Fumble Fingers

If you are not a blogger, this will be new to you.  If you are, then it has probably already happened to you.

When writing a post, you are presented with two choices:

• Save - as a draft for more work later, or
• Publish - to the world

You know what I'm going to say, don't you?  If you hit the wrong button, your incomplete, inane, rambling post gets published in all its unprepared ugliness for the world to see.  Of course you immediately hit "Save", which makes it a draft again.

But the damage is done.  The damnable RSS Feed gets it immediately - I mean right now - so that even when you recast the post to draft status, the RSS feed and the Google cache have at least the first part of your post out there.

Rats.

I did it again tonite.  So tomorrow morning's post about winged keels got out there in draft form before I could "unpost" it.  At least the first 200 characters or so, whatever it is my RSS feed publishes.  Check back tomorrow morning for the real thing.  I'd like to say the "polished" thing, but that would be an over-characterization.  But check back tomorrow morning anyway.

Fumble Fingers

Traditional instruments?

Do you have "traditional" instruments?  You know, a depthsounder, a knotmeter, a wind speed/direction indicator?  Or do you have a large screen in the cockpit with all of that instrumentation and more in virtual form? 

As an "early adopter" and self-admitted gadget freak, I have a nearly unconscious tendency to lean to the new, the shiny, the integrated.  The "glass cockpit" draws me.

But then my engineering side steps in and says, "All your eggs in one basket?  Really?  What if it fails?"

That is a very valid question.

There are tremendous advantages to be had with integrated instrumentation, and not just in conserving display real estate.  Being able to overlay radar and depthsounder information on the chartplotter display provides very real advantages over the same information viewed separately.  But if that is your only way to see, for example your speed, and it goes dark, then what?

And does anyone really believe that the modern all-electronic systems are more reliable than the older electro-mechanical ones?  The best that one could say is that the new systems have different failure modes, but I personally think that is being overly generous.  In designing systems for reliability, simplicity is a virtue, and modular design partitions problems. 

Problems that occur with an older electro-mechanical instrument can frequently be fixed on board by the owner, rather than by calling a technician who will charge an arm and a leg to swap out expensive circuit boards until things are working again.  Most (but not all) problems with older systems will be due to corroded connections, which are an easy fix.  And did you know that even the most modern and sophisticated airliners out there (787 anyone?) are still required to have a plain old magnetic compass, a conventional mechanical altimeter and a turn-and-bank indicator (a steel ball in a curved glass tube full of liquid) on board in the cockpit?  (Scott will probably correct me on this.)  Just in case.

Finally, there is an intangible.  I have seen boats with such a large computer display above the compass and directly in the view that commanding the helm surely has become some kind of real-life video game.  One of the joys of sailing is the totality of the experience... of capturing the wind for propulsion, of the boat parting the water and moving thru it, of the sights and sounds and smells of the sea.  When you were a kid, didn't your mother tell you, "Get away from that TV and go outside!" - sure she did.  And she didn't mean for you to take the TV outside with you.  Like having a generator and a TV at a campsite out in the woods, sailing as a video game misses part of the point.  Perhaps the major part.

I am not saying that we should eschew the advantages of modern technology.  But keep it in perspective.  Hang on to your single-purpose instrumentation, and "Get away from that TV and go outside!"

Traditional instruments?

Dock life: Trick or treating

We are a little community out here on the dock, more so than on shore because we all share a common interest and experiences. This is manifested in many ways - trick or treating is one of them. Because of our environment (and thanks to Angela of Ghost for starting it), we do this traditional task in what I think is a very "civilized" manner.

Angela posts two sign-up sheets at the head of the dock. The first is for boats to sign up if they want to be extorted by goblins, and the second is for the goblins themselves (or rather their parents) to sign up. This way the kids know which boats to visit, and the boats know how many kids are coming. Isn't that great?

And then at the end of the extortion run, out at the end of G Dock, there is a party! (There are rumors that grog may be part of the run for the adult participants, but I can neither confirm nor deny that.)

The run starts at the far end of F Dock, goes back towards shore, across the connector (F and G Docks share a common gate), and then back out G Dock. Here, Jane sits with a glass of wine, awaiting the invasion.

Civilized indeed.

Dock life: Trick or treating

Identity problem - living aboard in Puget Sound

This is a liveaboard blog.  At least I'd hoped for it to be one - "life aboard s/v Eolian" is what it says up there in the header.  In my posts I often try to give the liveaboard viewpoint, and try to accentuate how that differs from life ashore.

People frequently stumble across this site by doing a search for "living aboard a boat in Puget Sound", or "live aboard Puget Sound", or something similar.  That would seem to be a good thing - they are ending up here, after all.

Unfortunately, that search seems to always return them possibly the single worst example of the living aboard experience: the tongue-in-cheek liveaboard simulator post.  You can try it yourself!  There it is, at #3 (or, at least it was before this post went up).  Usually that is enough to scare them right off.  The blog, that is - I hope that post has not scared anyone off from considering living aboard a boat.  But I fear that it may very well have done so.

So - what might I do (short of sending money, of course) to get Google, Yahoo and Bing to return something other than that fateful post to someone looking for live aboard info?  Perhaps I could put up a post that includes the words "living", "aboard", "Puget", and "Sound" in the title?

Maybe that would work.

Identity problem - living aboard in Puget Sound