Most Fascinating Story

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

I am stunned. I just read an article in today's Guardian that blew me away. I has to do with the master key to the whole Internet. Granted I'm a techno geek, but even if you aren't I'm sure this story will impress you too. Compare it to James Bond, Star Trek, Kafka, George Orwell, The Matrix, and Catch 22, all mixed together. But this story is not fiction; it is real.

Read the story here.

It is a must read.

By the way, the I the resting part is not the nature of the secret being protected. Rather it is that all cyber security ultimately depends on trust, not technology. The article illustrates what is necessary to gain trust.

 

An Offer of a Lifetime

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

Wow! This got my instant attention. Should I say yes?

(Libby says, "if you really want to, go.")

Mike Johnson, a former Westsail owner that sailed his Westsail around the world before selling her, has a 44' schooner that I built back in the mid 1970,s, and last summer sailed the boat half-way through the Northwest passage, but got stopped by the ice closing in. The boat is currently hauled out at Cambridge Bay, and Mike is back in the US. Temperatures now at Cambridge Bay are about 30 below.

I just got a call from him, and Mike is planning on going back up there in the early summer when the ice breaks up, and sailing from there to Nome, Alaska. He figures it is about an 8 week trip. From Nome he will sail to Dutch Harbor or Kodiak, about another 8 week trip. Then down the coast of Southeast Alaska as the weather permits.

He is looking for crew to help and get experience from the master mariner that he is. I can vouch for him that he is truly capable, and easy to get along with. If you are interested, contact me and I will put you in touch with Mike. bud@westsail.com.

Onboard Photography

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida.

Last night we heard commotion in the water next. To the boat. We looked just in time to see a big fish jumping with a dolphin right behind him. The dolphin swallowed the fish in mid air. I was not fast enough with my camera to shoot the picture, but if I did it would have looked like this.

As you can imagine, we see a lot of very photogenic scenes living on board a boat. It frustrates me that I am unable to capture more of them to add to the blog. No doubt I could do better given enough time, effort and money. But there are three obstacles that I think I could not overcome.

1. Speed. As in the dolphin shot above, many scenes are action shots that require lightning fast photography. I would need expensive equipment always at the ready to have a chance at those shots. In real life, I would be dropping that expensive equipment overboard several times per year.
2. No stable platform. Many scenes I see would require long time exposures at night. Even on still nights, the boat moves and my pictures look like this.

3. High zoom. This morning before dawn, the tip of the crescent moon nearly skewered Venus near pink clouds. Very pretty. But when I shoot it with my camera, the moon looks like a tiny dot. I would need extreme zoom to et some of those shots, meaning big heavy lenses which leads back to problems 1 and 2.

Maybe technology will solve all these problems for me, but I am not holding my breath.

 

Like the Swallows of Capistrano

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

In the past, I've blogged more than once how the migration instinct seems to catch us in ways very similar to wild animals.  One day, we get up, look at the sky, sniff the wind, and suddenly we know, "It's time to leave."   Well guess what, this year it didn't work.  At least it hasn't worked on us as fast as on others.

In recent days, I've noticed a growing number of vacant mooring balls.  That probably means that the waiting list to get a ball will disappear shortly.   We also noticed an abrupt drop off in the traffic on the daily VHF Cruiser's Net.   Then in the past 24 hours we've heard from three friends that they are about to start heading north.  Like the swallows of Capistrano, they felt the urge, but we haven't yet.

What about us?  Libby and I discussed it for the first time last night.   All season long we have been telling people that we will leave here mid-April, go to the Bahamas, and then head north from there.   But I just learned that The Bahamas raised the cruising permit fee for boats Tarawathie's size from $150 to $300.   To make that reasonable, we need to stay there a month, not two weeks.  If we don't leave until mid-April, there's not enough time to stay there a month, and stop in North Carolina a month, and to make New York Harbor by June 1 (our usual schedule).   Hmmm, we'll have to make an alternate plan.  

Nailed

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

I have a cold today, but with a difference. It rarely happens in real life, but this time I think I know exactly how I caught it.

Yesterday when checking out at the Publix supermarket in Marathon, I saw the cashier sneeze into his hand, and then pick up my receipt and change and hand them to me. I should have yelled "Keep the change," and fled. But I didn't think fast enough and I accepted the change. Today, I'm paying the price.

It would help avoid these things if businesses trained employees to always sneeze into their elbows. Perhaps alcohol sanitizer could also be kept by each cash register. I don't know what they might do if an open cash drawer is accidentally sneezed on. I suppose that there exist many procedures for these things that I am unaware of.

Jen used to work handling cash in a bank. Poor Jen. I never stopped to think before what a cess pool of germs lurk in cash.