Skywalkers - Ironworkers at the WTC - NY Times

Credit: Damon Winter/NY Times

The Times Magazine today has a great photoessay about the ironworkers who are erecting the new tower at the World Trade Center site.  The photos are reminiscent of the famous Lewis Hine shots of the Empire State Building.  Slideshow HERE.  Text HERE.  Video HERE.

A ‘Canoe Family,’ if Only for a Few Weeks - Slide Show - NYTimes.com

A ‘Canoe Family,’ if Only for a Few Weeks - Slide Show - NYTimes.com: "Canoes from tribes throughout the coastal Northwest converged on the Swinomish reservation, the host for an annual week of traditional dancing, singing and celebration. For some, the journey involved weeks of paddling."

'via Blog this'

Margaretville flood

Hurricane Irene: Storm Warnings : The New Yorker

Jim Cantore, of the Weather Channel, in Battery Park.
Photograph: The Weather Channel/Getty Images.

Weather channel syndrome - its meaning for our time.
Global warnings: a taste of things to come? - GWC

by Adam Gopnik - the New Yorker

News Desk: Hurricane Irene: Storm Warnings : The New Yorker: 

"We happened to be seeing out the summer on Cape Cod last week, thinking we’d come home Sunday, when news that the hurricane was on its way first got around. We blessedly don’t have the Internet or a television in the house we rent up there; you get your news by biking down to the local grocery store for the paper or just by hearing what’s up on the beach—or, when the satellite decides to pass over in a good mood, from the occasional snatch of info you can grab from your iPhone. Talking round with friends, it sounded like Sunday would be mighty rainy and windy and that it would be prudent to come home sooner. Since traffic is always horrific coming home from the Cape on Saturday, we decided to drive back Friday night."

'via Blog this'

Eagle Island light

Islands are places of dreams, where, we imagine, we are free to build lives of our own choice, free to be alone, and free to leave to join the rest of the world. Eagle Island in the east Penobscot Bay is a place that elicits such dreams.

Pescadotes: Herreshoff New York 30

The New York 30 - designed as a club boat for the New York Yacht Club (which has a sidewalk in New York and a dock in Newport) is one of Nat Herreshoff's masterpieces. Nice job here by Joe Warren to capture boat and summer sky.  In the old style `30' refers to waterline length, not length overall.

Pescadotes: herreshoff ny 30

Irene-damaged wharf - City Island Yacht Club

Francine Alheid's flickr photostream is HERE

We built a Lumber Yard Skiff!

At the WoodenBoat School, Brooklin, Maine, August 22-26, 2011 we (Dave, Casey, Walter Baron  and me) built a 16 foot Lumber Yard Skiff!
Walter is the designer and boat builder.  See his work at Old Wharf Dory Co.  My slide show is embedded below.
Casey's excellent slides are HERE

And here's a video of the LYSS making its way up the rapids below a dam:

Issuma: 105' West -- Cambridge Bay, Nunavut

Go due North from Boulder Colorado for a thousand miles.  You'll find Issuma there.  But three cruise ships got there first to Cambridge Bay, the Victoria Islands, Nunavut, Canada.
As Yann, the boat's builder and first captain commented "What do you have to do to get away?

Issuma: heading west!

The + marks Bellot Strait.
The big island to the east is Baffin.
Below it is Labrador.

Issuma is so far north that the compass needle points down.  This is looking like the beginning of a northwest passage, NOT a circumnavigation of Baffin Island.  Bellot Strait - which Issuma just traversed westbound - is the northernmost point on the North American continent.  Perhaps wintering at an arctic port is the plan.  The photo is of the Bellot Strait which Richard describes below.  Go directly to Issuma to learn how they did on their passage through the strait.

"Bellot Strait is an 18 mile long passage between Prince Regent Inlet and Peel Sound. It was named after Lieutenant Bellot of the French Navy who came across it in 1852. It has a difficult reputation due to its fast tidal currents and a rock that is awash (so hard to see) near the eastern end of it. While there was no ice when we passed, Bellot Strait has a reputation for quickly jamming with ice. The Sailing Directions note: "The tidal streams run with great strength through Bellot Strait...In the vicinity of Magpie Rock, the currents are highly variable; localised 7-8 knot westerly currents have been reported on the north side of the channel at the same time that equally strong easterly currents were flowing on the south side. Mariners should exercise extreme caution in this area."