carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...

I've done the bulk of my driving on my trip back north. I am now in Connecticut and will be spending the next few days doing some visiting in the NY area. Almost home...

I'm not sure if I really want to head back to Boston. It looks so damn cold up there.

Yesterday at 1pm I set out from Key West on a sailboat with three guys from Toronto. We were delivering the Farr 40, Rumour, from Key West to the Derecktor Shipyard in Fort Lauderdale. We knew that the wind was not coming from a favorable direction but we were going to try our best. We headed out the main shipping channel from Key West towards the Gulfstream to take advantage of its northerly current. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing nearly 30 knots from the direction we wanted to go and we were forced to sail as close to the wind as possible heading out towards the 'stream. After a couple of hours of getting slammed into steep six to eight foot waves the other crew decided that they didn't want to risk damaging the boat. We turned back to Key West.

I spent the night in a friend's hotel room and then caught a ride north with the people who were driving my car to Fort Lauderdale.

Talk about last minute... Tomorrow I will be sailing the Farr 40, Honour, from Key West to Fort Lauderdale. A friend will be taking my car on the trip up to FTL. I expect the sail to only take 20 hours or so and we will have five people onboard.

Key West Race Week has a lot of off the water festivities along with the racing. You get a pass which allows you into the event tent (large) for free Mount Gay Rum and beer and food every evening between 6 and 8pm. Since it's so easy to get yourself well lubricated so early in the evening most of my nights have not ended up being too late. This is especially good since we have to get up at 6am each morning. I've been hanging out with a big group sailors from Chicago and we usually head over to Rum Runners right after the 8pm close of the tent. From there we have continued to the Green Parrot, the Hog's Breath, and Sloppy Joe's on numerous occasions.

Back at the tent there are displays from sail making companies, sailing electronics vendors as well as bunch of other interested parties including Mount Gay Rum. All fun stuff and there is lots of socializing and carousing which happens here. In this tent I've been introduced to lots of people and even ran into people I've known for years.

I think I'll tell you a little about the people I've been sailing with for the past week. The owner and skipper is a retired airline pilot with over 45000 hours of airtime; there was a retired airline flight attendant; a hotel/restaurant guy who is currently the Executive Chef for the Sonesta Resort on Bermuda; a former hotel/restaurant chef who is now a mortgage trader; and a computer consultant who specializes in converting Microsoft SQL databases over to open source MySQL databases. The owner and the database guy also happen to be very involved with car racing. They both race in TransAm and other assorted touring-car road-racing programs. The database guy also races in SCCA ProRally which is the same racing which I do! He hasn't raced in the past two years though which is why we've never met before. But he does know all the people I know in rally circles. This is all a crazy group of people and a crazy set of coincidences.

We've completed the week of racing here in Key West. The week ended in a blast with a day of heavy weather sailing which prompted many boats to not sail at all partly due to how cold it was out on the water. Our boat did however go racing and we finished a little more more respectably than we had been doing all week. It was rough and cold out there but we worked hard and had a good time.

I'm probably staying one more night here in Key West. I had hoped to find a job delivering someone's boat north from Key West but if I do not find that connection tonight at the closing events of the Race Week then I will be driving back north. Plans for things to do along my trip north are yet to be determined but I'll stop in the Fort Lauderdale area again and I'm still checking around to see if I can find a boat to race in the Montego Bay Race to Jamaica. That race starts in Miami on Feb 7. The race is one of the longest races in North America at 700 miles which draws a high caliber group of boats. Unfortunately that will make it difficult for me to find a boat to sail on.

Sorry for the long delay in updates when so much is going on. I've been here in Key West for nearly a week now and have been sailing every day. I was invited aboard a J-105 for the week's racing. A J-105 is about 35 feet long and sails with six people on board. I'm serving as the bow man, managing everything which happens on the front of the boat. The rest of the crew is great; there are a few coincidences with their backgrounds. One person is a computer geek who specializes is converting MSQL databases to MySQL databases; another person has been involved with SCCA Rallying for many years, but stopped a year or so ago just as I was starting. He knows all the same people I know in those circles. So there is no lack of fun out there on the water. The bad part to the situation is that the owner of the boat who steers for all of the racing is an older gentleman who has little concept at all of the proper way to drive a racing sailboat and he is very, very adamant about not accepting any words of advice or criticism from any of us. So as good as our crew work can be, we will remain at the back of the pack. Fun has been had off the water too; much of my time has been spent with a group of sailors from Chicago who party hard and have done a lot of great sailing. I've also run into some old friends who I used to sail with on the Hudson River in One Design 14s. Racing continues through Friday and the forecast is for much more wind as opposed to the very light wind we had today.

This will be my home for the next week or so. At least during the day...

The Swiss team Alinghi beat Oracle BMW in the sixth race of the best-of-five semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup.

http://www.louisvuittoncup.yahoo.com/story1719.html

The Swiss now become the Challenger and go up against Team New Zealand, who are the defenders, for the America's Cup on February 15th.

I'm here in Key West now. In just under four hours I made it from Fort Lauderdale to Key West. US 1 through the Keys was tedious as hell, but was glorious. My car ticked over the trip milage of 2050 just as I came into Key West. My car has been serving me so wonderfully. Knock on wood.

I went to the skipper's meeting for the Fort Lauderdale-Key West Race at the Lauderdale YC last night to meet the guys I had been invited to sail with. The person I had spoken with via email and on the phone was not there, but I introduced myself to Jim, the owner of the boat. I turned out that I was invited to fill the spot of someone who had not been definite about showing up for the race. The owner told me he would make some phone calls and determine if he actually had a spot for me on his boat. As the skipper's meeting got underway he told me that his boat was full with the six people his PHRF rating allowed.

I ran into the manager of the Doyle Sails FTL, who I had met the other day when I stopped by his loft, and he was still trying to find me a spot. Surprisingly, he is running the race committee for the FTL-KW Race. The suggestion I got from him and Jim was to return to the Lauderdale YC in the morning and continue to walk the docks as people were getting ready to leave. I decided that was reediculous since going to the YC without any assurance of getting on a boat would be too difficult to pull off with regards to parking my car and having all my gear (for the next two weeks) in place and ready to go. If I had a specific boat to drop my gear on and then go take care of my car it would be a different story.

So now I'm out of ideas where to go look for boats which are still transiting down to Key West for the Race Week and I'm now faced with the possibility of driving myself down to Key West. It's only about 3.5 hours so the drive isn't any big deal. This puts me in a not as great position for getting some sort of delivery job after the Race Week since I'll have to get back to Key West when I'm done. I guess that's not so different than going to Fort Lauderdale though. Oh well. So much for well laid plans.

I rarely come across any anti-semitism these days. But when I do, it comes as quite a shock. It's probable that some who is Jewish tends to not hear anti-semitic comments because those around us know that we are Jewish. In this recent occurrence it was not known that I am Jewish. It's really appalling how often these comments are heard. In fact I think that it's common here in Southern Florida. I've heard a number of people talk disparagingly about Jews, as well as many other racial and culturally negative comments I have heard down here in Florida.

The other night I won a victory however. I was able to effectively verbalize logical thoughts refuting what I was hearing. I didn't do this the easy way, which would simply be to say "Hey, I'm Jewish and take offense to that." That would simply quiet the issue. Instead I argued how the person was taking a lopsided view on a particular situation and that instead of just targeting Jews, the particular problem they were talking about was represented amongst many cultures and faiths.

I caused the person to pause. They had to stop and think about what they were saying and that maybe they were wrong. This ended the conversation. And they still don't know that I'm Jewish.

Today, after going down to the wreck of the Ancient Mariner in 70 feet of water and then another dive on the Sanctuary Reef, I am now PADI Open Water Diver certified. I was a little concerned because my left ear hurt a little this morning when I woke up this morning but it stopped hurting by the time we went in the water. I had no trouble equalizing pressure in the water. Total time at the bottom over the past two days was 120 minutes (all very closely tracked in a log book). My instructor took a roll of film and gave it to me. I'll have it developed and online as soon as possible.

Anyone wanna go diving?

You asked for pictures. Here are the first two showing a little about where I've been staying here in Fort Lauderdale. More pics will follow soon.

This is the view west towards the Intra Coastal Waterway

View to the east, towards Spain

I had a number of things I set out to accomplish today and I got to almost every item. First I set out to register for a two-day PADI scuba certification course. I brought my dive gear with me so I could offer my services for inspecting a boat bottom, or clearing something from under a boat, but I figured that I should take advantage of the opportunity (warm weather = opportunity). Mission accomplished; and all the study material is on CD-ROM!

Then I head off to locate any of the local sail lofts. If anyone has a good line on who is competing in upcoming regattas, it's the sailmakers who maintain every racer's sails. Strangely enough, I had trouble getting handle on the crazy layout of the streets in the Fort Lauderdale area. After not finding the Hood loft and the Doyle loft, I stumbled across the North Sails loft. It turns out that the Hood loft was on a ~different~ 15th Street (there are 6 or 7 different 15th Streets and Avenues in Fort Lauderdale) and the Doyle loft had closed up shop a few months ago. The North guys were awesome and gave me a number of leads for boats to get aboard.

Then I headed to Derecktor Shipyards which handles the preparation for most of the grand-prix race boats for the winter season. There I found about 30 Farr 40s all lined up as well as many other race boats in varying states of preparation. I got there late in the day, so there were only a few people around, but I was able to speak to a few folks and gave out some contact info for prospectives rides at the Key West Race Week.

By then it was the end of the day (several hours were burned looking for the sail lofts). I stopped at two more boating stores looking for new sea boots before heading back to the Sea Tow offices for dinner and to study for my scuba class. Tomorrow will be more of the same.

Today I discovered that my uncle spends his weeks here in Fort Lauderdale working as the interim Director of the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. He stays in an apartment just a few blocks from where I am here at the Sea Tow office. Tomorrow I'm stopping by his office at the museum and on Thursday we're meeting at a local raw bar/ mariner's watering hole for dinner.

For anyone who has been trying to follow, or is even slightly interested, the Louis Vuitton Cup, which determines who gets to challenge possession of the America's Cup, is now down to two teams. The Swiss Alinghi Team will start a series of races against the Oracle BMW Racing Team on 11 January. Whoever wins will race against Team New Zealand for the America's Cup.

With just over 1400 miles logged over the past five days, stops in New York, Washington DC, and Manning South Carolina, I am now in Fort Lauderdale, FL. I arrived last night at 8pm after about 10 hours of driving. There was virtually no heavy traffic at all with the exception of a 20 minute period when a medivac helicopter had to land on the highway in front of me. I did some socializing on the side of the road with other travelers and ended up finding some people to chat on the radio with for the next hour or so.

So here I am in Fort Lauderdale. I arrived late night in time to go for a quick ride on a Sea Tow Fort Lauderdale rigid-hull inflatable. I got to see the area a little. I had no idea that Fort Lauderdale was so far south on the FL coast; you can see the Miami skyline to the south of here. The southeast has been going trough a cold spell so the temperature has only been in the 70s during the day. It's even been getting down into the 40s at night and apparently people are freaking out about it. Today I start exploring the area. There are SO many boats here; this is truly a yachting community.

My trip is underway. I left Boston on Thursday the 2nd and my first stop was in Westchester. The New York Boat Show at the Javits Convention Center in NYC on Friday was nice yet unexciting. There are only a handful of sailboats at this show anymore (I used to see many more there in the 80s) and the show is smaller in general than it used to be. But it was fun spending the day poking around boats with my father and Diane and Chris.

Washington, DC was my destination for Saturday and an awesome visit was had with Maura at her new apartment. We visited the brand new International Spy Museum (MUST go back for a longer visit) and then a traditional Thai dinner at her friends place. After that it was out for some drinks before we called it a night.

I got on the road at about 11am today and my plan was to drive as far as I could before I got tired. I made it to where I am now, in Manning, South Carolina and this lovely Comfort Inn just off I-95. I drove about seven hours. I probably could have gone another two hours but I was just getting tired and I can always get a very early start tomorrow.

Mapquest says I've got nine more hours (590 miles) to Fort Lauderdale. Should be an easy haul for tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Last night saw in the New Year with a party at Dean’s loft in Charlestown. The last time I was in that same loft was about two years ago, before Dean, Dave, Rob and others lived there. They’ve made amazing changes to the place and Shores had spent nearly the entire previous week decorating the place with his excellent florescent designs, yarn work and other designs. The place looked great! The party was relaxed and awesome. We arrived in the middle of Greg’s set, and he was appeared to be getting back to some of his old trancey stylings. The night progressed well, with a guess set from Dave West who is visiting from San Francisco, Lauren, Dean and Matthew. That’s about when I left; it was about 2am and a perfect time to call it a night.

I t was all together a wholly new kind of New Years Eve for me. It seemed like many people all around were looking for a more relaxed, quieter New Years than in the past and I think that is exactly what most people got. Of course my brother was looking to have a quiet, sophisticated soirée at our house, but it ended up getting more raucous than he planned: when I got home there were people passed out all over the apartment. Sounded like a good night!