International Lightning Class Association

I've owned two Lightnings.  My fave - the woodie, of course - hull #8885.

The second a Lippincott - glass.  But I've forgotten the #.

Home - International Lightning Class Association

About the Lightning

• Design: Sparkman & Stephens, 1938
• Over 15,000 built
• More than 100 active Fleets worldwide
• Length: 19'0" (5.8m)
• Beam: 6'6" (2m)
• Displacement: 700 lb (318 kg
• Draft (board down): 4'11" (151.3cm)(board up): 5" (12.8cm)
• Mast height: 26'2" (7.9m)
• Sail area (main & jib): 177 sq.ft. / spinnaker): 300 sq.ft.
• Crew (racing): 3
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A day in the ER // Craig Spencer, MD, MPH

 Craig Spencer lives and works in our neighborhood.  He is an ER doc at Columbia University Medical Center where he is an Assistant Professor of Medicine.  He first garnered attention when he was infected with Ebola while a volunteer treating patients in Guinea.  He fell ill on return from Africa.  He survived.

This animation describing a day in the ER at Columbia Presbyterian really hits home with me.  I've been there - short of breath - sucking oxygen from a tube, waiting for a room; cared for by nurses, tested, stuck, probed, stared up at the meaningless monitors above me in the "Cath Lab".  This is A Day in the Life in the ER at 168 and Broadway, NY, NY.   

As COVID19 surges across the US, it’s hard to describe the situation inside hospitals for healthcare providers & patients.

We made this video depicting 1 day in the ER to show the painful reality & to remind us why we must remain vigilant. Please watch.pic.twitter.com/JzxcHJKFuP

— Craig Spencer MD MPH (@Craig_A_Spencer) November 29, 2020

Van Morrison - Live at Rockpalast Dusseldorf - Christmas 1998

 

The Humble Confidence of Seamus Heaney | Roy Foster - Literary Hub

The Humble Confidence of Seamus Heaney | Literary Hub

By R.F. Foster

When he first began to publish poems, Seamus Heaney’s chosen pseudonym was “Incertus,” meaning “not sure of himself.” Characteristically, this was a subtle irony. While he referred in later years to a “residual Incertus” inside himself, his early prominence was based on a sure-footed sense of his own direction, an energetic ambition, and his own formidable poetic strengths. It was also based on a respect for his readers which won their trust. “Poetry’s special status among the literary arts,” he suggested in a celebrated lecture, “derives from the audience’s readiness to . . . credit the poet with a power to open unexpected and unedited communications between our nature and the nature of the reality we inhabit.” Like T. S. Eliot, a constant if oblique presence in his writing life, he prized gaining access to “the auditory imagination” and what it opened up: “a feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the levels of conscious thought and feeling, invigorating every word.” His readers felt they shared in this.

The external signs of Heaney’s inner certainty of direction, coupled with his charisma, style, and accessibility, could arouse resentment among grievance-burdened critics, or poets who met less success than they believed themselves to deserve. He overcame this, and other obstacles, with what has been called his “extemporaneous eloquence” and by determinedly avoiding pretentiousness: he possessed what he called, referring to Robert Lowell, “the rooted normality of the major talent.” At the same time, he looked like nobody else, and he sounded like nobody else. A Heaney poem carried its maker’s name on the blade, and often it cut straight to the bone.

KEEP READING

At 75. May hope and history rhyme.

At 75.  I chose a couple of passages to read before we cut the chocolate birthday cake Marilyn baked.

Remembering my father

If all a man does is to watch from the shore,

Then he doesn't have to worry about the current.

But if affection has put us into the stream,

Then we have to agree to where the water goes.

- Robert Bly

Hope and history

from The Cure at Troy

History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave,

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for  tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

- Seamus Heaney 

 

Vendée Globe: A well-tuned Renault 4 >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

61-year-old Jean Le Cam’s boat, designed by Bruce Farr of

Annapolis in 2007 is leading the 33 boat fleet through the south Atlantic, 

despite lacking the hydrofoils of the next 9 boats in the 33 boat fleet.

Vendée Globe: A well-tuned Renault 4 >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News: For the 2016-17 Vendée Globe, of the 29 IMOCA 60s, six new prototypes had been fitted with foil appendages and one older boat modified to include them.  For the 2020-2021 Vendee Globe 18 of 33 have been fitted with hydrofoils which give a 3 knot advantage in off-wind conditions.  Wily Jean LeCam describes his fifteen year old boat as a Renault 4 racing against Ferraris.

Snipe Class: Changing the gender balance >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

Snipe Class: Changing the gender balance >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

by Kathleen Tocke
When the 2020 Snipe US Women’s Championship on November 7-8 was cancelled mid-week due to the impending hurricane, some sailors were already on their way south to Miami, so the fleet organized a heavy-air clinic, pairing women with heavier male teammates.

For safety reasons, only three boats were rigged and the women switched in an out from a RIB, which had a female coach on it, who explained the technique for very heavy air Snipe sailing. What the sailors learned was invaluable and it was an opportunity of a lifetime to sail with Class greats like Augie Diaz and Ernesto Rodriguez.

The clinic was just one of the things the Class is getting right in terms of increasing opportunities for women’s sailing.

At the recent Frigid Digit regatta in Annapolis, over 60% of the sailors in the 28-boat fleet were women. This is becoming a trend for major Snipe events in the US and women’s Snipe sailing is growing exponentially in many places around the globe. What has the Class learned? What have the women learned?

Bronagh Gallagher - The Healing Has Begun

 And we'll walk down the Avenue in style...

Friendship Sloop ‘Blackjack’ added to list of historic places | PenBay Pilot

Friendship Sloop ‘Blackjack’ added to list of historic places | PenBay Pilot

Blackjack. (Photo by Alison Langley)

ROCKLAND — The Friendship Sloop Blackjack, owned and restored by the Sail, Power, and Steam Museum of Rockland, was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The National Register of Historic Places is the Nation’s official list of cultural resources worthy of preservation, according to the Museum, in a news release. The Register is a program of the National Park Service but the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, a state governmental agency, oversees the administration of the Register program in Maine.

In the words of Ann Morris, former SPSM board member, curator of the Rockland Historical Society, and the person who initiated and oversaw the application process, “Blackjack is significant as a fine example of the Friendship Sloop type of sailing vessel designed by Maine boatbuilders specifically for fishing and lobstering along the Maine coast. And she is significant as one of the oldest surviving Friendship Sloops designed by Wilbur Morse, the most prolific builder of these vessels.”

Originally built in 1900, the 33-foot Blackjack was donated to the museum by owners who had come to realize that the restoration was a much bigger project than they had anticipated. Capt. Jim Sharp, founder and director of the museum commented at the time: “We rebuilt the vessel entirely. She had a broken keel, all the frames and planking were gone, and the sheer was lost. We replaced everything but the transom!”

Consulting with wooden boat experts such as Maynard Bray and boat builder Ralph Stanley on design and techniques that Morse might have employed at the time, a team of master builders that included Jim Loney, Tim Clark, and Garrett Eisele worked for countless hours with dedicated museum volunteers to complete the project, according to SPSM. Re-planked cedar the waterline and native pine above, the wood for the new frames came from a stand of English oak from Friendship. Sharp was quoted in an article in the Maine, Boats, Homes and Harbors Magazine as saying that the museum was “keeping her genes in the right place.”

Upon completion of the restoration, a grand celebration and launching was held on Saturday, July 7, 2018 at the site of the old Snow Shipyard, currently home to the museum as well as the city’s Snow Marine Park. With bagpipes and fiddlers playing the soundtrack for the day, Blackjack was moved from the museum’s boat shed by a team of oxen from Cox Kennel and Farm in Woodstock. Sharp noted that the boat may well have been launched in the same way over 100 year prior to that time, according to SPSM.

Cyndi Chao - the most romantic thing

 

Vendée Globe: Who to watch and why >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

I love sailing single-handed.  Taking water over the bow, bucking up against waves, sliding down the back.  For an afternoon. Followed by a hot shower.  But yesterday 33 solo sailors - six of them women - headed out for the eight running of the Vendee globe, a French obsession.  The rules are simple:

Leave Les Sables d'Olonne, heading south.

Keep Africa's Cape of Good Hope to port.

Keep western Australia's Cape Leeuwin to port.

Keep Antarctica to starboard.

Keep South America's Cape Horn to port.

Return to Les Sables d'Olonne, heading north.

Alone. Nonstop. No help allowed.

VENDEE GLOBE NEWSFEED

Vendée Globe: Who to watch and why >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

SKIPPERS

Bob Dylan explores death to self in 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' | National Catholic Reporter

Bob Dylan explores death to self in 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' | National Catholic Reporter

By Fr. John Gribowich

One of the bright spots for me during the COVID-19 summer of 2020 was the unexpected release of a new Bob Dylan album in June. The album, entitled "Rough and Rowdy Ways" was announced via social media after Dylan released two of its tracks earlier during the pandemic.

RoughAndRowdyWays cc.jpg

Being an obsessive Dylan fan, I very much looked forward to what the Nobel Prize laureate had to offer the world during this unprecedented time.

Dylan's last album of original material was in 2012 with the release of "Tempest." (In fact, the first track that was released from the new album, "Murder Most Foul," was most likely an outtake from that album.)

Once again, the singer-songwriter does not disappoint, and even as he approaches his 80th birthday, he is still able to reinvent himself and surprise even his most loyal fans. The dark sound and lyrics of the album initially suggest Dylan's personal wrestle with mortality, yet I find that this record is not a "swan song" or the musings of an old man who is waiting to die. "Rough and Rowdy Ways" highlights an ongoing death to self, which every person must choose to embrace.

In 2018, author Robert Hudson released an engaging book entitled The Monk's Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966. The book highlights the famed monk's profound interest in the music and lyrics of Dylan. The image of Merton cranking up "Bringing It All Back Home" on vinyl in his hermitage with visitors, who included the 83-year-old French philosopher Jacques Maritain, is amusing to say the least! Yet, what Merton recognized in Dylan's earlier records can be equally applied to what Dylan unknowingly recognizes now in Merton's writings.

In the early pages of New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton writes that "contemplation is always beyond our own knowledge, beyond our own light, beyond systems, beyond explanations, beyond discourse, beyond dialogue, beyond our own self. To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being" (emphasis mine).

A Glance at Daily Life Among the Caretakers of Britain’s Small Islands - The New York Times

A Glance at Daily Life Among the Caretakers of Britain’s Small Islands - The New York Times

Photographs and Text by Alex Ingram

Oonagh - Sailing Dinghy Plans Kit Arriba Hylan - Info Page - OffCenterHarbor.com

Oonagh - Sailing Dinghy Plans Kit Arriba Hylan - Info Page - OffCenterHarbor.com