Got a call this morning from Steve Earley -- he and his friend Bruce made it to Rock Hall, MD after several days of small craft warnings coming up the Chesapeake Bay.
I sit here in my office and watch the trees fluttering and swaying under a bright blue sky.
Steve's sailing a Pathfinder, the same boat I'm building, so when I head up to the Mid Atlantic Small Craft Festival this weekend, I plan on taking loads of pictures and -- even better -- seeing a completed boat! A far cry from the dusty skeleton in my garage, but still very, very inspiring. Can't wait.
I've sailed in small craft warning conditions before -- that's the meteorologist's code for "awesome sailing conditions" and the boat pounds through glittering waves, swaying and tilting. You're going so fast that when you trail your hand in the water it feels hard, like you're slapping a wall. Everything is wet and breathless and happening very fast.
Wait a second, that sounds like ... something else.
I'm beginning to think that my other hobbies and loves are simply lesser replacements for sailing fast in a good boat. Running brings me into the outdoors; biking adds the element of speed. When a thunderstorm cracks open the sky and I stare at the churning clouds, it's sailing I'm thinking of. When I visit the beach I stare out to sea, thinking, watching the waves.
And days like this I sit inside, gnashing my teeth and savoring the strange little boatbuilding cuts on my fingertips. (Did you know the back of a saw can cut you?)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Footwell progress
What's that, you say? A footwell? Boring? Never! The footwell is where you put your feet when sitting in the boat.
It's where sunblock gets tossed, where a sponge (on a cord, always on a line) swipes the painted wood so your feet stay dry, where you stash a wine bottle or a cold beer at the end of a long trick to windward. Where you check the compass course and hope you've accounted enough for the powerful tide sweeping out of the vast Potomac. Where you kick up your feet and daydream on a long downwind run.
It's the boat's cockpit. Where the magic happens.
With the frames in, "all" I have to do is add in the sides. These are the fronts of the seats, where -- if you were a small doll with very short legs -- you'd drum your heels when sitting and draw the ire of the captain.
The tricky (and best) part is: the boat's bottom is gently curved up. The front and back edges of the seat fronts is at a strange angle due to the angled frames. And the top is also curved, almost but not quite at the same arc as the bottom. Solution? A pattern! Here are two views of the pattern, clamped in place on the starboard side of the cockpit.
The thick frame on the aft edge -- the Legendarily Difficult Frame 7 -- is different to starboard because it's where the outboard motor clamps. In fact, the alignment of that F7 onto the bottom was so precise I snapped a picture. Freakish accuracy like this is all too rare:
This is the centerline of the frame (labeled "AFT" so I don't install it backwards) and the centerline of the bottom. The pencil line is about 0.5mm thick. Yeah!
Lastly, the view I treat myself to at the end of each boatbuilding session: the frames up, the shape of the boat beginning to take shape. Inspiration....
The front of the boat is out of the frame to the right, but you can see the centerboard well, the frames, and the bottom, as well as all the holes for ventilation.
It's where sunblock gets tossed, where a sponge (on a cord, always on a line) swipes the painted wood so your feet stay dry, where you stash a wine bottle or a cold beer at the end of a long trick to windward. Where you check the compass course and hope you've accounted enough for the powerful tide sweeping out of the vast Potomac. Where you kick up your feet and daydream on a long downwind run.
It's the boat's cockpit. Where the magic happens.
With the frames in, "all" I have to do is add in the sides. These are the fronts of the seats, where -- if you were a small doll with very short legs -- you'd drum your heels when sitting and draw the ire of the captain.
The tricky (and best) part is: the boat's bottom is gently curved up. The front and back edges of the seat fronts is at a strange angle due to the angled frames. And the top is also curved, almost but not quite at the same arc as the bottom. Solution? A pattern! Here are two views of the pattern, clamped in place on the starboard side of the cockpit.
The thick frame on the aft edge -- the Legendarily Difficult Frame 7 -- is different to starboard because it's where the outboard motor clamps. In fact, the alignment of that F7 onto the bottom was so precise I snapped a picture. Freakish accuracy like this is all too rare:
This is the centerline of the frame (labeled "AFT" so I don't install it backwards) and the centerline of the bottom. The pencil line is about 0.5mm thick. Yeah!
Lastly, the view I treat myself to at the end of each boatbuilding session: the frames up, the shape of the boat beginning to take shape. Inspiration....
The front of the boat is out of the frame to the right, but you can see the centerboard well, the frames, and the bottom, as well as all the holes for ventilation.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Animals Gone Wild
Another one from the NY Times, fast becoming the premier weird-animal-fact-discoverer. Evidently, fanged, bird-eating frogs have been discovered in Southeast Asia. ***SPOILER ALERT*** It's actually Dracula.
Frogs that eat birds? No, thanks. That's almost as bad as spiders that eat birds, wasps that paralyze and lay their eggs inside live tarantulas, and eagles that eat monkeys. I guess you could have a gruesome circle of life: Frog and spider team up to catch bird; bird escapes and goes off to eat monkey; spider is attacked by wasp and becomes horrible paralyzed living nursery for wasp larva, which consume it as they grow and eventually eat their way out.
"Circle of life" may be an optimistic term, now that I think about it. Circle of Painful Death And Sometimes Crippling Fights For Survival doesn't have the same ring to it, though.
Seriously, once you start thinking of humans as prey, poor wee naked monkeys with neither claws nor fangs nor defensive stings (most of us, anyhow) things move into the crueler perspective already shared by the rest of the natural world.
Would my two housecats stalk, kill, and eat me if I was smaller? No doubt. After which they would probably have a hurking fit and barf me onto a section of rug (never linoleum, oh no, they aim for carpet).
Yesterday I encountered further signs that animals have Had It Up To Here. First, as I was recounting my tale of near-gut-exploding terror at work, one guy noted that he had actually run into a deer while jogging.
Was the deer stupid? Nearly blind in the darkness? Or simply ... waiting?
RUNNER: Is that ... a tree branch? A shadow? What the...?
DEER: Oh, step on, mofo. Let's dance.
Then, after work, I was biking up a cruelly steep gravel road when I rounded a bend and saw a fat copperhead snake S-coiled in the road. I noted the location (left turn, powerlines, steep camber) so when I returned, racing downhill later, I wouldn't run it over.
But on my way back down, it was gone. Spooky!
Next week: enough with the animals, already. Boatbuilding and writing galore.
Frogs that eat birds? No, thanks. That's almost as bad as spiders that eat birds, wasps that paralyze and lay their eggs inside live tarantulas, and eagles that eat monkeys. I guess you could have a gruesome circle of life: Frog and spider team up to catch bird; bird escapes and goes off to eat monkey; spider is attacked by wasp and becomes horrible paralyzed living nursery for wasp larva, which consume it as they grow and eventually eat their way out.
"Circle of life" may be an optimistic term, now that I think about it. Circle of Painful Death And Sometimes Crippling Fights For Survival doesn't have the same ring to it, though.
Seriously, once you start thinking of humans as prey, poor wee naked monkeys with neither claws nor fangs nor defensive stings (most of us, anyhow) things move into the crueler perspective already shared by the rest of the natural world.
Would my two housecats stalk, kill, and eat me if I was smaller? No doubt. After which they would probably have a hurking fit and barf me onto a section of rug (never linoleum, oh no, they aim for carpet).
Yesterday I encountered further signs that animals have Had It Up To Here. First, as I was recounting my tale of near-gut-exploding terror at work, one guy noted that he had actually run into a deer while jogging.
Was the deer stupid? Nearly blind in the darkness? Or simply ... waiting?
RUNNER: Is that ... a tree branch? A shadow? What the...?
DEER: Oh, step on, mofo. Let's dance.
Then, after work, I was biking up a cruelly steep gravel road when I rounded a bend and saw a fat copperhead snake S-coiled in the road. I noted the location (left turn, powerlines, steep camber) so when I returned, racing downhill later, I wouldn't run it over.
But on my way back down, it was gone. Spooky!
Next week: enough with the animals, already. Boatbuilding and writing galore.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Spin, my spiders. Spin like the wind!
The NY Times had an article yesterday about -- ready? -- Madagascar Golden Orb Spiders harnessed to tiny silk-extracting machines. The silk is spun into golden thread, which people have then woven into beautiful and costly tapestries.
Unfortunately, when I read "spider harness" I picture a tiny warrior in a Roman chariot, being pulled by an armored war spider. This moth uprising will not stand! To war, my arachnid brothers! Maybe partly due to -- ready? -- cat armor I saw on Laini Taylor's blog. Very cool, though I imagine the martial effect might be lost when the armored cat decided to sit down, raise one armored leg behind its armored ear, and lick its po-po. (First rule of Cat Club: Always stay clean.)
It gets me worrying about the spiders, too. What if, once they realized what they could do as a group, they gave up on gallery-ready tapestries and instead spun a giant web? They're already the size of bats, so I have no doubt that a web as big as, say, a trampoline would serve to hold an entire kindergarten class. And then the golden killers would scurry across the thread, gnashing their spidery jaws and squeaking their horrible spider language.
Where was I? Oh, right. Art from spiders.
Unfortunately, when I read "spider harness" I picture a tiny warrior in a Roman chariot, being pulled by an armored war spider. This moth uprising will not stand! To war, my arachnid brothers! Maybe partly due to -- ready? -- cat armor I saw on Laini Taylor's blog. Very cool, though I imagine the martial effect might be lost when the armored cat decided to sit down, raise one armored leg behind its armored ear, and lick its po-po. (First rule of Cat Club: Always stay clean.)
It gets me worrying about the spiders, too. What if, once they realized what they could do as a group, they gave up on gallery-ready tapestries and instead spun a giant web? They're already the size of bats, so I have no doubt that a web as big as, say, a trampoline would serve to hold an entire kindergarten class. And then the golden killers would scurry across the thread, gnashing their spidery jaws and squeaking their horrible spider language.
Where was I? Oh, right. Art from spiders.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Terrified
This time of year, when I step out the door for a run at 5:30AM it is DARK. And even more so when it's overcast and there's no moon, like this morning.
I have been startled on runs before. A mailbox or a trash can slowly looming out of the murk can appear to be a dog, just standing there, watching me. Or a deer can crash through the woods and gallop, hooves clicking, across the road, giving me a little jolt. Often branches lie in the road pretending to be snakes.
But what happened this morning surpassed all that.
The trouble is, writing fantasy means I get to / have to think about things like Baba Yaga and her house on chicken feet, or what a spider might feel like skittering down my throat (another worry: gulping down a glass of water at night without first checking that a spider is not floating in it!), or whether a goat standing alone on a dark road, grinning, is frightening, or whether there's an old man with long fingernails under my bed. Crows with smoke leaking from their eye sockets. Something in the air too big to be a bird. Poetry scrawled in tiny letters inside a rat den. The smell of rotting fish inside a cave. You see, I can't turn it off.
This is what happened today on my run. It was so dark that all I could see was a dim belt of grey above me, where the trees open to the sky, and an equally dim belt of grey below my feet. Everything else was that black, black, almost vibrating darkness of zero light.
I ran up what seemed like the middle of the road, trying not to think about dogtoothed clowns and old women giggling insanely -- you know, normal running thoughts -- when I glimpsed something in the darkness in front of me. RIGHT in front of me.
In less than a second, the following thoughts flickered through my animal brain like lightening:
1) That's a dog or a deer. Scary, but no problem.
2) It's not moving like a dog or a deer. What is it?
3) It's my height and flailing its arms and legs.
4) It's coming right at me OH GOD WHAT IS IT?
You know the sound you make when you open a drawer -- to get a spoon, say, or your keys -- and there is a spider that you nearly grab? Sort of "Unnhhhh!"
I made that sound and leapt out of the way of what turned out to be ... another runner, who was just as scared as I was. However, what scared him was the near-collision, whereas I was worried about face-eating demons who would take me back to their master, the bloody-faced old lady who lives in a dead tree and sends her scaly children out each night to bring her their prey to toy with.
The phrase "a chill went down my back," is an understatement. I shivered from the back of my head, down both arms, and down to my calves, a breath of ice that I expect was every hair trying to raise itself up as if I were a startled cat. Fight or flight is a difficult decision when you're already running directly at the problem.
I wanted to explain the strangled groan I had emitted, so I remarked in a shaky voice, "You scared the crap out of me!"
The rest of my run, thank goodness, was uneventful.
I have been startled on runs before. A mailbox or a trash can slowly looming out of the murk can appear to be a dog, just standing there, watching me. Or a deer can crash through the woods and gallop, hooves clicking, across the road, giving me a little jolt. Often branches lie in the road pretending to be snakes.
But what happened this morning surpassed all that.
The trouble is, writing fantasy means I get to / have to think about things like Baba Yaga and her house on chicken feet, or what a spider might feel like skittering down my throat (another worry: gulping down a glass of water at night without first checking that a spider is not floating in it!), or whether a goat standing alone on a dark road, grinning, is frightening, or whether there's an old man with long fingernails under my bed. Crows with smoke leaking from their eye sockets. Something in the air too big to be a bird. Poetry scrawled in tiny letters inside a rat den. The smell of rotting fish inside a cave. You see, I can't turn it off.
This is what happened today on my run. It was so dark that all I could see was a dim belt of grey above me, where the trees open to the sky, and an equally dim belt of grey below my feet. Everything else was that black, black, almost vibrating darkness of zero light.
I ran up what seemed like the middle of the road, trying not to think about dogtoothed clowns and old women giggling insanely -- you know, normal running thoughts -- when I glimpsed something in the darkness in front of me. RIGHT in front of me.
In less than a second, the following thoughts flickered through my animal brain like lightening:
1) That's a dog or a deer. Scary, but no problem.
2) It's not moving like a dog or a deer. What is it?
3) It's my height and flailing its arms and legs.
4) It's coming right at me OH GOD WHAT IS IT?
You know the sound you make when you open a drawer -- to get a spoon, say, or your keys -- and there is a spider that you nearly grab? Sort of "Unnhhhh!"
I made that sound and leapt out of the way of what turned out to be ... another runner, who was just as scared as I was. However, what scared him was the near-collision, whereas I was worried about face-eating demons who would take me back to their master, the bloody-faced old lady who lives in a dead tree and sends her scaly children out each night to bring her their prey to toy with.
The phrase "a chill went down my back," is an understatement. I shivered from the back of my head, down both arms, and down to my calves, a breath of ice that I expect was every hair trying to raise itself up as if I were a startled cat. Fight or flight is a difficult decision when you're already running directly at the problem.
I wanted to explain the strangled groan I had emitted, so I remarked in a shaky voice, "You scared the crap out of me!"
The rest of my run, thank goodness, was uneventful.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Sennen Cove
One of the places we visited during our Cornwall trip in June was a tiny village called Sennen Cove, tucked into a rocky concavity on the coast of Southwest Britain. When we were there it was overcast and breezy, though we were in shorts and long-sleeve shirts, and we scuffed along the cool sand and wondered about sunburn through the clouds.
Today's weather report (I love the Internet) for Sennen Cove is 70 degrees, mostly cloudy, a gentle onshore breeze. And when I do an image search I find beautiful shots of turquoise water, corkscrew narrow roads, rocks at low tide. Postcard stuff.
But Sennen cove is also the handwritten "Open" sign on an empty snack stand, staffed by solicitous matronly types who cluck happily at American tourists who haven't yet had a cream tea. The tables are faded plastic, and you go up four steps to the restroom, past a mural of a larger-than-life mermaid.
Or the ancient tavern you have to duck your head to enter, warm and cheery on a cool day, with uneven tables and a surprisingly large menu of sandwiches and good beer.
Or the old man, striding along the beach in galoshes as if he could walk over or through anything, led by a bounding dog that leaps over the rocks as if he were a mountain goat. Sure enough, you blink and in what seems like seconds both man and dog have scaled a small cliff and are cruising through a slope of gorse twenty-five feet above the beach.
Or the surf shop with a whiteboard listing water conditions. Or the complicated bus schedule. Or the round souvenir shop, still full of chest-height spokes. Or the surprising taste of cold Coke on a cold day. Or clutching a paper bag of postcards or maps or books or vases, the brown paper wrinkled and folded and now beginning to tear through at the corners. Or the bright purple seats on the bus, where you huddle below because going up to the open "upstairs" would be unpleasantly cold and rainy.
On and on. Even a few hours can result in such a rich bouillabaisse of images, smells, and sounds, that if you're in the right frame of mind, or the right place, they come flooding back almost unbidden.
There is so much to tell.
Today's weather report (I love the Internet) for Sennen Cove is 70 degrees, mostly cloudy, a gentle onshore breeze. And when I do an image search I find beautiful shots of turquoise water, corkscrew narrow roads, rocks at low tide. Postcard stuff.
But Sennen cove is also the handwritten "Open" sign on an empty snack stand, staffed by solicitous matronly types who cluck happily at American tourists who haven't yet had a cream tea. The tables are faded plastic, and you go up four steps to the restroom, past a mural of a larger-than-life mermaid.
Or the ancient tavern you have to duck your head to enter, warm and cheery on a cool day, with uneven tables and a surprisingly large menu of sandwiches and good beer.
Or the old man, striding along the beach in galoshes as if he could walk over or through anything, led by a bounding dog that leaps over the rocks as if he were a mountain goat. Sure enough, you blink and in what seems like seconds both man and dog have scaled a small cliff and are cruising through a slope of gorse twenty-five feet above the beach.
Or the surf shop with a whiteboard listing water conditions. Or the complicated bus schedule. Or the round souvenir shop, still full of chest-height spokes. Or the surprising taste of cold Coke on a cold day. Or clutching a paper bag of postcards or maps or books or vases, the brown paper wrinkled and folded and now beginning to tear through at the corners. Or the bright purple seats on the bus, where you huddle below because going up to the open "upstairs" would be unpleasantly cold and rainy.
On and on. Even a few hours can result in such a rich bouillabaisse of images, smells, and sounds, that if you're in the right frame of mind, or the right place, they come flooding back almost unbidden.
There is so much to tell.
Monday, September 21, 2009
What a fascinating, modern age we live in
It's funny how after something is invented -- a blender, the Internet, whatever -- that we get so used to it we can't imagine life without it. Yet somehow we survived for many years doing just that.
Life before the Internet? I think I can remember. We all lived in caves, right? I think my dad worked at a quarry and slid down a dinosaur at the end of the day.
What seems even stranger to me is the fact that we (I) didn't even yearn for the Internet before we had it. Oh no, I was perfectly happy with my printed books and actually visiting the library in person and writing letters and talking on the phone. It didn't seem like I was missing out.
Maybe that's how it was before the printing press. Could it be that most people, when they weren't being repressed or plowing icy fields (for some reason my image of the Middle Ages is hunchbacked, ancient thirty-year-olds groveling through ice and mud while the stern manor home rises in the distance) simply never thought how nice it might be to have some form of accessible printed books?
I guess what I mean is: accurate relativity. It's tempting to look at those who came before and wonder if they knew how much they were missing. In most cases that's not quite the right question, because they weren't "missing" anything. (Except maybe a good set of insulated clothes and a toothbrush for the medieval peasants.) We don't just invent products, we often invent the need for those products.
Which is why it's such a funny, perspective-inducing moment in the Master and Commander film, when Jack Aubrey looks at a hand-carved model of a ship in astonishment. Referring to some slightly different underwater shape, he remarks, "What a fascinating, modern age we live in."
Life before the Internet? I think I can remember. We all lived in caves, right? I think my dad worked at a quarry and slid down a dinosaur at the end of the day.
What seems even stranger to me is the fact that we (I) didn't even yearn for the Internet before we had it. Oh no, I was perfectly happy with my printed books and actually visiting the library in person and writing letters and talking on the phone. It didn't seem like I was missing out.
Maybe that's how it was before the printing press. Could it be that most people, when they weren't being repressed or plowing icy fields (for some reason my image of the Middle Ages is hunchbacked, ancient thirty-year-olds groveling through ice and mud while the stern manor home rises in the distance) simply never thought how nice it might be to have some form of accessible printed books?
I guess what I mean is: accurate relativity. It's tempting to look at those who came before and wonder if they knew how much they were missing. In most cases that's not quite the right question, because they weren't "missing" anything. (Except maybe a good set of insulated clothes and a toothbrush for the medieval peasants.) We don't just invent products, we often invent the need for those products.
Which is why it's such a funny, perspective-inducing moment in the Master and Commander film, when Jack Aubrey looks at a hand-carved model of a ship in astonishment. Referring to some slightly different underwater shape, he remarks, "What a fascinating, modern age we live in."
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