The Venus Butterfly of Cruising

New Bern, North Carolina

We are back in New Bern after nearly two weeks away with Dave and Cathy.  Jen and Marilyn have safely flown back home.  Dave and Cathy are back at work.  Libby and I are back on the boat contemplating the project list.  However, the cold weather is damping our will to work.

The other day I was discussing with Cathy a subject that I deliberately never wrote about on this blog.   Today, Libby and I chuckled over another subject; something about the cruising life that we don't discuss on the blog either.   Actually there are several other subjects I never write about.  

Did you think that this blog is a tell-all?  How naïve of you.   If you print the entire history of this blog, you will need more than 10,000 pages.  Even if you do, there are several cruising life topics you'll never see mentioned.

Ha ha; on this last day of 2012 I play this little joke on my readers.  After dangling the bait, I leave you hanging with a burning desire to know what things I left out.   I'll never tell.  It is like the joke on the viewers of the 1980's TV show LA Law.  The joke was called "The Venus Butterfly."  If you saw it, I'm sure you'll never ever forget it.

Happy New Year.

You Can Keep The Real World

Zebulon, NC

Whew, what a day!  It was almost more than a poor old sea captain like me could take.   Libby and I are used to life annoyances such as a bridge opening delayed or the gossip about someone who used profanity on the VHF.   Today we got a dose of the land lubber's real world.  They can keep it.

It was time to return my sister Marilyn to Albany, NY after the Christmas holiday.  We had a great family vacation but now it's over.  I set the alarm for 0600 so that we could get up early enough for the 3.5 hour drive to Charlotte, NC to meet Marilyn's plane.   My day started at 0500 when my phone woke us.  It was US Airways calling to tell us that her plane might be delayed by 50 minutes.

We left at 0700 for the long drive.  It was a miserable morning, with cold driving rain.  Just a few hundred miles north of here the rain turned to snow and blizzard warnings. The traffic was miserable, and I was stressed out.  We were forced to move too fast on the interstate boxed in with cars ahead, behind and on either side of us.  I tried driving slow in the right lane but that was worse.  North Carolina's road designers added right lanes that turn into Exit Only lanes just before each exit, thus forcing us to merge into an already full left lane.  Worse, North Carolina drivers entering from the right seem to think they have the right of way.  A couple of times we had close calls as a merging car on our right just cut us off.

Two hours into the journey things got abruptly worse.   First we discovered that Marilyn had no ID.  The case worker who escorted her to the gate at the Albany Airport last Monday apparently pocketed Marilyn's ID.   Then, a few minutes after that I got a message from US Airways -- the flight was cancelled.   We turned around.  At 1130 we got back to Dave's house and I was really tired from 4.5 hours of stressful driving.  We saw six fresh wrecks on the highway, several of which seemed to be cars spinning out even though there was no ice.

Now we are working on getting Marilyn's ID sent here by FEDEX and on getting her a new flight booking for Friday.

The cruising life really is a dream life!!!

Wind Storm

New Bern, NC

 

We brought Jen back to New Bern to see where we are hanging out for the winter. Libby cleaned and rearranged to make a nice spot for Jen to sleep in the v-berth. Unfortunately, she didn't get much sleep last night. Why not? Because of a wind storm.

Last night it blew like the dickens. I don't know the official numbers but I believe that it blew 50-60 in at least one of the bursts. This morning I heard from some of the other boat owners whose bikinis and other canvas works were substantially damaged.

OnTarwathie there was no damage. Libby and I slept soundly because we were securely tied to a dock and because we were substantially sheltered from wind and waves. For poor Jen however it was not nice. The noises got to her. Wind howling in the rigging, haylyards slapping, and most of all, the fenders getting squashed between the hull and the dock. She said that around 0300 she finally thought to put in ear plugs, and after that she slept OK.

I looked at the marine weather forecast also. It would be a nasty time to be offshore in the next few days. Welcome to winter weather.

Backup Plans

Zebulon, NC

I got this message today. "I don't like the new blog format. Has anyone else commented? Merry Christmas, Terri" I haven't changed anything, and neither has blogger.com, but either Google or Apple changed the default for iPads. iPads used to view the web version of this blog meant for PCs, but now they show the mobile version of the blog meant for phones. Could it be the iPad Mini that is the reason for the change?

If you have the problem on your iPad, there is a link at the bottom of the page called "View Web Version"

Anyhow, Terri's message reminds me of something that has worried me for a long time -- the fragility of free services like Blogger and even Google. They could disappear overnight without warning. If that happened, how would you readers and I reconnect on a new hosting site?

I've written before about backup plans while cruising. Well, for this cruiser blogging is an essential part of my cruising. I need to worry about the security of blogging too.

Over the years, I've carefully kept the address and the format of this blog invariant so as to maintain continuity with long term users. I also carefully make a backup copy of this blog's entire archive every month or so. If needed, I could make a new blog somewhere, and migrate the archives to that place, but I could not hold the address constant. How therefore, could you find the address of the new blog?

One way would be to send me an email to dickandlibbymills at gmail dot com. But that begs the question. If Google vanished, both blogger.com and gmail.com would vanish also. It is probably not prudent to post my phone number here, but foolishly or not, it is already there in the blog archive. 5182560889

I toyed with the idea of registering my own domain, then using it to redirect to wherever my blog is posted. I didn't do that because many of you already bookmarked dickandlibby.blogspot.com

I could get a second email account with some other provider, then publish that email address here on the blog. But to be effective, that would force you to bookmark that email address in a third place. Ditto for my phone number. Neither is a really good backup solution.

Here is my best try at a foolproof method to reconnect. If this blog, and gmail and my phone number vanish, I promise to try to start a new blog someplace. On your part, just remember dickandlibby. After a month or two, use dickandlibby as a search term in your favorite search engine or in twitter . It should locate wherever we are on the web.

I'll welcome any suggestions for better ways.

The sails

New Bern, NC

Modern sails last much longer than the canvas of Joshua Slocumb's day. He spent much of every day, sewing and mending his scraps of canvas. We don't do that, but we do have to mend sometimes. In the modern world, we have modern materials(Dacron) and modern sewing machines.

Usually, we have to take the sails to a sailmaker to do that work, but this year we were lucky enough that George and Carol offered to help. They are part owners of a heavy duty sewing machine and they have the expertise to know what to do.

With something as big as a sail, it must be sewn outdoors or in a very large room. Below you see George working on our main sail in the club room of the Blackbeard sailing club.

Unfortunately, before we finished the job, their sewing machine broke down. We will have to finish the job next spring.

Today, Saturday, we drove to pick up Nick at Fort Bragg. Then we are heading to Dave and Cathy's house for the holiday. Next Monday, Jennifer flys in from Burlington. The Monday after that my sister Marilyn flys in from Albany. It should be a great family Christmas. :-)