windsend

Note to IBM

I have an IBM ThinkPad T41, which I love dearly.  I do have one little problem with it, however.  As a 'convenience' to the user, IBM put a 'page back' and a 'page forward' key in the crooks of the inverted T of the cursor keys to the lower right of the keyboard.  Unfortunately, it has happened to me more than once, when composing in the browser window, that I have hit the 'page back' key by accident when aiming for one of the arrow keys, only to see all my brilliant post or illuminating comment disappear, lost forever.  If there is an 'undo' for 'page back', please tell me what it is.

In fact, I just did that very thing to a very thoughtful post on the interplay of the movie 'What the Bleep do we Know?' (which I saw yesterday - see it!), last night's torrential rains.and this morning's sun on the slopes of Mt. Washington scores of miles to the west as I came out of the YMCA at Pineland.  Very profound post, but you'll never know - I'm not going to rewrite it.  IBM, you have deprived the world.

Waterfront walk

Yesterday, ML and I took the old guy for his last beach walk of the season at Popham Beach.  Here are a couple of pictures:

Frosty Moon

Last night was the November full moon - the Beaver Moon, but also known as the Snow Moon, the Tree Moon,  and the Frosty Moon.  Frosty was the right term for last night.  Here in Maine, Thanksgiving was warm and moist - in the sixties.  Then, a cold front howled through on Thursday evening.  By last night the temperature had plummeted to 18 degrees.  I stayed up late playing Myst, re-reading my journal from a year ago when I was sailing in the trade winds, and designing a new weblog to hold my dreams.  The old dog, who loves a full moon, bothered me to go out about 11:30.  I stood shivering in the doorway as the moonlight bathed the yard in silver.  This morning the bathroom tiles were icy and the fields were rimed with a hard frost.  Winter has slipped in with the Frosty Moon.

Loft Report

This is a short week at MSP, as we take a four day Thanksgiving break.  We packed up the Hood 60 genoa for shipment to Bermuda.  We just got an order for a HydraNet genoa for a Tripp 55 to be deliverd to the South Pacific in January.  And we just started building a large asymmetrical spinnaker with a 20 foot inlaid cryin' lion.

A Little History

Yesterday, Etienne Giroire, the perfector of the spinnaker sleeve, came into our loft.  He has a trimaran that's being worked on by our local multihull guru Walter Greene.  (This boat has a long and checkered history, but that's for another day.)  He is planning to sail off back to Florida today, and he was picking up a couple of sails we've had here for storage. 

Anyway he came across an ancient display model of one of his sleeves that we've had for many years hyanging off in a dingy corner of the loft.  We have a newer, nicer display model.  Apparently, the discovery of this old relic was quite a nostalgia trip for him. so we insisted he take it away with him.  All very nice until you realize that we're turning into a little bit of a museum...

Loft Report

Last week we started to build a Spectra/Dynema reinforced laminate roller furling headsial for a 60 footer which will go out before we leave for Thanksgiving.  We finshed off a suit of sails that we've been working on for an Allied Princess 37 foot ketch.  We also started to tackle in earnest our pile of winter service work - the several hundred sails we have to wash, inspect, and put in that  occasional stitch in time that saves nine...

We also received three fleet orders - groups of identical sails ordered simultaneously that make our production life a little easier if less interesting.  This is a little unusual to have in hand this early in the winter, but it's been an unusual year - we have quite a pile of new sails to build.  So, we're once again advertising for help.

43 Degrees of Separation

This morning coming out of the gym, the air seemed soft and warm, almost springlike. Indian summer was the phrase that crossed my mind, a phrase that is somehow inextricably mixed up in my mind with the politically incorrect 'Indian giver'- you know this summer will soon be snatched back.  The outside temperature reading on my car's dash said 43 degrees.  Meanwhile on NPR someone was saying that food, like love or money, becomes most important in its absence. 

One of the things I still retain from my years as a psychology major is that the human nervous system is designed in such a way that whatever we experience for a while becomes normal, and any change becomes abnormal.  The dramatic demonstration of this is that if you stick one hand in a bowl of hot water and one in a bowl of cold water and leave them there for a few minutes soon both hands will experience the temperature as neutral.  Today, 43 degrees feels warm.  In August 43 degrees would make it quite a chilly morning. 

Of course, food and temperature are not really like love or money.  Love and money are like the bowls of hot and cold water - their prescence or absence can hurt, but eventually become neutral.  However, although we can tolerate quite a range of caloric intake, in the not too long run, absence of food is deadly.  Same with temperatures - we can adjust to hot and cold water, but ice or steam will do us in.

Last night my daughter and I met with a group of people whose homes abut the woods behind my parents' house, woods that I grew up in.  Now my parents are gone, and my siblings are grown and have homes of their own.  It is time to sell this property.  We hoped to see the woods remain as they are.  We felt that the land in the abutter's back yards would be most valuable to them. 

We had a pleasant talk with these neighors, most of whom I had never met.  We agreed we loved the land and hoped it never changed.  However, we ended up being miles apart on what it was worth to see that happen.  Money is certainly the most relative of all values.  It will we interesting to see if we end at the same temperature.

Loft Report

When last you visited, we were just starting on a new Cuben Fiber Mainsail for Bruce Schwab.  That project pretty much consumed the loft for the month of October.  It was really more than we ever should have taken on - not enough time to do it right, too big a sail to fit comfortably in our loft, a little short on people to tackle the job and keep up with our other customers, a test of the limits of our sewing equipment.

So, it was a great relief when we finally got it done, out of the loft and Bruce hoisted it for the first time.  Now, we are watching the race closely in the hopes that Bruce and our sail both acquit themselves well. 

From now on, sails for more conventional 60 and 70 footers will seem a piece of cake.  Which is good, because we have a few of those coming up...

57 and counting

Yesterday was my 57th birthday.  My daughter asked me what I intended to do with my 58th year.  (Actually, she asked what I planned to do with my 57th year, but I knew what she meant.)

I wasn't really prepared for the question.  The first thing that came into my head was that I would really like to get better at this blogging thing. 

So here I am.  Take that as a resolution.  My posting tmay not be polished or exciting, but I'm going to try to put more words together and up on the screen.