father & son sailing

Friday Column: Ut på tågresa - A train journey to Sölvesborg and back

2012-01-27T11:11:00.000+01:00

Clint said this would happen on the boatride back from Åland. I was espousing how much I was looking forward to being back home in Dunderbo for several weeks. Making fires and drinking coffee and not living out of a suitcase or having to move anywhere. He said it. “Mate, in two weeks you’ll be itching to go somewhere new.”

He was right. Something in my nature does not like sitting still for very long. I cannot explain the joy I get from coming back from a trip, eating proper food that I can cook myself in a real kitchen, sleeping in a real bed and waking up to my own environment. But it definitely does not last. Probably because I have been stuck in the pattern of coming and going now for most of the last five years, since I first met Mia (and Clint, for that matter), down in New Zealand.

After New Year’s, Clint was off to Copenhagen to visit a friend for a while, before going back to England for another (maybe) MMA fight. After training for six weeks he was going to go back to Norway, where he has a small apartment and a job as a tree surgeon. I suppose he did not do the fight – I got a message from him yesterday saying he was off to Turkey, and then headed back to Oslo. Don’t know what for, and apparently he was traveling alone. He might have the itch worse than I do.

So it is then that I’m sitting in the train station in Enköping, waiting to ride to Stockholm, where my journey will begin in earnest. I only bought tickets last night around 8:30pm, at the last minute, and only decided for certain that I was going about an hour beforehand. Earlier that afternoon I had been distracted by taking the dogs out sledding again (six of them this time, which is considerably faster than four).

I do have an actual reason for the trip – I’m off to the south of Sweden to buy a camera. A used Nikon F3, originally released in 1983, and fully manual. That’s right. I found it on Blocket.se, a sort of Swedish Craigslist, and negotiated with a very friendly man named Torbjörn to meet me at the train station this afternoon. More on why I did this in a while. It is loosely related to celestial navigation.

I sit and wait in Enköping. My train should arrive in 14 minutes. What follows will be an account of my journey, as it is happening, a running diary of sorts and one of my favorite ways of recording events.

1010: På snabbt tåg. Till Mälmo och Köpenhamn.

On the fast train. To Malmo and Copenhagen (though I will change at Hässleholm, for the last hour of my ride to Sölvesborg). The beginning of this narrative is going to be regularly interrupted, as I have some real work to do on the train today, a major reason I decided to spend over $100 to come on this trip rather than have the camera mailed to me. I work better on the move, without distraction. I’m in my seat now (which is comfortable and spacious. Like and airplane seat, not quite in first class, but definitely better than economy extra. The armrest dividing my seat from the one next to me is wide enough for two elbows).

I have two articles to write today from scratch – one that will go under my dad’s byline, for the new magazine: another for Spinsheet, again about Matt Rutherford now that he’s round Cape Horn and well on his way back north to civilization. I also must finish editing my first editorial for the new magazine, which has been a work in progress. It’s only 600-some words, but it feels important. I’ve been changing it constantly.

We started moving. I’m going backwards in my seat. This train is so smooth I didn’t even notice the motion, and would have thought we were still in the station if not for the city outside going by the window. Interesting how we say that sometimes – “the city going by the window.” The city isn’t going anywhere. Outside my window it is.

I’m off to the café car shortly to start work in earnest. I’ll wait first for the conductor to come by and collect my ticket. I already got shooed out of the café car once – they’re not open yet. I plan to spend the day in there.

1023: The Bistro

I would pay extra for a plane ticket if they had a bistro. I would.

This one is small. They serve mostly cold fare, plus coffee (of course). I got a citrus Ramlösa and a kaffe, mostly so they let me sit here. Strangely, there are no tables, but little stand-like devices around which I suppose one is supposed to sit with friends, with room enough for coffee and beverages on the stand. The stand is in the middle of a squared-off u-shaped dinette, with fake red leather seat covering and a too-low backrest. I’m facing the bistro bartender, who maintains a small laptop at the end of the long counter where food and drinks are served. I can see the world going by outside the window just behind him. There are seven others in the bistro car with me. One is most certainly an immigrant – a dark woman in a white burka who does not speak Swedish. One is likely an immigrant, and looks vaguely Italian. I, of course, am an immigrant as well. People outside of Sweden think I look Swedish. People inside of Sweden mark me as an American from a mile away. I stick out like a sore thumb. The rest appear Swedish. But what do I know.

1211: Back in a seat, not the one I was assigned.

The train is not full today. Not yet. We have stopped several times along the way, never for more than sixty seconds. You’d better be ready to get off when you’re time comes.

Ironically, I ate my lunch in the cabin, and not the bistro. I do believe they frown upon bringing your own food into the cafe car. I drank my coffee and my bubbly water, wrote the article based on my dad’s story (I recorded our Skype conversation last night and transcribed a lot of it for the story today), and came back again for lunch so as not to be rude.

I took a seat opposite my own. It faces forward and is adjacent to a window, so I can watch the scenery go by.

It’s a black and white day outside, the sky blanketed by a low, thick layer of clouds, the sun never high enough to provide any light. The ground is covered in snow, and the trees in the forest have no leaves. The only color comes from the odd countryside house, always painted bright yellow or red (and now I understand why), with a bit of green mixed in from the pine trees, though a faintly duller green to me thanks to my deficiency. It’s slight less black and white here, a bit further south, with a bit less snow on the ground than back in Dunderbo.

The train leans into the turns, like a speedboat. Or a bicycle.

1219: Film photography. -or- Why I took this trip in the first place.

I am a cocked spring, freaking loaded with creative energy.

For the past three days I have been absolutely obsessing over a camera, and not entirely for the wrong reasons. I bought one, an old Nikon F3, on eBay, with a 50mm f/1.4 prime lens – that was Saturday night, and still I wasn’t satisfied. I needed it now. So I spent most of Sunday morning and Sunday evening back online looking at Rollei 35s, Minolta Hi Matics and older Nikkormats, trying to find one within a day’s train ride so I could make a small adventure of it. Last night was my first reasonable night’s sleep in several days.

My editorial for the first issue of All at Sea SOUTHEAST (the new magazine for which I am acting as editor) touches on the intangibility of modern technology – ”writing digital words and getting paid digital dollars, neither or which actually exist.” Something along those lines.

Back in Lunenburg last summer Mia and I were gung-ho about buying an iPad, so we could use the insanely cheap chart software in lieu of purchasing a new $20 paper chart for each new place we sailed to. The software, which includes digital reproductions of the actual paper charts, and with the same detail, cost about $40 for the entire collection of Canadian Hydrographic Office charts, from the Arctic Ocean south, to all points west and east. Essentially free when you consider the sheer number of charts, from zoomed out small-scale charts to zoomed in harbor charts, some covering only a few hundred square yards.

The owner of the North Sails loft shared them with me on his own iPad when I went in to buy some spare hanks and some nylon webbing that Mia could make sail ties out of. The program begins by showing all of Canada, with a myriad of red squares that outline the various charts held within. Simply zoom in the clever way Apple does it on their mobile devices, running your fingers over the touch-screen, and each chart automatically appears, resolving right down to the creek level with as much detail as the paper versions.

But they are not paper. In the end, the iPad costs $500.00, about twenty-five charts. To me, the value of that paper, which is real, far exceeds the ones and zeros embedded within that iPad that merely represent the paper they’re based on. I’m very excited that we never bought it.

Similarly, I’m back to writing in pencil, and in fact, this very story began as pencil on plain white computer paper.

Hence the 35mm film camera. It’s real. Light enters the camera and leaves it’s imprint, physically, onto the film. The resulting image is real. It’s not zeros and ones, not tiny square pixels, but a real, tangible image, one that can be real and tangibly archived and resurrected any time in the future. I dig that.

The physical capturing of those images. After agonizing over this camera – having already decided I was getting a 35mm, just needed to choose one – I chose the F3 because it’s fully manual and mostly mechanical. The mechanisms that create the images all operate from the power of one small watch battery. There is no LCD screen, not even the small one most SLR’s have on the top, showing basic shooting information – all the data is in the viewfinder, where it belongs, and settings are changed with tangible, mechanical switches and knobs. The resulting image, once the shutter is pressed, will be a surprise days or weeks later when it returns from the photo lab.

The F3 was the premier professional SLR in the 1980s when it came out, and remained in production through 2000. Ironically, it was the first in the pro ’F’ line to use any electronics at all; people genuinely feared this at the time, and the camera was equipped with a backup mechanical shutter that would still fire at 1/60 with no batteries. I bought it precisely because of its simplicity, even if it was considered ’advanced’ in 1983. Two watch batteries that last over a year, and some film – that’s all you need to carry to get the most of it. No cords, no computers, no plugs, just the basic gear. The body is weather sealed and all-metal, and the lens I bought is fixed – no zoom. The camera will take photos in the freezing cold and in the damp and I will not have to worry too much about it.

I’m taking a fork in the road. Hopping off the fence.

I said it was like celestial, and it is. Technology is concerned mostly with the end, not the means. GPS? Tells you where you are, and you don’t have to know how it works for it to do so. It just does. Digital photography? Makes pictures fast and easy. On automatic settings, the camera just works. It thinks for you.

Poeple say that celestial navigation is a good backup in case your GPS fails. This is not true. This is not why it’s worth knowing. Celestial navigation is not about knowing where you are on a chart, it’s about knowing where you are in the universe, physically and philosophically. It’s about practicing art, for the sake of it. It’s about learning history, learning something for the knowledge because knowledge is enlightening. It’s about using tangible references in a tangible world, about being conscious. Not everything has to be about practicality.

Likewise with film photography. I want to pursue it precisely because it is more difficult, more time consuming. It’s real. I keep saying that, I keep thinking that, and I’m finally doing that which I say I believe in. It’s about going out and looking for interesting images to record, and the learning the process by which they are recorded, not simply switching on to automatic and having a go.

There is no logical reason behind learning celestial or how to shoot a manually operated film camera. The logic doesn’t matter. I cannot reasonably defend either pursuit.

I have never made the argument that celestial makes a good backup to GPS. A second GPS makes a good backup to GPS.

1255: Leaving Nässjö station.

Almost 2400 words. Long Friday Column this is going to make. I give myself shoulder problems in my right arm from using the trackpad on my laptop. My whole right side is affected by it, from a crick in the base of my neck, down through a tender spot between my spine and shoulder blade, into a feeling that my right hip is out of its socket and ultimately to a sensation in my foot that I have a stress fracture. It hurts when I twist it a certain way or sleep on my stomach.

The conductor came by just now looking for new travelers. I’ve been aboard now for nearly three hours.

1307: It’s military time in Europe.

The sun just came out, and it’s no longer a black and white day outside. It’s impossible to describe the winter light at 60º north, particularly when there is snow on the ground. The sun never climbs more than it’s circumference above the tree-line, and the shadows are always stretched long. The days are perpetual sunrise/sunset, and it is difficult often to tell the difference. Further south and closer to the equator the sun rises and sets in a near vertical line, the difference in time between sunglasses and a flashlight only minutes.

The air must be cleaner here, or thinner when it’s cold (though that doesn’t make any scientific sense), but something about it makes the daytime light glow. When the sun’s out, one really understands why the houses are colorful, for in the winter on a background of glittering snow, they look like fairytales. The pine-tree green colors lights up in the sunlight as if lit from within, and the moss on the forest floor, the bits that shows through the snow, is nuclear. The browns of bare tree trunks take on a detail impossible to render in broad daylight, visible only in the distorted shadows of sideways sunlight.

It is not often that one gets to enjoy the privilege of a bluebird day in winter – when it happens, it’s always the coldest day of the week, as the clarity brings with it frigid temperatures. But when it arrives, it is foolish to spend the day indoors.

1324: Heartless Bastards, ‘Out at Sea’ is stuck in my head.

1329: Heartless Bastards, ‘Out at Sea’ is now playing on my computer.

…and I am drownin’ in, I’m drowin’ in frustratiiiiiooon

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH

I’m out at sea and a cannot stop the tide

I’m out in the water I cannot stop the tide

I’m out at sea and I’m floatin’ away

I’m back in my real seat now, about to start going backwards when we leave the station we just stopped at. It is zero degrees Celsius, says the ticker.

1414: På tåget mot Kristianstad

On the train now headed towards Kristianstad, my last switch before arriving in Sölvesborg, which should be in about an hour. The sun has fully emerged now and the clouds have cleared to reveal a deep blue sky, the landscape glowing just like I described it above, and yet still more brilliantly. Note the time – I have been on the move now for five hours since boarding the first train in Enköping. I have six hours more on the journey home tonight.

This train feels more like a commuter train and less like a long-distance train. There is no bistro, and the cars are deserted. I can see the conductor through the glass doors separating the cars, about to come by and check my ticket. I am a new passenger on this train.

1423: At the back of the train.

The conductor checked my ticket. He also informed me that I’d have to move to the back of the train – the front bit wouldn’t be going beyond Kristianstad, and Sölvesborg is beyond Kristianstad. Thank you sir.

1441: Backwards

The back half of the train is now the front half of the train. I’m sat just next to the door that leads to the driver’s seat, and watched as a train employee who looked strangely like Seth Green, opened it with a special key and took his place at the helm. Several minutes elapsed sitting in Kristianstad Centrum, and then we were off again, in the direction from which we’d come, going backwards and towards Sölvesborg.

1713: Tillbacka till Dunderbo

Back on the train! And it hardly felt like I ever got off.

I met Torbjörn (Tobi), about quarter after four, outside the train station (Sölvesborg, by the way, is a very neat little seaside town. It’s on the way for us next summer when we bring the boat up to Stockholm, so I told Tobi to hang on to my phone number. After a short stroll around the square, I had a coffee at the aptly named Coffeehouse, and wrote next month’s Spinsheet article about Matt Rutherford. Started it anyway – it’s about ¾ of the way there. The latte was finally hot enough). Tobi came into the small station with me and we took a spot on the bench next to a picture window overlooking the town.

Tobi could not have been much nicer, and matched my brain’s description of him after first hearing his voice on the phone (which rarely happens – have you ever listened to a radio announcer for a long time without ever seeing them? Inevitably you’re disappointed if you ever actually do, because during that time your brain creates an image of that person based on their voice. Just like reading a book and then seeing the movie – imagination is far better than the real thing). He brought the F3, as promised, but also had along a dozen or so rolls of film, and two lenses. I really only wanted one of them, but he gave me a good deal. In the midst of our meeting, he rushed home to retrieve some extra batteries (the little bitty watch batteries, part of the reason I wanted this camera), and brought back with him two photography books, extra lens caps and even more film. So, done and done. Now I have six more hours on the train to learn how to use the thing.

It’s fully dark outside now. We’re back at Kristianstad Centrum.

1833: Losing motivation.

On the train to Stockholm now, having switched at Hässleholm. I had to run up and over the bridge to track #4, wasn’t quite sure where I was going and thought for a few moments that I’d miss the connection, as I had only a couple of minutes to spare. This was compounded initially because I was not quite sure which side of the train to get off. Usually there is no choice. Now there was. I hopped off one side, remained indecisive, climbed through to the other side, and again decided that was wrong, and raced back across to the side I had originally gotten off of before the doors closed. I made it.

1952: Bistro

Back in the bistro car. A group of twenty-somethings occupy the same fake-red-leather seats to my right, really designed for three, but four are sitting there. Drinking drinks and talking Svenska. Two more sit to my left, a couple – they are sitting closer than friends would. I bought a bottle of water and an apple.

About ten minutes ago I realized I have an hour stopover I Stockholm on the way home – my train arrives at ten pm, and doesn’t depart again until after eleven. Not ideal.

2305: Tåget mot Väasterås

But I am not traveling there. I’ll get off one stop sooner, in Enkoping, a full sixteen and a half hours – if we’re on time – after after I got on earlier this morning, at the same station. It will almost be the next day.

I didn’t realize it until looking at my ticket earlier that I had an hour stopover at Stockholm Central. That was a bit of a bummer. I spent the time looking at photography magazines in Pressbyrån.

Sled Dogging Videos

2012-01-24T07:56:00.000+01:00

This is way more fun than should be allowed...it's like asking Mom as a little kid to go out with a pair of skis and the dog and have him to you around the yard - she'd definitely say no. But now it's four dogs, bred specifically to do just that, with a sled specifically made to go as fast as possible, barreling through the forest. This day we had four dogs, for practice...the next we had six.

Friday Column: Sled-Dogging

2012-01-20T12:49:00.000+01:00

Richard came by on Sunday, only a few minutes after myself, Mia, Börje, Lisa (Fisa) and Claes had returned from our improvised shooting range down at the Blåsbo farm, and in the midst of making lunch (a sort of ‘pyttipanna’ – Swedish for mung – omelet arrangement) he asked if I wanted to come along to train the huskies.

“When?”

“Now.”

“Like, right now?”

“Yeah, now.”

“Okay.”

I did manage to gulp down my lunch in three or four hurried bites, clambered into my new-to-me-but-old blue overalls that Mia’s dad gave me for collecting the firewood, attached my scarf and put on my Hestra cross-country skiing gloves, which I would later discover are not in fact dog-sledding gloves, to the detriment of the dexterity in my fingers.

Oddly it is January, and as of Sunday there was no snow on the ground. So we set out more or less on a dog-four-wheeling journey through the forest.

Richard in the hundgård

Hooking up the huskies is not really an easy task. They know what is about to happen and can barely contain their excitement. We secured them to a chain in their outdoor pen – the ‘hundgård’ – lined up one by one and separated by enough space to make it less difficult to put their harnesses on and hook them up to the sled (quad). Once secured, Richard opened the gate and drove the quad inside (it’s a large hundgård), stretching the mainline of the harness between the front of it and a steel post hammered into the ground on the opposite side of the yard near the fence. The main line is a piece of polypropylene, like waterski rope, divided into four sections, with leads coming off the right and left side of each. Each lead is about three-feet long, made of thinner poly, with a brass clasp on the end of it. The dogs wear x-shaped harnesses (some of them very difficult to put on, as the dogs are bouncing-off-the-ground motivated to run), to which this lead is attached at their after end, on their back. They pull the sled (quad). Their snouts are attached to the mainline via a short six-inch lead clipped to a collar around their neck – there is no tension on this line, but rather just keeps the dogs in line and following one another.

Utah

The hitching-up process took several minutes, where after Richard drove the quad (and the dogs) out the other end of the hundgård while I stayed behind to keep tabs on Utah, the newest addition to the gang, a three-month-old husky youngster that Richard plans to use for breeding purposes when it gets a little older. Utah created the biggest ruckus and was even more excited than the others to get out and run, but she’s too young yet and wouldn’t keep up. Once Richard and the dogs were clear of the fence, I locked Utah in and joined him on the back of the quad.

In Swedish, they call it ‘ut på landet’ – out in the countryside. It has its advantages. ‘Dunderbovägen,’ the name of the road which isn’t really a road but leads up into the village from the main road about a kilometer down the slight hillside and out of the forest, terminates just to the north of the house here, splitting off into the driveways of Richard’s and a few of the other neighbors. The ‘road’ ends, but a path continues into the forest and further afield. Mia and I often run on the myriad paths that bisect the woods out back, and Richard and some of the other neighbors often see moose and deer wandering around not far beyond their houses.

It was back in these woods last summer that Richard, his five-year-old nephew Liam and I wandered off into with the idea of camping out overnight. Richard and I each had rustic old leather packs filled with hammocks and rain tarps, and he carried a newly dead pheasant along for supper. I had three Kostrizters with me I intended on enjoying upon setting up the campsite. A half-hour hike in the woods is long enough for a five-year-old, and must have felt far from home, so we set up camp on a small hillock with lots of nice flat rocks to sit on. Richard and I set up the hammocks between some large pine trees, and he set about teaching me how to make fire without any matches.

The caveman way of rubbing two sticks together works after a while, but is incredibly inefficient. Instead, we made a bow out of a springy tree branch, stripped of its bark, and twisted another piece of wood into the string. Laying this against a flattened board with a gouge notched out of it, you simply held the small piece of wood in place and ‘played’ the bow as if it were a musical instrument, and at a frantic pace. Eventually an ember would fall out of the dent you made in the board, and if you’re careful, you can transfer that ember to the firepit that would have been set up by then. If you’re not careful, the whole mess will burst into flames in your hands, as it did for me. If you’re not careful, the forest will be too dry for such things, and the fire will very quickly spread outside the nice pit you made for it and will be very difficult to put out, threatening to burn down the whole wood.

After two hours of fighting the fire – which I had successfully started without any matches – we decided we’d had enough stress for the day, drank the beer and hiked back home. I took the train back to Stockholm that evening and surprised Mia and her girlfriends at the Södra Theatre bar on Sodermalm.

With the dogs hooked up to the front of the quad as if it were a sled, we set off on the trail in the direction of our old campsite (also the same trail where I asked Mia to marry me). Driving the four-wheeler is almost an afterthought – the dogs pull the thing merrily along in neutral on the flat bits, and only require the slightest bit of throttle going up the small hills or around a tight bend. Incredibly, once they’re off and running, the barking and whining and general excitement is translated into forward motion – under way, the dogs are silent.

We took the first right-hand fork in the forest that heads out towards one of the field. The interesting thing about agriculture in the region surrounding the village is the division between forest and field. Things grow around here, but on much smaller plots of land, interrupted often by tracts of pine forest, the floors of which are covered in lime-green moss and granite grey rocks, creating an oddly beautiful contrast of colors, especially with patches of snow interspersed among it. Within the fields themselves are often piles of granite boulders amongst a clump of trees – originally the land around here was incredibly rocky, so to tend a field of any kind required some serious plowing up of the hard bits, which were apparently piled in the middle. The crops grow around these piles.

The dogs followed a path to the right of the field, edging along just outside the forest until we came to another dirt access road used by the neighboring farmers. The road exited the wood and we turned down onto an open plain. It was icy on many bits of the path, and the less-experienced dogs slipped and slided there way along, while Avalanche, the lead dog out front, smartly avoided the shiny spots.

In mushing language “Zjee!” means left and “Hhoaww!” means right, and this is all Richard had to shout to Avalanche, some thirty feet out in front of the quad, in order for her to change direction or follow a particular fork in the road. The rest of the huskies followed in lockstep with one another, and we turned back to the left and back towards the forest.

About halfway through the 12-13 kilometer course we followed, Richard stopped the quad and offered the dogs a rest. They seemed to know this was coming, and like an athlete will when he knows he needs it, the dogs immediately dropped to the ground and lay on the sides in the snow, licking at the ice because they were thirsty, still connected to the mainline. I took a leak.

Varg and her pups in the house

Avalanche, the all-white dog with different colored eyes (like my childhood dog Pepper, who I think now more than ever was part husky), is the lead dog, hooked up at the front of the sled. Her and Kiruna are hitched together at the snout, and their jobs are to follow directions and be the brains. With six dogs behind them, they have less weight to pull, but still put in some effort. They are the smallest of the pack, and the smartest, and they’re both female. At the opposite end of the line, Sarek and one whose name I can never remember do the heavy lifting closest to the sled (quad). They are the biggest, strongest, craziest and last to tire out. In front of them, still participating in the heavy pulling, Fjäll (the friendliest dog) and Oden (the other all-white dog) are paired off. Nanook (Eskimo for ‘polar bear’) was hitched up in front of them, alone this time, as his partner Varg (Swedish for ‘wolf’) was busy in Richard’s house tending to her newborn pups, which by then were about three days old. Richard explained all this to me while the dogs chilled out in the slow-motion dusk that accompanies a winter sunset at 60º north. Then we were off.

I drove the second half of the route, and it was during the end of this, riding through the forest with the quad’s headlights on in the waning daylight, my hands in my Hestra gloves, inside big nylon mittens designed to go around the quad’s handlebars in wintertime, that my fingers went numb. My right hand was in charge of the thumb-operated throttle, and that was the first extremity to go first cold, and then painful. By the time we returned to the house – and the whining and yelping of Utah, who still had not forgiven us for leaving without her – my fingers were downright frozen, and it was difficult to operate the throttle as I could not feel my thumb.

I drove the dogs back into the hundgård after Richard opened the gate, this time unconcerned with the whereabouts of Utah (with the other dogs around there was no way she’d be running off on her own), and we reversed the process of hitching them to the line. While I removed their harnesses (after which several of the huskies immediately laid down and nodded off to sleep), Richard retreated to the kitchen to fetch their meal for the evening. He scored a huge coup for his husky operation after meeting a local butcher and cutting a deal where he’d pick up all of the scraps from the slaughterhouse and feed it to the dogs. With twelve of them now (including Utah and the newborns), food is the single biggest expense, not to mention the benefits of feeding the dogs real meat every night.

In the light cast by the spotlight setup in the hundgård we fed the huskies, Utah scrambling about trying her best to make an impression on the bigger dogs while not getting growled at. I went inside the house and said hello to Varg and her pups, all three of which are pure white. I went home next door and took off my blue overalls, and my fingers eventually regained their feeling.

Dunderbo

2012-01-17T16:36:00.000+01:00

(Note: I did not attach a name to this story - ala my 'Friday Column' - but I may end up doing just that if this Tuesday thing becomes a regular occurrence. For now, think of it as a bonus.)

Ahhhhhhhhhh...

What a pleasant afternoon in an (oddly) quiet house. The fire I have been tending for the past two hours is raging, brighter now that it's getting darker outside, reflected in the television that is currently turned off. Mysan the cat just jumped up into my lap, and I felt kind of bad for shoving her away. She is purring, sitting on the armrest of the couch.

This is the winter that I have been pondering over. Though it's not as cold, nor is there as much snow outside as there was in the picture in my head, this just about fulfills my lofty expectations. A house in the countryside, sitting by the fire. And writing.

I've been in charge of bringing in the wood from outside that we use to heat the house with (and holy moly, it takes a lot of freaking wood! About twelve rather large cardboard boxes full of split wood, every three or four days to be precise). Adjacent to the cellar downstairs, where all the fruits and veg and leftover food is kept in the chilly confines of a small stone room, is a large wood-burning furnace that creates the hot water and heats the house (my dad, upon seeing it last summer, with it's multitude of dials and electronic readouts said it looked like operating a submarine). The furnace is not that complicated, and most of those dials don't do anything anyway. It burns wood and makes heat.

When I was here last, after our sailing trip, Mia's dad Börje and I went down to the farm at Blåsbo and loaded up two large, old wagons with wood split by the neighbor, that had originated as trees in his small bit of forest (Richard, the neighbor with the huskies, and I chopped down about twenty of those trees and made teepees out of them that are currently drying in Richard's front lawn). I got to drive the big tractor. The first of those two wagons is parked halfway inside the carport, the other half covered by a rubber grey tarp. The wood is incredibly dry, and burns remarkably well - I have already gone through half a load since getting home from school today in the small wood stove they have in the living room (I have taken over the living room today as my office - the house is empty, rare in Dunderbo, and I'm taking advantage of it).

On Sunday Mia's dad took us shooting. He used to be competitive at the sport (having shown us a globe that he won once in the seventies), and brought out his old .22 caliber rifle. Mia and I, plus her little sister Lisa (Fisa) and her boyfriend Claes drove again to Blåsbo and set up a small range against a derelict house in one of the fields. Mia's dad laid out a small competition target, next to which we arranged several beer cans from Mia's parents 'road-kill' supper a few nights earlier (a deer had been hit on the property a while back, and several of the neighbors helped clean the edible bits while it was still fresh. Mia's mom Annika got loads of the fresh meat and froze it. The sloppier cuts of meat she ground up, and she saved the best bits to roast later. 'Later' was a few nights ago. Mia and I were designated drivers for the evening, and Annika pulled out all the stops to create a remarkable dinner for eight people that lasted well into the next morning. Mia, myself, Lisa (Fisa) and Claes were relegated to the kids table in the kitchen while the adults ate in the dining room. I am now enjoying the leftovers).

Our shooting range was perhaps 50 meters long, and appeared fantastically longer through the sight of the gun. Börje arranged some quilted blankets in the dirt, using one of the frozen mounds created from plowing the field as a sort of hillside to lay behind and prop the gun (which, with a stock from an 1899 German rifle, is incredibly heavy, weighing about 4-5 kilograms) onto. Our first few shots (the first time I have actually fired an actual gun) were way off the mark, but eventually we started hitting the cans. Everyone took aim at the competition target, and only Mia hit one of the small black bulls-eyes (not the one she was aiming at), but at least we were all on the paper (which was still only about five inches square). Lisa (Fisa) was probably the best shot, having actually done some practice before with air guns.

Standing to shoot. That was something altogether different. It's all about your stance - hold the trigger in your right hand, with the butt of the gun pressed into your shoulder. Stand with your left leg slightly forward of your right, your knees flexed and your weight on your back foot. Prop our elbow into your left side, setting the gun barrel on your fingertips, and aim down the sight. Just finding the small tin can in the (non-magnified) sight is a task, then releasing the safety and squeezing the trigger without shaking the thing to bits is nigh on impossible. Watching someone else do it is nerve-wracking. I quickly learned to enjoy the laying down method infinitely more, and also wondered how many freaking bullets the military must go through out there running around and trying to hit things (other people).

Then there are the biathletes. Most Americans don't give a damn about the sport anyway, but it's on television often over here, and after Sunday, I have a newfound respect for them. Those targets are so small. The idea of ramping up your heart rate for thirty minutes and then shooting five small targets (and getting punished with extra laps on the skiing course for missing one), is lunacy. It was enough trying not to breathe while laying down, and to think I'd be able to hit the broad side of a barn while standing after having just skied ten kilometers...well, it just wouldn't happen.

I rented Blade Runner from the library today.

Training the huskies. Story to follow this week...

2012-01-15T18:02:00.000+01:00

Friday Column: 'Svenska för Idioter,' - OR - 'Where is Palestine?'

2012-01-13T06:28:00.000+01:00

So, back to the old days of sitting in a foreign café and writing about it.

I’m in Wickman’s. In Enköping. It is January in Sweden and yet it’s raining today (this was written on Thursday), and about 3º plus (above zero). Skitväder. The café is on the corner of a small ‘roundy’ as Mia is apt to call them, and on the opposite corner is an appropriately named bicycle shop called Cykel Hörnan (Cycle Corner). It is half past three in the afternoon and nearly dark outside. Of the dozen or so tables in the café, only three of them are occupied, one by myself and my computer. They’re black (the tables), and the walls of the place are white (as are the chairs). With the candles spread throughout the room (Swedes love candles in the wintertime), the light is warm and cozy, and yet the large glass storefront succeeds a bit too much in wintertime at bringing the outside in. It’s not my favorite café, but the closest one to my school, so I’m here. As usual, my café latte was not hot enough even though I asked for it very hot. They still cannot make a hot enough coffee for me in this country.

This morning was my first real day of Swedish classes. ‘SFI’, ‘Swedish for Immigrants’ (or ‘Idiots,’ depending on who you ask). Tuesday was really the first day, but it was filled with information and not much was accomplished. Today we learned.

I expected the class to be easy – I have been exposed to the language now for five years, and am getting better at speaking it each time I come back to Sweden – but what I did not expect was the cultural experience I’d get in the classroom, something I think many Americans would be downright shocked at. I am the only one from the continent of 'Nordamerika' in the classroom, a fact made strikingly obvious when I had to pull down a separate map to explain where I had come from (the map the teacher used was one of Europe and 'Nordafrika', where most everyone else originated). The two guys in front of me were from 'Grekland' and 'Italien'. Two girls behind me, 'Indonesien' and Thailand. Behind them was a young guy from 'Irak' and another from 'Palestina'. (Yes, Palestine). He had trouble locating it on a map, because it is not in fact on the map, as most of the world does not recognize it’s existence as a country. The proximity to global politics in this small classroom alone was staggering.

On the opposite side of the room sat another young man from 'Irak', and in front of him a woman from 'Iranien' (the teacher, in Swedish, questioned whether their countries were friends. Everyone laughed). In front of them was a woman from somewhere in Siberia I think, and two in front of her from 'Lettland' (Latvia) and 'Ryskland' (Russia), and another from 'Syrien'. Our teacher is from Finland, and I sat next to a middle-aged man from 'Libanon' (in the city of Beirut). He moved to Sweden and bought a pizza shop.

What shocked me was that a good one-third of the students in that classroom are refugees. Refugees. In 'Amerika' that word brings with it so much baggage. We hear it on the news daily, but does anyone quite understand what it means? Has anyone actually met a refugee? Befriended one? The word’s meaning was abruptly understood in class today when the teacher questioned all of us as to whether we were refugees or immigrants – ‘did you flee your country or did you come of your own free will?’

Flee your country. ‘Did you flee your country?’ It was such a simple question (oversimplified actually, as it was asked in the simplest Swedish so everyone would understand exactly what the question was). More than one innocently and completely un-self-consciously answered ‘yes,’ and my mind instantly wanted to know why.

When the question of immigration arises in US politics, I am not so sure that the American public quite understands the implications of such a question. I am not about to attempt to debate the topic. But it’s interesting. The idea that someone might have to flee their own country has to be utterly foreign to 99% of Americans.

It’s very interesting here in Sweden how the socialist system works in certain ways. They offer SFI for free to all legal immigrants (including refugees who came here legally and with good reason - again, refugee, someone fleeing their country because they fear for their life). Some of them get a piece of paper stamped each day that they then take to the local government and get money for, in lieu of working (the class is five days per week, almost all day – the idea is to learn the language as quickly as possible in order to enter the workforce already fluent in Swedish. The government is apparently happy to encourage this). And it makes sense in a way. People bitch and complain at home about Spanish, and yet how is a Spanish immigrant (a legal one) supposed to learn the language? Has anyone ever considered the enormity of the task of moving to a foreign country, with a foreign language (a foreign alphabet for most of the Arabic people in my class) and trying to get a job? The Lebanese guy who sat next to me this morning used to work in a rather high-tech field, traveling in South Africa and Dubai for his work, and now he sells pizza and can just about read the ingredients on his recipes. Does anyone ever consider this when they are debating immigration laws back home? Or putting signs up on their hotdogs stands that people must be able to speak English before ordering (next to an American flag)?

I am 100% in favor of Americans speaking English, immigrant or otherwise. I do not think we need a second language back home, and I think that people who want to live there should learn to speak like the natives. The fact that so many Swedes speak English is not to placate the foreigners like me that come here, but precisely because English is what the rest of the world speaks and they are smart enough to figure out that they need to learn it or be left behind. In the USA, immigrants should speak English, but how should they accomplish that? It’s a question I do not have an answer for, and it certainly wouldn’t go over well to model it after the socialist system here and offer it for free (because everyone knows where that suggestion would end up going). But for a successful immigration policy, doesn’t that have to be part of the discussion?

(This brings up an interesting aside. Mia and I are in the process of applying for her green card. Suddenly I’m almost an immigrant in my own country. Incredibly, US Customs & Immigration – USCIS – is amazingly helpful. You can call them up on their helpline, and – though the automated service is clunky and frustrating – you can eventually speak to a real person who offers real help, and in a friendly tone. We applied to have Mia's forms expedited so we can get home to help my mom and dad, and to our surprise they were sympathetic. We received a reply within a week that the form will go through expedited, but that they need two documents we submitted in Swedish – our wedding certificate and our state-registered status as being married – translated into English. Mia thought this kind of silly – as the Swedish government can handle forms in both English and Swedish – but I disagreed with her and took the side of the USCIS. We want to immigrate into the USA – well Mia anyway – so the burden should be on us to provide the forms in the native language. Going through this process really makes it apparent that people who haven’t seen it firsthand should really not be allowed an opinion on the matter. The chasm between the ideological and the practical in the case of immigration is vast).

As for the Palestinian in my class today, how incredible is it that in 2012, someone can enter a class and not even be able to point out his country on a map because the rest of the world does not recognize that country’s right to exist? I find this amazing. And enlightening.

Matt's into the Atlantic (Again)

2012-01-10T15:53:00.002+01:00

There is no point in me telling this story. It's much better from the man himself. Matt's back into the Atlantic. Read about it here.

Friday Column: Matt Rutherford around the Horn

2012-01-06T10:35:00.000+01:00

I was going to write this morning about my first week back in Sweden. About arriving on the 5th anniversary of Mia and I first meeting in New Zealand (December 28, 2006). About her surprising me at the airport and taking me to dinner at our favorite Greek restaurant 'Tzatziki' in Uppsala. About staying in Cicci's apartment for the night so we could drink some wine with dinner. About meeting Clint the next night at Skavsta, the airport he was not supposed to fly to because it is two hours from the house in Dunderbo, but did anyway, and at eleven o'clock at night. About taking the ferry to Åland, the Finnish island where Johanna lives and where my sister got too drunk on snaps in 2008 when we last went there for New Year's Eve. About taking a real Finnish sauna in Johannas house after running my fastest-ever 10k on New Year's Eve (40:42). About Dunderbo and the sled dogs next door. About the goose I have in the oven this morning for the 'American' Christmas dinner we are cooking today with Mia's family.

But I won't write about any of that today, because Matt Rutherford has just rounded Cape Horn.

Matt and I met a few years ago when he first got back from his single-handed double Transatlantic. His Pearson 323 took him north towards Canada and across the Atlantic via the Great Circle Route (the same route we took in 2011). He was headed for Iceland then, but got blown south in six gales during that crossing and ended up in the UK instead. He left his boat in Amsterdam, returned home to help fix old Alfa Romeos at a friends place in Texas, then returned to the boat flush with cash and went 200 miles up the Gambia River in Africa. Only then did he set out back across the Atlantic, sailing again alone to the Caribbean and eventually north to Annapolis (with a few yacht deliveries in between), where upon his arrival in the harbor, he dinghied over to Mia and I - we were anchored on my dad's Sojouner - and had a few beers and some dinner with us. He was already talking about the NW Passage and Cape Horn even then.

Now, a few years later, and he's there, literally, only 25 miles east of the famous landmark at the bottom of the world where "all bluewater sailors dream of going," according to the web post he wrote this morning. Mia and I have been downloading GRIB files the last few days as he got closer, and following his track almost hourly as he made his southing and easting. My Yachting World update on him was due this morning, perfect timing. He is headed towards home, the first time he's been able to say that in the 208 days since he left Annapolis last June. From his website:

"Originally when I left Annapolis I estimated that I would round the Horn on January 16th so I’m 11 days ahead of schedule. I’m also only 1,000 miles from South Georgia (Island). How tempting is that? In 10 days from now I could be on South Georgia, standing next to Shackleton's grave toasting “the boss” with my last glass of whiskey. It’s a nice idea but I’ve come too far to stop now. Now I can start thinking about my ultimate destination, the finish line at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and my first landfall in Annapolis."

So Matt, this Friday is for you buddy. I'll have some goose in your honor and perhaps even a slug of whiskey this evening, dreaming about going round the Horn on my own.

To read more about Matt, check out solotheamericas.org. On the 'Press' page you'll find four Spinsheet articles I wrote about him, some about his previous Atlantic crossings. Donate to CRAB there as well if you want to support him. Cheers mate.

It’s round Cape Horn we all must go, Bring ‘em down;

Arms all stiff to the ice and snow, Bring ‘em down;

Oh, rock and roll me over boys, Bring ‘em down;

And get this damn job over boys, Bring ‘em down.

FORTITUDINE VINCIMUS

building the archive...

2012-01-04T21:01:00.003+01:00

Check out the published archive now and in the coming weeks. I am starting to flesh it out with .pdf files of all of my published pieces, where applicable (in some cases due to copyrights, I have to link to the website of whatever publication printed it). Anyway, the latest Yacht Essentials article I wrote is the first to go up there today, with more to come. The Matt Rutherford piece from Yachting World will be up soon. Stay tuned.

Friday Column: Observations from the International Airport

2011-12-29T21:19:00.005+01:00

All of this must be finished by December 29, before we pick up Clint at that far-away Stockholm airport that I cannot remember the name of (Skavsta) and take a bus and a ferry to the Finnish island of Åland where Johanna lives and where we are attending a New Year’s Eve party only after we run a 10K in the town of Mariehamn whereby afterwards I am expected to attend a traditional Finnish sauna with Mia, Johanna and Clint, and naked.

So it is okay that I am writing a ‘Friday Column’ on a Tuesday.

My flight to Munich is delayed. I suspected as much driving to the airport in the driving rain after lunch in West Chester with my sister, but it is not for the weather that the flight is delayed. We had boarded the plane and then unboarded the plan, after a weather announcement by the captain – ‘we are waiting for the frontal passage and windshift, which should be here momentarily,’ he said – which was followed by a de-planing announcement that I knew was coming after someone came over the intercom asking the flight attendants to disarm the doors. I had just curled up into a double-seat I had searched the entire plane to find because some jokers who were supposed to be sat in row 34 – leaving me with the four-seat row 35 completely to myself, which had been my plan when I chose my seat – decided instead to sit with me and stare at their iPhones taking up my well-planned space.

First our flight was delayed from 6:40 to 8:30. Then 9:00. And now 9:30. So now I am sitting near gate A-24 waiting for the airport to provide new equipment so we can fly to Europe.

I wrote my Spinsheet column earlier at the wine bar, accompanied by two glasses of ‘New Worl Value Reds’ – an Australian petit syrah and a South-American cousin of Malbec which I do not remember the name of. It is difficult to write a sailing column when I have not actually been sailing since September, but then again it is the times around the holidays when one is prone to reminisce, so I reminisced about our Bahamas trip in my column and think that I did a reasonable job.

Meanwhile, in the airport, people are freaking out about missing their connections in Munich. I have six and a half hours – had six and a half hours, which is down to about four and a half by now – but I am waiting either way, so it does not much matter to me. I took a proactive role though and tried to get on an earlier flight to London and connect through there, but in the end that was more trouble than it was worth and I do not know what might have happened to my two checked bags. I left my Cruising World on the other plane by accident.

The Celtics-Heat game is on TV now but I am listening to music on my headphones instead. Lebron James’ beard looks Muslim.

In Munchen

Anyone who says we have not yet invented teleporting has never been on an international airplane flight. Jet travel is freaking teleporting. It is so far removed from a human scale, a human sense of speed that it may as well be time travel. I went to sleep curled up in a group of three seats all to myself (after hunting for them – in the row of four that I found, the armrests did not raise, so that was pointless), and woke up six hours later on the other side of the Atlantic. It took me three weeks to accomplish the same on my sailing boat in August. Teleporting.

I am in Munchen now, and boy do the Germans know how to build an airport. I foolishly am about to go purchase a thirty-eight Euro haircut, but there is a barbershop here and I look ridiculous. I may even opt for the shave and really run up the bill.

The food establishments here actually serve real food. I just had a decent café latte in one of them, that seems to serve mostly seafood. It is strange sitting next to someone eating pasta. I feel like breakfast. It is really one in the afternoon here.

The flight out of Philly finally got off the ground around eleven last evening, which was just okay with me, because now my six-hour layover has turned into a two-hour layover, which should give me just enough time to get that haircut and shave.

This airport! It sparkles. I cannot fathom the actual restaurants are actual restaurants. They serve big German biers in big German glass mugs. There is brown whole-grain bread everywhere. The guy who served me my coffee is from Thailand, but he speakers perfect English and German and made me Euro change from my American dollar transaction! There are several Audis in the terminal I am in with their fog lights on. And watch shops. This sounds horribly clichéd for being in a German airport, but everything is impeccably clean.

I am going to go have that haircut now.

I had my haircut. It cost only twenty-five, probably because the barber only had to use one tool (the clippers) and it took only a few minutes. He washed my hair as well. I feel fantastic.

At the ‘Bistro Organic’ (these eateries are phenomenal), I just had a yogurt and fruit cup and the yogurt was actually plain, unflavored yogurt and the fruit was freshly sliced. Why is it that we cannot do this in the USA at airports? One hour until my flight boards for Stockholm.

An email exchange about celestial nav.

2011-12-26T13:56:00.005+01:00

I was just reading your article in the magazine "All at Sea" and had a couple questions. First I haven't done celestial in forever and thought the pub was 229 not 249. Am I misremembering, more than likely lol!? I was interested if you wrote other articles on this and if I could get a copy of them possibly. Please let me know.

-A brother on the waters

Thanks for the email and glad you liked the article! I actually wrote a series of four articles on the topic, with the idea being that you'd be able to take a sight and reduce it having read all four. They are online here (http://www.allatsea.net/by-author/Andy_Schell), with the rest of my All at Sea archive.

As for the pub, we are both correct - Pub 229 was intended for navigation at sea, while Pub 249 is technically 'air navigation.' 249 is easier to use, as it was intended to be a quicker reference for pilots who needed the info faster as they were traveling much faster than a ship. However, it is also less accurate. It is argued though that the accuracy lost is negligible because the human error of actually taking a sight on a pitching deck of a boat is greater than the inaccuracy of the pub.

I find it's easier to teach 249, and if people get really into it, they can delve into 229 on their own. Those who don't have that level of interest will have a solid base with only 249. So that's the long of it!

+Andy

Friday Column: Home

2011-12-23T23:56:00.000+01:00

I should start calling this the Friday Evening Column. It is still Friday.

I went to the mall today with Mom. It is December 23. Not good planning.

Home again. Really, really nice to be here. I got in late Sunday night (or early Monday morning depending on your perspective). It is chilly here now, but not cold, certainly not cold enough for December, but it feels better than the tropical Caribbean sun.

I cycled for an hour and a half on Monday afternoon, down to Robesonia and back, nearly burning my lungs in the process in the cooler air that I am not quite used to yet. The hill behind the house on the back roads that go round Blue Marsh Lake is big and steep and difficult when you have not ridden a bicycle in several weeks. By the top of it I was panting hard and the cold air in my lungs was not feeling good. I had the hiccups because of this later in the day, for over an hour.

On Tuesday I went running with Oatie. I am not sure who enjoyed it more, me or her. We took the new trail over by the lake, where I can let her run. It was just getting dark, and I was ridiculously dressed. I had white long underwear tights beneath bright red board shorts, a red rain jacket to match and a bright yellow reflective vest from ICA in Sweden that Mia gave me. I wore a black beanie and a headlamp and my five finger shoes, which are now about to fall apart. I need to glue the rubber sole back on. The toes flap around when I run.

We ran up and down the hill right by the driveway (we live on Hilltop Rd. Imagine that). It was raining, but given the context, it was actually slightly enjoyable. The fresh temperature was invigorating, and I am sure Oatmeal felt it too. She has not run in over two months. Her hair is long now because Dad refuses to cut it and Mom does not have much of a say since she does not drive them anymore to the clipper. Lewis is shiny and black too. Dad calls them 'real dogs' now. I agree. I have to lead Oatmeal down through the basement and quietly get dressed so Lewis does not hear us. He gets jealous. He loves to run, but is horrible on a leash. For the first half of the run he pulls as hard as he can (last time round with both of them I actually hooked him to Oatie. She runs slower and steadier and was able to slow him down a little so there was less tugging on my end of the leash). But by the second half he is so winded he needs to be dragged along behind. A few times he has thrown up near the end of a run, likely due to his effort in the beginning. So I do not take him along, normally. Sometimes he sees us leaving and puts on such sad face and a lonesome whine that I cannot bear to leave him behind. I always regret it, and I think he does too.

So we went out the basement, and Lewie did not follow or complain. Oatmeal, very unlike Lewie, trots right alongside me, the leash slack the entire time. She looks back at me smiling, I swear. When we get to the trail I leave her off the leash. She usually stops to pee, than darts ahead into the bushes sniffing for something and disappears for a while. When she realizes I have not stopped but am now a few hundred yards down the trail, she looks up, searches for me, finds me and runs as fast as she can to catch me. Once she is confident I have not disappeared, the process repeats itself. She has never run away (though I think she would if Lewie were along).

I parked in the grass today at the mall because there were no more parking spaces left and I was in the Jeep.

Blake and I have been back in the 'garage' with Dane twice this week. Back for me, first go for Blake. Today, two days after the first session, it is still difficult to walk. I bought 42 eggs from him, a gallon of raw milk and a whole chicken which we will eat for dinner tonight.

I cannot understand why people go to Starbucks, order there coffee to have in the store, and then drink it out of a paper cup with a plastic lid. I do not believe Starbucks even offers real cups. I ordered a single espresso one time and they gave it to me in a small paper cup like you might get at a water cooler (!). I went into to order Mom her chai latte today and smiled at the scenario. People are insane.

Friday Column: Can I get some freaking real milk please!?

2011-12-17T00:05:00.001+01:00

(Yes it is late, but it is still Friday).

Why is it that 'standard' is so sub-standard?

Yesterday in St. Lucia, Mia and I were enjoying my secret Santa present at the Bread Basket, one of the myriad cafes in Rodney Bay Marina, where the ARC finish festivities are still going on (the secret Santa, by the way, is a disproportionately enjoyable activity that we ARC staff participate in each year. Each person is allowed to spend $30EC dollars on some sort of knick knack to give to a person whose name you draw from a hat. Inevitably, we are given only a few hours to complete the task, usually within the marina. The options are fairly limited - there is a cheesy tourist shop called 'Drop Anchor' in the center of the marina, a small not-well-stocked grocery store, said cafes, a marine chandlery - that was closed - and an electronics store. Plus a sailmaker and Suds laundry, which do not offer much. The gifts are more often than not silly - take for example Nick's hard hat and safety goggles he got last year - but this year there were decidedly more practical ones. I got a gift card to the Bread Basket).

A further aside - today we were at the same Bread Basket drinking another frozen cafe latte (the subject of today's diatribe, which I will get to), when a drunk man from Martinique fell off the balcony adjacent to our table and landed with a thud in the grass. Only after bouncing off an a large air conditioning unit on his way down. He only spoke French, and the cadre of people standing around watching could not offer much help. He seemed fine - other than being so drunk to the point that he could barely speak - and no bones were poking out where they should not have been. Nonetheless someone called an ambulance and they took him off.

To the point. Yesterday, when we first ordered a frozen cafe latte at the Bread Basket, the waitress assured us that it was only milk, coffee and ice - no sugar, nothing extra. Sounded good to me. When it arrived, it was suspiciously dark and creamy. I took a sip. Mia took a sip (she rightfully did not order one of her own until tasting mine). We both grimaced. It was definitely not real milk or coffee, and there was definitely sugar in it. Mia chased the waitress back inside to tell her to cancel her order. It took several minutes to get the thick taste out of my mouth. Mia discovered that the 'real milk and real coffee' came out of a box, pre-mixed. The second ingredient was sugar.

Which prompted her to try and persuade the waitress that I was in fact disgruntled and would not be drinking my frozen cafe latte nor would I be happy about using my secret Santa gift card to pay for it. The waitress returned. She then assured us that she would be able to in fact make us another one, this time really with real coffee, milk and ice (no sugar). This she did. Again Mia waited to taste mine. Satisfied, she ordered her own and we enjoyed them.

But why is the standard fare the crappy fare? Why is it fake? Why should I by default suspect something labeled as innocently as a frozen cafe latte as not telling the truth?

The coconut men on the other side of the road outside the marina have it right. They whack open coconuts by the bushelfull and pour them straight into recycled water bottles, big ones. They sell them for $8EC out of the back of pickup trucks. I know what I'm getting. They are delightful.

The lady in the hotel this morning tried to make me pay $6EC for reconstituted warm milk. I just wanted it for my coffee.

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the Grinder Board). Day 7.

2011-12-16T22:36:00.003+01:00

Hilly beach run v.2. St. Lucia.

Another midday run today that started at about 10:15. I took an alternate route to the beach (sort of), and ended up in the same place. The route was the same as before - up and over two rather large hills, one being macadam, the other rocky and barren, just the type of rugged trail that I like to run on best. The terrain requires constant concentration, each step has to be fully thought through. It feels like you're going faster and it's much easier mentally to run further distances. I passed a group of people on horseback, twice.

Stats: 4.03 miles / 37:45 / 9:21 m.p.mile / 2:29 off pace

'Spindrift of Jersey,' and 'Handling Breakages at Sea, Part II'

2011-12-15T14:05:00.004+01:00

Spindrift of Jersey enact a steering repair at sea.
Photo courtesy Chris Austin, Spindrift.

In the night, the pin connecting the steering chain to the steering cables came loose and was lost in the engine compartment. 20-knots of breeze was blowing from astern, both headsails were poled out and there was a fair bit of sea following them astern.

“You’re suddenly thinking, ‘this is an unusual feeling under full sail, at night,” Chris the skipper mentioned. “I said, ‘oh dear, how unfortunate,’” he joked.

'Cruinneag III' and Handling Breakages at Sea, from ARC 2011

2011-12-14T21:15:00.003+01:00

Cruineag 3, a classic wooden ketch built in Scotland in the 1930s.
(Photo courtesy of cruinneag.com)

Check out a new, two-part feature on the ARC website that I posted this afternoon about handling breakages at sea. I particularly enjoyed Cruinneag III's attitude on the whole thing. An excerpt from today's story:

Karen allowed that they view most of the sophisticated equipment onboard as luxuries, and as such, do not rely on it. Their autopilot is a hydraulic unit connected by a bespoke ram to the rudder. Were it to fail, Karen felt confident they could do without.

“We know how to balance the boat without the autopilot,” Karen said. “Nick is very good at fixing things as well. But if it failed beyond repair, we had enough crew to hand-steer. More than likely we could have balanced the sail plan and coaxed her sail herself.”

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the Grinder Board). Day 6.

2011-12-13T23:09:00.002+01:00

Rodney Bay to another beach.

Hot again. Not like yesterday (I ran after 5pm, so it was mostly in the shade with a low sun). We first went to Pigeon Island with Clare and Alain and ate lunch at Jambe de Bois before hiking to the top of the island. I drank a big bottle of coconut water that I shared (a little) with the others. We took photos. Guys on the beach where I ran to told me to be careful and run with a friend because 'there are bad people in the forest.'

Stats: 5.3 miles / 46:30 / 8:46 m.p.min / 1:54 off the pace.

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the Grinder Board). Day 5.

2011-12-12T19:35:00.001+01:00

Hilly beach out-and-back, St. Lucia

It is not a good idea to go running at 12:30 on the afternoon on a tropical island. Even worse an idea to attempt this one night after about 15 havana cocktails and half a pound of salt pork. I was slightly dehydrated, to say they least. Nonethelesss, I ran. I would do it again.

I listened to music this time round, which I do not often do when I run with Mia. We chat instead. The Arcade Fire came on first, then a song by the Australian band Evermore. It made me think about music in a way I have not before. The Arcade Fire - the song was 'Haiti' (I just put it on now, again) - gave me a cool feeling. Despite the incredible heat. Colors can be warm and cool (red and blue), but I never thought of music that way. Evermore was warm. The song ('For One Day') had a decidedly warmer feel to it, particularly following 'Haiti.'

Music (or sound, I suppose), like fragrances, for me is more closely related to memory than any other sense. The amount of pleasure I derive from any particular song has more to do with where I was when I first heard that song (or, rather, where I was when the song became recognizable to me, when I got used to it). Music is connected to mood.

I first heard Evermore when I lived in Brisbane, Australia (maybe that's why it feels 'warm' to me?). I got to know that album there ('Dreams'), and listened to it often. I listened to it in New Zealand as well, when I met Mia. I recall one particular time taking a nap in our hostel in Taupo and listening to it as I went to sleep.

Another album (also called 'Dreams') by The Whitest Boy Alive I can only listen to in Sweden. I first got used to it there and it gives me such good memories of living in Stockholm that I do not let myself listen to it anywhere else for fear of ruining that. Likewise, another of their albums I have ('Rules') I first started listening to at home in PA, running on the new trail with Oatie. It will forever remind me of that one instance; that memory is inexorably linked to that album. Peter Bjorn and John's 'Writers Block' is perhaps the only album that I can listen to anywhere, and without recalling anything significant (though it does bring back memories of the concert in Pittsburgh with Nate and Ryan). It is my all-time favorite album though, and I have listened to it so often so as to perhaps have erased any specific memories abotut it.

Stats: 4.2 miles / 37:50 / 9:00 m.p.min. / 2:08 off the pace.

Getting better, only slightly.

ARC kids share thoughts on Atlantic crossing

2011-12-11T17:02:00.001+01:00

ARC Village & the St. Lucia Hinterland

2011-12-10T21:52:00.001+01:00

From a feature I wrote for the ARC website this afternoon:

The coconut vendors, of which there are plenty, admit that the tourists do not quite understand the attraction. “We sell most of the drinking coconuts to the locals,” said one particularly friendly vendor in Castries. “The tourists don’t even know what they’re missing.”

Check it out here.

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the Grinder Board). Day 4.

2011-12-10T19:37:00.000+01:00

The best run so far. Legs were springy, it was early enough that the sun was not out yet and I had about ten hours of sleep and no booze the night before. We had posted a noticeboard in the ARC office for anyone to join us. No one did. We had fun.

Stats: 4.6 miles / 42:00 / 9:08 m.p.mile / 2:16 off the pace.

The Friday Column: 'Coconut Vending Area'

2011-12-08T18:23:00.001+01:00

St. Lucia is getting more and more familiar. This is the third year Mia and I have worked here for ARC, and the fourth time we’ve visited including Broadreach (5^th if you count the time we anchored off the Pitons on the way back from Trinidad, but that was only for a few hours…we did buy fruit from a local boat though).

Monday we had the day off (days off always follow the 0200-0800 night shift – which we are on right this moment – and are followed the next day by a 0800-2000 double-shift. But that 24 hours without any responsibilities is wonderful). The yellow-shirt team has a rental car we can use, mainly to get back and forth from the marina and the hotel in the middle of the night, but also for use on days off.

We took the car south to the market in Castries, which we first discovered on that Broadreach trip. The traffic on the island is bad, especially in the first half-mile between Rodney Bay Marina and the new Bayview Mall (or whatever it is called). The intersection there is not well designed. There are loads of cars on this island. There are loads of cars on most of the islands here, and it usually makes for sour driving experiences. St. Martin around Christmas time was the absolute worst. We gave up trying to go for dinner that one night, barely making it a mile from the Pad. Instead, we went to the grocery store and bought beer and cheese.

One of the coconut men.

This day in St. Lucia was not bad though. After driving around town a bit, which was busy (there were two cruise ships in port), we eventually found the parking garage and happily paid the two EC dollars it cost to park securely (as opposed to the 25 we paid last year when we got a parking ticket).

Castries is a Caribbean city. A very nice harbor is situated to the east. At it’s terminus, a single cruising sailboat was anchored a couple hundred feet from the shoreline, on which the main road runs. The cruise ship terminal is what you would expect from a cruise ship terminal. It’s too-clean and filled with stores selling watches and jewelry. Across the road, the market comes in two sections – one for the locals (apparently) and one for the cruise ship tourists (obviously). The latter is lined with stalls under a wooden fixed roof, selling things you would expect to find in a market next to a cruise ship terminal. Crappy t-shirts that say ‘We be Jammin’! St. Lucia’ and photo albums made from palm fronds that you can buy in every single Caribbean city. This market is under the wooden roof so as to be in the shade.

Beer on the dock in Gros Islet.

The locals market is on the opposite side, further from the waterfront. Most of those vendors have tables set up beneath umbrellas. Some of them are in permanent huts, and colorful (like the one Mia’s bread lady operates). Along the streets surrounding the market space are several small pubs and food establishments, though most have only a few stools, if they have any place at all to sit down.

The locals market is where Mia and I go to buy food, where we have gone to buy food since our first year down here. Then, we found a guy, Brock-Up, who sells meat from a grill along the street at a place called Brock-Up’s. He is set up on the corner, and just this year got a nice new awning, ostensibly sponsored by Carib beer, because the awning says ‘Carib Beer’ in bright blue and yellow. He has a small hut inside which a woman cooks the side dishes, and he runs a big grill outside, this year comfortably in the shade. He sells chicken wings and pork cutlets. He remembered us last year – I took him some plantains from another vendor, and he grilled them for me. Plantains on the grill. He remembered us again this year, and questioned why I did not bring any plantains.

The bread lady was closed on Monday, so Mia was out of luck.

We drank two coconuts before buying meat from Brock-Up (and his special ‘banana salad’ side dish, which was an interesting mash-up of salt fish, boiled green bananas and mixed veg). Then we drank two more coconuts after, spreading the love between the various pick-up trucks. A nice guy wearing a Philly Flyers shirt (I do not think he knew where Philly is) sold us our last one, and I told him we’d return later for more. He told us the tourists do not really know about coconuts, so it is mostly locals who buy them, which is strange, because back home they sell coconut water in cardboard drink boxes in the grocery store. I have had about twenty coconuts since we arrived.

Today we have another day off. We will visit the market again.

Magnus Olsson sails on Triumph in ARC 2011

2011-12-07T15:19:00.001+01:00

Christof Petter on Vaquita

Greetings everyone! I had the chance to chat with Magnus Olsson yesterday, the ex-skipper of Ericsson 3 in the 2008/09 Volvo Ocean Race. He sailed aboard the Swedish-flagged Triumph with a group of others. I chatted with him on the dock yesterday while he and his wife mended Triumph's genoa.

Martin Maier on Vaquita

I also had the chance to meet and chat with Andreas Hanakamp, another Volvo sailor who skippered Team Russia in the last event. His story is unique in that he partners all of his sailing projects with good-for-the-world awareness programs. This year, with Vaquita, he is partnered with the Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). Look for a more in-depth feature about those partnerships coming soon.

In the meantime, check out the feature I wrote on the ARC website about those guys and others.

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the grinder board). Day 3.

2011-12-07T08:08:00.000+01:00

Cricket Stadium Loop.
St. Lucia.

We ran the cricket stadium loop on Wednesday. It absolutely poured down rain.

I made the mistake of commenting at the start of the run that the slight drizzle we had was just enough to keep us cool but not be annoying. It quickly turned into a monsoon.

We ran through muddy puddles and through streams of water sluicing across the pavement, and it is no wonder that a place like this has to rebuild its roads all the time.

I was more tired that I allowed for (sleep-tired, not physical tired), and spend the rest of our 0800-1400 shift in a grumpy mood, especially when the handheld VHF radio was not picking up the office as clearly as I would have liked from the end of the dock. Afterwards, Mia went out with Clare and Will who had the day off. I slept for three hours in the hotel room.

Stats
Distance: 4.68 miles
Time: 00:45
Pace: 9:36 / mile

Not good.

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the grinder board). Day 2.

2011-12-06T08:01:00.000+01:00

Rodney Bay to the beach...again

Erell, the French girl from Phaedo, was supposed to come with us, but she slept in. We were up at 5:45...Nick heard us walk past his door at 5:57 and thought he was late for something. When he realized we were out for a run, he thought to himself that we were idiots.

This one was better and worse than the first one. Better in that I ran some hill repeats, but worse in that the overall pace was slower. I don't have numbers for this one, not that it matters.

Sub-three-hour marathon (...or trying to get on the grinder board). Day 1.

2011-12-05T20:10:00.001+01:00

Day One: 5 December 2011

Rodney Bay to the Beach.
St. Lucia.

It was not pretty, but likely effective. I ran at 2:30pm, in the heat of the day, but I had to. Mia and I have a meeting with Magnus Olsson, the Swedish ex-Volvo Ocean Race skipper of Ericsson 3 this afternoon. We were off all day, so I have to make the best of the time. I know when we get over to the marina I will not force myself to run later (which is the sensible option, given the temperature), so I got it over with now.

We worked until 8:00am this morning (from 2:00am), slept for a few hours in the hotel room and took off in the rental car to Castries. I am going to write about the 'Coconut Vending Area' for my first Friday column this week, so look for that. We met the meat guy at Brock Up's and had cutlets with banana salad. More on that later.

I ran in my Five Fingers, turning right out of the Palm Haven and heading northeast, towards the Atlantic side and the beach. Google maps shows roads in that direction, but they are really 'roads.' After a half-mile or so, the pavement disintegrated and became a deeply rutted dirt track with shanty homes and stray dogs on either side, and the oddly placed upscale B&B lingering further off the path behind the palm fronds. The topographical map does not quite show it so dramatically, but the path was two distinct mountain climbs and descents, one after the other and more or less in a straight line. At the top of the first there is a horse farm, and I passed three white riders and a local guide, who gingerly led their steeds down the path. Mostly it was firm, with the odd muddy spot. Running downhill at speed on a dirt trail is immensely enjoyable. It requires unexpected concentration, focus on each footfall, and the time disappears. My steps are shorter and more deliberate. One the way back, my rhythm was in-sync with the beat to a Moby song, which I turned up very loudly.

On the other side of the second big hill is the Atlantic Ocean.

Once I got back to the main road that the hotel is on, I searched for 'Summertime Clothes' by Animal Collective and sprinted around the block with the sound turned up as loud as it would go.

Distance Covered: 4.26 miles

Time: ~40 minutes

Pace: 9:22 / mile

Pace Needed for Sub-3: 6:52 / mile

Discrepancy: 2:30 / mile

Long way to go.

'Kinship' Across the Atlantic

2011-12-05T09:10:00.001+01:00

Saga 43 Sailplan

It is official. Thanks to the nice email I received from Tim Szabo the other day, Mia and I will be heading across the Atlantic again next spring. This time onboard Kinship, a Saga 43, and via the southern North Atlantic route through Bermuda and the Azores. We will actually be participating in the ARC Europe rally, getting a chance to sail in an event I worked on last year. The event finishes in Lagos, Portugal, a part of the world neither Mia nor myself has ever been, which is rather exciting (we have also never visited the Azores - part of the reason we went north on our boat last year was the inkling that we would likely get the chance to see the other route professionally someday; we never thought it would be this quickly though. Thanks Tim!). Though we have great fun working on-event for stuff like this (and plan to continue to do so), the ultimate goal has always been to keep sailing, so when the opportunity came up it was an easy decision.

Mia and I met Tim and Teresa in Tortola during the finish of the Caribbean 1500, which they had participated in to bring the boat south from the Chesapeake. Tim asked us to come by the boat to talk about sailing her to Europe. I do not have much experience with a Saga, but I was impressed when he showed us the boat, and I am more impressed after just reading a few things about it on the builder's website. The 43 is in my opinion, by far the nicest-looking boat that Saga makes. I look forward to sailing it.

Bob Perry designed the boat, taking cues from modern shorthanded ocean-racers like those in what used to be the BOC. The design brief was essentially opposite of what you find in typical production boats, emphasizing sailing ability and seakeeping qualities over interior volume. It is a narrow boat and long on the waterline. Read about the Saga 43 here.

ARC Europe Route

It is quite interesting how we ended up in this position. I have never really been a fan, philosophically, of these cruising rallies, and yet this will be the 4th one I have participated in (my Dad has done one as well without me - by next summer, between he, Mia and myself, we will have done 9). Since working on the organizational side of things I have come to appreciate the attraction, and I respect the World Cruising Club for their emphasis not so much on safety in numbers (but heavy on safety in general), but more on the educational and social side of things. The seminars and talks they host are well-attended, and often by less-experienced sailors. There is a big opportunity to get across messages that emphasize the 'Right' way to do things at sea, from preserving the world's oceans to how to behave on the radio.

The ARC in particular gets some high profile sailors and boats. I am working on a story for the website right now about just that - I had a conversation yesterday with the crew of Vaquita, an Akalaria 40, which includes Andreas Hanakamp, the ex-Volvo Ocean Race skipper of Team Russia. His Segelwelt company manages various sailing projects around the world, and his enthusiasm for the sport is infectious. Magnus Olsson, the skipper of Ericsson 3 in the last Volvo is crewing aboard the Swedish yacht Triumph, a Baltic 64 that arrived yesterday. Mia and I have a 'date' with him tomorrow afternoon on our day off to discuss my story.

Phaedo, the Gunboat 66 cat that was third across the line in ARC this year, won line honors in this past summer's Trans-Atlantic race from Newport to the UK, beating out the Maltese Falcon at the finish. Andreas Hanakamp told me that several ex-Volvo sailors were aboard Med Spirit, the maxi that took line honors in ARC this year (and then promptly departed for Martinique). So despite my reservations about events like this - I still would not do one on my own boat, the reason we went north on Arcturus last summer - I now understand the attraction, and am delighted to be able to participate on other people's boats.

Hanakamp incorporates good-for-the-world initiatives into his programs as well. Last year Vaquita was named We Sail for the Whale - both years, they promoted the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, to raise awareness. Check out the ARC 'Features' page tomorrow for more details.

Hanakamp said it best yesterday - "it's all about expectations," he told me. "I love working with people, managing their goals (whether it's the Volvo or something like ARC), and achieving success." His passion for the sport is infectious, and it is easy to see why he would enjoy the ARC as much as the Volvo. He told Mia later, when she went out on Vaquita to watch Scarlet Oyster finish, that "people love sailing with 'legends'."

Anyway, to my 'enlightened' self, these rallies are similar to a marathon or triathlon. You can run 26.2 miles by yourself, but a lot of the time it is more fun surrounded by thousands of other people who share a similar passion. That, above anything else, is why these events are so popular - and why, with the right attitude, they can be fun.

Pre-dawn in St. Lucia

2011-12-04T11:39:00.001+01:00

Nix crew were in a festive mood
despite the early hour.

"Cheers Nico!"

The crew of Nix, an X-612, was in a celebratory mood this morning. Mia and I went out to I-dock to greet them, only minutes after they had bested the bigger Swan 62 Acool Turabi across the finish line. It was close - only one and a half minutes separated the two boats - but Nix came out on top.

From our post in the ARC office, we listened in on the radio to a rather humorous exchange between the two boats and the ARC finish line (which consists of a network of former participants who have volunteered for the job - this year there are seven boats who want to help, so the marina set up a permanent mooring on the south end of the line to make it easier for boats to swap watches. Each is responsible for a twenty-four hour shift). Acool Turabi evidently had a beter VHF onboard, and was communicating regularly with the finish line, while Mia and I listened in from the office. As they crossed and the finish line boat announced their arrival over the radio, Acool Turabi came back again - "we have not crossed the finish line yet!" The finish line crew had seen Nix cross the line first.

The welcome procedure is a nice one here. Along with Johnny, a local St. Lucian who is working the night shift for the Tourism Board, and his rum punch, Mia and I strolled out onto I-dock with handheld radios and Nick's new flashing LED light to guide Nix in. Acool Turabi elected to anchor out after nearly running aground before even attempting to enter the channel (they draw 13 feet...). Nix has done the ARC before, but set a personal best for the 2,800 mile course this year, which delighted skipper Nico and the rest of his crew, who were all dressed for the occasion in their clean white polos. They did not stay clean for long though once the champagne started flowing.

Click to see recent news from the ARC.

Vaquita, first boat in ARC Racing Division, Arrives

2011-12-04T07:03:00.001+01:00

Some news, from the ARC website (which I wrote yesterday)...

"After a phenomenal 2,800-mile passage in typical Trade Wind (read 'fast') conditions, Vaquita arrived in St. Lucia yesterday (Friday) afternoon. The Akalaria 40 is the first boat to cross the finish line in the Racing Division, over a day ahead of their nearest competition."

ARC 2011 Under Way

2011-12-02T16:45:00.001+01:00

Rothmans Arrives in St Lucia

Phaedo Arrives early Friday morning.

Already a busy day in the ARC office. Four boats have arrived, and the Akalaria 40 Vaquita is due in sometime in the next few hours. Vaquita is only 40-feet long, but has the highest (read fastest) handicap in the entire event. Still, under 13 days across the Atlantic (2800 miles) is impressive.

Med Spirit earned line honors, crossing last night around 2330. With her 15-foot draft, she did not even attempt to enter the marina, and has already left for Martinique this morning. Rayon Vert, a trimaran, was a close second (and was actually overtaken by the bigger Maxi Med Spirit last night).

Mia and I woke up around 0345 this morning in anticipation of Phaedo, the distinctive Gunboat 66, painted bright orange (and looking quite impressive at the head of I-dock). They arrived about 0500 into Rodney Bay marina, and were rather excited by Mia's presentation of rum punch and Heineken. Rothmans followed shortly thereafter. Rothmans is a 90+ foot Maxi, former Whitbread boat, with twenty crew onboard, a mix of old and very young Swedes. I think Mia enjoyed speaking with them - I enjoyed listening.

The local news crew was by this morning to interview some of the first arrivals. Phaedo's crew were very receptive, and gave a nice chat about their recent program. The boat has been across the Atlantic three times already this year, most notably winning the Newport - Uk Trans-Atlantic race by a slight margin over Maltese Falcon. Phaedo's photographer was actually responsible for the dramatic photos of Rambler 100 after she capsized in the Fastnet Race this past summer. She and her owner are based in St. Barth's for the winter.

Check out official photographer Tim Wright's (of photoaction.com) photos of the boats crossing the line.

Revisiting Carrauntoohill

2011-11-29T21:24:00.001+01:00

I have discovered that I can now quite easily imbed photo slideshows. Likewise, I have stumbled upon some old photos from my first trip to Ireland when Michael and I climbed it's highest peak. Check out the story below that I originally wrote immediately following the climb back in 2008 (?). I have edited it a couple times, but have not touched it in a while. Below is a recent edit. Enjoy.

Today I had, without a doubt, the worst shower of my life. You know how you feel after a long day of skiing; you're soaking wet and freezing cold, a cold that will not go away without a hot shower. Well that was me today, and after my long-anticipated shower, I'm still freezing cold. This despite wearing two long underwear shirts underneath a wool sweater, and long underwear under my jeans.

Barring a cataclysmic seismic event on the island of Ireland, nobody will ever stand on a spot higher than Michael and I have. That spot was Mt. Carrauntoohill, which menacingly juts skyward, rising 2500 vertical feet (to a summit at 3500 feet) from it's base, and looks more like a peak you'd see in Switzerland than Ireland. The snow began about halfway up the mountain, and the surrounding slopes, green as Kermit, were engulfed in snow at their peaks. And we stood on the highest one.

Since coming to Ireland, Michael and I have been craving some adventure. We'd stopped at each castle we'd seen along the road and traveled to the brink of the Atlantic to see Europe's oldest lighthouse. At Hook Light, we braved the wind and rain, and watched an offshore gale send 15-foot breakers smashing into the rocky shoreline, their spray lifting skyward nearly as high as the lighthouse itself. We drove onward from Wexford, where we'd spent the first night on the Emerald Isle, with no destination in mind, just enjoying the scenery. We stopped again along towering cliffs guarding Ireland's southern coast, and couldn't stop telling each other we were actually in Ireland. It was everything we'd expected and then some.

Around 7pm last night we rolled into Killarney, which looked like a nice spot in Lonely Planet. There is an enormous national park on the town's doorstep, and we wanted to explore. After wandering through town and stumbling into Neptune's Hostel, we headed for a pub. Three Irishmen with fiddles and a concertina played sea chanties and Bob Dylan while we enjoyed the best-tasting Guiness in the world. It was during then that we decided to attempt climbing Ireland's highest mountain, and by the second beer we reckoned it'd be easy.

Upon returning to the hostel and telling the receptionist of our plans, our expectations were immediately brought back to earth. She warned us of the snow in the mountains, the relentless wind that scours the summit, the plummeting temperatures and the fickle weather… and this was in the summer. She suggested we instead rent some bikes and go explore the more accessible parts of the park, which included a large lake where stood a 15th century castle. It sounded nice, but we had already decided we had to at least attempt the mountain, and turn back if it got ugly.

The alarm went off this morning at 7am, and we'd purposefully parked the car in a lot where it needed to be removed by 8am, to motivate us into action. I ate two enormous bowls of Irish Muesli to top up my energy stores, and we geared up as if to go skiing, and set off for the base of the mountain. After driving maybe 15 minutes, we caught our first glimpse of the dazzling peak, and exchanged nervous laughs and asked ourselves what the hell we were getting into. I cannot emphasize how large and intimidating the mountains look here. The highest peak rises to only 3500 feet, but the fact that they rise from sea level, and are strewn with sheer cliffs, jagged peaks and unfathomably steep slopes makes them appear downright terrifying to anyone with the idea of climbing one.

We arrived at a small farm at the end of a stunning one-lane road. The road followed a series of switchbacks as it descended into a large valley filled with grazing sheep. At the tiny car park, there was a donation mailbox to leave your 2 Euro for use of the lot. In the summertime there is a small hut with fireplace and hot showers, but it is inexplicably closed in the winter, when, ostensibly, one might need it the most.

Climbing the mountain involved far more than just scampering up it's steep slopes. We first had to navigate a 4 mile valley, slowly rising from the car park, vaguely following a cascading river that brought snow runoff down from the hills. Aside from my inadequate footwear (I was only wearing running shoes), we were dressed for the occasion, I in my ski pants and puffy coat, Michael in a similar getup of waterproof fabric. We decided to hike up into the valley to the base of the mountain, assess the weather and the conditions and make a decision from there as to whether we'd actually go higher.

The walking was arduous, steadily increasing in elevation. We followed the riverbed, which cut a deep swath through the surrounding green fields. We had to stay up on the steep slopes of the bank, as far above in the fields, the grass was more like a swamp, and the only dry footing was hopping along the rocks along the river. Two or three times we had to ford the river, skipping from one side to the other while trying to keep our feet dry. This was no small task, as the river was 15 feet wide at it's narrowest, and moving at a decent clip, with rapids and several small waterfalls. We pushed on however, the mountain looming ever closer, drifting in and out of the low clouds. Only once were we able to catch a brief glimpse of the impossibly high summit.

The hike through the valley continued ascending until we were in the mountain's shadow; here we were greeted with the most stunning scenery yet. Not a sole was in sight, the only sounds the rushing water and the howling wind, as it tumbled down the steep slopes of the surrounding peaks, seemingly trying to halt our progress. The valley was surrounded on three sides by towering peaks, and we had the feeling an ant might have if walking between the fingers of some ones outstretched hand. At the terminus of the valley were two lakes formed by the runoff of the neighboring peaks, which spilled into the river below. This was an unexpected surprise, and we stopped here to take a rest and some photos before pushing up the most difficult portion of the hike. We'd been walking for 2 hours.

Two peaks, one to our right and one to our left dominated our immediate frame of view. Between them ran what's called a 'saddle', connecting the peaks in a concave arch of exposed rock and snow. To reach the low point of the saddle, we were faced with the difficult task of ascending the 'Devil's Ladder' a chute right up the middle, 1000-foot cliffs boxing us in on either side. This would have been difficult in dry conditions, but because of the snow up at higher elevations, there was quite a bit of runoff, which cascaded down the Ladder, making the climb slippery and cold.

Most of the climbing on the Ladder was zig-zagging between the cliffs, looking for rocks to hop onto to increase our elevation. The ground was unstable, with loose boulders at every turn, and we took extra care not to knock one of them on the person following. Several times we had to boost each other up to a higher rock, but we continued on, rather swiftly, and the going was tiring, but not extremely difficult. But every time we turned around we were granted a fantastic view of the valley we'd just traversed, and also reminded of how steep this slope was – and that we'd have to walk down eventually.

At this point we were in uncharted territory. We half expected that we'd turn around at the base of the Ladder, but the weather was holding, we'd only gotten a few drops of rain on us, and by now we were pumped to at least get to 'Christ's Saddle', and re-evaluate there. After all, it was enormous fun, and serious adventure, and we were in our element.

With about 50 feet to go on the Ladder, we hit the snow line. It was already mostly melted, but made the going a bit slower – the rocks we'd been using as footsteps were now hidden under a melting layer of snow, and it was getting steeper. The final pitch was almost straight up, and we reverted to climbing up on our hands and knees, digging into the snow for traction. I reached the Saddle first, and was greeted by a phenomenal view of the opposite valley, lakes and rivers bisecting the green fields below. To my right was the summit of Mt. Carrauntoohill, our mountain. The neighboring peaks made up the MacGillycuddy's Reeks, the highest range in Ireland. They were much closer and much scarier at our new vantage point. We now stood at 2400 feet; we knew this thanks to Michael's GPS…we'd been setting waypoints every half hour in case the weather turned and we lost visibility on the way down.

I was dead-set on making the summit by now. I never imagined even getting to the Saddle, and was now inspired to keep going. We rested for about 15 minutes, but soon my feet began to get chilly – they were soaked by now, and the temperature had dropped to below freezing – there was about a foot or two of snow drifting in the 30+ knot winds. We needed to keep moving.

I led the way, and the going was much easier on the ridge that led to the summit. I was suddenly living every adventure story I've ever read about climbing a mountain, and could hardly contain my enthusiasm. Michael was dragging a bit, so I carried the backpack for the final push. The snow got firmer the higher we climbed, and the slope gradually became steeper and rockier – and it got progressively windier. The strongest gusts were in the range of 30-40 knots, which was disconcerting, but for the time being the peak was in the sun. Clouds were building to the south however, and I urged Michael to pick up the pace if we were going to make the summit in sunlight. I did not want to get up there and be stuck in a cloud…we had already had more than enough adventure to worry about finding our way down.

I was 50 feet higher than Michael when the summit came into view. There is a large steel cross marking the summit, and seeing it for the first time energized me. I nearly ran on my hands and knees for the final 100 feet or so. Then I crested the last ridge and stood up. Words cannot describe the feeling I had at that moment. I experienced a surge of adrenaline, was overwhelmed by the 360 degree view, was scared by the sheer drop of the cliffs on the north face of the mountain, and was overcome with an enormous sense of accomplishment. I'd just done something I'd always dreamed of, and felt an enormous sense of pride. But at that moment I also confirmed to myself that I can do absolutely anything. Suddenly I decided I'd climb more mountains, I'd sail around the world, I'd complete that full Ironman. I discovered again that I have it within myself to do anything that I set my mind on doing.

When Michael crested the final ridge we high-fived each other, embraced, and soaked it all in. We took photos of each other and of the surroundings. You could actually see the ocean from our vantage point, and we couldn't believe we'd made it all the way to the top, two wanna-be adventurers probably in way over our heads. But we made it, and we savored every second on that peak. Strangely the wind actually died down, and we experienced a serene peace, standing on our spot, the highest in all of Ireland, 3500 feet straight down into the ocean.

…

The entire way up, we kept saying to ourselves that the hard part was going to be coming down. We stayed in the snow drifts on the descent from the summit along Christ's Saddle. Here the footing was much more secure, and we traversed from one side of the ridge to the other, following the snow. We made remarkable time, and arrived back at the top of Devil's Ladder by 1pm, the original time we said we'd turn around, no matter what. We were a bit concerned about descending the Ladder, especially the snow-covered steep section near the top. Michael went first, sliding on his ass most of the way, and I followed close behind, scurrying crab-like on hands and knees. The volume of runoff had increased dramatically, and the climb down was much slippery and wetter than the climb up. It didn't much matter, because it had also started raining, and we were completely soaked.

Our legs were quite thankful when we emerged back onto relatively flat ground. Now all that lay between us and the warm car was 4 miles of hiking through the river valley. This time we headed for the left side of the river, and followed its banks, again hopping from rock to rock. Getting our feet wet was less of a concern however, which made the route-finding a bit easier. Fording the river was now only a matter of walking through a shallow bit. The sheep looked at us funny, and we steered clear of the horned ones. This is after all their territory, and we thanked them for letting us use their mountain as we passed by.

After 6 hours of near constant walking and climbing, we finally crossed back into the car park, in the pouring rain, soaked and delirious with satisfaction. As it turns out, we timed the weather absolutely perfectly. When we were on the summit you could see dark clouds rolling in from the south, so we didn't dawdle and headed down with haste. It paid off, because soon after leaving the Ladder behind us, it began raining in earnest, and continued the length of the valley. The mountain was now cloaked in rain and fog, and when we turned around for one last glimpse, it was gone.

Which leads me to my horrifying shower. We finally returned to the hostel and proudly announced our success to the same receptionist who tried to steer us towards the bike-rental. She happily rented us another room, and even offered to do our laundry for a discounted rate. When I finally stepped into the shower, the only hot water was literally a trickle, barely enough to get the soap out of my hair. I stood there, freezing, trying to get warm, unsuccessfully. Now I sit in the café of the hostel, having drunk my second cup of tea in an effort to bring my core temperature back up, to no avail.

The sense of accomplishment I'm feeling right now I have never experienced. I think it's a combination of doing something totally on a whim, with little preparation, something we probably had no business getting ourselves into, and the ecstasy that nature provided our senses at the summit. The photos I got are amazing, but they of course do little justice to the serenity and the peace we felt standing on that mountain. I'm physically drained, but mentally bursting with energy and enthusiasm. Suddenly all bets are off. I've opened up an entire new part of myself and the boundaries within have become limitless. I have stoked a long-smoldering fire within myself, and it won't easily be extinguished.

En Route

2011-11-14T16:57:00.001+01:00

I am always the last person on a plane.

We are in the midst of the Caribbean 1500 cruising rally – the fleet was entirely at sea as of last night, which I confirmed via the internet after I had spent 8 ½ hours in the car driving home from Hampton – and I had to get up today at 6am to send the fleet the weather report for November 12. They never got it, though I hope some of them got the message that they would not over the SSB. Thanks to Tim, the tech guru from techyach.com. And the SSB shore station.

I am airborne now, and will see Mia tonight if I make all of my connections. Speaking of which, Mia’s travels only ended last night after three days in the making. She left Stockholm on Wednesday, spent a night in London, boarded a flight that lifted off three hours late, spent a comped night in a resort on Barbados (where Matt Lauer filmed the Today show yesterday morning) and then took a tour of the Caribbean, flying out of Bridgetown and stopping in Antigua, St Kitts and St Maarten (in that order) before finally touching down at Beef Island in Tortola late last night. It has been nearly two months since we have seen each other not on a videocamera or in a photograph.

I will never understand while people herd themselves like cattle trying to get on an airplane. What exactly is the point of standing in a crowded line with a large backpack so that you can stand in an even more crowded line inside the flight tunnel thing, and finally sit in a crowded seat uncomfortably while you wait for everyone else to board the plane. As the last person aboard, they shut the door behind you and taxi away from the gate almost before you can fasten your seatbelt This is the way to fly. And I did touch the outside of the plane with my right hand as I stepped aboard. Thanks for that Katie D.

We flew over the mouth of the Delaware Bay and I could clearly see Cape May and the canal we went through at the beginning of our trip this past summer. And the beach we ran close in on when my dad and I delivered the J-37 down from Connecticut (to this day I still remember how to spell that word from what I was taught in grade-school – ‘connect-i-cut’. Neat). From high up it actually does look like you can save some time by going through the canal. On the chart and on the water it would appear otherwise, but I do not now think that is the case.

These new headphones I bought at the airport were worth every penny. I cannot believe I went the entire summer and fall using the old Apple headphones that we found in the laundry in Baddeck. They had been through the wash. I had to swap the left for the right, because for some reason I could not hear correctly if they were in the proper earholes. Weird.

We Are Penn State...They Are Not

2011-11-10T18:42:00.001+01:00

I was the last person in the world that thought I would end up at school at PSU. I hated it. I hated the idea of it. Joe Paterno and football on Saturdays and that stupid cheer and those stupid blue and white jerseys made my skin crawl. I just did not get it. I could not understand how so many people could get so caught up in something so unimportant.

After a semester at Coastal Carolina University my freshman year – where I went for Pro Golf Management, one of the few schools in the country that had such a program – I decided to leave there. I hated the golf thing and I did not like being that far away from home. The honors program I was in at CCU was a joke, the classes too easy and the lifestyle down there unappealing.

By December of 2002, I was set to transfer. Villanova was high on the list, one of the four school’s I had originally applied to. But they probably would not take me mid-year. Lehigh was a go. I did good enough on the transfer application that they would take me mid-year – one of only five such students, out of about 100 who applied – and I was set to go there. Though I had no idea what my major was to be, it did not matter – Lehigh was a top-notch school, close to home and should have fulfilled my immediate needs.

And then I went to a PSU football game. Penn State versus Michigan State (*just added this, my mistake). Larry Johnson’s 2,000 yard season, and the game he broke the record. My best friend Nate Bauer took me, along with Dane Miller, my other best friend. We were hammered before the game, trying to hurdle over the road blocks on the walk over from East Halls. We sat in the student section. I was excited when the drum major guy did his backflip. The ‘We are – Penn State!’ chant, as heard from inside the stadium, finally made sense.

Before the end of the first half, my voice was hoarse from shouting LAAAARRRRRRYYY! as loud as I could into Dane’s ear. I was only visiting Nate and Dane that weekend, but it was clear on the drive home that I would be transferring here, not Lehigh.

Conveniently, I had already applied. PSU was my ‘safe’ school, even though I never intended to go there. However, my application was still active, and they would take me at any time of the year.

I got a room in North Halls. And my first girlfriend. I was that guy (along with Nate, even moreso than me) in high school who all the popular girls liked as their best friend, but who never had a girlfriend. For whatever reason, that stigma did not follow me to college (which was okay with me).

I met some great guys that first year, and we founded PSU Skiers. Eight of us took the inaugural pilgrimage up to Mont Tremblant in French Canada, an 11-hour ride with all of us and our gear piled into my mom’s white minivan. The place lived up to its reputation as one of the coldest east-coast ski resorts. The worst day temperatures at the summit were minus-44 – the temperature at which Fahrenheit and Celcius are the same – and the clear-coat on my new Rossignol’s actually cracked (the company sent me a replacement pair). The baskets on my poles shattered in the cold.

Our week up there started a tradition. Several times a semester we would find someone with a big apartment and throw parties for the membership. I had an old ski that we glued shot glasses onto – five of them - so we could communally drink vodka together. For some reason (probably a lot to do with The Big Lebowski – our unofficial drink amongst the founding members was a white Russian.

By the time I graduated, our club went from a ragtag, non-recognized organization of skiers and friends into one of the larger clubs on campus. We fought – and won – for recognition by the student government, were able to apply for funding and got our website (which we designed on our own) onto the universities official list of student organizations. My last trip as President (and actually my last big ski trip period) was Spring Break of my senior year. 40 of us flew out to Lake Tahoe for six days of serious skiing. Jeff Oshnack, one of my best friends and an original member, rode the lift with Glen Plake at Squaw Valley. I lost $800.00 at the casinos that week, which I justified to myself because I did not pay much for the actual skiing. It was the last time I have ever gambled.

Just recently, five years after graduation, Jeff got back in touch with me. He is living in Alaska now – he followed the snow after school, did a grad year in Colorado and took an internship in Alaska so he could ski. Jesse Ritter, another founding member, found me on LinkedIn only a few days after I got an email from Jeff. I have since gotten into the sailing world and have not skied since that Tahoe trip with those guys. Jeff and I are planning a backcountry trip to Sweden this winter now, and Jesse lives a half hour from my family’s house in Pennsylvania.

My old PSU friends coming out of the woodwork only a week or so before the scandal broke is an odd coincidence. Watching news of the riots this morning pissed me off. Students are idiots and do not fully understand the situation. Plus, what is rioting going to get us other than an even worse reputation.

My hatred of all things Penn State made a full reversal by the time I graduated. I was accepted into Schreyer Honors College my sophomore year and I understood what Colin Cowherd was saying on the radio yesterday when he referred to PSU as a ‘public Ivy’ school. I never fully got into the fervor surrounding the football team, but the ‘We are…’ cheer still gives me chills just thinking about it. And that drum major doing his flip is still pretty awesome.

It is sad that JoePa is taking the blame for this, but the university did not have a choice. I am happy they got Spanier too, because nothing short of that would have been enough. But what is really lost to current students and former students alike is the notion that PSU is above other schools.

I realized on graduation that saying I was a PSU alum meant a lot. It meant, first of all, that people knew where I was talking about (as opposed to CCU, for example). My network of people with things in common was instantly enlarged. Even though I still cringe a bit thinking about the things I hated about the idea of Penn State in high school, I still felt proud to say I went there. Traveling as much as I have, people all over the world know where I came from.

The most annoying thing in this whole mess is that the actions and inactions of a handful of people have affected the hundreds of thousands of us out in the world and the student body still there. It is a lot like the world in general – I do not want nuclear war, for example, but if Iran decides it does, it will undoubtedly affect me and there is nothing I can do about it. Pollution is so widespread now you cannot escape. Geographically, there are few places in the world to ‘opt out’ of modern society and it’s ills.

The students and graduates alike at PSU have nothing to do with this story, and yet we are the ones affected. As it turns out, JoePa, Spanier and the rest at the top are no better than the Section in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy. The giant coverup has exploded in their faces. They will go down in flames, are going down in flames, but it is the rest of us (most notably of course, the victims of Sandusky) that are bearing the brunt.

The idea that I feel shame now when telling people I went to PSU is something I never considered, even way back in high school, is incredible to me. Ironically, I had packed a ‘Happy Valley’ dark blue t-shirt with me this week in Hampton, and I wore it this morning on my run. I almost did not, again out of shame, but it was the only clean one I had. Why in the world should I – and the rest of the students – feel like we need to explain ourselves with drooping eyes when we tell people we came from Penn State?

But it is not the leadership necessarily that makes an organization great. Penn State, and "Penn State" is great thanks to its students and faculty, the organizations on campus, the town, THON. All of that stuff is still there, will still be there. Bringing down the few guys at the top will not change any of that, and it does not need to. What is good about "Penn State" remains good about Penn State. Separating the few that brought "Penn State" down, and distinguishing the many that remain to make Penn State what it really is, should be the ultimate goal going forward.

What needs to come out of this whole mess is the idea that we are still Penn State. Those at the top who betrayed those kids, have since betrayed the entire student body, the entire network of graduates and alumi, the entire aura – what it was, for better or worse – and in fact all along were never "Penn State" - and all that the phrase used to imply - to begin with. Even when, for 60+ years, JoePa represented everything that phrase ever meant.

For the handful of those at the top of the coverup, may they never utter those words ever again. But for those of us who really matter – the victims, the students, the alumni – may we – and the rest of the world – forever remember, that WE are Penn State.

Musasi

2011-11-08T03:05:00.002+01:00

For Dinner.

Transcribed from pencil on 8 November 2011…

I am in a Japanese restaurant. There is something very authentic about these places. The Asian stuff for instance. The lighting is dim, and very Japanese. It emanates from behind veiled walls and from colorful paper balls. Over the bar (where I am sitting), it shines down from the slightly overhanging roof protecting the sushi chefs. The case immediately in front of me contains the tentacle of an octopus.

I am drinking (about to finish) my second small glass of cold sake and I feel great. I feel very tired, but I feel great philosophically. The shrill voice of a woman I wish I had not noticed is piercing my thoughts and only slightly degrading my mood.

Support your local...

2011-11-04T12:39:00.003+01:00

I talked Kate into buying the new Coldplay album from a real record store in West Chester. The idea of a record store is appealing, as convenient as it is to buy from iTunes. But if nobody supports them, that idea will disappear. She bought two.

I pre-ordered a book from the local bookstore in West Chester, The Nerdist Way. For the same reason. On the way to Hampton from Oxford, I stopped at a little place called the Book Bin on the Eastern Shore and bought War, by Sebastian Junger (the guy who wrote The Perfect Storm). I didn't even want it really. But I felt like they deserved some of my money, and the book is really good.

So support your local everything. That stuff will not be around if we don't, no matter how much we like the idea. So go to Dane's gym. Go to Schell's. Enjoy it. Spread the word. Oh, and buy my book too! I'll send you a personalized, signed copy. Email me at andy@fathersonsailing.com.

Garage Strength - Oct 25

2011-10-25T17:33:00.003+02:00

October 25, 2011. ~8:30am

I was knocked out last night. Mom and I were late coming home from her Vitamin C treatment (I ended up on the NE extension of the turnpike by accident, not realizing it until we got to Quakertown). So I got to the gym around 5pm. By then, a lot of the high school athletes were there. Jason Coon was having a lousy day on the squat rack – he was doing jump-squats and dropped the bar – loaded with 225 lbs – and just about put a hole in the floor. Dane lectured him on staying in control. Jason went outside in the dark and in the dew and chucked sticks around the yard by the throwing circle, talking to himself all the while.

Anton.

Meanwhile I had a leg day. The cool thing about Dane’s routine is that I was warming up with what I normally would consider my workout – a few rounds of front squats and overhead squats with the bar, plus split squats. I started warming up for snatch with 25s on the bar, gradually moving up to 35s and I think getting about 120 or 130 for three or four reps, which is okay considering I have not done that move in years.

Power cleans went better, and I maxed out at 175, more than my bodyweight, so a success in my mind. I felt good last night. I squatted as well, managing 225 for five before failing after one rep at 235. Again, it has been about five years since I did anything with that much weight on it, so not bad. The ‘warm down’ – again, what I would have considered a workout on its own – was kettlebell swings with the 80 pounder (mine is only 36), followed by pistol squats (one-leg, butt to the floor, no weight), and jumping lunges. Four sets of this just about did me in. My calf was shaking on the drive home trying to depress the clutch when I shifted gears.

We ate the chicken soup I started making at Kate’s on Sunday. After picking the bones clean for dinner with Kevin and Kate on Friday night, I slow-cooked the bones in a crockpot for twelve hours or so. The next morning the rest of the meat fell off the bones into the soup, and I brought it home. It congealed into what Dane calls ‘chicken gelatin’ overnight in the fridge, and to get mom eating more I packed it full of rice, beans, carrots, spinach, half a stick of butter and some flour to thicken it. She managed to get down an entire bowl last night (plus half an avocado). The soup was excellent.

I do not think I was fully recovered this morning. I went over at 8:30 for a cardio routine. I am playing golf tomorrow and do not want to be sore from lifting heavy (though I fear my legs will be anyway from yesterday, but that is manageable on the golf course. Sore arms less so). Dane had me doing circuits of kettlebell snatches with the 50 pounder (heavier than I have ever done), rope climb, pushups, the walrus (walking across the floor on one’s hands, feet propped up on a wheeled block of wood, in a pushup position), more pushups, box jumps, jumping lunges and pulling the prowler. I could not recover between sets for some reason, and had a headache all morning. My heart rate was through the roof and took far longer to come down than usual. I only did two circuits and left after collecting my computer (I was recording the ambient sound of the gym to play in the background during some of the interviews).

Dane’s sister Kai (sp?) was there today working out. I have a time set tomorrow to chat with her about the farm and how her and Brant have helped out get the farm under way. She told me her five-year-old daughter works out once a week in the barn. “She has lats,” Kai said.

I also chatted with another woman (name?) with breast cancer. She was interested in mom’s Vitamin C treatment, and attributes her quick recovery from surgery to Dane’s diet and exercise program she had been on. She is back in the gym, seemingly healthy, and starts chemo shortly.

Both Dane and Dan were sporting new haircuts last night. Dane declared it is his last shave of the summer – he will let his beard rip from now on through the winter.

I left the gym this morning with another chicken (Dane claims the broth should get my mom some of her strength back, even if it is the only thing she can get down), plus some mint chocolate he let me try, which is amazing. I brought a dozen eggs home last night, which I ate for brekky this morning. I still have about half a gallon of raw milk (in the midst of Kate’s party on Saturday, seven beers deep, I started offering people gulps of the stuff out of the jug. I think her friends thought I was a little off. I also made myself an Ezekiel English muffin which likely contributed to their opinions of me).

Questions for Kai:

Whose idea was it to buy the farm?
What do you think of Brant mowing with your 18-month-old on his back?
How do you guys split the financing?
How much influence did Brooks have on this?
Tell me what you know about Brooks deal?
Who is Dane’s biggest influence? Brooks?
How close are the three of you to each other and your parents? How does that contribute to the success of you guys as a family?
How do you think Dane and Caitlin will raise Lincoln?
How often do you workout in the barn?
Do you and Brant have your own responsibilities beyond the farmhouse?
Tell me about the history of the farm and the house.
What do you do for a living? Brant? How do you guys reconcile that with the lifestyle your brothers are living?
How much influence does Joel Salatin have on Dane and/or Brooks?
I heard Brooks is presenting Food Inc. at the National Archives? Are you going?

Garage Strength Notes, Day 8

2011-10-13T17:44:00.002+02:00

October 13, 2011:

It was just Dane and me this morning. I arrived a bit after 8:30, a few minutes late because I was reading an article in the new issue of Time about Steve Jobs and did not want to rush. Dane was not there anyway. I walked into the open barn, failing when I tried to switch on the lights. Anton was barking somewhere in the distance. I found him in the little back office, sitting on a soft recliner in the dark. The ‘office’ is not quite an office, but is on the brink of perhaps resembling one. Same goes for the ‘bathroom.’ With a bit of imagination you can visualize the result, but both are a long way off from realization.

Anton followed me out of the dark office space. I walked across the Astroturf (which gave me a nice big blister on my big toe from pushing the ‘prowler’ back on Monday in my bare feet) to the little station on the opposite side of the barn, perhaps 50 or 60 feet away where Dane keeps his smart phone and iPod touch that is hooked into a set of computer speakers he apparently keeps plugged in all of the time so that when I browsed through his music and chose an artist and a song, the sound came out immediately and at a reasonable volume. Dane emerged from the adjacent farm house where his sister Kai and her husband Brant live, carrying two French presses full of coffee, which he would ostensibly be finishing on his own this morning as it was a training day for him. He ate a raw egg yolk by the side of the barn, discarding the shell in the bushes amongst the many others that had been given a similar fate (indeed once by myself).

I did a cardio routine today which involved a lot of jumping onto boxes, pulling the prowler across the turf and bouncing around the room in a series of burpee jumps that were quite difficult and not friendly to my lower back. I have incredibly tight hamstrings. The box jumps were actually really fun, each rep a little challenge to myself whether or not I could make it from a standstill onto the top. The stakes can be quite high. Dane recalled a story of a female fighter he trains who was having a sub-par day on the box, alternating jumps with sets of front squats in a nearby rack. She had completed the box jumps on the big box, which was not exactly a box at all but a metal frame platform, carpeted. But only just. After the next set of front squats Dane set up the smaller box. The woman was not amused (though I do not think Dane intended it to be funny), and promptly stationed herself back at the big box, where on the very first rep she missed the landing and crashed to the floor with a shin-bone bearing gash on her lower leg that ended up requiring sixteen stitches from smashing into the metal lip of the frame. On ‘max’ attempts now, Dane typically uses the wooden boxes (‘more forgiving’) and stacks stiff rubber pads on them to add height. Sometimes he will put a sweatshirt on the edge to prevent a similar accident.

The workout was a circuit, sort of. It should have been but we were too busy yapping between sets that I did not complete them in as quick succession as I should have. The series included the box jumps, prowler pull, kettlebell snatches, burpees, jumping lunges, more prowler, one-legged squats, more prowler, and box squats. We chatted about training. Last night on TV I saw by chance the ‘Crossfit Games,’ which incorporate a lot of the movements that Dane does in the barn, but branded as ‘Crossfit,’ a name that I gathered has something to do with Reebok (For Dane to become a ‘Crossfit’ gym, he would have to pay a $5,000.00 naming fee, plus take a $1,000.00 certification course, so that rich moms would pay to come to his “accredited” gym. He is actually more okay with the concept than I expected, especially the nutrition side of it which advocates the ‘Neanderthal diet,’ again a clever name for concepts that he has been preaching for years). I mentioned that the idea that they have an Olympic-style “games” for the Crossfit movements seems kind of silly because is not the point of Crossfit to get fit for a specific sport by incorporating full-body dynamic exercises into routines that focus on ‘useful strength’ rather than simply getting big and/or strong? Dane agreed, but because there is money in it, they will do it. He likened it to the Strongman competitions, which similarly seem to have pointless competitions simply for the sake of it. One of the Crossfit challenges was front-squatting 230 pounds for seven reps, riding a stationary bike for 700 meters and monkey barring back and forth on a 50-foot section of them. Do this once, then repeat two more times and go up against six other guys, the winner being the first one across the line. It was oddly entertaining to watch – these dudes are incredibly fit and look like statues, but more resemble triathletes in their lean builds than the typical running-back type you might see in the NFL – but I could not shake the fact that they ought to be transferring that fitness into something that more resembles an actual sport. And it is obviously a little bit about vanity too – most of the guys were clean-shaven all over to accentuate their abs, and quite obviously had gel in their hair despite the fact that this seemed to be a serious fitness competition. The event reminded me almost of a cross between a bodybuilding competition that is all about vanity, but where they actually have to use their bodies rather than just display them. I cannot decide if I would watch it again, but like I said, it was oddly enjoyable. I find it fun just to watch people doing cool things with their bodies, so I guess it qualifies.

After my routine, I followed Dane down onto the throwing circle where he would spend the next hour or so, alone and in the drizzle, practicing his technique and throwing simply for the sake of it. I asked him yesterday if he thinks he has another Olympic bid in him, and he answered almost nonchalantly and was non-committal. He immediately agreed with me when I suggested he was PRing because mentally he is in a happier place. I compared his throwing for the sake of it to someone heading to the driving range with a couple large buckets of golf balls, and Dane agreed with this as well. The act is almost meditative. I left with another dozen eggs and a gallon of raw milk.

Garage Strength Notes, Day 7

2011-10-12T12:54:00.002+02:00

October 11, 2011:

Arms today. I cycled over, nice and slow to try and get my legs loosened up after a brutal session yesterday. I have a large blister on my big toe from pushing the sled across the floor in barefeet. Dane has a word for the move, which I cannot think of right now. Evan and Jason were there, as was Dan again, a black woman I have not met, and two other guys I have not met. Dane was out back with Evan and Jason throwing when I arrived on my bike, a bit early. I mowed the lawn this afternoon for my dad.

My workout started with some kettlebell stuff – swings and Turkish get-ups – while Dane finished up with the throwers. I did some pushups. He came up and had me warm up on the fat-bar flat bench. The fat bar is difficult, and sets with only 100 pounds on were tough. But I am extremely weak. These were alternated with climbing the skinny rope (he has two attached to a beam in the ceiling, one about the size of my wrist – skinny – and the other about the size of Dane’s forearm. The bigger one is decidedly tougher). Next I moved over to the decline bench (with a normal-sized bar) and alternated sets on that with pull-ups on the monkey bar. I had to use the band for assistance. But I am extremely weak.

I asked Dane what marathon time it would take to get on the “grinder board,” the whiteboard off to one corner of the gym that lists peoples names’ and their remarkable accomplishments. If your name goes on the board it does not come down. Examples are squatting 2.5 times your body weight – this would currently equate to 437 ½ pounds for me, on my 175 lb frame. To put this in perspective, I squatted 455 in high school when I weighed 255, which at the time was a school record. Dane told me a sub 3-hour marathon would qualify, so that is my new goal. Thank you Ash and Brian for inspiring me to get back into it – Mia and I are now signed up for two marathons next spring, one in Tel Aviv and the other two months later in Stockholm. Stockholm will be my target.

I moved then onto sitting military press with some ring pull-ups, and finished off the day with “miracle grows” (because it’s a miracle how much they grow your triceps!), fat-bar seated curls and the forearm device.

Afterwards I chatted with Jason and Evan about the gym. Jason was one of Dane’s first clients back when Garage Strength was actually in a garage. He and Evan are going to tell me some stories tomorrow when I have the computer there to record everything. I ran into Jason’s mom in the driveway on my way out. She actually was the one who found Dane, through Coach “T” at SV. Her daughter had been a state-champ sprinter, and Jason wanted to follow in her footsteps from the throwers circle. Still in 8^th grade and significantly overweight, Jason’s mom signed him up with Dane, and they bought into his program, gym, food and all. She told me it was convenient for them, as Dane’s was only a few miles away, and Jason spent some time working there in the summer. Win-win for all involved.

Garage Strength Notes, Day 6

2011-10-12T12:53:00.005+02:00

October 10, 2011:

Dane told me that his philosophy – or what he wants to appear in the newspaper – sort of centers on ‘doing what you say you will do.’ His parents drilled that into him and Brooks as kids. If you want to be a state champ, work hard and do it, do not just talk about it. He talked to me today about personal responsibility and being accountable for your health. I told him my angle was going to be on him doing what he loved, not really about the gym. He said that no matter how much he hounds the people he trains, they have to want to do it themselves.

As for the food and the farm, he believes that food has a relationship to everything you do in life, and that healthy soil begets healthy food, begets healthy bodies, begets healthy relationships. He did not make the farm to be the only place in the world that does it, but rather because he believes in it, and he hopes other people follow his lead. He related the Russian coach and how he was an open book talking about training methods, versus the American coaches who will charge money just to talk to them, and then the secrets they divulge are not secrets at all! This annoys Dane.

Dane also related that when you have all these ideas about the world, mostly negative, especially in his case in college, that you should channel that negative energy into something positive that will actually change the world, rather than just sit and complain about it.

Garage Strength Notes, Day 5

2011-10-12T12:53:00.003+02:00

October 3, 2011: Garage Strength, in the gym

I went over to the gym this morning at 8:30 to train for a bit before Dane wa scheduled to throw. I got there before him, and found Brant’s dog Pippi roaming around outside. She looks like a full-grown version of the smiley dog from St. Lucia, and made almost the same face through the open barn door. She jumped up on me and was very excitable. Brant came out of the farmhouse looking for her, wearing a red sweatshirt and grey sweatshorts. He remembered me, but only after I told him who I was. He corralled the dog, and I followed him into the farmhouse to find Dane making a French-press of coffee. He told me he only drinks it three days a week (on days when he trains), but when he drinks it, he drinks a ton of it. One day this summer he drank nine cups in 100º heat, and had to excuse himself from the gym to go back in the house and sit down while his caffeine headache wore off. He thought he might faint. Dan, the other trainer, was there that day, so he took up the slack for a bit until Dane recovered.

Jen related this story to me. She looks to me to be 40-something, slightly overweight, but solidly overweight, not quite the flabby fat that you see in a lot of Americans. He calves are like grapefruits, the first thing I noticed about her. She had on a blue and white stripey t-shirt and gym shorts, and was very outgoing and articulate, and we chatted throughout the morning, the three of us bantering on about this and that in the training world. She was giving Dane shit for some of his personal eccentricities. “He usually does things for himself,” she told me, which is definitely Dane. Jen started training with Dane a year and a half ago. Back then she was 65 pounds heavier and on sixteen different prescription medications. Dane had her tested for celiac disease, which came up positive. He started her on a diet which included raw eggs and liver milkshakes, but she came fully around to his way of thinking and is all the better for it now. She is on a supplement plan Dane prescribed, but no longer takes a single prescription drug. Dane spotted her doing dumbbell bench presses and pulling the big sled across the room with a 5” diameter hemp rope.

Today was an upper-body day for me, and after the reasonably good day I had doing power cleans and things with my legs (which are very strong, and make me feel good about myself), I was embarrassed today by my feebility at doing anything with my shoulders and arms. Dane started me doing “pornos,” external shoulder rotations with a light dumbbell, followed immediately by ten pushups on the soft astrotuf middle of the gym. We followed this up with fat bar incline bench press, progressively increasing the weight and lowering reps, with sets of the climbing rope in between. Towards the 4^th set I could no longer make the top of the rope unassisted, so started wrapping a leg around it for some leverage. The last set of incline bench was with a much lighter weight, and to failure.

Next was flat bench, with rubber-band assisted curl-ups (chin-ups) between sets, again increasing the weight and lowering reps until the last lightweight set to failure. I am pitiful at the bench press. Then we did the sled-pull, which quickly became my favorite exercise, utitlizing the twisting motion of the body to gain leverage. Dane told me if I did it correctly, my abs should be sore tomorrow. The workout was finished with band-assisted dips, a fore-arm torture device that is essential a fat piece of pipe on which a thin line is attached to lightweight plates…you have to ‘reel’ the plates up to the level of the pipe while your arms rest over a bar. Then came another tortuous lightweight shoulder exercise and overhead dumbbell tricep presses. These last three were performed as a circuit. I am not going to be able to wipe my butt tomorrow. I left with another chicken, 18 eggs and a gallon of raw milk, some of which I just had in my coffee. I cannot believe that anyone would ever drink skim milk after tasting real, raw milk. It’s not even the same product – if someone says yes, they like milk, but only drink skim, then, no, they really do not like milk. That is something else entirely.

When I left at 9:45, Dane had just gone out to his throwing circle, alone, in the 45º temperature and with a light mist falling, and would be out for the next several hours, practicing his technique.

Oct. 3:

- Do you think your PR throws are a result of mental stability now that you have a family and a feasible business? Something to fall back on?

- Is it safe to compare the throwing motion to that of the golf swing? And if it is, does it take the same repetition and muscle memory earned by spending hours on the ‘range’ each day practicing?

- What are your long-term goals for the gym and your career? Do you want to expand, or stay on the farm?

- For Jen: What was your initial motivation in coming here? Did you know Dane beforehand? How did he convince you to eat liver smoothies? What are your long-term health goals? What would you say to a skeptic? Do you feel strange working out in such an unorthodox gym? Did you exercise before? What were some of the drugs you were on prior? Does what your doing with Dane clash with practices you see at the hospital? Is it difficult to go back to work as a nurse knowing now what you’ve learned from Dane? Do you view your participation here as a political statement?

Garage Strength Notes, Day 4

2011-10-12T12:53:00.001+02:00

2 October 2011, Dane’s House, 125 Reeser Road

Lincoln was sitting in Dane’s lap drinking from a bottle when I walked in the door. He was only born on August 23, and he and Caitlin (sp?) are teaching him to drink from it so she can go back to work in January.

I sat on the couch and set my computer on the coffee table, not really sure how to start this interview, even though it was just a chat with one of my best friends. So I just started chatting. I did not want to intefere with Lincoln, so we kept it casual for a while, talking about his brother Brooks and the new farm he bought (83 acres) in Newport, PA, where Nate Bauer is from. He has been learning how to make specialty pork (Lebanese cured, for example), and selling it at high prices in farmer’s markets as far a field as Washington DC and New York City. This was actually a perfect place to start, because Brooks is also doing what he loves, and I am positive that he has influenced Dane.

The chicken my dad and I ate on Saturday night was not butchered by Dane. He packs them up in crates, loads them into the pickup and drives them to a Mennonite who does it for them, then cleans the carcasses and packages them for sale. Dane is not even sure of the legality of him butchering his own (it is a grey area in PA), so for the time being he will continue having them butchered. In Newport, at Brooks’ farm, the practice of butchering on the farm is decidedly illegal. They consider it a ‘commercial’ practice (whereas farming is agricultural).

I remained on Dane’s sofa for over an hour, scratching his little white dog Anton’s head. Every time I stopped, he would lean back and push his head into my hands, asking would I please continue. Dane says Anton is good with Lincoln. At one point, Caitlin laid Lincoln on his back on the floor and Anton sprawled out next to him, curious.

Dane re-told me the story of his road trip to Kamloops and back, and again about his time spent out there training with Dr. B, where he says he had the first serious inclinations of opening his own gym and training people for a living. Dylan Armstrong, the guy who initially put that all together, remains out there getting ready for the 2012 Olympics in London. He was third in Beijing.

Dane was in Kamloops from fall 2007 until the summer of 2008, ironically abroad during the same period that I first moved to Sweden. I had not realized this, but he and Caitlin were also in the midst of a long-distance relationship, obviously ultimately successful. We stopped the interview when Dane got to the part about him coming home and opening the first gym in his parent’s house, hence the name. I want to keep it going another time.

Dane did mention that Kamloops would be, in essence, his ‘grad school’. He was a paper boy and bouncer at a bar to pay for it all.

Questions:

Oct 2:

- How did you meet Caitlin and how did you two handle the long-distance?

- Where do you get your training methods? Solely Dr. B? Mr. Yoder?

- Are you still training yourself? Do you have any ideas of another US Trials bid?

- What happened in college when you got your teeth kicked in?

- How did studying religion affect your views on it?

- Why did you study history and religion in the first place?

- How many hours do you work on a normal day?

Garage Strength Notes, Day 3

2011-10-12T12:52:00.002+02:00

29 September:

I drove to Dane’s today anticipating bringing home some eggs, milk and maybe a frozen chicken or two, and didn’t want to cycle with them on my back. Plus, the weather looked threatening and I’m a sissy when it comes to cycling in the rain. Instead I took the windows out of the front doors of the Jeep and rode over listening loudly to the Foster the People cd I bought in West Reading at Vertigo. Kate and I ate lunch at Good Eatz, then carpooled down to the OTB to watch Lightning Madison come third at Monticello with Mommom and Pappap. Kate drove me back to West Reading to get the Jeep, before which we popped into Veritgo. The album is fantastic.

I met Dan in the garage (barn). I didn’t know it then, but he works for Dane, and was a football player in college looking for a place to train when they first met. He’s young. He told me Dane was out back next to the chicken pen traning some guys in shot and discus. He had built a regulation throwing circle in the adjacent field, two shot circles an a discus circle, and is able to transition from the weight room to the practice area in a few steps. Evan and Jason, two SV throwers were there with him, and he spent the 30 minutes I watched relentlessly hounding them and telling them how much they suck. Typical Dane. He made fun of me in high school much the same way, going so far as to tease me for the peach fuzz on my face before I started shaving. I sympathized with Jason especially, who gets upset about it on occasion. Dane even makes fun of this.

The shotput the guys were using is a pound and a half heavier than competition, and Evan was wearing a leather device that attached his wrist to his first three fingers to alleviate the tendonitis that can form after intense and repetitive training. I watched each of them make about 8 or 9 throws, querying Dane between each on what was actually going on. He has high hopes for Evan especially, though on that day there numbers were unimpressive, in the high 30s and low 40s. Dane threw 62’ to win the PA State Championships in 2002, a number he claims would still be good for the win today. A good thrower in high school is in the high 50s.

Back in the gym, Dane started me on what I hope to become a month-long training program, participating in the same style exercises that he trains others. I met Jason, a high school senior at SV who started going to Dane in March 2011. He weighed 340 poounds then. Yesterday he was 260, and Dane commented that he was a new version of me. I topped out at 255 in high school (and held the squat record at one time, 455 lbs), and go to an all-time low of 155 when I came back from Costa Rica in 2002. My sister Kaitie called me Skeletor when I got off the plane. Dane said that Jason has gained so much confidence in his new body that he has started hitting on one of the hottest girls that comes to the gym. Dane has had to tell the other youngsters to tell him to cool it so he doesn’t embarrass himself. I told him to show Jason a photo of my wife Mia to see just how high his prospects could become if he works hard enough.

Dane started me out on the platforms doing power cleans, after first warming up with two sets of front squat on an empty bar. The power clean is a move I remember fondly from high school, and one of the Olympic lifts he uses on all his clients. A forty-something physical therapist that came in just as I was leaving can clean over 150 lbs, more than her bodyweight, which is seriously impressive. She was lean and wiry, by no means ‘bulked up’ and quite attractively fit. I started doing reps of three, and finished with a max of 170 for two, making all the reps along the way. I have to ask Dane if the low reps is part of a particular theory.

I moved on to one-legged squats and jumping lunges, as I’ll call them. The last set of squats saw me holding 45 lbs dumbbells for sets of eight. Then it was the ‘prowler.’ I pulled a sled stacked with 45 lb plates across the 50-feet of the floor, which he’d covered with astroturf. Going backwards was easy enough, but the trip back saw me nearly on the floor as I had to push the thing the opposite way, considerably more difficult, especially in my bare feet. It’s awesome that I can train there barefoot. These moves were immediately followed by box steps holding dumbbells again, for sets of 10 per side, or twenty total. Dane says this will be good for my tight hamstrings, and my legs were burning by the end. I bought some eggs and a frozen chicken from the freezer right in the gym, and left, as we were taking Pappap out for dinner that night and I had to get home in time.

Garage Strength Notes, Day 2

2011-10-12T12:51:00.004+02:00

September 28, 2011:

Skipped today – took mom to Philly, spent the day in the car! Listened to 1/3 of Eva Gabrielsson’s book about Stieg Larsson. Sat in the car and got inspired by the This American Life episode on the un-reality of money while mom got her MRI in Collegeville. Inspired me to do the Dane story with that angle – no money, lots of passions. Speaking of which…

Angle #1 (?): If money is imagined, then what is the point in chasing it…?

I’ve known Dane my entire life. We played Little League against each other. Both of our dad’s were our respective team’s coaches. Dane and I spent high school together. Freshman year, 4 weeks into our first high school experience, Dane convinced me to quit the Spanish class and come join him in Herr K’s German class. My school was small, and we only had two options for languages, and only one teacher for each. Dane just said ‘there’s something different about Herr K, you have to take his class.’ It took a meeting with the guidance counselor, who was confused, as I was getting A’s in Spanish. I could only tell him it ‘felt right.’ He let me switch, on a hunch.

Dane and I went on to enjoy several year’s of Herr K. We learned German, for sure, but his class was more about life. It was about discipline (he once gave the ‘silent treatment’ to the other German 2 section for over a month, speaking only German to them, as he felt they had disrespected him). It was about hard work. It was about passion.

Dane and I learned all of these things in spades, and the lessons stayed with us. We left high school, andboth graduated from Penn State. Dane was heavily recruited to play football at several Division 2 and 3 schools, but chose PSU to join the track team. He was state champ in shot-put and a defensive end on the football team our senior year. I was captain of the golf team.

Neither Dane nor I followed a typical path in college, instead choosing subjects that interested us. After several semesters ‘finding myself,’ I ended up with a minor in history basically by default. I didn’t choose to major in it simply because I ran out of interesting classes to choose from one semester and picked something else. Dane was also a history buff, and combined this with religious studies, philosophizing between practices with the track team.

I got the travel bug. Summer after my sophmore year, I took off and went to Costa Rica for a month to travel and do volunteer work. It was a test of sorts to see if I could spend a lot of time away from home, which I hadn’t done to that point. Spring of junior year, after deciding that traveling was indeed for me, I went to Australia to study tourism management in Brisbane, at the University of Queensland. On the way, I stayed 10 days in New Zealand, vowing to return to what quickly became my favorite place on earth.

After college, Dane and I lost touch. We’d meet for the occasional beer when we were back in Leesport, but went months or even years without saying a word to each other. But we read each others blogs, and this is significant.

Then, I was writing for pleasure, for myself, just about my experiences. I went back to New Zealand in 2006, after graduating from PSU with a BS in Tourism Management and a minor in History, and before starting a ‘real job’ as a sales agent for a company in Annapolis that ran a sailboat for tourists, and for which I had worked on as sailing crew for a while in the summer. That trip, two months this time, was when I met the woman who is now my wife, a 6’ tall, blonde Swede named Mia.

Dane hitch-hiked across Canada. He had a dream of making the Olympics as a shot-putter, and wanted to train with [name], who lived in Kamloops, near the west coast. His stories of catching rides with guys halfway through a case of beer are both scary and enlightening. When not training, or talking about it, Dane was a bouncer at a local pub. He chuckled when a girl tried to pass off a fake PA ID – he denied her, she complained, and he promptly produced his real PA ID, at which point she politely asked for hers back and left the premises.

Dane’s pilgrimage to Canada and mine to New Zealand did not change our lives, but they solidified our worldviews and gave us the inspiration to chase our dreams. In the five years that followed, up to the present, Dane, after failing at his Olympic bid, has carved a niche in the athletic training world, opening the world’s first and only gym that raises and sells its own food. The gym, called Garage Strength, after first opening in his parents garage, is now house in an 18^th century barn, with climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling, kettlebells lining the walls and high school freshman girls doing pull-ups and powerlifting exercises. Out back, his 130 hens lay eggs daily, and Dane stores them in a large wire basket you’d normally see at a golf driving range. Dane has over 70 regular clients and hasn’t had a job since 2009.

I started writing professionally a year after that first trip. Thanks in part to Dane’s encouragement from having read my travel blog, I started sending articles into magazines, and they started getting published. Mia and I worked professionally on sailboats, doing yacht deliveries up and down the east coast and running adventure travel programs for teenagers in the Caribbean. This summer, we sailed our own boat – our only possession, and our home – from the Chesapeake Bay to Ireland, fulfilling a dream and getting a lot of writing material in the process.

Both Dane and I have interesting stories, but it wasn’t until today that I realized how I was going to pitch it. After listening to the money episode of TAL – which only confirmed some notions that I have held for years – I realized that there is a logical continuation on that thesis – if money is inherently imaginary, what then is the point of pursuing it? Dane and I seemed to have figured that out long ago, and yet were never really aware of it. We just did things we were passionate about, and the money (though not a lot of it) followed.

Garage Strength Notes, Day 1

2011-10-12T12:51:00.002+02:00

September 27, 2011, ~4:15pm:

I cycled to Dane’s today. The triathlon wheels – the ‘Hed Jet’ wheels I bought from Brian back in the day – were still on my bike from the race Mia and I did last fall. They are heavy, and make a whooshing sound when I ride. They are unnecessary. I took these wheels off the bike, but needed the tires. The tires on my lightweight wheels are bald, some grey stringy stuff showing beneath the black rubber cover of the front one. I recall needing to bum a spare back tire from the mechanics at the last Livestrong Challenge ride I did a few years ago. It would never have made those 100 miles. So I took the tires from the tri wheels and put them on the light wheels. Done and done.

I felt strong riding to Dane’s. Without music on, I thought. I thought I’d write about Dane’s Garage Strength, turn it into a long-term project that I might sell to Outside or Men’s Journal, one of those. And the Reading paper.

Since visiting last time with Mia after (or before?) our wedding, the ‘garage’ (really the barn nowadays) has come a long way. On my last visit, Dane was still training out of his parents garage (hence the name) on Slater Rd (where we use to race his minivan against my Jeep Wrangler). The barn is now complete, and huge. In it Dane has several climbing ropes, monkey bars, kettlebells, weight sleds, Olympic bars, benches, dumbbells and frozen chickens. And a large driving range bucket full of eggs that his hens just laid. He showed me how he eats the yolks, raw. Ordinarily this is supposed to sound disgusting in an article like this, but I see it otherwise. I make soft-boiled eggs for breakfast regularly, and Dane assures me his freshly laid eggs are as warm as the ones I’m eating from the stove. There are no machines in Dane’s barn.

The walls are painted white, and he has several white boards around the place with peoples names and various strength and conditioning programs. Three young girls were working out together. They each did several legitimate pull-ups, followed immediately by rubber-band assisted bodyweight dips. Then they moved on to the sled. It has three snowplane like feet on it, with space to fit weight plates on the top. Attached at the front end is a natural hemp rope, about 30’ long and fatter than my forearm (which is not all that fat). The girls took turns lying flat on their backs on the floor at one end of the barn (on a rubberized indoor/outdoor carpet that spans the center of the barn), and pulling the weighted sled across the room towards them, hand over hand. The two not participating assisted when the one on the floor struggled near the end. Later, they got into a pushup position on the same floor, only their feet were on a 12x12 square wooden platform (like those we played with in elementary school gym class) with office chair wheels on the bottom. They walked across the room on their hands, while a heavy chain hung around there necks. The girls are freshmen in high school. They are swimmers.

“You should be here around 6:30, this place gets nuts.”

Dane took me outside to see the 130 hens he has in the field out back, a flock (?) that has multiplied substantially since I saw it last. The one lone rooster in the pen with the hens strutted. Opposite the movable, outdoor chicken coop (happy chickens!), Dane had set up a concrete throwing platform, two circles for shotput and one for the discus. In the barn on the lower level were a few dozen baby chickens that let me pick them up.

I told Dane of my inspiration, and he is enthusiastic. Tomorrow I’ll start my month-long training and spend as much time at the farm as I can until October 28, when I have to be in Virginia for work.

“Cailtin’s dad had Lincoln baptized while I was gone. I asked him if there was any way to un-baptize him.”

“Everyone thought I named him after Abe. He’s named after a wrestler. Cailtin was unsure at first until we drove through Gettysburg, with Lincoln shit everywhere. She said, ‘I guess I kind of like that name.’ Lincoln’s not named after Abe though.”

Trans-Atlantic Logbook Preview

2011-09-19T09:53:00.001+02:00

St. Pierre – Crookhaven: 6 Aug – Day 7, 0500

Ugh, awful night. It’s five in the morning, and I’ve got the morning watch. I know I will regret saying ‘awful night’ later on when we really do have one, but it was unpleasant nonetheless¹.

After the WX report last evening with Dad, I turned in for the night. It was blowing ~25 knots and we were just roiling along in big seas under the small jib and the mizzen. The boat was really moving, and happy. Every 4th or 5th wave exploded on the beam, covering the decks with green water and spray.

I found it nearly impossible to sleep on the high side. Until last night we’d either been becalmed or on port tack, so my starboard bunk was always on the low side, or at least level. To start the night last night I was about 30º higher on my side – until the wind died, again. After dark, the rain came, and the wind went with it. We had too little sail up, and the boat just started bobbing around uncomfortably. It’s too warm to crawl into the sleeping bag, but too uncomfortable and itchy to lie on the bare cushion, so I had mighty trouble getting any good rest, really the most important aspect of the voyage for my overall happiness².

I switched over the Clint’s side at midnight when Mia came off watch. It was still very muggy, and the cabin is damp from the constant windward sailing and heavy rain of late. Now that it’s warmer in the air, nothing dries and all the surfaces are sticky and unpleasant to the touch. The wind never did come back, and I lay there half in a daze gritting my teeth at the unlikeliness of the scenario³. I’m guessing the center of the low finally caught up with us, and we’re actually in or near the eye, where the wind drops right off. The stars came out in a clear sky, another indication. If I’m right, we should get a windshift later today to the WNW, when it should also get colder, drier and windier. The GRIBs, according to Dad, show favorable wind for the foreseeable future.

I’m making coffee now. The kettle my parents got us for the wedding works wonders onboard with its wide base. But the handle broke the other day. The whole thing is brass, shaped like a bell with an exceptionally wide base so it stays put in a pitching galley. The handle is teak, perched atop two brass arms of sorts. The brass arm on the ‘aft’ side of the handle came loose from the teak. Mom bought it from a specialty jeweler that deals in nautical-themed pieces, and I wonder if the kettle – though modeled after an authentic sailing ship design – was ever intended to go to sea⁴.

The coffee is done. It’s Swedish instant coffee, and it’s actually really good. I’m drinking it black now, as my stomach can’t handle the UHT milk that hasn’t been in the fridge. This particular instant coffee came in a small Ziploc bag, and was present #8 that we got from Mia’s swim girls⁵. Everyday we open a new one, and the event marks a highlight to each day, and something we truly look forward to. The girls gave us 30 presents – one for each day of the voyage, and a few extra to be sure we’d have enough. We started opening them on the way to St. Pierre, as Baddeck was our last real stop on the mainland. Clint won possession of the swim cap (present #6) yesterday when he beat me at a round of the raisin game⁶, his first. He and Mia will vie for the cap sometime today over a game of graph paper Battleship.

--
For days now we’ve had a little black chirping bird fluttering around the boat during the nights. You can just make out his little silhouette against the night sky when he flutters near the tricolor. He sounds almost as if he’s chuckling to himself. I haven’t decided if it’s been the same one night after night or if he has friends that take up station near the stern as we continue east. If we were closer to shore, he could easily be mistaken for a bat (save for the chirping of course), as his flying motion is almost floppy, like he’s not sure how it’s done. I think I’ve seen him in daylight – he flaps his wings only occasionally, and between flaps his body appears to fall right out of the sky, as if he’s struggling just to stay airborne. He’s by far the smallest of the seabirds we’ve encountered, but he must be a good flyer, as we’re now over 300 miles from land. There are a surprising number of birds about actually – the other day during one of the calms (which are beginning to be hard to keep track of) an enormous flock of brown and white guys seemed to be following the boat. We were motoring south, trying to get to 43º north, ahead of the low, and I think they mistook us for a Grand Banks fishing boat. They’d take off en masse, and land on the water just ahead of us, floating and looking for food. Humorously, they’ll dunk their heads right under the water to have a good look around, like the ‘curious birds’⁷ I became friends with in the Caribbean. Once the boat passed them by, they’d take to the air again, landing again just ahead of us. This game went on for hours that day. We never did feed them.

The sun’s coming up now. This is one of the best times of the day, especially now it’s clear. The nights are long and hard when you don’t sleep well, and the dawn is so friendly, invigorating. I just finished my coffee and ate a Larabar, and with the coming daylight, I might actually feel reasonably awake. The last few stars are just now fading, and if I were a little more ambitious I’d get out my sextant. Maybe in another week or so.

I don’t think I mentioned it, but I’m finally getting ‘into’ the voyage. There are times when my anxiety goes way up – two days ago I was literally on the verge of tears, wanting to snap my fingers and find myself at home on the couch with the dogs, or at the breakfast table in Dunderbo⁸. The feeling was utterly irrational – we were sailing beautifully and the boat was performing great. But the sky was grey, and with it my mood. Last night was another instance, even after I felt I’d turned the corner. The building wind and seas raised my heart rate just enough that I found it hard to relax. I noticed my breathing was short again, which had gone away since leaving St. Pierre. The feeling faded into a battle with my consciousness to try and let me sleep, which I failed. Mia shared this ‘butterfly’ feeling, and we chatted about it before her watch. Clint overheard and jokingly wondered if he should be concerned as well⁹.

Out here, you’re so exposed. I think that’s the root of my anxiety anyway. The comfort and security found in your bunk is literally only separated from the sea by – at most – an inch of plastic. I thought of other land-based adventures yesterday – mountain climbing, hiking, etc. – but comparatively, from my perspective on this boat, they seem so secure. Yes, a rock-climber is only one slip away from death, but I feel like he’s in control. Out here, it’s utter wilderness, and no matter how prepared you and the boat are, the sea is ultimately in control, and can simply overwhelm you if it really kicks off. It’s this feeling of exposure that literally has me holding my breath. On the really bad thoughts, I tell myself that this is the end of my seafaring career, that from now on I’ll stick to adventures on solid ground, but I know that’s not true. Those are just the bad days, and they’re complemented by good ones. Nevertheless, on this day, that feeling of raw exposure pervades and hangs like a cloud over everything else.

¹ During the calms, Mia and I would sleep in the same bunk, head-to-feet, wedged in between the lee cloth on the outside, and the teak backrest on the inside, usually with some pillows or an extra sleeping bag for padding. Whoever was supposed to be on watch set the alarm to go off every 30 minutes, so we could pop up and check the AIS and have a look around outside. The typical pattern was for the wind to get light before midnight, and die off to just a whisper by the early morning hours. By 0300, before Mia’s watch, it was gone completely, and I’d take the sails down before coming down below. Neither of us would really sleep in the cramped quarters, with the boat rolling incessantly from side to side, the contents of each locker banging back and forth violently and noisily. By dawn, the wind was usually back to a whisper, and we could make sail before breakfast. It was common in a 24-hour period that we made 5-6 sail changes, often at night.
² And maintaining an efficiently sailed boat. When I’m tired, I’m grumpy. When I’m tired, I don’t like getting up, and get frustrated when someone wakes me. Inevitably this leads to poor decisions on my part, even though I know what needs to be done. It always would get done, but not without grumbling from me, and usually 30 minutes too late.

³ We’d expected constant wind and weather, often bad at that, this far north, as the pilot charts indicate. We never did get it, and when the wind did come up, were more concerned with sailing the boat as fast as we could than worrying about our survival.

⁴ In fact I’m sure it was never intended to go to sea. The handle got worse – on either end of the wooden piece were tapered ‘plugs,’ which fitted into an opening in the curved brass arms on either side. The ‘aft’ plug was the first to pull out, then the forward one went. 5200 solved the problem for good.

⁵ Anna, Ida, Sara and Anna – at the wedding in June, they changed out of their dresses and into their bathing suits, goggles and swim caps, and gave the most memorable speech of the evening (to the delight of many of the American lads in the room).

⁶ Mia taught me this. Place a handful of raisins in an open palm. Think of one. Have a friend choose a single raisin and eat it, until they choose the one you’ve been thinking of. Say ‘beep.’ Now switch roles. Whoever eats the last raisin wins.

⁷ The ‘curious birds’ were actually red-footed boobies (try looking that up in google images). I was swimming once in Ile Fourche, near St. Barth’s, and the birds would land nearby and stick their heads under water. When I dived down, I could see them from beneath, and their expressions were quite comical as they looked around underwater.

⁸ The idyllic village where Mia’s family lives, literally ‘Thunder Village.’ As I write, the apples on the trees in the yard are ripe – I ate three of them from the gound in one sitting yesterday. The breakfast table in Dunderbo often consists of home-baked bread, yogurt, muesli, crispbread and cheese, hard-cooked eggs, fruit, homemade jams and potfuls of coffee. These breakfasts, especially when Mia is home, can last for hours.

⁹ It was obvious that he was not. On watch a few minutes earlier, Clint had stood outside in the drizzle and spray, hooting and hollering every time a big wave came up astern and sent Arcturus on a wild surfing run, or when another smashed into the beam, sending spray as high as the spreaders. Clint was in his element.

Leaving Ardglass

2011-09-10T11:53:00.000+02:00

Today should be the final days’ sailing of our voyage. Mia and I have decided to pack it in and leave the boat in Northern Ireland for the winter, returning when our bank accounts are fuller and we have more energy. The weather is continually getting worse, the nights are colder and the prospect of a North Sea passage in late September is daunting. We’ve gone far enough, and no matter how we rationalize it, were just done. The deciding factor yesterday was simply that we’ll enjoy the last of this cruise when we’re fresh. This sounds a bit negative as I re-read it, but it’s not meant to be. This is the perfect end to the trip. And the fact that it’s not really an end, gives us something to look forward to. Mia and I are satisfied, more so than we’ve been in sometime, and it feels good to be leaving the boat here.

Ardglass has treated us kindly. An old man called Fred and his dog Ben were the first to greet us upon entering the marina. I stupidly went on the wrong side of a red marker coming into the very narrow channel, and nearly ran up on the rocky breakwater before noticing Fred waving me off. I think it will always be confusing having the red’s on the ‘wrong’ side over here.

We arrived on the evening of the 7^th. I marched up to the dock office once the boat was secured and got properly introduced to Fred and Ben. Ben is a five-year-old springer spaniel, with an energy level one might expect from the breed. He’s hilarious. In the small vestibule inside the marina building, Ben would toss a tiny stone at my feet, no bigger than a pea, and expect me to throw it for him. I would, and he’d chase after it at full speed, leaping up onto his hind legs and pouncing on it, front feet first, and carefully holding it his mouth before trotting back and laying it once again at my feet. This would undoubtedly have continued for hours had I not simply walked out. Ben and I played the stone game each time I visited the marina office. It seemed like he and Fred lived there, for they were always around, day and night. A staircase wound around the perimeter of the circular building behind the small office, and I wondered if this was their apartment. I never ascended it.

The village of Ardglass is small and charming. A large fishing fleet operates from behind the big seawall just inside the harbor entrance. Near it, a small chandlery / hardware store supplies the fisherman with commercial-grade ‘stuff,’ from survival suits and boots to large galvanized shackles and barrels of chain. We met a local man named Martin who skippered one of the boats, alongside his three crew, which consisted of two Bulgarians and another Irishman. They catch prawns, he told us. This year has been exceptional, but they expect it to slow down over the winter months. The fleet is perhaps a dozen strong, and Martin informed us that yes, there is competition among them, but it’s more or less friendly. It would have to be – in the harbor, the boats raft onto one another behind the seawall, sometimes four or five deep, so it’s apparent that everyone is at least physically close to one another if not emotionally. Martin said some of the guys won’t chat on the radio, but that generally they’re all on the same team.

Mia and I have spent a big chunk of time in the Harborview Inn pub across the street from the fishing fleet. It’s the only place in town with internet, and we’ve had substantial research to do, looking for a winter berth and trying to find out how to import the boat into the EU without being in Sweden. As it turned out, the people at ‘Her Magesty’s Royal Customs’ department were exceedingly helpful, and managed to sort out all of our questions in a matter of a few minutes and a few phone calls. We’ll import the boat here in the UK, and request tax relief as I’m a new resident of Sweden, and therefore of the EU, so this is possible.

---

The sails are off. Arcturus will be hauled out tomorrow morning around 10.

The engine gave us fits again this morning, to the point that I was making phone calls and wandering around the marina looking for someone who could tow us out. Today would be the last chance we’d have to make Bangor in fair weather for perhaps a week, with a large low-pressure system poised to reach us tonight, while behind it lurks the remnants of Hurricane Katia. That’s forecast to bring gusts upwards of 60 knots here by Monday. Though we enjoyed the village of Ardglass, it would not have been a place to spend a week. And knowing our trip was coming to a close, it’d be better to keep moving. But that damn engine. It starts every time, but ever since I put it back in the boat this past spring, it refuses to idle smoothly and stalls without warning. Today was the worst yet, surging from 1500 rpm to 3200 and back again, uncontrollably. The alarm would not go off, despite all the gauges showing normal. This nearly scuttled our sail today. The clock read 9:30, and we need to be on the move by 10:00 to catch a fair tide. The Irish Sea flows swiftly near the Mull of Galloway. At 9:45 we were still in the dock and I was scrambling to find a tow. I met a man in the marina parking lot, dressed in shirtsleeves and a tie. He was sat in his car. I asked him if he know where Fred was. He didn’t, and wasn’t sure who Fred was (he’s the marina ~~manager/owner~~ guru). But he gave me the number for Ricky, a transplanted South African who the well-dressed man told me wasa sort of engineer around the marina and might be able to help. Ricky was friendly enough on the phone, but didn’t have an immediate solution, and offered to ring back if he could find any help. We needed an immediate solution.

Standing in the cockpit, I carefully gauged the wind, which seemed to be coming out of the SW and was gusty, but calm most of the time. The channel out of the marina is particularly narrow, and we nearly went on the rocks on the way in. I didn’t think it prudent to try and sail out, as just outside the marina there is a rather tight bend around the inner breakwater. Once round that bend, I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to point high enough to make the outer breakwater and not get set down on the rocky shoreline to the north. One large section of reef extended rather far into the harbor, marked by a large cardinal buoy. This was the mark that concerned me. Once clear of it, the coast dropped away to the north, and though it may have been close, I thought we could weather it. The water was deep right to the shore.

In the end, we needn’t have worried. At the time, I nearly had a heart attack. The engine got going, though it screamed in protest idling at the dock. Oddly, it seems to run absolutely fine in gear. This works when powering at sea. Manuevering around a harbor is rather tricky, as we never know if the engine is going to stall when shifting between forward and reverse. And since moving the engine’s electrical panel below into the galley (to keep it safe in the event the cockpit would flood), Mia has to stand on the companionway steps ready to crank the engine when this happened. Mia hoisted the jib, which I let luff as we motored out of the first channel. Once clear of the inner breakwater, she hoisted the mizzen and I sheeted home the jib. Clear of the harbor, the wind was lighter than I’d anticipated, and we motor-sailed, close-hauled, out into open water. The engine didn’t make so much as a hiccup.

---

Our last sail for quite a while today was a pleasant one. The wind was aft, and we set the small jib on the pole, with the full main pulling to starboard. It was a bit rough at first, and Arcturus rolled heavily sailing downwind. We were in a hurry to make the tide, given our delay in looking for a tow. The cabin had not been made totally seaworthy, and stuff was flying around. We bought some milk the night before from William’s small shop he works with his two sons. We’d actually bought milk from him two nights in a row – without a fridge, it doesn’t keep long, and we like to have it fresh for our coffee. Anyway, the milk was one of the items that hadn’t been stowed properly, and to my dismay, I discovered that it had disappeared, just as I was ready to pour the last of the coffee from the morning now that we were safely under way and I could relax. I searched and searched. Mia searched and searched. We’d located the milk from the day before. This we knew because it did not have a ‘40p’ written in marker on the cap. This we also knew because it smelled like two day old milk that hasn’t been in the fridge might smell. I recalled how one of the other items I hadn’t stowed was the second sink and it’s wooden cover, which also serves as the step into the companionway, and part of the galley top. When this is removed, the 8x12” hole gives access to the top of the engine. It also gives access to the y-valve that swaps the seawater intake between the engine and the foot-pump in the galley. We have to switch this each time we turn on the engine, and subsequently switch it back when we want to wash dishes or cook with saltwater. The ‘40p’ milk had slid across the galley and dropped into this hole (which by the time we were searching for the milk had already been covered – Mia had put the sink and the step back in place). I took the sink out again and found the milk standing upright on the portside engine mount, as neatly as if someone had placed it there as a joke. I had my coffee.

Both Mia and I remained awake. We sailed close to the coast, which had flattened out since we passed the mountains of Morne two days before, near Carlingford Lough. The water was smooth and the wind strong enough to give us 7-8 knots in the fair current (which we did manage to make). The day was warmer than it’s been, and the sun was out almost for nearly the entire six hours it took to get here. The sailing was easy.

Near the entrance to Belfast Lough, the coast falls away to the SW. We sailed through a narrow passage inside of a small island just off the mainland, the shoreline passing by about a quarter mile to either side. The wind was blowing off the land here, the sea flat. By now I’d set the big genoa, and we stowed the pole, inching higher and higher on the wind as the passage opened up into Belfast Lough itself, and we left the Irish Sea behind. Close-hauled, we made good time into the Lough, sailing due west now, the first westerly heading we’ve had since running for cover into Shelburne, Nova Scotia almost two months ago. Since then it’s been entirely northeast.

The marina in Bangor is nestled inside an enormous breakwater. The marina itself is enormous, and will make for good boat-watching tomorrow. Garreth from the yard greeted us on the small floating dock near the haul-out well. He helped us with the docklines and handed us the keycard we’d need to get into the yard, which is surrounded by barbed wire fence. We made Arcturus fast, went to the coffee shop and searched for flights to Sweden.

Check-in/OK message from Arcturus SPOT Messenger

2011-09-10T09:19:00.001+02:00

Arcturus
Latitude:54.66537
Longitude:-5.66943
GPS location Date/Time:09/10/2011 00:19:42 PDT

Message:Greetings from Northern Europe! We made the crossing and our on our way to the Baltic.
-Andy & Mia

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Check-in/OK message from Arcturus SPOT Messenger

2011-09-09T12:17:00.001+02:00

Arcturus
Latitude:54.32953
Longitude:-5.48248
GPS location Date/Time:09/09/2011 03:18:10 PDT

Message:Greetings from Northern Europe! We made the crossing and our on our way to the Baltic.
-Andy & Mia

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Windy in Skerries, Part II

2011-09-06T20:00:00.000+02:00

Check this photo, from Mia's blog.

At two o’clock, cabin fever got the best of us and we ventured ashore. I had on my running clothing – and old pair of Mia’s brother Erik’s board shorts, tight, white long underwear and my five-finger shoes (their brown leather, and in Kinsale someone joked that I ought to wash my feet). Mia was similarly attired. She had a backpack with her, and I the black Pelican case that we transport our computers in when we’re on the boat. The plan was to sit in the pub for a while, do some work (I had an article to send in), and then go for a long exploratory run before returning to the boat later in the evening.

We set out along the beach that fronts the sea. The community had built a beautiful paved footpath behind the sand. Several benches were set in the grass every few hundred meters, and there were recycling bins by each one. The path ended when the beach turned into a cliff, and we continued along the road. Neither of us had ventured this far yet, though Mia had run along the beach path two days before. Our goal was to run for a while along this road, then head west, towards the setting sun, and loop back around to the harbor, exploring through the town as we did so.

Ever since Crookhaven, each place we’ve visited shoreside has been overgrown with blackberries. Mia finds them irresistible. Mia and I run side-by-side, her a half-step in front of me because she hates when I run faster than her. We chatted along the road out of Skerries, and soon became aware that there were no turnoffs to our right, the direction we wanted to go. I mentioned something about this to Mia, but she was gone. I stopped and turned around to find her stooped by the sidewalk eating berries. This is a common occurrence. By the end of the run her tongue was black.

I found a dirt path the headed inland into some farmland, and we took it. After several hundred meters we came to a field of rye, about waist high, with two narrow paths cut in it, apparently made by tractor tires. We followed one of these paths, and it felt like running in a cloud. I couldn't see my feet, and the rye was fluffy and flowing in the wind. The field ended near a large building of blue and white corrugated tin, with several farm vehicles parked around the dirt on the property. In an adjacent field a large green John Deere tractor was doing some sort of farm work. On the other side of the building, a dirt driveway led past the farmhouse and to a proper paved road, which we followed for several miles in the wrong direction, before it intersected a road which we thought would take us back into town. We were out for over an hour, though a large chunk of that time was spent stopped on the side of the road eating berries.

Back in the harbor, the wind was blowing as hard as ever. The two seals who apparently lived there were back, and bobbing in the chop just off the large fishing pier. It was rather obvious that there was no way we’d be able to row against the wind and sea back to the boat, despite the fact that it was only a few hundred feet away from the pier.

Along the wall, two fishing boats and their crews were making ready for sea. A younger man in yellow oilies was laying out a long fire-house on the dock, while an older man, also in yellow oilies and a blue sweater, was welding a broken piece on one of their traps. When it was complete, they tied it to the back of their van and dragged it along the concrete to the boat. We stopped to ask them if anybody could give us a ride in a real boat, while towing the little dink. They couldn’t, which was just as well, because I hated to bother them while they were working. The younger one directed us towards the sailing club, where a van was parked near the boat-ramp, with an empty trailor half-submerged in the water. It was a long walk around the bay. We tried to row.

Almost immediately we were blown backwards. The seal bobbed his head up again as I admitted defeat, and we maneuvered back into the lee of the large red fishing boat we’d been tied up near. An older man out walking his golden retriever helped us take the painter ashore. I petted his dog. Mia and I made the long walk round the harbor and found a man sitting in the driver’s seat of the van. He made a quick call, and two of his friends out surveying the moorings in the gale came to our aid in their large inflatable, towing mini-Sojourner behind. We would not have made it without their help.

Skerries

2011-09-06T16:31:00.002+02:00

We’re weather bound today for the first time on the journey. In fact, we’re experiencing lousier weather than at any time during the actual ocean crossing, which is slightly amazing.

Arcturus is on a mooring (free!) in Skerries, a small seaside town 15 miles north of Dublin. The harbor (or more appropriately, ‘harbour’) is wide and shallow, with a large fishing pier at its eastern fringe. There are several moorings to the west of the pier, and we are one of maybe half a dozen sailing boats in at the moment, though we haven’t seen any other people on any of them. They appear to live here (I spoke with Tom yesterday, an engineer at the sailing club, and he told me that in another two weeks all the boats will be hauled and stored for the winter, so it really is the tail end of the season here). Further in, inside the pier, several smaller boats (dinghies, fishing boats and small racing boats) reside on their own moorings. At low tide, the harbor dries, and this smattering of craft, perhaps two dozen or more, lay scattered around the bay, high and dry, like a yachting graveyard. Very close in, right off the main street in town, three of four bilge-keelers literally ‘stand’ on their hulls, balanced by their rudders, their decks six feet off the ground (which is surprisingly solid for how muddy it appears). Against the pier lives the fishing fleet, one or two large steel boats and several smaller ones, though it doesn’t appear that they go out very often. In the last three days we’ve been here, nobody has been around much. Yesterday though, one of the big ones returned to the pier, after having been gone at least as long as we’ve been here, so it appears they venture rather far out to sea (they are certainly built for it).

There are at least two seals in the harbor who routinely make an appearance near the fishing pier. Three times while we were in the dinghy, one big one would poke his head up and just sit there, looking around with those big friendly eyes and just letting himself bob in the water while he did so. The first two occasions he was quite close to the dinghy, which, rather than inciting a fearful reaction, simply made us want to reach out and pet him. They really look like pooches – upon seeing the first one, Ullis shouted ‘A seal! Or, a dog!’. Mia and I have decided that they are lazy seals that live here and get fed by the fisherman who routinely line the pier in the afternoons looking for mackerel. I joked yesterday that the one big guy we’ve seen quite often was waiting for that fishing boat to return, wondering where his dinner was.

Ashore, one main street stretches for half a mile or so, with a line of buildings behind it, the street marking the edge of the harbor, which has a three-foot stone wall on its western side to guard against the stormy weather (the north and west quadrants of the harbor are completely exposed to the weather, and yesterday when it was blowing hard from the NW in the morning, their was a significant chop – my dinghy ride ashore to drop Ullis off was interesting…fine going in, as the wind and seas were with us, but rather wet and slow coming back out, especially without the extra weight of Ullis and her gear to keep us stable). Behind that one row of buildings is a long stretch of beach, which, depending on the tide is either about 15 yards wide, or 100. The town is built on a long, narrow peninsula, the sheltered harbor to the west, the Irish Sea to the east, and ‘Red Island’ at the peninsula’s northern tip. They call it Red ‘Island’, but it’s not really an island at all, just a wider, island-shaped blob of land on which are the ruins of and old tower. There is a lovely restaurant/hotel at the end of the road, The Pierhouse, with which Mia and I became acquainted with yesterday when we realized we wouldn’t be going anywhere.

As the town stretches away to the south, the peninsular gradually widens until it meets the main land, and the one road split into two at a small roundabout that has a rather large statue of a cormorant in it’s center (speaking of cormorants, when I dropped Ullis off yesterday, there was a big one sitting in a half-flooded dinghy that was tied up to the fishing pier. We came right up close to him, so close that my oars touched the dinghy on which he was standing, and yet he didn’t so much as flinch at our presence. He just sat there and looked at us with a goofy expression, his huge webbed feet standing wide on the dinghy seat and his large, friendly eyes staring at us. A guy came by in a larger boat to tow the derelict dinghy away, and the cormorant went along for the ride). To the left, the road continued along the beach overlooking the Irish Sea, while to the right, it continued around the wide bay, houses lining both sides. The storefronts were in the town center, a few blocks inland.

We remain in Skerries longer than expected thanks to the weather, which is only now becoming typically Irish – wet and windy – whereas the past two weeks have treated us rather kindly. We knew from the outset that we’d stay here at least two night – all three of us wanted to go into Dublin, and the Dart train got us there in only half an hour the other day. We strolled around the city and finally found an old pub in the Temple Bar area (in fact, the first pub I’d visited on my last foray into Ireland, with Michael, my friend from Prague during my English teaching school), and sat down to watch the final of the All Ireland Hurling Championship, between Tipperary and Kilkenny. Hurling is a Gaelic game, kind of reminiscent of field hockey, except that the ball is usually airborn, and players can catch it barehanded and run with it for a stretch. Scoring is accomplished in one of two ways – the easier points are had when a player tosses the ball to himself and takes a swing at it, knocking it through a goal post, not unlike an NFL field goal (however, he does so while everyone else is trying to kill him and get the ball). The more difficult points are had by similarly knocking the ball into a soccer-style goal, with a goalie in front. Kilkenny won, upsetting the reigning champions from the year before. The atmosphere at the stadium was quite lively, and every pub in Dublin was overflowing with people in for the game.

Ullis left yesterday. Mia and I had a long debate about whether to leave or not and high-tail it 30 or so miles north to Annalong, a small fishing village in Northern Ireland, and the only real shelter north of here. The weather was calling for gales from the S-SW by evening, with heavy rain and limited visibility starting in the afternoon. Given the very high tidal ranges, and the accompanying strong currents associated with them, we could only leave Skerries at 11am, at low tide, when we’d have a fair current behind us for the ride north. This would give us only a six-hour window or so of reasonable weather, and that if the system arrived on time. Looking at the GRIB files, it was quite obvious we were in for a blow, as a large area of low pressure was hovering just west of the country and making it’s way towards us. In the end, we decided to take a known quantity – or nice and sturdy (and free!) mooring here in Skerries, rather than an unknown fishing pier only 30 miles further on. The dinghy rides in to shore and back would be uncomfortable, but at least we could relax knowing the boat is safe. It’s frustrating when you’re trying to make miles to have to sit and wait.

The wind arrived, late last night when we were getting ready for bed (which by now consists of donning long underwear and wool socks and slithering into our sleeping bags, on opposite settees, and trying to stay warm. It’s not that cold here yet, but without heat on the boat, it gets chilly at night. I end up pulling my bag right up over my head, and by morning, my hair, which by now is almost as long as it’s ever been, is matted flat down to my forehead, further exaggerating the illusion that I’m in fact wearing a helmet). In the end, we could have made Annalong no problem, or even Ardglass, our intended next stop a further 15 miles up the coast, but we’re safe here anyway. Mia and I instead sat inside the Pierhouse for most of the morning on our computers, and then sauntered into town and to the community center in search of showers. We counted last night, that since leaving Annapolis on July 4, we’ve had a total of 10 real showers, including the ones yesterday in the women’s locker room of the community center. Half of them could hardly count as ‘real’ from a shoreside perspective – the pressure was so weak at William-the-Swedish-Chef’s house in Crookhaven that it was difficult to get the soap out of our hair, while the showers in St Pierre (2), Kinsale and now here, had no adjustment for temperature, and were luke-warm at best. Nonetheless, the water was fresh and came from a spigot rather than a bucket, so they counted in our minds. The two girls at the community center were quite friendly, and offered us the showers for free, but had to turn on the hot water first, and it would take twenty minutes or so to kick in. They let us relax in the staff kitchen, offering us tea while we waited for the water. Kenzie and Carol (I think), ended up joining us up there, and we chatted for a while about traveling and Irish culture.

And now, we remain on board. The wind is whistling in the rigging outside, and has slowly shifted from the south overnight, to more WSW this morning, meaning there is substantially more fetch for the wind to kick up a nasty chop, making our mooring that much less comfortable, and the prospect of a dinghy ride ashore that much less appealing. Rather than pick up my book, as I usually do in the morning with my coffee, I got out my computer (I’m currently involved in three books at the moment – The Lord of the Rings, which I’ve put down indefinitely; Donnie Brasco, a book about the Mafia that I bought the other day in Dublin, and which is currently holding my attention; and the Stieg Larsson Millenium Trilogy, which I’m listening to on my iPod, mainly when I have to hand-steer on watch or when I’m doing dishes, to pass the time. It’s amazing how clean the galley gets when I’m listening to that book – it’s so captivating that I take extra time to clean just so I can listen longer). I have two articles due today, one for Spinsheet and another for Yacht Essentials, and I know if I don't’ start writing straight away this morning that I will get distracted or find an excuse not to get started.

Given the delay, September is advancing far too swiftly for our liking, and we have a hell of a lot further to go than I allowed for. Scotland is still at least five or six sailing days away, and it feels like the fall weather pattern is quickly kicking in, making for fewer and shorter weather windows. We can do about 40-50 miles per day quite comfortably, and have charted several stopping points around those distances up the coast. The passage planning is slightly more complicated than we’re used to, having to play the tides, so often you only get half the day with a fair tide, and can really only use 7 or 8 hours to keep moving. However, with a fair tide, we can make 7-8 knots, which still lets us make good mileage, even with a shorter window. So now Mia and I are considering leaving the boat in Scotland for the winter, as the prospect of a late-September North Sea crossing (which will take us at least three days, and more likely five or six) is seeming less and less enjoyable as the days go by. If we can work something out with the Swedish customs that would allow us to import the boat next summer, we’ll do just that, and return to Scotland with fresh energy and (hopefully) more money, so we can really enjoy this last part of our adventure rather than it feeling like a burden.

Mia is baking bread, and I’m about to make breakfast.

---

So much for that idea. Scotland was scuttled nearly as quickly as it entered our thoughts. I made an attempt to contact Swedish customs yesterday, to see if they could give us some leeway considering the seasons, and allow us to leave the boat in the UK over the winter, bringing it the rest of the way next spring or summer. According to the immigration laws, I have one year to import all of my belongings from the date that I officially moved to Sweden (which I take to mean January 25, 2011, as that was when I last entered the country on my new residency permit, after having been away more than a year and a half, which qualifies under the guidelines set forth on the immigration website). So we’d need a few months of leeway if we left the boat for the winter. Customs was closed yesterday, so we never got through.

This morning, however, I spoke to a reasonable man in Goteborg, where we’d officially be importing the boat. He was helpful, but maintained that not only can they NOT give us an extension, but also, they can not even determine my one-year eligibility without both myself and the item to be imported (in this case the boat) being present in Sweden. He spoke at length with Mia in Swedish, to more clearly explain the situation, and she came away with the feeling that he was merely doing his job and playing by the book. Apparently there is no way around this, as he was the highest up in that office. So to Sweden we’ll continue, North Sea be damned.

---

Mia’s getting bored. She’s on to the last book in the Harry Potter series. A running joke for most of the Atlantic crossing was asking each other what the characters in our books were up to. I was reading The Lord of the Rings, while Clint and Mia were each reading different books in the Potter series. ‘How’s Potter doing?’ was invariably answered with ‘Good – he’s in school!’ no matter what was actually happening. My response to ‘How’s Frodo doing?’ was always ‘He’s out traveling!’ This never got old.

We’re stuck on the boat. The wind has continually increased since I started writing this morning, and the chop in the bay is big enough now to douse any ideas we may have had of going ashore. Getting to the pier wouldn’t be a problem, but the return journey in our tiny rowing dinghy would be quite impossible. We’re rocking and rolling on the mooring, and the Coast Guard comes on the VHF every hour or so to update the gale warning. A sea buoy off the west coast of Ireland is reporting waves over 15-feet, with wind gusts in the 50s. We have a steady 25 knots, gusting into the 40s in our anchorage. I continue to give thanks for our free mooring, which seems solid-as.

Windy in Skerries, Part I

2011-09-06T12:48:00.000+02:00

We’re weather bound today for the first time on the journey. In fact, we’re experiencing lousier weather than at any time during the actual ocean crossing, which is slightly amazing.

Mia is baking bread, and I’m about to make breakfast.

---

Check-in/OK message from Arcturus SPOT Messenger

2011-08-29T22:37:00.001+02:00

Arcturus
Latitude:51.7006
Longitude:-8.51401
GPS location Date/Time:08/29/2011 13:37:39 PDT

Message:Greetings from the North Atlantic! We're having a blast, and are doing well. Love, Andy & Mia (& Clint!)

Click the link below to see where I am located.
http://fms.ws/5qCvY/51.7006N/8.51401W

If the above link does not work, try this link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=51.7006,-8.51401&ll=51.7006,-8.51401&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

Arcturus

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Glandore

2011-08-28T19:56:00.002+02:00

We drank coffee this morning at Donald Street’s house in Glandore. He lives in a beautiful little place up a back street only half a block away from the harbor. We more or less invited ourselves over yesterday, when we accidentally ran into him on the street not five minutes after we’d come ashore. Since running out of propane we’ve gone without our morning coffee, and on hearing this, he said there was plenty of it available if we wanted to stop by.

We found him in the small annex, a sun-room of sorts off the side of the house. Strewn about the apartment were just about every sailing magazine in print, current and back issues alike, and photos of his iconic yawl Iolaire and various J-class yachts on the walls. The centerpiece of sorts was the original tiller from Iolaire, built in 1905, that had split in half somewhere in her history and replaced. Street’s son glued it back together and now, freshly varnished, it hangs on the wall in Glandore. The place was unassuming, slightly disheveled and utterly charming. The coffee was strong.

We only stayed for half an hour or so. Street, at 81, was heading off at half past ten to race a ‘Dragon,’ and his particular boat, Gypsy, was nearly as old as he. At 79, he says it doesn’t quite compete with the latest and greatest from Kinsale, but he assured me that the competition at the back of the fleet is fierce. In parting, he gave us a signed copy of a cruising guide to the south and west coasts of Ireland.

Since Clint left, Mia and I have been enjoying the only few days of a proper honeymoon we’ve had since leaving Annapolis. We haven’t been alone on the boat since sailing to Newport, and that trip was so busy with boat projects, planning and generally being nervous about the crossing that we didn’t have time for really exploring ashore. In Nova Scotia, it was more of the same. We did get to see some of Lunenburg and Baddeck, but the adventuring was always clouded by a vague sense of uneasiness I had about the coming trip. By St. Pierre, the boat was nearly ready, but my mental state was in no mind for exploration, and I barely made it beyond the yacht club docks, going only as far as the grocery store on the hill for cheese and wine.

With the crossing behind us, we’re making up for it now. Crookhaven was a perfect place to make landfall, and we became regulars at O’Sullivan’s. Here in Glandore, we’ve gone further afield, and been a bit more extravagant in spending money. Last night we ate dinner at the Marine Hotel, on the waterfront – I had an 8oz. steak, Mia a 15” homemade pizza – and we didn’t return to the boat until 10:30 in the evening.

After coffee this morning, we hiked up the steep hill behind Street’s house. The road was paved, one-lane, and lined either side with ancient stone walls covered in ivy. The forest was thick to our right, while on the left were several quaint houses and B&Bs, all with lovely stone entrances and gravel driveways. Further up the hill, which seemed endless to our untrained legs, blackberry bushes were blooming on both sides, and the berry hunting began. They weren’t quite ripe at first, but near the top of the hill where the trees opened up and the sun shined through, we found more berries than we could ever imagine eating, and we ate as much as we dared. There was a bit of a contest for the fruit with the bees, but I think in the end Mia and I won out. Our tongues were purple and our bellies full by the end of our mile-long hike along the road, which by then had flattened out to reveal fairy-tale scenery in the hillsides and farmland beyond. Cows grazed on either side of the road, and several isolated houses were visible tucked away in glades of trees here and there in the valleys. The sun was shining, and I rolled my jeans up for the warmth of the air.

We’d planned on enjoying the ‘carvery lunch’ at the Marine Hotel today, after noticing the sign last night outside. The money the swim girls gave us for a fancy dinner we decided to stretch, and managed to make two meals out of it. We returned to the hotel at around 1 o’clock to find the buffet set up with roast lamb, pork and beef, and grilled chicken and salmon, with taters, carrots and veggies, plus local brown soda bread. We indulged despite our bellies full of berries, and had a two-hour lunch while we watched sports on TV.

At first we thought we were watching rugby, but it soon became apparent that it was something else altogether. The ball was round, for starters. I asked an older couple at the adjacent table, and he said it was Gaelic football, akin to Aussie Rules, but with a round ball and a rectangular field. It’s like rugby in that the teams beat each other up quite well, and you can carry the ball. But you apparently have to dribble off your feet when running downfield, and can score by kicking it into a soccer-style goal, or drop-kicking it over the goal and between two posts, like an NFL field goal, only at full-speed. The play does not stop. The game we watched was the under-18 league. Just as we finished our meal, the big match of the day came on, the professional league match between Dublin and Donegal. The fans were riotous, and I was very much inclined to stay and watch.

Instead, we wandered back up the hill looking for cell phone reception to call Ullis and plan for her arrival tomorrow. We walked up another steep paved road behind the Hayes Pub (where I’m sat now), and managed to get reception at the top of the hill. Ullis never answered, but it was worth the walk for the view. Before us to the south was an incredibly view of the harbor entrance and the mooring field (with our boat visible on the outside). To the north stood more rolling hills and countryside. I asked a local woman sitting on her porch if the road looped back into town. She said it did, and that I could take one of two forks, each of which returned to the town via opposite sides, and made for about 30 minutes walks. Mia and I plan on returning tomorrow morning before our departure and running the loops. We have to choose our runs wisely, as it’s no use running right after a shower, as we never know when the next one will come. We decided it’s okay to run before a sailing passage, as we usually get dirty under way anyway. Tomorrow there should be showers available at the Royal Cork Yacht Club, our destination and meeting place with Ullis, and also the oldest yacht club in the world. It’s about forty miles from Glandore, so if we get away by noon we should make it before dark.

RE: Congratulations!

2011-08-28T15:53:00.000+02:00

Andy, thanks for the reply to my questions. Terrific answers!

Cork is one of my favorite towns....like I might have said previously, I
have ever met an unhappy Irishman...although I am sure there are after
reading some of the great (and depressed) Irish writers. The other thing
about Ireland is the incredible shades of green you notice. While in Cork
ya' gotta get a plateful of boxties and an Guinness at a pub in the Temple
Bar area...or even better yet, visit the Guinness brewery...the Guinness
they serve in the Sky Bar is the most delicious thing you can pass through
your lips. I think you could live on it as it is a perfect food.

My best to you and Mia...and Clint...keep your lee rail awash and God's
Speed!

Uncle John

-----Original Message-----
From: andy.schell125@gmail.com [mailto:andy.schell125@gmail.com] On Behalf
Of Andy Schell
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2011 5:25 AM
To: John Garis
Cc: Mia Karlsson; Gail Schell; andy; andy.schell125.upload
Subject: Re: Congratulations!

Greetings from Glandore! Thanks for the congrats - Mia and I are
sitting at a small hotel bar now, having our morning coffee - we ran
out of propane two days ago, so have been consisting on tuna and
cereal until we can get it filled in Cork, where we're headed
tomorrow. Thanks for the list of questions - I'm going to do my best
to answer them, and I'm also going to post this email on my blog,
because I think it will be of interest to others.so, here you go! Hope
all is well back home.

Uncle John's Email, from our landfall, 23 August 2011:

Congratulations on making landfall in Ireland..both Dan and I agree
that you both have "balls" to do what you are doing..I wouldn't know
where to start. I've passed your "Spottings" along to the rest of the
family (Dan and Tobie, Tim and Mindy, Kristen and Mark, Mart and Larry
and Kathleen) as I've received them. I wish I could sit down with you
and debrief..among the questions I have for you:

1. Was the crossing what you expected?

Yes and no - we expected much worse weather. Thanks to my dad who was
doing some 'amateur' weather routing from back home (and in touch with
us every third day or so via satellite phone) we managed to avoid
winds over 30 knots, which is almost unthinkable that far north. The
reason for taking the route we did is the westerly winds normally
expected at that latitude. The Gulf Stream, combined with the Azores
High and the Icelandic Low create a 'highway' of sorts for low
pressure systems coming off the Eastern Seaboard. Just south of this
track, you'll normally encounter westerly winds, and fairly steadily.
In 2008, my friend Matt Rutherford (who is currently north of Alaska,
having just completed the NW passage - solotheamericas.org),
experience SIX full gales (winds over 40 knots), and deployed his
drogue several times. We were more concerned about making the boat
sail fast when the wind picked up, and were instead BECALMED ten
times, having to furl the sails because they were banging around so
badly in the swell. On the other hand, I'd conservatively estimated
we'd be able to average 100 miles per day (which is about a 4 knot
average) and we managed 90 miles per day, not too far off. When the
boat got some wind though, we were able to do 140 miles, which we did
two or three times. This, obviously, would have made for a much
quicker passage.

2. Would you do it again?

If you asked me this during the first seven days I would have said no
way. But now? Absolutely. The first week was extremely frustrating -
we only made 360 miles in 7 days, with three days UNDER 40 miles,
which is horrible progress. And in the wrong direction - SE, due to
the light easterlies we experienced. I was nervous about the boat,
anxious about the trip and generally depressed. And had no patience
for the calms at all, letting the weather get the best of my mood.
Almost as soon as the wind picked up and came from the right direction
- west - everything changed. We got into a nice routine at sea, and
the boat performed wonderfully once we learned her niggles. Mia, Clint
and I got very good at sailing her by the end of the crossing, which
instilled confidence tremendously. And I realized everything I'd done
to refit her for the passage actually worked. We had no breakdowns,
and the worst problem was a tiny tear in the mainsail near the foot,
that we still haven't fixed because it's that minor. Mia and I already
started discussing future cruising plans. Our next big hop will be
back across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal
and across the Pacific. We have a strong desire to return to New
Zealand, and next time it will be by boat. As for the northern route
across the pond, I'd love to do it again to see how the weather is
really supposed to be!

3. You seemed to have all the details worked out before you left
and were confident in your planning. Did you learn anything new?

We were very pleased with the work we did to the boat, especially what
Mia had made for the bookshelves down below. She'd sewn up some
lightweight netting material and attached them with bungie cord across
the book shelves, and not a single thing went flying in the cabin,
even in the heaviest of weather (which, admittedly, wasn't very
heavy). I was most concerned about the rigging work I'd done, as
keeping the mast up is the single most important aspect of sailing
(perhaps behind keeping the water out, which is obvious). Each time
the boat heeled hard I'd wonder if I really did put every pin in
correctly. I did. In Lunenburg, we decided to buy turnbuckles for the
shrouds, as the old-school lashings we were using looked cool but were
extremely annoying to tension. I spoke with John Franta from Colligo
Marine (the guy who helped us with the synthetic rigging), and told
him as much. We found galvanized turnbuckles at the hardware store at
$13 a piece (as opposed to nearly $100 for the shiny stainless 'yacht'
turnbuckles). We fitted them in Baddeck, and it was the best change we
made. Once I tuned the rig, we hardly touched it all the way across.

Our watch rotation changed several times along the way. We started out
doing 4-on 8-off, with a split watch around dinner time. Two people
would share a four hour watch, taking turns cooking and washing up.
This also staggered the shifts, so you always had a new time each day
instead of always having the night shift, for example. This worked ok,
but Mia and Clint had a habit of waking my in the night to make sail
changes, and it was hard for me to get any rest. We switched then to
four hour watches for Mia and Clint - Clint had the 2000-0000, and Mia
the 0300-0700. Since I was usually up anyway, I took the 0000-0300
watch, for only three hours. Then I did a long five hour watch in the
daytime, since I was usually up then anyway also. With only three
hours at night, I was more rested if they needed me before or after.
This worked great, and we only changed again once we spotted land, to
three-on-six-off for the last day.

4. Were you in a shipping lane and seeing other vessels during
the crossing?

At the outset, crossing the Grand Banks, we were in fog most of the
time, and wouldn't have seen any if they were there. Our AIS system
worked well, and we heard a foghorn close by in the night one time,
but it soon moved off, to our relief.we never saw the ship it came
from. We did spot a Portugese battleship who steamed out of the fog
quite close (and did not appear on AIS). I hailed him on the radio and
had a friendly chat for a bit, though his English was very broken. We
got pushed far south of what our intended course was, due to the
Icelandic Low not really being in place. All the low pressures were
tracking farther south than usual, so we had to go south to be on
their 'correct' (southern) side for westerlies. For the first half we
didn't see any signs of shipping (but did see loads of life - birds
followed us the whole way across, and it was a rare day that we didn't
see dolphins). By the second half, once we gotten north again, we were
back in the shipping lanes and saw ships regularly. This was actually
a nice feeling, knowing that if the worst happened we'd likely get
passed by sooner rather than later.

5. How did the boat hold up to the rigors of ocean sailing?

The boat performed beyond expectation. She was very fast when there
was wind, and more importantly, felt very solid. I compared it to a
Mason 43 we delivered to the Bahamas a few years ago, one of the
sturdiest boats afloat. Arcturus felt like a mini Mason to us. She did
not go to windward very well when there was any sort of sea running -
we were only able to tack through about 110 degrees, which is abysmal,
but expected. Once the wind freed, however, she flew. We had some
surfing runs with the wind aft and the sails set 'wing-on-wing' with
the jib out on the spin pole, and regularly saw speeds over 12 knots
for short stretches. The best night watch of the trip came around Day
20 - I was outside, the half moon was shining very brightly and there
wasn't a cloud in the sky. The wind was blowing 25-30, dead astern,
and we had the full main up on one side and the small jib out on the
other, with the pole. The wind had been steady from the WSW for two
days, and had built up a very friendly sea, big, but which Arcturus
easily surfed on. We were probably over-canvassed, but I let her go,
as I was having too much fun. Every second or third wave we'd just
zoom off at 10, 11 and 12 knots, the whitewater streaming around the
hull and making a sound like a jet taking off. It was exhilarating
sailing. I went forward in the dark with my harness on, and climbed up
on the spin pole and just hung on for about 20 minutes enjoying it
all. I finally did take two reefs in the main before Mia came up, so I
could sleep better, and we were still doing more than ten knots,
though admittedly more under control.

6. What was the worst part of the trip?

The first week, easily. I managed to learn some patience by the end,
and when a calm came, we just furled the sails and went to bed to wait
for wind. At the beginning, I couldn't stand not being able to move,
and was very frustrated. Combined with the foggy weather and my
feeling of general uneasiness, that first week was miserable.

7. What was the best part of the trip?

Smelling land as we rounded Mizen Head coming into Crookhaven. I'd
forgotten about this. Clint had tears in his eyes. All three of us
were taking short gulps through our noses soaking it up, as we knew
we'd soon get used to it and it wouldn't last. Smells always seems to
evoke the strongest emotions, and the smell of grass, dirt and smoke
from a nearby chimney was absolutely enchanting.

8. What kind of meals were you eating?

We actually ate very well, and didn't run out of fresh food until
almost Day 21 or so. Our normal routine was to cook one hot meal per
day, taking turns cooking and washing up. Mia had made a seven-day
menu, based on the food we ate at Broadreach, when we were in the
Caribbean working with teenagers. Monday was 'Mediterranean Pasta',
Tuesday Chili, Wednesday Hawaiian Stir-fry, Thursday Tuna salad and
roasted veg, Friday Curry, Saturday rice and beans and Sunday pizza!
We baked an enormous amount of bread, thanks in part to the calm
weather. The pizza was a big hit, and we made the dough from scratch.
We had lots of garlic, onions, cabbage and turnips on board, which
lasted the whole way across. We also had farmer eggs from the market
in Reading, that lasted a full six weeks - in six dozen, only two or
three went bad. They had never seen the refrig, which was key. We had
many cans of beans and tomato sauce, cans of pineapple and a basket
full of apples and oranges. We had peanut butter. Oatmeal (though only
for a few days, as we'd stored it in the bilge and all three
containers got wet and moldy - this was the worst part of the trip for
Mia, as she lives on her oatmeal for brekky).

9. What does the cabin below deck smell like after 3-4 weeks at sea?

Surprisingly clean! We'd take bucket showers about once every three
days, and the weather was so nice that we never even got out our long
underwear. Yet it wasn't hot enough to sweat, so we felt pretty clean.
Every few days we'd take turns cleaning the head and sweeping the
floor, and we were very good about cleaning the galley after each meal
and putting things back in their proper place. Our hair was a bit
messy due to the saltwater, but it really didn't smell bad at all!

10. Did you take photographs during the trip and are you going to
post them on FB?

Mia took nearly 1000 photos! Check out her blog at
miatravel.blogspot.com. She posts some of them up there, and I'll have
some on my site. We don't put photos on FB, but we'll send you the
good ones. There are loads!

11. When do you sail for Norway? And are you taking the western
route or the eastern route through the Irish Sea?

We're heading up the east coast of Ireland, in the Irish Sea. We're
only 30 miles from Crookhaven at the moment, where we made our
landfall. Our friend Ullis, who was the photographer at the wedding,
is flying down tomorrow to Dublin, and taking the bus down to Cork,
where we're taking the boat tomorrow, about 50 miles further up the
coast. She'll sail with us up the Irish Sea and through the Caledonian
Canal in Scotland. Then it's a dash across the North Sea, about 3-400
miles to Kristiansand in Norway. From there we enter the Baltic and
plan on leaving the boat on the west coast of Sweden for the winter.

Hope that answers your questions! Keep in touch!

+Andy & Mia

Re: Congratulations!

2011-08-28T12:25:00.001+02:00

Uncle John's Email, from our landfall, 23 August 2011:

Congratulations on making landfall in Ireland….both Dan and I agree
that you both have "balls" to do what you are doing….I wouldn't know
where to start. I've passed your "Spottings" along to the rest of the
family (Dan and Tobie, Tim and Mindy, Kristen and Mark, Mart and Larry
and Kathleen) as I've received them. I wish I could sit down with you
and debrief….among the questions I have for you:

1. Was the crossing what you expected?

2. Would you do it again?

3. You seemed to have all the details worked out before you left
and were confident in your planning. Did you learn anything new?

4. Were you in a shipping lane and seeing other vessels during
the crossing?

At the outset, crossing the Grand Banks, we were in fog most of the
time, and wouldn't have seen any if they were there. Our AIS system
worked well, and we heard a foghorn close by in the night one time,
but it soon moved off, to our relief…we never saw the ship it came
from. We did spot a Portugese battleship who steamed out of the fog
quite close (and did not appear on AIS). I hailed him on the radio and
had a friendly chat for a bit, though his English was very broken. We
got pushed far south of what our intended course was, due to the
Icelandic Low not really being in place. All the low pressures were
tracking farther south than usual, so we had to go south to be on
their 'correct' (southern) side for westerlies. For the first half we
didn't see any signs of shipping (but did see loads of life - birds
followed us the whole way across, and it was a rare day that we didn't
see dolphins). By the second half, once we gotten north again, we were
back in the shipping lanes and saw ships regularly. This was actually
a nice feeling, knowing that if the worst happened we'd likely get
passed by sooner rather than later.

5. How did the boat hold up to the rigors of ocean sailing?

6. What was the worst part of the trip?

7. What was the best part of the trip?

8. What kind of meals were you eating?

9. What does the cabin below deck smell like after 3-4 weeks at sea?

10. Did you take photographs during the trip and are you going to
post them on FB?

11. When do you sail for Norway? And are you taking the western
route or the eastern route through the Irish Sea?

Hope that answers your questions! Keep in touch!

+Andy & Mia

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2011-08-27T17:54:00.001+02:00

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O'Sullivan's (Minus Clint)

2011-08-26T22:54:00.001+02:00

Mia and I are sat back at the pub on the Crookhaven waterfront. She's
nursing a Murphy's (the local from this neck of the woods…Guinness is
a Dublin tradition). I'm working on my Powers Irish whiskey (a
double). We're waiting for the music to start, and after a honeymoon
dinner aboard 'Arcturus' decided it appropriate to spend our last
evening in Crookhaven in the same place we've spent most of the days
here.

Not to sound like we've been drinking the whole time either (in fact,
on the contrary, save of course our gluttonous coffee and soda bread
consumption). O'Sullivan's seems to be the central meeting place of
Crookhaven, one of only two pubs that line the narrow street
(singular) along the waterfront, and decidedly the more popular of the
two. They open around 10:30 in the morning, and for the past three
days, we've been knocking at the door with our laptops and bags of
laundry and trash. We've made the seat up in the back our home base.
That early in the morning the place is empty and the staff is usually
making coffee and mopping the floors, so we could really have the run
of the place. But by noon, the punters are in, and there's not a seat
left in the establishment. They only make basic food - sandwiches
(toasted!), and homemade soup and bread, but it's all delicious.

Clint set off today for parts unknown. Dermott O'Sullivan (the local
barman whose become a huge help to us here) took him in the car to a
small town a few kilometers over where he was able to get a bus to
Cork. He flies to London on Sunday, and ultimately has to get back to
Norway to either continue his job as a tree surgeon or pack his car
and leave, depending on how well his boss took to his six week
vacation. The only message he's received is that his boss was away in
Thailand for the strangest three weeks of his life, and it'd be good
to see him again. So that's that. We hugged him goodbye and thanked
him for his hard work enduring the rigors of ocean sailing (and the
rigors of being cooped up with Mia and I for six weeks - he joined us
in Lunenburg back on July 15, which seems like a lifetime ago by now).

Yesterday we got off our butts and managed to go for a small adventure
into the hillsides surrounding the harbor. There is a small castle a
few miles to the west of the town, up a steep ridge and overlooking
the ocean. We sailed past it on the way in, and the sight of it
enchanted us (me at least). At the time, it really felt like we'd
landed in a new place. There is only one road in Crookhaven (in the US
it would be considered one lane it's so narrow, but here there's white
stripes down the middle and the small cars can actually pass one
another, albeit with the utmost care). We followed it to the west, the
harbor on our right as we ascended the first hill. Only about a
quarter-mile along, we followed a path into a grassy meadow that
continued even steeper uphill, passing through several metal cow
fences. There were actually cows on the other side, but they paid us
no mind and allowed us to pass without trouble. A small stone church
with a sign reading 'St. Brendan the Navigator' outside was perched
below us, overlooking the long, narrow harbor.

We continued along a well-worn footpath that arched further upward and
made it's way along a steep ridge. The land sloped dramatically away
to our left, before the road cut it's path in the hillside, and then
continued on down to meet the ocean. On our right was a more gradual
drop over granite rocks, ancient stone walls and meadowland down to
the harbor. At the summit of this first ridge we were offered a
magnificent view of the harbor and the waterfront, and I cast a
nervous eye towards Arcturus to make sure she was still in the same
place on anchor (I did think to bring the handheld VHF just in case,
hoping someone in town would try to call us if the boat broke it's
anchor. As it turned out, we overhead a PAN PAN call, wen a 40-foot
sailing yacht lost her engine and went on the rocks at the entrance to
the harbor. The Mizen Head Coast Guard quickly responded, and a large
RIB from in town went out to assist. The three people on board were
picked up and they managed to tow the boat off the rocks and onto a
mooring, apparently without too much damage. The incident was over in
less than half an hour).

The ridge then quickly descended. We scaled an old stone wall,
carefully avoiding the barbed wire fence to keep the cows at bay. The
path seemed to disappear on the other side, and the hill sloped away
to the extent that we had to scramble our way down, sometimes on all
fours. The ground was rocky and covered in little prickly bushes, and
mine and Mia's choice of flipflops as footwear seemed less than ideal
at this point. We reached the road, where next to a small causeway,
where the ocean and the harbor were seperated by only a few hundred
yards of low-lying land we found a group of friends camping out in a
tent. We crossed the road and began another ascent up a gravel path,
wide enough for a small car. Mia was lagging behind picking and eating
blackberries the whole way. Clint criticized me for not waiting for
her - he assumed she was having a tough time of it because she'd hurt
her back the day before, and he laughed when he realized she was only
eating. The track was straight and steep, and quickly reached a far
greater height than the cow pasture we'd just come down from. To our
left was sheer cliff right on down to the ocean, the same bit of sea
we'd only just sailed ourselves a few days prior. At the top of the
hill a footpath branched off to the left, and the castle came into
view. Despite our altitude, the path was rutted and muddy thanks to
the rain (which has been here in bits every day). We made the castle
with only seconds to spare before the downpour started, and we
sheltered under the stone roof and drank from our two thermos' of
coffee. Off in the distant a naval warship passed to the south,
heading towards Fastnet, visible just before the horizon.

The return journey was uneventful, and we followed the road all the
way back into town. All three of us were far more tired than we'd
expected, and we're all but drained by the bottom of the big hill,
with still another kilometer to go back into Crookhaven. We cooked the
six fish that the three young boys sold to us in the pub the day
before - we'd left it in the fridge at the adjacent shop, and bought
some potatoes and an onion to go with it. It was delighful, and the
right price - 3 Euro for six nice mackerel, gutted and filleted by the
three ten-year-olds that sold it to us.

Landfall in Ireland

2011-08-26T13:16:00.001+02:00

24 August 2011

Clean!

Clint and I are sat in William's apartment in Crookhaven, above the
restaurant for which he is the chef. He's Swedish. He's been living
and working in Crookhaven for the past two years (the owner of
O'Sullivan's pub is Swedish, and brought him over).

We met him through the older bartender at the pub just a while ago. It
was our first stop ashore after having walked down from the little
dock we tied the dinghy too. We chose a spot further from town, as the
wind was blowing out of the harbor and to have rowed upwind would have
been impossible. The stroll down the one-lane road into the small
village was absolutely delightful, lined with blackberries ripe for
the picking and surrounded by green hills and cow pastures, with a
backdrop of grey stone mountains behind. A castle was perched on the
hilltop in the distance, which we shall explore tomorrow.

The three of us enjoyed three rounds of fresh coffee (with real milk!)
and their homemade brown soda bread with butter and jam. William came
out having heard that one of us is Swedish, and offered the use of his
shower if the sailing club was closed up (which it was). We met Magda,
who I'm assuming is one of William's roommates, and another girl whose
name we didn't get. It looks like we've taken over their apartment,
out salty wet weather jackets strewn about, my flipflops drying on the
floor (they were incredibly moldy when I took them out of the hanging
locker), and our bags lying on the sofa.

Clint shaved his beard and looks like a child.

Mia and I are freshly showered, for the first time in 24 days, which
feels indescribably magnificent. The water was difficult to get the
correct temperature, and the pressure left much to be desired, and yet
it was one of the greatest showers of my life. The curtain was hung up
loosely with an old thick wire. It's not the nicest apartment, but
wonderfully comforting.

We're headed back to the pub now for our first Murphy's Irish Stout
and some lunch. There are two golf flags in the pub, from the '07 PGA
Championship and '08 Open Championship signed by Padraig Harrington,
who is good friends with one of O'Sullivans' regular customers.
Tomorrow we shall go exploring in the hills, looking for castles and
stretching our legs.

William the Swedish chef had a black t-shirt that said 'I (heart) Goats' on it.
--

The best part about our landfall was the smell. I'd forgotten about
that part, and it came upon us as we rounded Mizen Head and the wind
came blowing over the hilltops towards us. We were wafted with an
aroma of grass and trees, soils and woodburning stoves, moss and
rocks…earth. Nothing can quite stir the emotions like a strong scent,
and this one was mesmerizing. I couldn't get enough of it through my
nostrils, and kept gulping in quick short breaths, aware that soon
we'd become accustomed to it and it's magic would fade, but in the
moment we took as much as we could. Mia and Clint agreed, Clint even
having tears in his eyes and we started motoring up the narrow channel
into Crookhaven harbor just as the last light of day was fading. We
anchored between two rocky cliffs, opened a bottle of bubbles and
drank wine for the rest of the evening, not even bothering to change
out of our foulies. We're in Ireland.

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2011-08-23T22:43:00.000+02:00

Arcturus
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2011-08-23T11:49:00.001+02:00

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2011-08-23T10:20:00.001+02:00

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2011-08-22T13:45:00.001+02:00

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2011-08-21T07:43:00.001+02:00

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2011-08-19T17:41:00.001+02:00

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