Music Videos and Beer

I have had a surprising amount of readers who have complained that I've stopped my regular music video feature, "Music for Fridays" (well, two of you have raised your voices). The simple explanation is that I've found other modes of time wasting on the Net rather than watching music videos. For those who enjoy music videos, may I suggest you make regular stops over at My2fish and Baydog, both still have a regular music video post as part of their blogging repertoire. All is not lost as I still have some music videos bookmarked and one never knows what random research and linking will point to other music videos (see below). Don't despair, Earwigoagin will, out of the blue, have a music post.

Another feature that seems to have disappeared from Earwigoagin is the posts about the beer I have been currently drinking. Nope, I haven't stopped sampling beer - by the time I get around to thinking about the beer I've been drinking, I've gotten confused about what and how did it taste. Better to drink and not worry about writing about it. However, here are some of the recent beers that made a decent impression on my taste buds;

• Smashed Blueberry - by Shipyard - A sweet Scottish ale married with blueberry.
• Sam Adams Winter Lager - A dark, spiced beer with a malt base which fits my taste.
• Sam Adams Imperial Stout - A dark, dark, stout with a distinct licorice flavor.

And courtesy of random Net research, the Bonzo Dog Band, just recently featured in this post, a germane music video to beer (and other drinks to imbibe this holiday season).

And a very merry holidays to all of those out in the bloggosphere. (With these craft beers, you just need to slowly sip just one, roll it around the tongue once or twice.)

(With apologies to John Lennon and Yoko Ono.)

Shannon One-Design

Saturday morning saw me at West Marine, browsing their magazines (like all cheapskates who digest the content at the local bookstore rather than pony up some cash) and I read an article about the just completed Irish Raid in September with two of the classes comprising some really ancient vintage dinghies (the WaterWags go back to 1887 and the Shannon One-Design to 1922-23). There was a picture in the Classic Yacht magazine of the Shannon One-Design ripping along in 25 knots, a wow-ee photo which looked ripe for some further research, especially since they were designed by Morgan Giles, the go-to designer in the 1920's for the International 14's (before Uffa Fox came along). In doing so I stumbled across a very delightful documentary, put together by Irish TV, of a Irish farmer, Jimmy Furey, building the clinker Shannon One-Designs. Split into three parts on YouTube, of about 9 minutes each, this is a fascinating look at how sailing dinghies were put together at the beginning of the 1900's. Although my craftsmanship tilts more to slathering on thickened epoxy rather than finely shaping a piece of wood, synapsing an expertly guided plane, most of us can well appreciate the craftsmanship on hand shaping a boat (the first mechanical device is a planer that appears at the end of video 2) and chuckle at the down-home wisdom of a taciturn Irish farmer.

The Ironing Board

The previous post about Ian Bruce reminds me that the Laser dinghy is now 40 years old (the actual anniversary is somewhat muddled - do we go with the first appearance of the "Weekender" at the TeaCup regatta in Wisconsin in 1970 or with the very successful introduction of the production "Laser" at the New York Boat Show in 1971). Tillerman made an oblique reference to the Laser reaching age 40 in this homage to his forty year love affair with Tillerwoman. The Laser is now so ubiquitous, found in every nook and cranny sailing water throughout the world, it is hard to imagine a world where the Laser was the newcomer.

I remember reading about the new "Weekender" dinghy in ODandOY (for young whippersnappers, this was the One-Design and Offshore Magazine, the forerunner to the now Sailing World magazine, of which Bruce Kirby was the editor and the organizer of the TeaCup regatta.) Although the Laser topped the results, there didn't seem to be much to choose from between the Laser and the other singlehander making it's debut on the national scene; the West Coast designed and built Banshee (based on a Flying Junior hull).

I saw my first Laser the first year they came out, 1971, though the dates, times, chronology and characters have been clouded by the years. It was Septemberish and I, as a Midwestern college student from Miami University of Ohio, who couldn't get enough of dinghy racing, had finagled an invitation to the University of Wisconsin Hoofers Intergalactic Tech Dinghy Championships. And as was common and completely normal for a college student who didn't own a car in those years, I hitchhiked those 400+ miles through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and into Wisconsin (this may have been the trip where I spent the wee-morning hours trying to sleep on the hard seats in the bright lights and elevator music of the Milwaukee Airport - hitchhiking being a very non-linear form of travel - but this may have been on another hitchhiking foray into Wisconsin).

The Hoofers Club Intergalactic Tech Dinghy Championship put their 40 or so Tech dinghies on the line, a singlehanded championship that featured mostly current Hoofer's skippers or alumni such as the Harken brothers, Peter Barrett, Charlie Miller and I'm sure there were some scow champions sprinkled in as well. The weather was warmish, the breeze about 8-10 and I finished somewhere in the middle, middle-to-back. A great regatta. There is always something special about the Midwest lake sailing hospitality. On the way back out, I arranged to stop at Peewaukee, Wisconsin where Vanguard/Harken Blocks and North Sails Midwest (Peter Barrett and Charlie Miller) were neighbors in a business complex. Vanguard was closed when I showed up but there was someone at North Sails to show me around the loft. Tucked in one corner was this oddball dinghy with a completely flat deck.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Oh, this is the new Laser dinghy." came the reply.

"What a weird looking deck!" I was having a hard time getting my brain around something so flat looking.

"Yeah," the North sailmaker said, "Around here we've nicknamed them the Ironing Boards."

I nodded in agreement. At that moment I couldn't imagine a boat so different looking (yes, even ugly) ever getting off the ground.

Later that fall I hitchhiked into Annapolis to crew in an International 14 regatta. Good friend Sinjin Martin, who had been selling Ian Bruce's International 14's to the local fleet, was Annapolis's first Laser dealer and they had been selling like gourmet cupcakes. He stuck me in a Laser for a test sail. Light, fast, responsive; when I stepped back onto the dock at SSA I knew this was a special dinghy.

And that ugly flat deck - that kinda grew on you.

Ian Bruce

I was walking down the pier at the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft festival this year and passed one of those varnished Classic look-alike repro Chris-Craft runabouts. I made a mental note that this was an odd duck at this event; I'd never seen a classic motor boat at MASCF, there already being a surfeit of other events that cater to the Classic runabout crowd (the big one is the Antique Boat Museum event at Clayton NY at the beginning of August). Pushing this anomaly out of my mind, I kept ambling along to the end of the pier, perusing all wide variety of paddling, rowing and sailing craft. After fifteen minutes stepping in an around the small boats scattered on the floating dock, I looked back toward the Museum and spotted what looked like a familiar figure standing on the pier next to the Chris Craft. Hard to tell at this distance but it looked like Ian Bruce, the one man responsible for launching the greatest number of fiberglass sailboats in the history of mankind (the Laser first comes to mind, then the Laser II, the Tasar, the Byte, the Megabyte, the Laser 28, and before all that, about 150 International 14's). If it was Ian Bruce, then the reproduction Chris Craft started to make sense. It took me some time to make my way back up the pier and, sure enough, there, standing in the cockpit, was Ian Bruce.

I had heard Ian was developing an all-electric Classic runabout, something that could do 30 knots, an unheard of speed in the all-electric world and here was the boat in the flesh. Ian had brought the boat down from Canada to do the Wye Island Electric Boat Marathon the weekend before (just up the river from St. Michaels) and decided to attend MASCF. Ian had a water pump pack it in the day before the Wye Island race which he and his friend Jack Lynch fixed with some local hardware parts (not sure what needs water cooling in Ian's electric setup on the Chris-Craft look alike). This severely curtailed the top speed to about 9 knots and put him out of the running. His intent is to return next year, fully operational, and smash the record for the 24 mile course. A YouTube video on the Wye Island Marathon (including Ian's Classique Bateaux - Ian has always lived in French speaking Quebec) shows these electric powered craft making good speed around the course.





After producing fiberglass sailboats since the late 1960's, Ian is no longer in the sailboat production business, having sold the Byte and Megabyte lines to Zim in May of 2011. This E-boat project has got Ian's considerable creative talents going full bore and his focus is on making this all-electric Classic runabout a success.

The bulk of our five minute discussion wasn't electric boats, or the state of sailboat manufacturing but reminiscing about Classic International 14's. I consider Ian one of the greatest living International 14 champions. I hope to catch him again in 2013 on his return to racing on the Maryland Eastern shore.

Header Photo: South African Sonnet Scow

South African Jack Koper designed three plywood scows, starting in the late 1950's with the junior scow, the 11'9" Dabchick, and then followed with the 15'6" Tempo scow and then with the 14' 6" Sonnet Scow (featured in the header photo). All three enjoyed great success in South Africa and the Tempo also achieved some numbers in Europe, notably Holland and Germany. The Tempo has faded from the scene but both the Dabchick and Sonnet still have good fleets in South Africa (500 built for the Sonnet). Those readers who guessed the photo might be the American Y-Flyer scow were close -from the photo they look similar - but off by 4 feet in length.

Sunfish Frankenboat; The Solar Fish

Drawn to all things just different, I couldn't pass up taking photos of this modified Sunfish, the Solar Fish, that showed up at the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival. Very ingenious. It was designed to be a sit-in, non-hiking day sailor with a small cabin. I took a quick once-over on shore but didn't have a chance to talk to the owner/builder. Some features that were apparent in my quick glance over were;

• Furling sail.
• Solar panel that fed a small trolling motor (the motor seemed to double as a rudder as well.)
• A very nautical looking cabin.
• What looked to be a wooden anchor bowsprit fitting (but I didn't see an anchor).

The Sunfish sported Ohio registration numbers. There seems to be a large number of retired machinists from the now-gone heavy industry factories of Ohio that seem to love hacking into various projects.


The Solar Fish made it out for a sail-about before the sailing race but didn't participate, instead smartly returning to shore under power, ignoring the contrary wind blowing off the Museum shores.

A side on view of the Solar Fish under sail..

Two photos on the trailer.

#16 - Bumpity Bump

As mentioned in the previous post, I did race committee for the J-24 East Coast Champs run by Severn Sailing Association. It was supposedly a race committee by invitation only which meant it was mostly greybeards and it seemed that we all brought our own wind-sticks and handbearing compasses. Many a lively discussion cackled over the radios about what the wind was doing and should we move the marks or not - credit Mike Waters, PRO, with taking all this cacophonous feedback and making command decisions that turned out to be correct.

I was on the pin boat - the leeward end of the starting line was to be the anchored SSA RIB - the idea being we could control the unruly J-24's with another set of stationary eyes at the leeward pin. I've never done this before; usually when I've been tasked to call the leeward end of the line I've done it from a moving motorboat that we are trying to hold on station - never an ideal situation. Friday we had very clean starts but Saturday the class got more aggressive, we had around 4 to 5 general recalls - still not bad by class standards; which worked out as we were trying to bang out 4 good races that day to conclude the regatta in front of approaching Hurricane Sandy.

From the vantage point of the pin boat, I got to watch the antics of good old bow number 16 who was trying the very risky starting tactic (in this caliber fleet and with a keelboat to boot) of coming in on port and tacking to leeward of the fleet with about 30 seconds to go. The first start on Saturday he made a complete hash of it and ended up slightly below and squeezing up mightily to avoid hitting the pin boat - which he ultimately failed to do. Bumpity bump he went along our inflatable bow and then his rudder fetched up on the anchor rode. In a superb feat of athleticism, one of the crew, lickety-split, leaped over the aft stanchion, straddled the rudder with one foot on top and used his extended leg to push the anchor rode down off the rudder. Quite remarkably, this was successfully accomplished in a couple of seconds and #16 was off to the races. Dutifully we radioed the main committee boat that J-24 #16 had hit the pin boat. We expected that he would take a penalty when he finished, as was written into the race instructions.

Number 16 hadn't learned his lesson for he tried the same maneuver on the next two starts. He didn't hit the pin boat this time but he did create a nice cluster of J-24's, clotted together, all downspeed at the start and straining to get around the leeward pin boat.

It was a grueling day getting four longish races (not only were we the pin boat but we traipsed up and down the course, filling in where needed especially in changing some marks).  I got out of the club around 5 o'clock, went to the beer store to get some storm stock and back to the house to get some food. Somewhere after 6 o'clock, Mike Waters called on my cell phone and wanted me to confirm that #16 had indeed hit the pin boat as the skipper was now claiming that he didn't, only that he had snagged the anchor rode which is not a foul. I confirmed and volunteered to come back to the club but he could tell in my fatigue and I could tell in his fatigue that this was not a battle we wanted to fight. Plus, everyone was hustling to de-rig their J's and leave that night as everyone had places to go and things to do to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. So I didn't drive back to the club and #16 gambled again and got away with a bald-faced lie. I've seen this happen before in sailboat racing, mostly in the protest room, but it doesn't get any easier.

Tip Of the Hat to Number 16 (I have a Filipino friend who maintains that karma always returns the favor) - The Bonzo Dog Band, "I Love to Bumpity Bump".