Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 64

Yard Sailing

By Mike Jastrzebski

Roughdraft is in the yard for a bottom job and and so I can pull the shaft and replace the hose that connects the shaft stuffing box to the boat. Because of the cracked hose we had to have Tow Boat/US tow us to the yard. We are also still having some problems with water in the fuel tank so I need to remove the gas that’s in the tank and replace it before we can go back into the water. In the meantime Mary is busy organizing the boat. There is never enough room for everything on a 36 foot boat so I don’t envy her, I just appreciate her.

We’re staying on the boat while it’s in the yard and the biggest hardships are getting our dog, Belle, down for her walks and getting down to the yard bathroom. We’re the only ones staying on their boats so in the evenings when we take the dog for her walk it’s like wandering through a concrete island filled with ghost boats.

It looks like we’ll be here for about two weeks and we don’t have internet coverage in the yard so if you have any comments and don’t hear from me right away, it’s not that I’m ignoring you, I will respond, it just might be a week or so.

I will say this, we’re looking forward to getting back in the water and going cruising. If you’re already out there wandering the seas, drop us a note with your names and the name of your boat and we’ll look for you and say hello if we meet up.

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Welcome guest blogger Kaci Cronkhite!

Lessons from the Deep Blue Sea

by Kaci Cronkhite

When Christine offered a guest blog appearance I blurted “Heck yea!” and promptly burst the book writing bubble I’d created the past six months at my writing retreat in Oklahoma. “Write anything about being a writer who loves the water,” she wrote. “650 words or so.”  Sounded easy enough.

After coffee the next morning, I took off on an idea and after a quick paragraph I hit a wall and stopped dead in the water. Next, I wrote 3000 words. Oops, too much sail.  Over the next few days, this surprising, irritating then scary pattern persisted. The idea of 650 words jammed my gears. I changed chairs, tried writing outside, jotted down ideas on a notepad. Nothing. Fear drifted into my creative space like a transparent jellyfish trying to paralyze me.  I could not get to the ocean in my mind.

Then on Friday, NOAA radio forecast a Severe Tornado Warning. Urgent and clear, the rhythmic cadence of the computerized voice rebooted my brain. For a decade that voice in varied forms had been a lifeline at sea.  Informed, reliable and calm, NOAA ocean was now NOAA Oklahoma.  Eight miles from town and alone, I methodically prepared the house, car, dog and myself for the blow as if I were on the boat.

There’s nothing like the steady approach of a storm to distill thoughts.  As the band of low pressure raced up the plains from Texas, I watched its colorful bands of rain, circles of hail and nascent swirls of upper level cyclonic activity creep steadily closer on the computer screen.  The paradox of beauty and danger drew closer line by line.

NOAA radio went off. A tornado was on the ground just southwest of Woodward heading northeast at 60 mph.  “Take shelter immediately,” repeated the voice.  Remembering the Canton tornado last May, I moved into the safe room.  Tornadoes sometimes veer right once on the ground and the long squall line from which this tornado spawned was getting close. It would definitely cross my location. Woodward is 70 miles northwest. Canton was 18.  In both cases, a tornado turn right would be in my direction.

Memories of the passage off South Africa bubbled to the surface. A deep calm settled over me. While I could do nothing to move the house, the fact that it was anchored would shorten the impact.  Messages from my unintended singlehanded sail from Thailand to Malaysia echoed encouragement. I was alone, but not alone. What will be, will be.

The storm was now only minutes away. Closing the computer screen, I waited in the dark. The night sky to the southwest was aflame with lightening and soon the canyons and house began vibrating with the rumble of thunder stampede drawing near. Through a small window in the bathroom, I got the first scent of ozone.  The whispering approach wind rustled the trees next to the house. Seconds later, the bellowing wall that every ocean sailor recognizes burst through.  It was here.

The angry front edge of the storm cut loose with a roar in the canyon blasting trees, hurling limbs and tearing at the roof.  As the brutal front raced across the ridge, wild torrential waves of rain crashed against the house and gushed from the gutter like a firehose.

The biting edge of the storm passed quickly. I stepped to a window as lightening illuminated horizontal rain drops and a stream cutting a new channel down the driveway.  It was a relief to not worry the anchor would drag.  Then abruptly the rain stopped, the wind dropped and it was over.

Stepping out on the porch, I watched the flashing black mass roll away downwind like a ship sailing wing-on-wing with stars in its wake. Orion and the Seven Sisters lay anchored in their usual spot.  All was well on board in Oklahoma.

Write on!

Kaci

p.s.  Storms are indiscriminately violent and as they move through the atmosphere, someone somewhere eventually gets hurt.  As this blog post was written, 6 people were killed and at least 30 sent to hospital in Woodward, Oklahoma.  Hundreds lost their homes. My heart goes out to them.  Donations are being accepted by Red Cross.

About Kaci Cronkhite:

A writer, circumnavigator, wooden boat owner, happy traveller, boat genealogist and featured blogger at OffCenterHarbor.com, I work wherever the wind blows and with creative people worldwide.

Life began on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma, then rolled west for a decade in Alaska, a decade on the ocean and a decade at the helm of the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival.  Wilderness treks, upwind deliveries, non-profit success and a circumnavigation of the world are special memories in my journey’s wake.

A buxom little spidsgatter named Pax (peace in latin) is currently the focus of my life. Struck first by her beauty and then by her mystery, the search for her owners, her builders, her truth has now taken me to Denmark, British Columbia, both northern and southern California and through hell and heaven in Washington state.  Built in 1936, she survived the Occupation of Denmark with her lead keel intact. Through a woman shipwright, she survived a raging fire in Sausalito. Through at least ten owners and two continents over eight decades, she’s been loved and lost repeatedly.

Finding PAX is the story of her journey to be published later this year, touch wood!  For more information see kacicronkhite.com.

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For Fine Dining on the Hard…

C.E. Grundler

Rainy Sunday afternoon? Working on the boat, yet again fighting to forcefully remove excessive amounts of illogically applied caulking from odd regions of a leaky cabin?  Don’t let the damp, bitter weather, the skinned knuckles, splinters and heat-gun burns get you down! Come, sit in The Boat in the Shed and enjoy gourmet dining at its finest while basking in the warm glow of space heaters and drop-lights.

Enjoy a mouth-watering meal of fine wild-caught Alaskan smoked salmon, crisp, spicy radishes and fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, followed by a desert of sliced Rome apples and Peruvian dark chocolate, all prepared with only the finest of genuine imported Japanese utility knife blades and served on a genuine vintage mahogany boat stool. Sip Monkey-Picked Oolong tea prepared in a hotpot and served in insulated travel cups. Admire the authentic ‘boat under restoration’ ambiance, surrounded by the genuine plywood cabin sole, galley-as-workbench, plastic drop-cloths and everywhere you turn, tools, tools, tools!

Listen to the rain drum on the shed roof as you consider the work that lies ahead and contemplate how someday, eventually, all this will actually once again resemble a boat. Savor the flavors of the fine cuisine while you dream of being afloat and traveling lazily to far off destinations, like New York Harbor and Sandy Hook. As a special touch, every half-hour or so, feel the soothing vibrations and hear tools rattle as the ground beneath the boat shakes with each passing freight train.  If you’re lucky, you might even see trains on both the northbound and southbound lines pass simultaneously. Twice the vibration for double the fun!

Located just off the Hudson River and a stone’s throw from the tracks – For gracious dining and a memorable meal in a unique setting…

Nothing compares to The Boat in the Shed.

Breakfasts served from daybreak until 11:00 a.m.

Luncheons served daily from 11:00 a.m. until closing.

Cocktail hour from 3 a.m. until 2:59 a.m.

Entertainment provided by Ipod-Plugged-Into-Computer-Speakers.

Ample free parking available directly beside The Boat in the Shed.

Be sure to call ahead, as seating is limited and fills up fast!

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A Tribute to Jose Wejebe

TV personality and saltwater angler Jose Wejebe died earlier this month when his single engine airplane crashed shortly after take-off in Everglades City, Florida. I never had the pleasure of meeting Jose, but he, through his show Spanish Fly, entertained me on countless Saturday mornings, especially during the winter months when I longed to be on the water.

There are plenty of assumptions people might jump to when presented with the image of a Saturday morning fishing show. Perhaps they even apply to Spanish Fly. Most likely not. Think of bright blue water – the Keys, the Bahamas, South America. Stir-in wonderment for the ocean’s creatures, much the way Cousteau dazzled us. Add a host whose Cuban-American heritage added flair along with years of saltwater experience that never doused boyhood exuberance.

Jose has been described as affable, emotional, funny, and intense with a generosity of spirit. That’s certainly what came across in every episode. Granted, it’s possible that Jose was an entirely different person than portrayed on TV. What I do know, is that Jose Wejebe taught me many lessons. Like Cousteau, Wejebe often revealed new worlds by going into the water with a camera (at least once he even went under water with a fishing rod – to unhook a fish that got snagged on a rock). He was a master angler who cast a fly rod with ease and returned billfish with great care. In fact, it always seemed as though Jose handled fish with the care you might reserve for your favorite pet. What amazed me, too, was the excitement and joy he exuded with every catch. Even then, it really wasn’t about the catch, it was the act of experiencing sharing nature and being on the water.

Jose’s ability to communicate the wonderment of the ocean inspires me as a writer and his passing illustrates the impact we have on others, even those we have never met in person.

Captain Jose Wejebe, a heartfelt thank you.

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Writing, it can take many forms

I drove to the MWA board meeting/luncheon this past weekend and worked on my sequel to “Stairway to the Bottom” on the way. Of course, if you’re my wife, I wasn’t writing I was driving. To be honest, she is right – kind of.

My wife thinks my ‘writing’ is an excuse to do anything but work around the house. I try to explain to her that while I am under the house – we live in a stilt house in the Florida Keys – maybe smoking a cigar and sipping some Jameson’s and no laptop around, I am writing.

For me, to get as much of a chapter in my mind, worked over and over again, is writing. It makes it a lot easier when I sit down to write the chapter that I have more than a general idea of what I’m going to do. I don’t always have this luxury. When I work on a chapter, it may take two days. I get up in the morning and begin to finish what I started the day before. Some nights I’ll think about where I’m going with the it. There are nights when a great solution pops into my head and when I get up, wham, bam, thank you ma’am, and the chapter almost writes its self. Not enough of those nights.

I find driving does the same thing. I start off heading up US1, CD of Kris or Waylon playing, and I get to run ideas through my head and more often than not, I find solutions to problems in the story, move forward, past the chapters I’m working on and before you know it I’ve got a mental outline of three or four other chapters. I keep a tape recorder – a small one on the passenger seat – and record my thoughts when I think I’ve hit on something. I’ve lost ideas on drives and once lost I’m not able to get the thought back! A small tape recorder eliminates that problem.

I try to explain to my wife that times at Schooner Wharf, Smokin’ Tuna, Hog’s Breath, etc., is writing too because I am looking for unusual traits in people – the way they dress, talk or act.

Reminds me of the time the Gay and Lesbian group came to the island – twice a year the organization has events in Key West – and this one year my friend Bob and I were at the Hog’s Breath and we watched two guys try to pick up two women who had been sitting together when we walked in. No way to tell if they were straight or gay, but in my imagination they were gay and the two guys trying to pick them up became a comedy act. Hell, I should’ve taken better notes and I would’ve had a stand-up routine.

I guess my point is – and my wife doesn’t get it – is that as a writer you have to be aware of your surroundings and use them to up the reality of your story. For me, driving and walking circles under the house is a form of writing. Sitting in a saloon watching the loons, is a form of writing.

You want to do some strange research, come to Key West when the Limeys are here. The sailors get off the ship and go looking for a fight. Well, first they want some booze. You wouldn’t believe the crap tourists pull and I have to be out there catching it all for a book. I call it research. I can’t use the words my wife calls it, but it’s fair to say she thinks I’m goofing off.

What do you think? Not if I’m goofing off or not, but do you write in your head before it gets onto the computer screen? Or do you put ideas down longhand? Where do you do this? In the car? On the morning jog? Let me know.

For more about my Key West series, check out www.michaelhaskins.net.

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Running out of time

By Mike Jastrzebski

Wednesday we haul Rough Draft and we’ve been racing the clock every day trying to get projects done so we’ll be ready to go to the Abacos by mid May. So far the clock is beating us.

We had planned to spend 6 or 7 days in the yard and then take a couple of weeks to give the boat a shakedown before leaving. We’re going to cross to the Bahamas with Christine Kling and she won’t be ready ’til about the 15th.

Since we had the tear in the hose connecting the stuffing box we have extended our expectations to 12-14 days. I still have to rework the plumbing to the head as well as pull the shaft and repair the stuffing box hose. There are many other projects I could work on but alas, I doubt they’ll get done.

We really want to get over to the Abacos this year so I can begin work on the next Wes Darling book, so some of the projects will have to wait until this summer when we come back to the States.

I’ll try to keep everyone updated on our progress, but I’m not sure how well my internet connection will be in the yard. I’ll have the 3G on my iPad so I’ll have something next week, but it will probably be short, sweet and to the point.

Amazon.com Widgets

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My love/hate relationship with Amazon

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by Christine Kling

So from one week to the next, you just don’t know if Amazon is your best friend – sending your book sales into the stratosphere – or your apparent enemy when they seem to try to purposely and maliciously hide your books in the wilds of Amazonia.

I recently wrote here about my fabulous results after a Kindle Select promotion. Since Circle of Bones was selling so well, I decided to try to get my rights back to my four Seychelle books, two of which hadn’t earned out and all of which were not priced to sell very well as ebooks. My former agent had been a whiz with contracts, and I was able to prove that according to the terms of my contract, Random House was required to return those rights due to poor sales. End result, I got those rights back with minimum hassle.

[image error]After editing the texts for all the scanning errors, and getting the new cover art, I re-published Surface Tension under my own imprint, and two days later Cross Current went live. I’ll be slowly working on the editions of the last two books in the series over the next month.

The problem was, however, that these books were not out of print. The Random House Kindle editions were live right up until I was ready to put mine up, and their books were priced at $6.99 and $7.99.  Because Amazon will price match with any digital editions out there, I really had to scour the web from Kobo to Diesel to Nook to find all the places those books still appeared and ask that they be removed.

But then when Surface Tension did finally appear in the Kindle store, there were no reviews. My new edition wasn’t linked to the 16 reader reviews that had been there for years. So again, I hit the keyboard and fired missives out to the Kindle Direct Publishing support people asking them to link that book, as well as the second book I had just published.

Then it happened. They got the books linked to the reviews somehow, but in recreating these links, they somehow managed to make the presence I had built on Amazon get totally screwed up. The sales of Circle of Bones suddenly screeched to a near halt. I think it lost all those links it had forged out in the world of “people who bought this also bought this…” On my Amazon author page, it doesn’t show the covers of my new Kindle editions, in fact, it only shows paper books for all the entries. When I do a search for Surface Tension in the Kindle Store, it only shows the audio book – not the Kindle edition, and when I search for Cross Current, it finds nothing at all. And what’s the key word for good ebook sales? Discoverability!

So, while I loved Amazon last month, recently I’ve been making use of my fluent ability to swear like a sailor when referring to my retail giant friend. I hope we’ll get back on better terms soon because I have scheduled another Kindle Select give away for this weekend. If you are interested, the Kindle edition of Surface Tension will be free Saturday, April 21- Monday April 23, and you can access it just by clicking the link on any one of those days.

And do you want to help me get back in Amazon’s good graces? Then tell all your friends about this free ebook, post it on your Facebook pages, and retweet something like this:

Christine Kling’s #boating suspense novels keep you turning the pages. SURFACE TENSION #free for #Kindle 4/21-4/23  http://amzn.to/surfacetension

I’ll need your help because I won’t be able to work at getting the word out myself. I will be off in the Exumas and beyond with questionable Internet, as the proposed schedule is to depart Sunday morning on Wild Matilda to sail directly to Luperon in the Dominican Republic if this weather window holds. I’ll activate my SPOT when we leave, so you will be able to follow me here: http://tinyurl.com/talespinner.

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle 
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On assignment in New Jersey…

C.E. Grundler

I think one of the greatest advantages to living aboard a boat is that it is your home. A simple and obvious statement, I know, but a significant one, because when things require attention there is an order of priority, and that place where you sleep and eat, that place that shelters you, tends to stay at the top of the list. As a result, time we’d set aside to work on the boat is first spent fixing that ever present to-do list around the house and the truck, or else there will be no moving of tools and materials between said house and boat.  But as of today, this spring’s squeakiest wheels on the home-front have all been greased, the shop inventoried and organized, and now it’s time to get back to the things I really want to be doing. So you’ll all pardon me if this post is a bit shorter than usual, but now I’m off to work on the boat!

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On Assignment in Saint Maarten

For the last couple weeks, I have been on assignment for Write on the Water travelling to French-Dutch island of St. Martin or St. Maarten. My ride was the 85-foot Herreshoff replica Mistral, pictured above while anchored off Margot Bay.

On my blog I have published a guide to sailing there this week. The ride was a steady motor upwind across Lake Atlantic. Luckily we had 600 gallons of diesel and a top notch motor running at 1700 RPM’s carrying us at 8 knots for 7 days. We headed east through the Providence channels, off into the Atlantic, and turned right onto Route 65.

My favorite spot was Grand Case with her incredibly clear water, plentiful sealife, and chic eateries. I caught a conch on our first day anchored there and after an overnight marinade had a fresh conch salad that would have made Victoria here proud.

Put the island on your bucket list, and if staying long term, grab a mooring in the Simpson Bay lagoon and get some first class service.

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Mind Demons free on Kindle

Mike Jastrzebski

Mind Demons is free through midnight Pacific time today, Monday, April 16th. If you haven’t read it, I hope you’ll give it a try.

On the boat prepping front, we have run into a couple of mechanical issues. The rubber hose that connects the shaft stuffing box to the hull cracked and water came gushing in. I thought I was going to have to have a diver come out to pull the shaft in the water but I managed to patch the hose and now we are going to have Tow Boat US haul us to the yard where I’ll pull the shaft and replace the hose after we paint the bottom.

Those who follow this blog know that I had some problems starting the engine, and we thought we had that licked, but the engine seems to have a mind of it’s own, and we have our mechanic, Steve, coming out again on Tuesday. Hopefully that issue will be solved. After all, it doesn’t do any good to be towed to the yard, fix the prop shaft problem, and then be stuck there because the engine won’t run.

Sometimes I wonder why I write and why I live on a boat, but for some reason I can’t seem to stop doing either. Anyone else have that problem?

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