carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...

This was posted as a comment an an earlier post:

Hello to all of the Larinda crew.

That is meant for all of you that have supported the ship "then and now". The dream must live on. Larinda is not salvagable, at least not by us. The cost is too out of sight. The repair is extensive. She went out for bids today.

Larry and I will try to find some other character ship that he can truly make his own so the sail training for young people can continue.

Thank you all for your support.

Marlene Mahan

I had gotten an early start from Pier 1 forgetting that the nine hundred twenty-two foot ship was "bow in" and it would take the tugs an extra fifteen minutes to push the ship around so it was facing out of the harbor. So I was taking it easy, heading out slowly and taking time to look around as I crossed President Roads towards Deer Island. A string of six or seven flashing dots sloped up over the Atlantic as planes made their final approach to Logan. How many of these planes were arriving from thousands of miles away? How many had crossed oceans to get here? It almost looked as if the planes were flying right through Orion's Belt.

I'm not sure what made me look up to the north. Something had caught my eye. When I focused on what was attracting my attention I was able to make out wide bands of different colored light in the sky. At first I thought I was seeing lights shining up from the airport or that the bright orange sodium lights at the Deer Island sewage plant were throwing a strange pattern on the humid air. Then it dawned on me that I was looking at the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, and that this was only the second time in my life that I had ever seen them. But why should I be seeing them here in Boston? The puzzle started coming together. Earlier that day someone had mentioned some sort of solar event. "It's bad. We're all gonna' be gone in a few days." joked the guy at the fuel dock. I must have dismissed his comment as being too ridiculous to even contemplate. But as I watched this strange, vague light show I remembered that solar radiation contributes to the Aurora and that was what I was seeing. It all made sense.

The container ship had finished its turn and was picking up speed as it headed out President Roads. I bumped up the throttles bringing the pilot boat alongside the ship to follow it out to the sea buoy where I would take the Pilot off the ship. I wondered, for what far away places was this ship headed.

nights out should always be as such. good.

good friends. good people. fun. it should always be this way.

i can go to sleep with a smile on myh face.

my ears may ring but the smile never goes away,,,,,,....

Today is Personal Finance - Filing and Organization Day. In my world at least. I let things stack up for a while in my To Do mailbox and the File mailbox. Things in the File box have already been taken care of and just need to make it to the Vertical file drawers. Of course I try to slim down at every step of the process to make as much as possible end up in the Round File (my trash is not actually round).

I tried to start this chore yesterday but ran into snag. I needed a new file for my new job. But when I went to label the new folder with my P-Touch label-maker I discovered that I was out of tape. This was impossible to me and derailed the entire project. It wasn't until a day later that I realized what I was allowing to happen and continued with the project, sans label.

Is it strange that I have the Bill of Sale from my past four cars?

Is it odd that I have a dedicated hanging file labeled Speeding Tickets & Accidents?

Is it weird that I have report cards from 2nd grade?

Damn, I need to throw some stuff away.

Here's a cool idea. This is a website where you can submit listings for potholes you've seen around Boston. The site attempts to track how quickly the potholes get fixed. You can search by neighborhood and such.

www.potholeweb.com

From this Boston.com article about street repairs for the Democratic National Convention next summer.

Thanks to Allison's comment on my previous post about the sinking of the Schooner Larinda, here is an update to the story. She has been lifted from the bottom of Halifax harbor by crane. Plans are to move her to a boatyard in Lunenburg for repairs.

www.larinda.com

This is too awesome. Through a number of donations and several planets lining up correctly, the PACT 95 America's Cup boat "Young America" from the 1995 Cup has been permanently put on display at the Storm King Art Center.

More details from Scuttlebutt.

Robert Miller and the 23 crew members on board his 140 foot super yacht, Mari Cha IV, re-wrote sailing history when they sailed past Lizard Point, off the south west coast of England, at 11:32:20 BST Thursday to shatter one of the world's most historic and prestigious sailing records - the West to East Transatlantic speed record.

Mari Cha IV set sail from Ambrose Lighthouse, New York, at 17:39:41 BST on Thursday October 2, and completed their 2,925 mile crossing in 6 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes and 39 seconds,* beating the existing record by over two days and giving them their place in the record books as the first monohull ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean in under seven days. Their average speed for the passage was 19.5 knots!

The previous record, held by Switzerland's Bernard Stamm aboard Armor-Lux, stood at 8 days, 20 hours, 55 minutes and 35 seconds and was set in February 2001.

The Mari Cha team had already smashed one record during the transatlantic crossing when they beat the 24 hour distance record on Tuesday, sailing 525.5 nautical miles in a 24 hour period.* They beat the previous record of 484 nautical miles set by John Kostecki's Illbruck in April 2002, becoming the first monohull to ever sail over 500 miles in a day.

Next year, the Mari Cha IV team plans to launch an attempt to become the first monohull ever to sail around the world in under 80 days. The current record held by Michel Desjoyeaux's PRB is 93 days, 3 hours, 57 minutes and 32 seconds. - www.mari-cha4.com

From Scuttlebutt

My initial estimate of working from 4am (actually left the house closer to 3am) to noon or so was a bit off the mark. I just got home at 2am having worked about 23 hours. I got to sleep for a few hours during the day but it was hard to force myself to get to sleep. Being able to fall asleep on command is going to be one of the challenges of this job.

Time for bed. Then off to Providence tomorrow afternoon for Yom Kippur services and my grandmother's awesome break fast dinner. Back to work again early Tuesday morning.

Lot's of stuff going on over here Where Ethan is...

I totally forgot to mention a significant event which occurred during my vacation the other week. We stopped to look at the row of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions which were at the local dealer. Sean related a story to one of the salesmen about some poor treatment at another dealer. We were told that a directive had come down from Mitsu HQ that no one was allowed to test drive an Evo without first having paid a deposit to actually purchase the car but upon some cajoling he agreed to take us for a ride with him at the wheel. He tore out of the lot and had the beast going 100mph within about a 1/4 mile (five people in the car). Then the unexpected happened; he pulled into a parking lot and told me to drive, which I did. The car was awesome. It had a very tight suspension, somewhat twitchy but extremely responsive steering, and gobs and gobs of power. While the torque didn't feel quite like what I got from my old Saab, it was flat across all RPMs and just pulled and pulled. And virtually NO turbo lag! All in all, a very awesome car. Not plush or luxurious by any means, but full of raw power and driving excitement.

I had my last day at Sea Tow which was pretty anti-climatic. I was on the late shift so as everyone else left for the day a few goodbyes where mumbled, some thank yous and that was it. I was left alone for the evening and then closed up the shop. I'll be back, but still, it was the end of a significant period of work.

The very next day I started at the Boston Pilots. I've worked a few days so far and am getting into the swing of learning the ropes and getting acquainted with how they do things. I'll be working a pretty random schedule for the next few weeks as they try to give me the maximum amount of time underway to get familiar with the boats and the procedures so that they can let me loose on my own. An example of the schedule: today I'm going in at 2pm and only working for a few hours, maybe until 6pm. They gave me tomorrow off because there aren't many ship movements in the harbor. Then they want me to come in at 4am on Sunday. Sunday will be a busy day with something like twelve or thirteen ship movements. I'll probably leave the dock at 4am and not return until around noon.

Work continues on the new deck which I guess I've never mentioned here. My brother and our father built a new deck on our house while I was on vacation. They finished about 75% of the work in the time my dad had here in Boston and my brother and I have been working on the rest as time allows. The other day we poured the final concrete footing for the spiral stairs. Today we mounted the center pole, lowered all of the steps onto the pole and bolted the top landing in place. Left on the to-do list is: finish the stairs (probably another week of work), build and install all railings (another week), and install the rest of the decking. Then we barbecue!