My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on March 28, 2015

One of my favorite sailing authors Fatty Goodlander has a new book, Creative Anchoring: Everything about Anchors and Anchoring, and it is now available. With some travel ahead I opted to purchase and download the ebook to my iPad for $9.99 at Amazon. Fatty's writing style is always entertaining be it a magazine article, sailing tale or educational cruising book. Since I follow he and his wife Carolyn on a couple of social networks, I also enjoy doing my part in keeping his vagabond sailing lifestyle in “freedom chips.”

Currently they are holed up in New Zealand, but I sure are anxious to continue “one again” sailing around the world … this time in their new boat Ganesh (rather than their long time smaller boat Wild Card). Fatty Goodlander is a prolific writter and has hundreds of articles to his credit not to mention several very enjoyable books. If you read one, you'll want to read another.

This practical, down-to-earth, step-by-step instruction manual isn’t merely about the basic mechanics of how to anchor—but how to anchor safely, while enjoying your boat more comfortably, in a far greater number of exposed anchorages. It contains everything a cruising sailor needs to know—including the proper cruising attitude and philosophy in relation to international anchoring-as-a lifestyle—and much, much more! It takes a completely new, totally unique “sea gypsy” look at the art and science of anchoring in today’s shrinking world. And, it does it from the penny-pinching perspective of a confirmed “economically-challenged, ever-restless” World Cruiser.

What other book on anchoring contains information on heaving-to, sea anchors, and Jordan Series Drogues? Flopper stoppers? Shore jackals? Dinghies? Anchor weights. Being tide-bound. The Etiquette of dragging. Land sharks. Snubbers. Doing WHAT to a coral head? Cheap DIY moorings. Arming your lead. Fish finders. Aground! Kedging off. Grappling hooks. Chain hooks. Lunch hooking. Hiding a sunken vessel under a floating vessel. Welding cables. Keep-away anchors. Free anchors. Cheap anchors. Free chain by the ton. Salvage. Karma! Sea Swine! Sex and Romance! Dirt Dwellers!

What special precautions should you take while anchoring in very shallow water? How to realistically anchor in 200 feet of depth? And what is the Key Concept to being able to anchor safely—year-after-year—where most sane yachties fear to tread?

It’s a book that only Cap’n Fatty would dare pen—written in his own inimitable, laid-back style.

 

Category: Books, Sailing | No Comments »
Tags: amazon, anchoring, Books, cruising, ebook, fatty goodlander, sailing, sharkshares

Posted By RichC on March 27, 2015

I wasted a couple hours on Thursday morning while “working” (cough, cough) from home and downloaded the Periscope app for iOS on the iPhone.  To the novice “tech geek,” these live broadcasting social networking apps will soon have the Internet filled with video streams. Currently I’m seeing broadcasters like CBNC’s Julia Boorstin (above) jumping on the bandwagon and testing things out on the air. But as apps like Meercat (live video on Twitter) and Twitter’s Periscope take off, I’m beginning to wonder how culpable the “network” becomes. I’m thinking about underage children broadcasting live video using the conduits connected to Twitter, Facebook, etc as well as other crimes or terror publicity clips?

Streaming live video isn’t new, considering ustream.tv has been livestreaming for years, but connecting with an audience using a cellphone the size of Twitter’s and Facebook’s is taking it the next level. So far it makes live broadcasting of “breaking news” by everyone with a cellphone a reality. It will be interesting to see just what grows from having the ability to connect instantly with a social networking audience and have a decent quality live video (and audio) feed pumped in realtime throughout the world.

Now to fine time to watch more Internet video???

EDIT: Watch Bruce Van Horn walk around his lake over his lunchbreak on his iPhone and earbuds … very nice. I sent a few messages to him as he responded back audibly while walking. Wind noise and image quality of a moving iPhone does degrade quality so including image as an example. Still very cool.

Category: Cellphone, Social Media, Technology, Video | No Comments »
Tags: meerkat, News, periscope, techfriday, twitter, video

Posted By RichC on March 26, 2015

News is slowly trickling or leaking out as to what may have happened to Germanwings Flight 9525 with 150 people on board in the mountain region of southern France. The lastest indication from a New York Times report is that one of the pilots left the cockpit after having a “very smooth, very cool” conversation with the other (according to one report after listening to the audio on the cockpit recorder). After the pilot left the cockpit the Airbus A320 started to decend and the investigator said “the guy outside is knocking lightly on the door and there is no answer. And then he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer. The investigator then said, “You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

Category: Aviation, News | 2 Comments »
Tags: airbus, crash, flying, germanwings, nytimes

Posted By RichC on March 25, 2015

Nationally the pay for babysitters is up in 2015 according to care.com as reported on CNBC this morning. When the reports indicate that wage growth is stagnent and inflation is at bay, they obviously don't have kids to take care of …

[adinserter block=”5″]

Category: Financial, Misc | No Comments »
Tags: babysitting, childcare, cpi, inflation, wages

Posted By RichC on March 25, 2015

My magazine reading has slipped in recent years and after 35 years of nary a missed issue of Cruising World magazine, I’m considering canceling my paper issue. Actually with all the  information available on the Internet I may not even want a digital copy? I’ve posted numerous tips and comments associated with the publication, but have found my copies piling up with even a glance. Part is due to time and the above … although it is partially due to the excessive amount of advertising filling the pages. No decision yet, but I can’t see renewing when my subscription runs out unless the 35 years of nostalgia keeps me collecting the paper copies.

Category: Misc, Sailing | No Comments »
Tags: crusing world, magazines, publications, sailboat

Posted By RichC on March 24, 2015

Early in the day I wondered why French President François Hollande was so quick to say that he expected no survivors in the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 … after seeing the debris field photos in the afternoon, I understand why (below). Sure seems like a suspicious crash considering the reliability of this Airbus A320 commercial airline workhorse – 6000 built, 3000 fly everyday.

 

An Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf with 150 passengers and crew on board crashed in a remote, hard-to-reach region of the French Alps on Tuesday, in the worst air disaster in France in more than three decades.

The flight operated by Germanwings, a budget airline whose parent company is Deutsche Lufthansa AG, went down near Méolans-Revel, a small village of 300 surrounded by steep mountains.

“The conditions of the accident suggest there are no survivors,” French President François Hollande said in a brief televised address.

Flight 9525 reached an altitude of 38,000 feet at 10:45 a.m., or 44 minutes after takeoff, and a minute later began an eight-minute descent before crashing, Germanwings Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said.

more at WSJ LINK

Category: Aviation, News | No Comments »
Tags: a320, airbus, airline, crash, france, germanwings

Posted By RichC on March 24, 2015

While doing a little garage work this past weekend (removed snowblower from the John Deere) I crawled under Brenda’s dented and bruised 270,000 mile 1998 Toyota Rav 4 (Links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6). Besides repairing an exhaust hanger and heat shield, I spotted a leak in the power steering and inspected a couple rusting structural parts. Although I’ve driving cars with far worse cancer, it has been a long time. Nowadays the rust treatment and steel seems to be so much better than anything built in the 60s, 70s and 80s. We are at a point with this little bugger that I really don’t want to put to much work or money back into it. Hmm?

Category: Automotive, Personal, Photos | 1 Comment »
Tags: brenda, Rav4, rust, toyota

Posted By RichC on March 23, 2015

I spent a few minutes updating and cleaning up some of the tags on MyDesultoryBlog this past weekend … more of a maintenance thing than anything essential. Part of the reason was that I am still learning about Blogsy as a blog writing and editing tool, but also just to clean things up.

I realized that the amateur radio propagation daily graphic wasn't something I or any readers really needed in a sidebar and that a tag cloud might be more useful. When adding it, I was also surprised to see a few of the “larger” words highlighted and was also disappointed when I realized how many early posts had missing “categories” and “tags” as they were lost during an update and server move years ago.
🙁

 

Category: Blogs | 1 Comment »
Tags: blog, blogsy, update, wordpress

Posted By RichC on March 22, 2015

Last year about this time I had mentally decided that Brenda and I would be cruising the Bahamas aboard our sailboaat Encore in March 2015, but as “life happens” those dreams were not meant to be. As the year progressed, both of our surviving parents had health concerns requiring more of our attention, Encore started to show her age and had a few mechanical issues needing my attention and those pesky bills continued to keep us in need of a job. Our (my) plans were modified and instead of a month cruising the Bahamas we rerouted to the Florida Keys, then again to Miami and Biscayne Bay for a couple weeks and eventually nothing. Probably the most disappointed was my son Taylor who was looking forward to spending some time someplace other than frozen North Dakota in late winter (we’ll still do something this spring, just not as exciting).

Disappointed but glad not to be cruising with known mechanical problems, I made the most of a couple stretched out boat “work” weekends in Florida and “should” just about have the diesel back in running order. The last fix will be to add a thin copper washer to the number 3 injector on the high hour Volvo (unknown hours). Unfortunately an epoxy fix was attempted prior to our owning the boat and went unnoticed until it failed and began leaking … causing low compression, a loss of power and a little puff of smoke to enter the engine compartment. While it still ran, it wasn’t smooth or with the power needed in some situations and eventually coked up the injector making it’s removal from the head difficult. Thankful a diesel mechanic, Tim LaValley, winters in Florida and travels to the area in his RV each year with some of his tools. With Tim’s knowledge and penance for saving a buck, he suggested instead of removing the head and having a machine shop bore and press out the existing copper sleeve and install a new one (major engine work), that we try cleaning and placing a thin copper washer to see if it seals the leak (yet to be known). I’m crossing my fingers and hoping this fix will complete the diesel updates for 2015.

For now, I’ll follow my cruising friends the Judy and Mark Handley aboard Windbird (emails in above photo) who are in the Bahamas in between Mark’s chemotherapy treatments. They are an amazing couple making the absolute best of their challenging situation. So onto my 2016 dreaming and planning.

 

 

Category: Personal, Sailing, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: cruising, diesel, encore, plans, sailboat, sailing, volvo

Posted By RichC on March 21, 2015

If you do plan a trip on the Amazon River, you’ve probably though about the wildlife … especially the ferocious insects, dangerous reptiles and famous fish … like the Piranha. They inhabit the neotropical freshwater rivers of northern South America, including the countries of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. According to the article posted in Wikipedia, there are over 20 species. Some larger, like the solitary Black or Redeye Piranha, others a bit smaller who feed in schools like the better known Red Bellied Piranha.
Hmm … feeding in schools?  Yikes!

Category: Nature, Travel, Video | No Comments »
Tags: amazon, brazil, fish, piranha, river, Travel