Saturday
- Book #35 was Alone Around the World,
by Naomi James, 1979. This is a pretty good book - fairly
straightforward and quite readable - about her 272 day circumnavigation
in 1977-1978. The subtitle is "The First Woman to sail Single-handedly around the World.", but according to the Wikipedia article on James that honor belongs to Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz,
finishing just a couple of months earlier, with one Kay Cottee being
the first woman to circumnavigate non-stop & single-handedly ten
years later in 1988
Sadly James started with a cat, Boris, but
he went overboard. I cringe whenever I see references to a cat in a
sailing biography - it rarely ends well for the cat.
Chay Blyth wrote the introduction, and he starts with:
"In
this world there are people with good ideas and people with bad ideas.
There are also people of action and people who just talk. The
combination to beware of is the person of action who has the bad idea."
but then continues in a more kindly way:
"Fortunately for us and for her Naomi James falls into the ideal category - the woman of action who has good ideas."
Hot, hot, hot. Miserably hot -
111F. That's right, eleventy-one degrees. I slept on the front room
couch as the swamp cooler kept it to a reasonable low 80's to mid 70's
there. Even the cats didn't want to go outside. Well, actually they did, but then they wanted back in almost immediately.
Friday
- I finished most of the punchlist for Zone 1, so that's good. It was
the worst of the Zones, since it was done first and the mental
processes and recording habits for good inspection had to be developed.
Easy stuff, mostly, but it takes a while.
Then
I rescued a friends family from the mechanics, after they had to have
their car towed (again), and dropped off some drawings at an office -
the secretary there was kind enough to stay late on a Friday and allow
me to do so. So, all in all, a pretty good week.
Though the trailer did get registered - the plan was to do it today, but it's a state furlough day. Oh well, no hurry.
That avid blog reader, Tim, tells me that Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, were all labeled as June for the last couple of weeks. So I fixed that - thanks Tim :-)
There are a number of sources of info about HMS Beagle, Wikipedia is one, The Beagle Project Blog is another. The BPB had a predecessor Friends of Darwin blog, and in it they muse on an important question: did the HMS Beagle have a beagle figurehead? Inquiring minds want to know, but probably never shall...
Thursday 16 July
2009
Thursday
- more time in the field. It was hot again, 95F, and not much shade where I was. Still, getting into it...
Book #34 was H.M.S. Beagle: The Story of Darwin's Ship*, by Keith Stewart Thompson. This title, while accurate, is a bit deceptive in the sense that it is about the ship herself and not solely about her relationship with Charles Darwin.
It covers the history of the somewhat controversial ten-gun 'coffin brig' design,
the ships' layout and differences (because of refits for survey) from the
standard design (both known and imagined). It describes how she sailed (very wet); and talks about all
her voyages - the three major survey voyages (only the second had
Darwin on board) - and her inglorious end as a floating dormitory for
British coast guard personnel, and the eventual sale as scrap.
You do
learn a lot about Darwin, and the various captains - Fitzroy, Wickham,
Stokes, and about the extraordinary job the Beagle performed on each
of the three voyages - mapping most of Tierra del Fuego and the horrible Straits of Magellan (in a 90' long
square rigger!) firstly; then on a second voyage finishing that mapping
and mapping the coast of Argentina and the Galapagos and
entirely circumnavigating the globe for precise navigational determination of
longitudes; then finally five years spent mapping the northern part of
Australia and environs. Amazing. Recommended.
The view from IN THE PARADE, just after starting. Pretty amazing!
Wednesday 15 July 2009
Wednesday
- working out in the field. It was hot, but only in the mid 80's, not
95F like Tuesday. I am getting back into the rhythm of field work, it
takes a little time to remember how to do things efficiently.
The quarterdeck, staffed and ready to go.
It looks like the crew at the taffrail have noticed a likely pirate wench...
Tuesday 14 July 2009
Tuesday
- a day in the field, doing 'punchlist' stuff - stuff that was missed
or lost in the main inspection. This was all up in Ojai and it was hot,
in the low 90's. Still, more enjoyable than battling the balky Windows
Vista computer in the office!
Just before the parade the sun came out, then the foredeck hands came on board, ready for action!
Monday 13 July 2009
Monday
- I tried to be first in line at the DMV, showing up at 8:00 for the
8:30 opening. Only it apparently opens at 8:00, and there was upwards
of fifty to a hundred people in line. Not having the time to spend I
just went home, then headed down to Ventura for a half days work.
Before the parade the entrants are assigned a place, which is marked on
the pavement the day before. We were #44, and wary of not having enough room
made a point of arriving pretty early. In fact we had just enough time to get ready.
Sunday 12 July_2009
Sunday
- Hot weather, in the high 90's, but a bit less than the 100F of
Saturday. Mostly I did small chores and shopping errands. Mowed the
front lawn and looked for the anti-fungal spray. I bought four bottles,
and only have used one...the other three are missing.
I bought a small utility trailer. It's 4x8, folding, and a tilt deck, but needs to be
re registered before I can put it on the road (legally).
It's past time to start posting some 4th of July pictures - below is
from the Explorer on Sunday June 28th, as I was towing the pirate ship Jolly Roger
over the Grapevine, near Gorman. Just a grass fire - the traffic slowed
but did not stop.
It was a hot trip - 109F was the hottest we saw on the trip to the
coast, and the long grade up to the I5 and from I5 to the coast on the
CA-46 has the explorer dropping from fourth gear, to third, and at one
point, second. But the Explorer performed beautifully, getting about
8mpg on the way over, and the temperature gauge not moving more than a
few degrees. I had the two teenage boys with me, and the boat and
trailer, and a full load of gear, so it was a good test of the vehicle.
It was a five hour trip, with a couple of stops for gas and such. When
we arrived in Cayucos the empty lot that we had planned to park the
boat in was pretty much filled by a bunch of beat up portable's,
surplus from an old school, that the owner had plopped on the lot three
days before (the neighbors were furious). There was a place between
them where we could back up to the the fence of the house we were
renting, and after several tries (it's been a long time since I did any
towing!) it was ensconced safely. Actually the owner had a bright
orange construction safety fence across the opening, so that probably
helped keep the lookey-lou's away.
