Frank Giovinazzi

Amtrak employees in Alexandria VA rock!

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:49:08 -0500

They were a lot of help when a birthday party of 15 kids and parents showed up — the Amtrak people were friendly, helped with info, held luggage in baggage check and one fellow even handed out kiddie train books to teh little ones. Very nice!

Black Friday Assault on my Inbox

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:08:27 -0500

How many sale emails did you delete today? I’m up to about 30.

More kayaking

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:53:26 -0400

More kayaking

Kayaking on the Potomac

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:44:38 -0400

Kayaking on the Potomac

If fantasy authors keep building on each other's work

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:39:54 -0400

will they eventually become realists?

Stolen joke:

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:41:11 -0400

Two cannibals are eating a clown, one turns to the other and asks, “Does this taste funny to you?”

Cracked iPhone glass

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:05:00 -0400

can fix it myself, sure, but I contacted ‘reliable iphone repair’ and he hasn’t gotten back to me in a week!

What's with all the tweeting of famous quotes and news articles?

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:04:29 -0400

Obsessing over old ideas that failed us is not going to make a better future — offer something original or shaddup — there is an energy cost to all this pointless electronic activity.

The Moon is Just Past Full

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:56:45 -0400

Both hatches are off the boat for painting, the cicadas and the water are keeping a rhythm, the air is temperate enough for shorts and a t-shirt on deck and life is good.

Owning a Boat, Green Acres Edition

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 03:55:43 -0400

The warning sound on the inverter went off, and since I was laying down and trying to sleep, it went through me the way I’d imagine a siren in a biohazard lab would sound.

What the…? I immediately had my ‘jump to conclusions’ mat out and decided the damned inverter had already failed — at less than three months old! Damn, I threw out the packaging! I can’t return it! I have to buy a new one! Wait, that means I can get a better one! A 1500 watt model! I can run a microwave!

But then I turned a couple lights on and noticed they were dim. Shut one light off and the others brightened. Aha Watson! Deductive reasoning strikes again — the battery is weak and the inverter actually functioned correctly, warning me that the battery didn’t have enough power.

Damn! Now I have to buy a new battery! They’re a hundred bucks! And so on.

Perhaps not. I unplugged the inverter and shut off all lights and let the charger work for a few minutes. Then I plugged in the inverter which did not set off the Anthrax alarm, and my iPhone started charging again.

This is like the Green Acres scenario where they can’t run the dishwasher and the toaster at the same time, but I am thinking of taking the battery home, with the charger, and letting it replenish for a few days without drawing any power. We’ll see. This reminds me that I have to learn more about electrical and 12 volt systems — and that most learning on a boat is dictated by stuff as it happens.

Another Great Reason to Own a Boat, Tea Party Edition

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 03:36:25 -0400

There’s no government program that guarantees the right to own a boat.

No section 8, no cash for canoes, no means, that I know of, for people who have not worked for the privilege of owning a boat to get one for free and have the maintenance and operating expenses of the vessel paid for from the sweat of someone else’s brow.

Everyone who is on the water has earned it. They bought the boat, paid for supplies, gas and dockage and most important, if they make a mistake they are going to have to fix it themselves.

This notion occurred to me one day when I was by myself and slipped while tending the mainsail. “Whoa!” I righted myself, “I’m out here alone — and I can die!”

It wasn’t that big a slip in itself, it was more the split second awareness that I had to be more careful because there is no net.

I’m not a major tea party ranter, though the reason that meme has proven persistent is that there is some kernel of validity to the idea that self-reliance is a neglected responsibility.

Once I started riffing on this concept, I looked at my fellow boaters and the water a little differently — the overall community is a shade different than land-based life, where it seems everyone is in your pocket or working a scam to enjoy the easy life. And let me be clear, where I diverge from the tea partiers is that I include a broader list of freeloaders in my estimation — not just garden variety welfare recipients, but the politicians, bankers, lobbyists, retirees, lawsuit beneficiaries, double dippers, the self-handicapped, bogus protected classes and so on. If you take the current attack on freeloading to its logical extreme, the fact is a good deal of the well-to-do slice of society has secured their position by taking their points off the honest labor of others.

But you can’t do that on a boat that’s actually in the water. Even if you obtained your vessel by your little scam of making others pay for it, once you off the dock it’s up to you to fend for yourself and make sure you get back safely.

I think this goes part of the way to explains the bonhomie among the boating class — every one knows that every person they meet has made an effort to get there and stay there, and you are met with a higher level of trust than in ordinary land-based dealings. Where else do people wave to each other as they pass by on the way to their destination?

And since I’m talking politics, there is a subtle phenomenon to this idea of earning your place. Since everyone in boating knows that you earned the right to be there, there is an openness to helping one another that doesn’t exist in the land of scams — it’s a case of assuming the best about someone before learning the worst. Now imagine if our primary society had a shared sense that everyone was doing their best, that they weren’t out to scam you or take what you had earned for yourself? I would say that our society is suffering under a mutual suspicion, that since everyone is working a scam, people are operating with a closed fist. There’s an argument to be made that curtailing entitlements would not only encourage people to work harder but also engender a greater level of cooperation and goodwill among folks that, right now, have good reason to believe their neighbor is getting something for nothing.

Forget Two-Foot-Itis, I've Got Eight-Foot-Itis

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:19:34 -0400

You know the old saying, ‘if I knew then what I know now,’ and in terms of the boat that means I am looking for something in the 34-foot range. Still capable of single-handing, but but enough to cruise in style. The headroom on my Pearson 26 requires me to stoop and it’s just a little too tight.

I am going to skip the two foot growth spurts and go for what I want, which allows for a hot water system, shower, maybe a reefer box and most of all, enough floor space to do yoga. Not that I will but you get the drift.

Sometime Prudence is the Better Part of Maritime Valor: Cue the...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:08:43 -0400

Sometime Prudence is the Better Part of Maritime Valor: Cue the Jaws theme song — duh, duhn, duh, duhn. That’s what I was thinking when I saw some big honking floaters on the Chesapeake today. I’m talking ten foot logs, which I suppose would be more accurately referred to as trees, floating along, the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and non-Hurricane Lee getting washed from rivers into the bay.

This stuff is no joke — I actually barreled over a three foot piece of firewood and the clunk as it hit the keel was the sailor’s equivalent of getting kicked in the nuts. I read in some news coverage of a 40-foot section of dock floating semi-submerged off North Carolina. That kind of debris can change your status from sailor to swimmer in short order.

When I was motored into the dock, a neighbor on a quite nice 38-footer yelled, “How is it out there?” and I told him about the firewood. He followed, “We went out yesterday and turned around.” At first I thought to scoff at this, after all, boats are meant to be sailed and all that bravado, but then I realized that this man has more experience than me as well as a nicer boat, and that his caution may be hard won. There’s no point in wrecking your boat just to say you went out there, when the stuff in the water is tougher than your fiberglass skin. I don’t know how long this stuff expects to hang around, but I figure I can spend tomorrow working on the deck and letting Nature wash the aftermath away.

This Boat Will Be Watertight

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:58:07 -0400

After a 2 hour sail, I resumed working on fiberglassing the deck. I am removing all deck fittings, some permanently, and swabbing resin over the whole mess. After scraping and sanding.

I figure most of the water coming in during rainstorms is from the handrails and the loose stanchions, with smaller amounts coming in from loose screws and assorted cracks.

It is a 40 year old boat, and it appears the deck has never been touched up — original gelcoat is scabbing in sections where the previous owner laid down treadtape to protect it from further erosion, and the whole of it needs redoing.

It is the opposite of fun but I am working on the assumption that stem to stern resin application and 2 coats of paint will ally most of the leaks.

Lots of debris in roiled water after non hurricane lee, just hit...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:34:09 -0400

Lots of debris in roiled water after non hurricane lee, just hit a three foot log.

Is it really a mobile phone

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 02:10:43 -0400

if it’s plugged into a power supply all the time?

I’ve got a house and car charger now, and keep the iPhone plugged in at all times when I’m not using it, and sometimes even to take a call. Tough on the neck, but man if this thing doesn’t lose battery faster than when I first got it.

But I must be an ingrate — it’s AN IPHONE.

The line between expediency and half-assing it

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 02:06:35 -0400

is pretty thin and when it comes to doing the deck repairs on the boat it’s top of mind. The idea of doing a showroom restoration is out of the question — I think it’s a waste of time, at least for me, and I don’t have the time. First, a Pearson 26 is a good boat, I love it, maybe it’s a great boat.

But it’s a boat. meaning it is meant to be sailed and lived in and perhaps on, and spending 200 hours to make it look like the vintage brochure does not accomplish this primary goal.

Also, let’s face it, even totally restored it’s worth a couple, three thousand at most, so I don’t want to get carried away, putting $10,000 worth of work into a $3,000 boat.

I plan to simply remove legacy deck fittings that I am not going to use at this stage of my sailing career — anything to do with the spinnaker, for instance, and I will close off old fastener holes that were used for instruments. This is a bay boat, not the Santa Maria. My goal is to have something that is pleasing to the eye, that is a matter of [moderate] pride and that is clean and watertight.

It’s possible that painting it is a goal too far, but the current shade of Avocado green is atrocious. My internal joke is that he bought the boat at Sears and they threw in a free refrigerator. Either that or he painted it to match the cushions. Anyway, pairing it white will restore the rather lovely lines to the vessel, give it a crisp appearance and make it look a little bigger. [Any boat you’re thinking of living on, as soon as you start thinking it, automatically shrinks]. Also, as fresh problems resurface, they will be easier to isolate and repair with a freshened canvas.

So I have been reading Don Casey on the appropriate topics, even skimming once I feel I’ve gotten the point as well as editing how much of the the purist I intend to be while keeping the expedient goal in mind.

Purged my Netflix queue of all the junk

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:22:00 -0400

and added workout videos. It’s a start.

When faced with a seemingly difficult task

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:21:14 -0400

contrast is always helpful. In my case, I’ve been kind of dreading the must-do project on the boat — fiberglass deck repair, then priming and painting it.

But I’m watching a documentary, 180 [degrees] south, where the cast had to deal with a broken mast at sea — and then repair it off Easter Island, in the water, using handcut wooden supports to get the thing back up! Let me repeat, they were using axes to make the tools necessary to make the repair.

So for me, going to West Marine and dropping $350 on supplies isn’t such a big deal. I am guessing the whole project will take 10 work days. I am also guessing there isn’t a West Marine store available on Easter Island.

Rain, rain -- just go away.

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:19:42 -0400