Tuesday, July 11, 2017

A winter project now in the getting-ready stage

A relic from the collection of an ancient mariner.


Several years ago in order to add some insulation to the roof of the cabin at the East Pole, I put up some R-max sheets of about R-9 I think. They are 4x8 sheets of 2-inch thick foam covered on one side by reflective foil. Since then I have often stared at that ceiling trying to figure out what I can do to cover that foil. Part of the problem would be nailing anything through those two inches of foam in hopes of hitting a rafter. The best I came up with so far was hanging canvas, stretching it tight and painting it like I did with the deck of my lightening sailboat in the 1960s.

Life continued on under the foil and I grew older to the point when a while back I came across a posting on facebook addressed to the elderly and informing us that all the crap we have accumulated throughout our lives that we feel is so important, well, our kids just don't want it. None of it. A few years ago I offered my library of nautical publications (two whole shelves at the pole) to my son who has since embarked on a career at sea. A yawn, a noncommittal nod and nothing further said. Among the nautical accumulations are probably a thousand dollars worth of NOAA nautical charts, for the entire south coast of Alaska from Dixon Entrance south of Ketchikan all the way out to the western Aleutians, about half of them laminated.

I tried to sell them recently. You see in accepting the fact that my kids aren't going to want anything I have (I already got noncommittal nods from both of them about the fate of the cabin itself), I have started clearing out the collection. I must have burned 20 years worth of financial records already. Got a huge bag of barely used clothing to give to some charity and another bag of throwaways.

Among the things to go are those charts. I put them up for sale on Craigslist and the Alaska List and they've been there for a month and not a single call. I know people use electronics these days, but I thought somebody might want them. I asked a friend who has sailed the big ocean if he knew anybody who might want them. His suggestion was to use them for wallpaper.

Funny, a flip comment, a toss off, until, wait for it … I started thinking about that foil ceiling. Wow, now doesn't that sound cool? A whole ceiling in a cozy bush cabin papered with nautical charts. I have even thought of using colorful push pins to mark the ports I've visited and maybe even stretching yarn among them to mark the passages.

Now, I learned long ago when you have a dream or even an idea for a simple project you can't do right away it's a good idea to do something tangible with it once in a while to keep it alive. So, today I found a chunk of foil-covered foam left over from another project, pulled out a chart that duplicates another and then bought five different kinds of adhesives in small amounts to test what would be the best to hold those charts on the ceiling. I think I will add some thin wood slats to make sure they stay in place.

I won't get to do this until snow flies. For one thing I don't want to take a chance on ruining the charts hauling them over a wet, muddy trail, plus I will have a lot more time when I go out for the winter. My plan is to go as far as I can with the laminated charts and then later on fill in with paper ones if I need to. Looking at the pile of laminates, I might have enough without the paper, so if anybody's in the market I still have quite a few charts for sale. Hit me up. Then again maybe they aren't for sale.

I remember reading an article in Cruising World by a guy who hauled out his charts one day and began erasing all the marks he'd made on them during passages over the years. He didn't get very far before he realized he was erasing the chronicles of his many days under sail and he quit, instead reliving the memories from the notations and courses and positions of one voyage after another. He left the marks on his charts. I have some of those too and I look forward to reliving the adventures. Who knows, a story or two from one of those charts might end up on this very blog one day. Watch this space.

Our kids don't want our stuff
A Guide to Right-sizing and Relocating
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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

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Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

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You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

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Sports malaprops

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