Is Buddy Melges America's Greatest Sailor?

 If you were looking for the home town of the great sailors, you wouldn't look west of Kenosha, WI to the Town of Zenda, Wisconsin which produced the champion of local racers on little Lake Geneva.  But  Buddy Melges came from there - and won a slew of world championships in big boats, small boats, you name it.  The last successful American Defender of the Cup, now 91, he is the subject of a forthcoming movie - The Wizard of Zenda.  Check out the trailer.

Oh and Melges.com  builds great sail and power boats, like the Melges 24.

Why Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour song “Good 4 U” is rock’s first Hot 100 No. 1 in years.

Why Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour song “Good 4 U” is rock’s first Hot 100 No. 1 in years.

Oceanbird. sail-powered transoceanic auto delivery

Oceanbird

FACTS

The wind helped us discover our planet – now it can help us preserve it

7,000 cars

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90%

lower emissions than a vessel with a diesel engine

5 rigs

with 80 metres tall wing sails for forward propulsion

12 days

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Lilac Days in May

It's all about lilacs.  This time of year they are everywhere.

But we can also remember Walt Whitman's great lament for Abraham Lincoln When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.  It begins:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

 

Chad Kalepa Baybayan, Seafarer Who Sailed Using the Stars, Dies at 64 - The New York Times

He circumnavigated without a compass.

Chad Kalepa Baybayan, Seafarer Who Sailed Using the Stars, Dies at 64 - The New York Times

Andrew Cuomo - painting his sailboat

 

Curtis Fuller, a Powerful Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88 - The New York Times

 

​We all have songs we can point to that shaped our taste in music.  One of mine is Coltrane's Blue Train.

At the time (1958) he was playing in the Thelonius Monk Quartet at the Five Spot on 8th Street.​ Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's Studio on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, NJ, it features Coltrane (tenor sax), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Paul Chambers (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums).

We have now lost the only survivor of that momentous quintet. - GWC

Curtis Fuller, a Powerful Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88 - The New York Times

By Giovanni Russonello

May 14, 2021

Curtis Fuller, a trombonist and composer whose expansive sound and powerful sense of swing made him a driving force in postwar jazz, died on May 8 at a nursing home in Detroit. He was 88.His daughter Mary Fuller confirmed the death but did not specify the cause.
Mr. Fuller arrived in New York in the spring of 1957 and almost immediately became the leading trombonist of the hard-bop movement, which emphasized jazz’s roots in blues and gospel while delivering crisp and hummable melodies.

By the end of the year, he had recorded no fewer than eight albums as a leader or co-leader for the independent labels Blue Note, Prestige and Savoy.

That same year he also appeared on the saxophonist John Coltrane’s “Blue Train,” among the most storied albums in jazz, on which Mr. Fuller unfurls a number of timeless solos. On the title track, now a jazz standard, his trombone plays a central role in carrying the bold, declarative melody. Fuller’s five-chorus solo on “Blue Train” begins by playing off the last few notes of the trumpeter Lee Morgan’s improvisation, as if curiously picking up an object a friend had just put down. He then moves through a spontaneous repertoire of syncopated phrases and deftly wrought curlicues by playing off the last few notes of the trumpeter Lee Morgan’s improvisation, as if curiously picking up an object a friend had just put down. He then moves through a spontaneous repertoire of syncopated phrases and deftly wrought curlicues.

Bob Dylan & Susan Tedeschi - Highway 61

 

His Ship Vanished in the Arctic 176 Years Ago. DNA Has Offered a Clue. - The New York Times

His Ship Vanished in the Arctic 176 Years Ago. DNA Has Offered a Clue. - The New York Times

By Bryan Pietsch

On July 9, 1845, two months after departing from Greenhithe, England, Warrant Officer John Gregory wrote a letter to his wife from Greenland in which he described seeing whales and icebergs for the first time.

Gregory, who had never been to sea before, was aboard the H.M.S. Erebus, one of two ships to sail in Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage, a sea route through the Canadian Arctic that would serve as a trade route to Asia.

Disaster struck. The Erebus and the H.M.S. Terror became stuck in ice in Victoria Strait, off King William Island in what is now the Canadian territory of Nunavut. In April 1848, the survivors — Franklin and nearly two dozen others had already died — set out on foot for a trading post on the Canadian mainland.

All 129 explorers ultimately perished, succumbing to brutal blizzard conditions and subzero temperatures. The doomed expedition endured in the public imagination — inspiring fiction by Mark Twain and Jules Verne, and, more recently, the 2018 AMC series “The Terror” — driven in part by rumors that the crew resorted to cannibalism. The wreckage lay quiet until 2014, when a remotely controlled underwater vehicle picked up the silhouette of the Erebus near King William Island. Two years later, a tip from a local Inuit hunter led to the discovery of the Terror in the ice-cold water of Terror Bay.

John Gregory’s descendants would not learn about his fate until more than 175 years after he sent the letter home from Greenland. Some sailors had been identified after being found in marked graves. But recently, Gregory’s DNA and a sample from a descendant born in 1982 were matched, making him the first explorer from the trip whose remains have been positively identified through DNA and genealogical analyses — a process similar to that used in recent years to identify murder suspects and victims in cold cases.

Last week, Jonathan Gregory, 38, who lives in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, got an email from researchers in Canada confirming that the cheek swab he had sent to them confirmed that he was a direct descendant of John Gregory.

He had heard about his family’s connection to the expedition, but until the DNA match, “it was really theory.” (Though he goes by Joe, the similarity between their names “all makes sense,” Mr. Gregory said.)

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Paul Cayard: Leading the US Sailing Team >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

Paul Cayard: Leading the US Sailing Team >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News

"Cliffy' Lobster boat takes shape - Apprenticeshop

 The Apprenticeshop in Rockland, Maine, is a traditional boat-building school.  Each student builds their own boat - usually a ten foot rowing skiff like the one in the foreground of the current header on this blog.

But the school takes on larger commissions.  One I have presented before - the Dublin Bay 24 - is in an advanced state , though paused by covid19.  I last reported on the lobster boat project at the early stage - building the stem - in February 2020, just before covid 19 hit. But substantial progress is being made on the 26' lobster boat named Cliffy for a local builder, commissioned by South Thomaston boat building legend Harold "Dynamite: Payson. Rick Kraft, a fine woodworker, graduated last year but stayed on as  a Fellow.  He gave me the closeup tour of how this traditional local boat is coming together.

The longitudinal pieces - called ribands -

hold the ribs (frames) in shape 

while the boat is planked.

As the boat is planked the ribands come off.

The first plank is called the garboard. It runs lengthwise 

along the keel, from the stem to the stern.

Too long for one planked, it has to be spliced.

The transom is solid oak.

The lateral pieces are called floor timbers.

The frames (ribs) are split to enable them to bend.