Thursday, March 15, 2012

Volvo Ocean Race PUMA claim second 24-hour distance award

13528It sounds like a blast.  A 24-hour run of 527.8 nautical miles has earned Rhode Islander Ken Read’s PUMA team the IWC Schaffhausen Speed Record Challenge award for Leg 4 of the Volvo round the world race.  And it helped them to a 2d place finish on the 5,200 mile, 19 day Sanya, China to Auckland, NZ Leg 4.  But in a Bangor Daily News syndicated piece Read spoke candidly about the price his team paid for their northerly run to high winds and a good sailing angle.  
Pounding for days in close reaching conditions is like living inside a drum as you try to rest in your pipe berth.  And then you get to go topsides to a firehose plane.  Read - 50 years old - has been through hell.  Dismasted in the South Atlantic, loaded aboard a freighter at Tristan DaCunha - the most remote inhabited island on earth  - Read's Puma team is 4th out of six .  How competitive is this race? Approaching Auckland the top three boats were in sight of each other.  A week's rest and then they head for Cape Horn.   I'll keep you posted. - GWCVolvo Ocean Race Puma skipper Read of the U.S. is seen on a yacht at the port in Alicante
Volvo Ocean Race 2011-2012 | PUMA claim second 24-hour distance award:

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Harmon's Downeast Crabcakes - since 1923

Contains Crab, Wheat, Egg, Soy.  OK, a little mayo, some butter, green onion and mustard, vinegar, salt and Old Bay seasoning, that old reliable bit of zing.  Maine Made.  I can only vouch for the crab cakes.  I've got the clam cakes for Friday night, which is fish night.  Except that every night, most lunches and some breakfasts feature fish when I'm up here in Friendship, knocking about Knox County by myself.  Don't believe me?  Check it out - visit Harmon's HERE

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Small Fortune

The Crew They're fishermen. They like to fish - offshore, mainly out of Montauk.
Check it out if you like that sort of thing. 
at Small Fortune:

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Sunday, March 11, 2012

Ray - A Life Underwater

a film by Amanda Bluglass
Beautifully written and photographed. A man of extraordinary focus.  Ray, 75, is a diver  who treasures the deep and the ordinary.  And  hopes for gold and a mermaid.
A gem. - GWC
h/t Pescadotes/Joe Warren

Chinese Platform divers practicing -2008

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Pescadotes: blue whale*

Pescadotes: blue whale*:
New from Joe Warren


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Orchids - Jon Gelman, letters - O'Keefe and Stieglitz

photo by Jon Gelman
Georgia O'Keefe made this sort of thing popular - with her paintings of vaginal flowers.  Perhaps she missed her partner Alfred Stieglitz with whom she carried on a copious correspondence during the long periods when they were apart.  (NPR reports on Sarah Greenough's volume of   the letters - My Faraway One.) I suspect there's not much literary treasure in all today's email, tweets, and blogging, but the photography is really good now, as Jon Gelman shows us in this set taken at the orchid show. 

Alfred Stieglitz attached this photograph to a letter for Georgia O'Keeffe, dated July 10, 1929. Below the photograph he wrote, "I have destroyed 300 prints to-day. And much more literature. I haven't the heart to destroy this..."
Stieglitz and O'Keefe - reunited

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Carlo Borlenghi - Vela e velieri

Can't make it to Paris for the opening? Check out the spectacular website of the great Italian sailing photographer.

Chinese vs foreign stars: Who has most beautiful legs? - GlobalTimes

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Copps Island Cedar Point Oysters - Long Island Sound

Had a half dozen at Tony's Pier on City Island Avenue; took another half-dozen home - at a buck a piece.  Briny, fresh from the Norwalk Islands on the Connecticut shore.  Get 'em from Norm Bloom & Sons.