Lunchtime Late Links

And as long as I'm catching up with things I've been meaning to do (SO glad to have gotten the annual Ways To Get On The Water post up!), might as well get up a couple of links I've been meaning to share for a while. Blogging's going to get a bit spotty here for a while - I've got good plans for tonight and both days this weekend, my sailing vacation in Estonia is coming up unbelievably fast, I just accidentally lost myself the packing & prep day I was going to take the day that I leave by scheduling a meeting that needs to happen at 2:00 in the afternoon that day - I'm a key participant & although I thought about rescheduling for about 5 seconds when I realized what I'd done, I decided to just stick with it, my flight's not until late and it's a very tricky group of people to collect, so it's all good, except that now I'm feeling very, very pressed for time.

Have enough time here on lunch to share a few links I've been wanting to share, though - month-end close is over & it's quiet now, desk-cleaning time, but first:

Firstup - the link that made me want to do a link post - Capri's writeup on Saturday's adventure, now up on the CIBBOWS blog, Salty Tales. A really excellent writeup.

Next - blogroll updates that I'll probably do when I'm back, but would like to share now...make new friends, but keep the old, we used to sing in Girl Scouts -

New friends:

1. Gianmaria and Claire are a young couple who live here in NY who've decided that the summer of 2012 is the summer they learn to sail. A lot of my kayaker friends and I actually got to meet them when they showed up at the Blue Drinks last month - I didn't actually get to talk to them much but they seemed very nice! They introduce themselves on their first post on The Sun Over the Yardarm. I'll be following (and envying...they're in the BVI's now!!!).

2. The Knitting Sailor...ok, actually I don't think I've said so much as "Howzit?" on her comments so "friend" is a stretch, but she's absolutely lovely. The Knitting Sailor - a Tillerman find. (ps - Tillerman, I haven't got time for essaying an essay right now but I think I will have a photographic entry for your Photography For Bloggers 101 group writing project. Nearly took it the other day but there's an errand I have to run first. Part of the prep for the Estonian trip, woohoo...)

Old friends: Way back when when I started this blog, I went looking for kayak blogs.

I didn't find many.

I found a lot of paddling blogs, but they were a different kind of paddling, if you get my drift (heh heh). After a little more hunting, though, I did find 2 - Kayak Quixotica (then known as Kayak Wisconsin), by Derrick Mayoleth, and On Kayaks, by the dashing Ignacio Wenley Palacios. They were some of the first blogs on my blogroll - but when Google Chrome delivered the coup de grace to the Blogrolling service by blocking users from looking at any blogs using the service, I had to rebuild the entire blogroll. I've always had a feeling that I'd never quite collected the entire original gang, but I was quite shocked recently to discover that I'd left these 2 off! They'll be back on soon. Sorry, gentlemen!

Finishing off with a couple of good books -

1. Kevin Stiegelmaier's Paddling Long Island and New York City. Some Sebago friends and I took Kevin out for a trip in Jamaica Bay as part of his research for this book and it published this Spring. I've mentioned him a few times in the last couple of months, but I don't think I ever quite reviewed it after he sent me a signed copy - I will probably try to when I get back but in the meantime, it looks like a really good resource for any paddler in the Long Island area - his writeups are very informative, I actually learned a couple of interesting facts about Jamaica Bay from his writeup of our trip (like I always knew J-bay wasn't named after Jamaica, but I could never remember what Native American word it WAS named after - it's "jameco", beaver), and he gives great little nutshell ratings with length, skill levels, time of the year, ease of rescue, and even scenicness! Good stuff.

2. One of the fun things about blogging is that every now and then somebody just sends you a book. I would like to thank Sarah Russo at Sarah Russo Publicity for sending me the new Pegasus Press edition of Justin Scott's The Shipkiller. Holy crap. Giant tankers that people down without even noticing. Giant waves that treat your 36-foot keelboat like a sugar-crazed toddler treats a bathtub toy. Sails that shred themselves in one wayward gust of wind. losing your mind sitting in the doldrums...all the things that have always made me find the idea of open ocean cruising kind of scary and keep me happy with my near shore and in shore boating existence are in this tale of one man's quest for revenge on a soulless behemoth (nope, not Moby Dick, although the comparison came up in pretty much every review that popped up when I googled for the publisher). Sea snakes and evil spies, too, just for good measure. Yep. Excellent read, I couldn't put it down.

Although maybe I should've waited until AFTER my Estonian adventure to read such a scary sailing book. Brrrr.

PS - I link to Amazon but it's always lovely to support your local independent bookseller!

PPS - Feeling terrible, haven't read my friend Joe Glickman's Fearless yet! Thought I'd be able to get a copy from Randy, that fell through, thought I'd be able to get a copy from him at the Open House but was out leading trips all afternoon, I don't think I even saw him - soon, though, I swear! cheeee!