Amy Smith Linton
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Fiction Prompt: Strange Devices

4/9/2019

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Some warming-up exercises from my writing day.
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Story 1: Got an Eye on You
They might be watching from the most unlikely of places: from your own wristwatch, a smudge on a painted cinderblock wall, the unfurling tendril of kudzu.

If it looks like, it looks.

An eye for an eye.  

You might speculate, but how will you ever know what thoughts –– or if thoughts –– drift across those observer's minds. They are made to watch, certainly, function following form, but by whom and for what possible reason?


Story 2: Fisheye Lens
Fish always look surprised when lifted from the water. Well, not all fish: Sharks aren't so much surprised as continuing to look as if they are hunting, cat eyes blank in those smooth faces. But most fish tilt a that sequin of an eye and flex a jaw, possibly astonished by the wide airy world that has taken them.  

Maybe it's gravity that surprises them, even more than the suffocating air: the sense finally of the earth pulling on every cell, unsupported guts tending downward, gills crowding one another in a single direction. 

Are they at the apex of surprise when hauled alongside a boat? Is there further astonishment at being unhooked and slid back into the sea? Surely even the most inexperienced of baitfish can not be surprised or outraged when the rigging hook circles a spine and the wire leader dictates their way.  But no, that feels false. We all treasure secret ambitions. No baitfish knows for sure that she is bait, even when she's twitching away from the cotton net in the aerated tank.
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Fiction Prompt –– Fishing

11/7/2018

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Trachinotis carolinas. Characterized by small silvery scales, forked tail, related to Jack-fish but highly valued for eating. ​
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A Fishing Story –– Version 1
Caught me a biggun.  Though he had me whupped, but I turned the tables on his bipedal ass. Bootless meet toothless. How do you like them airless apples? Huh?  Swim like a fish much?

All he had to do was let go, but it's greed what catches em, every time.  Sparkle sparkle! Just let go and get back to your spot, but no. Gotta cling. Dunno why it's called landing when you reel one in. Land's the one thing they ain't much of in that situation, if you know what I mean. I figure he'll eat pretty good, give him a few days.


A Fishing Story –– Version 2
A short list of ways I've avoided writing today:  rearranged the fiction bookshelf, cleaned my stainless water bottle with bleach, followed by cleaning the bottle-brush. With bleach. Made a few calls. Perused Writer's Digest. Bootlessly researched a specific twitter from a specific Twit. Cleaned the keyboard with rubbing alcohol and q-tips. Listened to samples of Billie Martin's songs on iTunes.  Decided listing my excuses was nearly as good as writing anything. Words are words when you are trying for a daily word-count.

A Fishing Story – Version 3 
Swimming, swimming, swimming, biting at a shrimp.
Shrimp has sharp –– ow!
And damn! What the hell?
Swimming swimming, vaulting into air.
Tractor beam or something yanking.
Don't beam me up.
Swimming, running from the grasp.
Caught.



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Mackerel

5/31/2018

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Ah, mackerel season. Say you are a sailor. Naturally, you are sailing on a Thursday evening, enjoying a beverage as the sun sinks below the skyline of Tampa.

Then, zing!

A meaty torpedo of fishiness flies out of the water. Then another! And another! 

​It seems impossible that no one is brained by the piscatorial hailstorm.

It seems impossible that the near victims often don't even notice it. (Ah, the power of enjoyable beverages and picturesque sunsets on a Thursday evening on Tampa Bay!)
Spanish Mackerel
The Spanish mackerel, scientific name Scomberomorus maculates, which does –– seriously –– translate as "silly spotted mackerel," is back in town.  Sharply pointed and oily, iridescently dotted and foolish enough to sometimes bite the hand (or toe) that tries to unhook it. 

​I don't even need to write fiction.   
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Simulacrum

5/24/2018

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I looked up the word "simulacrum" a while back for a story I was writing, and I keep wanting to put it into wider circulation. It's defined as a copy or an imperfect image of a thing.  Likewise the word "brace" means a pair. I'd thought it was more, as in "a brace of partridge," which seems like a small bag for a day's work.

Anyhow, for your viewing pleasure, a brace of angular angler simulacra.
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Everglades Challenge: Scouting Routes

2/5/2018

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Like sands through the hourglass, so are the shapes of those passes...or something.

When Hurricane Irma spun through last fall, the sandy landscape of Florida changed.  My old stomping grounds of Shell Key, for instance, bifurcated. A fresh new pass split the barrier island.

In preparation for the 2018 edition of the Everglades Challenge, my favorite skipper TwoBeers and I hoped a bit of leisurely scouting might save the Spawn team some misery.

Navigating is tough enough when the islands hold still. 

​Particularly late at night. Particularly if the weather is awful.
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2017 Everglades Challenge Team on board Spawn. Jahn Tihansky, Jeff Linton, OH Rodgers.
We'll camp in the Everglades National Park. It's not our first venture into this wilderness. It's a place less full of shady Spanish moss and swampy mud than one might expect.   

​It's pretty darned pleasant, actually: we pitch a tent on the sandy beach, maybe catch a few fishes, play with driftwood.
In general, the hazards that are most worrying on this venture off the map are, oh, I dunno –– mosquitoes, sunburn, getting stranded and having to be rescued.  

​THIS is not what I expected:
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Mormon Key is our favored camping spot. George was almost 10 feet long last time they checked, and weighed in at 700 pounds. Good lawsey day. 


​

More Everglades Challenge?
Okay, here's a story about the adventure race by the late great Meade Goudgeon. We'll miss seeing him on the beach this year.  

​The Challenge starts on March 3 off Fort DeSoto Beach. 
​
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Pictures > Words

12/14/2017

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We spent a month in Ecuador. 
Salinas, Ecuador
We went to the lovely seaside town of Salinas, west of Guayaquil for the Lightning Masters World Championships and the Lightning World Championships. The Lightning we sailed is Steve Davis's boat.

​We jump onto a Lightning with Steve from time to time, and as a bonus, we've been able to travel with Steve and his wife Jan. Sometimes we get to hang out with additional Davises, which was an extra treat this time. Hi Stephanie! Hi John!  
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Steve and Jeff share an unshakable and insatiable interest in hunting fish. Luckily, they have a Lightning friend in Ecuador, Paco Sola, with just the right big boat for such an interest. The boys took a day between races to search for fishes.

Shall we say "bucket list"?
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After the racing was done (3rd and 12th respectively. Respectable!), we split tacks with Jan and Steve. They went home to Colorado, to work on the Bosler House, while we went swanning off to the Galápagos.
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We saw a whole bunch of blue-footed boobies.  (Yes, the use of the word never gets old.)
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Blue Footed Boobie
Also iguanas –– both land and marine versions.
Iguana
Galapagos Marine Iguana
We swam a lot.
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We had some encounters.
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White Tipped Reef Shark
And hiked some trails.
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And had some other encounters.
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The time just flew by. But we never got our fill of sea-lions.  
Isabela, Galapagos
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Alert! Sharks Have No Bones!*

8/2/2016

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In a blithe hunter-provider mood, my favorite skipper once yanked a yard-foot-long shark right onto the 24-foot-long sailboat we were cruising.

Three muscular feet of dove-gray anger thrashing about, in what turns out to be a –– maybe –– six-foot long cockpit.  

At every thrash, those blank yellow cat-eyes not blinking and that grabby mouth with the stadium-seating rows of triangular serrated teeth snap snap snapping...


 

We weren't wearing shoes, and we had neglected to arm ourselves with a winch handle or any other species of bludgeon.

Forced to retreat to the cabin top, we were obliged to wait for the fish to, as the captain put it, "simmer down."
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Oh, we ate shark nuggets that evening, of course we did.  

As my hunter-provider often remarks about the swimmer vs. Jaws issue: he's eaten a lot more of them than they have of him.  ​


(*"Alert! Sharks have no bones!" is the most awesome Archie McPhee catalog headline of all time.)
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Jukebox

2/26/2016

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My favorite skipper was sailing back to Florida from the island of Bonaire with his dad when the theme song from "Gilligan's Island" got stuck in his head.
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It was a long offshore voyage that included a lot of adventures, beginning with Pappa Joe having decided it was time to quit smoking.

A few peevish days into it, and having scrounged every fleck of dried old tobacco from the bilge, I believe they made a foray into Key West for smokes.  

Later in the voyage, they nearly sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Spent the night holding Island Woman off the rocks and had to limp into shore to effect repairs. 

​Which led to a midnight bunk, dodging commercial traffic out of –– was it Maracaibo? to avoid having to hire the required but extravagantly expensive harbor pilot. They returned home with both passports, which was a bit of serendipity.

Also, Pappa Joe nearly got pulled overboard by a billfish. He wanted to boat the fish; the fish wanted to ocean the man. 

Two men on a stout 36-footer with a damaged rudder making their way upwind from the lower reaches of the Caribbean? Of course some song was going to get stuck in someone's beezer. Why not that most appropriate of lyrics: "The weather started getting rough/the tiny ship was tossed"?

Any sailor with the slightest lick of whimsey has chanted those words from time to time.

Of course, with the Google these days it's a cinch to get the rest of the words. Offshore, back in the day, sleep-deprived and salty?  Upon reaching shore, I imagine these were his first words to the nice fella at the gas pump in Marco: "Hey, you know Gilligan's Island? Yeah, what comes after 'Sit right down and you'll hear a tale/A tale of a fateful trip'?"

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The Everglades Challenge is a week away, which means the household is in full press mode to get Team Spawn to the beach with all the parts needed to get to Key Largo.

I'll post next week with all the links and updates.
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Sailing: Entropy

9/7/2015

3 Comments

 
As far as spectator sports go, sailboat racing is a bust. Unless it's blowing a gale or there are hydrofoils involved, the boats move so slooooooowly. And the actual event ––! When does it start? When does it end?  Everything's indirect: the boats don't even go straight from A to B. 

Onboard, it's a whole different story. Even on the nicest of days, improbable things happen* –– usually quite rapidly. 


*This makes reasonable scientific sense: it's a law of physics that things tend to become more random. 
Flying Scot Sailboat
For improbable example, a remora attached itself to our boat.  My skipper and I were racing on Sarasota Bay, in our rotund Flying Scot*. 

Going downwind, I usually nip back to the stern and give the rudder a quick wipe, in case we are trailing seaweed or we've picked up some other slow debris. Sliding my hand along the slab of metal in the water, I really was not expecting to feel a live, swimming, wiggling fish. A remora.

 *(Full Disclosure: all Flying Scots are rotund)


Though I grabbed the fish –– knowing it would be the Best Sailing Story EVER if I could land the nightmarish creature with my bare hands –– it wiggled free and re-attached its creepy suction-cup head to the boat.  

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I took another swipe at it, and then another: eight seconds of piscatorial rodeo. 

Whether because of the yanking on its slippery hind-parts or by virtue of my powerfully girlish shrieking, the fish came loose and swam away after while...one hopes it found a more peaceable commensal partner. 
I expected that the ruckus might have caught the attention of my favorite skipper. Surely he'd glanced back to see if I had fallen overboard or lost a limb or something, even if he couldn't fully participate in the battle. But when I scrambled to my usual spot, he replied with a simple, "Huh," after I told him what had transpired.

A fish that can suction its bony head-plate onto boats (or sharks or humans) in roughly the manner of a party-goer applying an Solo cup to her chin? Okay. But it finds our boat? During the selected 25 minutes of that race when we were going downwind? 

The universe may tend toward randomness, but maybe there's a far shore of random that looks like order, or perhaps intention. Or not.  
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Everglades Challenge: High Tech, Lo Tech

2/21/2014

8 Comments

 
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When TwoBeers (the WaterTribe name for my husband) first decided to transform an elderly, mild-mannered Flying Scot sailboat into a vehicle suitable to the Everglades Challenge adventure race, he never guessed that the project would siphon up two and a half seasons' worth of fishing time.  

That's a lot of weekends and evenings.  While the fish have enjoyed their vacation, our house has been a hive of activity: preparing, building and rebuilding, plotting routes, and thinking about what might go wrong when pointing a small boat away from shore. 

We are not the first to ponder and worry. The organizers of the Everglades Challenge have an extensive list of required safety gear -- and it includes a cell phone. (Those who know TwoBeers can take a moment to nod wisely and chuckle at the irony.) So like it or not, my favorite captain has been venturing into the 21st Century.

After decades spent dodging the camera, he often remembers to fire up the GoPro nowadays. He's got a firm grip on the line-of-sight needs of cellular data transmission. Practice has given him speed at wringing the available data from his GPS. He's got the SPOT set up the way he wants. The EPIRBs are located.  He's even been observed using a tablet -- and yeah, a tablet not hewn from stone -- with surprising dexterity. 

Racing one-design boats for the past decade or so has meant that we leave the dock, sail around brightly-colored buoys all day, and then come back to shore in time for dinner. It doesn't require a lot of sophisticated navigation.
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My favorite captain has had mad camera-dodging skills from way back. Here, while his brother J is happy to display his magnificent 15-year-old physique, it appears that young TwoBeers is busy with something behind Pappa Joe. He's not. Tricky.
Although TwoBeers spent many of his childhood summers cruising the Bahamas with his pappa and brother, and he put in plenty of long-distance miles delivering boats in the years since, the Everglades Challenge IS a different kind of race.

Luckily, his crew, Moresailesed (aka Jahn "Wild Card" Tihansky), coaches the Navy off-shore team. He's also an amateur pilot. This means he practices navigation, preaches navigation, and has a keen appreciation for the value of safety gear. 

So while TwoBeers has been focused on boat-speed and design, Moresailesed has been leading the charge on navigation, with EnsignRumDown (Mark Taylor) as expert IT director. On the advice of a cruising friend R, we are trying out Navionics electronic charts. We even found a folding solar charger with a pair of USB ports for charging the hand-held electronics.  Frankenscot's progress will be tracked closely by satellite.

At the other end of the technology spectrum, I bring you...FIRE.
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All the high-tech gadgets in the world are well and good, but if it comes to making a rough landing on a dark and cold shore, the thing that will keep a body alive is very basic indeed. 

The Campmor catalog has provided a lot of cool gear (cozy sleeping bags, mylar survival blankets, water purification tablets, a snake-bite kit, and waterproof stuff-sacks), but the coolest of them all? The sheath-knife with a magnesium fire-starter stick built right into the handle. 

Strike the steel blade along the magnesium and you get (kettle-drums sound off here: Dun-Dun! Dun-Dun!) fire! 

Well, not quite fire: more exactly, sparks of molten magnesium at around 1200 degrees that -- after a number of practice attempts as you get the hang of it -- will create flame in a bit of tinder. 

Stone Age high technology.  It's our hope that Frankenscot will carry the crew safe to the finish, but they'll have a hand-line (Hey, fish, wake up!) and the means for fire, just in case. 

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