Adam’s First Law

Adam’s First Law:

All tools are hammers.
Except screwdrivers - screwdrivers are chisels. 

---

(See also: Salnick’s First Law
                Salnick’s Second Law
                Salnick’s Third Law)

Adam’s First Law

Salnick’s Third Law

Salnick’s Third Law:

There is no better way to say “I’m retired “
than
“Morning beer.“

---

(See also: Salnick’s First Law
               Salnick’s Second Law
               Salnick’s Fourth Law
               Adam’s First Law)

Salnick’s Third Law

On the grid

The Grid at Poulsbo

I'm sure that you've heard the expression "on the grid".  In the nautical world, "on the grid" does not refer to the Internet or to the power grid.  Instead, it refers to having one's boat on a construction like the one pictured above.  It is designed to provide a stable platform that will take the weight of a boat and provide a means to keep it upright as the tide drops, leaving it "high and dry" so that below-the-waterline work can be done.  Of course for this to work, there needs to be sufficient tidal range (the US Gulf Coast need not apply).

The realities of the tide dictate that there will not be unlimited time for the work, for what goes out will soon come back in.  And the lowest areas of the boat's hull will be exposed for the shortest time...  thus the origin of the expression, "between the devil and the deep blue sea".

We've never had the courage to use a grid...  too vivid an imagination I guess . 

On the grid

Jet City redux

(click for a larger view, as always)

I've written before about Seattle's place in the aircraft industry.  Here's something passing by the marina that you probably don't see in your city... those are 737 (?) fuselages on specially-designed rail cars, heading from Boeing's plant in Everett to, well, umm, Boeing field I presume (Doug, correct me if I'm wrong here).

They are covered in some kind of green film - film that even stays on when they are in the air, as they sometimes are with the film intact.  Presumably to protect the exotically expensive aluminum aircraft skin until it's painted - skin which we manufactured at the Kaiser Trentwood rolling mill where I used to work.  There's a whole story about aircraft skin sheets - a story for another time.

Jet City redux

Guitars and boats

Guitars and boats go together pretty well, don't they?



Found this on Boat Bits

Guitars and boats

Jet City

While it is frequently Microsoft that keeps Seattle in the public eye today, it is worth remembering that aircraft are at the foundation of Seattle. This is the city that Boeing built (called "The Boeing Company" by those who work there). Known as Jet City in the trucking world, there is a motel near the airport which commemorates that name.

There are daily reminders here of this airborne heritage:

• The Boeing 787, aka the Dreamliner, is frequently seen in the Seattle skies as she undergoes flight testing. This is the world's first carbon fiber commercial aircraft, and it has to be the most graceful man-made thing in the sky. Hopefully you'll get to see one too, soon.
• There is a WWII era B-25 which still flies the area, offering rides to those willing to put up $400 for 30 minutes in the same kind of plane that made the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo.
• But my money (if I had it) would go for a ride in the Boeing B-17, also available for rides. Sporting 4 huge slow-turning radial engines, the sound this plane makes in flight is like nothing you've ever heard (unless you're old enough to, well, remember). You can hear it coming for miles. And when it thunders overhead, you'll understand why it acquired the appellation "Aluminum Overcast".
• The second largest Experimental Aircraft gathering (after Oshkosh, Wisconsin) is held at Arlington airport, just north of Seattle. Attending the Arlington EAA fly-in is one of my bucket-list items.
• And Sunday evening, the inspiration for this post, a flight (swarm?) of 10-12 Rutan VariEze's passed over our anchorage here in Eagle Harbor. I have never seen this many of them in one place, at one time. Come to think of it, I have never seen that many of *any* kind of aircraft in flight together before. It was impressive.

And, tying this back (sort of) to the theme of this blog, have you ever noticed the strong correlation between aircraft pilots and sailing?

Jet City

Looking, and seeing

The way the mind works is a mystery to me.

How many times have you looked at the sunset this week?  How many times have you seen it?

How many times have I looked at the reflections of the boats in the marina in the waterway?  How many times have I seen the liquid interplay of shapes and colors that result?  Tuesday nite, while making cheeseburgers on the grill, I had one of those wonderful, but sadly rare, instances where I saw those constantly evolving fluid shapes.

When looking turns into seeing, I can actually feel the mental gears shift, tho I have no words to describe it. 

I know that I spend way more time on the passive, looking side.  I wish that I could find a way to be like some people I know, who seemingly spend the majority of their lives on the seeing side.

As I was writing this, I was about to make a connection to right-brain / left-brain.  But I don't think this is necessarily valid.  Here's why:

This morning at work, I was examining an intermittent failure in a system that I have been trying to get to the root cause of since May 20.  Every day, for at least part of the day, I have spent time looking at this failure, from as many different directions as I can, hoping to get a clue as to its cause.  Now this is pure, unadulterated left-brain analytical thinking.

This morning, while looking at all the same elements that I have examined every morning for the past 3 weeks, I could feel a subtle shifting of the puzzle pieces occur.  Some pieces became more prominent and others became more dependent... and, most importantly, looking turned into seeing.  Everything fell into place, and the cause became not just distinguishable, but OBVIOUS.

Even tho I was heavily into computer systems analysis, did I just shift into a right-brain mode?

Did the shift happen last nite while I was cooking cheeseburgers? 

And by far the most important question:  How can I stay here, where I am today, in seeing mode?

Lots of questions.

No answers.

Looking, and seeing

Salnick's First Law

Complexity is the enemy of reliability

First corollary:
Simplicity is harder than complexity

Second corollary:
Complex solutions are usually the first ones discovered

Third corollary:
When a simple solution and a complex one are both possible, the complex one results from an inability to grasp the entire problem at once.

---

(See also: Salnick’s Second Law
               Salnick’s Third Law
               Salnick's Fourth Lawl
               Adam's First Law)

Salnick's First Law

Seattle Seasons

For those of you in the rest of the world, I thought it might be useful to explain the seasons here in Seattle.

Since they are cyclical, it really doesn't matter where we enter the cycle of the seasons.  So arbitrarily, I choose Summer as the entry point (because it is my favorite):

Summer

• July
• August
• September

Fall

• October

Winter

(such as it is in Seattle anyway)

• November
• December
• January

Spring

• February

Woebegone

Where every day is 10 degrees below average

• March
• April
• May
• June

So, here we are in the second month of Woebegone, with near-record low temperatures and having just come thru a major winter storm, with another bearing down on us for tomorrow. Quite a come-down after Spring. But we Seattlites are tough and are used to it.

Unfortunately.

---

Dateline Thursday, April 8:  Update!
There is snow on the ground on the higher hills in Seattle this morning.

It *is* April, isn't it?

Seattle Seasons

Spring Ahead!

Last fall, when we "fell back", that signaled the end of the possibility of sailing to Port Madison on a Thursday nite after work because of the loss of daylight (I don't work Fridays.  Or Mondays.  Yea!).

Well, what was gone has returned!  The prodigal hour of daylight is back in the fold,  and there is now time for a brisk sail or to motor across to Port Madison in the evening.   

And in an amazing bit of synchronicity and homonymity (I just made that up), the threat of the worst of the winter storms is over, so we can single up the spring lines that  were doubled last fall.

These two changes spark a subtle adjustment in me.  I don't suppose it's visible on the outside, but in a shifting of mental framework, I no longer see Eolian as the teak-lined apartment that has housed us thru the winter.  She is returned to being a boat.

Spring Ahead!

Musings on Grandparenthood

Babies take 9 months, more or less. I have frequently observed that it takes all of those 9 months for the parents-to-be to come to grips with the idea of parenthood. In fact, I have observed this quite often lately with Erica and Ken (my daughter and son-in-law), since they are expecting! SHORTLY!

What I have failed to anticipate in all those years of making that observation: it takes at least that long to get used to the idea of grandparenthood.

I have been thru the parenthood acclimatization - with all the awe, amazement, joy, and with the weight of responsibility for a new life that you actually feel fall on your shoulders like a cloak. When it happens, you sense that you are moving forward, that life is being completed, filled in. It is a fulfilling and satisfying time.

Ah, but grandparenthood - that's different. Now, instead of fully entering the comforts of middle age, you are leaving, to old age. But wait - I'm not old! Notwithstanding that an old curmudgeon stares back at me in the mirror now every morning, I feel like I am middle-aged. I have been so for a long time, and I am contented with it. I don't want to give it up. I am comfortable with my delusion, and I want to keep it, thankyouverymuch.

Just as in parenthood, the grandparent (me? you talking to me?) still has responsibility for a new life, but now it is very different - it is all by proxy. The primary responsibility belongs to and must remain with the parents - you can offer hints and the rare sage advice, but you need to stay once removed so that you do not usurp the role of the parents.

Rearing a baby into an adult is the most important task a human being can undertake. And yet it is one that by far the majority of parents are forced to handle with on-the-job training. Very few people get to see the actual results of their efforts in an adult offspring - what worked well, and what maybe should have been handled differently - in time to apply the learnings to the rearing of another child. In point of fact, I believe that is what grandparents are for. They do have the experience and they do have the long viewpoint. But: gently, gently. Can I be subtle? Can I suggest, instead of pronounce? I hope so. But this will not be easy for me.

Seeing your child become a parent is remarkably fulfilling. But stepping into the proxy role, and out of middle age requires a significant change of world view.

I am not quite there yet.

And I am quickly running out of time.

Maybe I should ask the curmudgeon in the mirror for advice - he's old.

Musings on Grandparenthood

Read FREE!

Now seriously, what could be better than free?  Well, free *and* good is better.  Here in the Pacific NW, we have a multitude of free boating magazines that are distributed to the various chandleries and marinas, available free for the taking.

Our two favorites are:

48° North

This is a non-glossy publication, devoted pretty much exclusively to sailing and sail boats.  In it each month, sailing in the Pacific NW is encapsulated.  Racer?  Yup, all the latest results and standings.  Cruiser?  Yup, there's a section or three each month on various cruising destinations and gunkholes, much like my destinations posts, but way better written (my pictures are better!)  There's "Galley Essentials with Amanda", always an interesting cooking idea, tailored to the galley, not the trophy kitchen.  News from the business of boat brokers, chandleries, and other marine-related business.  New products. Well, just about everything you might want.

And if you are looking for a boat, the want ads in the back are a wonderful resource.  In addition, 48° also catalogs all the boats offered by brokers, organized by length.  So, if you are looking for a 27 footer, this is a great place to go to see a summary of what is available at the brokers docks.  (But go to the docks!  It's a wonderful day that is spent looking at boats!  And the brokers want you there - really!).

48° also has a web presence.

Northwest Yachting

The showpiece of this large format magazine is the cover art.  Each month a spectacular, luscious (really, that word does apply) photograph by our own Neil Rabinowitz (Neil lives on Bainbridge Island) fills your eye.  And evey month, the editors play with the title - it's always something - sometimes pretty subtle.  This month it is obvious - the bow of the boat is in front of the title.

Northwest is devoted pretty much (but not entirely) to power boats.  But since few sailboats are truely sail-only boats, there is a lot of crossover.  And both are boats, after all.  Much of the gear featured applies equally well to both power and sail.

Northwest has a large want-ad section in the back, and also has an organized catalog of broker powerboats.  Northwest Yachting also has a web presence.


I think if you are a power boater, Northwest Yachting is your magazine.  If you are a sailor, then you will enjoy both magazines.  We are very fortunate to have these two fine publications offered to us free every month.  Go get a copy of each, and do some dreaming.

Read FREE!

Joyous Christmas!

"Unto you this day was born a Savior"

Rejoice!

Merry Christmas to you blog readers!

(photo from 2004 Seattle snowstorm)

Joyous Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2009

It really is a good thing to have a day set aside for this. Too often we are experts at the cynical, the whine, the complaint. Beka said it way better than I can. Throughout the history of mankind, there have been very, very few who would not have jumped at the chance to enjoy the blessings we have.

But: Just one day??!? Really, one day a year is laughably inadequate. The challenge for all of us is to live each day consciously - fully aware of all the goodness that comes our way, every day. Every single day.

So especially today, here are some things that we are thankful for (sublime, mundane and maritime guaranteed to be randomly mixed):

• That Adam could join us for the Thanksgiving celebration.
• That Ken and Erica's pregnancy is moving along normally, right on schedule. I've seen an ultrasound of a foot! And a nose!
• That Jon and Tina (part of Adam's BBH crew) are able to join us for Thanksgiving.
• That Joe Buys (also part of the BBH crew) can join us. We will have a full table for the feast, and that is as it should be.
• That we have had 80" of snow already for skiing!
• That both Jane and I have new (old) skis this year!
• I am thankful every single time that the heat pump on Eolian kicks on! (It just did - Yay! - I am writing this ahead.)
  
• I am thankful that we are privileged to live here, where we can enjoy near-spring like conditions and yet be within driving distance of skiing.
  
• I am thankful that we were tested - our week of 30+ kt winds is over - and that we, and all our friends on the dock, survived it unscathed.
• I am thankful for the wonderful friends that the liveaboard lifestyle has provided us over the years.
• I am thankful that we have no deck leaks this year (knock wood).
• I am thankful that I have the luxury of a heated shop to fix things in. And a long list of things to fix!
  
• I am thankful that I am nearly done with rebuilding the deck at our cabin (after 3! years)
  

Jane preferred the essay approach:

I have many things to be thankful for, family and friends topping the list. As a sailor, I am thankful for an incredible summer that just kept giving. It seemed like just desserts as we had a record-setting winter leaving snow on our finger pier numerous times, nonetheless, this summer tops my record as my best in Seattle. Summer arrived early for us, meaning from Memorial Day on we enjoyed plenty of sunshine and wind. The dock was the site of numerous dock parties that lingered late because we weren't chilled by a fierce evening blow. The San Juans provided plenty of anchor lingering days and a memorable ride from Lopez to Port Madison in less than a day. Our favorite gunkholes were welcoming as we enjoyed some of the most comfortable evenings we have had sailing in the Pacific Northwest.

We are definitely November in Seattle now, rain, rain, rain. I am thankful as that is how it should be. Temperate lowlands make life on the dock manageable. The rain is snow, snow, snow in the mountains. I am thankful for the white stuff as we enter the ski season. The Salnicks have enjoyed another bountiful year with many joys.

Thanksgiving 2009

You know you are from the Pacific Northwest if...

This came to me from my friend Courtney Fujita. This is sooo true! It needs to be shared with those of you who live where slugs are small and inoffensive...

---

You know you are from the Pacific Northwest if:

You know the state flower is mildew.

You know the state motto: "Rain? What rain?"

You have a T-shirt that says, "200 Billion Slugs Can't Be Wrong!"

You use the term "sun break" and know what it means.

You open the windows in the summer to let the warm air in.

Your Early Girl tomatoes ripen in September.

Names like Point No Point, Useless Bay, Deception Pass, Destruction Island and Friday Harbor don't faze you.

You feel guilty throwing out paper or aluminum cans.

To you, if it doesn't have snow or hasn't erupted recently, it is not a real mountain.

You know more people who own a boat than own an air conditioner.

You will stand on a deserted corner in the rain and wait for the "Walk" signal.

You feel overdressed if you wear a suit to a fancy restaurant.

You can order coffee 10 different ways.

You can taste the difference between Seattle's Best, Tully's and Starbucks.

To you, swimming is an indoor sport.

You never go camping without a poncho and waterproof matches.

You know the difference between Coho, Chinook, and Sockeye salmon.

You know how to pronounce Puyallup, Sequim, Sekiu, Yakima, Oregon, Wenatchee, Steilacoom, Quileute, Cle Elum and Willamette.

You know Forks is not a bunch of eating utensil but a town on the Olympic Peninsula.

You can tell the difference between Thai, Japanese and Chinese food.

You know that Boring is not a state of mind, but a town in Oregon.

You have no concept of humidity without precipitation.

You know that a forecast of "rain, changing to showers" means "constant drizzle changing to intermittent drizzle."

You are not fazed by the weather forecast, "Today: Showers followed by rain. Tomorrow: Rain followed by showers."

You rejoice at a forecast of "rain with sun breaks."

You know what "The mountain is out" means.

When the temperature gets above 50, you put on your shorts (If you're warm blooded, that is. If you're cold blooded, you wear a sweatshirt all summer.)

You can point out at least two volcanoes, even if you can't see through the cloud cover.

You think people who use umbrellas are either tourists or wimps (or both).

You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.

You knew immediately that the view out of Frazier's window was fake.

You use a down comforter and wear flannel pajamas in the summer.

Your kid's Halloween costumes fit under a raincoat.

You know all the seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Deer and Elk season (Fall).

Every year you have to buy new sunglasses because you can't find the old ones after such a long time.

You know you are from the Pacific Northwest if...

Keel? Why Is There a Keel?

(For those of you reading because you are attracted to the romance of sailing into the sunset, or the peace of being anchored in a quiet cove at dawn... There is no romance in what follows - it is the technology which enables the romance. But I promise: no equations or vectors, just common sense and analogies)

Why would you take a perfectly good boat, and then handicap her by hanging 6 tons of lead (in Eolian's case) from her bottom?

Two reasons. The keel actually performs two separate functions that, in a wonderful bit of convergence, work out to require the same structure.

First: Keep the boat from falling over.

A sailboat has a tall mast, and carries a lot of sail up there, The weight of the mast and rigging alone, plus the sails would make her unstable and likely to fall over without the weight down below the waterline. Then there is the tremendous force that the wind adds! The hull actually acts as a fulcrum on which the mast/keel arm pivots. As the mast descends due to weight and force of wind, the hull rolls and forces the keel to rise, like a teeter-totter (<-- I think that may be the first time I have ever typed that word... it looks strange to me). As the boat rolls farther, the keel is pulled out farther away from directly below the hull, increasing the roll resistance. At the same time, as the mast goes more and more toward the horizontal, it becomes less and less effective at catching the wind. therefore the system is stable and self-correcting. As the boat heels more and more, it becomes more and more difficult to increase the angle of heel. The greater the weight, and the lower in the water below the hull it is suspended, the greater the stability which results.

Second: Keep the boat from sliding sideways in the water.

When the boat is sailing in any direction except dead downwind, the force of the wind on the sails is not along the boat's line of motion. To make this possible, something is needed to create a force which will resist the hull's desire to drift downwind. Once again, the keel comes to the rescue. In this case, the shape and surface area are the controlling factors; weight is irrelevant.

In the early days of yacht design, it was the "keel-as-a-barn-door" theory that prevailed. The idea being that a barn door would be really hard to push sideways thru the water. And in fact this is true. It leads to the full and modified-full keel designs which have been with us from antiquity. These boats (including Eolian with a modified full keel) are additionally very stable and easy to hold on course.

Tho the full keel design works well at optimizing one parameter: lateral resistance, it fails badly at optimizing another: wetted surface. Dragging anything thru the water takes effort - an effort that is proportional to (among many other things), the amount of surface area submerged in the water. Given a constant propulsive force, decreasing wetted surface will result in an increase in speed.

In the middle part of the last century (that would be the 20th century...), the search for a keel design that would provide the needed lateral resistance with decreased wetted surface was on. This led to the modern fin keel, when it was recognized that the keel moving thru the water could be viewed as a wing (much as the sail can be viewed as a wing operating in the air above), and thus could be designed as a hydrodynamic lifting body, - long and narrow with an airfoil cross section, instead of a barn door. Fin keel boats are faster, but are a little less stable - it takes more steering to keep them on course. However, they are far more maneuverable in close quarters, like a marina, since the boat pivots easily on the narrow fin.

Convergence

At first, the fin keels were just (nicely shaped) slabs of lead or cast iron. But then another conceptual breakthru came when it was realized that, if the keel material were strong enough, the bulk of the weight could be concentrated at the bottom in the form of a bulb, maximizing the righting moment that any given amount of keel weight could deliver.

Next, bear with me for a moment as we consider the keel as a lifting body. Consider the more familiar form of a lifting surface: an airplane wing. No matter how you describe the mechanism that makes it generate lift, it is a truism that the pressure on the bottom of the wing exceeds that on the top, if it is generating lift. Now what happens at the end of the wing? Yup... air flows out from under the wing and tries to fill the low pressure area on the top. This leads to the tip vortices that force air traffic controllers to space out flights at an airport. And it leads to a decrease in lift. The small vertical winglets seen on the wingtips of the most modern planes are effective at blocking this bottom-to-top flow.

Now back to the keel... it needs to lift from either side as the boat moves from one tack to the other., making each side of the keel alternately the high pressure and then the low pressure side. And yes, tip vortices rolling off the bottom steal away some of the effective lift of the keel. The same thinking that brings winglets to airplane wings has brought the wing keel - but with winglets on both sides. And in addition, the winglets are usually a modified form of bulb - that is, they contain a substantial fraction of the keel's weight. Because the wings increase the keel's effectiveness as a lateral plane, and because they allow weight concentration at the bottom where it is most effective, wing keel boats can have shorter keels than their fin keel counterparts with equivalent performance. Conversely, with the same depth and weight, a wing keel will increase both the boat's stiffness and its pointing ability.

Divergence

Working in the opposite direction, it is also possible to divorce the functions of roll stability and lateral resistance into two separate structures. The shoal draft/centerboard boat is such a case. In this design, the ballast keel is increased in weight, but held relatively high up, giving a shoal draft configuration. Because this keel generates very little, lateral resistance is provided by a retractable centerboard, which is weighted only enough to keep it in place. With the board extended, excellent lateral resistance is generated; with it retracted the boat can venture into thin water (tho the keel alone will not provide enough lateral resistance to allow thin water sailing without making huge amounts of leeway, unless nearly directly downwind).

The Future

So, what comes next? Venturing into prognostication, I have seen some interesting developments that have been tried on the "any $$ for 1/10 of a second" boats. Some of these are:

• Canting keels - they can be hydraulically tilted from side to side to increase the righting moment
• Keels with tabs - flaps really, keeping the aircraft wing analogy. The flaps increase the lift that the keel generates
• Boats with two steerable keels, fore and aft and no rudder

All of these ideas presume that something movable can be kept working in an environment that features barnacles, mussels, crab pot lines, and the occasional ill-placed rock. To survive in this environment, things have to be simple and robust - no delicate linkages need apply.

We'll see.

Keel? Why Is There a Keel?

Slugs

Where I grew up, in the Midwest, slugs were a garden problem. They'd hole your tomatoes, and eat the leaves of about everything else. These little black shell-less terrors got perhaps an inch long and were less than 1/4" across.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, they grow the slugs bigger. Seriously people, you have NO IDEA. Here, a slug 6-8" long is the norm, and these guys (and gals? how do you tell?) are 3/4" across. And, no they are not black. Most are green with random dark spots, and there is a second kind that is brown. Stepping on one is seriously dangerous - as dangerous as stepping on a banana peel... but way more disgusting.

And they can swallow your tomatoes whole.

Slugs

How to start the week. Not.

Monday morning, at 05:15. It is dark.

I am up, but barely conscious.

I need to make lattes. (I have an alarm. Jane has an espresso machine, and me.)

Darn - the sugar container is nearly empty. Open the pantry cabinet, and take all the stuff off of the large sugar container, including a bag of rice. Pull out the container...

Splat! There was another bag of rice in there, and it was open.

Aside: I love the use of the zip-locks on food packaging - it's a great addition. But for some products, it is hard to get the zip-lock to, well, lock. A single grain of rice in the zipper is the same as having a tooth missing from a regular zipper - the whole thing comes undone starting right there.

So, now there is rice everywhere. Everywhere! So on Monday morning, Jane gets up to the sound of the vacuum cleaner. And for the rest of the day, I seem to be missing those 15 minutes I spent chasing rice grains. I am late for everything, running 15 minutes behind. I would have had this posted yesterday, if I wasn't behind...

Monday mornings are not my favorite.

How to start the week. Not.

Motherhood as a Weight Loss Program

By this time of year, the baby seagull chicks that were hatched earlier in the spring (somewhere? Where do seagulls build nests?) are no longer babies. They are full-sized gulls. But they still have their juvenile gray plumage. And their juvenile ways. They still follow mama gull around, begging for food with a high-pitched mewing cry that surely is as annoying to her as it is to me.

This poor gull spent an afternoon trying to ditch her two offspring, zooming from one perch to the next. The mewing never stopped - as mama flew around, they were right behind her, mewing away. At each perch, the two Baby Hueys would land and immediately assume the "begging-for-food" pose (body held low, head and neck extended up), mewing frantically. When that failed to work, both babies literally tried to take the food from her mouth, stabbing at her face with their beaks, trying to pry open her mouth. She protected herself by turning away.

Eventually, the "motherhood" wiring did kick in tho, and she regurgitated a load for them - right onto this poor guy's bimini. I don't know how this bird is managing, having to feed herself and two other adult-sized birds. She did look trim and svelte tho. Eating for three, and staying trim. Hmmm...

Motherhood as a Weight Loss Program

Imprinting?

Looking like a mother duck and her ducklings, a cruising sailboat tows a gaggle of Optimist dinghies out of Port Madison on a recent evening. Did they imprint on it? Was it the first boat they saw as they left the dock?

The older/more experienced sailors get themselves out of the harbor by sailing. I could not capture all of them at once in the camera because they filled the harbor, but it is like being surrounded by a flock of butterflies - beautiful, graceful and silent.

Actually, sailing is a school sport on Bainbridge Island (boy, that's not the way I remember school!). I don't know if these pictures represent the school sessions, but there was definitely schooling going on. Here is one way to do it: Put an outboard on a dock section, set up a flipchart to make it an impromptu schoolroom, tie the Optimists to it, and take the whole shebang out into the harbor for on-site training.

Imprinting?