Category: boats

In which we see no whales

April 28, 2023

The sailing was, in fact, a lot of motorsailing. Because of the threat of weather, we tended to hammer along with the four lowers set, and a shallow reef in the main – this is enough sail to steady the ship in rougher seas, and add an unexpected bit of speed to the engine power, but it is also enough to feel relentless and loud when it keeps going. We again spent the first two days in the Gulf Stream, so all our forward motion was augmented with a steady 3-4 knot shove from that. This part of the trip we did not heave to, and did not move inexorably north, completely sideways, at four knots. Instead we forged ahead more or less due north at, generally, roughly seven knots. There was one day where wind and current combined to get us to nearly 9.5 knots without the engine, which was deeply gratifying. Honestly, everyone perked up and was pleased with themselves that day. It mostly made up for a pretty miserable previous day where two of us got massive migraines, and the ship was pitching and heaving and wallowing in the crossing seas of winds from the north roughing up the current heading that way.

The Gulf Stream (did I say this already?) is a ridiculously lovely clear blue-purple color. I was deeply grateful to the instruments in the lab, and I got so attached to them that the science staff taught me how to do the hourly reports. I can say with authority that the Gulf Stream is substantially warmer and saltier than the US coastal waters, and that there is less Chlorophyll A in it than in coastal waters, and that the planktonic load is lighter. I got one of the visiting specialists interested in the edges of the Gulf Stream too – and we were watching the instruments and looking back over the readings trying to find where and when we’d left it.

This is where I admit that I had thought of the edges of the Gulf Stream as being much more definite – in/out, yes/no, here/there. And what was brought home to me, and what I think will inflect my thinking a lot about the work I want to make about the Gulf Stream, is that everything in nature is a gradient. There are nearly no hard lines. I was talking to the Center for Coastal Studies man and musing about lines in nature and my own words teaching about GIS came back to haunt me: raster tends to be best for natural phenomena such as elevation, rainfall, etc., while vector representations are generally manmade things – political divisions, roads, power lines – OR manmade distinctions, like contours in elevation. I was looking for a line, a manmade distinction, and what we traversed was a gradient. A very steep gradient, but it was still sliding between one thing and another.

This reminder about gradients rather than hard lines has opened a whole new way of thinking about representing the Gulf Stream in the pieces I am planning – I am awash in notes and theories and it feels exciting.

This morning early I was awakened by a large noise, and went on deck to try to see what our approach to NYC looked like. From fifteen miles out, it looked like a field of oil tankers – I could count ten in the pre-dawn light, and there seemed to be more ship IDs on the plotter. NYC itself was a hint of glimmering lights juuust over the horizon, and I am still not clear what I was looking at. As we approached the Verazzano narrows, we pulled in behind two oil tankers headed to NJ for processing. While we were in the channel we were overtaken by one of the Evergreen fleet (yes, I was absolutely hoping it would run aground) and it was reported that when asked how he would like to meet (the polite terms at sea for “which way ya going?? Ahead of me or behind me?”) their captain replied “you go one side or other, I take middle” and they steamed past us at an astonishing speed.

We pulled in just in time too – a north-easter is brewing, and it is cold and wet and rainy – better to be in Brooklyn than on the high seas. Even better to have new long underwear to keep me warm for the next leg!

More Sailing!

July 19, 2022

The Schooner Lewis R French, a (floating) designated national landmark, takes passengers around Penobscot Bay in Maine. I made my entire family come (both kids, one kid’s partner, my partner… I would have brought my mum too, but she made do with meeting us for lunch after and debriefing us) and we had such a nice time! The crew was competent and charming, the cook was skilled and also didn’t poison any of my allergy ridden family, the scenery was gorgeous, and our fellow passengers were delightful. We had ridiculous good luck with the weather. I would rate it 15 out of 10, would do again in a heartbeat.

Some intrepid souls swam, insisting you got used to the cold after a bit. We ate absurd quantities of lobster on a beach one night, and watched the tide go out. I waded around and found hermit crabs of all sizes, and some other scuttling crabs, and some tiny nearly transparent shrimp (all remarkably difficult to photograph). We cranked ice cream by hand, and whoever was cranking (only two minutes) had to tell about a thing they’d done they didn’t think anyone else might have done, or recite something. We got some excellent tales, about bats, and seeing the Red Socks (unexpected, in that the individual hailed from Australia). I recited The Owl and the Pussycat. Aerin and Jared chose bits of Shakespeare. One person talked about climbing one of the tall construction cranes, which sounded equal parts glorious and insane. It was an excellent way to introduce people in a kind of stealth fashion – a social engineering win.

And now we’re home again and I am lightly sunburnt, having washed off layers of sunscreen, salt water and bug dope, and pleased to be in my own bed again.

Source to sea

June 1, 2022

I live close to the Connecticut River, within the Connecticut River watershed. The river, and the valley it runs through, is the arena for a lot about the things I do for fun, and has been since I came out here as a grad student in cough*1983*cough. We have paddled sections of the river from Bellows Falls VT to Northampton, MA. We have hiked all the marked trails (and several unmarked) on the edges of the valley, stopping at places where the view is good for a picnic. We have ridden bicycles over most of the roads between Brattleboro VT and Granby, MA within the valley, and from the eastern border fault to the western hill towns.

What I have never done, and what I have thought about for a long time now, is paddling the river from the beginning to the end – source to sea. The Connecticut River Conservancy has a page of people who have done similar things, either in one fell swoop or in sections. This is the summer I am going to work my way down the river, by boat where possible, in a boat of my own making when possible, from the top to the bottom, north to south, well spring to Long Island Sound.

I am definitely going to have to do it in sections. I’ve invited a friend to come along as well. She writes, and has summers off, so we can do a fair amount in parts of July and August. The next thing is to decide how exactly we want to do this – we need guidelines, and goals, so we’ll know if we are doing roughly what we mean to be doing.

I’ll write more, as it becomes clearer what we want to do.

Update

June 10, 2021

Things I have done since January 23, 2021

  • got my COVID-19 vaccination shots! I can hug people again!
  • accepted a commission for a piece for a friend’s parents
  • found work as a teacher at a micro school, two days a week, maybe a dozen kids, ages 6-14
  • addressed 35 years of paint on the dinghy my father designed and built, as a start to refinishing it
  • reached the one year mark for playing my guitarlele, and celebrated with a concert for a dozen children, all waist high or shorter
  • taught two Making Tiny Art classes for the Northampton Center for the Arts one online, and one (loosening restrictions and vaccinations) in person!
  • worked on a class description and syllabus for a fabric coloring and collage class for Northampton Center for the Arts
  • cleared off my desk twice (but you couldn’t tell right now)
  • went to see my mother in another state for the first time in sixteen months, hugged her a lot
  • mounted an exhibit of my work at the TDBank lobby in Amherst, MA
  • had people over to dinner, gone out to dinner and had a pique-nique at a dear friend’s house (hugs all around)
  • mounted an exhibit of the Daily Project in my dining room
  • helped a friend with her father’s terminal illness
  • answered questions to for the Northampton Center for the Arts Featured Artist spotlight(!!)
  • reserved a dumpster so we can get things out of the cellar so the mason can fix the (non-weight bearing) wall that is composed of melting(?) bricks
  • applied for a mentorship (I would be the mentee)

It’s been a while – what have you been up to?

Arabella

November 3, 2020

I distracted my father yesterday by taking him to find the people building a boat in Granby. It inspired some writing, that may or may not be poetry: 

In the arch of the shed built for her
 ribs reach up, inverting and echoing the arch of the roof, 
built truth of the suggestions on paper
 each one a balance of ideal line 
 and the reality of the materials at hand
 balanced on her keel, propped by trees 
from the woodlot behind the house, 
 and more of these trees, neighborhoods felled for this 
 form the bellied center, the eager bow, the solid and comfortable stern

  planked only part way yet, the final outline is visible
 even to an untutored eye
 In answer to his questions, the man replies
 "38 feet, two masts, ketch, gaff rig"
 to my father who cannot remember if he asked, 
 or what the answer was

 From this I can sketch in the rest of this boat, 
 imagine her at sea, sails tall against the sky, 
 masthead pennant streaming
 and in one short leap I can helm her, 

 I stand there in my minds eye, confident, relaxed, delighted
 and feel some ease I had not before
 "38 feet, two masts, ketch, gaff rig" he says again, 
 a look askance at me, is this right? his eyebrows ask
 I nod, and answer in turn
 "38 feet, two masts, ketch, gaff rig"
 leaving him to return to work, to make this skeletal dream
 a floating surging reality

You can see their progress at Acorn to Arabella – they describe each step, and put out regular videos showing progress, and things they’ve learned. The person I spoke with was exquisitely kind, even though I was distracting him in the middle of something, and he was patient with my Da’s repeated questions. We admired the progress and slipped away again into the blustery day to find some lunch, but it made a huge impression on me.