08.14.08
Quote
Upon showing up at a WYC meeting wearing a nice shirt, I was accused of being gainfully employed:
“Matt, you’re dressed like you’re gainfully employed!” —Brandon Whitehead
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05.23.08
Productive Weekend
Well now that it’s almost the weekend again, I have a report on my incredibly productive previous weekend.
Saturday:
I was supposed to go to a fish ID class at the Seattle Aquarium. I decided to take the bus—after standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes I realized that the bus wasn’t on the route that day thanks to the University District Street Fair. Every now and then I need to take the bus to remind myself why I never take the bus.
After missing the bus I decided I’d rather not drive downtown, fight parking, and still be late. So, I decided I would run. After getting back from a short run in Ravenna Park I decided that if I was going to have to take a shower anyway, I might as well get some more dirty work done. So I mowed the lawn, weeded the flowerbed, raked some leaves, and edged the lawn along the sidewalk.
After this I decided to go to Home Depot and pick up some stuff I needed—Saturday was scheduled to replace the neck seal on Adrian’s drysuit so I needed some router accessories.
Back from Home Depot and armed with a new router bit (router bits are expensive, I found out), I went to the Waterfront Activities Center and built a circle cutting jig for the router there, and used it to make two neck seal installation rings from a sheet of lexan (lexan is like plexiglas, but stronger).
My primary mission for the day accomplished, Adrian and I sailed the SX-18 in some pretty decent wind. It was a wild ride. No capsizes, but definitely some hull-flying moments to strike the fear of God into us.
Of course, after all this I was hungry, so I went home and made french dip sandwiches (I did not make the dip from a packet, either—onions, garlic, beef broth, oregano, and pepper make a better dip).
After I ate Matt called me and wanted some help working on his boat. I believe his exact words were “I need you to come bang on the starter with a hammer while I turn the key”. Well he didn’t have a hammer, he had a large crescent wrench, and banging on it didn’t really work (at first, anyway), but we did finally get the starter working, and the engine almost started.
After giving up on the boat Matt and I went to Adrian’s apartment and replaced the neck seal on his drysuit.
All in a days’ work…
Although I should note that this is by far the most productive day I have had in *years*.
Sunday:
I was supposed to meet Matt around 11:00, but he didn’t show so I sailed a Hobie Bravo around Union Bay for a little bit. Matt finally showed up and we spent some time screwing around the carburetor on his engine. We did some checks on the ignition system, too, since I thought the spark looked a little weak.
Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon we decided we were hungry so we ordered take-out pizza from Papa John’s. Papa John’s is by my house, and I needed to stop by there anyway to pick up a floor jack and other tools to install a trailer hitch on Adrian’s car. There’s a nice little tree covered area parallel to the north docks at the WAC, and we parked our three cars there (Mine, Matt’s, and Adrian’s) and stood around eating pizza and just generally enjoying the beautiful day.
It turns out that getting some of the bolts installed for a trailer hitch is a real pain. After half an hour of fighting with the bolts, we finally got them in. It turns out a piece of string can sometimes be more effective than telescoping magnetic retrieval tool. Who knew? 
However, Adrian’s car had recently been rear-ended, which pushed the bolts into positions they weren’t supposed to be in. After a little bit of fooling around we came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to get it on until the collision damage had been repaired.
So, failure on that project, but at least the most troublesome bolts are in position, and that’s the hardest part.
Around 4 the batteries for Matt’s boat were charged, so we went back to that project. After a fair amount of fooling around (turns out there was an ignition problem, and we’d mostly been going after fuel), we finally got it to run for about 15 minutes (this thing had been sitting for 6 months). Once the engine had warmed up we tried adjusting the idle speed and ended up stopping the engine. We couldn’t get it to start after that, and there was oil coming out of the ignition coil, so I’m guessing we cooked it.
That’s it for the weekend. If only all my days were that productive…
08.07.07
Sailing
I went sailing today. We (Andrew Cheung and I) took out the I-14. The I-14 is a fairly high performance dinghy (read: go fast). It’s a little trickier to sail than most of the other boats the yacht club has, so we capsized it a few times. At some point we capsized near the 520 bridge and someone driving by on the bridge decided to call the Seattle harbor patrol and report some poor drowning sailors.
So Andrew and I are halfway back to the Waterfront Activites Center when we see the Harbor patrol with lights on speeding in the opposite direction, where we’d been earlier. Then we start seeing aid cars and fire trucks show up at the Waterfront Activities Center. The Harbor Patrol boat finally came back up behind us and asked if we’d been “tipped over” by the bridge earlier. Anyway, as we got closer to the dock all the people on shore realized that we didn’t need rescuing and got back in their trucks and left.
So yes, one boat, two aid cars, and one firetruck. Other members we ribbing us because they’d only had a single aid car and a firetruck show up when they capsized near the bridge.
Anyway, so that was my adventure for the day. In other news, I’m still peeling from not wearing sunscreen weekend before last. Melanoma, here I come! Also, my submersible marine VHF radio appears to be truly submersible (I hear they aren’t always).
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08.14.06
Learning New Things
The yacht club is sending out a newsletter so it’s my job to pull a list of addresses from the database. Lucky me. The thing is, I can just barely get around in SQL Land…complicated queries aren’t something I have any experience with. I finally came up with this:
SELECT CONCAT_WS(';', CONCAT_WS(' ',First,Last),StreetAddress,City,State,ZipCode) FROM WYCDatabase WHERE ExpireQtr >= 30;
This gives a list of current members in the format of:
Full Name; Street Address; City; State; ZIP
I could probably do better, but I’ll take it for now. Hopefully our newsletter person can use it or I’m going to have to manipulate the data with some scripts or something. Another thing I don’t have much experience with…regular expressions make my brain hurt.
I really shouldn’t be complaining–I’ve always meant to learn this stuff sooner or later, anyway.
01.12.06
Sailing
“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky. And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.” —John Masefield
I was going to sailing this morning, but it didn’t happen–I was too lazy. I’m shooting for Friday now. I work in the morning, and then I can go straight to the water and sail from about 1:00 to sunset. I saw Andy this morning–he says he’ll be there to laugh at me. It probably will be pretty funny, I haven’t been out in a while.
I’ve been thinking lately, and the only moments I’ve been really happy over the past 4-5 years have been sailing. I bought a book of sailing quotes the other day (that’s where the above came from, you may also have heard it from Star Trek V). There really is something about sailing that can’t be explained…
When you’re sailing…it just seems like everything melts away…you’re only 20 minutes from shore, but everything there seems infinitely far away. Nothing on shore (work, school, whatever) can bother you while you’re out on the water. There’s you, the boat, the water, and God. I could swear God has a stronger presence on the water than on land. That’s probably due to the absence of distractions out there.
I think the best thing is when you go out in a storm, and it’s kind of nerve-wracking, and you’re putting all your effort into not capsizing. It’s kind of scary, but it’s great. And then the storm settles down and there’s still plenty of wind, but it’s not scary anymore, and you realize you’re still alive and the rest of the world just seems so trivial in comparison to what you’re doing right then. It’s purifying.
12.14.05
Tides
Tides came up at work, and we were trying to figure out what the tide numbers were relative to. You would think this would have been easy…but it took a lot of searching to find.
So…
Tides are given in feet above (sometimes below) chart datum. Chart datum is defined (in the United States) by Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). MLLW is “The average of the lower low water height of each tidal day observed over the National Tidal Datum Epoch” (http://www.baysail.com/tide_terms/gloss_m.html). Lower low water is the lower of the two low tides (or single low tide) in a day. The National Tidal Date Epoch is 19 years, and currently is the period from 1983-2001 (http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/datum_update.shtml). I’m mainly posting this just to remind myself since I spent so much time figuring it out.
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05.12.05
Weekend
Saturday was Opening Day of boating season here in Seattle. The Seattle yacht Club is the sponsor of the event, and they invite all the Commodores from area yacht clubs to participate in the opening/closing ceremonies. So, even though the Washington Yacht Club is hardly a real yacht club, I still got invited. Anyway, I figured it might be kind of fun so I got the proper attire together and attended. Yeah…so I now own a pair of white oxfords, which I’ll probably never wear again. Anyway…so I went to breakfast and I was like, “huh, I’m the youngest person here by at least 20 years…”. After breakfast was the commissioning ceremony where they raise the American flag and the burgees from all the attending yahct clubs. The American Flag was raised by Navy ROTC people from UW, so they were probably close to my age, but I was definitely the youngest Commodore there…it was kind of weird…I was always half-expecting someone to say to me “ok, who are you really, and why are you here?” There were a lot of VIPs at the commissioning ceremony (Seattle mayor, police chief, UW president), but I didn’t get to meet any of them.
After the SYC stuff I walked (yes, still dressed up) to the Waterfront Activities Center at UW, where we were having our own opening day party. It’s only a 15 minute walk…but I’m sure I was quite the spectacle. We had burgers and chips and cake and stuff, and I managed to eat lunch without getting anything on my white pants or shirt.
After our party I took a nap on the couch in the conference room, then headed back to SYC for the “Commodore’s Reception” and closing ceremony. So yeah…they know how to do food over there. Bacon wrapped scallops are really good. I want some. If you know how to make them, please tell me!
Sunday I had lunch at Azteca with Preston and some other folks with UCF since he was heading back to wherever it is that he comes from. Then I went home for Mother’s day and had dinner with the family…at Azteca. 
Oh yeah, there are pictures of me dressed up for opening day…I’ll update this entry with a link when I get them posted in a permanent location.
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04.25.05
Weekend
Weekend was good. I was teaching a catamaran class most of the day Saturday and Sunday…my nose and ears are sunburned, but not badly…I found my sunscreen, though, so that won’t happen anymore (right…). Anyway, the students were good, everyone was happy (catamarans always put big smiles on faces…they go fast!).
On a separate note:
If I ever get stuck in a room again with 3 girls talking about bridesmaid dresses, I swear I’ll kill myself…or cry…or something….
It has also been brought to my attention that I’m a Marshmellow Peep Bunny (of the blue variety…not pink). I’ll let y’all think about that one. That reminds me of a funny website: Peep Research.
04.20.05
Yeah…
I was going to study yesterday. Really I was. But it was sunny and windy and I had my sailing gear in my car…and of course, I’ve always maintained that academics should never be allowed to interefere with sailing.
I decided to single-hand a Hobie 16, so after half an our of patching ripped out batten pockets with sail tape I finally got on the water. The jib sheets were too big for the blocks, which made sheeting out rather difficult…I’ll have to fix that. And this time I got a trapeze harness that actually fit into the hardware on the boat–last time I grabbed a harness with a windsurfing spreader bar…and, well…let’s just say I was slightly annoyed to find out it didn’t fit after I was on the water. Always check first. The sail was great–my sail trim is pretty bad, but it was getting better by the time I was finished–if longer trap runs are any indication of better sail trim. I do have slightly sore ribs from the trapeze harness…but it was totally worth it.
Anyway…I left my gear at home to dry so I won’t have any excuse not to study today.
