Amy Smith Linton
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In a Tiny Boat

3/30/2021

3 Comments

 
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Every few years, somebody casts off a perfectly nice dock, heads out onto the bounding main, and breaks the record for exceptional adventuring.

Among ocean-goers, minimalism makes the record: go small, go solo, go alternately powered. For instance, the Norwegian-American fellas who rowed from Manhattan to the Scilly islands in 1896, and then, just 'cause, they continued rowing their 18-foot clinker-built oak open skiff to Le Havre, France. (George Harbo and Frank Samuelson were Jersey clamming buddies, and their 55-day record stands still for two guys rowing.)

The 13.5-foot long Tinkerbelle sailed across the Atlantic in the mid-1960's (78 days of salty solitary, chronicled in a book entitled, helpfully, Tinkerbelle, the Story of the Smallest Boat Ever to Cross the Atlantic Nonstop.)

Then there's Father's Day, a boat only 5'4" long, which made the crossing from Newfoundland to Falmouth in 1993. The boat has an uncanny resemblance –– to my way of looking –– to a large Igloo® cooler.  That sailor famously was nearly unable to walk after his 105-day crouch.  

via GIPHY


Mercifully, my favorite skipper is not going far in this thing.

Still, every time he inserts his person into the diminutive cockpit of his 2.4 Meter, I have a moment of cognitive dissonance.

The scale is so oddly skewed. 
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It's my nature to draw parallels. A good metaphor makes me unaccountably joyful, much like cash found in the street. ​
So when Jeff reverse jack-in-the-boxes into his 2.4 Meter, I think, "Does it look as if he is sailing his own boot?"  

Giving the boat a titanic boost off the dock, I wonder, "Is that what Paul Bunyan would look like if he traded Babe for Courageous?"

I almost think we saw models at the New York Yacht Club that dwarf the 2.4.
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But as we say of one-design racing, if all your friends are racing turtles, race a turtle.  Or in this case, race an HO-scale turtle.  
3 Comments

Everglades Challenge 2021: In the Books

3/9/2021

16 Comments

 
Imagine butterflies metamorphosing –– but in reverse. One by one, brightly-colored creatures alight and begin removing their orange and yellow vests, their chartreuse-and-black drysuits, scarlet wetsuits, gloves, booties.
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They are encrusted with salt. Their swollen, water-softened hands quiver. They struggle with zips and buckles, sometimes having to stop for a revivifying sip of nectar.

But they finally peel their waterproofing cocoons and emerge at Key Largo: smaller, barer, larval.


The transformation needs only a blast of the hot shower and some hours of sleep before, voilá! they transform into human caterpillars again, full of stories and potential, committed to mowing some vittles.
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​Here are a few of those stories:

​Andyman and Natedog screaming along on a reach, the rig humming with energy, everything on the edge and making amazing time in Florida Bay.

Natedog looks back and proudly announces, "The boat's bulletproof!"

Andyman immediately turns his eyes to the sky and says, "Oh Lord! Forgive us, I cannot control what words come out of his mouth."
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This photo from Paddledancer of Iron Bob and The Juice, the first paddlers to the beach.
Off Cape Sable, as Spawn of Frankenscot skitters along under spinnaker a, a 5-foot-long tarpon lifts itself clear of the surface –– four or five feet out of the water –– big jaws agape, sides shining like a mirror, and splashes down just shy of the boat's port water-wing. 

A near miss to a legendary fish story. Moresailesaid, from the other side of the boat, "What the hell was that?"

Tied to the dock at Checkpoint 3 in Flamingo in the middle of the windy night, Andyman wakes to the sound of covert rustling.  

He opens an eye, and –– projected against the tent-wall he's made of his mainsail –– is the clear profile of Rocket Raccoon, who has delved into the cooler and opened the plastic Tupperware container and is rummaging boldly  for the really good trail mix.  

Andyman repels the intruder and tries to return to dreamland from his spot on the trampoline of his catamaran.

Just as he is falling back into the sleep of the righteous, a manatee surfaces under him, perhaps 18 inches to the south of his face.

Meanwhile, Natedog snoozes peacefully in a nearby Toyota. 

via GIPHY

At Checkpoint 2, Bill Wright is the volunteer in charge of the administration of the race. Under Bill's watch, the duties include gleefully filming the technique of each team as they navigate the viscous grey mud that separates water from shore at low tide.  

His videos are accompanied by an evil chuckle worthy of a Bond villain.

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Photo credit Bill Wright.
Stumbling Thunder recounted the singular joy of sailing out Murray Channel to find a –– is it a congress of manatee?–– manateeing around.

He also said he was surprised by the number of porpoises that swam up to the boat to give the program the side-eye, as if to say, "Y'all crazy!"  Mind you, he and JustAnotherSailor were on a 2-hour watch system, so they were not as sleep-deprived on the mighty Dovekie as might others have been on their various other kooky vessels. 
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SailorKing and the RealDM finish their first Everglades Challenge at around noon on Tuesday. The last leg, crossing Florida Bay in a brutal 24+ hours, as the weather grew sportier and more on-the-nosey by the hour.

Tapped out on Monday evening, SailorKing and DM park the Windrider 17 in the lee of a mangrove island south of Tavernier.

​The RealDM tucks himself into a sleeping bag in the tent on shore while SailorKing snoozes at the helm, sitting, he notes, like a corpse.

​Weekend at Bernies takes to the waves! Hell, he remarks, I probably look like a dead guy the whole time.
Meanwhile, on shore, the adventures are perhaps less heroic, but not without risk:

That first bite of one of Harriet's Restaurant's key lime muffin carries a beignet hazard: do not sigh in pleasure and then inhale sharply.

Unless of course you enjoy aspirating powdered sugar and resembling a 1980's cinematic criminal. 

Paddledancer and Mrs. D-Squared both fall victim, but –– thank goodness! –– do not have to press the button for outside assistance. 

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via GIPHY

Afterword

So, my favorite skipper, TwoBeers along with Moresailesaid sailed in the kind of conditions that are hard to top for Spawn racing down the coast: good breeze, mostly NNE, with favorable tides and excellent luck.

"We've never pancaked so much," announced TwoBeers, meaning that the boat was skim-boarding along large swaths of the racecourse, occasionally outrunning the scrim of water and belly-flopping into the soft sandy mud. The new gasket he'd installed along the centerboard worked well, but sadly, they forgot to close the automatic bailer. Hello Old Faithful of stinky mudflat mud.  

The team crossed Florida Bay in an astounding 4 hours moving like a scalded cat under reefed main and jib. The water-ballast and trapezes came into play on and off.

As they often express, they got their wish to finish before the second sunset, each sailor getting a couple of hours' worth of naps as the boat planed off on a (port) run. 

In fact, the vast majority of the Challenge was completed on port, aside from the odd tack and jibe through passes.
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Prudent superstition did not permit them to utter the words "record" until they were safely ashore in Key Largo, but they  finished in something like 33 hours, breaking their own course monohull record from a few years ago by a smashing three hours. 

We stretched out the clean-up and putting away of gear for a few days in Key Largo so that we could share in the triumph of other finishers; the event passes so quickly!

​Until next year...
16 Comments

Everglades Challenge 2021 –– It Begins.

3/6/2021

8 Comments

 
Crossing the Sunshine Skyway as playful gusts of wind nudge my RV from one side of the lane to the other, I dart a quick look to my right.
Spawn of Frankenscot EC2021
Thanks to power-boat riding Robert Hill for this photo of Spawn shortly after the start.
Of course the fleet of adventure racers is long over the horizon. Even knowing that my TwoBeers and Moresailesaid are sporting fine Gortex® waterproofs, I knock wood that they're hauling (dry) butt ahead of the rain.

​Rain that is just starting to ping against the windshield.


When my favorite skipper and Moresailesaid push Spawn off the beach for the Everglades Challenge each March, their focus is 100% on getting to Key Largo.  

The event is an "unsupported" adventure race, which means the racers carry whatever they expect to need. Preparation is key: for months, I'll find lists of how many AA and AAA batteries, of food ideas, of which things need fixing.

​There are long looong phone calls about how best to stow gear.
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Before sunrise on the beach, the game is all about stowing gear.
I stay out of most of it. I consider myself a quartermaster rather than a chef d'équipe for the team. I obtain and make stuff in advance of the event.  

But when they take off at 7 am on the first Saturday in March, my focus changes.

I'm ground control, so I keep an eagle eye on their SPOT track. And another eagle eye on the weather news.

And another on the WaterTribe tracking page and on the RaceOwl page when the WaterTribe page gets bogged down. 

Plus one more on what's shaking on the social networks. Oh, and maybe a peek at the weather radar.


How many eyes is that?

(Whatever you do, do NOT Google "eagle spider." Jayshusmaryandjoseph)

By ten, I've managed the bronco ride home –– despite that fool motorcycle that would decide to  nip in front of the big rig as we whoa'd down the exit ramp.

​The bumpersticker is right: you DO have to keep an eye out for those things.

I'm emptying one vehicle and repacking another, since tomorrow I'll be conveying Spawn's trailer to Key Largo (knock wood! if nothing happens in the meanwhile! fingers crossed!).

And refreshing my screens and answering texts.

via GIPHY

Among the many management challenges of the Everglades Challenge each year, the only thing tougher than organizing batteries and gear and the boys' socks  –– for me –– is keeping a lid on worry.
Knocking wood and crossing fingers and so on.
8 Comments

Spawn of Frankenscot Lurches Out Once More

12/1/2020

2 Comments

 
O Spawn! It's getting to be that time of year again!* 


My favorite skipper took a couple of days to locate all the pieces and parts of his Everglades Challenge adventure boat.

He picked a Saturday and made a few phone calls to drum up other WaterTribesfolk.

And if the weather wasn't exactly cooperative, Spawn DID get to shake off the cobwebs and skitter about Tampa Bay last weekend. 
 
They put in maybe 7 hours of sailing, finishing under a lovely full moon. 
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It was a decent warm-up, as the team remembered (when prompted by text by an alert ground control) to turn on their dang SPOT tracker when they were already halfway down the Bay.

Which is why their track looks like a point-to-point sail rather than the actual circle route that it was. 
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Fans of the team will be surprised to know that zero major innovations are planned for the 2021 event (starts the first Saturday in March at dawn at Fort Desoto Beach! Bring bagpipes!).  Of course three months does leave room for all sorts of shenanigans. We'll see.

Thanks to Dave Helmick, Dave Clement, Andy Hayward, and Nate Villardebo, most excellent WaterTribesmen, who offered help, companionship, and a place to park. Good luck in the most challenging part of the Challenge: getting to the beach.
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*Time of year coming up...when armchair adventurers and make-it-real dreamers to prepare to participate in (or just watch) adventure: human powered watercraft (from kayaks to SUPs to catamarans, etc.) take an unsupported 300-mile-long voyage south along Florida's west coast. 

​The event offers both genuine danger (the waiver spells it out: "You could die") and possibilities within a budget's reach (a couple hundred bucks worth of required equipment, a little boat, ten days of vacation...). 

The starting line –– the high tide line on the beach –– offers an astonishing vision of people living their dreams. And alarming, of course. 
2 Comments

What I Miss Most Today

5/27/2020

0 Comments

 
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Okay, so everything has changed.

​More or less.

Less in some states. 

But for many people, especially those with a healthy respect for both the science of infectious disease and the preservation of our elders, this summer seems like the start of a not-so-brave new world.

So here's what I am missing.

In photo format, because nobody wants to hear that tone of voice.

With vintage photos, because it does seem like a long time ago since we went out dancing, or hung out without a care with multiple generations of the family ––or not-family –– or planned a trip, or hugged people, or shared aprés-sailing stories...
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But all this aside, please be sensible and gentle with one another. We're all trying our best –– even when it's not that great, it's likely all the effort we can manage. 

​That is all. For now.
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Everglades Challenge 2020: In Hindsight...

3/17/2020

18 Comments

 
In hindsight, the preceding two weeks of blustery winds might have hinted at the weather ahead...but hope springs on and on and on. Like an Energizer bunny.

The 2020 edition of the Everglades Challenge –– that 300-mile human-powered unsupported expedition-style race that goes from St. Pete Beach to Key Largo along the left coast of Florida in March –– ended early for our beloved team aboard the mighty yacht Spawn.
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The event begins on the first Saturday in March from the beach at Fort DeSoto in St. Petersburg.  This year, because of the small craft advisory in place for breeze, the race started under a weather hold and Plan B –– which meant that instead of having the 100+ paddle-craft, catamarans, sailing vessels, SUPs, and windsurfers scamper into the sea at sunrise to the majestic caterwauling of bagpipes, not much happened for a couple of hours.  
Everglades Challenge Spawn of Frankenscot 2020
The sun also rose. As it does. People wandered around and chattered.

Some Watertribefolk packed vessels onto cars and drove off to launch anywhere south of the Tampa Bay shipping channel. They can do that. It's a quirky event, with a certain fluidity to the rules of play.


But by 10:15 or so, after that final freighter cleared the racecourse, boats belly-flopped from the high-tide line into the salt water.

Cheering was heard. Good-bye kisses were thrown about with abandon.

​A few moments later, the remaining spectators shrugged to one another and drove their separate ways elsewhere.
Spawn of Frankenscot Everglades Challenge 2020
The incessant checking of the tracker began, somewhat less frantically for me this year as our dear friend Charli Clifton had taken on the on-shore chase-car driver duties.  He had the trailer in tow and would be picking up the boat and team at the end of their trip –– we hoped in Key Largo. 

Spawn had many miles to go before sleep, many miles, but also promises to keep.  JT(Jahn Tihansky, aka Moresailhesaid) and my favorite skipper Jeff "TwoBeers" Linton are busy guys.  JT had airline reservations while Jeff's next sailing engagement started the following Wednesday (ooh! Merlin to Eleuthra!). 

They hoped that the northerly winds would hold and catapult them all the way down. But if wishes were horses, and horses could fly? You'd have to really watch your step.  
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As they tracked down the coast, conditions continued freshy-freshy in the low-20's.  Spawn beelined across Tampa Bay with a reefed main and jib, and then threaded the needle of Passage Key and Anna Maria, hugging the shore. Some swim-bouys may have been seen on the seaward side of Spawn. Oopsie!

On the long swoop south east along the coast, the boys crossed tacks with stable-mates DC and SailorEd. Each team tried to gauge whether the breeze was better by shore or farther out. The jury never really settled on a side.

Because the conditions were so up and down, with the wind dying and then puffing a LOT, the Spawnsters set up their "triple rig." 

In the three or so minutes when the wind was lighter, JT and Jeff deployed the screetcher (a big, roller-furling jib with a free luff, ideal for either light air upwind, or off-wind work), and then as a black-beauty puff came barreling down on them, they'd quickly roll up the screecher and sail on reefed main and jib alone. When the puff passed, out came the screecher again...all the way to Gasparilla Pass (almost to Boca Grande).

Like downshifting for hills. 
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With the sun setting, the breeze evened out, and the team continued with the more conservative jib and (still) reefed main. They cleared Channel marker #4 –– Boca Grande –– and hardened up for the left-hand turn to clear the tip of Sanibel. 

Then came the fast but very wet portion of their ride.  So wet that the boys could only offer a weary laugh at the ridiculousness of the wetness.

Drenching conditions: airborne water stinging right into your face. Ploughing into waves, spray fire-hosing completely through Mr. Linton's dry suit. 
Soi-disant dry-suit! That particular garment did not make the return trip in the van.

Under a shining full moon, Spawn crashed and splashed to Cape Romano –– Caxambas Pass –– around 11 at night, well ahead of their previous best time. Then to Indian Key on a jib-reach, doing 10-12 knots.  

Going up Indian Channel to Chokoloskee, a foul current and the lee of the mangroves led to the need for oars. The team rowed and sailed ("power-sailed") for about an hour... They met with a very considerate crab boat that neither chased them out of the channel nor waked them. Hurrah for humanity! 
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Into Chockloskee at low tide meant an Abbot and Costello routine involving JT, knee-deep mud, a lost (and found!) shoe, and an attempt to check in without having a check-in box in play. A 100-foot trek through stinking saltwater mud for essentially naught.

The text he sent is telling: "Just left Chok. No lockbox ."   So many words go in that space between the x and the period!  

While JT was so employed, Jeff slowly and cautiously walked in the mud to turn Spawn around ("to get the weather gauge") for departure.  

Once they got JT back aboard and mostly de-mudded, our doughty crew shook out the reef, and proceeded with a favorable current and a tailwind. As a cheerful change of habit, no oyster bars jumped out and bit them.
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At around 5, predawn, the leg to Cape Sable turned kindly. The boys were able to dry off and snatch a bit of shut eye.

They call it Cape Sable, but it's made up of three small bumps along the coast, each unnamed except as they relate to a person's progress (first, second, third...).  At the first cape, the wind was out of the northeast at around 8 knots. At the second, Northeast at 12.  By the third, KATIE BAR THE DOOR! The wind was blowing around 25 knots right out of the east.

We often remark on the speed at which the weather changes. For Spawn, in the course of 20 minutes, the conditions went from idle pleasure cruise to very heavy sailing indeed.  Knowing that they had the tide at least with them into Flamingo, the Spawnsters beached the boat before rounding the third cape.
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They took down the jib and put up the smaller storm jib. They put the reef back in to the main. They reapplied unguent to their sit-upons and girded up their loins.

It took something like 5 hours to travel that final 10 miles to Checkpoint 3. The wind was howling from exactly the direction they wanted to travel.  The tide running against that wind made for yet another agitate cycle in their washing machine.

They ultimately decided to overstand the mark, sailing beyond Flamingo and then trying to skate downwind into the harbor rather than short-tacking up the coast.  Once they got to windward of Flamingo, they had a sort of slalom downwind course between mangrove islands.

Shooting along, hoping to reach a minuscule powerboat channel, they sailed right up to some standing seabirds working along the backside of some mangroves. Standing seabirds –– as any boater will tell you –– is a sure sign of impending land.  
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JT playing with an egret before the 2019 Everglades Challenge
As soon as Spawn reached the lee of the trees, the boat came off its plane and snuggled into the mud.  Stinky saltwater mud oozed out of the centerboard trunk. The birds waded on, nonplussed.

Unfurling the storm jib, the boys caught a puff and escaped certain quick-sandy doom. "Looks like your bed got ruined," TwoBeers remarked, as the mud found its level all over the cockpit of the boat. Again. 

Reaching Flamingo, finally, at around 4:30 in the afternoon Sunday, the team tied up next to the Tenzan and MidNightCrew, a Hobie 16 team.The wind continued to howl out of the east.

After careful calculation, the soonest our team figured they could reach Key Largo would be Tuesday night. With a 6 am start scheduled for Wednesday morning in Fort Lauderdale, TwoBeers pulled the plug. Reportedly, Moresailesaid was both incredulous and enthusiastic about the decision.

They called their ground crew –– Yay Charli! –– who had just reached Key Largo and asked him to come fetch them.


By eleven, the team was tucked, likely snoring, into their hotel room back in Key Largo, ready for their next adventure. 
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Of course, in hindsight, it was a wise –– if bitter –– decision to stop early.  More than half of the fleet bailed out early. In discussions afterwards, the words "epic" "gnarly" and "nightmarish" were tossed about freely. There were triumphs and actual tragedies.  

But on our boat neither triumph nor tragedy, we are grateful to report. Another 24 hours of pounding upwind? The mighty Spawn never made a peep, never leaked, never balked, but the main bulkhead definitely felt the conditions.

And of course, next year, the Spawnsters will be clearing their schedule to make time for a day's delay should conditions require.  
18 Comments

Everglades Challenge: On Line

3/3/2020

5 Comments

 
Not unexpectedly, Twobeers has his hands full with plumbing and physics: the core elements of any last-minute boating design challenge.

One asks oneself: How many pounds of foot pressure is required to move a gallon of water up a pipe of diameter x? 

What is the likelihood of the West Marine store producing a promised y-valve?

How long does it take to drive from Davis Islands to St. Petersburg and back during the tourist-enhanced afternoon rush?

These are not particularly difficult questions, but add the element of time tick-tock-tick-tocking to the starting line only four days hence...

Times like this, nobody knows how tempted I am to rush up to my favorite skipper and exclaim, "No man, the BLUE wire! The BLUE wire!"

Of course, he's the hero. A single drop of perspiration may slide down his face as he hesitates with the wire-snips, but he manfully clips the red one and saves the world regardless. 
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But be that as it may.


​Here's a link to the Watertribe Challenger Tracking site (or just click on the picture!).  

​The event starts Saturday morning at dawn. Charlie "Gaajii" Clifton will be official shoreside support, chasing the team by land as they sprint down the state.

We keep our fingers crossed...
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5 Comments

Everglades Challenge: Once More Unto the Breach, My Friends, Once More

2/25/2020

4 Comments

 
As Click and Clack Tappet used to say, "Well, it's happened again."

​Another eleven and a half months have passed and it's time for the annual Everglades Challenge race.  Which is, as I suppose most of my dear readers know, an unsupported adventure race that sends a flotilla of human-powered water vessels down the left coast of Florida from Fort DeSoto beach in St. Petersburg all the way down and across the Everglades to Key Largo.

Don't know about this? Want to waste a perfectly good period of time? Go over to the right, scroll down and click on "Everglades Challenge" and read all I've had to bibble-bable tittle-tattle about it.)

My favorite skipper (and boat-builder), known as "TwoBeers," heads a team of friends who designed, built, sailed, modified, sailed, modified, sailed, and modified yet again a boat called Spawn of Frankenscot.

​The boat is a sloop of 22 feet designed by OH "Ningee" Rodgers. TwoBeers sails with Jahn "Moresailhesaid" Tihansky. He's supported by Amy Smith "Bookworm" Linton, Mark "EnsignRumsDOWN!" Taylor, and ––new this year!–– Charlie "Gaagii" Clifton. 

The sweet sloop has changed over time, but the current freshness involves the water take-up system.
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Photo credit Tom Ray, 2019
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This chapter begins on a dark but not-too-stormy night.  

The setting: a fantastic oyster bar (the kind that serves beverages, not the kind that plagues our team's path to Key Largo).  ​BTW, if you like lively viands such as oysters on the half shell, go to Eustis and check this place out: The Oyster Troff.
​As we perched at the Troff, enjoying our second bucket of freshly shucked bivalves and our icy beverages, a rendezvous occurred.

Ostensibly an opportunity to catch up with mysterious engineer and former neighbor Jamey Rabbit, the social event had a darker purpose. Keen observers like myself witnessed a surreptitious handoff.  

A bedraggled sack that patently did NOT contain lucky groceries switched hands.  

Some words were spoken. Hands were shaken. Technical explanations followed.

Knowing glances were exchanged. Ironic laughter rang out. The deed was more or less done.  
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Next thing you know, the take-up system for Spawn's water ballast (see here and here for last year's explanation) has been finessed so that the team doesn't have to pump water into the ballast tank by hand. 

​Instead, H2O will be scooped up by ingenious plumbing.  Jamey used a 3-D printer to fashion the spring-loaded cartridge that allows our team to lower the PVC pipe so that gallons of ocean shoot right into the system.
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That salty goodness whooshes up a hose to the cross-beam.

Then it flows into the tank, where it provides a righting moment at 8 pounds per gallon.  The 35-gallon tank is roughly the equivalent of one hefty but non-complaining, non beer-drinking gurgling dude.
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The water intake is not connected in this image, as the wings are folded for transport.
Jamey created a super-nifty, bling-y, customized air-vent for the tanks, since, as we know, a vent can provide an unexpected way for water to make its way into the tank.  If things were to get, you know, flippy-whippy, a person does NOT want water to fill one of these water wings.  
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Bling! It reads "SPAWN"
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PS: here's the release flap for emptying the tank.
You might not be able to tell, but that vent is made of sparkly gold plastic.

Jamey claims that color plastic was the only material at hand for the 3-D printer, but I think we can all agree it looks pretty dang gangster.  And that's good. 
4 Comments

A New Year...More New Projects

1/2/2020

9 Comments

 
My favorite skipper and I eloped when it came time to get married.

He'd been through a big wedding already and I wanted neither the pouffy dress nor to stand at the center of that kind of social attention. 

The legalizing deed was performed at the Wee Chapel of Love, which used to lurk on Gandy Boulevard in Tampa. 

On the way to the Wee Chapel, we did a quick pre-nup.  "I'm going to buy boats and forget to tell you," Mr. Linton said.

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After a considering moment, I came back with "I'll get fruity furniture, like chaise lounges, and I just don't want any lip about it."

​We both found these demands reasonable. And so it has gone.
This fall, between Flying Scotting, Sunfishing, and warming up Spawn (and then repairing the damage), himself started sailing a 2.4 Meter.  

As a boat design, the 2.4 Meter looks very much like the old school America's Cup boats:  a classic pointy bow and sweetly curved belly. Those yachty yachts of Newport Rhode Island fame. Dennis Conner and that gang. 

Only, 2.4 meters comes out to a diminutive 13 or so feet long.  So it's an America's Cup boat considered from the wrong end of the telescope. 
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The boat is large enough for a single person, who sits inside the hull with not much more than a noggin showing above decks.

As if Paul Bunyan had taken to the high seas, or as if a person had inexplicably shrunk down into a shoe.
The boat has been used in the Paralympics, as well as for the able-bodied; it's difficult to sink or flip.

It's got a mass of spaghetti line controls in the cockpit and Jeff will be using his feet to steer.

Of course he's excited for the new adventure. The man does love a new sailing challenge. 

He went halvsies on a 2.4 Meter owned by a friend and began working on it, as he does.

Gelcoat, fiberglass, carbon fiber, epoxy, refiguring hardware, rejigging lines...it's all good.

A bigger project maybe than he expected, but intellectually stimulating.

In December, he got invited to a regatta in Port Charlotte, Florida.

One of the 2.4 Meter guys had a nearly brand-new boat that he'd lend Jeff for the race.

​A nice shiny new boat. 

Mr. Linton came home with an particular, peculiar expression on his face (or maybe it's the way he holds his neck).

​An expression I have come to identify.  

I said, "Did you buy that boat?"

Yes. Yes he did. 

​Happy New Year!

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9 Comments

Emerging from Her Summer Den, Spawn Makes Her Way Back to the Water

11/17/2019

2 Comments

 
David Attenborough narrates: "The first cold front rumbles through the subtropical morning, pushing rain and a chill wind across Tampa Bay in November. At long last, winter has returned. 
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"Solitary and wary, Spawn emerges slowly from her summer den. She occupies the apex of sailing predators, but caution can be seen in every move as her protective coverings fall away. It has been a long six months of shelter away from daylight and water.

"Once she is in the open, Spawn must quickly make her way into the sea. The accoutrements of speed are complex yet remarkably delicate, and each outing she makes entails a frenzy of preparation and grooming activity.

"A single forgotten shackle or mis-run halyard can mean the difference between success and failure as she embarks in one of her highly anticipated adventures.
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"Making the ungainly transition from land to water, she begins to bob and sidle with imatience. Having gained her preferred element, her purpose in the world becomes clear. She will sail, and quickly."





Of course someone has already coopted Sir David's style to narrate their part of the natural world; still, thank you!
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