm7FKK1xbDY-Rspi-Rat2MOXAjP-pwcAN2CE4VpZv714QiWzCm32WjeZ9WAEld7L6SklKKXJjxlEOKWq8DXywQ/s400/100_2710.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="319" /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Right</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I guess it kind of made sense to finish out the pole with a little senseless color. You can buy a festive flag set, a random sample thirty-five or so feet long, for sprucing up the boat or cottage on special occasions. I have to wonder if each purchased set is the same pattern, or if the factory spits out randomly random patterns. In which case I have to wonder if, as one would expect with a roomful of monkeys given enough time and workstations, an interesting message might occasionally turn up. My interest is again peaked, almost enough for me to laminate a code list and start carrying it around in the wallet. Almost.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Author’s Note:</i></span></div>
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A few weeks after the above was written, I was relaxing at my mooring when I noticed a nearby yacht club flying two decorative sets of flags from the truck, each streaming down to anchor points near the ground to form a festive phalanx. With little else to do but continue drinking, I decoded the grouping with a computer printout I’d recently placed aboard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The upshot? Again, the message was gobbledygook, but with a notable twist. One of the strands had been hung upside down. Now, the fact is, the yacht club in question is the youngest and most relaxed on the bay, but isn’t that special? Were that to happen at one of the more staid seaside institutions, it wouldn’t surprise me to later see the perpetrator of such ill decorum hanging from the appropriate yardarm. And I’ll bet you there is one so specified for the job. That transgression is surely worse than trailing a strand of TP from one of your Topsiders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Author Subsequent Note:</i></span></div>
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I’m so wrong. I’ve now seen the same thing done at the stodgy club, which means they’re all hoisting a long set of flags from the middle. Get it? It’s just a big colorful bunch of nonsense. Still, don’t mess with their starting gun.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-42973233019967234422009-04-28T18:03:00.009-04:002010-01-06T18:52:38.409-05:00A Racy Fictional Tale at Water's Edge<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrWLRGSX7dyd2DzddBNb5BXXXuP_oir70Z-JZzz06U1snBd5SHL2vmEdgMJsDU1icp4kDNTjvCX4IMw5euuG7D1iBelT4LWZnR8EQtm9lwv6YW_jesMnSpZ9kOyxoFBPFuYYcH9_0tnHH/s1600-h/100_4264.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 226px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrWLRGSX7dyd2DzddBNb5BXXXuP_oir70Z-JZzz06U1snBd5SHL2vmEdgMJsDU1icp4kDNTjvCX4IMw5euuG7D1iBelT4LWZnR8EQtm9lwv6YW_jesMnSpZ9kOyxoFBPFuYYcH9_0tnHH/s320/100_4264.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329869459214902898" /></a><br /><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A View To A Killing</span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times-Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(A make-believe story with lots of dirty words in it. I'm serious. If you are easily offended by scatology, read no further. Pick one of my real-life posts over down there on the side.)</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times-Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Phil Stark stared past his sand-caked toes at the curling foam on the horizon. Propped on the deck, his vision rhythmically occluded by the Heineken label as it rose to greet him, Stark lounged laboriously on an ancient Adirondack, taxing his elbows, doing his best to hover in space. Discovering momentary comfort, he scanned the coast, checking first his left flank, and the strip of silica commandeered by gay sun worshipers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Like I need this shit.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Next, a survey to the right, and the promising expanse that tended to yield the more favorable view.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"More like it." He always saved this vista for last.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stark occupied a beach house in the buffer zone between the fabulously flamboyant and the bravely blasé. You wouldn't spot suburban families here. Not for long. Not once the kids had asked mommy what kind of bathing suits the funny men were wearing.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Neither would a serious angler be caught rigging his rod in the vicinity. Happily, mused the detective, the only wildlife frequenting this stretch was of the self-confident female variety, seeking a solicitous spot for personal reflection, and the occasional all-over tan. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Detective? Ex-detective was more like it, since he'd taken those thirteen slugs during a bust that had gone terribly wrong in the city. And it’d gone particularly badly for Stark.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">How long ago had it been now? He searched his body for evidence, and his ass gave up a confession with little prodding. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Not long enough ago, man</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, it squealed.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">His backside had taken the brunt of the assault, in a tight pattern that seemed the intentional insult of a gifted triggerman. Let's make it clear here at the outset that the wounds were not the result of our agent having turned tail and run. Not this decorated veteran of the force. The first of the fusillade had caught him as he’d turned to look for his absent back-up, and was followed rapidly by a pinpoint peppering of his posterior. Miraculously, he'd been saved by a rump with a well-traveled rep among beach strollers of the distaff persuasion. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What had gone down that fateful day? Had he been set up? If so, by whom? And if by whom, how come? And if how come, why did it have to be in the ass, and thirteen times already? It had to make a guy wonder all the way to the 7-Eleven for a case of over-the-counter painkiller.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Here then squirmed one of NYPD's finest, on possibly permanent R&R, soaking up the sights, smells, and UV of the Atlantic coastline, courtesy of John Q. Public. Could've been worse. If he hadn't spun around…</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The hot cross buns were on the mend now. The doc, a strange bird with an admittedly odd assignment, seemed competent enough with the needle, or whatever he'd used to rebuild the area. A putty knife and some live spackle, one might reasonably surmise. Once repaired, the patient had been assured his trophy glutes would be reeling them in as usual. A thumbs-up from the attending nurse provided a compelling second opinion. Stark’s professional attention to detail flagged a hottie breathing beneath the surgical mask. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Speaking of reeling them in, just beginning to surface over the line of dune grass to starboard was a keeper, for sure. Stark's body stiffened reflexively. Bad idea. Ouch. But then it hadn't really been an idea in the first place, had it? No, it was more a primal reaction, triggered from some remote recess in his brain, a reaction honed through years of experience on the force. His ass forgave his neo-cortex, or whatever the hell part of the brain it was that made him flinch. What does an ass know from brains, anyhow? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She came gliding over the dunes like a vessel under sail, each control line taut under its assigned load. Triangles of fabric stretched in graceful arcs about her. Her hips seemed designed to ply the sand that yielded to the contours of her feet, and as she approached, her course was corrected away from the shoreline, in the direction of the deck where Stark sat, nursing his inflamed butt. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Brushing away bits of broken shell from his dogs, Stark sucked away whatever spinach dip might still be clinging to his gum line and gave his trunks a hitch to redistribute the newly alerted troops, first impressions being what they are and all.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She paused at the base of the stairway, assuming a stance that was casual yet provocative, with a breath of coy, a waft of demure …and what else was his sniffer picking up? A whiff of dominatrix? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The detective could've imagined the last scent. He wasn't sure. While it’d been his job to read people instantly through their mannerisms, he'd been fooled in the past, on occasion with catastrophic results. Like that one time… and the other time, too. Shit, there’d been a bunch of times, actually.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">He shook the memories from the filing cabinet as a stallion might shake biting insects off its hindquarters with finely tuned muscle control. Maybe not that effectively. Stark focussed on her rack for a second, and that seemed to work.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Maybe it was just a wisp of ennui he'd misread. He made a mental note to look the word up. Anyway, she was put together like an exotic racecar. No, a classic roadster. Definitely not an SUV, which, call him old fashioned, handled too many passengers at one time. He'd figure the make and model after a test drive. At any rate, she looked ready to take on a wet, winding road in any gear you happened to slip into. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Permission to come aboard, captain?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Well I'm no captain, but you certainly have my permission, sweetheart."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I'm no sweetheart, but I'll accept the offer."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As her legs left the beach for the stairs, her gait accommodated, the way a thoroughbred leaves behind the rigors of the racecourse for the pomp of the winner's circle. Only this one you wouldn't want to blanket with roses. No sir. This one you'd keep saddled, and you wouldn't let go of the crop.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She wore a white two-piece, bathing being the last thing on its mind, and a sheer wrap of shimmering white drawn up and tied at the hip. A translucent white sunhat provided soft illumination for the view below. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Her hair was not white. That would have been going overboard. No, the coif was a startling shade of red, yet to be duplicated by the Crayola folks, cinched back in a tightly tethered, yet untamed ponytail. It seemed in the process of spontaneously combusting under heaven's broiler, while her skin had acquiesced to a burnished caramel hue. She looked like a sack of skewered marshmallows on the toasting altar. Okay, never expect an apt simile from a guy preoccupied with a misbehaving woody.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The whole ensemble left little for Stark's imagination, but he let it run wild anyway, like a bolting mustang (the horse, not the car) for the hell of it. What kind of knot was just barely holding that wrap on? It looked awfully, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">professional</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. The kind of knot you’d want to remove and inspect, maybe draw a series of sketches of, and not bother to put back the way you found it.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stark rose to greet her, in the process burying a splinter from the Adirondack deeply into what had recently been a convalescing cheek. He choked back a yelp of pain, staring at the sun for an excuse to tear up.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"It's one I came up with on my own."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Whaa?" he gurgled, wondering if the staples had held.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I saw you admiring my pareo."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Pa-wha?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pa-rrrey'ho</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. It's Spanish. It helps if you roll the tongue. Like this"</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She parted her lips languidly, introduced her tongue to the gap, and gave an inspired impression of Eartha Kit taking Batman to the cleaners.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Yes, I'm…sure it does." Stark bit his tongue, not hard enough to convince himself his backside wasn’t hemorrhaging like a loyal employee’s 401k.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"You're struggling too much. It's no biggie."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I, took French, in school."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I can do French, if you want."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sometimes it’s all in the timing. Stark garbled to the dunes, "This shit stinks, for sure.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Pardonne?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pull it together, Phil. </span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"To what, do I owe this distinct, pleasure?"</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She looked him up and down, and up again. He felt like a runway waif who'd yet to master the art of bulimia, with a package. Was she looking for anything in particular?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I'm looking for a good detective."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Inspector Tush</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> might just need another visit to the emergency room.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span style="Marker Felt"font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Detective? Last I checked, I wasn’t listed in the yellow pages…"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Word travels fast on the water. So how's that fine </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">derriere</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of yours coming along?" She was playing with her R's again.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stark took a gulp of humid air, but it was still too dry for his taste.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Actually, I think I've suffered a relapse." </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Oh? If you'd like, I'll take a look for you. I have some training in that area."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Something in Stark's cerebellum crackled, like tin foil between the molars, but back where the cerebellum is. Where the hell is the cerebellum, anyway? And what's it supposed to do? Maybe the sensation came from someplace else. Again, his ass was of no use to him, hence the name. What was it about this woman?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She seemed awfully</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, familiar.</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Listen, what do you know about me, and how do you figure I can help you?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Well, if you're going to get all formal on me, I know quite a bit about you, but I can't tell you why right now, or it would spoil all the fun. But you </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">can</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> help me, Phil."</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Phil? That was</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> his</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> name. He made a mental note to check his mailbox shingle.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"How, do you suppose</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">?" Phil, dear close friend of your devoted hiney, do you have any butterfly closures in the medicine cabinet? Don't desert the squad, Phil.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I need the private aid of an investigator," she stated as flatly as she could manage, under the circumstances.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Yes, well, as you might know, since you got the scoop on me, I'm not one."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"That's technically true, but you're no longer on the force, at least not actively. And if I know you, you could use a little adventure."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"A little adventure?" </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Like I need another hole to keep my rectum company?</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Sure you do. Something to get you up off that sorry ass of yours and get a little exercise, as it were."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ouch, that stung. Not the assessment from the siren, but the area he'd just probed with a free finger.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Got an itch, detective? I say scratch it."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Listen, this is kind of a bad time…</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I'm certain I can make it worth your while, detective." </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">With that, and barely a distinguishable shiver from her shoulders (one last equine sense memory, and we'll put the pony away now), her top fell to the deck like the forsaken feathers of a wayward gull. Detective Phil Stark now found himself staring at a pair of breasts the size and shape of, uh… a great pair of breasts.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She floated to him on a cushion of desire, reeling on the balls of her feet like the posted guard attempting not to awaken the Unknown Soldier. She reached back over a shoulder to draw him to the crook of her neck.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">He pulled his finger out of his festering new wound, which had sufficiently coagulated so as to mitigate the need for immediate medical attention, and proceeded to heed other voices. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stark managed to pin her hat brim between his nose and her ear for an improved view of the work ahead. She purred in a way that was just, just, intoxicating the way that, well, the way any sound coming from a woman is intoxicating when she's letting you feel her boobs. Hell, she could've been calling a square dance for all he cared. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Grab your partner, don't let go! Kneed her tits … and a…</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">well, you know the drill. Yee-haw.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Always the gentleman when in the vicinity of a potential lay, Stark made sure his calluses didn’t do any soft tissue damage to her, let’s call them milky orbs, while his medulla oblongata or whatever battled the scorching demons tormenting his backside. Some days the demarcation between pain and pleasure makes the Berlin Wall look like a simple demolition job.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She reeled suddenly to face him. Her lids fluttered, her eyes seeking some ecstasy or something far off in the distance. Her head jack-knifed back a bit too abruptly, sending the hat frisbeeing to the beach, and even though she was now kind of eerie looking, Phil Stark prepared to plant his tongue as deeply as possible into whatever orifice she might make available to him. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She fell in a limp heap to the deck.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Like I need this shit," he moaned.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What was going on here? He'd tried to catch her on the way down, but she'd slipped right through his hands. How could that be? He'd been a starting tight end in college, considered by many a real pro prospect before the damn knee injury.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Along with his famed fanny, women had all raved about the hands. Something didn't add up here. Whether he liked it or not, the detective was back on the job. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Searching for clues, he now noticed a moist, lotion-like substance on his palms. Odd. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Very odd.</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Why would a man's hands suddenly be laden with ointment when all he'd done was fondle a woman he'd just met at the beach?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Wait a minute</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Hadn't he heard of a diabolical plot that involved the introduction of a sophisticated poison through epithelial contact? Could this be just such a poison? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If it were so, then he'd be the murderer! Yet he was fairly certain he wasn't the murderer. But what if he were the unwitting accomplice? What if he'd been chosen to kill this poor woman without his own knowledge? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">But how would the killer know the woman was going to let him … mess with her mangos? Okay, okay. What if… this woman were in on the plot herself! But that would mean she was… Was this some kind of bizarre suicide pact? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pact? With whom? It seemed so improbable. And yet the detective had found that sometimes the least likely story ended up being the one that got published. I mean, I mean he meant… oh, you know what we mean, damn you. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">How about</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> this</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> scenario? What if the woman was there to kill him, and… But then he'd be dead on the deck and she'd be….</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Then it hit him like a tsunami sporting ankle weights. A homicide/suicide combo! She’d planned to kill him with the poison, and then die herself! But she </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">hadn't</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> planned on his having such heavily callused hands, made so by strenuous and repeated guy activities, thus delaying the effects of the poison seeping into his own bloodstream. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The poison, having effortlessly worked its way into her blood first, through those sumptuous, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">jugs</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> just doesn't sound like the right word to use at a sensitive time like this. Look at the poor, half-nude girl, there on the deck. Just take a look. Stare for as long as you like. She deserves a more dignified word for her hooters than jugs. What's left? Think, Stark!</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I definitely do not need this shit," he told the sandpipers, or terns, or whatever the fuck they were, screeching like harpies overhead. Sometimes the beach isn't all it's cracked up to be,</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stark was getting woozy at the implications. How much time did he have to come up with an antidote and another word for female mammary glands? Where was it he'd heard about that poison? Think, Stark! Think!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Damn!!!" It hit him like a double semi packed with bowling balls on route to a bricklayer convention. It was that stupid, fucking show, "24". That sophomoric pile of paranoia-laced pap that had an entire nation of imbecile xenophobes in a collective fit of hysteria over terrorist conspiracies popping out of every suburban garbage can. Even Mom was a terrorist. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Your</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> mom, I'm talking about. You, reader. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Your mom</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Kill the bitch, now, before it's too late. We'll wait…</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There was that spook moron, Keiffer Sutherland, poster-boy for super-secret-special spy-cops everywhere, barking, rasping, waterboarding his way through season after season of gratuitous mayhem, wringing every method-mangled moment he could out of a singular look that stretched like the birth canal of a mother of triplets. That incessant, tortured gaze of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">extreme urgency</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Drop to the floor! Do it! NOW! I can't tell you why right now! There's no time! Just do it! I can't tell you anything until a few hours from now, which is to say next month, at which point my cell phone battery will be dead. Do what I say now! What?! Yes, I'm talking to you from my cell phone… Cingular! What? Three bars, okay? But I can't tell you where I am. It's secret, don’t you get it!? Listen to me, if I bothered to stop for a moment to explain everything, the crisis would be over and the show would be called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">2</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> !!!”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jesus! Jacko was going through his minutes faster than a coked-up debutante plotting her coming-out party. Were there an Emmy for Best Supporting Electronic Device in a Mind-Numbing Neocon Series, the phone would have been a shoe-in. But you can bet our fictitious Agent Bauer wouldn’t have survived one episode on the LIRR. Forget terrorists. Commuters would've ripped him limb from limb for all his inane yammering. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Anyway, that was the show with the fancy poison, so in all probability Stark was going to be just fine. Still, there was the issue of the dead chick on his deck. How was he going to explain that to his ex-compadres? Would they ever believe a story from the guy who'd broken every rule in the book to solve every complicated crime the department had ever been saddled with? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Damn it, Stark!" his ex-superior would say, "I'm sick and tired of you running around half-cocked (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">full-cocked</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Stark would silently correct), skirting procedure, not filing forms in the right place, and solving everything for everybody! I did not endure mandatory "Being an Insufferable Prick " training to have my career ruined by a department scandal. I want your shield and piece on my desk </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">right now</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">! (Stark note to Stark: boss’s desk too small for my piece, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">ack ack</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">). A dead woman on your deck, for chrissakes!"</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Help me up, would you?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It was the dead woman, struggling to get to her feet.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Whoa, still a little light-headed. I should have mentioned that I tend to pass out when I'm getting my melons manhandled in a standing position."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Melons! How could the word have escaped him?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">He felt his head begin to swim. He looked into those inscrutable eyes, and then at those inscrutable, uhh… and now it was Stark's turn to go limp and hit the deck.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">When he came to, he was comfortably prone, his face buried in a Laura Ashley hypo-allergenic pillow. Comfortable yes, more or less, except for the… restraints pinning him spread-eagled to the most formidable poster bed Ethan Allen had ever devised for the boudoir. What the hell had he been thinking when he'd made that purchase, with no money down and seven years of interest-free payments? Oh, I think we all know what he'd been </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">thinking</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The knots holding him in place looked diabolically…. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">familiar</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. At least he was lying on his front side, a nice break for his…</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"HOLY MOTHER OF GOD MY FREAKING ASS!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">plink</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of metal into a ceramic container.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"That's one."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"What the…jesusmaryandjoseph is going on back there!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I see you've come to, Phil" </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Thanks for noticing…YOOOOO BITCH FROM THE BLEEDING BOWELS OF HELL, OW FUCKING OW!!!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"That's not a nice way of addressing a girl who's just let you feel her boobies. Two." Another </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">kerplink</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Phil Stark tried to compose himself so that he might assemble the pieces of the puzzle, which were now being extracted one JUMPING GODFORSAKEN COCK SNAZZLE by one from his BUTCHER THE NUNS AND FEED THEM TO THE PIGS!!! … tortured buttocks.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Three and four. You better talk nice to me, or I might lose my dainty touch."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Dainty, my WHORE OF THE FIFTH FLEET KILL MY LANDLORD KILL MY LANDLORD!!!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Five and six. You’re a real trooper, Phil. My little soldier boy.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"And you’re my EAT ME LICK ME HOWLING BUCKETS OF SCUM FIEND FROM HADES YOUHOOOOHOOOooooo!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"That one's deep."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"For God's sake, take a breather, would you? Please, pretty lady, please. Tell me why you're doing this to me."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"You mean you haven't figured it out yet, detective? You, the relentless bulldog of the NYPD? The Jolly Inquisitor? The one who never tires of coming up with new names for my knockers?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">That one was a gimme.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Okay, okay. I'm just a dumb ex-cop with a bug up his ass, or something. Educate me OH, SATAN'S SPAWN AND BLOW ME WITH A BACKHOE MOMMYYYY!!!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Got it. And that's number seven. And since you've lost your professional concentration I'll help you out, seeing as number thirteen I leave for you to enjoy."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Me to enjoy BASTARD CHILD OF A MONKEY'S RED RUMP AND DONKEY DONUTS LORD ALMIGHTY oh let me die in peace. A stick of dynamite up my ass should do the trick."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The cup was rapidly filling with, what were they? The slugs had been removed by that doctor guy, right?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Close, detective. What you haven't deduced, if I may pause from my work for a moment, is that you have been a very active, though unwitting, participant in a diabolically grand scheme."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Really? Well experiment on this you GODFORSAKEN DARKEST HOLE OF HELL FIRE WITCH-WEASEL OHHH STOP stop stop please, and talk to me like you love me for a minute!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Okay, my little stud-puppy. Phillip, did you ever once pause to ponder how you managed to get pumped with thirteen well-placed rounds of non-lethal small caliber fire, right after all your back-up disappeared? That no arrests were made, no official reports filed, the only written words surfacing on the case being those registered as bathroom graffiti at your precinct? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">No one had ever called him Phillip before. No one he'd ever wanted to fuck, anyway.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Some of that might have occurred to me."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Well, since you're going to buy it shortly, courtesy of an explosion through your freight exit, I’ll fill you in."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"You're too kind. I WASN'T BEING FACETIOUS!!!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Don't worry, Snookums. It'll all be over soon. See, your sweet cakes have been housing some of the most valuable intellectual booty since the discovery of Lascaux."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This had been the longest chunk of time Stark had had to consider his predicament without the accompaniment of searing ass pain. He searched for the perfect rejoinder, to keep his streak alive.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Go on."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Sooo…"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Hey hey HEY!!!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Just teasing. The painful sling you've found your ass in is just one cog in an astoundingly complex, multi-phased, monstro-funded endeavor that may be the most massive para-symbiotic politico-corporate escapade ever conceived. I'm through now, with the hyphenated jabber anyway."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"What the fuck are you saying? And trust me, I'm not stalling right this minute."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"How could you be? What I'm saying is this: you've become an unwitting warehouse for the most valuable collection of data ever accumulated and stored in the history of mankind."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Alright, I give. Shoot. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Well, for instance, one info-capsule is a collection of all the audio tapes Nixon thought he'd erased.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Oooh!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I didn't touch you."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"No, I'm just impressed."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Exactly, Think 'Books on Tape', as read to the masses by Tommy Lee Jones. The profits would be astronomical. Shall I continue?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Please. WITH THE EXPLANATION!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"One capsule has the dirt on Rooseveldt and Pearl Harbor, one is a “Where in the World is Jimmy Hoffa” map, one has the sordid dope on that little baton twirler, one…</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Let me guess. Did we really go to the moon? PFFFFFOOOOOOCCCCCCCCK!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Stop interrupting."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Sorry, but where did you come up with this stuff?" Stark was starting to forget what was more important, stalling this international mercenary terrorist till he could formulate an escape plan, or putting to bed every conspiracy plot he'd ever entertained in the part of his brain that… Where do we store all that crap? In the gray matter? Is it really gray? Stark hated when his head started doing shit like this.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I didn't come up with it. Other people came up with it, micro-packaged it, solicited the secret bids, worked the deals…"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"And the bidders were…? M-M-M-MYYYYY SHARONAAAAA GO YANKS THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM HATE IT HATE IT!!!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"That's for interrupting again."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Listen, geez! I'm sorry! It's a reflex thing with me. You should know that. But, but, why me?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Why you, detective?! You want to spoil the circus act with a spot of logic? You want to make sense of this collective carnival ride? You want</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">a rational explanation? Google it, Columbo. Wikipedia to your heart’s content. Ask fucking Kieffer how it all “goes down”, if he isn’t busy driving his Maserati on a suburban sidewalk with a bottle of Jack in his lap.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Okay, okay, but since you've implied that one of these things is going to do me in anyway, the least you could do is humor me while you go spelunking around back there with no novocaine."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"You're right. What could it hurt? I might as well tell you everything, since, this kind of info, when it gets out, will probably, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">ruin mankind."</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Did Detective Stark's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">schnoz</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> detect the ever so subtle aroma of regret? Time for </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">him</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> to dig.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Now you're getting me down. I mean it's one thing to come to an untimely end this way… How, does it work, anyway?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Well, remember Mission Impossible? When the tape gets through describing the mission and personally wishes Phelps, or Briggs, if you’re even older, all the best? And he backs off to watch the machine start to smoke and everything? Something like that."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Don't tell me you hang around to make sure I'm erased."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She cocked an eyebrow and stiffened her lips.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Like I need this kind of shit." Stark gave a tug on the lines that held him fast.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Try all you like, Phil. The knots just keep getting tighter. And screaming, well it's nothing your neighbors down the beach don't hear on a regular basis. If anything, they're envious. Yes, it's pretty much all… hopeless."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Definitely</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> a note of regret. He’d found an opening.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Oh, what does it matter? A bang or a whimper. It's all the same in the end. There's good and evil in all of us. Some of us just practice with more… panache. I'm through with the force anyway. Washed up. Never did fit in. Thought I was doing something good for my fellow man, but all I was doing was wasting my time till this moment arrived, I guess. All I ever really wanted to do was find my own little spot, you know? Settle down, away from all the madness, maybe find the right girl, get a boat, practice my knots…"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Really? You, mean that? Because, I've started to wonder, you know? </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">About my role in all of this. I mean, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">who cares</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> what's on Abraham Zapruder's other roll of film?"</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"What?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Yeah, one of these capsules has the footage from his second roll, after he reloaded. Supposed to, you know, blow the lid off </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">that</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> little story. Anyway, all this information, who really did what to whom, what the definition of "is" is, how many hookers did George Bush garrote before he found Christ…"</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I hear you. I hear you!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Then there's the alternative ending to "The Matrix" trilogy."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"You have </span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">got</span></i></b><span style="font-weight:normal;font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> to be joking."</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I'm </span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">so</span></i></b><span style="font-weight:normal;font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> serious. Where Keanu Reeves wakes up and realizes he's a </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Mister Softy</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> vender and it was all just a hokey, ridiculous dream."</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"My God, the havoc that would wreak on the streets."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Yes, and it would all be…my…fault."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Not just you!!! I'm in this just as deeply as you are now! We're in this</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> together</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">! I mean, here I've been, half-assedly guarding all this horrible truth until it was one fine day unleashed on an unsuspecting populace. The collective national psyche could never rebound from the horror.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And that would be my legacy. Those would be my last thoughts, right before I… went… </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pffft.</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Oh Phil! We can't let this happen! We can't let Paul McCartney get his hands on these capsules!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"McCartney! I knew it! Who else could it have been? Who had the wealth? The connections? The time on his hands? Bill Gates? That goofball is giving it all away now."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Philip, stop it! None of that matters any more. What do we do now? Just tell me what to do!"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Detective Stark was at the moment a man without a plan, or skivvies. Something was getting in the way of the firing of his, what the hell are those brain thingies that look like a leafless deciduous tree on its side? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Could I be falling for this femme fatale</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, he wondered? Could it be that he actually believed what he'd just said? That Mrs. Right had just now shown up at his doorstep, lashing him to their bridal bower at this pivotal moment in mankind's history? </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Then the solution hit him like a bucket of chilled Gatorade at the Big Countdown.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Listen, you've got to trust me. You've got to dig the rest of those suckers out of me, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">NOW</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, and then throw them all into the ocean like so much flotsam. No! Jetsam. That's it, jetsam. The worst that could happen would be that, I don't know, the answer to whether Don Larson's pitch was outside or not ends up in a jar of shells on somebody's mantle, looking for all the world like a bit of polished beach glass.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Oh Phil! Are you sure? Are you really sure? It's going to hurt just horribly!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Do it NOW! There isn't any more time! What's a little pain in the ass when there's a planet to saAAAAAYYYY YA COULDA WARNED ME DARLEEEENG OOOOOOOOKLAHOMA WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPING DOWN THE SHIP SET SAIL ON THE SHORE OF THIS UNCHARTED DESERT IIII’D LIKE TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING! BY BALOGNA HAS A FIRST NAAAAAAAME, IT'S O-S-C-A-RRRRRR WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY KENNETH! GIMME THE FUCKING FREQUENCY IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIIIIIIIIIN A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY ICH BIN EIN PATSYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"That's all of them!" </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Now go, go, GO!!!"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">He listened intently to her bare feet scamper out onto the deck, down the stairs, into the sand. There was a distant, dainty but determined </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">huff</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, as capsules encoded with the planet’s dirtiest shared secrets were flung into the sea, there to mingle with its other myriad mysteries. As Mr. Sutherland Jr’s big-screen commanding officer had once observed from the witness stand, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">we can't handle the truth.</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There was a loud </span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">pop</span></i></b><span style="font-weight:normal;font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, followed by squeals of male surprise from down the beach, and then exuberant applause. That had been the capsule meant for Stark.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Moments later she was at his side, the sweet scent of her bosom wafting over him like overripe fruit from an equatorial country the name of which you’d get wrong on Jeopardy even if you watched regularly... Damn! It’d been Coppertone all along. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She effortlessly flicked loose the knots that had held him in place. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She's gotta teach me that shit</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, he thought, as she delicately rolled him over. She stood next to him now, staring down sweetly as a Johnycake baked shortly after the civil war, when sugar had become affordable to ex-slaveholders. His eyes met with those of this stranger, who had so recently held captive his every sense, now reading his mind.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"You try it," she instructed.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">He brought his hand to her waist. Recalling his early days on the playground as a marble ace, he wedged his “fuck you, jagg-off” finger near the first joint of the thumb, loading up muscular tension between the two. Aiming slightly off-center, he increased pressure on the middle digit, while simultaneously relaxing the collective muscles of the thumb just enough for a spring-loaded release, allowing the finger a glancing blow to the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">pareo's</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> knot. What had remained of her original ensemble, wrap and all, wafted to the floor like a granted wish.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">She deftly picked her way over his now mostly inert frame, alighting with the pressure a butterfly makes against her chosen stamen. That’s where a butterfly lands, right? The stamen. Or is it the other thing? Damn! I got a B-minus in biology. That bitch, Mrs. Rosenberg. In any event, he felt no pain from the area that had recently been the focal point of his existence. There was a new kid in town. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Stark smiled lovingly, forgivingly, presently at a loss for an apt simile, but not for a boner the size of Mount Rushmore, without the faces, which would be way weird.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">this</span></i><span style="font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> is the shit I'm talking about."</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As she tweaked her landing, grinning back at him in complicity, it struck him. "Wait," he whispered.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"What, my sweet love-bone?"</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"I never caught your name."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Monica, my precious. Call me Monica."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Then, Monica, heart of my heart, as a new kind of experiment, be gentle with me."</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:27.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5844791744589714638.post-11773907675680233292009-03-26T19:10:00.023-04:002013-05-28T21:05:54.416-04:00Block Island Odyssey<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig5yvTahuzLGiycGjH8AlyO4xf8-UGD_qENLSxQjlWJpOnJYhiSjYX8J0dYPKrYazwshHFhcs7S9wUNXMePuDkfQvCImLg-nFTJnekr8vZaQEOk5ypYKxKUwL8tyrpXt6xiNvdjMM5DdoO/s1600-h/P7160226_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><span style="font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317650250134841618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig5yvTahuzLGiycGjH8AlyO4xf8-UGD_qENLSxQjlWJpOnJYhiSjYX8J0dYPKrYazwshHFhcs7S9wUNXMePuDkfQvCImLg-nFTJnekr8vZaQEOk5ypYKxKUwL8tyrpXt6xiNvdjMM5DdoO/s400/P7160226_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></span></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Confused Seas</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was my dream voyage. It was the trip I’d always wanted to take, aboard my very own vessel. And it would happen one fine day, as soon as I’d certified myself as fit for sea duty.<br /><br />To sail to an island in the Atlantic I’d only visited once or twice, the easy way, by cheating, by ferry. Always with “other chicks”, as my wife likes to put it. The next time around I planned to do it right, with the chick I’d pledged the rest of my life to, on our very own sailboat. That had been my <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Big Idea</span>, until Deb had gone and hijacked me on that same boat, to the Bahamas.<br /><br />Now <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">there</span> was a nice little trip. I wrote about it, too, in a book you can purchase for a reasonable sum. Just punch in “windandaprayer” on your favorite search engine and enjoy the journey. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">My</span> favorite search engine happens to be a Morgan 34 sloop named <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Laura Lynn</span>, but now I’m just playing with words.<br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Despite the successful completion of that somewhat more ambitious nautical endeavor, there was left in me a sense that a certain personal goal had gone unfulfilled. But there was still time on my biological clock, family cardiac history notwithstanding. Weren’t we as often as not referred to as “the kids” (Isn’t that cute? I was fifty at the time) on the aforementioned journey? Had we not proven we could negotiate a year away from home, combing an entire continental seaboard if we put our minds to it? How hard could it be then, to reach a well-scoped island off the tip of Montauk?<br /><br />It was a laughable distance now, in our seasoned estimate. A hop, skip, and Long Island jump offshore. We’d be crying “Land ho!” before the coast of Connecticut was spitting distance off our stern. Still I managed, as is my custom, to worry the pants off the thing. Once the time frame had been established for late July, with four days allotted each for the leaving from and returning to our home harbor of Manhasset Bay, with three days set aside for island tomfoolery, I started plotting for disaster.<br /><br />We could’ve turned around in fear and loathing any time we wanted. The Long Island Sound is generously pocked on both shores with viable avenues of escape, if you don’t read into the fine print. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But see, I like to read into the fine print. Boat people have prospered for generations around harbors I might write off as untenable due to excess pollen counts. I knew from sad experience that you can dismiss any navigable stretch of water, given the proper irrational fear born of unfamiliarity. I prefer to look at every listed anchorage as a potential opportunity to sink our boat.<br /><br />This is where Deb always steps in. With thousands of miles under her luscious keel, my mate is still unable to reliably tie a clove hitch. If you have issues with that confession, Mr. Burr, I’ll gladly challenge you to a duel. And I’ll give you some insider information: I can’t hit the broad side of a boat shed with a skeet choke.<br /><br />The thing is, despite Deb’s refusal to retain any nautical lesson proffered thus far, she makes magical things happen for her tentative crew. I don’t care if you can weave storm sails from the spider webs salvaged from your shrouds, you’re going <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">nowhere</span> without the right mindset. Deb has positive attitude in abundance, and no amount of ignorance on a subject will dissuade her from tackling a challenge head on. So we were going to go to Block Island, on a schedule that worked for her. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’m a freelancer, so I can flip off any work I want to. Deb has a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">real job</span>, and she wants a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">real</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> vacation</span>, so I got the boat and myself ready, as per her itinerary. We were loaded down with more stuff than we’d taken on our sabbatical to the Bahamas. I’d listed what we’d forgotten on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">that</span> trip and made sure we didn’t forget it this time. I packed a radar reflector, just to spite myself. It’d been somehow waylaid in the garage during our last trip, but it wouldn’t be <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">this</span> time, just in case we ran into pea soup at the onset of a lazy mid-summer’s morning and were still stupid enough to raise anchor. I took a sextant too, a frivolous gift from my brother, on the off chance we were boarded by Rhode Island pirates demanding any stuff I didn't know how to use, or my life. We should’ve packed more Oreos instead.<br /><br />But I did pack everything we <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">would</span> need. Everything but the kitchen sink. Check that. Everything but the kitchen sink, and my wallet.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHp2gY8C-4FyQwW-XKH9LYsGdgV7TAE2dCMdc3ZPzkcJYOnaYIo0UH9qYqO_OR_wRQP1k8qdIhTxNqb2PKFkfJliepNniDP9ZSXU1HGOh3Xf2jo6ZE8ouWe3CPsx_dit7kYwrFuEAGrt3N/s1600-h/P7100002_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="299" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317649554243290738" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHp2gY8C-4FyQwW-XKH9LYsGdgV7TAE2dCMdc3ZPzkcJYOnaYIo0UH9qYqO_OR_wRQP1k8qdIhTxNqb2PKFkfJliepNniDP9ZSXU1HGOh3Xf2jo6ZE8ouWe3CPsx_dit7kYwrFuEAGrt3N/s400/P7100002_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">This is wonderful. I wonder if I've forgotten anything.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">It is a sad commentary for a survival-oriented guy like myself, that he can be reduced to tears when he realizes that his Stop & Shop discount card has been left ashore. The fact is, most of my swagger for this trip was founded on media-induced complacency. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">If I’d actually left home something important</span>, I’d recited, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">we could always go into town and buy it with a credit card</span>, while the accompanying reminiscences would be provided, gratis.<br /><br />So there I was, all gussied up in the saloon, having radioed from our mooring in Northport, New York (our first day’s stop) for a complimentary launch ride into town. I was now frantically searching for the fanny pack that announces to the world that I am an <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Olympic-Class Dweeb</span>. The cold sweats that overtook me came near in intensity to the bout I'd had somewhere along the Carolinas when we’d dragged anchor in the middle of the night during a horrific squall, while stark naked. Read all about it in the aforementioned book. Oh yeah, baby.<br /><br />I was fit to be tied. Or, if you ask Deb, I was fit to be tossed overboard. I could not shake my wretched mistake. We had just enough chump change between us to scrounge a meal in this otherwise completely quaint coastal destination (the food tasted bitter, the town reeked of sour sweat, and the sounds from the local band shell seemed funneled from the lowest levels of Dante’s Inferno), and to tip the launch chick to get back to our boat. Yes, I said launch chick. My own chick had rightfully deserted me in spirit, and I was on my own. Survival instinct was in play. I was, in the parlance of your extreme sailor, a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">real pill.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLsuVW9_sXeThFbemfKHRsoLTvHNg7Rl2Djngs0QwU0Bwkmni5CvtUSCIYGZF9dmyL2JKK07gGQ86YzBK2og8zI1MWZHzhj5jq8axlZLBbB_Qy4Wg8-KgBPAtkI-H4Xh1_5HwwplabavvH/s1600-h/P7110017_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317649942635554898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLsuVW9_sXeThFbemfKHRsoLTvHNg7Rl2Djngs0QwU0Bwkmni5CvtUSCIYGZF9dmyL2JKK07gGQ86YzBK2og8zI1MWZHzhj5jq8axlZLBbB_Qy4Wg8-KgBPAtkI-H4Xh1_5HwwplabavvH/s320/P7110017_2.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Northport's Launch Chick</span></div>
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<br /><span style="font-size: large;">We considered turning the boat around right then and there, or maybe taking a taxi home, or possibly a commuter train. Each solution would have proven costly to our collective </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">wallet</span><span style="font-size: large;"> (which we didn’t have) and/or </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">time</span><span style="font-size: large;"> (which I weigh heavily in the forward direction). We finally called Deb’s sister </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Laura <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(t</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">he inspiration for our boat's moniker and much else in life). She dispatched her husband </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Vincent</span><span style="font-size: large;">, who retrieved the wayward fanny pack from the back seat of our garaged sedan, where I’d left it while searching for important stuff to stow onboard. How do you spell “</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;">Loser</span><span style="font-size: large;">”?</span><br />
<br /><span style="font-size: large;">Laur and Vin drove to Northport the next day to make the drop-off, taking a half hour or so to do in a car what it had taken us the lion's share of a day to accomplish by sailboat. We treated them to dinner for their trouble. The food was delectable, and the company unsurpassed. Afterward, the town smelled of lilacs, and a celestial choir was in perfect pitch at the bandshell. Try never to be in a hurry when traveling by boat. I mean </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">never</span></span><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">We were again independent, as is a newly bandaged child once he remounts his trike, to set off in search of new potholes to challenge. I’m not sure what I learned from the incident. Perhaps as little as nothing, but maybe this:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;"> Attitude is Everything</span><span style="font-size: large;">. But then I already knew that.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Because Deb has limitless capacity for forgiveness, we were on our way east the next morning, full of nothing but anticipation. Women rock, don’t they? Thank the heavens, because this story is nothing but euphoric from here on in. Which makes it just about over, doesn’t it?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Each morning was ripe with promise, each evening a celebration of the day’s gifts. Block Island was a gem: raucous, primal, sublime. We were reminded yet again what a great, grand thing a small boat can do for the soul. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And the memories were priced as advertised.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWXJdZ-UW_HfmqdHju5xyRyLuFpUuX0THzch2RLohF39TqLimH0J_c8iF_ImIuPmiZrNewtcIaKyfNCejry96BBS53fJ2px9UM6Dj1G1XkLocAhAF_CybH_1lToimNdCJqbF0bPkAilx48/s1600-h/P7140129_2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" height="357" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317650120380539570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWXJdZ-UW_HfmqdHju5xyRyLuFpUuX0THzch2RLohF39TqLimH0J_c8iF_ImIuPmiZrNewtcIaKyfNCejry96BBS53fJ2px9UM6Dj1G1XkLocAhAF_CybH_1lToimNdCJqbF0bPkAilx48/s400/P7140129_2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="400" /></a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Saluting Block Island's sunset.</span></div>
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Paul Koestnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334232458963693821noreply@blogger.com0