Monday, November 28, 2016

A Tiny Home That Floats - The New York Times



I hadn't seen Jane Clegg in nearly twenty years when I bumped into her on the deck of Richard Hudson's Issuma a couple of months ago.  Clegg  has the skills of a quartermaster  and keeps a tight ship. as one might expect from a former stage manager.  A veteran of the Women's Royal Naval Service she surprised me when I first met her and told her about the 15' Snipe I had sailed from a silted in marina -the Light House Boat Club just across the river from the 79th Street Bot Basin.  "Oh, she said in her British boarding school accent, I too learned on a Snipe - in the Great Bitter Lake!  Which I soon learned is a wide spot in the Suez Canal. The Times has a nice profile of one of the highlights of the New York waterfront - Captain Clegg, - gwc

A Tiny Home That Floats - The New York Times

By Kim Velsey

As far as places to live go, Jane Clegg considers hers nearly perfect.
“I have a beautiful view and no one bothers me — it’s just sometimes hard to get back on,” said Ms. Clegg, who lives aboard a 39-foot schooner docked for much of the year in one of the choppiest, if prettiest spots, at the 79th Street Boat Basin on the Upper West Side.
On a recent afternoon, a light wind was rippling the Hudson River, jostling Ms. Clegg’s schooner such that pens and cups and visitors slid about the cockpit. But she seemed oblivious, moving nimbly around the cabin in search of her outdoor seat cushions.
“Oh, this is nothing,” she said, popping her strawberry-blond head out of the hatch. “Sometimes I roll!”
Ms. Clegg, who is 83, started living on a boat in 1987, at the age of 54. She had been residing in a large rent-regulated studio on 75th Street near Columbus Avenue since the late 1960s, paying just $300 a month. But after new owners bought the building and moved aggressively to vacate it — they even sent a private detective to Albany where she was stage-managing a theater company one winter, she said — she decided a buyout was preferable to being trailed every time she left town. She received $23,000 and a year to leave.
She funneled the money into building her boat, the JFS Salignac, which cost about $90,000, designing a two-masted schooner that she could sail alone and lining it in mahogany — Honduran, as opposed to Brazilian. “I wanted it more red so that it would be cheery,” she said.
Ms. Clegg, who was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and spent part of her childhood in England, learned to sail in the early ‘50s in Egypt, on the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal Zone, while serving as a wireless operator in the Women’s Royal Naval Service.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Anuna in Beijing: Scarborough Fair and Greensleeves medley

The Irish chamber choir Anuna traveled to Beijing in 2015.  They performed at the National Center for the Performing Arts.  Last year I heard the spectacular 80 piece National Traditional (Folk) Music Orchestra in the same room.

Voyages>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º>: Anuna in Beijing: Scarborough Fair and Greensleeves medley

Anuna in Beijing: Scarborough Fair and Greensleeves medley

The Irish chamber choir Anuna traveled to Beijing in 2015.  They performed at the National Center for the Performing Arts.  Last year I heard the spectacular 80 piece National Traditional (Folk) Music Orchestra in the same room.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Rich Wilson - sole american in solo race - crosses the equator //Vendee Globe, week 2

Rich WILSON

 Rich Wilson aboard Great American IV has  crossed the equator
Maybe the ocean is not a country for young men because the younger, better-funded skippers have newer foiling designs create new risks.

The sole American skipper, Wilson is doing well in his non-foiling monohull holding in position No. 21, heading south in 94 F weather. Only 2, 382 nm to go
Alex Thomson - the leader hit a submerged object at 22 knots, fracturing the hydrofoil.  With 19,731nm to go he's going to be weakened on port tack.  Hard to believe he can hold onto the lead.  You can't carry a spare stabilizing foil.





Thursday, November 17, 2016

At Sea With New York Harbor’s Channel Masters - The New York Times




At Sea With New York Harbor’s Channel Masters - The New York Times

by Emily S. Rueb

Aboard the Pilot Boat New Jersey — A speed of 7 knots at sea is equal to about 8 miles per hour on land, which doesn’t sound very fast.
That is not how it feels 15 miles or so southeast of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, where the Queen Mary 2 is heading out into the Atlantic.
Capt. Thomas J. Keating Jr. emerges from a door in the belly of the vessel, an ocean liner that is about the length of the Empire State Building if it were turned on its side.
The wind is whipping on this Tuesday in August, but Captain Keating’s purple tie is securely fastened under his vest as he climbs down onto the bow of a 53-foot aluminum boat riding beside the larger ship, like a minnow next to a whale.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Vendee Globe - approaching the Cape Verde Islands

Hugo Boss route through the Cabo Verde Islands
Approaches to the Cape Verde Islands blue wind shadows stretch 280 km
Yellow marks wind acceleration
One week out Brit Alex Thomson leads the 29 boat Vendee Globe fleet, threading his way through the Canary Islands, approaching the doldrums (the ITCZ - inter-tropical convergence zone).

Avarie à bord de Initiatives Coeur
Tanguay De Lamotte (Save the Children) is the only one to have suffered major damage.  His carbon fiber mast snapped a foot from the top.  Now he's got a sail wrapped around the keel as he tries to make his way to a safe harbor for repairs.  This being the Vendee Globe he has to do it himself,  Bonne chance.

Vendee Globe - approaching the Cape Verde Islands

Hugo Boss route through the Cabo Verde Islands
Approaches to the Caper Verde Islands blue wind shadows stretch 280km
Yellow marks wind acceleration
One week out Brit Alex Thomson leads the 29 boat Vendee Globe fleet, threading his way through the Canary Islands, approaching the doldrums (the ITCZ - inter-tropical convergence zone).

Avarie à bord de Initiatives Coeur
Tanguay De Lamotte (Save the Children) is the only one to have suffered major damage.  His carbon fiber mast snapped a foot from the top.  Now he's got a sail wrapped around the keel as he tries to make his way to a safe harbor for repairs.  This being the Vendee Globe he has to do it himself,  Bonne chance.