Kaimusailing

I returned to the Gary Dierking website and followed one of the links there to another blog, by a fellow in Papua New Guinea who built a 24 ft proa in the jungle, had it airlifted by helicopter to the coast, and then launched it, for the first time, and sailed it 90 miles down the coast. He had never sailed before, and until he launched the boat, it had never sailed before. He could communicate with the locals using pidgin, and had to sail without any charts, without a GPS (it failed), and with helpers who regularly fell overboard while he tried to navigate over the breaking seas on the coral reefs. Of course he is a missionary and had divine help. He did have the requisite plague of mosquitoes and sand fleas.
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Mr. Dierking sells simple boat designs, and they sell all over the world. The basic design is as simple as a sailboat can be. Stoneage. Yet, if it is so simple, how can he sell so many designs, why do those who want to build this simplest of all sailboat designs have to send off to Gary Dierking for plans of how to build? The answer is that if we make something very simple, it constrains the design to some sort of elemental balance, it has no gadgets attached to correct anything, it must work as it is. It's harder to make something simple that works well. The KISS principle implies “this is good enough, stop here in the design”. These simple designs can only succeed if they are intrinsically correct. There is no “fudge factor”. Mr. Dierking has done all the evolutionary change, and his updated plans are in demand.
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In our own case, the work on the catamaran, and the work on the proa model, are on hold. We wait and we watch. The equinox has come and gone. Someone posted “Hurray for Spring” on facebook. Two days later the cold spell got even worse. Now it has snowed, the most wintry day, and this is spring, and April and Easter are next weekend. April Fool's. The sad fact is we can't complain. Up north in Boston and New England, they've been hammered with feet of snow. We get rain, they get snow. Somehow this will spur the economy. The New Englanders have to buy snowblowers and shovels, repair roofs that have collapsed, and go to the Burlington Coat factory. When the cold weather supplies have been purchased, the divine help will throw the climate switch and it will be time to stock up on air conditioners and mosquito repellent.
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And so we continue, ruing the decision not to sail south, and looking for more things to read on the Kindle. One time consuming task was to look over the mere 460,000 ebooks purchased from ebay, and other sources. I thought I was well read, or at least knew something about most authors, but most of the authors drew a blank, so I began looking them up on the internet. It turns out the most popular author, ever, is Danelle Steele. Others included the crime and mystery authors, a scad of fantasy authors, and a slew of english philosophers from oxford. It looks like the mainstream of English Literature is englishmen who study english literature, write a few unsuccessful books or pamphlets, and then perfect their writing skills in a “First Time Novel”, which somehow gets published, usually by a radical printer, and after that, they rest on their laurels. None of this helps us cope with the weather outside, because I fear it is much worse in Great Britain.
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The best author on that huge list was Mickey Spillane, who wanted to buy a house after getting out of the service after WWII. He decided to write a book, and 19 days later was finished, but it only sold 6.5 million copies. Guess he could buy that house. He once flew over a pretty area in South Carolina and bought some property there. He continued to praise how beautiful it was there. After it became built up and congested, he said he was sorry he ever told anyone about it.
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I also, gasp, downloaded a chess program and tried to beat the computer playing chess. I got beaten so badly. I reverted to the lowest level and won easily. Then I had to work my way up to a level where I felt comfortable. It was still “youngsters” level. How depressing. I remember playing some of the first chess programs many years ago. It took a while to find a line of attack that would win, and then you would win every time. I found a way to win this time and didn't want to change the level up. The whole reason I tried this was to exercise my mind so I wouldn't go senile. I was worried that if I didn't go up another level, it would prove I was going senile. I went up another level. The computer won.
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I had problems also making pasta. Hey, it's winter out there, might as well make some comfort food. Hah, what could be simpler, a cup of flour, an egg, a tablespoon of virgin olive oil, a teaspoon of water... Wait, it's a teaspoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of water! Yes, the mental processes are unreliable. I could use a breadmaker to knead the dough. Not! It just doesn't work. I could use the food processor to knead the dough. Maybe in the south of France or Italy, but if I tried it in Italy, I'd be shot. It turned out the best way was in a bowl. Get the hands all doughy. Work the dough in a pasta machine or on a table with a rolling pin. What a mess. Can't just open a box of authentic artisan pasta from the store, that wouldn't be right. It certainly turns out better if they do it. I ended up numbly dragging my feet into a celebrated Italian restaurant and I found out later, they used dried store bought pasta. It was good, though.
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I guess the worst thing is that this week, it wasn't just me, other people were looking up at the sky, talking about the peculiar weather, what happened to spring, what's going on with winter. It was a pervasive calamity that affected the whole area. Golf courses, marina docks, even the local elementary school. Even if we fly away to the Caribbean, it's still here when we come back. It's like that movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”. That title is very disturbing. I met a couple of local boatbuilders who were also complaining about the weather. The name of the boat they are restoring is called “Witchcraft” and can be found online by googling “witchcraft sailboat”. One of the fellows lives on the inlet here. I plan to visit their yacht when the weather warms up a bit.
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The picture is of the yacht “Witchcraft”.
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