How to dig back into Earwigoagin

Just a reminder. If you want to explore back into, what has become, with close to eleven years of rambling posts, a massive tome of a blog, the best bet is to do a Google search on Earwigoagin images.

Earwigoagin: Ten Years On

Yesterday, November 17, 2018, marked the ten year anniversary of Earwigoagin. I started this blog with a post responding to Tillerman's writing challenge, a take on "Who's Coming to Dinner". Over the past year this blog has been sputtering a bit, posting has become somewhat erratic but I still have material in mind so I haven't decided to wrap up this gig yet. I would like to thank some of the readers who have contributed to Earwigoagin over the years and with whom I have had interesting email conversations; from France, Bertrand Warion and earlier in this blog's life, Romain Berard; from New Zealand, Neil Kennedy; from Australia, Andrew Chapman and Chris Cleary; from Whidbey Island, transplanted Englishman, Michael Scott, and from up-some-river in the Pacific Northwest, traditional boatbuilder Michael Bogoger. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting at the moment but I'll get around to adding to this list. TOH to my local friends, Tom Price and John Zseleczky who have taken an interest in this blog and offered up their two cents whenever I meet up with them. (And a special nod to Pete Teeling who seems to have this blog memorized, dragging up old posts whenever we cross paths.)

Early on I discovered that if you switched out the header photo every now and then, you could write a post on that photo. If you do an image search on Earwigoagin's Header Photos you get a good snapshot of this blog.

Blogging is, for the most part, an anonymous activity, but I have taken enormous satisfaction that some readers have enjoyed this blog and, also that some readers have been able to take away useful information. Thank you!

• Some of my posts that track the ups and downs of blogging.
• Some of my posts with personal anecdotes.

Almost forgot. I would also like to thank Tillerman for ranking Earwigoagin as his best sailing blog of 2011.

Still Here (Sort of)

Two of my readers kindly contacted me to check that I was OK. Thank you for the concern - it was appreciated. I'm still around though it is obvious that I have been off doing something else rather than blogging (and it hasn't been sailing). Nevertheless, I have collected stuff to post, and the month of September 2017 will be a busy one in Annapolis, so there will be new material on Earwigoagin. (And the readers, bless them, still send material every once in a while.)

There is a lot of verbiage and photos already on this blog. Almost from Day 1 there has been a debate in my head about the right time to plant the flag, declare it over and move on. However, the time isn't at this moment.

May I direct you to this post from seven years ago which sums up the conundrum of a blogger.

Or you can get the full flavor of the milestones in this blog by clicking here. (Such as Earwigoagin got up to 2000 views in April 2009.)

What makes this blog run?

What makes this erudite sailing blog possible? How does Instagram save all those millions and millions of selfie photos? Where is the cloud? (Many of us don't trust it wherever it is.) How can Gmail save all my emails, even the ones I didn't mean to send? Why does Facebook still have THAT PHOTO of a certain college party after all these years

This video does the best of any to explain the technology of acres and acres of data farms that makes the cloud possible and has taken us beyond the single computer workstation (and shlepping a floppy disk hither and yon) into the hyper connected world. (It must be noted that this video is also a Google advertisement.)

Six Years!

This November marks the 6th anniversary of this blog. Within the last two years, the frequency of my posts have stopped, stuttered, and skipped and I've debated the end-game to this whole blogging thing. But, I have material in hand to keep going for a while and it helps that I treat this blog as a personal diary of sorts. At times, I admit, I get my enjoyment on the Net by re-reading some old posts of mine. (Narcissism anyone?)

Call it kismet but Tillerman over at Proper Course just posted "Is Blogging Dead". It may be but I'm not changing anything on Earwigoagin and I hope those bloggers on my blog list don't either.

So, after six years, let me acknowledge those bloggers I follow. They are an incredibly talented group. And let me give a tip-of-the-hat to the small cadre of "Earwigoagin" readers out there. Thanks for tuning in.

Header Photo: ACA Canoe and the Sebago Cup from Bonnie K.

In the Wild, Wild West ethics of the bloggosphere, if you see a photo from another blogger, go ahead and lift it for your own blog. And, that's just what I did. The previous header photo was by Bonnie K over at Frogma, a photo-blogger that covers all things NYC including the goings on at her beloved Watersports club, the Sebago Canoe Club. The photo is of the Sebago Cup, a somewhat long-distance jaunt for small sailboats, held mid-September that takes the fleet around Jamaica Bay. I think Bonnie K. took this photo looking aft while racing her Sunfish. The ACA (American Canoe Association one-design lateen rig) sailing canoe astern is Jim Luton, someone I crossed paths with when I was sailing International Canoes. He was a prolific tinkerer and a boat builder, who somehow got diverted from the open sailing canoes and now, it appears, is back. At the turn of the century I was the American Canoe Association Sailing Chairman for two years and attended the open sailing Canoe National Championships and so have a warm affection for this small band of sailing enthusiasts. Over the years I've owned two ACA sailing canoe hulls that never made it through as complete projects and now have been moved on to other owners. The Sebago Canoe Club and the ACA open sailing canoes are worthy of future posts but you can view some photos of ACA canoes sailing at MASCF that I have previously posted.

Blog on Hiatus

My desktop died last week. Not unexpected as it was getting long in the tooth in PC years. I am left at present with an even more ancient laptop that goes into paroxysms of unexplained disk thrashing when accessing the Internet. Seems like a good juncture to take a break from feeding this beast and work on some other projects.

Will be back....just not sure when. Tweezerman

I'm back!...........Well sort of

Some may have noticed my absence from these pages. Some may have guessed that I was once again helping coach womens spring lacrosse at Wheaton HS. We finished with 3 wins and 8 losses this spring; the wins were by bigger margins over the same teams we beat last year, the losses were by about the same as last year.... there was progress but with injuries not as much as I had hoped. There was some frustration on my part but hey, I'm a volunteer coach and there are bigger things in the scheme of high school life than wins and losses.

I must admit I didn't spend much time on the Internet the last couple of months. I didn't monitor my blog and (sorry) I didn't read other blogs on my blog roll. I did read books and that was a very good thing and (tip of the hat to Tillerman) I did have the first grandbaby to occasionally cart around to look at the leaves and flowers and breezes of spring.

So Earwigoagin is back but not as the consistent blogger of yore. I still have a pile of books to read.

100K Whoo Hoo!

Blogger Brother Baydog reached the 100K viewer hits this past August, about the same time as Earwigoagin hit 100k (100,000 for you who where k means nothing except k). This is very small potatoes in the sail blogging world (though I must admit Baydog did it in one year less than Earwigoagin - which proves food trumps sailing every time).

I too did some poking around the Internet when Earwigoagin hit this milestone and determined;

1. that Earwigoagin has acquired a page rank in the InterNets with lots of numbers - trying to count the places it looks like my page rank puts me as somewhere in the middle of the 15 millionth most popular blog on the planet (it's hard to determine whether it was the middle 15 millionth or more to the back, but this is my story and I'm sticking to it - hmm! I wonder if I can get a T-shirt printed with this metric). 
2. Some web site put the value of my blog as $312. Does that mean I can write this in my will and equate this as giving someone $312 ("To my cousin who I haven't talked to in eighteen years, I bequeath the blog "Earwigoagin" with an appraised value of $312.") 

(Both Joe over at Horses Mouth and I can take solace that we have somewhat more popular web presence elsewhere...and with a lot less work.)

Top Insect Sailing Blog of 2011

Shucks Folks, I'm Speechless!

Tillerman once anointed me as the Internet #1 Sailing Dork.

And now, out of the blue, he went and did this.

When the Grand Poobah of sailing blogs; the prolific, witty, erudite, authoritative Tillerman gives you a thumbs up.......Wow!

I'm deeply honored. A Tip of the Hat to Tillerman, the older-than-I, but still young, coot of a Laser sailor.

Navigating this blog

I've been meaning to write about how to navigate through this blog for a while but a comment from one of my good friends, Bill Parkes (I'm just tweaking on Bill, he really is a good friend) spurred me to finally write this post. Bill commented on my post: "Another Big Guy Singlehander: The Finn Dinghy"

"Rod, You have ignored the Finn.........."

Well, not really. Lets see how to determine how many Finn posts I have done, and other ways to find what you're looking for;

1. Search Box: With some typing you will find that I have 9 posts referencing the Finn, with 5 of them directly featuring the Finn. How did I do that? Well, Google Blogger utilizes the same Google search engine. "Where is it?", you say. The search box for this blog is on the left of the top menu pane, right above the Title photo.  Type in the word "Finn" in the box, hit enter and wala!, Blogger returns all posts that have the word Finn in them.
2. Blog Archive: A vast majority of readers visit this blog irregularly. To get an idea of what has been posted since you've been gone, just redirect your gaze over to the right menu pane and "Blog Archive" where Blogger will show you an index of all the posts I've done in the current month. If you want to see an index of the previous months posts, click on the right arrow next to that month to open up that index.
3.  Labels: Finally, I've tagged all posts into general categories which you'll find under "Labels", lower down on the right hand menu. You will see, surprise! surprise! that I have 39 posts on the "Laser", click on the Laser Label to see all 39 posts. I've tried to keep the Label list from becoming too unwieldy, which is a struggle.

Hmm! Lets play stump Earwigoagin;

• Search word "Flying Dutchman", aha! no posts found.
• Search word "Lightning", bunch of posts with maybe three or four related to the American "Lightning" dinghy and several others to the lightning as in "thunder and.....".

Comments - I do appreciate them

This blog doesn't go overboard to elicit comments to posts but let me emphasize that I appreciate all your comments (and now that I have finally figured how to track them through Blogger); I read them all. Since I'm not the most prolific commenter to other blogs, I don't expect much in return but many thanks to all who respond to my posts (TOH to the recent comment on my Patin A Vela post, TOH to Doryman, Tillerman, JohnZ and My2Fish, the most prolific commenters of my small but treasured readership).

All Paths Lead to Tillerman................

Today marks the second anniversary of this blog. I started Earwigoagin to deliver a response to one of Tillerman's writing assignments....... who would you invite, living or dead, to a dinner party?

I reprint my first post below. Definitely my dinner party is almost entirely populated with sailing technologists and tinkerers. After two years, I've added some more Classic Moth sailors. They're in charge of the beer.

_______________________________________________________________

I've created this blog mainly as a response to another writing assignment from blogger Tillerman. www.propercourse.blogspot.com There may be other uses for this blog but for right now lets dig into Tillerman's assignment .... who would you invite to a very special dinner/party? For this party you can get to mix the living and the dead, the friends and the strangers.

Tillerman's a dinghy sailor, I am also a dinghy sailor. Where Tillerman immerses himself in the one-design Laser class, I am usually found in some class where people design or build their own equipment, whether it's hulls, sails, blades, etc.

So my dinner party would definitely have an abundance of what the English call "boffins", in this case those who like to experiment with sailboats, preferably small racing dinghies.

Large parties work best and hopefully all guests are voluble, completely free with their opinions and willing to listen. Wives/ girlfriends are always welcome and indeed are essential. Unfortunately, I don't know any female sailing boffins so my guest list is definitely sexist.

You must start with your COF (circle of friends) boffins which in this case would be Bill Beaver, John Z, George Saunders, Steve Clark, John Kells, Bob Ames, Bob Blomquist, Paul Miller with some left coast COF boffins such as Erich Chase, Del Olsen, Fran DeFaymoreau (4 Naval Architects in this group and everyone has built, in most cases, multiple racing dinghies). I would also add local acquaintance, Aussie Tony Arends. I'd also invite Classic Mothists, George Albaugh, Mike Parsons, Ed Salva, Greg Duncan and Bill Boyle (but he doesn't seem to do parties very well).

Now onto to the special guests;

Austin Farrar - UK deceased - Austin was the premier designer in the International 14 class in the 1950's, was the first one to put a wing mast on the C-class catamaran "Lady Helmsman" founded the sailmaking firm Seahorse sails and was involved in a myriad of experiments. To use that overused phrase; Austin was always an "out of the box" thinker.

Ben Lexcen - i.e. Bob Miller - Australia deceased - Top designer/sailor in the Australian 18 skiffs. Designed the Contender which won the IYRU singlehanded trials in the early 1960's. Designed the wing keeled Australia II that wrested the America's Cup from the Americans. From everything I read, Ben Lexcen was a larger than life character and you need some of those at a party.

Ian Howlett - UK - designed America's Cup 12 meters, IOR tonners, premier yacht designer. House designer for most of the Topper companies dinghy designs. Final kicker in my book is he races an 11' British Moth. What other big name designer gets his jollies from racing an 11' dinghy?

Bruce Kirby - CAN/US - Top designer in the International 14 in the 1960's and 70's. Designer of the Laser. Designer of the Canadian entry into the America's Cup. Designer of the successful Noank Sharpies shoal draft cruisers. I met him in the early 1980's and came away with the impression of a personable, self effacing fellow with loads of stories to tell.

Tom Shnackenberg - NZ - The boffin in charge of New Zealand's America's Cup dominance. Not sure how forthcoming he would be at a party like this but, if he opened up, the stories he could tell...

Eric Arens - US - Eric is actually in my COF but I rarely get to see him. I crewed for Eric in Int. 14's in the 1970's. Eric still sails Int 14's today as crew - age mid 60's! Eric has been commodore of both Severn Sailing Assoc and Richmond YC, is a senior US sailing judge and loves the give and take with interesting people at a party. He's retired now but was a PHD physicist at NASA Goodard Space Center.

Jeff Linton - US - Jeff is a pro, has won several World Championships, has won US Sailing's sailor of the year award, but also designed, built, and races a Classic Moth. Jeff and his wife, Amy, have a wealth of stories to tell. Jeff is very approachable which is not always a characteristic you find in professional sailors.

Chris Thompson - AUS - Chris has written an unpublished history of dinghy sailing, a superb tome of research and writing. Chris races the original Windsurfer and Lasers. I would need someone to keep Tillerman occupied!

Mystery guest - It's got to be one or two of the Frenchmen involved with the design or building of the Vendee Globe 60 footers. Not sure who? as I don't know the players. Someone with good English as this is a Anglo-centric party. Someone who can bring the wine maybe?? What glorious machines those Vendee Globe 60 footers are and the French need to be recognized for driving these designs to the pinnacle they represent in ocean racing.

Other's on the invite list are all sailing dinghy designers with pages of design accomplishments. (but I 'll spare the details);

Jo Richards - UK

Phil Morrison - UK

Paul Bieker - US

Chris Benedict - US deceased.

Allright Already

I've been lurking on this blog and the blogger has stopped posting. Will someone kick him in his ass.............

Blog Mortality

Tillerman recently has had two posts, here and here trying to answer that weighty, age old human question, what happens at "the end", when it truly is "finis", when everything is finally "kaput".

I too have been pondering on "the end", but not in the context of aging decrepitude. I've been contemplating the death of blogs. It happens. My output in my second year of blogging has dropped precipitously. In the hyper-accelerated Internet, have I reached my apex and am now rapidly descending to the end? I have several blogs in my blog list that at one time were vibrant with daily posts but now blink feebly, like Tinkerbelle, a post coming once a month, once every three months. Am I watching the death thrall of these blogs, or even the beginning of the end of my blog?

Blogs are human. They have birth, life ,death. Some blogs flame out quickly, some like Tillerman's live a long life (over six years?). Most blogs seem to have a shorter lifespan than guppies.

For the blogger, blogs are time consuming, frivolous, and for most of us, despite what we think, primarily a solitary ego trip.

I have installed a blog counter; it seems conveniently designed to make me feel good. One day it added 400 hits overnight. It blithely adds hits at a nice daily rate, completely divorced from the reality on how small my readership really is.

But I'll let you in on a secret...... I blog for myself. As long as I can amuse myself by clicking on some old links to a "Music for Fridays" video or some arcane sailng topic, I'll keep going for the time being.

Meanwhle, I better add some more posts so that I can bump July up.

Weekend

As I was experiencing it, this past weekend didn't feel all that noteworthy. There was definitely more socializing than sailing. But now from midweek, reflecting on the weekend doings, I am struck at how the diversity in my boating friends mirrors many of the philosophical underpinnings to this blog.

On Friday evening, I day sailed my Classic Moth out of SSA. Driving over the Route 50 bridge I knew the wind on the Severn River was from the West. At the club, there was a light easterly wind, a 180 degree switch between the Chesapeake Bay and the Severn River. This sounds odd but isn't as rare as one would think. I launched and opted to try the Severn River, hoping for more wind strength. Off the Naval Academy, I had to endure a large windless hole where the two opposing breezes fought each other. However, once past, there was a pleasant 5 knots upwind to Manresa and then back again. On spring weekdays, there are a myriad of high school teams running their short course practice sessions, even upriver where the Severn School practices in the shadow of the Route 50 bridge. A very pleasant day sail.

On Saturday daytime, I cut the lawn but in the evening I was invited to a party of the Annapolis Section of the Carbon Makers Society (actually some International Canoe buddy's from yore who still race these challenging beasts but also get their jollies by designing and building lightweight carbon racing dinghies.... Bill Beaver, John Kells, George Saunders, and Gui with special guest Bob Ames). Well, I don't race International Canoes anymore, nor foiler Moths, nor do I build Carbon boats, but I get a pass since I've known most of these guys for over 20 years. As you can guess, the conversation is technical, engineering technical, naval architecture technical....... these guys love analyzing how to make sailing dinghies fast and light. But nowadays the conversation can't spiral too far into the nitty gritty of laminate schedules or daggerboard planforms as everyone (excepting "moi" and Bob Ames) are raising young families. Three year olds, seven year olds running hither and yon, sometimes with dangerous sticks, sometimes crying after spilling off the swing, sometimes hovering on their parents lap. Ah! the memories.... but I don't want to go back.

On Sunday morning, Bob Blomquist gave me a call about his adventures at the Cortez Small Boat Meet, held mid April at the North end of Sarasota Bay. Bob hauled his Bolger Light Schooner "Scoona" down to the meet and regaled me with stories of the sailing race around the island with the winner ringing a bell on a sandbar and his adventures in Ted Weihe's Flying Scot in big breeze on Sarasota Bay. You get Bob and I wound up and we can tell some sea stories, chuckling through all of them. You can see photos of the Cortez Small Craft meet here.

On Sunday late afternoon, I attended a theater party (my wife is very much involved with the Annapolis Colonial Players). Not to worry. This being Annapolis there are always sailors. I had an interesting conversation with Dick Whaley about the Sabre 28 he once owned and another conversation with Rolph Townshend, longtime Alberg 30 sailor and master model maker (he is currently scratch building a model of the "Pride of Baltimore"). He urged me to go see the recently reopened Naval Academy museum which he rates as one of the finest naval history museums going. I've been through it many years ago but with Rolph's superlatives ringing in my ears I've just added it to my immediate "to do" list (when I have a free afternoon).

Up over 2000 views....WooHoo!!

My view counter shows that this blog has been viewed over 2000 times. My more cynical friends say that I, and I alone must have accounted for over 1700 of those views. I don't think it's been that much. Anyway, thanks to the four or five other regular viewers for the other 300 views,

Navigating this blog

Google's blogger allows you to set up labels for each post. So if you, dear reader, wish to see all my posts for the category "Music for Fridays", go to the right hand pane, locate the Labels section, under Labels, click on the "Music for Fridays" which currently has 11 posts under it