Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 67

Houston, we have ignition

By Mike Jastrzebski

For those of you who are interested, our old atomic four engine is now working. The problem was water in the fuel tank. We also had the carburetor rebuilt. If all else goes well we will be on our way to the Bahamas by the end of April. Once there I plan on writing the third book in my Wes Darling series, tentatively titled Abaco Blues.

As you read this we are on our way to Minnesota via Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The out of the way road trip will allow us to visit with old friends and stop at the marina in Mobile, Alabama where I wrote Dog River Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery), the sequel to Key Lime Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery).

On our trip we plan to stop and visit with Gerald Dowling, a fellow writer and sailor that we met at the Seaside writers conference seven years ago. Gerald does most of his writing in a treehouse set along a river in southern Alabama.

Once in Mobile we plan to stop at the Grand Mariner Marina where we lived for two years and hand out a few copies of Dog River Blues (A Wes Darling Mystery).

After that we're heading up to Mississippi to visit our friend Barbara Korpi. Barbara lived on a houseboat at the Grand Mariner while we were there and was also a cruiser at one time.

Then it's off to see the grandkids. (And my son and daughter-in-law, but lets face it, the grandkids are the highlight of the trip.)

When we return home it will be work, work, work so we can get out of Ft. Lauderdale, but for now I'm going to put thoughts of the grind aside and enjoy our trip.

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Good-bye Mr. Chip, my dear Intrepid Seadog

by Christine Kling

It is 3:30 a.m. and I cannot sleep. Outside, I hear the sounds of the world – the horns of a passing train, the low hum of an air conditioner, the breathy sound of a light rain that drowns out the crickets and leaves behind that musical patter of drops off the eaves. Inside my little one room studio it is too quiet. Too empty. There are two still damp dog dishes on the floor and a recently rumpled doggy bed that I cannot seem to be able to touch or move. I keep listening for what isn't there and I cannot sleep.

For the past several months I have been asking myself how will I know when it is time to say good-bye to my dear little 16-year-old deaf and blind dog. As I motored my way down the ICW, I lived with the carpet of pee-pee pads for his incontinence. I did my best to steer him clear of all the barriers ashore he could no longer see. I held him when his heart cough wracked his little body for what seemed like hours. He continually chewed at his arthritic hind legs and his spine had started to curve, yet his tale still wagged. When he paced the floor for hours unable to sleep at night and bumped headfirst into every bulkhead or wall, he would always calm immediately when I held him in my arms. He would snuggle his head under my chin and I would feel his body relax. He would finally be able to go to sleep.

I believe there was still enough wild animal instinct in his brain to know that he was very vulnerable as a blind and deaf dog – were he in the wild, he wouldn't have lasted a minute – and some part of him knew that. But he was safe in my arms. And, I kept telling myself that old adage that people repeat: "Your dog will tell you when it is time."

I no longer believe that is true.

The new puppy was barely as tall as the grass

When I nicknamed Chip, the Intrepid Seadog, it was with a chuckle and a giant dose of sarcasm. He was anything but courageous as a pup. I had two dogs back then and when the doorbell rang, my other dog would run to the door and bark. Chip would run and hide under the bed.

Chip was a digger for his first couple of years, and my son and I lived in a house then. Chip would dig his way under the fence, and then the two dogs would escape. I'd find them side by side walking themselves down the sidewalk around the block, just as though I were behind them with leashes. It was hardly the Great Escape.

 

It was just the two of us when we moved on the boat 7 years ago. Chip could run up and down the companionway stairs and leap up into the forepeak off the footstool.

Any time I started the engine, he would yelp, race down the steps, jump into the forepeak and hide behind the pillows. He hated loud noises. In 2008, when we sailed to the Bahamas together, he still got up in the night, climbed out into the cockpit and walked the deck alone, racing back inside at the slightest noise. At sea, I tethered him to the galley sink with a tether long enough that he could reach the cockpit or go to the forepeak.

We had some great times in the Bahamas that year. For a solo sailor, having a dog meant I had to go ashore and he helped me make many new friends.

Chip and his Kalik on a bar stool at Nippers

Chip going snorkeling

When I made my first solo overnight passage, he stayed up almost all night either to keep me company or because he was terrified – finally crashing in a curled up ball in the forepeak just before dawn.

 

By 2010, the footstool had been replaced with doggy steps to the forepeak, and for the last two years he has not been able to run, jump or climb stairs. He could no longer hear the engine – or me when I called his name or asked if he wanted a treat. He could no longer go out on deck without a leash and me right there. Yet his tale still wagged, and if I held the squeaky toy right next to his face, he would still grab it with the few teeth he had and give it a lively shake.

I hadn't driven a car much since returning to Florida, but two weeks ago I took Chip for a drive knowing how much he used to like to stand on my lap and put his face out the window into the wind. This time his back legs could no support him – even though they had in the dinghy just a few months before. He collapsed across my lap and again I felt him give that long sigh of being at peace.

The next morning, his tail wagged and he even tugged at the leash a little to go out. I told myself that he was okay. He could keep on going. Even though I had to carry him back from the grass.  But the more I watched him, the more I realized that when your dog can't run or jump or play, when his congestive heart failure means you have to carry him everywhere – he's not really living the life of a dog anymore.

Yet the Intrepid Seadog turned out to much more courageous than I ever imagined. I didn't want to let him go, and I believe some part of him knew that. In spite of all his ailments, his fear and his pain, that little dog had the big heart every day to get up and tell me he would keep on going – because I needed him.

Chip wasn't going to tell me when it was time. It was time for me to be the Intrepid Captain and speak for him – to grant him the sleep he had earned.

So, ten hours ago, Chip and my son Tim and I took our last trip to the vet. I held my little partner in my arms, and I felt him give that last final big sigh of relief as he went to sleep. Forever.

Good-bye buddy. Thanks for teaching me a lesson or two about courage.

I miss you so.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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Hello, BoatUS?

C.E. Grundler

I suspect I may have some interesting comments in my file over at BoatUS. I call them every so often, though in the many years that they've insured various boats of mine I've never had a claim. Not one, and I'd like to keep it that way. But the kind folks over at BoatUS are a very helpful group, and I imagine if anyone's seen just about every possible thing that can go wrong aboard a boat and the resulting consequences, it would be them. And they're always so friendly and willing to answer my questions, no matter how strange, which is why, when I was researching a possible fictional fatal boating mishap, I decided to give them a call. It was an entertaining conversation for all concerned.

Before we even got started, they asked if I was a member. "Ah, yes. 32' 1977 Cheoy Lee Trawler. So how may we help you today?"

"I have a bit of an unusual question," I explained. "Hypothetical. Fictional. You see, I'm a writer, and I'm trying to determine the potential crushing power of a powerboat against a dock, and the resulting harm that might come to specific body-parts caught between said boat and dock."

Silence.

"It's for something I'm writing," I assured them.

"What do you write?"

"Murder. Mayhem. On boats."

That led to a short discussion on me and my books, (which I'm sure they were Googling at the time, just to be confirm what I was telling them,) then back to the topic at hand. I explain the scenario – a struggle on the dock, and one character pushing the other back, a fall, the boat swinging inward and a human head in the place where a fender should be. (Ever seen a fender crushed to the point that it blows out? Just think 'skull'.) How heavy of a boat? Around 20,000 pounds, roughly 36 feet, single screw, full displacement. Again, a pause of silence.

"That boat sounds very similar to yours."

"Just a coincidence. My boat's still up on the hard." And will be some time to come. And

the fictional boat existed long before I wound up buying one that did, in fact, bear an uncanny resemblance to Hammon's Revenge. That was even tossed around as a potential name. Then again, perhaps that explains what drew me to my present boat to begin with.

"But we are talking fiction?"

"Yes. Purely hypothetical. I'm just tossing around an idea."

Happily for the person on the other end of the phone, they had never come across a human-head-in-place-of-fender situation, but they assured me they'd ask around and put the question out there, and someone would give me a call back. And later that afternoon someone did. From what I was told, my little query made for some lively conversations throughout the day, and I was given a run-down of possible head vs. boat vs. dock situations. None ended well, which was just what I had in mind. And confirming that made me very happy.

This wasn't my first call of this sort to them, and it's unlikely it will be my last. And they've been more than helpful each and every time. I can only imagine what interesting notations they've added to my file.

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Back From Quebec

I am pleased to report that we safely re-entered the United States without incident following my Write On The Water assignment in Quebec.

"Are you returning with any goods you purchased in Canada?" asked the U.S. Border Patrol agent.

"Just two wool caps," I said.

Two wool caps, who is he kidding, he was no doubt saying to himself, not knowing of our thrifty ways.

"Oh, and a long sleeve t-shirt."

Right.

But this blog is about writing, not personal economics, and a primary mission of the trip was research for a future book. Mission accomplished. I am now ready to write chase scenes set in the winter north. I now have the specifics down if my protagonist flees on a sled pulled by a team of huskies. The same if I elect to work in some snowmobiling action. (For those of you down south, snowmobiling is essentially the act of riding a jet ski across the snow, the exception being the inverse relationship between the amount of clothing you wear.)

To gain this experience we headed to the the Quebec woods on Ile d'Orleans, a beautiful island in the St. Lawrence where we rented some Yamaha Four Strokes.

Loyal readers may recall an earlier post that referenced my ability to speak fluent French with perfect diction. These skills were in force when we met our guide.

"This is Pierre," we were told by the head man who processed our paperwork.

"Pierre's from France and he came to Quebec earlier this year to learn English."

Okay.

It turned out that Pierre's English was roughly equivalent with my French. So off we went, mutes on machines.

As far as snowmobiling, let me be succinct in capturing the basics: amazing acceleration, a lot less control than you'd imagine, and a real hoot of a ride. And I said amazing acceleration, right? Enough so that stories of back woods decapitation now make a lot more sense to me.



(Sally, ready to rev up the rpms on her machine)

And Pierre? Wouldn't you know that he showed off at one point and put his snowmobile into the air, coming down on the side of a ditch, thigh deep in snow.

We got him out, though. And Pierre was actually a great guy whose boss will never know why we were a half hour late returning to home base.

And what does this say as far as my writing research?

Well, I'm not sure, but I suspect a young Parisian with too many revs on his Yamaha snowmobile shows up somewhere in one of my stories. If he does, I might have to drive back up to Vermont to tell the border patrol that I forgot to declare some intangible valuables I brought back on our winter trip to Quebec.

(Reid, in the brown jacket, and Pierre, near Pierre's landing spot in the ditch)

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SleuthFest

SleuthFest 2012 is over. It was a good event though some of the South Florida people complained of the drive. I drive to the monthly luncheon meetings once a month and it's a four-hour drive. I don't complain because, to me, the time is well spent once I am there. I also use the drive time to work through my story. I spent the seven-hour drive to Orlando and seven-hour drive back to Key West, putting chapter ideas together in my head. Once at the hotel I wrote them down. It was a great help in getting me started and I am done with three chapters. I was chosen by the women at SleuthFest as one of six most watchable men, I think it's called. The women over heard the men, years ago, rating the women in the bar (where else?) and decided to turn the lot. Since then they've been doing this and if called up to the stage you are draped in a pink boa and ogled by the crowd at the cocktail party. The winner gets a bottle of Jack Daniels and paraded around the room! I didn't win, but it was an honored being named along with Reed Farrel Coleman. Also in the group were past winners like Don Bruns and Jerry Healy. Well, they save a photo is worth a thousand words, so I'll add a photo and shut up. Make plans for next year's SleuthFest, it's well worth the time. As soon as I know where it'll be held, I'll post.

Free Way Institution, the second in my Mick Murphy Key West Mystery series that came out from a traditional publisher, is now available as a trade paperback on Amazon.com.

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I need a break

By Mike Jastrzebski

We've been slaving away on the boat for the last couple of months. We had someone out to look at the engine and we discovered water in the gas tank so I drained the old fuel and had the carburetor rebuilt. Today the mechanic will reinstall the carburetor and hopefully the engine will start up.

Mary's been working on the dodger. She had never sewn before we made the bimini and I'm proud to say she's almost done with the dodger and she's becoming a real pro.

I spent the last couple of weeks installing a chartplotter, radar, and rewiring some of our electrical connections. I also replaced two bilge pumps and installed a new shower sump.

I'm also missing my writing time. I need to start on my next book, but first we have to get the boat moving so we can get on our way. I'm getting too old for this stuff, but it has to be done unless we want to get off the boat and I'm not ready for that.

So we're going to take a couple of weeks off for a road trip. We're going to Minnesota to see our granddaughters and along the way we're going to stop and see some old friends that we met while traveling on the boat. After that we plan to bust our butts for the month of April so we can head out, find a spot to drop anchor, and write the next book.

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My 7 Links Challenge

by Christine Kling

One of the best parts about cruising is that it feeds my desire to travel and meet new people. Sometimes, as cruisers, we make friends who keep cropping up in our lives. I recently received a note on Facebook from my friends Connie and Dave on Eurisko (Connie has been a guest blogger here at Write on the Water), and they nominated me to participate in The 7 Links Challenge that was started by TripBaseBlog to "to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again."

The rules of this challenge are simple.

Rule #1  You are supposed to go back through all the posts you have written on your blog and find the one that fits best for each of these seven categories. Here are the ones I have chosen:

Your most beautiful post

Gratitude

Morning on the Waccamaw River

Early this morning as I motored out of Broad Creek I watched a Great Blue Heron standing statue-still focusing on a small fish in the shallows. The air was a crisp 48 degrees and the sky was a pale blue still tinged at the horizon with dawn's colors. A little white two-decker ferry passed me and the skipper waved a gloved hand out the wheelhouse window. I reached over and switched on the autopilot, leaned back against the stern rail, took a sip of hot coffee and thought, "Aaahhhh. . ."

Your most popular post

Is print the new vanity press?

As those of you who have followed my blog posts here know, I have recently finished a new novel, and I've been trying to find my way back into the publishing world, trying to navigate all the changes that have taken place in the years I've been off writing.  Though I am intrigued by self-publishing, the lure of a print contract pulls strongly at my heart.  So, when I finally finished this book, I decided I would need to get myself an agent.

 

Your most controversial post

Stranded Naked

Yeah, I know this blog is late. But I was at Stranded Naked.  You see, it is Regatta Time in Abaco, and the first party to kick off the week's racing activities was today on Fiddle Cay and it's called the Stranded Naked Party.  About 200 boats and 2000 people converge on this little uninhabited island, and they serve free Margaritas and free Cheeseburgers in Paradise.

Your most helpful post

The Million Word Rule

Whenever I have to put on my writer's public persona hat and go out to book signings or conferences or library events, I find that unpublished writers frequently ask me for "my story."  They want to get published and they hope that from my story of how I got published, they will discover that one thing that they've been doing wrong all this time.

 

A post whose success surprised you

The dream vs. reality or only the tough survive

Irene a-coming

Okay, I admit it.  I shed real tears yesterday. Yes, I was the wimpy, blubbering girl who decided I didn't want to be tough anymore.  I'd had it with this *&%$#^ boat and everything breaking and the incessant rain from tropical systems and the fact that I wasn't getting anywhere near the writing done that I had hoped.

A post you feel didn't get the attention it deserved

Self reliance

I'm sitting here in the cockpit of my boat tied to a little dock in Black Sound in Green Turtle Cay.  Off in the distance I can hear music drifting over the top of the island.  It's the Gully Roosters playing some Rake and Scrape at Sundowners over in the village at New Plymouth.  Here at the dock, it is nothing but me and a billion stars and the soft gurgle as the wind pushes the water under my stern.  I walk the decks, checking the dock lines and making sure the boat will ride the tide well during the hours that I sleep.

 

The post that you are most proud of

We need to change the definition of "rich"

I went to a party Saturday night with other folks from my work.  One person I'd never met before asked me how long I had been working for the College.  I explained that I had started as an adjunct in 1999, and it was only three years ago that I got the full-time position.  She smiled and said that I was so lucky to have joined the rarified ranks of full-timers, and that after this year, I would then have tenure and wasn't that terrific? Tenure means you will have that same job for the rest of your working life.  I know I am supposed to think that sounds wonderful.  To me, it scares me.

 

So those are my 7 posts. It was lots of fun going back through all the posts I've written over the past two years. And since I enjoyed this exercise so much, I must move on to –

Rule #2  When finished with selecting your 7 blast-from-the-past blogs, you are then to nominate at least one amazing new blogger to take the challenge. Here is my nominee:

Victoria Allman's blog Following My Stomach is a blend of travel, food and photography that is beyond yummy, and I would really love to see a group of her favorites!

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle 
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What does the blue Buick represent???

C.E. Grundler



(Land-Yacht, 1973. Picture this in blue, with rust.)

Remember back in school, during discussions about those books we were supposed to have read, (Ethan Frome? Seriously. Why do teachers assign torture like that?) the questions that would arise: "What was the white horse/black dog/mockingbird outside the window/fill-in-the-blank meant to represent." Everyone would debate the symbolism and hidden meanings of these specific story details, certain they were code for something far more deep and profound than they appeared. I recall how my answer was marked 'incorrect' when I responded that perhaps the author simply had a favorite white horse, black dog, or as he wrote a mockingbird was singing outside the window. I was wrong, the teacher informed me. Symbolism, I was told. Every word on the page had a deeper meaning, even if the author themself didn't know it at the time.

Many times, I'll find myself at a juncture in my writing where I need to introduce a car, boat, animal, location, or whatever else. Sometimes I've simply glanced out the window, seen a burgundy mini-van rolling past, and onto the page it goes. Done. Simple. And I can assure you, I don't sit there thinking what deeper meaning that specific choice might connote.

But I will admit there are times there is a deeper meaning to my choices, though I'm certain my high-school lit teacher would disagree. In the start of Last Exit, there's a blue Buick wagon complete with the fake wood panels on the sides. And twenty-five years ago, that was my car, a massive land-yacht of rusted metal with an engine that could suck a Prius off the road. This ugly, offensive beast of a machine cost me a whopping $100, could pass anything on the road but a gas station, and I have nothing but fond memories for the old Suburban Battlecruiser. And when the scene called for something unglamorous and cheap but reliable, that Buick was resurrected into the story. The same goes for Kindling, the lapstrake runabout, which is more aptly named in the story than anyone might ever realize. A Dodge Dakota? Been driving one for twenty years. More cars from my past slipped into the pages of No Wake Zone. But the funniest detail of all is a boat Hammon gives glancing notice to in Last Exit, a stocky little Cheoy Lee trawler up on the hard. Truth be told, that was written while looking around the boatyard, and that particular boat had always caught my eye, though it was a year before I had any idea I'd ever find myself buying said boat.

So what's the deeper meaning of the fill-in-the-blank? Perhaps my teacher was right, but not in the way she might have realized. As writers, our personal lives and experiences, our cars, our boats, our music, our likes and dislikes, sneak their way into the pages of our stories, and our stories are a reflection of who we are, who we were, and what makes us 'US'. (And on an amusing and semi-related note, Monday night I learned I have something rather unique in common with Stephen King!)

Now, if someone could just explain to me the meaning of an electric blue Rolls Royce pickup named Miss Agnes!

(Oh, and by the way, regarding last week's post: I called it. Spring has officially arrived. The Floaters have begun to rise.)

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On People Knowing Your Name

Good Ol' Royale Palm

When I walk around the docks these days after leasing an office at Royale Palm for four years, I know almost everyone's name who works or lives on a boat here, and they all know my name too. The marina is a low key liveaboard basin, one of last in the Fort Lauderdale area. To be known is a comfortable feeling. Whether or not you agree with their politics or have said anymore than hi, you have this brotherhood of sharing space and understanding who each other is in a basic way. And I think these feelings apply to being an writer too.

You see I feel the same way sometimes with regard to my writing. I get that same comfortable sense sometimes when talking to someone or seeing something I have written referred to or repeated elsewhere. I exist and people, whether they disagree or like what I wrote, know me. And I know them.

At first there was a bit of startled feeling like being caught wrapping a line around a winch the wrong way when people engaged me about what I had written. And I still dread criticism although I internalise negative comments as a compliment that what I say matters and the reader cares. You grow a thick and scaly skin in life. You become numb to the novelty. In a sense you become comfortable with the situation through experience in the same way you become comfortable with your fellow liveaboards at a marina. You settle down in a comfort zone.

When people talk to you about your writing, how do you feel? Do you smile coyly, start to sweat, run the other way, or wink at them?

Joyce Holland on wandering the dock

March 6th by Joyce Hiolland


     I've been wandering down to the dock lately. I stand there and stare at Code One and feel an itch I can't bring myself to scratch. We haven't been out on her in so long, I'm starting to feel sorry for her. I know, anthropomorphism's are absurd, but mankind has been calling boats 'her' and 'she' long before I came along, and it works for me. So there. I think she cries.

     Tony runs the engines in place, we wash her down and keep up the bright work, but we don't move her a nautical mile. I admit it, we had a bad voyage. We were going to head south and got as far as the armpit of Florida just off Carabelle. I now refer to it as the 'hairy armpit,' for reasons you will soon understand. Actually, it's a gorgeous place, it just left me with a mental scar.

     Things did not go smoothly from the start on this trip, but I won't bore you with the mundane details, one of which involved swarms of Yellow Flies. Aggrrr… Anyway, I've been setting anchors since I could swim, but we foolishly made the switch from line to chain and my expertise went out the porthole. To say it's different is an understatement. A length of chain is great, but all-chain is evil. Trust me.

     We tucked in behind a spit of a barrier island and planned to cross the Gulf the next day. Nervous about the crossing and excited at the same time, we decided to get close to the harbor exit and anchor, so we would be ready for an early morning take-off. Because Tony knew I was uncomfortable with the new chain situation, he came forward and we set it together. Or so we thought. It later became clear that we had simply made a nice tidy little pile on the sea floor, which held us in place because there was no wind or current. Happy as oysters, we rowed the dinghy to shore and scoured the beach for treasure, then returned for cocktails and dinner. Lovely.

     Except, we went to bed…and woke up on the other side of the bay. What got our attention was the sound of cars horns on Highway 98. That and the fact that we began rolling in the surf. We hit the deck running. It would have made one heck of a video. The winch would be too slow, and I didn't know it was humanly possible to haul up that much chain in a matter of seconds, but we did it. We cringed as the boat bottom kissed the between waves. We experienced the strange phenomenon called time-lapse that sometimes comes with a close call. Time stood still. Powering out of the surf was one of the most harrowing moments of my life.

     Our grand adventure had short-circuited due to drama overload. Did we keep going, no way. We couldn't get home fast enough because we desperately wanted to deep six the anchor chain. Okay, so I mean take it off, but I seriously wanted to drop it off the end of the dock. There is an interesting side to this saga, we dredged up some pretty weird stuff on our way across the bay…and the Intra coastal Waterway. The stuff of nightmares. Critters, traps, clothing, and some undefinable items that would make a forensics scientist shiver with excitement.

     The bad news/bad/news? Code One hasn't moved in over a year. The good news–we are determined to do it soon. Honest.

Joyce




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