Winding Down the Season

We are definitely winding down the season here at Lake Michigan. Many boats already are out and many more have removed their sails.

Yesterday we got out the wire brush and brushed down the boat cradle and it is ready to receive two additional supports. After they weld these on I need to paint the cradle and apply the carpet on the jack stand pads. We may not get the whole thing painted but we will certainly get the carpet applied so it will not scratch the boat.

We are expecting wind speeds in excess of 50 knots tonight, tomorrow and Thursday as a storm goes through. I have re-secured all the lines and taken down the flags. The gale warning was upgraded to a storm warning this afternoon.

We stripped, sanded and varnished the outside of the companion way this afternoon instead of going sailing. This is probably good because as I write this the wind speeds are in excess of 20 some knots. I’ll write later to let you know how we made it through the form.

Cleaning House?

I cleaned out some of “My Friends” on Facebook. It is not that I want to ditch my friends and acquaintances but rather my Home Page was becoming so cluttered with junk Mafia Wars and other trivia that I need to clean the page. Fortunately, only two friends accounted for more that 50% so off they go – Sorry!

We are at the boat wrapping up the season. The next several days are to be filled with high winds and rain so we may come home.

I bought a new boat hook so we can avoid the disaster of last Sunday where the wind blew us away from the dock before we could get the lines on the cleat. I will also change the docking policy so we can make sure the forward lines get attached by the forward crew and the aft line will be handled by the helm crew. Captain will do a better job of discussing possibilities as relates to the wind.

The Chieftain – Oil propaganda

So The Chieftain has served up yet another installment of oil industry propaganda (Sunday Ideas, Sept. 6). If only we could overcome those eco-obstructionists and drill for more oil, we’d free ourselves from the grip of Middle Eastern tyrants and prices would drop!

This is a mathematically ridiculous fantasy that does not remotely reflect how the world oil market operates. I strongly encourage citizens who truly care about their nation’s security to do their own research. Visit the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Web site (www.eia.doe.gov)  and compare U.S. daily petroleum consumption with our proved reserves. It is shocking. Learn what “economically recoverable oil” means. Listen to what T. Boone Pickens, longtime oilman, has to say.

The worst part of the drill-till-you-drop argument is that it absolves us of any personal responsibility to change our nation’s perilous course. Those blasted environmentalists are to blame – not our gas guzzlers, lead-foot antics, elective long-distance commutes or engines left idling in the supermarket parking lot.

The Death of Conservatism

Sam Tanenhaus has just published a short book entitled The Death of Conservatism.   American conservatism is dead, Tanenhaus reports, because it lost its connection with its own essential modesty; its proper role was to act as a counter to “liberal overreach,” of which there was plenty in the 1960s and 1970s. Once it sought to advance policies of its own, and attempted to devise a philosophical justification for those new policies, it was done for.

Now we have a bunch of theatrical talking heads pandering to a minority of right wing radicals.  As a guy who always thought of himself as a conservative, I have had to distance myself from the right wing. I am still a fiscal conservative but a moderate in most other elements of life.  As a political persuasion Libertarianism is tantalizing since it promotes what I value – supporting strong personal rights to life and liberty.

Perhaps we should start a new political philosophy based on fractals – A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.”  This new Fractal Party would be homogeneous and represent the individuals fondest dreams since it individual parts would be smaller copies of the whole Fractal Party.  In other words we would be represented as per our wishes since they would be the same as the founding equation and thus the Fractal Party would be a positive force with positive attitudes.

In a way the right wing of today (radicals) is a Fractal Party since they pretty much agree on everything but in a negative direction.  Maybe the radical left wing is the same thing if you come full circle.  What to do?

.

Evacuated the boat

We left the boat this afternoon in sort of evacuation mode.  The weather turned rainy after a very nice month of good weather.  We went sailing yesterday up to Holland Michigan and this took about 3 hours but on the way back the wind piped up and at times it was 17+ kt from the East.  We were going along quite nicely and at near hull speed at times.  When we arrived at the harbor entrance  it was pretty simple to roll up the jib, take down the inner stay sail and then the main all while we were on the way in.  All was good until we got to the dock where the wind was blowing us into the slip and away from the dock.  We missed the aft cleat hook up and with the forward end tied off the aft end merrily blew to the south and CRUNCH into the dock.  I did not notice the damage for a few hours but I did not sleep well last night.

Today before leaving we bought some replacement parts and I will do the sanding, varnishing and mounting here in PL.  On return to the boat I will install and we should be back to where the boat was before we took it out for the sail.  After we got the parts we just bailed as we were tired of the boat life for a while.

We finally heard from DJ as there was a voice message on the answering machine on our arrival here in PL.  Now we are doing laundry and playing catchup with “things”.  That is all for tonight.  Hope I sleep well but solid ground feels strange to sleep on.

Beautiful Weather

The weather around these parts has been the thing of dreams.  What a marvolous summer we have had and  now the weather continues into this fall.  We drove to Muskegon, MI this afternoon to get boat supplies for closing up the boat in 3 weeks.

Sunday we had a great sail.  Tomorrow we plan another if the seas are less than 4 feet.  Wind tonight was up out of the NW and that is large fetch so they may be biggies by tomorrow.

SAM has discovered the notebook computer I brought aboard for the summer cruise.  Now it is all day holed up in the V-Berth until the batteries die and then it goes on the charger until recharged and then back up to the hole.  It appears as if I have created a monster.

Just checked my online broker and the market continues its rebound abeit slowly.  Maybe I will be solvent again. Yea..

August Oil Expenditures

August may be vacation time for many people, but our reliance on foreign oil didn’t take any time off. In August alone we imported 355 million barrels of oil and sent $25.2 billion overseas – the most spent on foreign oil out of any month this year…. We are digging ourselves deeper into a hole every day and our economy and security are suffering. Contact your representatives in Washington – This is very very important they are voting right now on Natural Gas, Exploration and many Energy Bills.

I put this same comment on Facebook and it did not elicit one single response.  People on FB talk about tattoos, what personality and all sort of other nonsensical trivia but never comment on the real deals.  Worse is that very few will ever take the 20 minutes to send an email to their representatives in Washington.

Chicago

We were up early this morning at 0600 and off to Chicago at 0700.  When we arrived at daughter JKM’s house she was not quite ready but we finally got the truck loaded and were off to Lincoln Park to her new apartment.  It was 20 miles up there on US41 and a few jigs and jogs past Navy Pier and about an hour drive.  Parking is pretty difficult to find but we managed a place real close to the apartment door.  The only problem was that the apartment is 4 floors up and there was a lot of stuff to carry up narrow hallways.  The worst was the bed mattress and box springs.  The back porch is a beauty an overlooks a nice quiet garden below.

We drove back to the old apartment in Whiting and loaded up the truck with items to be returned to PL.  The new apartment is too small for all the three floors worth of furnishings.  We arrived back at home about 1945 and about 300 miles later.

Now we are watching hulu.com.  Adios.

Sunday Sail

What a great day sailing!  We hit the lake about 1200 hrs and with all sails raised we went no where fast towards the WSW.  After about a half hour we saw some ripples on the water and headed for them.  The breeze picked up to about 7 knots from the NW.  I tightened her up a bit more towards the West and trimmed the sails.  After a minute or two we were going about 3.5 kts or better.  This tack was held for an hour or more and we were gaining on Moon Dance who was way out there.

I was sort of playing around with the wind and I tacked to the NE and then tightened her up a few points and we got 3.9 kts out of a 7.2 kt breeze.  This heading was taking us to a point just south of Holland.  It seemed like kind of a cool direction to go and with the waves less than a foot who could complain?  Certainly not the First Mate who was sleeping like the dead in the athwart ships bunk.

After an hour or so I changed course for a beam reach or slightly aft and held her until it was time to turn to the south to go back to port.  What a great day in great weather and seas.  We were back at the slip at 1700 hrs local.

Dead Heat

I just finished Dead Heat by Joel Rosenberg.  This is a good one – again.  I have read all in the series but this book concludes this series of characters.  Rapture occurs at the end of the book but is spell binding from beginning to the end.  Here is the url for the book