Blue Heron Stalks the Back River

Today a Blue Heron stalked the Back River behind our house.  There have been few this year.  Their frequent visits in years past led us to call the area behind our house Heron Bend.

Surveying Greenland's northern reaches - Ocean Research Project

Matt Rutherford - founder of Ocean Research Project - first came to my attention as he approached Cape Horn.  The first person to circumnavigate the Americas single-handed and non-stop. 309 days, 27,000 miles.  His story is told in the delightful, even inspiring movie Red Dot on the Ocean.

Having shown himself a master mariner he formed ORP.  Now a NASA grantee they have for the past few years been surveying the northernmost reaches of Greenland.  They do CTD- current, temperature and depth measurements - key raw data NASA scientists need to understand the upwelling warming water that melts glaciers.  The video below tells the story.


VIDEO: (click on it if the play arrow does not display)


Taking measurements on Croker Bay- blog post

Master and Commander - Camden, Dark Harbor, and Eagle Island

Much of the joy of sailing is that it puts you in the embrace of the elemental. Tide, current, wind, waves, sun, moon, fog, lightning, thunder, mist, rain, light and dark all matter - immediately.  And the hazards so near at hand - granite ledges, shallows, limited visibility - force an alertness which we otherwise can mostly ignore.

So it was on our voyage across the Penobscot Bay to Dark Harbor/Islesboro, then over the top of North Haven, to Oak, then Eagle Island which is Russ & Ellen's homeport. - gwc

Aboard Sophie - Camden to Dark Harbor, to Eagle Island

Master

Commander

Eagle Island Light

Namesake of the brig Sophie, Jack Aubrey's first command

A Dark Harbor 20 - Ames Cove, Dark Harbor

Marilee a 1926 Herreshoff NY 40

Chinese Shrimp Farmers Protest Environmental Enforcement - Seafood Source

OTHERWISE: Chinese Shrimp Farmers Protest Environmental Enforcement - Seafood Source: Chinese Shrimp Farmers Protest Environmental Enforcement - Seafood Source A stand-off between shrimp farmers and authorities in easter...

Coast Guard asks for help finding missing buoy bells | USHarbors

Coast Guard asks for help finding missing buoy bells | USHarbors

Haunting images of the St. Lawrence River // WaPo

Haunting Images of the St. Lawrence River
Charles-Frederick Ouellet grew up near the Saguenay River in Quebec. His interest in photography began when he was a teenager, and he went on to study it in college. At first he was mainly interested in photography as a way to document skateboarding. It wasn’t until he was in his 20s that he began to be interested in documentary photography. But that early interest in skateboarding remains with him. “One thing I learned from skateboarding is: It forces you to look at urbanism and architecture with a different perspective,” he told In Sight. “Through skateboarding, I learned how to create and improvise in the urban landscape. I do apply the same pattern for photography. You just have to open your mind and learn to look differently.”

Ouellet told In Sight that it wasn’t difficult to find his subjects because he used to live in a town on the river and knew many of the fishermen. It is through their perspective that he shot “Le Naufrage.”

“My work is anchored in the documentary tradition, but the idea of storytelling in a traditional documentary sense does not interest me that much,” he said. “When photographing, I don’t feel I have to stick to representation; instead, I try to see through the eyes of my subject. In ‘Le Naufrage,’ the images I was taking changed after I realized we were always talking about weather condition, history of navigation and natural elements. I felt I had shot enough of the men working at sea, and I started photographing the clouds, the sea and the shipwreck sites we were talking about. After that, my edit changed, and it became more poetic, less illustrative.”

Looking at the images in the book, it is true that the work is more interpretive and poetic than it is purely descriptive and linear. You can see more about the book at his website. In the meantime, you can see a selection of his images here.

Herbie Hancock | "Hear, O Israel, Hear O Jazz" by Allan Ripp

Herbie Hancock | "Hear, O Israel, Hear O Jazz" by Allan Ripp

During winter break of his sophomore year at Brown in 1967, Jonathan Klein traveled to New York with his French horn, baritone sax and an unusual score he’d written several years earlier. 

An aspiring composer and son of a Reform rabbi from Worcester, Mass., Klein had taken a traditional Jewish prayer service – complete with candle blessing, Kiddush, psalmist meditation and the Sh’ma – and set it to jazz tunes, from snappy to bluesy to bossa nova and even modal. Congregations around New England – including his father’s – enjoyed his adaptation and now Klein was getting chance to record the work, part of a recruiting effort by the National Federation of Temple Youth to attract new members. 

Blackjack - launch of historic Friendship sloop

The Friendship sloop is the iconic maritime symbol of Maine.  Today a completely rebuilt Friendship sloop Blackjack was christened.  I have previously posted photos and video of  Blackjack under reconstruction.  Now that project is complete.  Dragged by a team of oxen and steadied by a line of volunteers,  Blackjack has been launched.  

The project was led and underwritten by the legendary Penobscot Bay schooner captain Jim Sharp.  All the work (much volunteer) was done at his Sail, Power, Steam Museum in Rockland.  The boat was built over 100 years ago by Wilbur Morse who popularized the brand, building hundreds.  It is a modification of the traditional Muscongus Bay sloops of local fishermen in the age of sail.  The rebuilt Blackjack is a sailboat (no engine).  It will be a floating classroom of sorts - taking people out for afternoons to fish in the old manner.

To the Antarctic aboard the yawl Adele

North Cove- the boat basin just west of New York's World Trade Center is a stopping point or home for an array of boats: afternoon cruise boats, the Colgate 26's of North Cove Marina sailing school, ocean racers, and mega yachts.
Today we went aboard one of the Clipper Round the World racers but found ourselves drawn to the yawl Adele (55m LOA, 10m beam).  The shots below are mine except the overhead.  But to get the feel of it at sea check out 

Adele in the deep South Atlantic - video as the boat heads to South Georgia Island - launching point for whalers and explorers of the deep south. 

What is life really like aboard a superyacht - the 55m yawl Adele. 
by David Glenn February 2017

For two memorable weeks in 2009, I was accommodated in the port aft guest cabin, a twin-berth, mahogany-lined cocoon of comfort of Adele, a 54m modern classic by Hoek Design, built at Vitters and launched in 2005. This was my diary at the time:

My cabin insulates me entirely from the conditions outside. As I write this I’m looking through the porthole up at snow-covered peaks on South Georgia’s rugged coastline, but sitting here it’s hard to tell I’m aboard a yacht. The air conditioning keeps the cabin at a comfortable constant temperature and although one of Adele’s three generators is always running there’s only the faintest background hum from the air con.

Occasionally an electric motor or hydraulic pump whirrs into action, barely audible, a sign that the crew are launching or retrieving one of the three tenders, weighing anchor or unfurling and trimming a sail.

There’s a phone at my bunkside with a Fleetline and Iridium link to the outside world and best of all a network connection point for my laptop which links me to the yacht’s internal server and e-mail system. With my own onboard e-mail address issued as soon as I arrived I have been able to send anyone aboard an e-mail or leave a message on the yacht’s server to be sent to the outside world twice a day.

Text and small pictures are OK and that’s how this blog is happening. For the yacht it isn’t exactly cheap and the bill can run into several hundred dollars a day but if you have to keep in touch you can. Sadly, we do need to keep in touch…

Breakfast is served at a time agreed with the guests – there are eight of us – the owner Jan-Eric Osterlund and his wife Jennifer, the skipper, chef Claire Oliver and chief stewardess Anne Hall-Reace. Anne alternates her job with Liesel Havercroft so that she can get time off at home in South Africa, a system increasingly used in this extremely demanding service industry. For this demanding trip it’s her tour of duty.

Shortly after breakfast skipper Andre will produce The Daily Mail – yes, Adele subscribes to this satellite transmission service which is then printed out each morning. As we are only two hours behind GMT we are impressively up to date with what’s going on 8,000 miles away. Some of us think this is a shame but there’s always a rush for the Mail mainly to see the cricket and rugby scores.

Together with the papers will be a satellite derived weather check, printed out for all to peruse and as we get closer to a departure time for Brazil these charts become increasingly interesting and important to analyse.

The day’s plan of action will have been mapped out the evening before so that the crew know when to launch boats, have packed lunches together and when to expect us back for lunch, tea or dinner. While we’ve been in South Georgia the weather has been distinctly mixed and it’s become cold with snow and high winds so going ashore for some wildlife adventure normally means a thermal layer, fleeces, full oilies, long boots with walking boots in another pack, gloves, head gear and lifejackets. We all look as though we’re going to the moon by the time we’re ready to disembark.

We take grab bags full of emergency kit including sleeping bags, a tent and emergency rations. One must never forget that this remote, barely inhabited island will not support human life for much time in extreme conditions and if for any reason we couldn’t get back to Adele, which is our lifeline, we must be prepared to hunker down ashore. Radios are used extensively and if the shore party splits it’s essential both groups can communicate with the yacht.

There are three tenders from which to choose, a aluminium hulled RIB with a 35hp diesel outboard – good for running up the beach – a Castoldi jet boat, excellent for shallow waters, and the biggest a small launch driven by an outdrive unit which can cope with fairly rough conditions. They are all stowed on the foredeck and can be launched remarkably quickly by a halyard run to a powered drum winch. Bosun Georgina Swan and deckhand Quinton are responsible for getting us ashore and drive the boats with great skill, difficult sometimes with a sea running as they manoeuvre alongside the boarding platform.

Read more at http://www.yachtingworld.com/special-reports/life-aboard-adele-10562#wZVLyVgSeUtfjVmV.99