Story Telling Contest

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, FL

I entered a story telling contest yesterday. I didn't win :-( even though Libby and I though my story was unbeatable. But audience applause was the judge, and I finished in the middle of the pack.

The rules were:

1. Sea stories (absolutely true)
2. Limited to 5 minutes.

 Here is my story. Comments are welcome.

I love ice cream.

I love ice cream, but I hate ice cream trucks. I’ll tell you why.

I love sailing in October. I learned that up on Lake Champlain in Vermont. In October I could experience all types of weather. I could hear the calls of the migratory snow geese, and I could thrill at the fall colors. October sailing became a tradition for me and my family. 

Years later we moved to Sweden. I found one friend, Sten-Örjan, who also loved to sail in October. Lake Malaren, where we lived, connected to the sea via one lock. Sten-Orjan and I could go out to sea and cruise among the 20,000 islands in the Stockholm archipelago. But our preference was to cruise on the lake itself and to enjoy the natural beauty of the land as well as the water. Most years we sighted no other vessels. We had the lake all to ourselves. 

Sten-Örjan and I sailed in all kinds of conditions. But one day in particular stood out. That day. Ah that day. 

We camped the night before on an island famous in Swedish folklore. Norwegians will tell you that Vikings came from Norway. Danes will tell you that Vikings came from Denmark. But Swedes claim that Vikings came from this specific island on Lake Malaren. 

Over the camp fire, Sten-Örjan told me the story about how it was the responsibility of Viking children to deal with their parents when the parents got too old to pull their own weight. The children took their parents to the cliffs of this island and pushed them off the cliff into the lake. 

We arose the next morning to find very light wind and pea soup fog. We had no radar and no GPS, but there were no other vessels, and it was warm, so we decided to sail anyhow. We had good visibility of the vas because a six foot layer of clear air separated the surface of the water from the fog. 

Vas is the Swedish name for a species of reeds that grow in shallow water. Vas are not like cat-o-nine tails, but vas are the source of fall colors in Sweden. You see, in the fall, the leaves on the trees in Sweden all turn the same color of yellow. But vas has yellows, and reds, and orange, and browns and greens. Swedes love their vas. I learned to love vas also. 

Sten-Örjan and I were ghosting along the shore of the Viking Island. Ghosting means to sail in very light wind. Our speed was less than half a knot. The wind and the water, and the boat and the sails made no noise at all while ghosting. Sten-Örjan was at the helm and I was posted as a lookout at the bow. 

Somehow, the fog made sound travel extra far and extra clearly. We could hear cows mooing in a field far away. I heard the creak of a screen door gently opening then closing. A family of minks swam nearby. I was mesmerized by the beauty of the vas, the serenity of the moment, and sounds coming from places that I couldn’t see because of the fog. I strained my ears to hear even more faint but distant sounds. 

Well. I don’t have to tell you what happened next. Without warning the tranquility of the moment was shattered by an extremely loud musical jingle coming from a glockenspiel mounted on an ice cream truck. 

I love ice cream, but I hate ice cream trucks.

The Captain's Table: Basis of My libertarianism

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

 

This essay will be short, because the concept is dead simple.

 

Regular readers know that I have a libertarian bent. Not conservative, not Libertarian (meaning The Libertarian Party), but libertarian as in minimal government. My reasons are rooted in morality, and a thought (gedanken) experiment that I came up with while a college student.

 

Suppose we have a town with only five residents. Three in one family, and two in another. Three males and two females.

 

Now suppose the family of three wanted money from the family of two for some purpose. You can think of the purpose as worthwhile, such as a street, or a school, or a bad purpose, such as whiskey for a party. Would it be moral for the three to come to the door of the two with guns and extract their money? Of course not.

 

Suppose the issue is not money but behavior. On the good side, perhaps three wanted to ban drunk driving. On the evil side, the three males want the two females to go naked. Regardless of purpose, is it moral for the three to force the two to do as they want at gunpoint? Of course not.

 

Now let us inject an intermediate step. We will form a government representing the five people. Nobody gets to opt-out. All five are automatically entitled to vote, and burdened to obey the will of the majority. We hold referendums on streets, schools, whiskey, drunk driving and nudity. The majority vote on each issue becomes law. One person is appointed sheriff and given a gun. Anyone who refuses to obey the law is forced to do so at gunpoint. Does that change the morality? Of course not.

 

Think about it. There is no such thing as a moral way to govern five people if governance is backed up by the threat of violence.

 

Now let us scale up the size of the town from five people to, five hundred, five thousand, five million, five hundred million. Do the numbers change the morality? Of course not.

 

I believe that most people falsely believe that the morality is different when we deal with millions of people. I say they should go back and do the gedanken experiment themselves, scaling down society to only five people. Also, when people are forced to pay taxes into a general fund, and separately government decides what to do with those funds, people are fooled to think that changes the morality. It doesn't.

 

To those who would support government but only to do good and not evil, I say that the tyrannical majority has the exclusive power to decide what is good and what is evil.

But no society can be a free society, nor can we have property rights without two functions which only government can provide. Those two functions are external and internal security. Externally, the government must protect us from foreign attack. Internally, the government must protect us from fraud, theft, and violence. Private armies, and vigilantism don't work so they do not provide a viable alternative to government.

Therefore (even though the very concept of government I find morally repugnant), I concede that we must have a government to provide a military defense and a criminal justice system. But any government function beyond those, I view as unnecessary and thus immoral.

Here is another way of saying it: Whenever governmental power is enforced by the threat of violence (if voluntary compliance is not given), that is an extreme and heavy-handed tactic. To be moral, the use of violence must be as limited as possible. The power should only be used for those applications to which there is no alternative.

 

Libby's Oarsmanship

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

I'm proud of Libby's skill at rowing.

Sighting The Southern Cross from Marathon.

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

Right side up people (those who live in the northern hemisphere) believe that they can never see The Southern Cross in the sky.   Similarly, upside down people (such as Aussies and Kiwis) believe that they can never see The Big Dipper.   Wrong on both counts.   People in the zone 25N to 25S can see both constellations at certain times of the year.   Marathon is just at that 25 N boundary, and right now we are close to the winter solstice.

I got interested in this a few years back.   We were sailing one night in The Hawk Channel, heading for Marathon.  I happened to glance over my left shoulder, and there were four bright stars obviously suggestive of a cross shape.  "Must be the Southern Cross," I thought despite the fact that I had never seen The Southern Cross before.  My second thought was, "Nah, that can't be. We can't see it from here."

Well, I checked out that assertion using Stellarium, the free planetarium program for your PC or MAC.   The screen shot below shows how the sky will look at 05:32 tomorrow morning from Key West.   The Southern Cross sits just above the letter S. All four stars are above the horizon only 30 minutes.

But seeing it won't be easy.  Inside Boot Key Harbor, the view of the southern horizon is blocked by buildings and mangroves.   You need to be anchored out in the Hawk Channel.   Even then, the southern horizon is hidden behind the clouds that hang over The Gulf Stream most nights, so you'll have to find an exceptional day.  

But the more the obstacles, the sweeter the victory if you do see it.  Good Luck

The Retirement Surge

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Floridaill

Florida is the retirement capital of the USA.   I guess Marathon is the center of gravity for freshly retired new cruisers.  Twice in the past week I witnessed two very similar cases.

One couple came to the marina with a brand new kayak from West Marine, still in the shipping wraps.  Then they sat at the table and unboxed a Macbook Pro ($3000), plus his and her iPads, plus his and her iPhones.  When they got the computers online, they went directly to Amazon.com and they each started pushing the "BUY NOW" button on everything they saw.  I may be exaggerating, but it seems that these people are spending money at the rate of $1000 per day.  For many of them, that is over and above $300,000 for a brand new yacht.

Ten years ago, it was our turn to do likewise.  The first days of the first weeks of the first year of retirement saw us making lots of purchases to equip ourselves for our new life style.  We may have spent less than some, but it was still a surge.  Upon reflection, I realize that the same probably applies to newly retired people on water, on highways, or on land in condos.  Retirement triggers a short term surge in spending.  Therefore, a surge in retirements, triggers a double surge in sales.

We all know that the baby boomers have reached retirement age.  How could we not know?  The media is full of stories about that.   Perhaps less obvious is that boomers who might have retired in 2008-2013, may have delayed their retirement until this year because of the recession which is now "over".  Therefore, 2014 sees seven years worth of boomers all retiring at the same time.

I think that now would be a great time to be in any business that sells things popular with newly retired people.  Anything; boats, RVs, condos, cars, cruises, sunglasses, furniture; anything at all.