Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 35

Still learning

by Christine Kling

I have never been a fast writer. Getting the words down has always been a struggle for me, and writing a book seems to take me forever. Back when I wrote my first novel (not counting the book-in-the-drawer-book), I never really believed it would get published, so writing fast or slow was of no consequence. After that, I had deadlines and I managed to write the books faster, but that was only by spending more hours per day writing. My writing hadn’t really speeded up.

I remember one time I was on a panel at a writers’ conference with Stuart Kaminsky, the Florida novelist and film professor who wrote over 60 novels, plus many short story collections and non-fiction books. We were talking about the writing process and I said, “Writing isn’t typing. I can type fast, but I write slowly.” Stuart said, “I beg to differ. Writing is typing.” Then he went on to say that he wrote between 5,000 and 10,000 words per day.

I’ve never forgotten that day. I realized that day that there are all kinds of writers and some are just slower than others. I no more could comprehend Stuart’s ability to write so fast than he could understand my struggles. I resigned myself to being slow.

But one way that self-publishing has changed my life is that I can now see the direct relationship between more books on my shelf and more income. Older books no longer disappear. So I’ve grown more and more interested in figuring out how to speed up my writing process, and I’ve started reading about how to do it.

One of my favorite bloggers is Kristen Lamb. She advocates frequent blogging as good practice for getting into the habit of writing quickly and efficiently. Kristen, crazy woman that she is, writes her blog daily. I know I’m not up to that, but I will say that since I’ve shifted from blogging one day a week to two here at Write on the Water, the blogs have been easier to write. And in writing parlance, easier means faster.

In her book, 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love, Rachel Aaron explains that the reason writers are slow is because they don’t know what they want to write. This is absolutely true for me. The blogs I’ve been writing lately about my early days of sailing have been very easy to write. I know those stories. I can easily write a 900 word blog in an hour. Rachel suggests writing the details of a scene by longhand in a notebook before beginning to type. This suggestion is really working for me. I recommend her book to anyone who wants to learn how to increase their daily word output.

Karen Dionne recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post on how she went from writing “2,500 words a week to 3,000-5,000 a day.” She advocates writing by longhand also. But Karen suggests writing more than just the synopsis. She writes her first draft by longhand. She attributes her success with writing longhand to the fact that she doesn’t stop and edit as much. The computer makes it too easy. According to Karen, “When an author working on a computer makes a typo, as I just did by typing “Whey” instead of “When” at the beginning of this sentence, they stop and fix it. Why shouldn’t they? The mistake will have to be corrected at some point, the author has noted the error in the here and now, and it only takes a second to correct it.” I haven’t tried this yet, but I see it as more evidence writing by longhand does create a different connection to the brain and it does free up creativity.

According to an article on LifeHacker, we learn better when we write by hand than when we type. There is a more direct connection to the brain. I haven’t been able to find any studies that show it is easier to be creative when writing longhand, but I have found that to be the case.

After years of leaving paper by the wayside and being an avid technology geek, I find myself filling up notebooks once again. My only issue? There is no search function!

Fair winds!

Christine

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Creativity…and Cheez Doodles

C.E. Grundler

I’m going to admit something I’ve kept under wraps about myself for a long time now.

I used to paint boats.

I’m not just talking about with Interlux. I mean ‘paint’ as in the framed stuff you hang on walls. More specifically, I painted highly detailed, highly realistic watercolors (a very unforgiving medium – you can’t just paint over your mistakes, in fact, you can’t MAKE mistakes,) usually on commission. Boats, commercial and historic aviation, commercial trucking.

And it paid the bills for a number of years. I’d sold paintings worldwide. One room of my house was my studio, and I’d work 8-10 hour days, painting until my fingers cramped and my eyes hurt.

But the further along I progressed, the more I began to lose all enjoyment in what I was doing. I finished the commissions I had waiting. And then one day I simply packed up all my brushes, paints and supplies, and put them on a shelf in the back of a closet. Someday, I promised, I’d paint again.  Someday – when that spark of desire returned.

That had to be about 15 years ago. Every so often I look at that shelf, shrug, and close the closet door.  I look at some of the paintings I’d done at the time, the ones I’d done for my own personal collection, and I see them as if they’d been painted by a complete stranger.

I know they’re mine, I can remember painting them, but that’s it. Strange, I know, and I’ve always tried to figure what switch flipped to turn something that had been such a passion into something I could completely turn off. And it’s something that has always worried me – could my writing be next?

I don’t think so. While there are many parallels between painting, writing, and so many other creative endeavors, there are differences as well. For painting, at least the painting I did, it was a VERY solitary activity. And while I may be a bit (cough) of an introvert, the thought of hours of exile in that studio grew unbearable. I could think about painting constantly, but unless I had my brush in hand, holed up in my studio, I wasn’t able to work.

Writing, however, has no boundaries. I can and do write when and wherever I choose. I jot notes while I’m on line in the deli. When I wake at 2 a.m. At a red light All I need is my imagination and some means of transcribing whatever rattles through my head. I’ve even ‘texted’ myself notes for my files. With the painting I did, there were no revisions, no adjustments. One wrong brush-stroke and 70 hours of work were as good as scrap paper.

Writing, on the other hand, is all about re-writing. My painting required absolute concentration; my writing flows best when my mind is free to wander. Both involved intense scrutiny of the world around me, absorbing details then communicating them to others through that medium. But each individual painting, the sum of migraine-inducing concentration, was seen by few, while my writing, once done, is out there for a limitless audience.  Though ultimately writing was just as much work, if not more, it was also more fun and a more satisfying creative outlet. Oh, and I can eat Cheez Doodles while I write. Trust me, when you’re painting with watercolors, it’s definitely a ‘No Cheez Doodles’ zone. Come to think of it, that alone, could have been it. I mean, really, how creative can a person be when deprived of Cheez Doodles?

These days, when I paint a boat, it’s with a roller, and a bag of Cheez Doodles close by. But what about the rest of you? Does anyone else wear more than one ‘creativity’ hat, or have you hung one up for another, and if so, why?

 

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Creativity…

C.E. Grundler

I’m going to admit something I’ve kept under wraps about myself for a long time now.

Years ago I used to paint boats.

I’m not just talking about with Interlux. I mean ‘paint’ as in the framed stuff you hang on walls. More specifically, I painted highly detailed, highly realistic watercolors (a very unforgiving medium – you can’t just paint over your mistakes, in fact, you can’t MAKE mistakes,) usually on commission. Boats, commercial and historic aviation, commercial trucking.

And it paid the bills for a number of years. I’d sold paintings worldwide. One room of my house was my studio, and I’d work 8-10 hour days, painting until my eyes hurt.

But the further along I progressed, the more I began to lose all enjoyment in what I was doing. I finished the commissions I had waiting. And then I simply packed up all my brushes, paints and supplies, and put them on a shelf in the back of a closet. Someday, I promised, I’d paint again.  Someday – when that spark of desire returned.

That had to be about 15 years ago. Every so often I look at that shelf, shrug, and close the closet door.  I look at some of the paintings I’d done at the time, the ones I’d done for my own personal collection, and I see them as if they’d been painted by a complete stranger.

I know they’re mine, I can remember painting them, but that’s it. Strange, I know, and I’ve always tried to figure what switch flipped to turn something that had been such a passion into something I could completely turn off. And it’s something that has always worried me – could my writing be next?

I don’t think so. While there are many parallels between painting, writing, and so many other creative endeavors, there are differences as well. For painting, at least the painting I did, it was a VERY solitary activity. And while I may be a bit (cough) of an introvert, the thought of hours of exile in that studio grew unbearable. I could think about painting constantly, but unless I had my brush in hand, holed up in my studio, I wasn’t able to work.

Writing, however, has no boundaries. I can and do write when and wherever I choose. I jot notes while I’m on line in the deli. When I wake at 2 a.m. At a red light All I need is my imagination and some means of transcribing whatever rattles through my head. I’ve even ‘texted’ myself notes for my files. With the painting I did, there were no revisions, no adjustments. One wrong brush-stroke and 70 hours of work were as good as scrap paper.

Writing, on the other hand, is all about re-writing. My painting required absolute concentration; my writing flows best when my mind is free to wander. Both involved intense scrutiny of the world around me, absorbing details then communicating them to others through that medium. But each individual painting, the sum of migraine-inducing concentration, was seen by few, while my writing, once done, is out there for a limitless audience. I was starting to write more and more around the time I packed up my paints, and ultimately I think writing was a more satisfying creative outlet.  In the end, writing was just as much work, if not more, but it was also more fun.

Oh, and I can eat Cheez Doodles while I write. Trust me, when you’re painting with watercolors, it’s definitely a ‘No Cheez Doodles’ zone. Come to think of it, that alone, could have been it. I mean, really, how creative can a person be when deprived of Cheez Doodles?

So what of the rest of you? Does anyone else wear more than one ‘creativity’ hats, or have you hung one up for another, and if so, why?

 

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Friendly Cook Island

The downtown waterfront in Avarua, Rarotonga. Our boat, the Kathi II, is the one farthest to the left.

by Christine Kling

From Bora Bora to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is a little over five hundred miles. This is one aspect of the Pacific that makes it so different from the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, having to do an overnight trip to get across the Anegada Passage from the Virgins to Saint Maartin is considered a long trip. In the Pacific, this trip across to the Cook Islands was considered something of a short hop.

None the less, we were tired when we arrived in the little commercial harbor in Avarua, Rarotonga. There was not a whole lot there when we arrived in 1975.  We motored past the long empty concrete commercial docks and tied up stern-to on the seawall right in front of the range markers, as you can see in the photo above.

The entrance to the harbor in Rarotonga is through a pass in the reef that surrounds the island. There is a strong cross current and negotiating the pass can be tricky, even for a small sailboat. We didn’t really think too much about our docking location. We were just happy after a four day passage to be able to sleep the night through.

The next morning we were awakened at daybreak by the loud engine and propellor noise of a ship close by. This sound that comes through the hull of a fiberglass boat is an unwelcome one, especially to sailors who have just finished an offshore passage.

Jim flew out the forepeak hatch and I poked my head out behind him.

I told you we were stern tied just under the range markers, right?

We were staring dead bow-on at an inter-island freighter of about 300 feet in length steaming into the harbor. She had just cleared the reef into the basin. The guy on the bow threw the monkey’s fist toward the long commercial dock, but she was coming in too hot. The man on the dock looked on helplessly as the line curved aft and fell into the water due to the ship’s speed. It’s amazing how fast 3-4 knots of speed can look when it’s a big rusty metal ship that is bearing down on you.

At that point I was wondering if the prudent thing to do was to jump overboard and start swimming out of the way, but I was frozen watching the bow of this thing grow bigger and bigger.

Then with a splash, both bow anchors dropped and the chain rattled and clanked as they lay chain across the harbor bottom. The hull groaned as they put the brakes on the windlass, and it almost looked like the bow lowered into the water as the wrenching sound of metal screeching on metal echoed across the harbor and she ground to a stop. About one hundred feet off our bow.

After calming our heart rates with coffee and some breakfast, we walked over to the docks and asked permission to board the ship. It was 9:00 a.m. and the Kiwi crew was gathered in the galley drinking coffee served by the cook/steward, a fellow who wore a low-cut flowered dress (showing his hairy cleavage) and full make-up at that hour of the morning. They all got a good laugh when they learned we were the people from the boat tied up in front of the range lights.

In bits and pieces from the colorful crew we learned the story of their arrival in darkness, and as they waited for daylight to enter the harbor because their radar was not operational, their repeated attempts to awaken the captain from his drunken stupor. As the sky started to grow light, the captain got the ship more or less lined up on the pass and they started through. The first mate said he cautioned the captain about their speed, but the old man could barley keep his eyes open. It had been the sober crew, not the captain who had made the decision to drop the anchors.

We never saw the captain who had returned to his cabin and his bottle while the crew went about the business of unloading and loading their cargo and my new best friend, the ship’s cook wanted to know if I had any spare Simplicity patterns for dresses since he had lots of fabric and his sewing machine, but no patterns.

That night we went out to a disco with several members of the crew, including the steward. I recognized that those guys enjoyed living dangerously when I saw the friendly cook in his wig and high heels groping the bottoms of a couple of 6- foot tall, 200+ pound Polynesian guys who didn’t look like they welcomed the attention. Jim and I left early before what looked the inevitable fights started.

While thinking back on this experience, I looked up Rarotonga on Google maps, and I was amazed to see how the place had grown in 38 years. The layout of the harbor looks almost the same though it looks like the cruising boats now tie up in a new basin to the left of the old harbor. Times have indeed changed, and I’ve sailed many more thousands of miles in the intervening years, but one thing hasn’t changed since that day. I’ve never again looked at passing ships at sea with any confidence that they are going to look out for me.

 

Fair winds!

Christine

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Master Caster

by John Urban

Sure, Brad Pitt looked like a master fly caster on a Montana river in the movie A River Runs Through It, but he had help.

My own casting started when I was a wee-bitty boy. First with a bait casting rod and reel. I’d stand in the backyard, a good distance from the nearest body of water, casting a hookless practice lure time and again. I got pretty good at that, but plenty of times out on the water I’d hand that bait-casting rod to my father so he could untangle the mess of line I’d created.

When I was ten or eleven, I moved up to a fly rod. At that point in my life I was taking less direction. I now wish I’d asked my father more questions about technique, but I got along and soon I was casting a heavier rod on the salt.

After all these years I must be a qualified master caster. And even if I don’t cast as well as a professional guide, I figure I have well-earned experience that I can share here at Write-On-The-Water.

First, let’s get things squared away as far as fly fishing gear. You’ve seen the images on the covers of Orvis and Patagonia catalogs. It’s good stuff, but before you get overcome by Madison Avenue, let’s focus on the practical side of fly fishing. This is, I remind you, the practice of lassoing a razor sharp hook back and forth past your head…your eyes…your ears.

So let’s start with single most important piece of equipment, something easily found in garden centers all over – a Husqvarna helmet with a face cage and ear muffs. I consider this a must for fly fishing. And after a few sample casts, most of my fishing companions do, as well.

Next, waders. Like many things in life it’s a question of compromise. On one hand, do you want to stay dry while fishing? On the other hand, do you want to sink like a stone when those babies fill-up with water following your eventual fall into the drink. Again, there’s no right answer, just personal choice.

Third, your rod and reel. My advice here is simple. Put a big wad of cash in your left hip pocket and go to a well-regarded shop. After gaining advice from the sales rep, pull a credit card from your right hip pocket to pay for your new overpriced gear. The cash? You need that, too. It’s for the fly-line, which will cost just about what you thought you’d pay for the whole damn rig.

So now we’re rigged and ready (you bought some flies, right?).

The casting part? Don’t worry. It’s kind of like golf. The only people who are really good at it keep to themselves and leave the hackers alone. But if you do want to learn how to cast, watch some videos or sign up for lessons from Joan Wulff or Lefty Kreh.

You’re just about ready for the water. However, if you’re in a sporting mood, you might even clip the barbs off your hooks. Granted, you will land fewer fish, but you will have increased ease in releasing a fish without doing it harm, and you’ll make it easier to remove that darn hook when you snag it into your hand.

On this last subject, I can depart great wisdom. I once hooked my knee so deeply with a rusty treble hook I had to cut it out with a likewise rusty knife. (Can you say tetanus shot?) Another time, I embedded one of those big barbs deep in my hand, with it a fiercely-fighting bluefish, still on the hook. I say then, trust my life experience and use barbless hooks.

And if you need some more tips after reading this post, come on over and say hello if you happen to see a guy down by the water, fly rod in hand, donning an orange Husqvarna helmet.

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Is 42 really the answer?

By Mike Jastrzebski

The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, that is. The way I figure it, it’s as good an answer as any.

I’ve never read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but my wife Mary is a big fan. So much so that when we buy a lottery ticket and pick a number ourselves it has to have the number 42 in it. It’s also the standard answer I get from her when I tell her that something is on my mind and I’m not sure what to do. If I mention that I just don’t have an answer to what’s bothering me she assures me that the answer is 42.

I used to laugh at her answer, but after eighteen years of hearing the same answer over and over, I just raise my eyes to the sky and try to ignore her. Hell, if I had ten dollars for every time she’s spouted this answer I wouldn’t need to win the lottery.

So what’s the question that caused her to offer up her last 42? Why it’s the same question that’s been dogging me since I decided to take a short hiatus from this blog. Should we stay on the boat, or sell it and move onto land?

We’ve been considering buying a manufactured home in a 55 + community, renting a condo, buying a condo, and staying on the boat. When we got back from our last trip to the Bahamas this past summer we were determined to move into a 55 + community and get rid of the boat, but a strange thing happened as the summer flew by. We decided that we weren’t ready for a retirement community. After ten years of living on the boat we just aren’t ready to give up our seafaring life.

So we’re going to stay on the boat for another year, or two, or five. As soon as the weather cools off a little here in Florida, I’m going to go to work on the engine and see if I can put an end to the overheating problem that plagued us last spring. If not, I’ll hire a mechanic to take a look at it, and if that doesn’t clear up the problem we’re going to have the engine rebuilt.

So wish us luck and if all goes well look for Rough Draft in the Exumas next spring–or maybe we’ll head up the East Coast to the Chesapeake. After all, isn’t that what we love about cruising? We just pull out of the marina and turn to port or starboard and let the wind take us on our next adventure.

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Choose Tenacity

Jean Socrates, 70, becomes oldest woman to sail solo round the world non-stop/Mail Online

by Christine Kling

The last couple of months have seen some amazing achievements by people who had to reach far beyond their comfort zones. Jeanne Socrates finally completed her non-stop solo circumnavigation on her third try at age 70, and Diana Nyad, at age 64, completed her swim from Cuba to Key West and taught her detractors a thing or two about the Gulf Stream in the process. These two women personify tenacity.

When I meet people for the first time and we get around to talking about our professions, I often get the comment, “That’s something I’ve always wanted to do. My (fill in the blank with mother, teacher, wife) always told me me that I should write a book. I envy you.” There are many people who have terrific talent, but they lack the commitment to complete a book or a voyage or the many, many hours of practice it takes to get good at anything.

Kenneth Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager wrote,”

“There’s a difference between interest

and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it

only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you

accept no excuses – only results.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think I have the best job in the world. But still, it is a job. And it can be very stressful. What some people don’t realize is this writing gig can be hard work. Inventing, creating new characters and scenes and worlds is hard work for me. I’m not one of those people who joyfully sits down and trips the light fantastic through 6,000 words as easily as typing. It requires intense concentration and mental energy and most important of all — self-discipline.

We have grown into a society that adheres to the principle “If you don’t get caught, it isn’t wrong.” Very few American workers do a good job for the sake of doing something right, and if the boss isn’t watching, they goof off. If they didn’t have to punch a time clock, they might not even show up. That is the society I grew up in. I struggle with this every day.

Self-discipline does not come naturally to me. I am a life-long procrastinator. But in this line of work, there is no time clock and no boss to monitor me during the day. There is nothing to stop me from reading a book, playing on Facebook, shopping for boats on Yachtworld.com, or turning on the TV. The only thing that prevents me from doing any of that during the day is my own determination to finish this paragraph, this chapter, this book. And then the next. And the next.

To be successful at this thing I’m not naturally good at, I must choose tenacity. I work at it and worry it every day. Even if I only get a few words written, I won’t give up. I’m back in the chair the next day.

Words of encouragement help. I found this Pinterest board with some lovely posters and quotes. Take a minute, click on this link and read. Then make your choice.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Staying on track…

C.E. Grundler

“What’s the hardest part of being a writer?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked from time to time. Plots? Characters? Writing dialog? Writer’s block?

No, no, no, and no.

For me, the answer is simple. Staying on track. More to the point, getting back on track after a derailment. Sometimes it seems like writing is like moving a freight train down obstacle-strewn tracks. Every time I get the whole mile worth of cars rolling along, something else comes up to bring it to a halt. Worse yet, finally getting things rumbling along, at a nice clip, no less, to round the bend only to find a storm has come and washed out the bridge, tracks and all.

It’s nearly a year since Sandy did that and a whole lot more, and relative to the rest of the region I still feel quite fortunate. But when that tree dropped, it left a large section of roof and wall on top of the desk where my storyboard, notes, interviews with detectives and other resources, and all other research had been.  The only thing, fortunately, that wasn’t on that desk at the time was my laptop. But being that I was still in the plotting and planning stage, much of my story was yet to turn digital. I never saw what happened to all that precious paperwork, buried beneath shingles, plaster, leaves and branches. The next morning my husband and I were on what was left of the roof with a chainsaw and tarps doing damage control while my daughter tried to salvage what she could from the roofless rooms, stashing what she could in an undamaged room. ALL the contents of the kitchen, my office, pictures off the walls. Furniture. Fish tanks. And so on. Once the house was back together, I promised myself, I’d dig through what she managed to save and recover my notes.

And gradually, everything has returned to its rightful place. Everything that survived, that is. Everything, it seems, except a few important pieces of paper that had been on that desk… and all my notes.

They had to be somewhere else. At least that’s what I hoped. That they survived, but were packed somewhere I’ve yet to unpack. Once I found them, I told myself, I’d get back on track. I’d get this train rolling. But as the months passed, it’s become evident that they must have been a casualty, carted off in a dumpster during the initial undigging. Which left me staring at a blank landscape. I wasn’t just derailed. I had no rails. I had no train. It was all gone.

Once I finally came to terms with that, I knew what I had to do. Return to ‘GO’, less my $200. Start over. Stop waiting for all my research and notes to magically reappear. Accept that they may be gone forever, and just move one. Build another train, build those tracks. Get rolling.

The one advantage to starting over is starting fresh, applying those lessons learned over previous trips down this route. Like my storyboard. I’m an obsessive plotter and planner, and my storyboard is critical. But the last one was too big, and it didn’t unfold in a way that I could track the different stages of the story. This one is smaller, but more extensive, color-coded, folds in on itself, stores Post-Its, and it fits easily into my messenger bag so it’s always with me. It’s looking pretty naked at the moment, but before long the Post-its will start breeding and multiplying.

Also, I’ve begun a system of ‘un-lose-able’ notes. I set up a gmail account just for this story alone, and I email myself EVERYTHING. Notes, passages, references. I can access that account from anywhere, and everything is tucked into orderly files I can find in three clicks or less.  No more spreading across a desk. Portability is the key. And it’s a system I could see working well in the limited space of a boat, which is where I plan to do much more of my writing as I move forward. But as I’m still laying down the tracks, I’m curious, what systems do the rest of you use? What works for you? What keeps you on track?

 

 

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My Bali Hai

Kathi II anchored next to Curlew in Cook’s Bay, Moorea

by Christine Kling

We left Papeete, Tahiti in 1975 because of the crowds. It was le quatorze juillet or French Independence Day and after the outrigger canoe racers and the fruit carrying races and the dance competitions, we were looking for some peace and quiet. We’d been in the islands long enough that Papeete was the Big City and we could only take it for so long.

So after spending a couple of weeks med-moored on the waterfront in Papeete, we picked up our anchor early one morning and set sail for the island of Moorea, a mere nine miles across the channel from Tahiti. Another problem I had with French Polynesia was the free flowing red wine, and on that short crossing I hung my head over the side and chummed the fish for the first and last time in my life.

Needless to say, when we arrived in Cook’s Bay a few hours later, I was not in top form. Although this was certainly a short trip, the entrance to the bay was narrow through a cut in the reef with breakers creaming on both sides. The trades were tooting their usual 25 knots and we had no idea what the current was doing. The French charts we had stated that they were based on surveys taken in the 1890′s. We dropped all sail and motored through the pass in the reef with me standing up on the bow keeping watch for coral heads.

We made it through the pass and found our way in to an anchorage where ours was the only boat. We dropped the hook in the shade of the high island peak and Jim rowed the anchor ashore and tied it to a coconut palm. Then it was time to clean up the boat, and what a mess it was. It took us until the next afternoon to sort out our mess of lines, sails, sail covers, awnings and anchor lines.

The next afternoon as I was just finishing up a sink full of dishes, Jim called me topsides to look at something. There charging through the reef was a gorgeous little gaff-rigged cutter with tanbark sails and everything flying charging through the reef.

“It’s Tim and Pauline,” Jim said. “They’re a Brit couple. I met them in Hawaii.”

They flew through the pass, then as they sailed into the lee of the island, the wind decreased but their little vessel carried her way, and they sailed on toward us. As they neared our boat, theirs rounded up smartly, dropped jib, staysail, gaff-rigged mainsail and in the wink of an eye all were furled, the anchor set and Tim was rowing their little cockle shell dink to wrap a line around a palm tree whilst Pauline was calling over to us, “Would you like to come over for a cup of tea?”

I was absolutely gobsmacked by this feat of seamanship, but when we rowed over, not only was their boat neat as a pin, but there was a pot of delicious homemade soup bubbling on the stove and the two brass lamps on the bulkhead were polished to a sparkling hue.

And I was pretty damn sure that Pauline had not been feeding the fish in the channel due to an over-indulgence in the holiday spirits.

I was in awe of both their seamanship and their housekeeping abilities. Their 28-foot boat CURLEW had no engine and was built in 1905 in Falmouth England, originally designed to unload ships in the harbor. The Carrs had bought her in Malta about 10 years earlier where she was cheap and in disrepair. Like us, they were driven by dreams of sailing the South Pacific. At the time we visited, their boat felt like a real home, and I yearned to have the skills to cruise as efficiently as they did.

I never saw the Carrs again after our interlude in Cook’s Bay, but I always remembered them. They went on to become rather famous in the lore of great cruising sailors. They sailed their engineless CURLEW for 30 years, finally settling in South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic and eventually writing a book about their efforts to preserve and appreciate the environment there called Antarctic Oasis: Under the Spell of South Georgia. Today, CURLEW is in the National Maritime Museum of Cornwall which makes me feel a little like an antique, as well. But I also feel privileged to have met two of the greatest sailors of our time.

Still, I’ve never learned to keep my brass polished like Pauline did.

Fair winds!

Christine

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The death of a newspaper

michaelhaskins.net

This has been an interesting week in Key West. To explain it, I need to divert from writing fiction to journalism. The daily Key West Citizen also publishes, or did up until last Sunday, Solares Hill, a tabloid paper that has a long history in Key West. For long before I arrived, Solares Hill wrote about taboo subjects and also covered the arts community.

The paper went out of business soon after I arrived and the Key West Citizen bought it. I worked at the Citizen at the time and editor Bernard Hunt convinced publisher Bill Barry that if the paper didn’t buy Solares Hill someone would.

Solares Hill editor, David Ethridge, and writer, Mark Howell, came with the paper. Ethridge retired and now it was editor Mark Howell and assistant editor Nadja Hansen.

Mid-week last week, both employees were called in and told that Solares Hill was no more and its last edition would be Sunday, Sept. 8. Both their jobs were gone. Both employees are two of the most talented and knowledgeable employees at the paper, but that didn’t matter.

I am not surprised that Solares Hill had its plug pulled. It’s the way of journalism. It doesn’t matter about content, only advertising. The Citizen lost a big printing contract from the Upper Keys and needed to cut costs. I’m sure the publisher, a bean counter, found a way to make the two salaries turn the paper’s red ink into black.

Problem is, the daily paper makes little revenue with its four pages, eight pages when folded together. What is missing from the eight pages is advertising. Instead of looking at the real problem, lack of advertisers, the management decided to close Solares Hill and layoff its two employees.

I should mention here, Nadja was also the longstanding editor of Paradise, a week entertainment supplement to the Citizen. As an editor, the often error filled Citizen could have found a better use for her. The joke around town is that if you apply to the Citizen and pass the spelling test they won’t hire you.

Oh yeah, you won’t believe this, but the editor of the paper retired and the publisher didn’t see a need to replace him. So, let’s see, that’s three people in editorial that are gone, but nothing seems to have been done in advertising or to come to reality about the costs the paper charges for ads.

No, get rid of employees that are competent. Readers bring advertisers, but the publisher thinks ads bring readers. The popularity of the paper has fallen since Cooke Communications bought it. It has stopped being a local paper and tries to sell copies in the Upper Keys, cover Keys events, but someone forgot that most days activities to cover (other than small city government) are in Key West.

When asked why there isn’t an advertisement from businesses as close as Big Pine (about 30 miles away) there is only quiet. Bean counters, when confronted with loss, look at cutting costs as the answer instead of making a better product.

The demise of Solares Hill was handled poorly and the dismissal of its two employees should be a criminal offense. Of course, it isn’t in this ‘for profit’ world. This thinking is why our products are made in China today instead of America. It helps the bottom line. Where we once were a country that made and consumed American made products, the bean counters knew it could be done cheaper in China, Korea, Mexico, etc., so the bottom line improved for the business, but Americans were out of work. Is that they American way today? It’s worked out good for China, they own this country, just about, and without firing a shot or dropping a bomb.

Last Friday, the Smokin’ Tuna Saloon’s North of Havana Cigar Social Club (a founding member writing this) burned a hat with the Key West Citizen logo. Kind of a Viking funeral, not for the paper, but for the talented people swept away like dandruff on a Chinese businessman’s suit.

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