Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 27

Yard Bird

By Mike Jastrzebski

According to Wikipedia a yardbird is post-Second World War African American slang for “prisoner”, from the notion of prison yards. According to Mike Jastrzebski, (that’s right, that’s me) a yardbird is a sailor trapped on the hard in a yard that is often surrounded by a fence which is frequently locked at night.

As a boat yard goes, Westland Marina in Titusville, Florida is not bad. There are at least 15 or 20 other boaters living and working in the yard and probably as many more living on the water. The employees are nice, the facilities great, and so far, except for the weather, it’s been a fairly pleasant experience. My only complaint about Westland is that their wifi is terrible. I had better coverage at anchor in the Bahamas both in Marsh Harbor and Green Turtle Cay. Even in the boaters’ lounge Mary and I have both been dropped from the wifi service even when there were only three of us trying to get online.

There has been a good deal of rain this first week and like every yard we’ve ever been in it’s been muddy and wet, but a day in the sun seems to dry most of it out.

The bottom of our boat has been peeled and now it’s just a waiting game. Surprisingly, it only took Tom the Peeler about four hours to peel the bottom. The blisters are not as bad as we expected, but there is some delamination.  Tom will be power washing the bottom today and taking his first moisture readings.

Here’s a picture of Tom getting started.

 And although we’ve adjusted just fine to the yard routine, it’s been a little more difficult for our dog, Belle. We’ve cut out her afternoon walk just because it’s a pain to get her off the boat. We went out and bought a canvas tool bag just for her. Here’s a picture of her going down the ladder.

We’ll just have to see how we feel after 0ne or two or three months here.

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Attitude adjustment

Wayne coiling lines after delivering the rudder to Freddy, the welder

by Christine Kling

I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about how much one’s attitude determines the quality of life. We’ve been going through the process of removing the rudder from the boat by using the boat’s davit system and lifting the rudder into the dinghy — all on our own and having a good laugh while doing it. As of yesterday, the repaired rudder was returned, refitted and we have an intact steering system again!

When we first arrived here in Majuro, we went to the local telecommunications company offices to buy accounts that would permit us to get online at the local hot spots. While we were there, this American man started complaining at the top of his voice about how stupid and lazy all the Marshalese people are. He was talking to another American man he had just met and giving him all this “local knowledge.” Meanwhile, a very nice, polite, knowledgeable lady was helping us find the mac addresses for our wifi cards and getting us signed up and out of there leaving the ugly American still fuming and spewing his negative attitude. Here we are on this island that I think is wonderful, and there was this guy who hates it here. Wayne is Canadian, and when we walked out I wanted to say to him, “We Americans aren’t all like that!”

This past week, the Marshall Islands have been in the news with headlines like Man washed up on boat on Marshall Islands says he’s been adrift 16 months.  The castaway was from El Salvador and he claims that his outboard quit while he was shark fishing off Mexico and he drifted all the way across the Pacific before washing up on the island of Ebon here in the Marshall group. When they were first lost, a younger man was with him, but the survivor said the younger man was unable to stomach the raw flesh of birds and drink turtle blood. The younger man died. He didn’t have the mental or physical strength to survive. The February 7th edition of the local paper, the Marshall Islands Journal, carries the front page headline, “Miracle Man.”  And now there are many other articles out there on the web about this amazing story, many of which are questioning the truth of his tale. I think it’s perfectly understandable if a castaway gets things confused or if perhaps his story changes between tellings. No one can deny the man went through an amazing ordeal. The thing I find so extraordinary is the fact that he survived at all, and I can’t find a single reason reason why it would be a hoax or how he could have perpetrated such a thing. But there are always those who will see the negative side of things. In local interviews the castaway has admitted that he contemplated suicide, but he was afraid  to do it. He kept thinking about his family, his parents and his daughter.  When I hear this guy’s story, I hear an amazing tale of strength and survival, while others only hear a trickster and a liar.

Most of the time I think I have a pretty good attitude, and I tend to look on the bright side, but last week, I must admit, I was the doubter. We had been going about the business of getting the rudder repaired. We took a taxi out to the local business where we hoped to find a machine shop and welder, and when Wayne went to put his wallet back into his back pocket, he apparently missed the pocket and left the wallet behind in the taxi back seat. He didn’t realize it was missing until about an hour later. Credit cards, drivers’ license and green card were gone. Taxis don’t have radios in them and there was no way to contact the guy. Another yachtie who has lived here for years, told Wayne to go to the radio station and they would put it out on the local news. Days went by. I kept thinking he really should be calling and canceling his credit cards, but no, Wayne said he was going to give it time to turn up. He said that the majority of people were good and decent, and it would be better to wait than go through the hassle of canceling the cards in this remote location unnecessarily.

Four days after the wallet disappeared, my cell phone rang. I have a local sim card in my phone, and I haven’t given the number to anyone but Wayne. It turned out to be a guy who said he was on a tuna fishing boat that was tied up to a Chinese “mother ship” unloading fish. One of the Chinese guys on the mother ship had found the wallet, and they found my phone number inside. The Chinese crewman gave it to his captain who gave it to the one guy who speaks English on the tuna boat. That man told me that there was no money in it, but the Chinese crewman knew that the owner would need the cards and the ID.

We got the name of the boat and went out in our dinghy. When we came alongside the fishing boat, two crewmen lowered the big net boat with the man who spoke English. With a big smile, he handed me the wallet. Everything was there except the cash. Wayne tried to give him a reward for going to the trouble of returning the wallet, but he refused. Even the men manning the cranes that had lowered his boat shook their heads. They wouldn’t accept any money — only our thanks. I put my hand on my heart and said thank you. As we dinghied away our new friend stood on the deck smiling and waving.

Just aft of the middle net boat you can see our friend waving to us

We don’t really see the fishing industry guys in the local taxis. I think the next person who got into the cab found the wallet, took the money and pitched the wallet somewhere. I think the Chinese crewman who found it really did just want to return it to its owner.

It’s so often easy to think the worst of people and find only the ugly in the world around us. In this cruising life, I’m always learning. Just like we had to learn to balance the boat with the lashed rudder, I’m still fine tuning those attitude adjustments.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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Snowblowers, slush, and inspirations…

Yet again I’m sitting in my favorite dark corner of my favorite diner, thawing out with a hot bowl of soup and being bad with a plate of fries slathered in ketchup. I have a theory that once the temperature drops this low, calories don’t count — they’re negated by the energy it takes just to keep from going hypodermic. And besides, a little extra padding this time of year is just bonus insulation — not that anyone would see the difference under layers of sweaters, long-johns and puffy down coats. So if you’re somewhere that isn’t getting hit with two to three winter storms a week, with trees glistening like they were crystal sculptures and roads of salt, sand, packed ice and potholes, savor your sunshine and warm breezes.

I honestly believe it’s times like these that being a writer is part of what’s getting me through. It’s a case of mind over matter, and while my body may shivering, in my mind, my characters are a whole lot warmer, and have bigger worries than digging out from the latest wintry mix. And even as I’m wrestling with a snowblower, they’re wrestling with life-or-death decisions. It’s enough to almost take my mind off the freezing rain. Almost.

There’s one problem with this whole ice storm/snowblower/voices-in-my-head equation — keeping track of all that inspiration when I can’t feel my fingers, no less scribble down these brilliant brainstorms on what would likely become paper-mache with a pen where the ink has frozen solid. (And trust me, I’ve discovered this by trial and error… lots of errors. The solution? Evernote.

For anyone unfamiliar with Evernote, it’s a handy little free app you can install on your phone, tablet, computer, or simply access on-line as needed. Think of it as a digital notepad, one where you can scribble, type, or even recite whatever ideas arise, whenever, where ever they come to mind. With my phone tucked into a waterproof case, I can dictate thoughts as I’m clearing snow, walking the dogs in the rain, at 3 a.m., and even while I shower, where my muses seem particularly fond of inspiring me. It allows you to organize your notes into as many notebooks as you see fit, incorporate links, photos, audio recordings, audio to text, as well as create checklists, set reminders, and I know there’s a few more features I’ve yet to utilize. It all syncs automatically, so notes added on the computer appear in your phone and vice-versa. From there, it’s a small digital copy-and-paste into Scrivener. Which makes me extremely happy, considering the ideas presently finding their way into my chapters came into existence while I couldn’t feel my fingers, toes, or nose. Any any app that can do that is a win in my book, quite literally.

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Super Bowl – You Talking To Me?

It has come and gone. 60 minutes of football with loads of pre-game hype, a half-time show, and TV advertisements that seem to equal the duration of the game. The Super Bowl – 22 men on a field fighting over possession of a leather ball while 100 million viewers watch remotely, many of them heavily invested in the game’s outcome.

This year, the game happened to be devoid of any excitement or suspense. It was a great day if you are a Seattle Seahawks fan, but no more than a yawn if you were a casual observer, and a nightmare if you were rooting for the Broncos. Still, the Super Bowl is good business. In fact, in terms of TV revenue, it’s a crazy business. Consider, for example, the fact that Fox charged $4M for TV spots; consider, too, that nobody among us is all that surprised by the $4M figure.

For a moment, though, ignore the spectacle, ignore the wild costs, and simply focus on the question of who is being targeted by the Superbowl. Ask yourself, Who are they trying to talk to?

Here are some observations that might help:

1) Football must be aspiring to become a classy sport and they used National Anthem singing opera star Renee Fleming to underscore the point. Chevy has been a long-time sponsor, but next year – Bentley? Rolls Royce?

2) 28-year old Bruno Mars belted the half-time entertainment, but if the economy doesn’t improve for unemployed twenty-somethings, the advertisers will soon have us back to the 70-year-old aging rockers (Paul McCartney, The Who, The Rolling Stones). Could it be another encore of Roger Daltrey singing My Generation?

3) Anheuser-Busch, the one-time king of beers, seems to have officially left the liquor business in favor of the pet (dog and horse) business;

4) Go Daddy must have signed up every last male customer because after years of alienating the 51% demographic they’ve finally decided to add females to their target audience.

5) It’s official that your blood thins as you get old. Leave it to Broadway Joe Namath to prove the point wearing a fur coat in 45 degree weather.

Sure, the game stunk, but it was never really about the game, was it.

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On the hook again–well, sort of

By Mike Jastrzebski

We’re actually on a mooring ball in Titusville. We have a 9am appointment to have our boat hauled today (Monday) and we decided to treat ourselves to a couple of days away from the marina.

It’s been about seven months since we came back to the states and we’ve been itching to get moving again, but first we have to do a bottom job so we decided hanging out on the water for a couple of days would be good therapy and a taste of what’s to come when the bottom job is done.

We awoke this morning to thick fog, something we haven’t experienced since we came down the river system from Minnesota ten years ago. I was hoping to post some pictures but the wi-fi is very slow out here on the mooring balls and I couldn’t post the pictures.

Am I enjoying being back on the water? Let’s just say I slept like a baby last night.

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Finding my tribe

The north mooring field in Majuro with the tuna boats offloading to the factory ships in the background.

by Christine Kling

Sometimes I must admit, my kid turns out to be pretty smart. Okay, I am a proud mom, but I’d like to share a chat conversation I was having with him on my computer from Majuro here in the Marshall Islands yesterday. It was almost 5:00 in the afternoon on Thursday here, and it was coming up on midnight Wednesday back in Fort Lauderdale, so my son was talking to me from the past. I still have trouble wrapping my head around that.

Anyway, I told him that I was very surprised about it, but it looked like I was going to make this boat Learnativity my future home. I wrote that it had been hard being solo for so long and that as a single mom, I had always felt alone and afraid.

He wrote back:

“We’re still just monkeys.  We need need the security of a tribe.

Basically, I mean you can survive solo.  And probably be happy.  But I think you’re fighting your wiring.

And I was just worried you had made up your mind, and that’s how you were going to live out the rest of your life.  So all of this was a pleasant surprise.”

Okay, I admit it, I wiped the tears out of my eyes at that point. But over the past 24 hours, I’ve been thinking over and over about what he said, and I keep thinking to myself, “Out of the mouths of babes….” because no matter that he’s almost 30, he will always be my baby boy.

Tribe, club, neighborhood, communities, partnerships. We humans are very social animals.

And that fact was brought home further today when I got up just past sunrise and went out into the cockpit and turned on the VHF radio to channel 74. Right on time at 7:30, the lovely Aussie voice of Rhondi on board Navi-gator came on the radio saying “Good morning and welcome to the Majuro Cruisers’ Net.” From there, she went through what would be familiar to cruisers from the Bahamas to Trinidad.

“Do we have any new arrivals?  Nothing heard….  Does anyone have any treasures from the bilge?”

And finally, she announced that today there would be a seminar at the Wan Hi Chen Chinese Restaurant from 10:00 a.m. to noon on “Apps for Cruisers” presented by Wayne on Learnativity and Philip on Blue Bie.

I mean, really, have I fallen in with my tribe or what?

For readers of this blog who aren’t cruising sailors, it’s probably difficult for you to understand that cruising can be a lonesome lifestyle. When I cruised the South Pacific back in the 1970’s, it was a big deal to get together with another boat or find people to talk to. I mean, we didn’t even have a VHF radio on board and we weren’t unusual. The Internet has changed this significantly and now with Satellite phones, cellular broadband, and wifi, people are finding more and more ways to make their tribal connections.

The Abaco Cruisers’ Net now has a webpage and anyone with Internet access can listen in to the weather and the day’s menu at Grabbers or Nippers. It’s a kick to listen to it out here in Majuro.

The Women who Sail Facebook group I belong to now has 1,746 members. The group is closed and it doesn’t allow any men to become members. It’s supposed to be a place where women can go to ask questions and share thoughts with their “sisters.” Not long ago a woman posted about how lonely she felt far away from the community of women friends she had had back in the home town she’d lived in before taking off cruising. She described how when she returned home now, she no longer had anything in common with those women, yet when she was back aboard with her cruising partner, she so missed the company of other women. I lost track of the thread when the comments went past 150. Women from all over the world shared their own fears and lonely moments and that Facebook group of over one thousand women came together to virtually hug and support a lone woman on a boat anchored in an isolated anchorage. She found her community online.

Throughout the Caribbean there are Facebook groups for Antigua Cruisers, Trinidad Cruisers, and Grenada Cruisers, to name a few.

So, at the Apps Seminar this morning, I met many new folks aboard boats here in the anchorage at Majuro. I offered to help a couple who have their first iPad arriving soon and they offered to lend us a hand with dropping the rudder on Learnativity. And I find each day, I am less and less of a solo sailor and more of a member of this community or tribe here in Majuro.

So, I’ve concluded my son is a pretty smart kid. Even if I do say so myself.

Fair winds!

Christine

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HELP!

michaelhaskins.net

As the two or three readers of my bi-monthly contribution to this blog know, I am busy working on my next Mick Murphy Key West Mystery. I finally came with a name, tentatively, anyway, “NOBODY WINS.” You’ll have to read the book to know why the title.

Like “TO BEAT THE DEVIL,” this book takes Murphy and his eclectic crew of miscreants out of Key West to Los Angeles, New Jersey and Dublin, and back to Key West. I am almost ready to begin the Dublin part of the book, but won’t be in Dublin until mid-April for the anniversary or the Easter Monday, 1916 Uprising against England.

I hope to have the book finished before doing my Dublin research and while there add the color of the city. The story doesn’t change, but I will add detail of the pubs and streets and cemetery.

So, what do I need help on, you ask. I am staying at a hotel in Parnell Square because it puts me near the train station for day jaunts into the countryside. If you’ve been to Dublin or other cities in Ireland, tell me about it. Recommend places to stop, places to eat and drink. Pubs, galleries, bookstores, museums, pubs, and least we forget, pubs.

I hope to find my family heritage while I’m there and if my grandfather was from Ireland (my sister says it’s my great-grandfather) then I am second generation and can apply for dual citizenship, get an Irish passport and travel anywhere in the world!

If you’ve got a story about a trip to the Emerald Isle, let me hear it.

* * *

Anyone interested in the Mystery Writers’ Key West Fest, the website is now 99%, so check it out and sign up. www.mysterywriterskeywestfest.com.

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…

By Mike Jastrzebski

…a rocket. The other night Mary and I gathered on the dock with half-a-dozen other liveaboards to watch the launch of the latest rocket from Cape Canaveral. In the past two years while we’ve been coming to the Canaveral area we’ve watched five or six launches and also watched the final Shuttle when it was carried out to California to become a museum display.

The night launches are the best. In daylight hours the sound of the rocket is always there but if the sky is cloudy we’re lucky to catch even a glimpse of the rocket. On a clear day the rocket soon disappears and it’s always a treat to watch the vapor trail as the rocket heads for the heavens.

But the night launches are a show onto themselves. It starts with the rumble of the engines followed by a faint glow behind the trees at the entrance of Harbortown Marina. As the glow intensifies the rocket begins to rise in the sky. As the sound wave builds a ball of fire appears over the tree line and the rocket is on its way. At night we don’t see the actual rocket, just the bright tail as the rocket ascends. If the night is clear we might see the second stage or even the third stage  break away, the the rocket is gone, blending into the starry sky.

For some reason it’s a show that Mary and I don’t seem to tire of. If you happen to be in the Cape Canaveral area during a scheduled takeoff try not to miss it. I’ve heard that there are observation towers around, but we get a great show on the dock and get to spend some time socializing with the neighbors while waiting for the launch so we have never checked them out.

 

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More than making do with what’s on hand

by Christine Kling

In the photo above, I’m posing next to the church bell at one of the churches here on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Do you recognize the bell? Yes, it is a gas cylinder. They can’t refill them here, so they put them to use as church bells. The striker (just out of sight behind a pillar there) is a tire iron. In a way, this is the ultimate form of recycling. Why get something purpose-built for the job when you can make do with what’s at hand? It doesn’t matter if you are in the Caribbean or the Pacific, so often island people make do with what’s available.

This concept of “making do” seems to be a skill that civilization and specialization is causing us to lose. I remember working as a teacher and trying to get students to use these problem-solving, critical thinking skills — and those muscles were so often flabby, to say the least.

Sailors know it as the art of the “jury-rig.” According to Wikipedia, that phrase has been in use “since at least 1788.” They define it as “makeshift repairs or temporary contrivances, made with only the tools and materials that happen to be on hand.” Back in the golden age of sail when boats were at sea for months at a time and they had no EPIRBs or SSBs or Sat Phones, jury-rigging was a way of survival.

Of course the ultimate jury-rigger was MacGyver. Remember him from the TV series from 1985-1992  (I suggest you look at the post-mullet hair style episodes)? He was a secret agent, but instead of having a “Q” to outfit him with the coolest gadgets, he devised his own from paperclips, a comb and a shoelace. I think it would be great if we had more heroes for kids today who could MacGyver.

As a thriller writer, I try to put my characters into deeper and deeper trouble. The problem is, sometimes I get them in so deep, I have trouble figuring out how to MacGyver them out of it. I’ve spent days trying out different ideas and manufacturing methods of escape — it is my version of writer’s block. Eventually, I always come up with something, and fortunately for me, there are only fictional lives hanging in the balance. If my methods of escape don’t work well, I’l only be flayed in the Amazon reviews.

On boats however, there are real lives at stake. And yachties in general seem to enjoy backseat driving and armchair quarterbacking – telling others how they would have done something better than the folks who were out there in the thick of it. Recently, there has been lots of discussion out in the world of cruising boats about the abandonment and rescue of the crew aboard a catamaran off the coast of Virginia that lost control of their rudders. They had lots more go wrong than we did, and they were in the frigid and dangerous waters of the North Atlantic in January. I would not presume to suggest they should have done anything differently.

However, I’m very glad that I was sailing with a captain who, like me, grew up watching MacGyver and put those problem-solving skills to work to figure out a way to get Learnativity to sail her way to Majuro. We were 211 miles south of our waypoint off the end of the island (or about 225 from the anchorage) when we lost control of the rudder, but in looking at the track we sailed I think we did over 250 with the jury-rig. It wasn’t like we figured it all out right away.

In case you want to take a look at our steering jury-rig, I’ve included a video below that Wayne shot with my GoPro when he’d finished tying up the rudder lines. Pay careful attention to the rising and falling of the transom in the seas. If you have a tendency to get seasick, watch it at your own risk.

Given that she is a steel boat, the rudder has zincs on it that Wayne used to keep the lines from sliding up. The ropes go around the rudder, and then they are lashed together at the trailing end and led up to either cleats or the radar/wind generator posts for tying off. On deck we were able to pull in by mere inches to move the rudder this way or that and steer the boat. It worked remarkably well.

Oddly enough, throughout the whole adventure we felt like we were doing much more than making do. We ate well, listened to music, laughed and had fun. Now, if only it can work out so well next time in my fictional world.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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The river’s looking a bit crunchy…

C.E. Grundler

I haven’t watched the news all that much lately, though it plays, closed-caption, on a screen in a diner I frequent.  And whenever it’s on, much of the coverage is focused on the obvious. I don’t need the news to tell me, it’s COLD outside. Now I realize there are some of you reading this in more temperate zones, and while I do understand that your weather may be colder than normal, unless your temperature has been regularly dipping into the negatives, you’re not getting my sympathy. Unless dressing each morning to step outside involves layering your clothes until you feel like the kid brother in A Christmas Story, and your travel time has tripled or quadrupled due to an infrastructure stressed to the breaking point by these frigid temperatures, it’s hard to feel bad… though truth be told after anything more than a short time outdoors, it’s hard to feel much of anything. Fingers and toes quickly go numb, your face loses feeling, and if your nose runs, it won’t for long — it’ll freeze, plain and simple. This morning, some tea from my travel mug splashed onto my glove — and instantly froze solid. And according to all reports, this weather pattern won’t be shifting any time soon. The only consolation to this bitter weather is the beauty. We’ve been hit by relentless snow, and every time it starts to look a bit drab, a new storm arrives to freshen things up. The ice flows on the Hudson have yet again brought construction on the new Tappan Zee Bridge to a halt, and if you stand by the river’s edge, the soft, murmuring creaks and pops as the flows shift on the tide can be downright eerie. Yesterday I watched a tug and barge on a small strip of open water, waiting for an icebreaker to clear the channel. Today, even that open water looks as though it’s been swallowed by the ice. Yet, even with this bitter cold, life goes on. Particularly if you’re one of our local eagles, perched in one of her favorite trees.  In fact, she seem right at home with this weather.

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