..."to the vagrant gypsy's life"... WHERED THE SUMMER GO?

From his posts, I would venture a guess that spendi has absolutely no experience on the waters in any thing other than a ferryboat.
You are quite correct in that statement msolga. The weather service gives marine forecasts for conditions that appear now as well as to predict what they feel will appear later and where. Weve often sat in shore in calm conditions onle to have met the fringes of gales when just a few miles out to sea.

There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but you rarely ever see an old bold pilot.

Commercial fishermen who venture beyond the weather services warnings and then suffer disaster often are denied coverage for just being "stupid".

Anyway, spendi merely likes to enter his maritime opinions from his own self induced fog bank.

Sex on a boat is especially great. There are several unique movements on a boat when its sea anchored for an evening and the quickening sideways roll adds an extra dimension of movement which enhances the interest of the participants.

You can get Shaker pisessewa at either Sabbathday Lake or at Hancock Village (Hancock is gonna be having its Fall fest in a few weeks). The Shakers tins of herb products are all kind of collectible since they only tin up a few hundred of the herbs at Sabbathday where a few rel live Shakers still live.(Although it is getting down to the wire since theyve had few new converts and the ones who became Shakers in the 1970's were more old Hippies who wanted to live another communal life and couldnt hack the severe Shaker discipline too much, since "no sex" was a strict rule of the religion)

TRUE, while there are several hundred different varieties, they all seem to hover around those three basic flavors. We have several different varietals of spearmints that are called individually, apple mint, orange mint, and chocolate mint, but they all are basically spearmint with flavoring induced by genetics. The mint family is composed of all plants with a SQUARE STEM. the stem in cross section is a compound shape that is actually square, so its easy to spot them in the wild.

However, isnt stinging nettle a member of the mint family? We all know about the wisdom of wearing shorts in the woods where there occurs groves of stinging nettle. Ive known people who had to go to the hospital after severe allergic reactions to this plant.
Any douche bag who would wear shorts while hiking say, the Appalachian trail, is probably the same kind of douche bag that would take his 30 ft wellcraft out to sea when there were small craft advisories.

I seem to remember, probably because it is quite recent, that you took me to task over 3 posts in a row, like the three little maids in the nursery rhyme.

And I had an obvious reason. I was answering three posts separately without using them as an excuse to have a gush. You have no excuse. You said I was trying to draw attention to myself. That saved you having to reply to my responses to the three posts which a sensible person would interpret as you being unable to.

And now-after all this time, I have discovered the Back to Post function and can reply to all your three self-aggrandising efforts. If only to make the time more easy passing.

I have been on four ferry boats. Two across the English Channel. One from Dover to Calais and one back to Dover. The same one to and from the Isle of Islay. I watched the sea most of the time. Stared at it. Thought about it. It was horrible. Swish bloody swish. That's it. For ever right round the globe some people say is round.

I went out in an inflatable about two miles to see the seals. Two of them in a very supine position gazed at us with an expression of the profoundest disinterest. I've heard it said that they look that way before being clubbed. Science will never know what things look like to a seal.



Well- I'll go to the bottom of our stairs. Goldarn it does? Whoodathowtit? Could it do anything else?

And I thought the whole point was a display of boldness and intrepidity and now you're telling us you sat in the marina waiting for conditions in which boldness and intepidity are superfluous virtues. You go so far as to liken boldness to stupidity as you would if you don't wish to try a bold venture yourself. So much so that the opening of the stop-cock in the sewage "goodbye" is considered an event worth relating to A2Kers who are all agog to hear about the whale which came up above the gunwales with its mouth agape.

Can people there be denied coverage for being stupid. That's a principle fit for any legal theoretician to conjure with.

I never had sex on a boat though, if you don't count fumbles on the boating lake when you get in behind the weeping willows on a sultry afternoon with the girl you have pegged for a life of domestic bliss. I doubt I could. The absurdity would make me laugh too much. On the ocean I mean. Parked in the marina would be okay I suppose. A four-poster is more my idea. In the west wing with the sun going down and a gentle breeze bringing the fragrances of the park in through the balcony windows and a distant freeway singing its asphalt harmonies.

What happens if the lady rolls off the bunk and skins her knees and elbows on the painted deckplates during the quickening sideways rolls?

Anyway--thanks for the tip. I'll know never to go near any stinging nettles in my shorts from now on. I have read that some men are stimulated with stinging nettles without having any trousers on at all. But some men is like some scientists eh?

"No sex" was the rule and they're now dying out?

I wonder why that could be?

Basil falls into the square stem mint family as well.

yep, and monarda too (bee balm).

Family name is Lamiaceae and, according to the Wik..., the square stem isnt a necessity because the family is primarily identified by it flower which is two lipped like a snapdragon. Some other plants in the family include TEAK trees and COLEUS (I just recalled that coleus are square stemmed).

Many of the the culinary herbs like basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano,lovage, are also in the mint family.

WHOODA KNOWN??

How long does it take to go from Dover to Calais, by that ferry ?

three beers and a glass of Balvenie , neat.

The one back was from Zebrugge and took longer than the other so I had a lot longer to study the swishing. It must look the same everywhere. And to all the sailors of the past.

I threw a cigarette end into it and watched it bob away into a watery and endless wasteland. A cold stiff wind blowing. Ferries are crude machines.

First Class on Eurotunnel is the thing.

Ahhh a prose style reminiscent of the great Bulwer Lytton.

perhaps but I was thinking William Kotzwinkle, especially his "Elephant bangs train"

When I used to take the Staten Island Ferry,
I used to throw nickels, pennies n dimes into the water.

The trip took about 20 minutes.

I used to enjoy taking the Star Ferry from Hong Kong to Kowloon.
If I remember, that took 16 minutes; its been a while, tho.





David

Did they put you in quarantine when you got back?

No; I told them that I look like a pig ALL the time.

Speaking of the vagrant gypsy's life, farmerman.

A Vagabond Song
By Bliss Carman
1861-1929

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood --
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Well, weve set upon a winters project in the small barn. Im going to build a sailing curragh after plans from the Kilkee version. Ive sat in one on the downrig day at Chestrtown last year and ,having days free (between my big geo project), I find the need to make something for the water. Ive only started by cleaning up the place where Ill be doing the framing and am today , setting up a kerosene heater for what will, no doubt be a one or more year project of learning steam bending and framing and setting the "Skin" in kevlar (no animals will be harmed in the making of this boat. I will have a marine architect help me in in designing a narrow transom to take a small ob motor. (Im hoping that a 3 or 5 hp will work on a swing away so that it can mostly act as a gaff rigged sailer).

Ill keep the notes and Ive been told to keep my woods at a constant humidity (all I have to do is find out how I will do that)
Thats the reason that most amateur boatbuilders make their boats in their basements and have to knock out walls to free the project.

I chose a curragh style because its beamy enough to ail in heavier water without too much care and bottom weight. It is traditionally a boat that is oar driven by Irish Fishermen and is quite well adapted to poundings on rocky shores . The sail configuration is my idea and was preliminarily approved by my marine architect friend Junior from Charlestown Maryland. Junior helped us immensely when we restored and basically redesigne IAPETUS from a really beat up old lobster boat into a nice wood topped glass hulled cruiser. It took us nearly 15 years to rebuild Iapetus and so this baby oughta not be too daunting.

I will be making orders for reclaimed mahogany boards and old caisson redwood from Townsend Washington.

Ill find a picture of the curragh for yas

<Sitting in. Fascinated in Ontario>

Well, heres a photo from the Celtic Society of Louisiana, where they build the old fashioned canvas covered curraghs and sail them and row them in the swamps.