Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 101

Where Summer Spends the Winter

As a result of our recent snowfall, it appears this will be a White Christmas in New England.  This is as it should be I suppose, but Florida (and even warmer climates) sure have an appeal this time of year. 

As I write these words, I know that scores will rise in protest, claiming the joys of life up here just below the ice cap.   Yet, if the merits of cold winters are so abundant, I ask, why do so few people travel this way for winter vacations (other than to go skiing)?  Wouldn't the travel industry have already capitalized on the joys of life up here if it's so wonderful when temps drop below 32?

When I read the travel section of the Sunday paper I see trips to Miami, Aruba, and the Virgin Islands.  Funny, though, there isn't a single competing winter trip to the north.  If there were, it might read something like this:

Day 1:  You will arrive at Boston's Logan airport.  In order to provide a genuine New England experience your flight will be delayed due to de-icing and problems with connecting flights.  Upon arrival, you will identify your luggage and proceed to the outside waiting area where you will be greeted by gale force winds.  For an extra charge, a hospitality photographer will be available to capture this moment for you.  Our transportation service will then pick you up and take you to the traditional New England home you have reserved.  We have arranged for curb-to-curb transportation service.  Upon arrival you will be given a free complimentary snow shovel so that you can clear the foot of snow that has fallen on your driveway.

Day 2: Given your long flight and airport delays, guests will sleep-in on Day Two.  Room temperatures will be set at 68 degrees, dropping down to 60 degrees at night to induce sleeping and deter any interest in getting out of bed at night.  Guests are encouraged to sleep in and plan for a late start, as this will be your leisure day.  After a breakfast of muffins and oatmeal, you will shovel the driveway and sidewalk once more.  As an option, guests may decide to use the snow blower provided in the garage.  Following snow removal, guests should plan for a problem with the furnace, which will take the rest of the day to remedy. 

Day 3: Celebrate Day Three outdoors!  After two days of snow, you should expect bright skies and dry vivid weather.  This is winter at its best.  Enjoy the options of downhill or cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, or skating. 

Day 4: After the wonderful outdoor experience of Day Three, guests will travel into the city by car, allowing you to simulate a day of work and practice driving in the snow and dodging other drivers who share an inability to control their vehicle during wintery conditions.  Mid-day, you will be invited to return home due to the harsh weather.  In order to provide a full experience on this day, you will be allowed to leave the office at 3pm, just as the storm begins, placing you in a three to four hour traffic jam.  Once you are off the highway and break free of traffic, guests are invited to goose the gas and experiment with fish-tailing, sideways skids, and extreme tire spinning.  Day Four ends with more shoveling.  Note: use of the snow blower is not allowed as it no longer works.

Day 5: Day Five completes your New England stay.  While we make no guarantees of the weather, guests in December and March should expect sleet.  This day will allow you to practice walking on ice and experimenting with the art of clearing an ice-encased windshield.  After breakfast, you will return to the airport.

Day 6: The agenda for Day Six mirrors Day Five for those travelers whose flights were cancelled due to grounded aircraft.  

Now don't get me wrong.  As a kid, I loved skiing and playing hockey.  I built snow forts, sledded and tobogganed, and even made a few bucks shoveling neighbors' driveways.  I wouldn't trade those days for anything.  Neither would my childhood friends.  But I'm at a different point in my life, and guess what, I'm ready to go where summer spends the winter.  So if you're living in a warm climate house by the water and longing for the five/six day dream trip outlined above, give me a call or shoot me a note.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

John

For more on New England weather: http://bcove.me/iq3ko5p5

Share on Facebook

What Hell Really Is . . . to me

By Michael Haskins

I have been fighting a sinus infection for more than week and feel like writing this . . . well, I don't, but here goes.

This sinus infection has my already damaged ear even more clogged up and that plays havoc with my hearing, my eyes are ready to explode,  my nose is so ready to explode NORAID needs to be altered (if you know you understand about the nose).

My body knows something is wrong so it keep closing down. I am in bed, sleeping, more than I am awake, as my body repairs itself (I wanna believe that).

Most illnesses I treat as an inconvenience, like a mosquito at bedtime. But this sinus thing is murder. I cannot read, write or even watch the boob-tube. I can tolerate about 15-minutes of CNN. I want to be under covers in a dark room.

Having nothing else to do, while waiting for sleep, I try thinking about where I am in my fourth novel. I do that a lot, think about where I will pick up the next morning and it has proven helpful in the past.

Not now! My head hurts so much that thinking hurts! This, I have decided, is what hell is all about. We all have a version of hell and it ain't always fire and brimstone, as we were taught in Sunday school.

Dec Burke, over at Crime Always Pays blog spot in Ireland, asked me once if God asked me to choose between being able to write or to read what would I answer. That's like asking me which of my twin daughters I would save from drowning.

That's how my hell feels right now. I can't do either. I tried making notes in my notebook about a short story, but didn't get far because my concentration was somewhere else.

I thought the end of the year was going out with a bang. I have sold two short stories, one to the Saturday Evening Post – my first ever Mick Murphy story –  and one to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine – my latest Mick Murphy story –  and had hoped it was foreshadowing of things to come. Then this!

I get a worse headache just thinking about what I could have accomplished in this week of hell. I would've at least finished one book I was reading, and figuring 500 words a day, I could've written . . .

Somewhere in the novel I am writing now, I have Padre Collins state that sometimes hell is waiting. Now that's foreshadowing.

What's your private hell on earth? You know mine, tell me yours.

Share on Facebook

A boater's Christmas wish list–or a letter to Santa Claws.

By Mike Jastrzebski

 

 

Christine gave us her writer's gift list on Friday, and since I have a personal relationship with Santa Claws, I thought I'd make my boater's gift list known.

First and foremost on my list is a quiet anchorage alongside a tropical island. I know, we live in Ft. Lauderdale, but damn it's been cold here. We need to head south to find the winter weather we desire.

Second on that list are solar panels. You can't live on a boat at anchor without power and although we have a small Honda generator, I hate to start it up. It shakes and it rattles and it disturbs the pristine beauty of an anchorage. (Subsection b of this list would be a wind generator.)

Third on my list is a chart plotter. We've come a long way without one. When we first bought the boat we sailed from Hammond, Indiana to Duluth, Minnesota. Later we traveled from Minnesota down the inland river system to Mobile, Alabama. After Katrina we made our way to Key West and finally here to Ft. Lauderdale. We did all of this with only a GPS and paper charts. Now don't get me wrong, Santa, we would never travel without paper charts, but a plotter with built in charts and all the bells and whistles would make the cruising life a lot easier.

As for stocking stuffers, an EPIRB would be nice, and we can always use new flashlights and lots of batteries. Since we have a wood/charcoal heater on board we wouldn't even take offense if you filled our stockings with coal, although we don't plan to spend too much time anyplace where we would need it.

And Santa, if this seems like a lot to carry on the sled and you would rather just spread out in the sun and take a nap, well you could just give us a winning Powerball ticket and we'll take care of our own shopping.

Merry Christmas to all.

Share on Facebook

My Writers' Holiday Wish List

I've been working on my draft of my Letter to Santa, and I thought I would ask the readers of this blog for a little help.  Could you please read this over and help me out with any suggestions for items to add to the list?

*************************

Dear Santa,

So, here's the thing.  I've tried real hard this year on the whole naughty and nice thing.  Okay, so I didn't exactly write every day, but I did better than last year.  That counts for something doesn't it?  I finished the rough draft even though it's a mess and needs tons of work.  And I promise to leave out homemade cookies and a nice little thermos of this special sailor's hot grog.  That will cut that wind chill factor for you on your long night watch, believe me.  I mean, it's not like you have to worry about getting a DUI — and if you get a little drowsy, Rudolph can always find his way back to the barn.  Anyway, I hope you'll see fit to leave me at least one or two of the items from my list under my tree.

One full year during which I never see the words on my screen, "Microsoft Word has quit unexpectedly.  Do you want to send a report?"
An apt metaphor that drops so effortlessly into my head and onto the page, it seems to disappear into the sentence, evoking meaning the way the smell of fresh cut grass can make you ten years old on a Saturday morning with the whole weekend stretching ahead of you.
An awesome editor who suggests changes that make me really mad because I know how right they are, and I wish that I had thought of them first.
I'd like to be able to buy extra memory — like you do for the computer — and install it into my head.  I'm still running on the original factory install and I wasn't a top of the line model to start with.  I'm certain if I could just bump it up by adding 2-4 more Gigs, I wouldn't spend so much time trying to find the right word.
And the last item on my list is time.  Great, long stretches of uninterrupted solitude when I can try to lose myself in my story and wrap my head around all these details.  My book is like one of those monster jigsaw puzzles at the moment, and I have all the pieces on the table now and great bits of it fit together pretty well, but the big picture is so big, I can't hold it in my head in the snatched hour or two I get in my life.

By the way, Santa. How's the weather up at the North Pole?  With all this Global Warming and Climate Change, it's been freezing here in Florida.  Probably means you and the elves are breaking out board shorts and flip-flops up there.  Say hi to Mrs. Claus and stay cool!

********************************

So how about it guys?  Is there anything you would add to my Writers' Holiday Wish List?

Fair winds!

Christine

Share on Facebook

Here's another great post from C.E. Grundler.

The other day Mike Jastrzebski raised the question: Is it harder to find an idea to write about, or the words to express that idea in a coherent fashion?  This was an excellent topic and it got me to thinking. Ideas have never really been my issue; they come to me at all hours of the day and night, sometimes to the point that my muses won't let me sleep until I appease them with a few sloppily scribbled words in a notepad beside my bed. I suppose coherency might be an issue if I let it, but I don't. I can't. My days are hectic and the time I can scratch out for writing is limited. I'm often sitting at my keyboard hours before dawn when the world is quiet, my head is clear and the rest of my day has yet to begin, and those moments must be utilized to their fullest. If I expect to get anything accomplished, then gazing at the monitor and wracking my brain for the right word is a luxury I can't afford. Instead, there's a system I've used for years, my secret weapon, so to speak, and I find it invaluable. It's <<>>.

<<>>? 

Yes, <<>>. These opposing pairs of "less than" and "greater than" symbols serve as an ideal placeholder for the points where my mind draws a blank; they fill the space for some elusive word or phrase while I continue without losing my momentum. The '' brackets are easy to type and they stand out clearly when I go back to revise. And the more I considered Mike's post the more I realized just how much I rely on the <<>> and just how vital it is to me. In fact, without the <<>>, I'd likely be paralyzed at the keyboard. I prefer to write first, ask questions later. Each time I run up against a word, a phrase, description, dialog, you name it, that I can't quite pin down I throw in a <<>> and let the express train of thought keep rolling. 

The <<>> is extremely versatile. Sometimes plenty of words come to mind, but the editor in the back of my brain demands <> synonyms, insisting my initial choices are <>  But now I can move on: it's been flagged for revision. It also allows me to leave notes to myself << for references, links to other relevant documents or reminders of areas I'd like to expand upon. I'll remove them later, though in this example they remain strictly for demonstration purposes.>> And sometimes I'll write an entire passage fenced off accordingly <> In short, the <<>> gives me the permission to let go of perfectionism, to ignore it entirely in favor of simply and gloriously writing. 

In my first drafts, clusters of these handy little brackets cover the page like dandelions waiting to be weeded out. Here's a few lines from an actual passage I'd written the other day in its roughest form. 

Off to the side, <> Occasionally Hazel <> Stevenson's eyes flickered over and the fellow with the dog gave the slightest nod, his jaw set.

"Who is the guy with the dog?" Hazel asked, sounding as casual as she could manage.  The tension between Stevenson and the stranger was unmistakable. <<>>

"My friend over there talks too much when he's had <> to drink. Most people <> might take it for the ramblings of <<>> but I've got to watch that he doesn't say anything that might <> 

Note the abundance of missing, repetitive and just plain lousy words. I'm introducing Bruce into the story for the first time; both he and his dog are distinctive for a number of reasons, but I didn't want to get sidetracked with descriptions until I know all the scenes flow. I'll revise this later, or maybe rewrite it altogether. But I've established the basic setup and I haven't wasted time agonizing over writing that may never see the final draft.  

 So there you have my secret weapon: the mighty <<>>. Give it a try. Sit down, start writing, and whenever you can't think of that perfect word or phrase, throw in a <<>> and move on. As my daughter, a self-professed perfectionist, likes to remind both of us, "Don't let yourself get in the way of yourself."

Share on Facebook

I'd like to introduce todays guest blogger–Richard Jordan.

Write on the Water strikes me as an unusual style blog. It is like a writers' discussion group. While usually blogs seek to gain a wide audience, in Write on the Water authors share challenges they face with their writing in a friendly tone that reminds me of a group of writers seeking fellowship. Predominantly, the parochial topics discussed here are not going to rank high in search results and get read by people around the world. But even so, there is still a flavor of mainstream blogging in every article, and that minority part is what I want to write about. I am going to give background and tips for "guest blogging," what we all are doing in some sense here.

 After authoring many articles on different marine topics on my blog, I started looking outward to connect with other bloggers through what is known as "guest blogging." I searched to find who else was writing about the same topics as I and sought to connect with them. Beyond the social aspect which Write on the Water is facilitating fantastically, guest blogging provides important incentives to both the blogee (hosting editor) and bloggor (contributing author) who are seeking to grow their blogs and monetize their audience via book sales, banner ads, or speaking gigs.

 To the blogee, a successful guest blog provides (1) good content that will attract readers and (2) reputability to the host blog. A guest blog shows that the host blog is important enough that the author will derive some benefit from putting their time and effort into contributing to it. To the bloggor, the host blog has a readership and search engine ranking value that if executed properly will pass on some "juice" to the bloggor's home base. The bloggor gains exposure. To make sure both the blogee and bloggor get boosts, here are five rules for the bloggor: 

1. Include a Link to Your Blog 

For you to have any chance of funneling additional readers to your site, you must include a link to your home blog. Without it and a little blurb, you are asking a lot of the readership to go out of their way to search for your website. The link will also pass on some search engine "juice" helping all posts on your blog rank higher and therefore attract more readers. 

2. Contribute Original Content 

While non-original content does add somewhat to reputability (if people do not assume that the blogee illegally copied it), already internet published material provides little to no value in terms of broadening the bloggee's audience. You broaden your audience by coming up higher or more often in search results. Because the content is duplicated across multiple sources on the internet, search engines will ignore the post, discount it, or in some cases penalize the host. Contributing non-original content may even negatively affect the size of the host blog's audience! 

3. Contribute Valuable Content 

A guest blog is the time to showcase your best writing. Your goal is that readers will value your article so much that after reading it on the host blog they will follow on to your website. They will think "wow that was interesting / helpful. I wonder what else they have to say." 

4. Contribute On Topic Content 

Know the audience. Your guest post should be what value you can provide to the host blog's core audience. The closer you can pitch that audience, the more successful for everyone the blog will be. If you do not have any association with the topic covered on the host site, you should not be writing a guest blog. Your contribution will not add value to the blogee, and the link back will not provide any benefit to your blog. Unless you are there for camaraderie, your contribution will not provide incentive. 

5. Co-create on Your Blog 

When readers follow through you want to have fresh, closely related content waiting for them on your side. This is not the time to slack; it is the time to double your effort. Post original, valuable, and related content to your blog, so that readers who follow through will not be disappointed. 

I have tried to apply these rules to this guest post, but in general I think I am here at Write on the Water for camaraderie as my blog though maritime does not deal with book writing or meta-blogging. I cannot really post anything directly related to this guest post on my site and if you go there the content will not interest you as writers. But this is good practice anyways, and I would love to hear and interact with what other people think about guest blogging. And if anyone would like to work on a guest blog, feel free to contact me. I would like to join in some kind of grassroots maritime blogging community. I find that satisfaction in life comes not from what you do but who you meet on the way. 

Richard Jordan is the principle of Jordan Yacht and Ship Company, a Fort Lauderdale yacht brokerage that represents fine yachts worldwide. His blog, Waves, is available at http://www.jordanyachts.com/waves.

"Original, Valuable, and Related: These Tips Apply to Photos Too." This is a photo of ol' Summerfields.  I have an upcoming scholarly historical article in Broward Legacy about the yard.

 

 

Share on Facebook

Writers, on the water

The Ocean Below My Cliff -- Photo by Tom Tripp

The nexus of writer and ocean is one of the oldest coincidences in literature. Even before Homer turned the ocean into the classic canvas for tales of adventure and discovery, there were, no doubt, people writing about the oceans that bordered their worlds. Many of these writers captured truths we still hold, so I thought it would be fun to take a stroll through the quotations catalog and revisit our love affair with the ocean as subject.  Many of these you will recognize. Some are deep, and some not so much. Add your own favorites in the comments.

"Once more upon the waters! yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a stead

That knows his rider." – Lord Byron

"Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam to sail

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath

prevail" – Lord Byron

(yes, TWO from Byron. For Heaven's sake, we spent enough time on him freshman year in college, right?)

"My soul is full of longing

For the secret of the sea,

And the heart of the great ocean

Sends a thrilling pulse through me."

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

". . . these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang."  — Herman Melville

The sea has never been friendly to man.  At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.  — Joseph Conrad

The ocean is a mighty harmonist. — William Wordsworth

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. — Henry Beston

I find myself at the extremity of a long beach.  How gladly does the spirit leap forth, and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad, blue, sunny deep!  A greeting and a homage to the Sea!  I descend over its margin, and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow.  That far-resounding roar is the Ocean's voice of welcome.  His salt breath brings a blessing along with it.  — Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Foot-prints on the Sea-shore"

"When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought." — Helen Keller

The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.  — Isak Dinesen

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.  — George Herbert

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land.  — Joseph Conrad

Most of us, I suppose, are a little nervous of the sea.  No matter what its smiles may be, we doubt its friendship.  — H.M. Tomlinson

No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm. — Charles Kettering

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came. — John F. Kennedy

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),

It's always our self we find in the sea.

– e.e. cummings

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean. — Arthur C. Clarke

"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever." — Jacques Cousteau

Never a ship sails out of the bay

But carries my heart as a stowaway.

– Roselle Mercier Montgomery, The Stowaway

Even now; with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off. — E. B. White

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death. — Morgan Freeman

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen. — Steven Wright

Where did that idea come from?

By Mike Jastrzebski

This morning I realized that it was time for me to do another post. The problem was that I had no idea what to write about. Then it came to me, like many ideas do, out of the misty fiords of my mind. 

As a writer I am often asked where my ideas come from. The idea for Key Lime Blues came about while Mary and I were living on Rough Draft in Key West's Garrison Bight mooring field. I was living on a 36 foot islander sailboat in the mooring field in Key West. My protagonist, Wes Darling, lives on a 36-foot Islander sailboat in the mooring field in Key West. I met a lot of odd and unique characters in Key West. Wes meets a lot of odd and unique characters in Key West. A coincidence or miraculous insight? I'll let you be the judge of that.

As for The Storm Killer, that was a little different. I had written several books that had not sold so I wanted to do something different. My criteria were that the book be a mystery/thriller, and a little different than other books I'd written. I always wanted to write a historical novel and the idea began to ferment up in that fiord. I liked the idea of including a historical figure in the book, hence the appearance of Ernest Hemingway. That meant I could include Key West, but would a mystery set entirely in 1935 Key West draw in readers? I wasn't too sure. Then I heard the song Orange Blossom Special and I realized that it was only a few days by train from New York to Key West and the book began to take shape.

Here's the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's version of The Orange Blossom Special.

 

I've been approached on more than one occasion by acquaintances who claim to have this great idea for a book; they just need someone to write it for them. Of course we would split any profit from the sales, after all it was his idea. All I had to do is write the darn thing. I just smile and say, "You know, ideas just come to me. Sometimes in a dream, sometimes while I'm walking, sometimes even when I'm watching TV. No it's not the ideas that are a problem; it's putting the damn words down on paper I have trouble with.

How about all you writers out there? Is it harder to find an idea to write about, or finding the words to express that idea in a coherent fashion?

Welcome guest C.E. Grundler

Christine Kling is taking the day off today to become a total fan-girl.  I have invited my new friend, C.E. Grundler ,  to guest here on Write on the Water.  It's not often I find a new favorite writer, but today's guest has made a fan of me with her terrific first novel Last Exit in New Jersey available as a Kindle eBook.

by C.E. Grundler

I own that boat in the shed. You know the one. Nearly every boatyard has a 'work-in-progress' tucked away somewhere. Likely it's something unique or uncommon, a boat with character. Usually it's old, often but not always wood. In most cases it has suffered declining or misguided maintenance in the hands of previous owners, or else it's been abandoned altogether, and now some optimistic (delusional) soul is undertaking a stem-to-stern restoration. Passers-by pause and shake their heads as they study it with a mix of awe and sympathy. They politely mumble, "but it'll be beautiful when it's done," and then back away as though this condition might be contagious.

For years I'd I sailed a lovely little gaff-rigged catboat. Unfortunately, due to a fear of capsizing that I may have 'accidentally' instilled in my husband when we first met, he was not a fan of sailing. In fact, getting him aboard my boat was like pulling teeth and most times I sailed alone or with our daughter. Once she left for college I was single-handing and silently dreaming of something with more cruising capabilities. Sitting among the 'death-row' derelicts at the boatyard where I worked was an abandoned 32' Cheoy Lee trawler. True, she was a powerboat, but if I ever expected to cruise my choices were a stinkpot or a divorce. She was sturdy, full displacement and single screw with a deep, concrete-ballasted keel and a massive rudder. But she needed serious work, the sort that strains wallets and relationships. For years she'd been in the back of my mind… until one fateful day. My husband had stopped by during lunch and we walked along the river's edge. He looked over, noticing the Cheoy Lee, and said, "You know, if you didn't have your sailboat we could fix that trawler up."

In the end we didn't wind up with that particular boat, though fate paired us up with a sister-ship. She needed work as well, though in theory she wasn't supposed to be quite so much of a project. In theory. You know how it goes: that little drip is never truly little and each project reveals several more lurking unseen. Where you draw the line is another post entirely, but for the last two years we've remained on the hard, watching the ebb and flow of boats around us as we toil away. In that time I've come to realize that restoring a boat is much like writing a book. It starts with a dream, but that's not enough to see it through. At the far end of the boatyard a collection of boats sit silent and forgotten. Long ago each had been someone's pride and joy; now they remain as lonely reminders of abandoned dreams and failed aspirations, much like manuscripts in a desk drawer.

Be it a boat or a book, if you want to see it through you're going to have to work at it. There's an order to the plan of attack: first you make sure everything in the hull or the plot is structurally and mechanically sound, then build out from there. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Everything takes longer than you can ever anticipate. Both undertakings involve a significant investment of time and sanity, none of which you can ever hope to recover. You'll be met with looks of confusion from those who don't understand what you're doing or why, and it's not even worth trying to explain. Odds are neither the boat or the book will make any financial sense, but when it's all said and done that's not what really matters. People will see the end result with no idea of the perseverance it took to reach that point. It takes a certain ability to see beyond the work to the potential, to press on in the face of adversity even while all seems endless and hopeless, knowing in your heart that it will, indeed, be beautiful when it's done.

Author Cynthia Grundler has sailed single-handed, worked in boatyards, and written for such publications as Boating on the Hudson, Offshore Magazine and DIY Boat Owner Magazine. About Last Exit in New Jersey,  "Nice young ladies from the Garden State really shouldn't be dumping bodies at sea. Then again, 20 year-old Hazel Moran is anything but your typical Jersey girl. Raised aboard a schooner and riding shotgun beside her father in their old tractor-trailer truck, there's little on the road or water that she can't handle."

It's all relative.

The last couple of days have been cold down here in Florida–record cold–42 degrees cold. Now our northern readers are going to say, "That ain't cold for December. What a wuss."  There was a time I would have agreed with them. We left Minnesota on the boat on October 29th, 2003. It was colder than 42 degrees at the time. If you check out this picture of our boat you'll see the ice stalagmite on the dock.

And it was damn cold on the Mississippi at that time of the year.

But for some reason that cold didn't bother me. Hell, I'd weathered -20 degree temps in a log cabin.

I guess my blood has thinned over the four years I've lived in Ft. Lauderdale. Mary and I go to the beach every Monday for coffee and muffins. I decided that I'd be damned if I'd give up my beach day just because it was 42 degrees. In fact, I suggested to Mary that we should take it a little further and go early enough to watch the sunrise.

Now I'll admit I prefer the beach and the rising sun to frozen water pipes and icy roads, but I was still freezing on Monday.

So if you're out there thinking that 42 degrees is nothing, just remember, cold, like a lot of things, is all relative to your experience.

By the way, as we sat at the beach a photographer for the Sun-Sentinel wandered by and took a very nice picture that appeared on the front page of Tuesday's paper and if you want to check it out here's a link to that picture. http://tinyurl.com/23cohhx