Night scene

Hi kids!

Here's a picture of Cahaya in the water in front of the city lights of
West Palm Beach at night. See if you can figure out the ship's
outline. Hint: you are looking pretty much at the back end of the boat.

Now see if you can pick out the light at the top of Cahaya's mast.
This is called an 'anchor light'. If the boat's anchor is down, the
boat is supposed to show an anchor light like this at the top of the
mast so other boaters will know it's anchored and go around it. There
are a whole system of lights that boats are supposed to show to tell
other boats what they're up to. Anchor lights are one part of that
system.

Fireworks!

Hi kids!

This past weekend we spied a specially sweet looking dock in West Palm
Beach. Three docks, actually, all newly built by the wonderful, caring
government of the city were lined up near city center. There wasn't a
boat on any of them. At first we figured we better not tie up there.
After all, if no one else was using them, there must be a reason, like
there's some trap or something. We anchored down the river a ways and
spent the night. But I came back later, checked it out and found out
it was ok to stay there and free to boot. Whoopie!

So we scooted right over and tied up. As it turned out the docks were
part of a waterfront improvement project which included a park. They
were having a grand opening that night. So we had tied up in the
middle of 30,000 celebrants, beside a Cirque de Soleil type outdoor
performance with loud music then a ton of fireworks. We had a great
time! Here's a picture of the fireworks over the boat. The thing that
looks like a UFO on a stick is my radar dome. We were so close the
deck was covered with fireworks ashes the next morning.

Now THATS the way to greet a Pirate!

White alligator sighting!

Hi kids!

Speaking of things that could eat you, while Angel Jen and I were at
the zoo we saw this white alligator.

"Oh, an albino!" I hear you young geneticists exclaiming. And you
would be wrong.

This big baby is not an albino he's "leucistic". What's the
difference between leucistic and albino? Beats me. Sometimes I suspect
scientists of making up words. I suspect it means "white skin" or
something equally obvious in Latin.

Well, he's huge, he's white, he's very very rare and he has blue eyes.
They just about can't survive in the wild because 1) he can't hide in
the water and pretend to be a log which makes it tough to catch prey
to eat and B) the rednecks like to shoot them. What is a redneck, you
ask? Just look around you, kid. The woods up there are full of them.

But don't let the blue eyes fool ya. If you were to cuddle down next
to ole whitey here, throw an arm around him and say, "My! What pretty
blue eyes you have!" Mr. Alligator would say, "CHOMP!" and you would
be alligator lunch. Then he'd say, "Mmmm-mmmm! I loves my kid
lunches! Yeah, baby!"

Remember kids, you can always trust an alligator-to be an alligator,
that is.

So be good today, kids, so the teacher doesn't have to lay an
alligator chomp on you!

This thing could eat you!

Hi kids!

Like I said in the last post, Angel Jen and I hooked up with some
family and took a trip to the zoo.

This zoo had more animals and birds than you could shake a stick at.
Creatures from all over the world. They had signs telling what the
name of the thing was, where it lived, what it ate, stuff like that.
Man, I bet you wish you could read so you could learn about the
animals in the zoo, huh? Well, keep at it, little buddies. You'll
catch on some day. At least we pray that you will.

At thezoo theyhadallkinds of animals that could eat you. They had
alligators and bears, cheetas, jaguarsstuff whose name I can't recall

And they had this dragon. This thing was huge. It's called a Komodo
dragon and if he was hungry he could eat you. It's the biggest lizard
in the world.

Oh, and by "he could eat you" I meant he could eat YOU, not me. I'm
too big to get eaten and pirates don't taste good. He'd spit me back
out in a trice. You, on the other hand would make a delicious meal.
And since you're young you'd be tasty and tender.

Sorry about the size of the picture but I didn't want to get too
close. Maybe he didn't know that pirates taste bad.

So be good kids and stay away from the Komodo dragons!

Man, is this ugly!

Hi kids!

Well, little buddies, Angel Jen and I are in West Palm Beach,
Florida. We came here to visit with our daughter, son in law and
grand kids while they were on vacation in the area. We hooked up and
went to the zoo. More on that later.

In the mean time, I went to the library. I almost always go to the
library when we stop in a town. Free wifi, warm comfy chairs, pleasant
people and computer printers comprise the attractions to be had
there. On this trip to said library, while trying to sync my iPhone
and load some podcasts to listen to while on the lonely seas I got
interviewed by library staff. They wanted a quote from a patron for
use on their website. I waxed long and poetic about what a
wonderful thing libraries are in general and this one in particular.
They were pleased to have a happy customer. Then they asked if there
was anything they could improve. I said,"Yes. You have the ugliest
library furniture I have ever seen! You gotta get rid of this!" The
girl tried to say she liked it, but I leave it to you. Isn't this
chair ugly? Yucky green with an ugly print. Whew! West Palm Beach,
we expect better of you!

Dreams

Hi kids!


Here's a picture that was sent to me by my son. I love this painting.  I think its absolutely beautiful. No, I don't know what is a painting of and I don't care. It just makes me feel good to look at it.   It was painted by his wife. They are in London. She is studying art, making paintings and 'broadening' her experience. That's what they call it when you go do some wild and crazy thing that people like you don't normally do to learn things you might not normally learn.

London, as is well known to the junior geographists among you, is a big old city in England,  which is itself part of Great Britain. It's, whoa nelly, say five thousand miles or so east of Camptown.  A 'wicked long way' away, you might say.

So what's all this to you, you ask. Well, little buddies, the point is that people can go places and do things that are way beyond what you might think.

I remember when I was a little kid like you. That was when your teacher was a little girl, too, so that gives you an idea how long ago that was. I never knew anyone who had ever been to Europe or any of those far off places I read about in books.  I never knew any one who made paintings or did those fancy things. I was just white trash from the backwoods and hills.

But if you try, if you keep your eyes open and grab opportunities when they come around I'm here to tell you, dreams can come true.

Why, in my time I've been to London, Paris, Germany, the middle east where the men wear turbans on their heads, Japan where they have no chairs and all sit on the floor, Vietnam, Malaysia, lots of places. And now my son, who is white trash like his father, truth be known, though he's awful good looking and smart as a whip, is in London with a beautiful young woman making paintings and filming movies while his brother is the backbone of an Internet startup in Greenwich Village, New York and a masterful photographer, guitarist and all around fine, gifted young man.

Kids, dreams can come true. But remember, you have to hold onto those dreams like little bulldogs. Sink your teeth in and never let go until you worry that dream into reality.

Step one:  LISTEN TO THE TEACHER!

Why?  Come on. You know the answer.  Because she's always....

She's always what?

She's always RIGHT!*

*or at least that's the way to bet

Be good!


Pirate John and the ever lovely Angel Jen

Weather faxes

 

Hi kids!

I talked before about sailors needing to know what the weather is.  The big, benevolent federal government kindly provides mariners and others access to great resources for weather prediction.  One of these resources is 'weather faxes'.  These are actual faxes that you can receive on your boat over special radios to show you pictures of the weather patterns for the day.  You can also get them online from the internet.  I look at several every day to figure out what the weather will be when we sail.

Here is a typical fax.  It shows an outline of the United States' coast, the presence of high and low pressure systems (look for an H.  That's a high.  Look for an L.  That's a low.)  The heavy lines show different air pressures and the little arrows show which direction the wind is blowing and how strong it is.  The wind blows from the tail of the arrow where the little 'barbs' are to the other end.  The number of 'barbs' tell you how strong the wind is.  Three barbs is 30 mph.  Two it 20 mph.  Two and a short one are 25 mph, and so on. 

This fax is a picture of the storm that just passed over you.  It indicates that your wind will be coming from the northwest.  In the center of the swirl of arrows it says 'hurcn force' which means 'hurricane force' or winds over 50 mph.  Woof!  A hurricane is blowing in the north Atlantic!  Guess I better stay out of there!

Here's an internet site with lots more of these weather charts:

http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/marshlatest.shtml

Have fun experimenting with weather charts!  If you check these every day and get used to using them, you'll always be prepared. If not, you'll be just another six year old.  Your choice, kid.

Viewing a launch at Cape Canaveral

Hi Kids!

I suppose you are wondering what it looks like to watch a rocket launch.  Well, here's a picture form the place we went to watch the rocket take off:

 

The rocket is about 11 miles away. There are four tall towers around it with letal antennas on top.  These taller antennas are designed to attract lightning.  If a thunder storm comes through, they don't want lightning to hit the rocket because A) rockets, little buddies, cost a whoa whole lot of money and 2) rockets are full of stuff that can blow up.  

The big building is where they put the rocket together.  There are a bunch of other buildings.  I have no idea what they are for.  You can also see a telephone pole which is much, much closer and a sign in the water that tells boaters "Don't get any closer to the rocket than this" which actually means "Don't get any closer to the rocket than this or we will arrest you and throw you in the slammer".  Official signs always have some sort of subtext like this, often unstated, which it would do you well to be aware of.  You are six and might be able to talk your way out of a trip to the hoosegow, due to your tender years.  But they would go a lot harder on an old Pirate like me who knows better.

This is where we stood to watch the shuttle take off, too.  But a picture like this from that time would  be useless because it was night.

So get the teacher to give you a run down on the concept of perspective.  Have her explain why the telephone pole, which is actually much, much shorter than the rocket, appears to be a hundred times taller.  Go ahead.  Ask her.

 

Rocket scientist sighting!

Hi Kids! 

Well, the big storm system that brought you all the new snow swung a little too far south last night for us to sail today.  This morning the wind was just a howling down here and we decided to lay low another day and sail south tomorrow.  The wind is predicted to continue coming from the north for the rest of the week so we have time to wait.

I checked the NASA rocket launch schedule on a whim to see if they still intended to try to launch the rocket they had planned for this morning.  It was 10:13 when I checked it.  The launch was scheduled for 10:26 and the schedule said it was still on.  So I said to Angel jen, "You want to go watch this rocket blast off?"

She said, "We ain't got nothing else to do!" (She likes to talk like that to make fun of my lousy English.  She's a card, she is.)

So we hustled up, dug her folding bike out of the shower stall where we keep it, dragged it up on the dock, unfolded it and pitched my bike over the rail onto the dock and we were off.  We bicycled the mile and a half down to the launch watching place and made it in plenty of time.  I was trying to take it easy on Angel Jen because she isn't much of a cyclist but she was having none of it.  "I'm Right behind you!' she yelled."Pick it up a little!"

So I pedaled faster.

When we got down there there was another couple there.  The launch got 'scrubbed' (which is rocket talk for 'postponed') after waiting an hour past the scheduled launch time.  We got talking to the other people and it turns out he is a retired rocket scientist!  A real live, honest to god, rocket scientist.  He wrote the computer software protocols for the communication of the Apollo space craft between the capsule and earth.  As you little historians know, the Apollo project is the NASA name for the rockets that went to the moon in the sixties and seventies, back when your teacher was a youngster.  Which was a loooong time ago.

They were really nice people so we invited them back to the boat for coffee.  We talked for a while and I asked him where he was when the rocket to the moon took off.  He said he was in 'the firing room'.  That's the room with all the control panels that we all saw on TV, the room with all the engineers who controlled the rocket.  He told us he had discovered a mistake in the software about ten minutes before the launch and was in hot discussions with his boss, the boss's boss, and the boss above him about how to fix it.  He got their permission to 'patch' the software and made it so the launch could happen.  Woof!

He worked for NASA for a long time then retired.  Now he comes out to the bridge to watch the launches with the rest of us.  It sure was interesting sitting down with a real live rocket scientist. 

He said when he goes sailing on boats with his friends he gets to be the navigator, figuring out where the boat is and how to get to where it's going because the guys tell him,"You're the rocket scientist.  You figure it out."  And he does.  It's good to be a rocket scientist.

So study hard, little buddies.  Maybe some day you can launch a rocket.  Or at least learn to navigate.

Haul Away, Boys, Haul Away!

Hi kids!

Well, this lying around on a dock in Cape Canaveral is just about
over. We have spent three weeks here in one spot, tied up, hardly
rocking a bit. We waddle up to the showers whenever we get the urge,
ride bikes to the store or the library, just take it easy all day.
I've even given up studying the weather six times a day.

But now we've blasted off the rocket, I've studied and resolved the
shaft problem in Maine, and we are ready to go back to sea. Here's a
picture of Angel Jen studying the charts for the next leg of the
journey.

The snow storm that is bringing you another half foot of snow and east
winds will bring us northwest winds. Our course is a nice south east
direction so we will be 'running before the wind'. That's what it's
called when the wind is directly behind the boat.

Why do you get wind different than ours? Because wind swirls in a
spiral around low or high pressure areas. I'll show you a picture of
it some day.

Sailors have to know all about the winds and weather because, little
buddies, 'the sea takes no prisoners'. That means if we mess up, we
sink and drown. So we better watch out. That's why Angel Jen watches
the charts and weather so closely. So I don't get her drowned.

Well, kids, be good. Have fun playing in the snow and pity us poor
sailors out on the ocean again!

GGrrrrr-KaBrrrrrrrr-KaZoooMMM-Brrrrrrr-Psshhhhhh-Shheeeeeh.

Hi Kids!

 

Angel Jen and I got up at 2:46 AM, girded our loins (I LOVE doing that), packed our hot chocolate, cameras, monopod camera mount, blankets and lawn chairs on our bikes and waddled down to the end of the road, over the highway, down the dirt access road out to the Banana River for the 4:39 AM Saturday night launch of the last night time blast off  by a space shuttle.  We set up, drank our hot chocolate, unfolded our chairs, plugged in our radios and waited.  They canceled the stupid mission five moinutes before blast off time!  Those rats!

They said the sky was too cloudy to take off.  What kind of a cheap rocket can't even get through a cloud, you might ask.  Well, little buddies, the cloud isn't a problem if the rocket is ok, but it prevents the astronauts from landing the shuttle if the rocket messes up and they need to abort the mission.  The shuttle is a glider.  It has no engines of its own so the astonauts have just one chance to land it and they want to live, too, despite what you might conclude from their career choice.

So we packed up, dejected and went back to the boat.  On Saturday night we went to bed early then did it all again, this time without all the chairs, blankets and food.  That was just too much to carry!

This time the weather cooperated and the rocket took off.  The weird thing is that you couldn't hear a thing from the rocket for the first 15 seconds, by which time the thing was half gone into the sky.  That's because sound travels much more slowly than light.  715 mph vs 3x10^9 meters per second, actually.  Spend some time on the internet working out the conversion factors, ratios and physics of that, report and discuss.

During my time off I read an article on the internet about photographing the launch by an experienced photographer.  It was really helpful.  His advice was DON'T TAKE PICTURES.  It's much better to watch it without trying to handle a camera, messing up and missing the whole thing.  Good advice.  So I set up the camera, tied it to a telephone pole with a rope and when they ignited the rocket, I touched off the timed shutter release and watched the blast off.  After the single frame of the shutter snapped, I just kept punching the button as the rocket climbed but I wasn't looking through the camera viewfinder.  I just counted on the rope and the telephone pole to hold it in place and it worked.  Here are two pictures of the thing igniting and then way up in the clouds.

Freud would have a field day with this imagery, but all I see is money going up in smoke.

Quite a show, though!

Have a nice day going over the Newton's second law with the teacher!

Pelicans! So funny looking!

Hi kids!

We got up this morning and this pelican was sitting on the post outside out boat.  I don't care what anybody says.  Pelicans are weird looking birds.  There are a heck of a lot of them in Florida, that's for sure.  What is the scientific name for pelicans?  Funny you should ask.  It's Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.  What the heck is a scientific name?  It's a way scientist have of being very specific about the things they study.  There could be several different birds that look a lot alike and people might call them all pelicans but scientists like to differentiate between types very closely.  So they invented scientific names, usually constructed from Latin.  Why Latin?  Because it makes them sound smart.  Who else can speak Latin but a scientist?  Nobody!  

Have a good day up there in the snow and cold, little buddies.  Angel Jen and I are in the warm waters of Florida watching pelicans play and mermaids splash.  God, I love them mermaids!

How big is it?

Hi kids!

Here are two pictures from the space center.  They have this full size rocket hanging from the ceiling in a big building.  It is the type of rocket they used to send people to the moon back when the teacher was young.  One picture is from one end of the rocket.  The other picture is Angel Jen after she walked all the way to the other end.  It's SOME big, little buddies!

It was cool to see it taken apart and to see some of the displays of what's inside a rocket.  This weekend we are going to watch an even bigger rocket blast off.  Yahoo!

Whoa! What's that down there?

Hi kids!

I told you I took a plane to Maine last week.  When I was in the air I was busy looking out the window trying to identify places we had sailed past to see if I could recognize anything.  Of course, recognizing New York City or Boston is easy.  In New York you just look for the Statue of Liberty, the East and Hudson Rivers and lots of Big, Big Apples.  In Boston you just look for confused and downcast liberals, Red Sox Stadium and beans.

Here is a picture I took out the window while I was over Long Island Sound.  We sailed through this area and the three pronged thing at the top center of the photo is Saybrook Manor, Connecticutt.  The island at the bottom is Orient, New York.  The latitude and longitude are 41 degrees 12 minutes north and 72 degrees 18 minutes west.  See if you can find it on a map.  See if you can tell if it's closer to New York or Boston.  If you get it right, the teacher will give you a pat on the head!  Man, it doesn't get any better than that.  Usually.  Which is no ringing endorsement of this life we lead, but get used to it.

Long knot

Hi kids!
See? I told you we killed time by tying knots!
I took a plane to Maine last week to look at a problem in a paper
mill. They have a series of machines powered by 5000 horsepower motors
that keep snapping the giant 15" shafts. And when you have a problem
snapping shafts, I'm the man to fix it. I'm not just a pretty sailor
boy, see. I'm also an engineer. That means I can figure out machines,
how to make them and stuff like that.
While I was there I visited my favorite marine supply store. They
always have a barrel full of odd ropes and Pirates just LOVE ropes.
Well, this time they had a veritable cornucopia or sweet, desirable,
brilliantly white polyester triple strand ropes in various diameters
at bargain prices. "Eureka!" I said. "I have found it!" (Which was
first attributed to Archmedes who said it in his bathtub. You can look
it up.)
I loaded my arms up with all I could carry and borrowed a box from the
store. I filled the box and took it all back to the boat with me on
the plane.
Angel Jen says now I have to throw out some old rope, the boat is too
full of rope. Women!
So I took a sixty five foot length of beautiful new rope and turned it
into a floor mat by making this thing. It's called a 'long knot'. I
think it's very nautical looking. I even decorated the rope ends with
fancy knots and 'turks head' decorations in red twine.
Now where can I hide the rest of the rope I bought?
Be good children now, and maybe you can get that talented teacher of
yours to teach you how to make a 'long knot' mat of your own!

Marshmallows

Hi kids!

We are still in Cape Canaveral, Florida. We are waiting here to watch
the last night time launch of the space shuttle, scheduled for 4:39 am
on 7 February, Superbowl Sunday. We are just a few miles from the
place the rockets blast off. The local people have seen this plenty of
times and are seriously nonplussed at the prospect of yet another
shuttle launch. Of course, to us it's a big deal since we've never
seen one. We ask them 'Where's a good place to see the launch?'

They're like, 'oh, don't worry. You'll see it. The problem is not
getting your eardrums busted!'

My sister lives forty miles away and she says she can see them from
her back yard. Evidently they make quite a show when they blast off.

To kill the time we hang out in the boat, clean, straighten up,
practice tying knots, analyze industrial failures in 5000 horsepower
drive systems and write extensive reports supported by reams of
reference data (did I mention I got a consulting job in Maine last
week?) and invent desserts from materials at hand.

Here's Jen making 'smashers', a dessert made by smashing a marshmallow
into a pile of chocolate chips then picking them up and snarfing them
down. She says it's good. I, of course, can't have any because I'm
trying to lose weight.

Well, kids, be good. Be nice to the teacher, bring in chips and
marshmallows and have smashers for a treat.