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Hits defy logic

I watch the statistics of the four web/blog sites I maintain on a sporadic basis…I don’t have much to sell and it doesn’t really matter except that one likes to think there are some folks  ‘out there’ who occasionally visit without trying to send a Viagra link. Google Analytics is running and can tell me more than I could ever want to know, but lurking on the bottom of each page is a plugin that simply counts visits…called hits…which was all I had on my first site a decade ago. Back then the count went up by a few hundred a month, so I thought I would see what is happening now. All the sites except C and the 8051 began about mid-March, so the counter may have been running for 5 1/2 months. The totals are as follows:

  1. Wood Islands Prints   1062 hits = 193 hits/month
  2. Wood Islands Sailing  1239 hits = 225 hits/month
  3. Revisiting Scripture       694 hits = 126 hits/month
  4. C and the 8051            2191 hits = 398 hits/month

So the old site…transformed into a blog…continues to get a high number of hits even though I only rarely post new blogs. I like to believe the folks going there are actually buying the book, and my data shows a few 10s of books do sell each month. The sailing blog probably has the large number of hits due to several links on Duckworks…that forum has a high number of followers who follow the links Chuck suggests. But the last two blogs have me confused…disappointed. Wood Islands Prints is the title for my publishing ‘business’ and has random bits about web blogs, marketing, publishing, photography, and painting. It is a sort of home base for everything else. But the blog I have been really hoping to see prosper is the last one…Revisiting Scripture. It seems to have the fewest hits despite efforts to cross-link with similar sites and relatively frequent postings. I knew I would have to find a market for the book by that name, but the blog doesn’t seem to be doing it. Perhaps it shows how a niche market is much more difficult to address.

[Incidentally, the hit numbers include my almost-daily visits to remove spam and check for comments, so the hits/month ought to be reduced by about 30!]

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Dinghy buoyancy

The following comment in a thread about rocker (front-to-back-curvature) in a boat on Duckworks forum reminded me of a flaw in my second dinghy:

The distribution of buoyancy along the length of the boat is also important. (Technically the Prismatic Coefficent or Cp). The more the buoyancy is towards the ends of the boat the more efficient the hull is at high speed. Conversely the more diamond shaped the better at low speeds.
So two people in a boat will sink it deeper and usually that means the Cp increases, so it becomes more efficient. Richard Woods of Woods Designs

 

top view showing ‘seat’

I can speak from personal experience about buoyancy along the length…several years ago I ‘designed’ and built a very small (6′) dinghy with a lovely deep V at the bow twisting to a relatively flat stern, but I made this boat quite narrow towards the bow…like an arrow, perhaps…it is so tender in front it takes a complete re-positioning of the first person if a second person climbs aboard and woe to the first one boarding if they try to board from the bow! Perhaps that is an unavoidable result of being so short, but I wish I had made it nearly equal-width throughout its length.

When the weight is properly arranged it rows beautifully with the cut-off bow going nicely through the waves. One time three of my younger (idiot?) friends rowed (with only a couple inches of free-board) over a mile in it to rescue my errant sailboat that had lifted its anchor and was heading out of the harbor. It is also quite rugged and one year floated around the harbor for a week after I forgot it when pulling the sailboat…it ended up buried on a sand spit with 6″ of sand in the bottom and another foot of water on top of that!

Still, I have always wished I had the time, money, and energy to make a stab at designing another very-short boat that would be less tender at the bow.

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8x10s for $1

I just discovered that Blacks is doing a deal on 8 x 10 prints through August 19th for $1.00. Since the files can be transmitted digitally and the chain will return the prints by Canada Post (for about $8 in shipping and postage charges), it is a very attractive deal. When you consider that they usually charge $4.99 (and Walmart charges $3.00), it can be a good time for someone who uses the prints in products to stock up. In my case I used to print my photos on an ink-jet printer, but the declining quality of my printer head output, the high cost of paper and ink, and the water-sensitivity of the prints makes the photo-reprint option attractive. The finished prints easily arrive well within two weeks…perhaps one week if things go well.

Keeping an eye on print prices is fascinating. Having surveyed the market on the internet, the big problem is finding sources (in the US) that will ship to Canada…and even then the shipping costs are absurd. Blacks and Walmart are the best sources so far. In the interesting-but-not-at-this-moment category was the previous Blacks offer of 1000 (!) 4 x 6 prints for $99…about $0.10 per print. I couldn’t get together such an order in the short time allotted. I wonder what next week’s deal will be!

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Jiffy reefing

Yesterday I finally rigged the reefing for my mainsail. Reefing is lowering the sail part way so it doesn’t present so much area to the wind…especially useful in strong storms where the sail needs to be ‘depowered’ to avoid going too fast…or more likely, blowing over. Jiffy reefing is simply a way to make this lowering easier to do…even from the safety of the cockpit, since one usually wishes the sails were reefed just at the time when the wind is so strong you fear getting washed off the deck if you go forward!

Jiffy reefing is a clever arrangement of light lines (ropes) and blocks (pulleys for you landlubbers) which make it easier to bring the mainsail down to just the right place to tie off the sail at the preset place(s). From the drawing you can see that it requires 3 pulleys and a rope that is fed through the reef cringles (large grommeted holes at the ends of the reef line). When the halyard…the rope attached to the top of the sail that holds it up…is let loose a bit, the sail starts to loosen and drop down. By pulling on the jiffy reefing line the two cringles are pulled down to the boom, holding the sail at the desired height. Then the halyard is tightened so the exposed area of the sail is tight again and the reef lines strung through the holes between the cringles can…if the winds and your courage allow…be tied around the bottom of the boom so the center of the sail stays tight against the boom and the excess sail doesn’t flop around. If it has become dangerously windy, you can leave those lines untied. Interestingly enough, the name for the ‘square knot’ in nautical terms is the ‘reef knot’ because it is the best knot to use for tying off those ropes.

While jiffy reefing makes the process considerably easier…especially when done by a single person…it is always best to anticipate the need to reduce sail before the conditions make it too difficult. I usually gauge the wind before starting out and do reefing and choosing a smaller jib while the boat is safely in the harbor, needing no one at the helm.

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Karen Gallant Painting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just finished converting a picture of amateur painter Karen’s amazing work into a post card to be printed by Vista Print (she is not to be confused with another more well-known artist with the same last name). The original is 30 x 40 inches, done in acrylic. The challenge is to mate the proportions of the painting to those of the post card, but that is all done now and the cards should be back in about 2 weeks.

The marvel to me is that she spent about 18 months doing it…finding both pictures of each president and researching details of their lives…and she has no US roots. She describes it as a journey without a specific goal in sight at the start. She certainly puts me, coming from the USA, to shame both for my ignorance of much US history as well as a vast ignorance of Canadian history!

Karen has prints of her painting for sale and presumably will have large postcards as well soon. She can be contacted directly at karen_anne_gallant@hotmail.com

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Fixed those rungs

mast with rungs and outer ropes

On July 22 I blogged about the problem of some broken-off steps of my mast ladder. Along the theme of my coming book, ‘Never the Same Mistake Twice‘, I decided to fix things to be safer and stronger. I’m not sure if the breaks reflected moisture getting inside the epoxy coating or if it is a fundamental problem of using cherry saplings from my woods (turned in a lathe) as the rungs. After the first rung broke, I was more cautious climbing up but was stopped by the breakage of both sides of a rung half-way up!

modified mast with cable and epoxy

My fix was to replace the outer ropes (which were deteriorating after several years of exposure) with 1/8″ galvanized stranded (aircraft) cable and use epoxy to repair the 3 broken pieces. Under each rung I fastened a wire rope ‘nut’ to provide support for the outer tips of the rungs. Since I couldn’t get these clamps really tight against the bottoms of the rungs, I used thickened epoxy to coat and fill the space…hopefully it will also keep moisture from getting in the wood where the holes drilled down through the rung ends. I had to have the epoxy to fix the broken rungs anyway.

Doing these modifications on the water was both easier and more difficult…easy to reach the (now horizontal) mast from the dinghy and more difficult to stay in place standing up in a small boat. My back was quite tired at the end. But the goal is to have a mast that is fully safe again. Then it will be on to new mistakes to avoid.

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Developing a style

Lupines in field

As I finish up the (impressionistic or abstract) paintings…18 of them…it becomes apparent that some things are more fun than others and that some things work better than others. One painting that wasn’t working well after two tries (shown at the bottom of this post) is about to be ‘re-purposed’ as a totally different picture. While that is not uncommon in the art world, when working with thick acrylic paint layers it is more of a challenge than repainting a thinly-covered canvas. I will have to use doubly-thick layers to cover up the original.

I just ‘discovered’ Church Bizarre, in Murray Harbour (PEI) last evening…a new shop that

Near Iona

is eager for locally produced items. They appreciated the local photos that make up my postcards and magnets and also took a few of my new paintings on consignment. The amusing thing is that the owner politely indicated that tastes differ and mine are certainly different from anything else they are carrying!

 The most enjoyable part of this exercise is discovering how much I enjoy painting wet-into-wet with acrylics...I have to work fairly fast where I want colors to blend, but an entire painting can be done in the time it takes for the paint to develop a skin…2 or 3 hours maximum. That leaves no time for pondering and fiddling with details. The more I paint, the more I find that I need only develop an impression in my mind of what an area looks like and can gradually move away from a concern for details being just right.

Incidentally, the last picture below is the one that is NOT working and should be covered over soon.

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Instant publisher

Yesterday I got some samples of books done by Instant Publisher, and it looks like a highly viable option for small run book printing (as opposed to Print on Demand). While my usual printer, Lightning Source, will do as few as a single book at a time and has automatic connection to Amazon ordering, Instant Publisher offers far more options relative to paper types and bindings. I suppose the difference is that LS has to be fully automated so a job flow of inter-mixed, single-book orders can run without special setup…they only allow a limited set of book sizes, paper choices, and bindings. IP, on the other hand seems to have a business model patterned after cookbooks and yearbooks…Aunt Minnie’s Cherished Recipes isn’t going to sell thousands, but it requires kitchen-friendly printing…glossy pages or even card-stock…color…spiral, lay-flat binding…all things that can be done for a run of a few hundred.

IP is also more flexible in terms of accepting manuscripts produced by word-processing programs…I get the idea they have often cleaned up files before printing…they have gone so far as to produce custom software to do that interface, and it must be working OK. 

Finally they do not have a setup fee, although there are fees for providing ISBNs and other extra charges for special sizes or other special handling. But the bottom line to me is that they provide a more flexible set of options for special requirements.

So, do you have a special book just waiting to be published?

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Compleat Cruiser

I am almost done reading  The Compleat Cruiser: The Art, Practice and Enjoyment of Boating by L. Francis Herreshoff (first printed in 1956). It has been one of the most enjoyable books on short-distance (non-blue-water) cruising I have encountered because it is told as a story. The reader casually is introduced to Mr. Goddard and his young-teen daughter, Miss Prim (for Primrose) who are taking short sailing trips around  the North Shore above Boston, MA.  While there are details slipped in about boat designs (the author’s skill and fame), the account paints a picture of the enjoyment of the journey. The moments of concern due to occasional squalls or shallow water fade as we are go along experiencing the cooking of meals and sitting on the boat in the quiet of the evening or engaging in informal ‘races’ with fellow sailors who happen to be going the same direction. The evenings often entail sitting around with these other boaters discussing everything under the sun…with a focus on sailing. More than any other book I’ve read, this one brings out the fun of simple short-run cruising.

I have often read books promoting the benefits of simplicity in cruising…no motor…no special electronics…no water heater or pressure…etc. Herreshoff makes some of those same arguments relative to initial cost of boats, maintenance costs, insurance costs, and so on. If he were still living and still making the same arguments, however, I would take him to task over a few items which were either prohibitively costly or totally unavailable back then.

  1. I think every boat above 20′ ought to have a depth sounder/fish finder. These can be had for about $100 and make running aground much less likely…especially if you are single-handing and couldn’t use a line.
  2. Navigation without a GPS in this day is foolish…especially if you might get out of sight of land. I recently changed my hand unit (~$200) for a low-end chart-plotter which cost about $450. Half of its value is the inclusion of charts which otherwise cost about $20 each.
  3. LED running lights and cabin lights are far superior to the old incandescent ones and the oil lamps in the cabin (I ;know some argue the atmosphere is better inside with oil). Add a solar charger (say 15 watts) and a deep-cycle battery and you have all the   power for your lights unless you run all night every night.

To be sure, power boaters define ‘necessities’ differently, but I consider the above items to be essential and affordable for those with small cruising sailboats. 

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Slowly is good

Yesterday I spent an hour or two hooking up sails and running the lines (‘halyards’ and ‘sheets’). It was far different than the times when I tried to launch the boat and rig the mast and sails all in one day. In particular, the stress level is far less when I don’t set a time limit on myself.

In the ‘God is good’ category, the first rung of the mast steps broke as I stood on it two days ago. That heads-up allowed me to be much more careful when trying to get the sail-hoisting ropes around the top pulleys. I used a strap to clip myself in and tested each rung on the way up. Half-way up a weak rung broke, first on one side and then the other. As evidence of my relaxed state…could it be wisdom?…I carefully backed down instead of trying to get past the 4′ gap that resulted–particularly because I didn’t have a solid confidence in the next rung. Since then I have devised a temporary rope step which should safely get me past the missing rungs and I am going to replace the outer nylon rope that was only to keep feet from slipping off the rungs with a non-stretching 1/8″ aircraft cable having rope clips under each rung so the outer end of each will have a solid support…the same approach I used on the previous mast. I think I can restore the broken pieces by drilling a hole and setting a short length of threaded rod as a pin and using a liberal dose of epoxy. See how time to think has helped…I think a word is ‘meditate’ or ‘masticate’ as a cow would chew its cud. I’ve heard that word in reference to Scripture passages, but the principle works with other problems as well.

How nice to be puttering on the boat in the harbor. On a Saturday evening the area was practically deserted except over at the ferry dock. No one is fishing then and no one fails to get on the ferry for lack of space, so there aren’t groups of folks wandering around with 75 minutes to use up. The sun was shining and the winds were light…5 mph on my new weather station! All in all, a moment to treasure.