Schooner Pix

Well, Pua wants pictures - that's my long-neglected photo blog at Buzznet with a few of my favorite pix from the schooner (it says Summer 2005 but of course it was actually Summer 2004). I am not sophisticated enough to post pictures yet - I tried that Picasa thingummy and it simply locked up my home computer when it set out looking for images. I've actually had a couple of recommendations as far as blog hosts that are more fun to play with than this one but at this point I have a feeling any blog upgrades will have to wait for the first blizzard of winter!

These pictures, btw, were taken on one of the more stunning days we had last summer - there was this very dark cloud cover, but it was clearing over New Jersey, and when the sun dipped below the clouds it simply set everything aglow - we sell disposable cameras on the schooner, and there had been one that wasn't working so we'd held it aside, and when the light got so breathtaking, I ran down below & grabbed it because it was all too spectacular to miss. These were a few of the best but I still can't believe how many wonderful shots I got out of a cardboard throwaway - it was the light.

And here's a picture taken from another boat - probably the Adirondack II, which is actually the schooner I was on yesterday. They both spend the winter at the Scarano boatyard, where they were designed & built - the Adirondack II is based in Newport, the Adirondack is the one we at Pier 62 all think of as "our" boat. The II comes down first, we sail her out of Chelsea Piers for a couple of weeks while the weather warms up in Newport (these are warm-weather boats, very much about being outside - the coldest I ever remember being was on my first NY - Albany delivery trip - it was snowing by the time we got to Albany). Actually that was part of the reason for half the 3-Stooges stuff I mentioned - it's not just that we're all rusty (or new, we had 2 trainees yesterday), but that we're working on a boat that's laid out ever so slightly differently, riggingwise, than the one we're the most accustomed to (the Adirondack, I can close my eyes & envision almost everything about that boat in pretty good detail). So you grab for something that was in a certain place the last 5,000 times you sailed to the Statue of Liberty - and it's half a foot to the left from where your long-term memory is insisting that that particular whatever-it-is was. One thing that always gets me is the position of the winch for one of the 2 mainsail halyards - I always end up whacking my elbow on it the first time I grab that halyard during the time that we're sailing the II, there's just something about where it is relation to where the same winch is on the Adirondack that puts it right in the way of what my habituated-to-another-boat muscle memory thinks is going to be a clear path for a fast-moving funnybone. It's funny how much of a difference those little tiny differences make. ouch.

It's also funny that I personally have NEVER taken a picture of the schooner from anywhere except on deck - I had to do a Google image search under "Schooner Adirondack" to find a picture of the whole boat (there's a good one on the Scarano website but it only goes about halfway up the sails)!