Rain, sleet and snow

Many years ago on an Icy river

First snow/sleet/rain of the season today.  It's cold, wet and raw outside, perfect weather for sailing in the mind by reading a book, working on boat design, watching sailing vids or updating the blog.  This morning I watched this video:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER2Ksa8uHpA

It's an older entry from Dylan Winter on his Keep Turning Left sailing blog.  He really does lovely work making these pieces and I'm considering purchasing the DVD versions of them, even though I don't really buy such things, and can't really afford the luxury
In this piece he shows some of the older SHARPIES that are club raced in the area he is cruising in and states all of the positives of the type.  Coincidentally these are all the reasons that I am on about the current project, my 15 foot micro-cruising boat, which may be called the "CEDAR POND CRUISING SHARPIE" or the HUDSON RIVER MICRO-CRUISER,  we'll see
A funny thing about this Sharpie design idea is that a friend of mine mentioned the idea years ago, saying that he'd wanted to build one.  I didn't give it much consideration at the time since I was very intrigued by my deep keeled full displacement cruising yacht, but things have changed since then.

The idea of sailing a small boat that can be kept for cheap/free, and used in almost any body of water, well maybe not offshore, but then again, what I have easily available to me is a grand river that leads to the sea, but more importantly, is on it's own, a wonderful playground for a small adventuring boat that can be beached and make it's way up small tributaries and marshes, but with some accommodations for over night camping aboard in relative comfort.

I've been staring at Ruel Parker's book on sharpies "The Sharpie Book." The boat I want to build falls somewhere between and outside of the boats he describes in this book, but that is just as well as I seem to have such a hard time following another persons directions.  I think of it as the difference between following a path on land, which can be discerned by foot prints, tire tracks and such which will linger and can even tell you something about who and what came before, I prefer the sea going version of following others, for the wake closes up, fades away, moments after it has been made, leaving no sign that anybody has gone this way before, even if out on the horizon you can see the other ship, tiny, miniature in the distance, there is no real way of knowing that you are floating on the very same water that that ship was supported by, and in truth, it's highly likely that you are not.  This allows for a certain degree of freedom in the way one approaches his path, journey, ideas.  There is hardly a chance that my boat will be the very first of it's shape and size, but that isn't important.  What is important is that I am coming to it in a unique way, for what I bring to the moment is uniquely my own.

Great book on a great boat type

The warm days of Winter

I was out on the pond again yesterday, in Tartlet.

 There was ice at the shady, shallow end of the pond but the rest was wet and ruffled by the breeze.  Tart is becoming more and more pleasing to me as I, more often, easily lift her to my shoulder and hike on down to the pond.
A sense of quiet grows as I get further from the road and closer to the water.  Once in the boat and on the pond the sound of the oars takes over, though they are barely audible and what I do hear of them is very pleasant.
There is something about the rowing position that is conducive to meditative, peaceful, experience.  I believe it has much to do with looking astern.  There is the sense of discovery as the world is slowly revealed to my peripheral vision, and I am allowed to linger on it as it gently gets farther away.  This is such a great contrast to looking so far ahead to where one might be going, and then as the approach and can capture attention they are more understandable until the moment they suddenly pass out of ones vision.
Occasionally I look over my shoulder, usually one and then, the other.  If I don't do this I run the risk of running straight up into something, but, what's ahead is not the focus, rather something to be aware of.
I think this has a lot to do with my preference for rowing over paddling.

I just finished reading "The Rudder Treasury" and "The Compleat Cruiser".  Both were great winter reading.

Happy Solstice!  Happy Winter!

winter reading

"Racundra's First Cruise" by Arthur Ransome, yes, the Arthur Ransome of "Swallows and Amazon's" fame, seems to be a not very well known earlier work of Ransomes and it is hard to understand why.  It was a great read for anybody who cruises in a small boat.  In it are lines that seems as though they are perfectly fit to quote and the first page of the book is just the thing to make a small boat cruising sailor forget any appointments he might have had and instead just sit, read, and turn pages.
I purposefully took my time reading this book, a chapter at a time, as it is a small book and I know enough to be wary of consuming the entire thing in one sitting and then wondering what I was going to do about the anticlimactic nature of still being snow bound for another few months of winter.
I highly recommend this book, if you can find it.  The worn 60 year old paperback copy I found was not inexpensive, but it is one that I suspect I will keep on my shelf and return to each winter for many years.
The book is a log of his cruise, just as advertised, not with any great plot line or moral, but it is more like what most of us experience when cruising, we leave a port, venture to many others experiencing weather, people, meals, the suns rise and set, changing winds and then eventually a return to the port from which we began.  For a cruiser being able to be there, if in mind only, with Ransome, all those years ago, is a pleasure in the middle of a winter when he may not be able to be out on his own cruise.