Feel good video on boatbuilding

I've been building a plywood paddling canoe for close to twenty years (I've lost track). Dr. John Vardiman from Texas took on a much larger project and successfully hammered it to completion in twenty five years. His down home observations are worth the price of admission.

Thirty Years Ago: Three Championships

Thirty years ago, starting August 15th, I sailed three World Championships, in two dinghy classes, in the space of five weeks. It was a simpler era, of simpler sailing dinghies, of amateurs that trained mostly by competing on weekends, and, if you just went out sailing, there was no training regimen, you were just out there for fun. Looking back now, that mid-August to mid-September, I was probably at the peak of my sailboat racing prowess; I was sailing fit, I had been hammering away at dinghy racing for the better part of ten years prior in various dinghies. Make no mistake, I'm not World Champion caliber; not mentally tough enough, not obsessively focused, my ego not wrapped around my performance on the race course. But I was good enough to steal a race here and there, to put up a series podium finish every so often.

Changes were afoot; I'd been married four years, I had a one year old son and my wife, the saint she has always been, was 7 1/2 months pregnant with twins. My footloose sailing lifestyle was about to wrap up for family and some sort of career. But then and now there still remains those three championships of 1981, August through September, racing with a band of brothers, both teammates and competitors, memories still strong to this very day.

Nostalgia of an Old Athlete - "Men Playing Basketball"

My favorite poem about old athletes and nostalgia, the significance of which will be revealed in upcoming posts. (I actually suck at basketball.)

"Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout at their backs."

Ran into Bob Turner, He of the Sock Burning

I wrote about Bob Turner a while ago; tucked in a post about the Y-Flyer scow was a one sentence tip-of-the-hat about his wooden Y-Flyer he built in his teenage hippie days . Bob Turner is now a yacht surveyor (a yacht surveryor..... they all seem to have a Magic rubber Mallet used to bang incessantly across a hull.... this subsequently determines the ultimate seaworthiness of said craft). I ran into him banging away with his Magic Mallet on a 50 footer and he mentioned that he stumbled across my blog and was astonished that his exploits in Y-Flyers had made it onto the web (and this is from the only person that I know that invented a viral cultural happening; for Bob came up with the ritual sock burning celebration on the Vernal Equinox .)

Well, lets go to the six degress of separation, Bob Brannan's dad (Bob Brannan of the of the 60th birthday party) owned a house on Green Street. In the 70's Bob Turner rented a room at that Green Street house with, I think it was his first wife, but it may have been a girlfriend, and the story goes that, way back then, at 6 am there was a huge crash that woke up all boarders asleep in that Green Street house. Bob Turner's wife/girlfriend, had embraced Yoga way before it became fashionable, and was wont to perform headstands early in the morning. That morning, she had fallen asleep in the headstand and in her collapse to the floor, had taken out a lamp and and some shelving.

Bob Turner can weave a sea story with the best of them. Hmm! I wonder if he has had a 60th birthday party yet?

Here they come; 60th year birthday parties

I attended my first 60th birthday party of one of my friends. I have plenty of friends that are over 60 years in age, but all of them, being the humble sort, declined to have a party to mark that milestone. It seems the wives are the ones that feel there should be a need to throw a party for this occasion (which is perfectly fine as I run into Bob very infrequently and I need a party to sit down and catch up).

Well, Bob Brannan, had his 60th party last weekend. We met in our 20's, the age when most friendships that sprout seem to last over a lifetime. We lived in the same batchelor house, caroused in Eastport, swilled the pitchers of beer at Marmaduke's and we sailed dinghies together... not constantly; Bob was usually the skilled pickup crew you got at the last minute. We did enough regattas to have accumulated those shared sea stories we tell over and over again when we get together.

Bob crewed with me in the International 14 (way back when I sailed doublehanders) There was one memorable Essex, Connecticut Regatta with numerous disasters in the blue Kirby V "Babe, the Blue Ox" (which became "Life during Wartime" with a subsequent owner). I digress. The only photos I can find of Bob is when we did the first Tasar regatta held in North America. Late 1970's and what I remember is Frank Bethawaite doing a clinic in the morning (the regatta was out of Mantoloking YC, Barnegat Bay, NJ) where he went into carefully trimming the main so the twist would get all the telltales streaming. We promptly went out in the 8-10 knot breeze and found that you went higher and faster if you just sheeted the main really tight and never, ever looked up at the telltales.

Bob, some 30 odd years ago...........................


My future wife took this picture of us sailing the Tasar out to the course............



Bob Brannan and Tom Price go all the way, I mean all the way back to fourth grade. Now those two can tell some stories. I'll see if I can get one to write at least one of them up.

Bob, Congrats on the 60th !

Lacrosse Season Begins

For many years, spring was not a season to do boat work, but a season to watch my two daughters play lacrosse. Those daughters have grown into adult women and that season has passed, but I still catch high school lacrosse with the Wheaton High School (Maryland) girls team. Lacrosse in America has always been the sport of white suburbia but in Wheaton High School, most of the team is composed of immigrant teens (children of all those invisible workers that make Washington DC operate), many are picking up lacrosse sticks for the first time in freshman year. To them, this is a very alien sport that must be learned from the ground up. The games against those richer, whiter schools in North County can be very dispiriting blow outs. But the effort is always there, the competitive drive never wavers.

For some reason, Montgomery County Public Schools, decided to make a video featuring Wheaton High School Lacrosse. They could have featured one of the schools with a top notch record but someone decided they would feature a team with multiple nationalities, a team that, at times, features more enthusiasm than skill.

Go Wheaton Knights and Coach Lauren Z, Coach Kari Tracey!

Mr. Putter

I was cleaning out my gutters when the visiting Mom/Grandmom of the neighbors across the street wandered over to introduce herself to my wife. Not to appear rude, I scrambled down and joined the two in the midst of their conversation.......

"Oh I've heard so much about you", says the Grandmom.

"Mostly about you (nodding to my wife, who is the friendly one, especially to the 4 year old girl from the family)"

And then Grandmom, nodding at me, adds "And S...(that 4 year old in the family) has a name for you. She calls you Mr. Potter."

Truly puzzled, I repeat "Mr. Potter?" (which is not even close to my first or last name.)

"Yes", says Grandmom "Mr. Potter"

And BINGO, the light went on and I replied.

"Ahhh.... Your daughter has remarked how I always seem to be puttering about with my boats. It seems your granddaughter has taken her mothers comments and named me "Mr Putter".

I kind of like it.

Mr. Putter

The Golden Palace of Annapolis

About a year ago they completed three large towers of the Parole Town Center, a much ballyhooed multi use, multi million dollar complex out on the western fringe of Annapolis. The stores and bars on the street level seem to be doing well but the luxury apartments up top are selling oh... so... slo...w....ly in this recession. The Parole Town Center may be one chink of the upcoming commercial real estate crash, the next crash to rock our economy, saith the doomsayers.

But this post is not about runaway commercial development, or boom economics, but about beauty in an urban world....... for the Parole Town Center turns into a golden palace in the springtime. The just risen sun of mid March lights the windows of the North East facing windows in a shimmering golden glow. I see it driving east into work at 7:15 am on Generals Highway, the glow just visible in early morn for only a few days right after the switch to Daylight Savings time. It is a springtime phenomena that for me, in the space of two short years, is much anticipated and given the short duration, I now pull my car over to the shoulder to soak it in.

I shot a short video which doesn't do it justice.

WaPo No. 1 - To Re-Pot oneself

I read the Washington Post newspaper haphazardly; one day it may be the Style section, the next day it may be the Business section. No rhyme or reason; whatever headline might catch my fancy at the moment. On January 9, going through the Metro section I dawdled on the Obituaries and came across this interesting quote from the remaining spouse;

"His wife of 52 years, Reba Watson Heyman .... added ..... every eight years he wanted to re-pot himself."

Re-pot himself .... what a wonderful term for someone who takes another direction in life, someone unpredictable, someone who takes up another interest, another career.