The long, cold leg - Volvo Ocean Race

The long (7,600 NM) Auckland to Brazil leg began today.

Here is 30 seconds of  video of the Southern Ocean roller coaster.

And it's good weather.  The wind IS at your back but...

Trouble at the start - video and routing imagery.

Deadwood

Ben Bajorek is rebuilding his Herreshoff S Boat.  The gray triangular piece is deadwood.  It bears no weight, just fills space.  It occupies the space between the 3,350 lb. lead ballast keel which is bolted to the keelson - the long plank that runs down the center of the hull - and to which frames (ribs) and floors (the orange pieces) are attached.

Six barges floating loose in Hudson River off Irvington

Six construction barges moored at the new Tappan Zee Bridge broke loose in Friday's gale.  At about that time I checked the NOAA data station at Kings Point.  It was gusting to 49 kts. NNE.  That's 57 mph - enough to chafe and fray just about any mooring line.  And it did.  Fortunately they didn't hit any of the anchored fuel barges down river.  - gwc

Six barges floating loose in Hudson River off Irvington

https://npcobserver.com/2018/02/25/translation-communist-partys-proposals-for-amending-the-p-r-c-constitution-2018/

Life on an Island: Silence, Beauty and a Long Wait for the Ferry - The New York Times

Life on an Island: Silence, Beauty and a Long Wait for the Ferry - The New York Times

by Katherine Q. Seelye

MATINICUS, Me. — The snow had begun falling overnight, and fell throughout the day, draping the towering pines and the lobster traps, stacked up on land for the winter, in blankets of white.

Still, Sharon Daley, a nurse from the visiting vessel Sunbeam, which provides medical care to remote islands off the coast of Maine, made her appointed rounds. She forged a path in knee-high rubber boots to the home of Bill Hoadley, who is, at 80, this island’s oldest resident.

She checked his blood pressure, which she pronounced “so good, it’s boring.” She listened to his heart, which was ticking just fine, almost in rhythm with his many clocks. Mr. Hoadley is something of a clock aficionado, and he keeps his timepieces on daylight saving time, which in winter is an hour ahead of everyone else.

Why?

“Because I can,” the impish Mr. Hoadley declared from his nautically themed front parlor.

Being able to do exactly as he pleases — and have health care come to him — are big reasons Mr. Hoadley stays here, 22 miles out in the North Atlantic.***

Presidents Day Weekend 2018

Jim Bridwell Yosemite Legend is Dead at 73

Jim Bridwell, Mountaineering Maverick, Is Dead at 73 https://nyti.ms/2Bykz0V

Twins

Alan Hollinghurst, the British novelist, describes the progress of a skiff through an estuary like ours "Observe the progress of a skiff through an estuary, the “million-sided sunlight on water green as the woods above, a dazzle over weeded rocks, sudden dark drops below.”

The National - Mistaken for Strangers

Supermoon eclipse over Manhattan