windsend

Strange creatures

Here is a man about to enjoy a lecture on heritage plants from a member of the local Scenic and Historical Society:

Here is a man trying to decipher the land assessment schedules of surrounding towns:

Though out of the frame, I'm obviously there in both situations. Why, I ask myself, why?

More Taxing

Like the idiot I am, I have gotten involved in trying to solve the controversy in our town over property taxation. ML and I are both on the second committee drafted by the selectmen to recommend a way to bring our property tax policy into conformation with state law while still maintaining open space and the rural character of our town.

Our town has been taxing land at about 10% of market value and homes at about 80% of market value. This has drawn complaints from citizens with expensive houses on small lots who feel they pay more than their fair share. State law says all property shall be assessed at market value, although there are also provisions for valuing land at ‘current use value’ if it is open space, farm or forest.

The first committee to study this problem recommended that the town do a revaluation immediately, at considerable expense, and that the revaluation value everything at market value. Their recommendation would have saved members of their own committee many thousands of dollars. It would also have raised the taxes on the largest farm in town, about 500 acres owned by a long time local farm family, by $12,000 per year. This would not have helped preserve the rural character of the town.

Fortunately, the town meeting resoundingly defeated a warrant item appropriating the money for said revaluation.

As my contribution to the first meeting of our new committee, I did a very rough Cost of Community Services study for our town. I found that, even with our skewed valuation of land versus buildings, we spend less than $.50 on open space/farms/forest for every $1.00 of revenue it generates. On the other hand we spend $1.12 on services to residential property for every $1.00 it generates. Moreover, if we raise taxes on land, those with the most expensive houses will save the most, while those with the least expensive houses will see their taxes rise the most.

Now it is our job to satisfy the disgruntled, or remove any cause for action, by finding away to treat land and buildings equally, while minimizing any tax increases on large land parcels, especially those held by long time residents without deep pockets. Any thoughts or advice are most welcome.

Going Solo

Today, ML and I had breakfast with the artist, his latest girl friend, and the solo sailor and his partner (too permanent a relationship to call her a girlfriend). We had a nice breakfast and then went to look at the solo sailor's boat. The artist and I got the boat tour, while ML gabbed with the girlfriend and partner.

The solo sailor is a very smart, dedicated and appealing person. He created and sailed the first American Open 60 in the Around Alone last year (so you who now may be able to figure out who he is). He is now preparing the boat for the Vendee Globe Race, a non-stop around the world race beginning this fall in France.

I enjoyed meeting him and getting a tour of his boat. He is obviously putting, to coin a phrase, 110% effort into improving the boat and raising them money to sail it in the next race. That effort includes creating a whole educational curriculum for students who follow his exploits.

That said, I have some reservations about his program. He strikes me as being analagous to someone who sets out to win the US Open by inventing his own golf clubs and playing with them. I say this because his boat flouts conventional wisdom about what an open 60 should be. His boat is narrow while the consensus Open 60 is very wide, it has water ballast while the consensus Open 60 has a canting keel, it has only the single fixed keel and single rudder while the consensus Open 60 has dual asymmetric daggerboards and dual rudders, and it has an unstayed fractional rig while the consensus Open 60 has a stayed, nearly masthead rig.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for inventing a better golf club. But not for proving it by going out and trying to beat the pros with it. You see, the competitors the solo sailor has to beat with his unconventional boat are the best of the best. They have all paid their dues, rising through the ranks of solo sailors by sailing in the MiniTransat, the Figaro, and other solo events, and proving they can sail with the best in each of those venues.

The solo sailor has certainly proven that he has the grit and skill to sail fast around the world alone, this is no mean feat, in and of itself. But he will never be able to separate his performance from that of his equipment, and he has selected equipment sufficiently different from that of his opponents that he can neither win nor lose (probably the latter) without an asterisk. He has set himself such an expensive undertaking, that, having selected his boat, he has no choice but to make the best of it. Having learned its strengths and weaknesses in the Around Alone, he has accurately assessed what he can do to make it better and is working on that.

I can only wish him the best.

New Toy

Todd, the UPS driver, has been at my house a couple of nights running, first with a manuscript for ML, and then with a new toy for me. My film camera is a Canon EOS Rebel, which Ive had for a few years and enjoyed using with a couple of lenses. But I hate paying for film and for developing, especially for the majority of really crappy pictures I take. Meanwhile, I have been happily using a couple of digital cameras at work, first a Kodak 2 megapixel clunker and then a Canon Powershot S-40 4 megapixel pocket camera. The Canon S-40 has been great, but it has a long shutter delay and a lot of barrel distortion, so it's not good for candid or fast action or wideangle stuff.

Todd, after reminding me to tell my coworker K, the Yankees fan, that the Yankees suck, delivered my new EOS rebel digital 6.3 mega pixel camera body. My EOS lenses fit and I never have to worry about wasting film again. Especially with the 500 megabyte CF card, that holds about 150 images. Here's a couple of the first results. If you click on the images, you'll see bigger versions, which are still vastly less detailed than the originals. Enjoy.

Tax Time

I woke up in the middle of the night - probably because of the coffee ice cream and Bailey's dessert we had before going to bed. At this time of year, I know I'll find going back to sleep impossible because I obsess about the pile of work waiting in the sailloft, some of which won't get done on time.

So, instead of tossing and turning, I got up and finished my tax duties. I am trustee for some college trusts my dad set up for six of my nieces and nephews, each of which has to file a form 1041 return. All I had left to do was sign and date the returns, six for the state and six for the feds, address and stuff twelve of those big Tyvek envelopes with the green edges, and make out and enclose a bunch of little checks - 6 for $20 each to the IRS and 6 for $8 to the state.

Then I went back to bed and fell happily asleep. Why does writing a bunch of small checks feel like such an accomplishment?

On the road

Spent yesterday driving down the coast of Maine, one of my favorite parts of my job, at least out of peak tourist season. The boatyards are shaking off their winter somnolence and feeling the beginnings of spring commissioning season panic. As one of the riggers discribed it, the theme from Jaws is becoming faintly audible in the background.

It was supposed to cloud up and maybe rain by the end of the day, but the sun prevailed. The trees are still leafless and the grass still brown, but the coast of Maine is beautiful as ever.

Sailmaker's lament

Look, I don’t know Maynard Bray personally. He’s probably a perfectly nice guy, a lot nicer than me, and he is clearly very dedicated to a certain aesthetic appreciation of antique sailing vessels. With that disclaimer, I’ve done my nod to civility, and I can say what’s on my mind.

My sail loft recently received a request for proposal for sails for a new boat being built by an excellent team of young Maine boat builders. The boat was drawn by Chuck Paine, who is pretty darn good at drawing a boat that marries traditional good looks with modern performance. I’m sure that this boat will be a thing of beauty when launched and will also sail quite smartly.

The request for proposal we received, in addition to the usual list of sails to quote on, included a set of specifications detailing aspects of sail design and engineering that are usually left to the sailmaker, such as cloth weight, hand, and color, panel width and arrangement, reinforcement, and finishing details. These specifications were signed by Maynard Bray, ‘on behalf of the owner’.

I had, of course, heard of Maynard Bray. I knew that he was one of the editors of Wooden Boat Magazine and a sometime colleague of the late Joel White. I also knew that he had written extensively on wooden boat design, construction and restoration. I had no idea that he was also an expert on sail design and construction. It turns out he is not.

When I mentioned these specifications to one of my cloth suppliers, he pointed me to an article in the July-August 2003 issue of Wooden Boat, written by Maynard Bray, taking owners and sailmakers to task for fitting sails onto restored antique sailing vessels that were not, in his view, aesthetically appropriate to the boats on which they were fitted. He further argued that modern boats, built in what has become known as ‘the spirit of tradition’ – boats with the appearance of older design, but with modern rigs and appendages – should also fit sails that have the appearance of antiques.

Many of the same suggestions about what constituted appropriate sails for antique restorations he made in that article were contained in the request for proposal that now lay on my desk.

Now, I should start by stating that Mr Bray made several valid arguments in his article. He rightly pointed out that sailing vessels owe a great deal of their appearance to the appearance of their sails. He also correctly stated that modern sailmakers, left to their own devices, are unlikely to produce sails that are accurate reproductions of antique sails, either in color or construction. And he is perfectly justified in concluding that modern sails prevent a restored yacht from evoking perfectly her original appearance.

But thereafter I’m afraid I must depart from Mr Bray’s conclusions. Evoking a vessel’s original appearance, while it may be the only point of restoration for Mr Bray, may not constitute the sole motivation of every person who brings an old beauty back to life.

Many of these old boats were built to perform - either to win on the race course or just to stretch their owners’ sailing range a little farther beyond the horizon. Part of the joy of restoring one of these boats can be giving her new life and perhaps giving her the ability to perform beyond anything she could have achieved in her youth. Perhaps her new owners believe that the original designer and builder would be happier to see their creation sailing higher and faster than to see her frozen in an amber recreation of someone’s idea of the ‘golden age’.

It’s seems pretty clear to me that reasonable people might disagree over whether modern sail materials and engineering standards have a place on restorations. Boat designers even 100 years ago were doing their best to build boats that performed as well as possible, given the constraints of the day. Sail designers were doing the same. Narrow panel cotton sails were the height of sail technology and engineering at one time. If either the sailmakers or boat builders of that age had had better tools available they would have used them.

All that not withstanding, I can still understand that some might want, and be entitled to, perfect authenticity of appearance.

To insist that such ‘authenticity’ is a requisite for modern yachts designed to evoke the beautiful proportions of the best of the past seems much more of a stretch. Modern sail materials and engineering will help these boats achieve their sailing potential in a way that sails hobbled by the requirement to appear ancient can never hope to do.

I am particularly sorry to see any prescription for appearance promulgated slavishly to the disservice to those who adopt it. I am convinced that sails built to the specifications in Mr. Bray’s request for proposal would compromise the performance of this yet-to-be-launched yacht of someone’s dreams. Worse still, it conveyed a casual disregard for the details of the project, for example, specifying piston hanks for roller furling sails.

Don’t get me wrong. My company is happy to build sails with as much of the look and feel of old time sails as we can achieve, if that’s what the owner wants, understanding the compromises involved. What we hate to see is someone like Mr Bray establishing himself as an arbiter of fashion for beautiful wooden sailing boats.

Closing time

My friend Jim appeared unexpectedly for lunch today. He grew up around here, but now he lives in the big city where he has done well working for the government for many years. He was up here to buy a piece of land with the intention of building a house in a few years when his wife retires.

He has been courting the woman who owns this land for several years, letting her know that he would love to buy it if whe ever decided to sell. She called him up out of the blue last week said she was ready. He jumped in his car and drove up here to make it all happen. As we were eating lunch, he was telling me that he and the seller had agreed on a price, and he was waiting to go see her lawyer to pick up the purchase and sale agreement. Just then, he received a call from said lawyer. The lawyer said that he should plan on a $5000 non-refundable deposit and that a condition of the sale would be to close in 2 to 3 week.

Jim doesn't like it - he was planning to take a loan (a refinance) to buy the land and can't be sure his bank will come up with the money in time. I can't imagine where this woman and her lawyer think they are going to find someone else to pay cash in three weeks. Is that a reasonable time frame?

58 Days 9 Hours 32 mins 45 secs

I thought 60 days was pretty optimistic... not hardly. Commodities trader and extreme record chaser Steve Fossett and his maxi catamaran Cheyenne just slashed 6 days off the sail-powered round the world record.

Oops

I apologize to everyone in southern Maine. I should have known better than to say anything about the snow being gone. On the other hand, maybe it was my co-worker Rob taking off his snow tires.