The Problem With Longitude

Great article on the history of finding your longitude.

Who's Faster??

BMO Now Showing on Youtube

BMW Oracle has built their own site inside Youtube. All the latest vids are there. Click here.

Joke of the Day

An ambitious I.T. Manager finally decided to take a vacation. He booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life. ...at least for a while. A hurricane came unexpectedly. The ship went down and was lost instantly. The man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only bananas and coconuts. Used to 4-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do.
So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice, longed for his old life, and fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship. One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowing boat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him. In disbelief, he asked her: "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she said, "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he said, "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many of you are there? You were really lucky to have a rowing boat wash up with you."
"It's only me," she said, "and the rowing boat didn't wash up, nothing did."
He was confused, "Then how did you get the boat?"
"Oh, simple." replied the woman "I made the rowing boat out of raw material that I found on the island, the oars were whittled from Gum tree branches, I wove the bottom from Palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"But-- but, that's impossible," stuttered the man, "you had no tools or hardware, how did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman, "on the south side of the island there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But, enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?" Sheepishly he confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
"Well, let's row over to my place, then" she said. After a few minutes of rowing, she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked onto shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman tied up the boat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumbstruck. As they walked into the house, she said casually "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down please; would you like to have a drink?"
"No, no thank you" he said, still dazed, "can't take any more coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk. After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. "Would you like to take a shower and shave, there is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism. "This woman is amazing," he mused, "what next?"
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines --strategically positioned-- and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her. "Tell me," she began, suggestively, slithering closer to him, "we've been out here for a very long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for all these months? You know... " She stared into his eyes. He couldn't believe what he was hearing: "You mean-- ?", he replied, "I can check my e-mail from here?"

Pumpkin Regatta

In Nova Scotia thay have an annual Pumpkin Regatta. You can see the pics here.

Iceberg?

Please click the pic to see the text.

Pics of the Week

On The Beach

The Big Sail

We have a big football rivalry in the Bay Area with Cal and Stanford playing the Big Game each fall towards the end of their season. Each year they play for the Axe (trophy) and keep it for the year on proud display. The rivarly goes further this week with competition in water polo and sailing. Both have very enthusiastic sailing teams that race around the country. Their big race is against each other in a match race on the bay. The race was held this week in light conditions on a beautiful day at the venerable St. Francis Yacht Club near Crissy Field. You can read the story here.

Tri This!

Rough Water and Heavy Winds

Awesome Kite

Via Sailing Anarchy

High as a Kite

More Windsurfing >>

17 Mind Blowing Yachts

Here is an amazing collection of some of the most(insert your favorite adjective, examples: beautiful, extraordinary, ugly, ostentatious, fast, ridiculous, etc.) yachts in the world of boating.

Roz Rows - Book Review

After reading the obituary of her extraordinarily adventurous, unconventional life, Roz Savage sat back with a self-satisfied smile. But then she wrote a more truthful one of a life less exuberantly lived and decided that a drastic change in course was needed.

If you were nearing 40, unhappy with the life you thought you were supposed to be living, disenchanted with your job and in possession of a "modest-sized divorce settlement," what would you do? Savage decided she only had one choice. She had to row across the ocean in a small boat by herself.

And so it was that Savage became the only solo female among the 26 crews and 60 competitors entered in the 2005 Atlantic Rowing Race, with a goal of rowing 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa to Antigua in the Caribbean.

Assembled for the November start in a small marina, the mastless and engineless boats, Savage writes, "huddle together for mutual support like the oddball branch of a family at a wedding, shunned by their elegant, affluent cousins."

She lay wrestling for sleep in a cabin about the width of two coffins, contemplating her "near total lack of qualifications for this undertaking."

"Rowing the Atlantic" is the story of her physical and, especially, her mental journey. Savage had decided that her trip had to be solo if she had any hope of answering the question, "Who was I when I was not being someone's wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister, colleague, friend?"

Read more here.

Not So Lucky

Got Help?

Catatonic

Went sailing on someone else's boat this weekend and had a fine time. When I spoke with the captain of the 45' cat he was disappointed that there were some last minute cancellations. How many will be coming today? Only 21, he replied. OMG. Sure enough there were plenty of folks and plenty of room as she must be 20' wide as well. This couple bought the boat from a guy in the BVI's and then sailed her thru the canal and up the west coast to SF. You can read about some of their adventures in paradise on their blog.

Leonids Tonight

One of my most memorable stargazing nights was in the mountains of Maui in November of 2001 where I saw hundreds of streaks across the sky in a few hours. We had passed thru a cloud of debris that was created by the comet in 1766, according to NASA. These spectacular meteors are created by the sand size particles left over by the comet.

This year's Leonid meteor shower will peak early Tuesday, forecasters say, producing mild but pretty sparks over the United States and a more intense outburst over Asia.

"We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," said Bill Cooke, of NASA's meteoroid environment office. "Our forecast is in good accord with ... work by other astronomers."

The Leonid shower is made of bits of debris from the Tempel-Tuttle comet, which streaks through Earth's inner solar system every 33 years.

It leaves a stream of debris in its wake. Forecasters, however, say it's hard to know exactly how many of the meteors will be visible.

"We can predict when Earth will cross a debris stream with pretty good accuracy," Cooke said. "The intensity of the display is less certain, though, because we don't know how much debris is in each stream."

The first stream will cross over Earth about 4 a.m. ET. That stream should produce about two or three dozen meteors per hour over North America, NASA said.

Prepare To Be Boarded

Are you one of the lucky ones who has been inspected by the Coast Guard? Well it could happen next week. Here is an account of being boarded and what to expect. And if you read the article, you find out that, "There's an app for that". Read the article.