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A Dream

As a member of the board of Wood Islands and Area Development Corporation I have listened as the board wrestled with issues relating to the closing of the liquor store (it now appears it will continue as an ‘agency store’ run by the corporation, but that is another story). What has come into my imagination is the idea of making…creating…made up of whole cloth…a shipbuilding village of the 1860s. Wood Islands has a marvelous resource in the lighthouse and park with a great view of the strait, the harbor, the ferries, and the fishing shacks.The dream is to save old buildings and move them to the area to create a village and represent the shipbuilding industry as it might have been at that time. 

I hope to produce a book outlining the dream and, just today had the idea of having shipbuilding take place on the park site in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the confederation in 2014. The project would aim to eventually become another King’s Landing, Sturbridge Village, or Upper Canada Village…a living history recreation.

But the reason I am posting under sailing is that I am hoping to draw on the expertise of some group like the Lunenburg Shipbuilding Alliance to create something that could represent real shipbuilding at that time. Authenticity to the period of course rules out epoxy and fiberglass! I am hoping to find some people who could create a shipbuilding process that wold not have to be hurried, as long as there could be some sort of activity for visitors to see every day. Whether a vessel of traditional plank and timber construction could find a market is a big question, but I suppose a first vessel could remain at the harbour for tours…perhaps we could fill up a harbour with vessels! Or another idea is to have life-sized, pre-cut pieces that could be assembled and then disassembled and re-used…sort of like big building blocks. Then the process could be illustrated over and over without producing a finished vessel that had to be fitted and used.

At this point the goal I have is to see if some living-museum activity could be funded for 2014 just sitting in the empty park.

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Where has the time gone?

I was dismayed to realize I haven’t posted here for almost 3 weeks. It isn’t that nothing is happening…actually I have been finishing up two books…Leslie’s and a revision of Tom Rath’s first Donkey book (he wanted a second printing and wanted the pictures to be enlarged to bleed off the edges). He is nearly done with the second donkey book, having persuaded Greg’s brother Ian to do the illustrations–what a talented family!

Still, that doesn’t account for it. I have been teaching photography and photo-manipulation for Seniors College as well as a very basic computer introduction for the 50+ club in Montague.

Also, I need to get the wood gathered and stacked so Randall Larson can come and split it for me…a great bargain he has been providing for many years. I stack only the wood big enough to need splitting and he comes and does up a whole year’s worth in about 3 hours…his splitter and his labor…a great bargain especially for one like myself who finds that much work a bit much.

Oh, I am trying to finish the summer guest quarters over the garage since cousins (and families) may be coming next Summer and it gets too cold to have the plaster set or the paint to dry if I wait too long into the Fall.

And, of course I am chipping away at the Revisiting Scripture book.

Now I can begin to see why I haven’t done so much posting recently!

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Now in the yard!

The boat hauling went well…but of course SOMETHING had to go wrong! The trailer went down to the wharf with no trouble but, when it came back out of the water one of the tires was flat. A quick trip to Loren Panting of Panting’s garage and it was fixed with a tube…the rims are rusty enough to make a seal a problem.

The weather was awesome…dead calm, sunny, and cool enough to avoid sweating. The trip home was done at 20-30 km/h to keep the mast from bouncing up and down…jerking from potholes broke it’s support and then, dropping, the mast itself once about 5 years ago. The boat now sits safely behind the house for the Winter.

The book I am developing is to be named, “Never the same mistake twice” and I am already planning improvements for the trailer. In its present form the keel sits flat horizontal on the main trailer beam once it is out of the water, but sits on the front edge on the 10:1 sloped ramp as it floats into position. The result is that when the trailer is pulled out of the water there is a significant change in bow position as the boat shifts back.To fix that I plan to add a wedge-shaped timber under the keel so the boat will maintain the 10:1 angle relative to the trailer as it comes out of the water…it would be oriented slightly tipped forward if it were not for the fact that the very low trailer connects to a considerably higher hitch ball on the truck. So the net result should be a boat travelling almost horizontal relative to the ground with the bow attachment remaining just where it was when the boat floated onto the trailer.

Are these modifications important? not really…it is working OK, but every year a little bit more is improved. Hence the name of the book.

 

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Time to pull the boat

The water and air are getting cool/cold enough to take the joy out of sailing and, even with no hurricanes, it is time to bring it home. The challenge is to pick the right day. With the moon phase, the high tides are coming early next week and it requires a high high tide to float the boat onto the trailer without having to back it off the bottom end of the ramp…the planks run out and there is about a 2′ drop off. So tide is one thing…and, by the way Monday through Thursday have good tides at mid-day so there is plenty of time to bring the trailer down in daylight and get the tongue extension bolted on and get the mast lowered before the tide is high.

Next is the question of weather…it appears that there is a small chance of rain every day, but no particularly high winds. So the time is here to bring it out.

I want to try out some trailer modifications which cushion the bow and give a roller to allow the bow to be pulled into place by the person on the boat. Coupled with a redesign of the side supports so the sides do not crush the amas, things should be good. Boat moving is always accompanied by high stress times…what might happen even if nothing actually goes wrong! Wish me well.

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Leslie Stewart’s new book

 

Leslie’s newest book

Leslie continues to write poems and interesting short accounts about life on Prince Edward Island. His latest , he claims, empties the barrel, but in the next breath he begins an account of a new poem he wrote based on his childhood, and how the inspiration refused to take him in the direction he intended. Having been short-listed for the Island book award in poetry, this newest collection should take him to the top.

Among the classic pieces is one where folks at a Halloween party decide to recruit the Wood Islands Ferry to serve as a bridge to bypass a long delayed highway department bridge repair…Ferry Bridge. Another prose piece recounts the hilarious efforts to get a piano out of the basement and deliver it to a friend’s house…Piano Movers.

Then there’s a poem about using a bundle of insulation as a sled because it is padded and slippery…Insulated Sleigh. His newest book is longer than usual…200 pages…and a bargain at $17. If he doesn’t corner you first, give Leslie a call about getting a copy in a couple of weeks.

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Secret of GPS chart-plotter discovered

Single-handing today I had a west wind which meant go south out of the Wood Islands  Harbour if you want to come back on the same wind. All well and good except a rising tide in Northumberland Strait gives a 2-3 Kt current to the west. Running a broad reach…crosswise to the wind…meant the tide carried me to the west even though the sailboat pointed south. 

After an hour I reversed direction…I could tack through the 180 degrees because the boat speed was high enough…about 5 Kts. Now, heading back toward the harbour, I noticed that when the boat pointed toward the lighthouse the little arrow on the GPS display pointed more to the west. OF COURSE, the GPS isn’t interested in the direction of the boat…just the net direction it finds the sensor going relative to the earth. You don’t need a course in vector math to recognize that the tide was moving me west as I sailed north. So I adjusted the autopilot setting until the GPS arrow was pointed toward where I wanted to go. Even though the boat pointed quite a bit east, the net direction was north! I’ve always known you could calculate the direction to point when in a cross current, but the GPS unit makes it even easier. My discovery for the day!

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VHF radio progress

I have ‘bitten the bullet’ and ordered a new marine radio…the old one which has been in use for about 7 years seems to only work on a few channels (thankfully including channel 16) but I have never been able to test the DSC (Digital Selective Calling) emergency function to see if my GPS connection is working. The advice from a technician is that, if only some channels work it is most likely not the antenna or cable.

So I have ordered a new radio…in this case a Standard Horizon Eclipse 1150 for about $130…coming from Canada (Halifax) so it avoids the ‘agent fees’ which are highway robbery. Courtesy of US government regulations, all radios are now type D, which means that they will continue to monitor channel 16 when you are on any other channel…a distress call will interrupt whatever you are doing. Another feature is the display of the GPS coordinates...if I have correctly coupled my GPS to the radio…and the GPS is on…I will see the current coordinates on the radio display. That does wonders for my confidence about the setup.

As best I can tell, the only loss is the ‘loud hailer’ function on the previous radio which allowed me to put speakers on the mast and be able to shout at someone nearby. Not really necessary, I suppose.

So progress marches on even when you aren’t watching.

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Progress with E-books

Since I’ve decided to ‘test the waters’ with E-books before finishing the print versions of my sailing and scripture books, I have been digging into ways to get to a suitable format. Unfortunately I have not tagged everything I’ve read so I can’t give you many links, but here are some discoveries:

  1. The best E-book candidates are ones with lots of text that can re-flow when the reader chooses a different font size, orientation, or even a different device. Books with lots of pictures, tables, and diagrams are not the best candidates fro E-book formats. 
  2. Microsoft WORD is the word processor of choice in preparing documents. Smashwords takes the .doc file directly while kindle takes the HTML conversion that WORD can make. I am gratified to read that my usage of WORD based on styles is the preferred way to go…no extra lines between paragraphs, no multiple spaces or tabs for the paragraph indents, and so on. Aside from inserted italics or bolding, the text should let the style determining everything.
  3. The table of contents is important for jumping to a specific place in the book…especially for non-fiction books where the reader can click to get right to the section of interest. WORD can easily create a multi-level table of contents in the document if the section heads use heading1, heading2, and heading3 styles. The only difference from doing it for print is to click the box to omit page numbers…the HTML version then inserts links to the specific places.
  4. The cover is still uncertain…there must be one. I can easily prepare a cover with Photoshop Elements (I often do that for the print books I publish with Lightning Source) and I have tried to put it at the front of the text file. It then appears there just fine but the goto for it…and the table of contents…are grayed out. Recent reading of Building Your Book for Kindle (a free E-book) seems to suggest that the key is to add bookmarks…a previously unused WORD feature…before converting to HTML.
  5. I am fighting against having to work in HTML. There MUST be a seamless way to get from WORD to the finished files…be they MOBI or EPUB. As long as you ‘go with the flow’ in terms of what you require of your E-book, I think the technology is there.
  6. There is presently a sharp split between Amazon (Kindle) and the rest of the world…especially EPUB (Kobe, Apple, and various others). I am leaning toward Amazon at the moment despite…or because of…their market dominance being in the USA.
  7. Proofing tools are important for testing your files before releasing them to the world. Kindle has a free previewer which (I think) includes (or at least automatically makes use of their file converter, kindlegen. The previewer lets you compile your HTML output from WORD and immediately test the way your E-book will look on the various supported devices…and then repeat the process until the final result is satisfactory.
  8. Money: all the tools, including the competing Smashwords, are free to use or download. The financial terms are typically around 70% to the author with the typical price to buy a download of an E-book being $2.99. High prices are about $9.99 and low prices are $0.99…although free is used for a short time to build interest and obtain reviews.

So there you have my present state of knowledge. The process, once you have a well-formatted WORD document, is quite simple…not the fearful HTML cutting and pasting I thought might be required. Now I have to get busy and finish the books.

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Single-handing with autopilot

The last two trips out on my 26′ trimaran I have gone alone. Partly that is due to no one being available and partly due to my primary ‘crew’ resigning…she has decided she doesn’t like wind and big waves and she got seasick. It turns out that the key is an autopilot…in this case a ‘Tiller Pilot’. With it in place I can go forward or below without fear that the tiller will shift to one side or that, even holding in one place, the boat will gradually turn in the wind. Not that a machine can replace a person…especially my wife…but it frees me up to do adjustments without the panic of having to do everything in 30 seconds. There is nothing like the quiet relaxation of sailing along in moderate winds and seas with the autopilot managing the details. The only time I take over is when going diagonally in following seas running with the wind…constant change is needed to head down the waves and then head sideways in the troughs.

I’m making up a checklist of things I should do before starting out single-handed from my home port of Wood Islands. It amazes me how many things there are to do when they are listed out…no wonder I have managed to forget some.:

  1. Print out a tide schedule so I can estimate the current amount and direction… will it be significant when coming out at Wood Islands? Falling current is east by up to 3 knots while rising is west up to the same speed. Look up the marine forecast online…not that that is particularly trustworthy…to see if there are any warnings…winds are usually less that forecast or later in arriving…perhaps due to the length of Northumberland Strait. If a trip to a destination is planned then the wind direction matters.
  2. Drive to an overlook and check how high the waves are…should I abort the trip?
  3. Arriving at the boat, unlock the companionway boards and put them in a locker. Make sure the water level in the bilge is not above the upper threshold for the pump (be sure it is working). Glance around to see if anything is obviously wrong.
  4. Read the wind gauge and evaluate the shape of the various nearby flags for wind indications. Based on those bits of data as well as the marine forecast, choose which sails and reefs to set.
  5. Tie the boat close in to the wharf ladder and remove the normal bow, stern, and spring lines.
  6. Lift the fenders (old tires) and leave them on the wharf.
  7. Lower the outboard into the water and start it to be sure it is functional…and then stop it.
  8. Turn on the instruments…GPS, marine radio, and fish-finder.
  9. Retrieve the autopilot from its storage locker below and connect it to its power socket…be sure to turn on its power.
  10. Put on your life-jacket.
  11. Check the ferry schedule so you won’t be going out when it is going through the narrow outer passage…even though there is room to pass safely, it apparently worries (or ‘pisses off’) the captains.
  12. Remove the jib cover from the chosen front sail and remove the cover and unstrap the mainsail. Attach the sheets to the leech (?…the back lower corner) of the jib.
  13. Raise the jib and tie off its halyard (lifting rope); set the sheets so the jib is on the correct (downwind) side for the wind direction going out of the harbor. 
  14. Raise the mainsail…then unhook the boom from its hold-up wire. Tie off the mainsail halyard and keep that sail sheeted at the center…not off to either side yet.
  15. Loosen the rope tying the boat to the wharf ladder and start the outboard. As the boat begins to move, cast off and keep the tiller almost straight ahead so you don’t rub the wharf.
  16. Keep a lookout for unexpected traffic and motor out to open water.
  17. Choose a direction, set the autopilot on auto, adjust the sheets for the wind direction, stop the motor, and begin the joy of sailing!
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Photo sharpening tools

I just got an ad for a 50% discount on Photozoom Pro and wondered if it would help the horribly poor photos I have been given for a book I’m preparing. The remaining $99 seemed a bit steep for something I would use infrequently, but I wanted to investigate. Search engines being what they are, I checked it out and found a ‘shareware’ version for free…bad news, the features are all there except a watermark in the output which doesn’t fit my idea of shareware.

Anyway, I tried it and found that it is especially good at removing jpeg ‘artifacts’…the strange pixels around the edge of a transition when the compression is high and the resolution is low. In addition, it seemed to be able to expand a few pixels at low resolution into the diagonal edge of an object they were representing. I suppose the spline function is the key, although that goes beyond the math I can remember from 40 years ago.

There was another tool (I forget the name) based on ‘fractals’…something that never made it into my ancient math curriculum. It was about $200, I believe and didn’t seem to work as well. But while I was poking around the sale on Photozoom went off and I’m too cheap to spend $200 for that. 

What I already had in Photoshop Elements which was really useful for salvaging Leslie Stewart’s horribly low resolution photos that he wants in his next book was their ‘Smart Blur‘…a sort of relative to their ‘Unsharp Mask‘ tool. I had never tried it since it lurks under Filters…Blur…Smart Blur way at the bottom of the list. By playing with the settings I was able to get rid of the JPEG artifacts without totally destroying the picture. So my time spent wandering was not totally wasted.