Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 47

At the Anchorage.

By Mike Jastrzebski

Unfortunately wifi is not available at the anchorage that we’re staying at on the Middle River so my last couple of blogs have been written on my iPad. Today I decided to include some pictures of life at the anchorage, including the aguacar we saw last week. In order to do that Mary and I had to haul our computers to shore by dinghy then walk to the Starbucks on Sunrise.

As you can see from the picture, there are boats of all sizes docked along the river, and Sunday morning I counted seven boats anchored out around us. Since in this area of the river water skiing is allowed, we also get a lot of traffic on the weekends causing us to rock and roll at anchor. Then there’s the jet packers. That’s right, a commercial water jetpack company has been visiting the area and we’ve been treated to a little show for an hour or so a day since Valantine’s day. Here’s a picture.

On the writer’s front, I’ve started work on Stranded Naked Blues, the new Wes Darling book. It took me a few days to learn the basics of working with the Shrivner software. I know Christine swears by the software and until recently it was only available for Apple users.

As soon as it was available for Windows I downloaded it and I have to say I’m impressed. I’ll report more on how Shrivner works after I’ve worked on it for a couple of months.

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Digitally empowered author

by Christine Kling

It is 5:00 a.m. on Friday morning and I am trying to get something written for the blog before I take off to drive across the state of Florida (in the pouring rain) to Sarasota for the one-day conference Sleuthfest of Saturday (SOS) tomorrow. I am giving a presentation entitled The Wild West of Indie Publishing, and I find it more than a little bit funny that I am the one doing this since, as my friend and blog mate Mike J. will tell you, I was dragged into this business kicking and screaming.

The title of today’s blog came from a quote I came across in one of two amazing events I’ve attended while doing my research for this presentation, although “attended” I use in a non-geographical sense because I only attended digitally. During the second event, critic and journalist, Porter Anderson said:

“What is this digitally empowered author to whom the central role in publishing has fallen?”

Central role? Since when have authors been at the center of publishing? In the traditional model, authors got paid an average of 10% of the cover price of a book and that demonstrated what value was placed on the author’s contribution to the effort.

But man, these times are a-changing and at this point, I’m sorry that I only have about an hour to speak. The audience is going to be made up of a wide spectrum of people from those who are just learning that it’s possible to self-publish an ebook to some who know way more about this business than I do. I can’t cover it all, but I’ve been doing my homework, prepping for those questions from the back of the room.

The first of these researching events was a free webcast given at the Digital Book World site titled “The Author’s View of the Industry: A Comprehensive Survey of Authors to Understand their Priorities in the Self-Publishing Era.” This hour long presentation shared some of the data that came from a survey that was co-sponsored by Digital Book World and Writers’ Digest. They surveyed 5,000 writers, half of whom had self-published. They divided the group into the categories of traditionally published, self-published and hybrid authors (those who had done both).

First of all, you know we are in a new world when the publishing world wants to know the answer to this question that appeared on the opening screen: What do authors want? The reason for the question became clear as the data was presented. For example, among the writers surveyed, the average annual incomes were $7,630 for self-published writers; $27,758 for the  traditionally published; and $38,540 for hybrid writers. This tells us that the traditionally published authors who are making a foray into the world of self-publishing are coming out ahead. As more authors learn this, more are realizing they have choices. They don’t have to stick with their publishers anymore. Hence, authors are empowered.

Recently, some self-published success story authors like Hugh Howey have made print-only deals with traditional publishers while keeping their digital rights for self-publishing. Such a deal would have been unheard of a few years ago, but when a self-pubbed author goes to the bargaining table with over a million sales already under his belt, he is certainly empowered to set down his own terms.

Another interesting statistic was that 68% of self published authors (including hybrid authors) want to publish their next book with traditional publisher while 92% of traditional authors want this. While traditional publishers remained the most desirable publishing method, it was interesting to see how much the desire to go with them dropped among those who had tasted the freedom and control that self-publishing offers.

The second special event I attended occurred on Feb. 13th and it was called Author (R)Evolution Day and it was at the start of the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference. The event was live-streamed all day for free. I’m hoping that they are going to offer videos of some of the sessions because I had to miss several in order to attend some appointments.  If you follow that link you will see how many fascinating sessions there were. It’s awesome just to read some of the bios of the people who were presenting because it will make you realize how much has changed in the last few years.

Here is just as one small example of what I learned existed that I had never known about before. There is a new business out there called Pubslush which calls itself a “crowdfunding publishing platform.” If you’ve ever heard of Kickstarter, this is a sort of Kickstarter for writers. In other words, authors will say that need X-number of dollars in order to self-publish a book to pay for editing, cover, maybe author’s time, formatting, etc. Then they will offer something to those who are willing to donate to the cause – usually a book in one form or another – and they will raise the money in advance to pay for their books. So the question is “Is crowd-funding using Kickstarter or Pubslush the new advance?”

There are so many more cool new ideas out there and I am going to start sharing more of them on my website under the tab For Writers. I already have a list of sites I use for promotion. After my presentation on Saturday, I’m going to make my notes and handout available as a download on  my website.

Now it is time to hit the road and head across Alligator Alley.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Two months to launch…

C.E. Grundler

The boat, I mean. Not a book. That was last year. This year has been a bit bumpier, and one can only spread themself so thin. For the sake of what little sanity I have left, I’ve been focusing the majority of my energy on at long last having a floating, seaworthy vessel as spring rolls around. Once the boat’s back in her proper element, then I’ll shift my primary focus to a more regimented writing schedule. But by my count, I have approximately sixty days to reach my goal.

Sixty days and a lot of work. But due to Sandy’s destruction, and the damaged boats she left behind, my boatyard needed a place to begin repairs, and the drafty, unheated shed where my boat’s been blocked for far too long is now sealed up and heated to a balmy 55 degrees — warm enough for extensive fiberglass work. What had been my fortress of solitude is now a bustling center of activity, and I’m surrounded by the sounds of compressors, grinders and buffers as wounded boats enter and are returned to their pre-storm condition. There’s plenty of company while I’m working away, and with a little luck and a lot of long days, Annabel Lee should be making a splash on schedule, or at least close to it. It’s a matter of chosing my battles — there’s far more work I wanted to do before she emerged, but at this point I’m dividing my tasks into those that can and can’t be done while afloat.

The thing I learned about writing is to first get a sound story — one without plot holes or leaks, so to speak, from bow to stern.  Make sure it can float. It may still be a bit rough around the edges, but so long as everything is sound and operational, then you go back over it and do the edits. Or, in my case, the brightwork.

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Like-minded Spirits & Seasoned Salts

By John Urban

As much as I love boats, beaches, and seaside bars, my favorite spot of all may be the boatyard. I find that I am not alone in this way, and that’s part of the allure – boatyards are where you find like-minded spirits, waterfront dreamers, and some seasoned salts who know a thing or two about the far reaches of the world. Fortunately, blogs and social media stretch our ability to keep in touch with these sea wanderers during the winter months, and this was the case when I received yesterday’s email blast from Michael Picciandra.

After a career as a commercial fisherman out of Martha’s Vineyard, Mike Picciandra retired and began the multi-year restoration of a 1938 center-boarder that was built at the Casey Boatyard of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. It was a exhaustive rebuild, but Mike persevered and six years ago he re-launched his beamy thirty-foot Casey. He soon set sail from Tripps Boatyard in Westport, Mass covering thousands of single-handed miles along the coast of Florida and the Bahamas, heading back up north in the summer months.

An email blast from Mike usually contains a good story, beautiful photos under sail or at anchor, and an introduction to folks he meets along the way. Yet, Mike’s most recent post – and the accompanying photos – tell a particularly remarkable encounter. So with Mike’s permission, I will retell it here.

The story begins last month while Mike was at anchor in a spot called Manatee Pocket on the east coast of Florida near Stuart. Mike’s account is as follows:

“[While at anchor, I was] hailed by a young man is a small sailboat who asked if my boat was a Casey Cutter…I was startled as in the time I owned her people would ask if the boat was wood or fiberglass or who designed her, but nobody asked if she was Casey Built….”

When Mike said that yes it was built by Casey, the young man advised him that the owner of the house in front of where he was anchored wanted to talk with him.

Soon after, Mike rowed his dinghy to shore where he was met by a man who introduced himself as Ken Zeiegler, who at an age of 83 was “as spry as a young chicken with a quick smile and gentle manner.” Ken explained to Mike that he and his wife Dorothy purchased a 1936 Casey Cutter of the same dimensions fifty years prior and sailed her for the next three and a half decades. For those unfamiliar with old wooden boats, this chance meeting was about on par with the likelihood of stranger coming up to you saying that you share a common sibling.

In Mike’s account of this exchange he describes how Ken retired from the Coast Guard at age 45. It was then that Ken and Dorothy moved aboard the boat, named Patience, and sailed her from Massachusetts to Venezuela over a four-year period, settling in Manatee Pocket, Florida. Adding even more serendipity of this encounter, Mike told Ken that his own boat was also named Patience under a previous owner. Two Casey Cutters, the 1936 Patience #1 and the 1938 Patience #2.

As part of this exchange, Ken shared photos of Ken and Dorothy’s time aboard Patience, in many cases roaming the same waters and harbors that Mike now sails. Dorothy has since passed and Ken sold the boat in 1999, but the photo collection is a testament to life.

Ken & Dorothy’s Photos

Ken and Dorothy’s story, like Mike’s account, is of the water, and it was my pleasure sharing it here at Write On The Water.

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To Beat The Devil

Just a short comment this morning because I am about 50 (my guess) pages from finishing what I am now calling To Beat The Devil. I wanted to have it done last December, but the story has legs of its own and I am fighting more and more ideas so I can finish. Almost 300 pages and I began thinking 200 pages! If I wasn’t having so much fun, this would be work!

What do you think of the cover?

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The perfect dinghy?

By Mike Jastrzebski

Mary and I were sitting in the cockpit Sunday morning, drinking coffee and enjoying the great south Florida sunshine when a car drove by. This is not a set-up for a joke, the car was actually cruising on down the river as if the driver had nothing better to do.

It appeared to be a classic 1960′s era amphicar. It’s been a long time since I saw one of these cars, in fact the last time I actually saw one on the water was around 1966. It was cruising along the Clinton River in Mt. Clemens, Michigan and I didn’t even have a driver’s license yet. I remember thinking that it would be a great car to own.

This got me wondering, could this be the perfect dinghy? One of the biggest problems with cruising is getting around on land. Sure, the weight might drop our cruising speed from 5 knots to 1 or 2 knots, but nobody cruises on a sailboat for speed.

And I might be a little worried that the thing would sink if a storm pops up, but isn’t life a series of chances we take?

I was sitting out there at the anchorage getting all excited about my brilliant discovery and I even went so far as to go on the net to see how much my new dinghy was going to cost me.

Damn. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that these little classic darlings are going for $75,000 dollars. My mood took a nose dive as my brilliant idea turned sour and I realized that there would be no new dinghy in my life after all.

Has anyone else out there had a brilliant idea that just didn’t pan out, or is it just me?

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So much to do, so little time

by Christine Kling

You know how chart plotters these days have big buttons on them marked MOB or Man Overboard? I feel like I need a big button like that for my life right now – only mine would be marked WOW or Woman OverWhelmed. I’ve decided to head north from the Bahamas in the spring and on to the Chesapeake for the summer again, thus I am trying to get everything done so I can leave.

Which means I am trying to be a good writer, self-publisher, sailor, mother, friend, and dog owner but recently, I’m unable to juggle all the balls I have in the air. That first one, being a writer is my full-time job these days, and I’m trying to put in the hours to meet this deadline. But I’m also preparing for the new release of the Thomas & Mercer edition of Circle of Bones, planning book events, mailing ARCs, preparing my talk for the Sleuthfest on Saturday in about 10 days. Then I’m trying to prepare my boat to take off on a 10-month trip aware from home base here, ordering spare parts and belts and filters and stuff, trying to get the outboard running, making sure my registration, customs sticker and radio licenses are good, provisioning, checking charts, getting winter clothes out of storage, cleaning out all the lockers, etc. And all of this is not to mention the doctors’ appointments, vet appointments, good-bye dinners, and social obligations.

When I can’t cope with all that’s swirling around me, I have a tendency to withdraw. I stop answering my phone, and I postpone answering the too many emails. I have all this stuff I have to do swirling in my head, and because it is so disordered, I avoid dealing with it and it only gets worse. Then I fall further behind. If I am facing over 100 unread emails and a tall pile of paper documents that need attention, and I have 5 voicemails waiting to be answered, that is when I’m likely to decide it’s a good time for me to read that book I’ve always wanted to read on Social Networking or Italian Cooking.

What’s the matter with me? Does this happen to anyone else? Because I’m basically an introvert, I find it requires more energy to interact with people, so all the stuff that requires decisions and dealing with people, I postpone. And then I start to feel even more overwhelmed.

One of the tools that has been helping me recently is my iPhone. I’ve started using Siri, the voice recognition robot voice. I press and hold the button and say, “Remind me to pick-up the inter-library loan book,” and the text appears on my screen. Then Siri asks me “When should I remind you?” And I say, “Tomorrow at noon.” And then Siri tells me she has entered the reminder into the Reminder App. The next day at noon, my phone will chirp and the text will display on the screen. In this way, my reminder list acts as my to-do list, and I can set it to keep reminding me every day until I mark it as completed. Adding things to this list is so easy, I tend to do it more often than I ever did with a paper list or an app where I had to type letters on a tiny virtual keyboard.

The second thing I’m trying out is going easy on myself and not making goals that are too overwhelming. For example, I’ve been trying to build my Twitter following, so I’ve decided that I need to tweet or retreat something every day. One tweet per day, I can handle. And I’m only tackling two items per day on the to-do list rather than feeling overwhelmed by looking at the whole list. Accomplishing attainable goals makes me feel less overwhelmed.

But it doesn’t always feel like I’m accomplishing things even when I do get stuff done each day. For example, one day I cleaned the carburetor on the outboard. It ran great, but it wasn’t getting enough water through it. The next day, I ordered a new impeller for the water pump. When it came in, I took the outboard to a mechanic to install it in the lower end. I brought it back, put it back on the dinghy and it’s still not getting enough water through it. That didn’t solve the problem. That was when I started looking for that book on Italian Cooking again.

Now, I’m working really hard at answering all emails as they come in. But the phone calls? They’re still going to voice mail. I’m dealing with my case of WOW one step at a time.

Fair winds!

Christine

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Stony Point Polar Plunge 2013

C.E. Grundler

 

The weather was bright and sunny, though the thermometer read 23 degrees. A bit brisk, to say the least.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A closer look (below) and you can see some smaller bits of ice on the river. All in all, a great day for a motorcycle ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not too many other bikes on the road… at least not until we got down to the river. (And yes, I’m following in the ‘support’ vehicle, with warm clothes and dry towels.)

 

 

 

 

On one end of town, other motorcycles were gathering…

(photo by Dana BatGirl Carroll)

 

 

 

 

…while down at the river the crowd enjoyed all sorts of entertainment.

I didn’t catch the name of the band, and I hope the drummer, sporting only a pair of swim trunks, didn’t catch a cold, but I suspect he was just acclimating himself for an upcoming dunk.

The four-footed audience, though, didn’t seem to mind the cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plenty of emergency vehicles on hand, though no emergencies arose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… are they native to the Hudson?

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then it was Plunge time! Unfortunately I can’t seem to upload my own video (0r embed this one on Youtube) but someone else had a better angle and caught the excitement of the main event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pIQtySF_C4

I like the guy at the end, with the souvenier block of river ice.

And for more pictures and stories, check out the Stony Point Seals on Facebook.

And here’s some more pics…

 

 

 

 

And apologies for the misaligned text. For some reason, it seems to be determined to position itself in this odd way, no matter how many times I tried to fix it.

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Anchoring out

By Mike Jastrzebski

Today we’re moving Rough Draft to a small anchorage about a mile away from where we’re currently docked. We’ve been at the dock since we arrived three weeks ago. While I was working on the overheating problem it was nice to be able to get parts sent to us at a fixed address, and since we were docked across the street for six years we know a lot of people here. That means we had the occassional use of a car and  many offers of rides to wherever we needed to go.

The problem with docks is that your neighbor’s music is your music, no matter how low they turn the dial. I’ve also found that the longer we’re at the dock the harder it is for us to pick up and go. And let’s not forget the high cost of staying at a dock, especially here in Ft. Lauderdale. And so this afternoon we’re moving out.

We actually prefer anchoring out. There’s more privacy. It’s quieter. Sleeping at anchor has a lulling effect and I seem to sleep better. And finally, I’ll have no distractions and I hope that will allow me to get back into the swing of writing every morning.

I do my best writing in the morning. I can usually get 3-5 pages written before lunch, and if you do the math that means theoretically I can write a three hundred page first draft of a novel in two to three months.

You notice I prefaced that estimate with the word theoretically. Living at anchor is harder than living at a dock. Water has to be hauled, trips to the grocery store become all day treks, and we still plan on heading to the Bahamas this month which means writing days lost while moving the boat.

Still, I’m hoping to have a new Wes Darling book written, rewritten, and polished to the point of being ready for publication by the end of the year.

Wish me luck–I’m going to need it.

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What is the best marine navigation app for the iPad?

by Christine Kling

Sample of Navionics chart and route with iNavX

Garmin BlueChart app with route and Active Captain data. Both charts show boat location slightly NE of southern waypoint

This is another question I am often asked, especially since Garmin released their new iPad app BlueChart Mobile (app is free and in-app purchase of charts ranges from $29.99 for US Coast to $44.99 for US and Caribbean). Previously, in my travels, I have always used iNavX ($49.99 for app alone and another $49.99 for US and Northern Bahamas) and I’ve been wondering if Garmin’s new offering was going to sway me from my go-to app.

It didn’t happen.

Let me give you some background first. See, the thing is in some respects I’m old-fashioned – even as techie as I am. I mean, I still carry a sextant on my boat. And my main mode of electronic navigation is via my laptop. When did it happen that everyone had to have a chart plotter at their helm or they weren’t real sailors? Frankly, I can’t afford one and I suspect I’m not the only sailor out there who can’t.

So all of these navigational apps boot up with a warning that they are not to be used as real navigational programs. And most of the bloggers say that they would never, ever use an iPad as other than a planning tool.

So here’s my thing. My laptop is down below on my little chart table and my iPad is right there at the helm. The iPad started out just being a planning device, but after a while, I realized that I, singlehander that I am, didn’t have to keep dashing below to look at the laptop. So over time, I have come to rely more and more on the iPad as my primary electronic navigational device – and of course, I have paper charts spread out on the cockpit seats as well.

So, for me, like lots of cash-strapped small boat sailors the question is which navigational app works best as a real chart plotter.

Both Garmin and iNavX can create waypoints and routes and all that is great for planning what you are going to do. They can both import and overlay tide and weather information. Garmin has some outstanding charts for certain parts of the world, but when I was in Thailand and the Philippines recently, they didn’t cover that area. iNavX allows one to buy charts from different vendors and covers more of the world. I was able to buy charts for my SE Asia trip from them. The list of charts available for iNavX is vast – especially when compared to Garmin. However, Garmin uses the Explorer chart data for the Bahamas which is considered to be the best there is, and overall the Garmin cost for app and charts is cheaper than iNavX. In addition, Garmin has partnered with Active Captain and users can choose to import that data while iNavX does not permit this.

iNavX app with GOTO activated and instruments ribbon showing across top of page.

But as far as I can see, there is only one app that lets me perform a GOTO or NAVIGATE TO function and that is iNavX. I like being able to look at my instrument readings and be able to see the BTW (bearing to waypoint), DTW (distance to waypoint), ETA (estimated time of arrival), and TTG (time to go) without having to calculate these on my own. At present, the Garmin BlueChart Mobile app doesn’t do this and while some in the tech industry have called this a “silly complaint,” I think having the ability to navigate to a waypoint is at the heart of what I want a navigation program to do. I readily admit that other peoples’ needs might differ.

I dream of the day when I will be able to get some of the other information I have swirling around my boat integrated into my laptop and iPad navigation. With a Raymarine radar and a Standard Horizon Matrix AIS radio on board my boat, only iNavX gives me hope of possibly getting my NMEA network onto wifi and getting some of my info onto my iPad. If I wanted to get such a system working with the Garmin BlueChart app, I would have to re-outfit my entire system with Garmin’s newest equipment. I sure don’t have the dollars for that. For those interested in trying to put together such a Garmin system, there’s a good long 10-page discussion about the Garmin app on the Tugnuts site here, and another on BoaterEd here.

In the past, I have always used Navimatics Charts and Tides app (each region charts and app for $19.99) for the Active Captain data and I have liked keeping my navigational charts free of all that stuff that I normally associate with a cruising guide. And I must admit, I am happy I own all these apps and I am able to switch between them and get the best information that each of them is able to offer. There is no chart plotter on the market that will let you check out the cartography of several different vendors. Today, our cruising guides (aka Active Captain, the Wikipedia of the Sea) are displayed on a chart, and I prefer that to be one or several different charting apps than the one I am using to navigate. Now I will have a choice to use either Garmin BlueChart or Charts and Tides, but for me, the best marine navigation app remains iNavX.

Fair winds!

Christine

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