Birds Versus ...

Porter Bay, Vermont
44 13.82 N 073 20.60

Today is a down day for us.  More of those pesky severe thunderstorms coming through.  When will I carry out my threat to stop listening to those weather forecasts?

Yesterday we spotted two osprey in what we believe to be an eagle's nest.  Three years ago along Otter Creek, there was a man-made pole with a nesting platform on top.  It was filled with an osprey family including three young.  A quarter mile away at the top of a 150 foot tree was an eagles nest, also with young ones.  Now it appears that the osprey nest is abandoned and the eagle's nest occupied by osprey.   Osprey normally choose nesting sites closer to the water.  I wonder if this pair doesn't simply enjoy thumbing their noses at the eagles.  A few weeks back I watched an osprey violently harassing a bald eagle sitting on a branch.  I think there's bad blood between those two families.

Last night after sunset, a school of little minnows started jumping out of the water right beside the boat.  Were they greeting the nearly full moon just rising or were they spooked by an underwater predator?    Anyhow, a flock of three gulls quickly landed and tried to make a meal of the minnows.  They weren't very skillful.  One gull caught two, and the others caught none.

Mysteries Of The Deep

Porter Bay, Vermont
44 13.82 N 073 20.60

I've written before about our sandbox -- the region from 25 North to 45 North within which we migrate in search of nice weather. It may surprise you to hear this, but almost all of our offshore cruising in that sandbox is in shallow waters above the continental shelf. Indeed, except for a deep trench near Miami, the continental shelf along the US East Coast is hundreds of miles wide and almost all less than 100 feet deep. As we sail offshore north and south we are almost always in 60-90 feet of water.

Now consider Lake Champlain. Most of the lake is more than 200 feet deep. Around here it is 300-400 feet deep. Combine that with the 95 foot elevation of the surface of the lake, and you see that most of the lake bottom is not only below sea level, but it is below the continental shelf level. Underneath our keel, the sea bottom is closest to the center of the earth here on Champlain, than on any other place from Maine to Florida.

To be sure, that trench off Miami is plenty deep, and in the Gulf of Mexico we've sailed over 12000 foot deep trenches. Still, those are not the places we do most of our cruising.

I've often wondered why and how Champlain came to be. It is sandwiched between two ancient mountain ranges, the Adirondacks, and the Green Mountains. I understand that the difference in age of the two ranges is about one billion years. Presumably, both ranges were formed when near the edge of a tectonic plate and involved collisions or subduction with another plate. Is Champlain the remnant of such a plate boundary? Was it carved so deep by the glaciers? Which plates collided when to form the mountains? Are the two mountain ranges parts of different plates or the result of a fold in the North American plate?

I've read three books so far on Champlain and the geology of the region and I still don't have a clear answers to those questions.

At one point in the past, Champlain was sea bottom, part of a vast bay extending down from the Newfoundland direction. I do not know if that was because sea levels were higher or land levels were lower. At another time, Champlain was also part of a vast fresh water lake of glacial melt water. At some point in the near future, it will rise high enough to drain south into the Hudson as well as north into the Saint Lawrence.

The CCLI

Vergennes, VT
44 10.17 N 073 15.48 W

I assume that everyone is familiar with the cost of living index, CLI.   In several cases, there are specialized CLIs for different groups that purchase differing packages of goods and services.  Why not one for cruisers?

That is a beautiful lead-in for a well researched piece on the CCLI complete with numbers, and graphs.   Sorry to mislead you, I did no such research today.  Perhaps some other time.   Instead, I want to gripe about two major items we need for the boat that have skyrocketed.

10 days ago, our house battery bank abruptly started behaving poorly.  When we woke up after a night at anchor, there was barely enough juice to start the engine.  I have two house batteries, and a third emergency starting battery.  The emergency one didn't work well either.  Sigh.

After some testing with the house batteries disconnected from each other, I determined that the older of the house batteries was faulty.  It sat at 12.5 volts at no load, but put a small load of only 4 amps, the voltage dropped to 10.5.   Must be a cracked plate.  Time for a new battery.

The last time I bought a new battery was 2010 in Marathon. I remember paying $110 for it at the NAPA store.  Imagine my shock when I found out that today's prices for the same battery ranged from $236 to $269!!  Even a Google search, which usually turns up the lowest prices anywhere didn't find anything cheaper.  Ouch.   2.27 times more expensive in less than 2 years.

One thing that leads to reduced battery life is that our solar panel is too small to desulphate (also called equalize) the batteries every 30 days or so.  Libby and I decided that we have procrastinated enough.  I have several quotes in my bookmarks since last February, for nice panels at $1/watt.  Time to buy.  I called Sun Electric in Miami, the company that gave the favorable quotes.  I was shocked to learn that this company no longer sells panels retail, they sell only by the pallet of 20 panels.  Again a Google search of the internet showed that the retail price of solar panels has soared from $1/watt to $2.5/watt in only 7 months. WTF!!!  It must be because of that danged tariff that Congress imposed on panels imported from China. Thank you Congress.

I'll keep looking for a panel.  My search was not exhaustive.

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Now for something completely different.  No more griping.  This is a news story I read yesterday that I must share.  It's just too too funny.  Criminals are not smart, not even white collar high finance criminals ...

Lessons in How Not to Insider Trade

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Thursday’s ten-page criminal complaint accusing Bristol-Meyers Squibb executive Robert Ramnarine of insider trading, it’s that Yahoo searches are no place to learn how to get away with it.

According to the complaint, about a week before some of the alleged trading, Mr. Ramnarine opened up Yahoo on his office computer in Princeton, NJ and entered a flurry of searches, including “can option be traced to purchaser,” “can stock option be traced to purchase inside trading,” “insider trading options traceillegal [sic].”

Radiolabs

Vergennes, VT
44 10.17 N 073 15.48 W

A while back I wrote that there were fewer boats on the lake this year.  Well, now the Canadian vacation season is in full swing and the Quebecois are out in full force.  It makes us feel isolated.  Here in Vergennes for the third day, there have been maybe 25 other boats that came to visit.  Not one of them spoke English.

We're hoping to see Pierre and Christina aboard "Anvil of the Sea". They are among our favorite Quebecois and their English is excellent. We've met them twice before, both times in Vergennes.

I found Radiolabs, a radio program, new to me.  It has outstanding stories and in-depth reporting on a variety of interesting topics.  I dare say it might be the best radio program I can remember ever.  If your public radio station doesn't carry it, you can find podcasts here.   There is a long list of past episodes. For starters try this episode about time  or merely click below.

Libby's New Toy

My computer is my main toy. Libby needs some toys too. Don't you think?

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