As long as I'm being gloomy -

One belated Festivus grievance.

Just wanted to send out a big razzberry to the people who've sort of spoiled the 1000 Days at Sea blog as a blog. The ability to comment & read others comments is such a big part of the fun of blogging - but it gets so difficult to maintain when even a small group of detractors declares themselves judge & jury alike, condemns a blog/blogger, then proceeds to abuse the comment privilege (and it is a privilege, otherwise Blogger would not come with the on/moderated/off choices, user bans, or the "delete" feature) by inundating the comments of the condemned blog with their verdict.

Reid & Soanya can be a bit out there (like, I sort of expect NASA has already considered the dental-hygiene aspects of long-term space flight), and I do worry when I read about an incident like the freighter collision, or more lately the sail repairs - but it's their business, I can't see that they have caused any particular harm any of the most vehement detractors, and a lot of people (myself included) have enjoyed following their unlikely expedition.

If people want to trash 'em in some forum, fine. That's the god-given right of forums. Since the invention of this Interwebs series of tubes, has there been an expedition that didn't get trashed by somebody on some forum at some point? Expeditions involve big dreams. Sometimes toes get stepped on & the step-ee yowls. Sometimes people just go all Japanese-proverbial on those insufferable sticking-up nail types. Forums are a pretty normal place for that sort of stuff. Ditto spoof blogs. But for pete's sake, when you set out to drive a blogmaster nuts, and succeed to the point where you basically force one blogmaster into "retirement", then force the next one to cut off all communications for the (probably much larger) group of people who were following the voyage with less hostility by simply drowning the comments in rhetoric -

Well, that just kind of sucks.

I watched Reid try to make this happen for a long time, beginning with the year the kayak company I was once a partner in moved to Pier 63, where Reid was one of the cast of characters that made the place something special. I never got directly involved - between the kayaks and the schooner Adirondack, my working in/messing-around-in-boats time was all spoken for - but I just saw anything but an artist with an out-there dream who never stopped working to try to make it happen.

I don't know what happened outside of New York to make a few people hate the guy so much - but he wouldn't have even set sail last April without the trust & support of an awful lot of people in the New York waterfront community.

The funny thing is that, as I mentioned in a comment on a recent Proper Course post - now that he & Soanya ARE out there - and very close to a quarter of the way done, despite setbacks - is that for all the hours and hours and weeks and months of time - NONE of what ANY of us are saying here on land is gonna make any difference.

Either they break the non-stop sailing record, or they don't.

And neither a sailing forum thread or bloggers (favorable or un) are going to be the ones who authenticate their evidence.

Now I wonder if this time I've pointlessly wasted in their defense will garner any time wasted in trashing them in my comments. We'll see.

OK. Got that off my chest. Postdating this so that my other post stays on top - in the big scheme of things, this is so small beside today's news.

I'll try to cheer up tomorrow. Maybe I'll see if I can talk anybody into paddling this weekend. That usually works.