Sailing Like Gentlemen

The fact is, when people tell you they're "going sailing" they are in point of fact "going motoring." Landlubbers are frequently astonished to learn sailboats have engines at all. I refrain from pointing out that technically speaking a sailboat is known to the authorities as an "auxiliary sailboat." That is to say, it has an engine to help things along when the breezes fails. Which is quite often as it happens. Furthermore most people know that a sailboat can't sail straight into the wind, so there is an arc of about one hundred degrees wherein you have to use your auxiliary to make progress. For those of you trigonometrically challenged there are three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle so a sailboat can only sail in approximately 260 of them at any one time. If you start to add up the amount of time the wind isn't blowing with the amount of time you want to go in the direction from which the wind is blowing you discover to the amazement of the sailing novice that more often than not the engine is running while the auxiliary sailboat is under way. Which thought puts me in mind of sails I have taken and enjoyed..

......................................................... Racing Catalina 22. ..............................................................

My wife had been out sailing before I met her and after we got married I hatched a great plan to get her back out on the water. We bought a Catalina 22, a basic modest sailboat with a large open area (cockpit) and a small cabin. It was well used but came with a competent 7.5 horsepower Honda outboard to provide the critical auxiliary power. I got in the habit of quitting work in the afternoon (I was the morning news reader at a radio station which got me out of bed at an ungodly hour) and instead of taking a nap I rode my Yamaha down to the harbor and took my Catalina out of the slip. It was a perfect boat for one, easy to handle and no trouble at all. By early afternoon in summer the northwest winds are howling down the California coast produces big waves and bigger swells and giving the warm air a cool breath from the icy ocean waters up north.

.........................................................Capitola, California..................................................................

Outside the exposed entrance to the Santa Cruz harbor lies a point known as Steamer Lane famous in surfing circles and this knob of land gives meager protection to small boats sailing between the harbor and municipal wharf a half mile to the north. My plan was to turn south to Capitola five miles away, sail south with the northeast winds behind me, drift through the anchorage looking at boats in the protected waters off Capitola Beach, and by the time boredom set in the evening land breeze would kick in producing east winds out of the Salinas Valley. Those evening breezes pushed me back to the harbor before dark, where I could step off the boat and be home before my wife got out of her law office. ...............................................Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor Entrance........................................

One Sunday afternoon after I'd had the boat a little while we both went sailing. The wind was honking but I was confident we'd have a pleasant afternoon out on the water. We motored out through the harbor breakwaters our mainsail (the one at the back) reflecting white in the pale afternoon sun and as soon as were out I put the tiller between my legs and raised the foresail (the one in front) quickly and efficently. I pushed the tiller to the left, turned the boat to the beach and allowed the sails to fill. I turned around to turn off the outboard and pull it out of the water ( for greater sailing efficency) when I felt the Catalina heel (lean) sharply. The wind was kicking up. By the time I was facing forwards the boat was creaming towards the beach both sails ballooning from the force of the wind that was now blowing from astern (from the back). Shit! I said out loud to a sharp look from my wife. Oh nothing dear. I threw the tiller over and let the sheets go, the sails ballooned some more as the ropes keeping them taut suddenly went slack, and the boat turned back towards the wharf.

.............................................................Santa Cruz Wharf...................................................................

I pulled in the sheets tightening up the sails. The boat started to heel most alarmingly. We ploughed wildly towards the wharf, pushing aside the waves thundering underneath heading towards crashing destruction on the beach to our right. The boat leaned over further and further, my wife's eyes got bigger and bigger and pretty soon we were standing almost vertically in the boat, leaning back against the bench with our feet braced on the opposite side of the cockpit. I held the sheets in my hands, ready to let go and release them from their respective clamps should things get any stronger. The tiller was fighting me like a very annoyed mule kicking me in the groin and swinging wildly keeping time with the waves pushing under the boat. Great isn't it? I said through gritted teeth but my wife's brain power was taken up by what was showing through her eyes and she could only nod mutely. I wondered what to do next. The usual northwest wind had obviously backed a little and instead of being deflected by the headland was blowing straight into the harbor mouth and pushing all before it. The Catalina kept going and I watched the rigging wondering which piece would go first under the awful strain and awhat would I do when it did.

And then suddenly we were in the wind shadow, the lee of the point and rather than go crashing helpless into the side of the wharf we levelled off and started to slow down. I threw the tiller over as soon as we regained our footing, took a tack around the end of the wharf and sailed splendidly into the calm blue waters off Cowell's Beach. Families were picnicing, toddlers were splashing in the tiddler sized wavelets lapping the sand. All was well with the world. My wife grinned at me and said that was fun. I would have been scared if you hadn't loooked so happy. For once in my life I was tongue tied and limited myself to nodding cheerfully while I tried to look busy with the slack sails and dormant tiller. It was years before I told her it was among the hairiest rides I'd ever taken. Previously, sailing single handed I had composed myself to die like a gentleman as suggested in the sailing literature, whenever things got out of hand. My wife made it clear she has never had any ambition to die like a gentleman, and would appreciate my cooperation in seeing to it. Thus it was we motored a lot more and sailed a lot less than we might have done and I found it easy not to blame myself for our motoring habit. I was just being a good spouse I'd tell myself as I reached for the starter button, suppressing the innate adventurer as I rolled up the foresail, who would otherwise much prefer, he says, to sail on his ear.

(Photos are stock non copyright photos as I have temporarily mislaid my own supply of sailing pictures.)

Garrison Bight By Night

My wife stopped by work and because she has gotten so much grief previously for not bearing gifts when she comes by the Police Station she had the great good sense to call ahead and asked what we needed/wanted. It was not a stimulating evening in police dispatch, after two weeks of riotous spending, Spring Break appears to have fizzled out, so I was very grateful for the large con leche. The side effect was that at two am I was hardly in the mood to compose myself for a nap, the coffee combined with eighteen hours sleep on my night off...so I went out and took pictures.When in doubt photograph the Bonneville. I decided to walk around Garrison Bight Marina and see what I could see. (If you want daytime pictures check March 23rd 2008 or use the search function because there are lots of entries for this body of water). The Palm Avenue Bridge is a convenient high point on a flat island. Crossing it though, means taking your life into your own hands as thirty miles per hour (50km/h) is just a suggestion at two in the morning:The view from the top makes New Town look quite delightful at this ungodly hour:The view underneath the bridge is a bit more eerie. Without flash:Worse yet, with flash!The navigation light designed to keep boats off the bridge supports was dark and leaped out at me in the reflection from the flash. I dislike flash lighting, perhaps because mine is a basic integral flash unit and I'd rather use the gorilla pod to allow for a slo-o-o-w shutter speed.Around Key West it's known for obvious reasons as the "Fly Navy" building but it's official title is the Bachelor Officers Quarters. It's an enormous pile clearly visible across the city from the upper decks of a cruise ship docked at the Westin pier. Garrison bight is home to the relatively new dinghy docks that are where people who live on the city moorings on the flats to the north make their connection to land. A new shower block is being installed and splendid floating docks provide secure dockage for dinghies ( if they are properly locked):Curt and I had a few escapades around here in the good old days long before the city offered moorings and docks for our dinghies. Harrr, in them days (the late eighties) we made our own moorings and snuck the dinghies in where we could (the bushes across from Burger King were a good spot) and we talked like pirates. Not really but it was fun for a while to live on the fly in Key West. Nowadays there is city sanctioned parking for scooters and bicycles:
And even this ghastly contraption, a Chinese attempt at catching the brief craze for covered scooters. It actually runs and I've seen it around town, but whether it keeps the rain off I couldn't say. I hope it does because in the aesthetics department it is decidedly lacking:Back to the water, a quick shot of the boats on the seawall:A splash of color in the night (I kind of assumed they were empty, but anyway I'd just filled the Triumph at the all night gas station):And back to work where I discovered to my annoyance that all hell had broken loose briefly while I was out at lunch. I was glad I had a pleasant hour taking some random pictures to make up for missing the excitement.

Vespa Commute

I've found that it doesn't much matter which vehicle I use to get to work, be it the car, the motorcycle or my wife's Vespa 150. I pretty much have to leave the house by ten minutes after the hour to get to work by ten minutes before the hour, door to door. The only exceptions are middle of the night rides for overtime when I'm on the Overseas Highway when most people are one hopes, asleep. Those are the times I can ride straight through and knock a few minutes off the commute. Passing doesn't do much overall, as one tends to get held back further up the road by another clump of cages ambling along admiring the scenery and failing to get a move on. Of course passing is fun but that's another sotry.So I decided to be a bit more conscious of the differences between commuting by Triumph or by Vespa ET4 on my 26 mile stretch of Highway One. I enjoy riding the Vespa and as my wife has been having some work related shoulder problems she hasn't left it at work and I've been taking advantage of it under the house to ride it around a bit. The ET4 has become something of a Vespa classic as it was the first automatic four stroke Vespa built by the company known for it's manual shift two stroke workhorses. At the time it was a radical Vespa and thus much criticized by a lot of people including myself.My wife's alabaster 2004 150cc is no longer built though the engine and transmission are still used in it's replacement the LX 150 (LX is 60 in Roman Numerals and is designed to denote the Italian factory's 60th anniversary). The LX 150 has an eleven inch front wheel which has to make the front end of the Vespa a lot less twitchy, and I have to say that's the first thing I notice when I transition from the Bonneville to the ET4, the front wheel feels very light. Which doesn't stop me from riding it altogether too fast, shown here indicating 56 uphill over the Niles Channel bridge:The distinctive oval headlight is reproduced in the slightly weird flying saucer shaped handlebar cover which contains the speedometer, fuel gauge and a selection of idiot lights. The headlight is quite powerful enough for night riding which is good for me as half my commute is in the dark. I have always enjoyed having a windshield on my motorcycles, and I use a 22 inch Parabellum on the Triumph. For the Vespa I bought an Italian Cuppini shield which isn't very big but it does push much of the wind aside and seems to make the scooter a little faster on the flat. However a full size windshield on a scooter with just twelve horsepower would rob it of a lot of speed especially into the wind so this has to be a compromise. My wife likes it and notices the relief it gives from wind in her chest too.We bought the ET4 in 2005 for around $3500 as I recall, when our house was worth a lot more too, halcyon days! It had 240 miles on the clock and was fully accessorised, with top case, floor mat lock and helmet. I think the woman who owned it dropped it at slow speed as we subsequently found a minor dent in the steel leg shield and I suspect she simply lost her nerve. Her loss is our gain and we now have nearly 6,000 miles on this little gem:

I was buzzing home from work last weekend and I got stuck behind a car doing just around 50 something miles an hour (the Vespa speedo is about ten percent optimistic). The big drawback to a 150cc engine is that it is almost impossible to pass a vehicle that is just under the limit. Sometimes the distances are just too short and other times the asshole, realising he is being passed by a moped, speeds up and makes for a chaotic moment on the highway. In this case I stopped at the gas station at the end of my street to fill up (1.7 gallons/ 7 liters of premium) and the car I had been tailing pulled up too. The driver got out and started staring at the scooter.

"How many miles to the gallon do you get? " he asked, the usual opening question.

"About 70, " I replied though my full, face helmet. The lack of a full windshield prompts me to wear a full face helmet on the Vespa.

"And you can cruise at 60 miles per hour?" he said, leaving the question hanging.

"Evidently," I replied, putting the pump away. I'd been following him since Mangrove Mama's and he knew I'd had no problem keeping up. Harley Riders hate it when they find themselves tailed by the pansy little scooter:

And sometimes people in cars, ignoring the fact I'm doing 60 will pull ahead just not to get stuck behind a stupid scooter. One of my colleagues coming into work one evening in his police cruiser pulled alongside at a traffic light on Stock Island and rolled down the window. " Hey, that thing goes pretty fast!" he said. I'm sure the other drivers watching the exchange thought I was in trouble for some reason. What they didn't know was I have the ability to make his life hell all night if I feel like. I was amazed he recognized me in my helmet riding my wife's scooter, but cops are smart like that.Happily it's hard to break the speed limit in a 55mph zone on a Vespa 150, so I hadn't been breaking the law in front of him, but he was surprised at how well I could keep up on the four lane section of Highway One. Vespas, even simple carburetted ones like the ET4, are fast as well as solid and comfortable. And the ET4 also sports weird oval mirrors:

Plus the scenery is just as good from the seat of Vespa as from that of a Bonneville or even a Harley:

And then I get to look out of the Communications Center windowat the top of the Police Station all night and see my little cream colored Vespa 150 ready to take me home:

I like the Bonneville because it has the ability to pass others easily, it doesn't notice headwinds and it engenders more respect from other road users. But the Vespa makes a welcome change from time to time and I'm really glad my wife enjoys owning and riding it so we can justify having it in our lives. It's definitely a keeper.

Wong Song Alley

Wong Song Alley. An evocative name no? So evocative drunken louts keep stealing the street sign that marks this downtown backwater. Actually Wong Song is downtown only if you have the fortitude to tear yourself away from Duval Street for long enough to trudge up Truman almost to the Japanese restaurant that I thought my wife liked and which she says may or may not be the case because she's never actually eaten there. Every time I mention my wife in connection with Kyushu I mean somewhere else ( I am not overly fond of raw fish so she tends to eat it with friends which is doubtless what friends are for).Somewhere opposite Kyushu and the Azur guesthouse there is a narrow opening next to a large building that has been converted to apartments:A super deal indeed. You can either buy half of Vallejo California, recently gone bankrupt, or a two bedroom manky little condo on one of the noisiest streets in Key West. Economic crisis means something different in the southernmost city, a place of different realities. However this is also the town where people balls up everything by being inconsiderate, like this Navy brat using his out sized penis substitute to block the alley entrance:So the obligatory Trumpet picture looks a bit skewed. (Squealing off camera Omigod I can't work like this!)Beyond it's irresistible allure as a place to dump large vehicles Wong Song is delightfully rural and unmaintained, a walk in the woods as it were:Lo and behold more coral rock, or is it limestone:Being blessed with a shorter stature I wanted to hold my camera on top of the wall and find out what was inside but I feared that doing so would end up being so fascinating i couldn't resist publishing the results here. Either that or it would so boring and bourgeois behind the secret wall I would fade away from disappointment. So I photographed the horse's head instead:They write children's books about places like this. these days instead I discovered young 'uns have to wear protective head gear and walk around looking a tad unbalanced instead of flying with their imaginations:They were on Virginia Street at the other end of the alley and this one was getting into the spirit of the secret garden:They were playing near the landmark that can be found at the Virginia street end of the unmarked alley:Back in the alley I found not much architecturally to capture my imagination after the rock wall got me lost in flights of fantasy:And the immensely practical wooden fence which is what I'd like around my own home to keep hoi-polloi out. Which as my wife points out frequently, isn't really a problem for us:But this being Key west there are intruders everywhere:He didn't take kindly to having his picture taken so he ran off, squeezing past the giant vehicle and he disappeared down Truman Avenue. It was a splendid example so I promptly followed suit.

Oblivion

"I'm not asleep yet. Keep the camera away" I remember saying that a couple of times after they started the Demerol into the intravenous needle stuck in my right hand. If there is any position likely to leave you feeling more vulnerable than lying on your side with your arse flapping between the inadequate cover provided by a hospital gown I have yet to encounter it, but it's made all the worse as you watch them position a screen next to your head which beeps reassuringly in time with your heart beat, as it displays for all the world to see the state of one's colon, a formerly very private place.

"I'm not asleep yet. Keep the camera away!" They stuck a clip on my finger to make sure I was still alive while they amused themselves poking around, fascinated by my rear end and it's contents. Dr Jones expressed no surprise when I told him I had been squirting bright fluorescent green liquid for lo these many hours. These preparations were taking forever and I wished they'd get a move on and start the inspection, as I heard them droning on, chatting inconsequentially in the background. "God." I thought. "Next thing I'll see the tunnel to the white light. They seem to be taking my death very calmly." Then I felt a smooth metallic wiggle in a place where straight men like me plan to never ever feel anything.

"You're back!" Doctor Jones called out cheerfully, not in the least guilty to be caught in flagrante delicto retrieving a camera from inside a grown man's backside. I could feel the slippery pen sliding out and I was immediately ready, there and then to get back to my normal routine well away from this hellish place. "Lie there and pretend to be a patient" Nurse Rebecca said sternly.

"No polyps," said the good doctor. And with those magical words not only did I get a clean bill of health (the best bill of all as pointed out by Heinz and Frenchie) but I also got a ham on brown bread sandwich and two strong black cups of coffee. I'm here to tell you hospital food is delicious if you are in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. And I most certainly was. I think I shall sleep for twelve hours straight.

Space Conch

It was a surprise to most locals, no doubt about it, but the announcement did not come as a surprise to the main participant in the bold new journey planned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The photo isn't the official picture commemorating the announcement, it's just a Key West way of poking fun at the surprise bound to be generated by the news issued this day, this special day in Key West. The Southernmost City is to e represented on NASA's newest and most audacious scientific voyage into space. There will be a Conch flying to Mars: The announcement of the selection of a Conch to participate in the first manned flight to another planet was viewed as just another step for the Conch Republic, taking it's place in the world of science and discovery."This is a great day for Key West, and a huge loss for this Department," said Chief Donie Lee as Noel announced his departure from KWPD on April 1st 2009 for the Mars training station on Culebra near Puerto Rico."Sorry to see you going" was his friend and colleague, Diggy's sentiment (Noel's partner Matt is seen at the rear in the photo above) when he presented Noel with a token of our appreciation in the form of the Flag. "Culebra is part of the US, just as the corner of Mars you step on will be," he said, handing over the April First cake. Noel himself was unable to contain his excitement at the announcement of his selection as part of the Mars Explorer Team, "I'm sorry I'll be leaving Matt behind," he said, "but our separation is for a good cause." Matt was unavailable for comment.Noel is already on his way to Culebra to practice space walking and learning how to remain unconscious in zero gravity in preparation for the three year trip to Mars. "April First," he said, " a great day for Key West and America, a great tradition refreshed." And with that- poof!-he was gone.