Thursday, March 31, 2016

For the Love of a Boat - High Idle - Jeff Armstrong

Jeff & Nancy leaving Thomaston for Hupper Island
My dear friend Jeff Armstrong, who passed away on January 11 lived every day to the fullest.  On the day before he went to Portland for the last, heroic efforts to extend his life, I stood with him in his basement workshop as he carved another black walnut wooden spoon and instructed Kathryn's beau Max Holm on how to turn bowls on  the lathe.
One of his passions was his 1963 Thompson 21' - High Idle, which carried him and many friends and family for forty years to destinations on the St. George River and Muscongus Bay - from Thomaston to Monhegan.  That last destination is memorialized by James Wyeth - who painted it in gratitude for a mission of mercy Jeff once did for Jamie's wife.
Jeff
What do we mean when we say For the Love of  A Boat?  Many of us share a passion for wooden boats - but few have put more into theirs than Jeff did for High Idle.  Click on that link above for a special piece of writing by Jeff - completed three years to the day before his death - and published only now by his family and friends at Jeff's Marine.


The Pirate of the Mid-coast.
Why he thought that was a selling point none will ever know.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Issuma reaches Antarctica

Richard Hudson has achieved his dream: After a peaceful journey across the 400 mile Drake Passage he and his crew aboard Issuma arrived at the protected harbor of Deception Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica.  They've been at Maxwell Bay for a while - at Jaroslav Pavlicek's Eco-Nelson base. Nice spot.  Check it out here at ISSUMA.  - George

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Friday, March 25, 2016

Lost Navy tug USS Conestoga found


The men of the lost USS Conestoga.
NOAA researchers have found the Navy tug USS Conestoga.  In 1921 it was lost on its way to Samoa, was sank just twenty miles of so outside San Francisco, near the Farallon islands where it probably sought refuge,  The New York Times reports

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

1936 Cape Horn

http://sailingcruisingscotlandtv.com/video/b7vygh6my2ld

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Rainbow - 360 degrees - The Weather Channel

I remember a spring day like this - one rainbow after another as Taisy and I drove from Clare through the lakes of Killarney to Kinsale. Unfortunately Taisy lost the film. This sort of makes up for it. - gwc
https://www.facebook.com/TheWeatherChannel/videos/10154092334385921/

A magnificent full-circle rainbow was filmed by a drone in Cookstown, Ireland. If you look closely, you can see that part of it makes up a double rainbow!
Posted by The Weather Channel on Tuesday, March 8, 2016