Woodsy Skiing Off Center Harbor Tom Pamperin

Well its been a while, Intrepid Readers, and I think its high time to discuss a small variety of issues that have accumulated over the winter.  There is a fair share of some shameless promotion, but it is all worthy, methinks.

#1:
So, lets get this out of the way right now:  I LOVE WINTER.  I LOVE SNOW.  I LOVE COLD.  I LOVE NORDIC SKIING. This has been a GREAT WINTER!

This winter I started delving into the ancient and wonderful art of pine-tarring, waxing, and using WOOD skis.  They ski as woodie as you can imagine: They are smooth and quiet, fast and classic. I have two pairs, and am looking for a particular third, with plans to maybe make my own pair this summer.  Lots of fun potential, here, I strongly recommend http://www.woodenskis.com/ (duh) which is run by the ever passionate Greg in MN who is keeping unique traditions alive, something that we here at GISAmateur can keenly appreciate.  Wood and traditional boats, wood skis, making life difficult for ourselves, stinking up the house with ancient concoctions, etc. "It smells hectic down here!" My brother yelled from the top of the basement stairs as a lit the pine tire on fire...

Obviously, it is very important to look classically classy while in the deep woods all by yourself:

My lovely, wonderful, amazing, sumptuous Madshus touring skis from the late 1960s

Pushing the Madshus around
Smoooooth as butter

#1.5:
Lovely Wife and I went to Acadia National Park and did some skiing there.  I have never skied next to an ocean before, and I highly recommend it! It was certainly neat to look out onto the same water I sail in the summer but under the dim broken light of midwinter, swept with snow squalls and now a hypothermic menace. If you ever want to have an entire National Park at your disposal without the summer madness, I highly recommend this time of year for a visit to Acadia.  Weather prevented summiting the higher mountains (40kts+ wind and blowing snow), but we had a great time low off the ridges down on the historic carriage and shore roads.

#2: Back to SAILING!

In other news, some of you may have noticed that Sea Pearl SCOUT and I have been on a somewhat heavy cinematic rotation.  The Intrepid Readers will remember BCBCBFest, where we had a fortuitous meeting with the dynamic and cutting-edge guys over at OFF CENTER HARBOR which have amassed a more-than-impressive collection of videos that detail everything from building a Caledonia Yawl step-by-step to the meditative aspects of small boats sailing on lakes.  There is truly something at this website for everyone, the videos are well done, highly informative, and feature heavy-hitting-legendary narrators, such as ***Doug Hylan, Maynard Bray, Harry Bryan***... get.out.of.town! This is not an amateurish effort (unlike...well...) and if you subscribe to any magazine on sailing, boating, wood boats, etc., this would be a perfect addition to your library.

AND SCOUT! LOOK! SCOUT IS FAMOUS!

Hamilton Marine sent out a recent email with the SCOUT video here... please watch our greatness (and then come join me for some sailing in Maine!) and after I whet your appetite, sign up at OCH if you are thinking about it for yourself, or a friend.

#3:

Tom Pamperin, skipper of JAGULAR the legendary Bolger Pirate Racer which has been festooning obscure small boat websites for many years has published a uniquely humorous book on their dynamic adventures in "Jagular Goes Everywhere: MisAdventures in a $300 Boat." I have a copy, and you should have a copy too.  If you are reading this blog, chances are you have built a 3-digit boat, want to build a boat, or have happily descended the path of small boat madness, lost all your friends, and are now living in semi-permanent status in some frigid garage arguing with recalcitrant epoxy while your coffee goes cold... again. I send you greetings you hapless hermit for YOU ARE NOT ALONE in a cold brutal world which does not understand this particular madness! YOU HAVE FRIENDS! Friends like Captain Callsign and Capn Jon, and Dan Noyes, and Tom Pamperin--who has never sailed with the three of us but who is of the same mind-- I know because I read his book!  Your bathroom is warmer than the garage, and this book will keep you good company for those quiet times.

#4:
Lets talk 3 digit boats. Build a Duck Punt for crying out loud.  Especially if you are in northeast MA, NH, or southern ME. Maybe we can get a racing series or something like that going on.

I know, I know, repeat picture but I so love MRS MUMBLES and she loves ME

#5:
My favorite wood-buying-place is Goose Bay Lumber in Chichester, NH.  Lie Nielsen had an event there recently, and I did not go, but I am sad about that, but this somewhat famous spoon carving fellow put up a very nice blog post about the event, and I share it here so you can see where I buy the wood for my projects and my boats.  Carl and Carl Jr. and team are very helpful and there is a wonderful variety of neat-O woods, and they have great marine plywood selection!

To hold you over until next time: Check out this great pic of SCOUT sailing Muscongus Bay last summer, taken by Green Mountain John of WAXWING fame!

I think that is all I have for now for you, you funny Intrepid Reader types who just keep coming back for more! Youre all great!

Tour du Leman 2008 The one that got away

When I first took part in the 160km, non-stop Tour du Léman à lAviron around Lake Geneva, I was thrilled to have completed what I felt at the time was a very daunting challenge, and was quite clear that there was no need ever to do it again. 

But some months later, the other woman from that mixed crew and I decided that we SHOULD do it again. And actually, make it harder this time by doing it in an all-womens crew.

Having pulled together a carefully chosen quintet of ladies who can "shut up and row", we set off for what we thought was going to be a tough row. In fact, it turned out not to be about rowing that year, but about the pumps. Of which  we only had one, and it was rather inadequate.

Ladies who row
At this point I should, perhaps, mention that the formation of the crew wasnt quite as easy as Ive made it sound. Youd be amazed at how many, hard-training/racing rowers DONT think that a 16 hour row round a lake is a good idea. But having got stuck at four out of the necessary five, I got chatting to a woman at the City of Sheffield Rowing Club training camp, which I was attending, mostly for social reasons, at the invitation of friends from there. After talking to her for about 5 minutes by the landing stages, I somehow felt that she was a likely candidate. "Hey, I dont suppose youd like to row round 160km round Lake Geneva at the end of September, would you?", I asked, before we were hurried into our single sculls by the coach, and sent off for the session. 

As I pulled back into the landing stage an hour or so later, she hopped out of her boat, and came over. "Put me down for that race. Ive already booked that week off work and was looking for something to do." Shes been my best expedition rowing friend ever since.

For Yorkshire, chocolate and the flag

The flag.

All five of us had strong Yorkshire connections: four were past or present members of York City RC, and the fifth was born elsewhere in Gods own county. And whilst I never got used to drinking tea THAT strong, its the kind of place you feel an attachment to, even if you only lived there are a temporary migrant from the South.

For further bonding of our otherwise dispersed team, I made a crew flag that featured the colours of the four rowing clubs that the five of us belonged to at the time. It was to become our rallying cry.

Getting roughed up
Although the weather was idyllic the day before as we were preparing the boat, the forecast was for a windy race day, and as soon as we rowed out of the organising clubs harbour, we knew we were in trouble. Still, 22 crews set off on the usual 1km charge across the lake, before turning to head out past the UN building and along the Swiss shore.

It was tough going. Although wed taped up our riggers, waves kept breaking over the bows, rapidly drenching the woman rowing there, and actually they were breaking high enough that they often just landed straight in the boat. I was soon working our hand pump whilst also trying to steer (which needed to be done actively as the waves were pushing us around).

Our normal stopping schedule would have had the first swap after 30 mins, but we were aware that this was no time to stop and clamber up and down the boat, so the first combo kept going, although with increasingly frequent pauses to bail out. At some point the hose fell off the end of the pump, but the amount of water the pump was shooting out, meant it was easy to aim over the side. That wasnt the problem. The capacity of the pump was, though: and it wasnt enough.

We discovered later that all of us were independently thinking, "If we get through this rough bit, even if the water flattens out, were all so wet were going to get hypothermia", and as five basically lightweights, we were all right. However, it was still a big "if"...

Bling
At this point, Ill leave us pumping and paddling ineffectually and explain a small aside.

Keen to encourage the participation of more all-women crews, the organisers had managed to secure sponsorship from a local jeweler (this being Switzerland, after all) in the form of five Boucheron watches. Nice. These would go to the winning womens crew.

So, as we were struggling along, quite close to the only other womens crew in the event, one of our crew did raise the point that if neither crew was going to finish, the watches would go to the one that got furthest, and so we should make sure we always paused ahead of them.

Which was a fine plan, but like so many brilliant strategies, its the implementation where things often go wrong. And the last time we stopped to bail, when we just HAD to, we were behind the others. At this point, the straw that broke the camels back, or more accurately, the wave that swamped the yolette, came over the side, and it was all over. As pre-planned, we pulled our feet out, the boat rolled over (but stayed floating), and we all ensured we stayed holding on to the boat with one hand until the other hand was holding the ladder of one of the two motor cruisers that were in attendance.

The race organisers always assign one cruiser per crew to act as a safety boat. However, as 11 crews had already swamped or run for he safety of the bank, one who no longer had a crew had chosen, for some reason, to follow the girls in the wet t-shirts. 

This was helpful, though it did lead to some angst as two of us got onto one cruiser, and three onto the other, and I was only 99% certain Id seen all three of the others get onto the other boat.

The French can be sticklers for accuracy
As we climbed aboard, I saw my drybag, containing clothes, and someones iPod, blow away across the surface of the lake, floating, because it contained quite a lot of air. "Mes vêtements sèches", I cried, in my best schoolgirl French. The cruiser driver replied "Non, vos vêtements secs", before retrieving the bag with a boat hook. Honestly, what a time for a grammar lesson!

Having been surprised at how warm the lake felt when we were swimming in it, as soon as we got into the cruisers cabin, we started shivvering like mad – it must have been the adrenaline that kept us going while it had to. We divvied up what dry clothes we had, and supplemented these with some towels lent by the two vast French gents driving the boat.

So, after a mere 1 hr and 20 minutes of "rowing", and a surprisingly long run in a cruiser back across the lake, we found ourselves once again at the Société Nautique de Genève, about 14 hours earlier than wed intended. We werent even tired!

We went back to the dormitory, we showed, we got dressed, and it was till only about 11.30am. So we wandered sadly into town, stopping for some photos by the famous Jet dEau, but not feeling very jolly. At this point, a thought suddenly struck me, "The flag!", I wailed. We had no idea what would be rescued from the capsized boat, although we had tied all of the important stuff on.

We wandered on, unexpected tourists. And apparently not very good ones either, as we finished up in a run-down red light district. A little later we did get to a rather better park, and played a few moves on a giant chess board, but we werent really in the mood, and soon headed back to the Club where we were delighted to find that our camera, GPS and most importantly the flag, had been rescued from their little swim. Good for you Pentax and Garmin, is all Ill say: when you say watertight to a depth of 50m, you mean it!

Giant chess is no substitute for a good rowing challenge.

In the end, only five of the 22 starters got round. They were all German. And were equipped with very efficient pumps.

And yes, the other womens crew got the Boucheron watches. Because they were about 25m ahead of us, and went down about 3 minutes later.

So we were a crew with unfinished business. But would we all be able to come back again? In one case, this trip was a crew members holiday budget for the year, so to allocate all that two years running was a big ask... Find out whether we made it!

[Apologies for the lack of pictures in this report: as you now know, we were a bit busy to stop and take any.]