Experience Matters

Several years ago my wife and I wanted to bring our sailboat from the Antelope Island Marina to the South Shore Marina on the Great Salt Lake. We knew a storm would be blowing in the next day and wanted to get the task done before it came. We staged a car at the southern marina and then drove to the northern one. We loaded up the boat with ourselves and some winter-weather gear because of the month, February. Then we rigged a few safety devices to help protect us just in case something surprised us. Adding a preventer to the mainsail help ensure we wouldn't break the boat in a sudden wind shift.

The first 15 minutes of the trip went well and the wind filled in nicely. While sometimes you have to use the boat motor on such trips, it looked like we would be able to sail the whole way. At about minute 16, the weather changed dramatically, the storm arrived 15 hours early, and we found ourselves in 60 knots (about 66 miles per hour) of wind pushing us in the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunately our sailboat is not built to handle such wind and things got crazy. We ended up dropping both sails and still scooted along at a blistering 16 knots. That doesn't sound very fast but is 3 times the speed we normally sail.

One would think we had our excitement and once the wind died down all would be well. The wind did die down but then a snowstorm rolled in. I had planned to navigate visually but when the snow started falling, we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of the bow. The large smokestack from the smelter at the south-end of the lake that we aim for quickly disappeared. I had never bothered to install a compass in the cockpit and so I couldn't use that to help me. Ultimately I used the direction of the waves to guide me for the next several hours.

Eventually I could see a vertical line of blinking lights in the distance and hoped it to be the smokestack from the smelter as I knew it had aviation lights to warn low-flying planes. When the depth-finder on the boat went from 20 feet of water to 8 in about 2 feet, I knew I was off course and had to decide between turning hard to the left or hard to the right. I guessed and went right. The guess paid off and we quickly saw the breakwater for the South Shore Marina. We had blindly made it within a couple hundred yards of our final destination. As we continued I could see the expected lights on the smokestack and realized I had been heading towards a radio tower I had never noticed before.

We got into the marina at the south-end of the lake and quickly tied up the boat. I think my wife even kissed the dock once safely off the vessel. We both felt glad to be unharmed and relieved not to have to file an insurance claim for running the boat aground.

The moral of the story is that there is no substitute for experience. Sometimes we think we know something, like navigation but it isn't until we are tested that we know for sure. Since that day, I now know there are two tall objects at the south end of the Great Salt Lake with flashing lights. More importantly I know that the radio tower has brighter lights but the smokestack has 2 lights per row instead of just one. These are things you don't pay attention to on a sunny day. After all, why would you?

Paper vs. Eletronic Magazines

I have a notice on my desk that I received in the mail a few days ago. It is from ARRL which is the national association for amateur or ham radio. It is time to renew my membership and I have a choice to make. In the past, membership has paid for a monthly printed magazine. Now that will be an additional cost. If I don't elect to receive the printed magazine, an electronic version is available for just my annual membership dues.

I know I am old school but I still like to read printed magazines over electronic ones. Is it worth an extra $25/year and the associated environmental cost (think trees and gas to deliver the magazine)? For me I think it is and I'll illustrate why with examples of magazines I currently receive.

I have a free subscription to an electronic version of a sailing magazine. I'm not sure how I got on the list to receive it. Perhaps because I previously subscribed to the print magazine or because I had an article published in the magazine on ham radio and sailing. I'm not sure why, but I have it. I also have a subscription to the print version of another sailing magazine. Interestingly enough, I read the print magazine cover to cover every time I receive it. I will only glance through the electronic one and never read more than a single article if I read any at all. From this experience, it seems I prefer print.

I also have a subscription to National Geographic which comes in print form but also electronically. Every day I receive an e-mail with about a dozen article teasers. If I see something that interests me, I click on the link and read the article. Sometimes the articles are from a few years ago that appeared in the print magazine with updated information. Other times the articles are from an upcoming issue. When I receive the print magazine, I am finding that I have read about 60% of the articles already. Furthermore the electronic versions of the articles contain interactive presentations or movies that greatly enhance what comes in the print magazine. This experience has me rethinking my print subscription for National Geographic and going with just an electronic one.

I honestly wish all magazines would come like National Geographic. Instead of receiving something once a month, having a daily e-mail with interesting articles to read. I know my ARRL magazine will show up like the sailing one and I am afraid I will stop reading it without the print version. So until they figure out how to send frequent updates with articles found in the magazine, I'll shell out the extra $25/year.

Internet at Sea

Several years ago I had the chance to help bring a 37-foot sailboat back to Los Angeles from Honolulu. As we neared the coast of California, a giant cruise ship passed us in the middle of the night. We had been eating our own cooking for about 2 weeks and not really had the chance to shower. Even though the ship never got closer than a few miles away, it was lit up like a Christmas tree and we could smell the wonderful food on board. Since then I have wanted to do a cruise but worried about all the weight I would gain from a multi-day eat-a-thon.

This year I decided that my wife and I should try to do a cruise. We looked for the shortest and easiest one available just in case we didn't like it. On Friday we flew to Los Angeles and caught an Uber to the Long Beach terminal where we easily boarded the cruise ship: Carnival Radiance. In doing my research I learned that you should make the upgrade to a balcony room if you can afford it, so we did. Then we toured our weekend home waiting for the ship to leave port.

Having never been on a cruise, I didn't know what to expect. No matter how much research I did, I still had questions and so I just waited to get on board to see what the experience would be like. One big question I had revolved around Internet connectivity. We would be sailing over the weekend and being disconnected didn't bother me. Up to 2 days before boarding the ship I had the option of purchasing a discounted Internet package but I didn't think I would need it. Instead I would rely on my mobile phone. It worked well while in port and I could take care of any late-Friday e-mails.

Carnival Cruise line has an app for your phone that they recommended be installed before boarding the ship and so we did. When we got to our room, we connected to the ship's WiFi and let the app know we boarded. It then became our go-to source for information about our cruise. As we left port, I put my phone into airplane mode but kept the WiFi connected as instructed. It didn't take long to realize I could still receive text messages. That allowed me to keep up with family comments even outside the sight of land. In reality that is the only connection I needed during the weekend trip.

On Saturday I sat down next to the pool and saw a couple watching a large smartphone. Naturally I asked about it. They purchased a day-use Internet package so they could watch their favorite college football team play. Carnival has 3 levels of Internet speed you can purchase: Basic, Mid-Level, and Fast-Enough-for-Video-Calls. I'm not sure which package this couple got but it was not fast enough to stream a live football game. I'm glad I didn't need to try and work while on vacation as I am not sure the Internet speeds would have been fast enough for me.

On Sunday we arrived in Ensenada, Mexico and I just took my phone out of airplane mode. T-Mobile immediately sent me a text welcoming me to a new country and telling me that I had free 5GB of data per month along with unlimited calling and texting while in Mexico or Canada. I used my phone to navigate the city and catch up with my kids and their families via FaceTime and phone calls. Once the ship left port, my phone went back into airplane mode.

The Internet connection allowing me to send and receive text messages worked sufficiently well that it is all I needed on my weekend cruise. I think if I had gone for a longer time, I might have purchased a basic package to read my e-mail and stay abreast of important work events. For this vacation, it would have been overkill.

The Latest News Updates

Every once and awhile a news story captures your attention yet it doesn't seem that important to others. Fortunately we have the Internet that allows us to stay on top of the latest developments. That happened for me this week.

Two days ago, I received an e-mail from one of the sailing magazines I read regularly. They shared a story about a fellow sailor having problems off the coast of Mexico. He is in the process of bringing a record-breaking sailboat to Baltimore where he will begin to make some records of his own. Unfortunately he had some problems with his boat and is now considered lost at sea.

This is a story close to my heart as once I embarked on a trip from Honolulu to Los Angeles in a 37-foot sailboat. I left Hawaii a day or two after a hurricane came close to the Big Island. Once outside the reach of mobile phone service the only communication I had with my wife was via expensive satellite phone or e-mail using ham radio. One night early in the trip, she awoke panicked that my boat might be in danger and she waited anxiously for my daily e-mail. I'd spent 3 days sleeping off sea sickness and really didn't do much other than my 2-hour watches every 6 hours. Otherwise I was fine. 21 days after leaving Hawaii, I landed in Los Angeles and quickly caught a flight back home to Salt Lake. My whole family was very glad to see me.

Having crossed an ocean in a small boat, I know what Donald Lawson is going through as he tries to sail his boat on a vast body of water. Fortunately for me, I had 3 other guys on the boat with me and we all worked together well. Donald is alone and we don't know his fate yet. I keep an Internet search page open with several key words and update the search every hour to see if there is any news. I'm hoping he is still alive, as I'm sure his wife and family do too.

So far we know that the Mexican Coast Guard has found his overturned boat, which is a good starting point. The US Coast Guard has joined the search and as of several hours ago has confirmed they are also near Captain Lawson's boat. Unfortunately we don't know any more than that. I keep hoping there will be good news.

Normally I would go to major news networks like CNN to catch updates on the story. Unfortunately this is such a niche story, they are not even covering it. The Baltimore Banner has regular updates but they seem to keep repeating the same information over and over. They also have a cap on the number of free stories you can read from their site without subscribing. As this is the only time they will have a story I am interested in following, I don't feel the need to pay money.

I looked at the US Coast Guard's official site. They have a number of daily press releases but nothing yet on this story. I have also scoured Twitter without any luck. Usually they are a great resource for the latest updates and I use Twitter during ski season to find the latest updates on snow-induced road closures.

I sincerely hope there is a happy ending to this story. Unfortunately as each day passes, those chances diminish. I hope that when we do find the outcome, whether good or bad, it is not something that appears as a footnote instead of a headline, which it deserves. Until then, I'll be looking for updates.

Plan A is Usually Not Enough

I read a very interesting article this weekend in one of my sailing magazines. The story could be summarized in a couple of paragraphs but the author lengthened it by talking about the problem-solving process while on an extended sailing trip. The article talked about 3 boats sailing together and one lost its rudder in about 15 feet of water. Now a rudder for a large sailboat is not something you can just swim down and pluck off the bottom. The crews of the 3 boats gathered together and developed a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C. Why? Because plan A rarely works on its own. In the story, the crews ended up using a combination of plans A and B.

Last week I had my own sailing problem to solve and also came up with multiple solutions in case my first choice didn't work. The Great Salt Lake is shrinking due to years of drought in the American southwest. It is now too shallow for sailboats and so I need to pull mine out. Fortunately I have a trailer to put the boat on but I needed to prepare the trailer to receive it. The last time I used the trailer, I put the boat on it and the tires all went flat. We pumped them up and they held air long enough until the boat went back in the water. With the tires being 20 years old, I figured they needed to be replaced.

So how do you replace the tires for a boat trailer? My first thought was to just bring the trailer down to the local tire store and have them do all of the work. An alternative is to pull the wheels off the trailer and bring them to the tire store. Finally I had the option of just inflating the tires to the proper pressure and hope they would continue to hold air. So like the story I started with, I had 3 plans that I could use.

My preference, or plan A, was to just take the trailer to the tire store. My justification for this is that I have submerged the trailer in the Great Salt Lake and I convinced myself that the lug bolts had welded themselves to the hub and would require serious work to remove them. The downside to this plan was that I would have to do the necessary work to make the trailer safe on the road. That means making sure all of the lights work (questionable because of trailer dunking) and that the hitch lock worked correctly.

The night before getting new tires, I couldn't sleep. Ultimately I prepared to execute all 3 plans before heading to the marina where I keep the trailer. The simplest solution was to just pull the wheels off and so I started with that. The trailer surprised me and the lug bolts came off without too much difficulty. It only took 30 minutes to jack up the trailer, remove the wheels, and put them in the back of my truck.

I easily got the wheels to the tire shop and they thanked me for not bringing the entire trailer. They installed the new tires in just a few hours and I had them back on the trailer that evening. Now my trailer is prepared to receive the sailboat. Once the boat is on the trailer, we will store it at the marina until the lake level comes back up enough to put it back in the water. There is no need to take the trailer on public roads.

So why is it that I always come up with multiple solutions for sailing but only one for computer issues. Part of that may be that when you have a sailing problem, failure is very expensive and sometimes lethal. With a computer, you can always turn it off and think about other solutions. If you find yourself constantly frustrated by your computer problems then it might make sense to come up with multiple solutions before starting any work. While it may seem like an inefficient use of time, it will force you to think more about the issue and your plan B or plan C may actually be more efficient in actually solving of the problem.

Sailing from Hawaii to California

A few days ago I mentioned that I wanted to complete a sailing video I started working on about bringing a sailboat from Hawaii to California. Yesterday I used part of my day off because of MLK and finished the video. It can be found on YouTube and represents my latest effort in learning about how to make good adventure videos.

It is really easy to come up with ideas for videos but they take a lot of work to put together well. With this project, I started the video over a year ago. I pulled together all of the photos from the trip and realized that the 62 I had, weren't nearly enough. The interesting stuff that happened during the trip kept everyone so busy that nobody bothered to pull out a camera and take pictures of it. We had 2 cameras onboard but neither were any good compared to today's standards. A telephoto lens would have helped a lot but we didn't have one and never bothered to get pictures of whales or dolphins. Cameras also don't really show the magnitude of the waves on the open ocean either. You really need to be out there to understand how truly massive some of the waves got to be.

Once I had all of the photos, I needed to put together a script. To help me with that, I went through my journal and took notes about the significant events that happened daily. I then had to match story narration with the limited pictures. Needless to say, a lot of what happened doesn't appear in the video. While we started the sailing trip in the slop left over from Hurricane Jimena, the larger waves came at the end of the trip after another hurricane crossed Baja California and slapped us in the face. We were too busy hanging on to pull out a camera and take any pictures. Suffice it to say that we had several days where we surfed 50-foot waves for hours at a time.

With all of the night sailing I have done, it wasn't until this trip that I actually got to see where the story of mermaids came from. We had finally reached the coast of California and sailed into a patch of phosphorescence that lit up the water with any movement. The boat passing through created a glowing wake. We could also see fish swimming under the boat. We didn't know it but fish had been riding our bow wave the entire trip from Hawaii and dolphins knew they were there. Every so often a dolphin would swim toward our bow and grab one of the fish traveling with us. The glowing trail left by the dolphins looked very similar to the outline of a mermaid. We became so mesmerized by the scene we didn't even try to take a picture, not that one would have turned out because of the darkness.

Unfortunately I don't think I spent enough time working on the script as each time I view the video I come up with better ways of telling the story. I'd like to blame all my English teachers that required us to create a minimum essay length. Instead of learning to squeeze as much information into as few words as possible, I learned to use 20 words when 5 will do. It is a habit that will take the rest of my life to fix.

With this video I did learn a number of tricks to help with the sound. In the past I have added the background music first and then the narration. This time around I made sure to put the narration in first and that allowed me to adjust all of the narration sound levels so they match. Now the viewer is not distracted by some sections being louder than others.

Recently I browsed through a book on how to make successful YouTube videos and it suggested throwing away your first dozen. This represents my fifth video and I hope there is a marked improvement over videos in the past. After all, that is the purpose of this exercise.

My 5 Minutes of Fame

Last October I received an e-mail from my marina on the Great Salt Lake. A local outdoor television show wanted to experience sailing on the Great Salt Lake and asked for someone to take them out. I responded that my wife and I could go out that week with the film crew and hosts. I assumed that there would be a lot of sailors who would also jump at the chance. Little did I know that we would be selected.

We met the husband and wife hosts at the marina that Saturday morning along with their family and the person who would capture everything on camera. Having that many people on the boat makes for a crowded experience but we made it work by spreading people throughout the boat. At first the wind cooperated in the sense that it started light so nobody got scared. Then as the sailing continued, the wind built to the point where we had an exciting day that didn't get scary.

As quickly as it started we finished our sail and the day came to a close. We had a great time and I think the hosts had a fun day of sailing. While they mention that in the television episode, they said the same thing when the camera wasn't rolling. For those that are interested in watching the video, it can be found on YouTube and gives you an idea of what it is like sailing on the Great Salt Lake.

Creating My Next YouTube Video

Back in 2003 I had the chance to help sail a boat from Hawaii back to Los Angeles. It had just completed the Transpac yacht race and the owner needed help getting back home. I found out about the trip through a sailing friend and jumped at the chance to participate. During the trip I made sure to take a lot of pictures. Now I am using them to put together my next YouTube video where I describe the trip.

I started the video several months ago but then discovered that nearly all of my photos needed to be edited. When you are on a sailboat, it is difficult to see what is level. Back on land you will look at your photographs and wonder why the horizon is at an angle. Other boats look like they are heading uphill in one shot and downhill in another. The reason is that on a moving boat it is difficult to capture the horizon correctly. Over half of my photos capture the horizon and only a tiny fraction of them have the horizon level in the photo.

As a longtime user of GIMP, I am fairly good at using it to correct photos. Basically I have to rotate the image and crop it. Then I save the new image as a different file to keep the original in case I have to go back and do some more alterations. It takes about 2 minutes per photo and when I realized I had a lot of photos to edit, I got rather discouraged. Last night I set aside several hours and spent my time fixing photographs. Now I am ready to begin actually creating the video.

The moral of this story is that if you ever try to take pictures on a small boat, you will probably need to edit the photos. Otherwise they may look skewed once you see them on land.

YouTube: It is not Just for Fixing Cars

My family always has a tradition of taking our sailboat out on the Great Salt Lake every 4th of July, anchoring the boat, and swimming/floating for hours. Sometimes we also actually get the sails up and go sailing. The Great Salt Lake is very shallow and is only 35 feet (10 meters) at its deepest. That means you have to walk a long way from the edge of the lake to get to where the water is deep enough to float. Taking a boat is the best way to get to where you can relax and float.

Unfortunately we thought we would have to miss our annual outing as I could not fix the engine on the boat. We really need the engine to get the boat in and out of the marina. Yes, it is a sailboat and we could use the sails to move the boat around but that is very difficult and best done only during emergencies. I have sailed the boat in and out of our slip and the process taught me a whole new list of cuss words I shouldn't use in front of small children.

As the name of the lake indicates, The Great Salt Lake is full of salt. Right now it is about 3 times as salty as the ocean. We often joke that if you drop a wrench into the lake, it will rust to nothing before the wrench lands on the bottom. That salt is not harmful to the sailboat as the hull is made of fiberglass. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the engine. Our little outboard engine slurps up water from the lake to help cool the engine. At the end of a day of sailing, we run fresh water through the engine to clean out all of the salt. After 19 years of sucking in salt, our engine clogged and I needed to take it apart to clean it.

We had the engine off the boat over the winter and had a local marine store service the engine. One of the things we asked them to do is replace the water pump. They did but they didn't replace the thermostat in the engine and I felt it might be the issue. When we put the engine back on the boat, it ran fine for the first 2 sailing trips and then gave us all indications that it wasn't being cooled properly.

Having replaced quite a few automobile thermostats, I knew the job is not that difficult. I got to the boat early one day over the recent break and pulled off the thermostat housing. Sure enough the 19-year old thermostat looked more like rust than any usable part. I pulled out the old one only to discover the new part didn't fit. I actually wanted to test if water was running through the engine and so I left the thermostat out, put the housing back on the engine, and started it up. There is a telltale that sprays a stream of water out of the engine and into the lake when everything is working correctly. Nothing came out. Knowing that you don't want to run an engine very long without a working thermostat, I shut the engine down, rinsed it off, and headed to the marine parts store. I worked with the manager there to use the serial number of the engine, which I had taken a picture of on my smartphone, and found the correct part. The correct part cost $6 less and so they refunded me the difference.

I didn't want to go back to the boat as the Utah sun was blazing away and being outside felt like being on the surface of the sun. Instead I came home and tried to take my mind off the fact I still hadn't fixed my engine. The next morning my wife and I got ready to head back out to the boat and see if we couldn't get it working. Before leaving home, I found a great YouTube video about fixing the cooling system on outboard motors. The guy narrating the video was from Australia and had an engine with a similar problem to mine. He tried a few things that I always try and had similar results. Then he gave me a small piece of information that I suspected but didn't know: not all of the water that cools the engine exits from the telltale. This effectively said that my engine might be cooling correctly and that the clog could be in the Y-valve where some of the water is diverted to the telltale and the rest exits the engine near the prop.

My wife and I headed to the boat armed with new information. I pulled off the thermostat housing and thoroughly rinsed the cooling path. I also followed the telltale hose all the way to the Y-valve and used compressed air to clean that out. I put the new thermostat back in and it fit perfectly. Then I started the engine and everything worked perfectly. An hour later, our children arrived ready for our annual tradition. YouTube is not just for fixing cars.

Enjoy Life

I have been traveling a lot lately and so I took last Friday off from work to help with the Salt Flats 100 ultra marathon. It is something I help out with every year as it is organized by a good friend of mine. Besides it is a great excuse to get away from work and do something adventurous. Don't worry, I am not crazy enough to run in the event, I just provide radio support to ensure that runners stay safe.

There is no need to go into too much detail about the event other than to say that it takes almost the full weekend and requires me to drive around on goat trails not suitable for almost any passenger vehicle. I would venture to say that a stock Jeep would have trouble in sections and a lifted Jeep with oversized tires is a must.

This year I decided to keep my involvement to a minimum and just help with a single aid station. In the past I have helped with two. That can be rather difficult and makes for a really long weekend. It is a good thing too because we did not finish with the last racers through our station until after 8pm. Then we packed up our Jeeps in the rain and made the technical drive from the far reaches of the course back to civilization. I thought I had managed to get through the difficult part until the constant rain soaked the seemingly gentle dirt road to the point of becoming a giant mud field. Getting stuck in axle-deep mud well after dark is not something I wanted to deal with and felt great relief when I got back to the start/finish line after several scary sections at around 11pm. I almost had to go all the way back as we feared several runners were lost. Fortunately they staggered into an aid station shortly after midnight while I helped a bring gas back to my buddy in his Jeep after he ran his tank dry pulling SUV's out of the mud. I didn't get home until 2:30 am the next morning and had given the event all of my energy.

Sunday afternoon I sat with a number of neighborhood friends and asked if anyone had done anything exciting over the weekend. One guy noted that he mowed his lawn while another attended a soccer game for his twin daughters. Both are noble events but I felt guilty as I thought about my exciting adventure. Now as I sit in front of my computer thinking about technology I feel I have to encourage others to get out and enjoy life. Technology makes it so we don't have to spend all of our waking hours hunting and gathering food for our families. Let's use that time to do something worthwhile and fun. I spend my weekdays playing video games and doing boring things. Perhaps that is why I feel the need to get outside and go skiing, sailing, or driving over rough terrain in a Jeep. Hopefully you do too.

Sailing Log

Saturday I went sailing on the Great Salt Lake. Every time the boat goes out, an entry is made in our log book. This week I noticed that we are getting to the end of the book and so I stopped by the local boating shop on the way home. I couldn't find their log books and so I asked one of the sales people for help. She said that their selection was very limited because everyone is moving to computers to keep track of their boating adventures. Nothing matched what I was looking for and so I figured I could just order something online.

Saturday evening I pulled out my laptop and did a search for log books in the hopes of finding the exact same book we have used for our previous 2 log books. Unfortunately it is out of print and while I could order the book from Amazon, it will cost me $122! It is only worth about $20 and so I kept searching. Unfortunately I can't find anything that matches exactly what I am looking for and so I am going to have to make my own. It will be as simple as purchasing waterproof paper, printing log sheets on both sides of the paper, and having it spiral bound at Kinkos/FedEx.

Now don't get me wrong. I love computers and think they are great for keeping track of information. However they don't really mix with water. We ruined a perfectly good laptop when we sailed back from Hawaii. The computer survived the 21-day trip but was useless afterwards. While you can purchase water-resistant laptops, they are expensive and completely unnecessary when compared with the low cost of waterproof paper and a cheap pen. This is one of those examples were we try to apply technology to a problem where it is not needed.

Compounding Problems

Today I had a busy day at the office and tomorrow doesn't look like it will be much better. There were some changes we made to our server infrastructure and ran into two problems. Unfortunately I need to make some more changes but those will have to wait. The last thing I want to do is compound the problems.

I was sailing back from Hawaii when I discovered "The Law of Compounding Problems." The law is based on the idea that serious accidents don't happen on their own but are a series of smaller ones that grow into something big. For instance, it is important to keep all ropes or lines on a sailboat properly stowed so that if a wave hits the boat and someone stumbles, they don't get tripped and fall overboard.

This law can be applied to computers as well. Perhaps you install new memory at the same time you upgrade your computer's operating system only to discover it now won't boot. Then you are left trying to figure out if the memory was installed wrong or if there is something with the new operating system. Throw in a third variable and fixing the problem can be almost impossible. That is why you want to ensure that you make sure each update to your computer works before adding something else.

Today we were able to isolate both of our problems. This allows us to fix them one-at-a-time without having to try and figure them both out at the same time. We still don't have solutions, but have some ideas. Once we get them taken care of, then I can make my changes.

My Old Boat

I got an e-mail today from an old friend. He is a yacht broker and helped me buy and sell my old boat. They say that the two happiest days of a boat owner are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it. In my case, I was very sad to have to sell my beloved sailboat. The problem was that I couldn't justify owning it when I no longer worked in San Francisco at the time. The purpose of my buddy's e-mail was letting me know my boat is for sale again.

Looking at the photographs on the Internet brought back a flood of old memories. Most of them were good. I remember sailing her up the coast from Dana Point to San Francisco. We went through the mother of all storms and had to pull into Monterey to make repairs. I remembered how the family used to spend time on the boat and we called it "Camp Sail and Swim" because we would go out sailing or swim off the back of the boat in the marina.

Everyone I have shown the pictures to has asked if I want to buy the boat back. While there is a part of me that loves the idea, there is also a reason I chose a smaller one when I bought my latest boat. It sure was fun to see the old pictures though.

E-mail Lists

Earlier this week I received a nasty e-mail from somebody wanting to be removed from an e-mail list. The e-mail went to everyone on the list and wasn't very polite. I belong to several e-mail lists and this is not a unique occurrence. It seems that once a week someone will finally get fed up with receiving so much e-mail and ask to be removed from the list. All of these people must be complete idiots because that is not how one unsubscribes.

If you are not familiar with e-mail lists, they allow people to use a single e-mail address to send information to a group of people. Perhaps you are interested in sailing in Utah and want to be included on the list. Simply sign up and you will receive all sorts of news and information from others with the same interest.

At the bottom of most e-mails distributed by e-mail lists are instructions on how to remove yourself from the list. Generally it involves sending an e-mail with the subject of "Unsubscribe". Sometimes there is a special e-mail address that must be used, but the instructions are pretty clear.

One would think that if a person is smart enough to register for an e-mail list, they would also be smart enough to un-register. Unfortunately that isn't always the case and it can be really annoying to the rest of us on the list. So if you find yourself getting a bunch of unwanted e-mail from one of these lists, do us all a favor and read one of the entire messages. Chances are that you will discover how to unsubscribe yourself and not come off looking like a moron.

Sailing This Weekend

I finally have a weekend where I don't have any other commitments. I don't have to go camping. I don't have to do any projects around the house other than mow the lawn. That means I get to do what I want and that means I am going sailing.

Sailing at the end of summer is always the best. The weather has cooled a bit yet is still warm enough for shorts and t-shirts. The wind is generally pretty good. Most importantly, the hectic summer schedule draws to a close and ski season hasn't started yet.

About five years ago this month, I was sailing a 37-foot race boat from Hawaii to Los Angeles. It was a 21-day trip. Cell phones stopped working about 5 miles from shore and so communication required different technologies. Even though I was out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it was still important to stay in contact with family and friends.

Sailboats doing trans-oceanic voyages are generally equipped with single-side-band radios (SSB). They are very similar to HAM radios and bounce the radio signal off the ionosphere to communicate with people half way around the world. The only problem with SSB is that very few people have them. Not to fear, there is SailMail which allows you to connect your laptop computer to a special MODEM that works with SSB. That allowed me to send and receive daily e-mails to and from the family. My wife would then update everyone with my position and how things were going on the boat.

It was great to have e-mail for the trip. However it is also nice to be able to talk to someone directly. For that you need a satellite phone. There are three companies that you can use: Inmarsat, Iridium, and Globalstar. Globalstar generally only works 200-miles offshore and so that was not an option. We opted to rent an Iridium phone which worked flawlessly all the way from Hawaii to Los Angeles. The only problem was that talk time is about a dollar a minute. You really want to keep calls to a minimum at those rates. However it was good to talk to the family on Sundays and Thursdays.

Communication is very important and it is nice to know that with today's technology it is possible to stay in contact even when crossing an ocean. Luckily for me, my cell phone will work just fine when I am out sailing this weekend.