END OF YEAR 2017 LETTER

It is Boxing Day and we are still on the lam in Palm Springs. Palm Springs to this old Cleveland boy is like SoCal on steroids. It is this worthless expanse of sand and scrub trees that some swindler seventy five, or so, years ago sold some poor hapless soul that this is just the place to grow golf courses. The land was cheap and there was an inexhaustible supply of it. We came out here last year to have a family Christmas at my second wife's home on, guess what, a golf course. The concept was great but the reality was straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. 

This year we have decided to utilise the hard learned lesson of staying at an ex wife's home and securing lodgings at a timeshare. This is more like it. We are in our own little world for a few days. We have several bedrooms in the event some friend(s) need a place to crash. There is a gas grill on a patio and several pools complete with Jacuzzis within walking distance. There is a Von's a block away as well as several movie theaters. There are two HD TVs in the place with DVD players so things are really self-contained. 

We had a brunch at the club house at the golf club and the watched the frenzy of grandchildren opening brightly wrapped Christmas presents. A little nap was in order after the orgy and then it was off to a very nice restaurant at the hotel that the kids were staying at. A little wine, OK a lot of wine, and a little prime rib, OK a lot of prime rib and the day was a complete success.

OK, I seem to have skipped the January through November part. In reality, 2017 was a fairly undramatic year compared to previous years. We didn't take any cruises through the Panama Canal or motoring trips across the country. 

Much of our time was devoted to the SLBYC, IE Seal Beach Yacht Club. Jamie was asked to become the club's treasurer. It was billed as a "two to four hour a week undertaking". That was a load of horse manure, She is at that stinking club all day, every day. I was nominated to the club's board of directors and when asked what the first thing I would do is, I replied "fire Jamie. I didn't get elected and feel that I have dodged a very large bullet.
I on the other hand have been named Food Manager for the club. I will, among other things, be selecting the menu for friday night dinners at the club. I also will either cook or help cook sometimes.
We have made many new friends at the club. We sailed to Cat Harbor on a Catalina 42.
 Somehow some people said that I could drive and navigate a boat off shore. So we ended up going to Avalon on a beautiful 48 foot Californian and a few weeks later went on it to Marina Del Rey. We also went to Two Harbors, IE The Isthmus, on a 42 Hunter so life hasn't been too bad.
In March, we motored up to The Cliff House at Mussel Shoals. I ended coming down with the Flu so I don't remember too much as I was delirious with a fever. We continued on up to The Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo and stayed the first night in the flintstone room which is literally made out of real stone boulders. I didn't sleep all night. In my feverish condition all I could think of was if we had an earthquake I would end up squashed like a piece of roadkill. The next day Jamie moved us to a much safer room. Staying at the Madonna had been one of my bucket list items but I don't remember much. Three weeks when I was better, we drove up to Cambria and spent two nights there. While in the Paso Robles/Templeton AVA we visited a lot of wineries and bought A LOT of wine. Clever marketers these wineries, get the visitor shitfaced and they will buy a lot.

BEER CAN CHICKEN

I was requested by upper management today to BBQ a beer can chicken.

I thought that I have written about the wondrous beer can chicken before but I can't seem to find it in my highly sophisticated files. So here goes.

The technique goes thusly.   

First steal a chicken. Whoops wrong recipe. That's how the recipe for authentic Hungarian Chicken Poprikash starts out. You clean out said chicken by pretending that you are a poultry proctologist and reach way up the south end of the bird and pull out anything that you're not planning on eating. Such as paper bags full of offal and the like. If there happens to be a neck stuffed in the other end, get rid of it.

Next, dry the bird with a paper towel inside and out. Salt and pepper the inside cavity.

Then get a can of beer out of the beer locker and drink half of the can of beer. Good God, don't use light beer or kumquat flavored ale. Use real beer because when the bird is cooking steam from the can of beer will wisp up and help the inside get done in a deat heat with the exterior. Just as wine in a fancy shmancy French casserole. You would use a wine that you would actually drink.

Enough about the virtues of using the proper beer for cooking.

Now light off the grill, gas or charcoal and let it get warmed up to temp.

Use the beer can as a suppository just as you would with a know-it-all. Once the bird bird is properly situated with it's can be sure it is balanced properly so it doesn't topple while cooking. Then give the bird a massage with unsalted butter and sprinkle the herbs of your choice over the outside along with salt and pepper.

Pop the little guy on the grill and give him his sauna. 

Cook to your liking which should be about 170 Deg. F. in the breast.
Stand by for the onslaught of compliments. 
You can use one of those stainless steel chingausos  but then it now longer is a BEER CAN chicken.

Who am I? What am I doing here?

Where as I am now seventy five years old, I thought that it is about time for a new assesment.

There are certain givens, such as I am a father and a grandfather. I am involved with the nicest and best woman I have ever met and I am a transplanted Clevelander living in SoCal. 

But what about the less obvious.

I have always been the the kid, the upstart. The guy who dives into things and makes them right without expecting as much as a thank you. 

I am a sailor in every sense of the word. I spent eight plus years in the US Navy. I had everything go my way while in the Navy. I went to Guidedmissileman A School at Virginia Beach as an E3 a Seaman First Class. We weren't allowed to take the E4 Third Class Petty Officer while in A School. Our class graduated on a Friday. The semiannual E4 exam was held on the following Monday. The next day we flew to Pomona, CA for Terrier BT3 C School. One week before we graduated from C School, I was informed that I had passed the E4 exam and would be promoted on May first. 

When I reported for duty at my first duty station at NAD Crane Indiana on May third, I was a pettyofficer. One year later, I was a second class PO. 

I reported to Missile Technician B School as a second class PO. Nine months later, I reported for duty on my first ship, an aircraft carrier where I took the First Class exam. Six months later I was transferred to new construction at Todd Shipyard in Seattle where I promptly sewed on my First Class crow. At the time I was the youngest First Class PO in the entire US Navy at the ripe age of twenty one. Three years later I turned down Chief Petty Officer. I didn't want to be a twenty four year old CPO. Chiefs lived in the chief's quarters, AKA The Goat Locker, and I didn't want to live with these lifers. I had already decided the I wanted out of  the Navy and wanted to go to college.

In 1968, I got out. We shot a bird, missile, the day before at the pacific Missile Range and pulled into the Ammunition Depot at Seal Beach to rearm. Being I was a Plank Owner, I had them pipe me over the side and became a civilian.

Life was good as a civilian.  I had marketable skills and had no problem finding employment. I had good jobs, finished college and  traveled the world on an expense account. I became a real estate agent selling apartment buildings in Lon Beach and made lots of money. I had Norton Commandos, Porches, Mercedes and Cadillacs. I sold industrial instrumentation and had sailboats which I lived aboard. I ended up starting a company that built plastics forming machinery and made quite a good name for myself.

The bad news is in 2013, I had a stroke. T the time, I had a schooner which I lived aboard for thirty five years.  I could no longer handle the five sails that we ran around on.

I now find myself as a codger. Seventy five is an old man by anyone's criteria. I now live on a forty foot trawler power boat and take a nap most every day.

I'm not complaining. I have a wonderful relationship with a girl who is my intellectual double. I drive a BMW 325ci convertible I have two grandchildren and I do the occasional machine upgrade with no heavy lifting. We have taken cruises to Alaska and through the Panama Canal.

I guess that I really don't have anything to bitch about but I am a bit uncomfortable being 75.

Like Micky Mantle said "If I knew that I was going to live this long, I probably would have taken better of myself."   

SAILING 101

I don't want to come across as a know-it-all but I have been sailing for over fifty five years and have picked up a few things along the way.

I first started out at my first Navy duty station. I joined the Navy to see the world and after attending various guided missile schools I was finally dispatched to Southern Indiana, NAD Crane. Crane is 110 sq. miles of high explosives quietly tucked  away in Indiana farm country. Most all of the sailors at Crane hated the place. We were a small bunch of young, horny sailors and there just wasn't much to do there. The was Lake Greenwood on the base and there was a 17 foot Rebel sailboat for recreational use. We would take the boat out in the afternoons without lessons or experience. For better or worse, we were self-taught. Two years later, while stationed for new construction at Todd Shipyard in Seattle I used to rent a 22 footer and sail it in Lake Washington. 

Later on while home ported in Long Beach I used to rent Sabots at Naples. When we went aground at Midway Island I checked out an 18 footer from special services and circumnavigated Midway Island.

After getting out of the Navy in 1972 I bought a brand new Venture 222, a 22 foot trailerable sloop with a Mercury outboard motor. I named her Tumwater.

We sailed that little craft to Catalina Island many times and towed the boat all over SoCal, Arizona and  Nevada and sailed in the many lakes, mostly manmade. In 1975 I graduated up to a used Columbia 28 that I lived aboard at Port Royal marina in Redondo Beach. Due to my lack of imagination, I named her Tumwater 2.

Tumwater 2 had an inboard engine, wheel steering, a real galley and a private stateroom for the owner. With two quarter berths, a convertible dining table and the stateroom, she would sleep six people.

By now I viewed myself as an old sailing hand. It was easy peasy. Hoist the mainsail and motor into the wind. When clear of very hard objects such as rocks and oil tankers hoist the jib and kill the engine.

In 1977 we bought a brand new 41 foot Taiwan built Garden ketch which we christened Bianco, which means white in Italian.

 Bianco was beyond big, she was huge. She had a diesel engine and a separate shower in the head. She even had a crew's quarters up in the forecastle with a separate  hatch to gain access.

Being a Ketch, she also had a second, mizzen, mast. You could actually trim up on a point of sail, lock the wheel and use the mizzen sail as a sort  of autopilot. She would track for hours if trimmed up properly.

Back in 1974, when sailing back from Catalina on Tumwater, a vision of beauty  sailed by us. She was an old wooden schooner and her name was Diosa Del Mar, Goddess Of The Sea. 

Since that very day, I was smitten by schooners. In 1979, we sold Bianco for very personal reasons and I started shopping for a schooner. All we could find was old, pre 1920, wooden boats. I had neither the time or inclination to make the care and feeding of a geriatric wooden boat my life's work. We finally found a boat that fit all of our parameters.  She was a Downeaster 38 Schooner.

This is Merrymaid under "normal" sail.  Normal sail consisted of five sails. From fore to aft: Yankee Jib, Fore Staysail, Main Stailsail, above it is the Fisherman and lastly is the Mainsail.

To say that I loved this boat would be an extreme understatement. I owned her for thirty five years. Lived aboard her for thirty two of those years and went through three of my four wives with her. 

Not only is she pretty, note above right, but a joy to sail. Keeping all of those sails trimmed up. 

This is the old girl showing off her Gollywobbler, the big Red White and Blue sail. 

Next time I'll talk about how to sail a schooner in Sailing 102.

 

 

 

 

TAKE THE BULLET TRAIN

Yesterday, over a “few” beers I told my friend Dennis about one of my stays in Japan.

In the mid seventies, I was working at Kawasaki Steel in Kobe Japan. I was installing a Zenzamer rolling mill that would be making transformer steel. The mill itself was built by Waterbury Ferrel in Waterbury Connecticut. A zenzamer mill is a complicated machine that rolls extremely precise cold roll steel. I worked for LFE Corp who built the control system. It was a non-contact guage that used a radioactive Americium isotope gamma source that could penetrate steel. The gauge also automatically controlled the gauge, thickness, of the steel in real time.

Working in Japan was a real adventure. I stayed at the Hotel Newport, what would be called a boutique hotel nowadays. It was a real Japanese hotel, not at all like a Holiday Inn, with tatami mats and in the evening after dinner your little Japanese bed was laid out on the floor. I met a sweet young girl in Kobe and we would take the Bullet Train to Kyoto which is one of the top places in the world to visit. We attended a Moody Blues concert one Friday at the civic auditorium. We were running late when we arrived and little honey san said that we wouldn't be let in. I scoffed and replied that this is a rock concert, everybody's late. She countered that this is Japan and things are different here. Sure enough, when we arrived, we were barred at the door. The good news was when the warmup act was through, they let us late comers in for the big show. Needless to say, it was a far cry from SoCal concerts. 

But I digress.

I and the guy from Waterbury worked all day in the extremely clean mill. Japanese factories are much different than most other plants. Not only are they clean but if a Japanese foreman tells a worker to pick up a hose, or something, the worker doesn’t say not my job, he bows and then runs over to the hose, or whatever and coils it and hangs it up.

My Waterbury cohort was actually a pilot in the Luftwaffe in WWII. It was in the waning days of the war and he was only sixteen years old. He received about a weeks worth of flight training and then he got a pat on the ass and stuck in a Messerschmidt. He only flew three or four missions and then the war was over. He was a happy guy just to be still alive.

When we were done at the job, I called our trading company in Tokyo and they rightfully  advised me to buy my ticket and call the office back so they could have someone pick me up at the train station because if you get lost at the Tokyo train station, you might as well be lost in the desert, the station is like an iceberg. Ninety percent of it is below the surface.  They needed the train and seat number, the Shinkangsen, bullet train, is as all things Japanese, very prompt. Not one minute late or one minute early.  If they know the seat number I'll be sitting in, they will know the car number. On the platform, there are colored squares with numbers painted in them. At the precise time the train is due to arrive, the door to your car number will be aligned with the square and my driver will be waiting with his sign.

OK, I bought my ticket and I walked over to the telephones. All of a sudden, it hit me. I had no idea how to make a long distance phone call in Japan. In Japan on side of a business card is in English horizontally. On the reverse side it is in Japanese charictors and is vertical. I was standing by the phones with a handful of yen in my left paw and the trading company's vertically held card in my right hand. A well dressed Japanese gentleman approaches me and as he takes the card out of my hand asks in unaccented English "What's the matter, don't you know how to make a long distance phone call in Japan." He reads the English side and makes my call for me chatting in Japanese on the phone. When he is done, I am flabbergasted  and ask him where he is from. He replies Chicago. He tells me how he owns a Japanese restaurant in Chicago and the price of the disposable  wooden chopsticks is skyrocketing being the wood has to be imported into Japan. He tells me that he asked fellow Asian Restaurant owners that if he bought a chopstick machine and set it up in Chicago, would they buy chopsticks from him at greatly reduced prices. Of course they all said yes. 
He then flew to Japan and visited relatives and had a great time. Finally, he had to justify his trip and went to some large plant that made chopstick machines. He told me that they were beautiful machines but they all made bamboo chopsticks. He inquired as to where he could get a wooden chopstick machine and they replied, Chicago.  
By now, if you don't know the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story, I'll tell you. A fairy tale starts out once upon a time. The sea story starts out this is no shit.
And this is no shit.

Long Beach

   We arrived in Long Beach on Halloween 1064. The moment I stepped off of the ship I though I like this place. I want to stay here. We had bought a new 1964 Turbocharged Corvair Monza Spyder Convertible in Seattle. It was a fantastic car. To this day, I still love that car. In December, I went out and bought a Christmas tree. I hauled it to the car and thought, oh shit, the trunk is in the front of the car. I then thought here I am in California in the middle of December and it's 72 degrees outside. So I dropped the top and stuck the tree in the back seat. I love California.

   One of the first things we did after arriving in Long Beach was to take on a load of 39 missiles which took most of the day. When loaded, some sandcrab handed me an IBM punch card and told me to sign here. On the card was the description Missile Unit of issue Each quantity of 39 and on the upper right hand corner it said 5.7M. Nothing else. Now by now I was familiar with these cards but normally it would show the cost $3.95, or whatever. I asked the sand crab what the hell the M stood for and he said "Million". Now this was 1964 and that was a hell of a lot of money and I was only 21 years old at the time but what the hell, I just made the largest purchase of my  life. Now that we had some toys to play with, we went playing. I was the only guy in the Missile Division that had mad a missile shot so they wanted me upstairs in the missile control radar room to man the console. Everything went along just fine until the end of the shot. The warheads on the missiles were the continuous rod type. The most effective "hit" is actually a four of five foot pass by.  This gives the rod bundle a bit of time to start forming its buzz saw shape. The missile passed by the target but the drone came to a full stop from 375 knots to zero all at once and just hoovered there. I grabbed a pair of binoculars and went out on what we called "the patio" a small weather  deck just outside the radar room. The director was not moving at all and still tracking the target. I sighted up to where the director was pointing and said oh. The Missile Officer was standing next to me and asked what I meant by oh. I passed him the binocs and he looked up and said oh. A chief was standing next to him and grabbed the binocs looked up and said oh and so it went down the line. The jet propelled drones that they use as  targets aren't cheap so they pop a parachute for recovery. The bird apparently made skin to skin contact with the deone and knocked the chute loose and with no weight on it, it just floated around way up in the air.
   After that we spent time off of San Clemente Island learning the intricacies of the 5"/54 naval gun and it's associated fire control system.
   We spent quite a bit of time operating out of San Diego learning  

   

Becoming a Tincan Sailor

   When I first saw my new ship she was laying alongside a pier at Todd Shipyard.

   Her hull was haze gray, aluminum and the superstructure was green zinc chromate. There were no barrels in the 5" guns and the was a thousand electrical cables and hoses laying everywhere. She looked a mess much like a woman two hours before going out for the evening. I was part of the precom, precommissioning, crew. The precom guys job was to learn every square inch of the ship from the bilges to the missile radar room. It was very interesting being most sailors rarely get beyond the spaces where they work, eat and sleep. I arrived in Seattle in February of  1964 and until I got out in 1968, every time that ship moved,  I was aboard her. We went out on several yard trials with the yard birds, shipyard personell, manning the engines and steering etc. This was a bit unnerving for the few sailors actually aboard as we all felt that only real Navy people could man a war ship. The future captain was particularly nervous as was his nature. He was only a speedbump up on the bridge. I suppose that he could  see his beautiful new ship meeting every maritime disaster known in the Western World. But, in fact, the yardbirds did a reasonably good job and we made it back in one piece every time. The USS Stoddard DDG-22  was  being built next door at the Puget Sound Bridge and Drydock Corp. DDG-22 was not only behind DDG-24. But had to be towed in most every  time she went on her yard trials much to our collective amusement.  The last trial was the most fun. We blasted through the Strait of Juan De Fuca at full flank speed for several hours. The actual speed was classified information and maybe still is, but it was way faster than I though was possible for a  4,500 ton ship. I was told by a yardbird that they had a monitor on the shafts for the RPM. It supposedly could tell at what point the screw would twist itself off of the shaft. Then a throttle stop was brazed on as the wartime emergency stop. Then they would back off a few turns and attach a plastic stop that could be torn off in an emergency. 

   In August, the ship was towed, cold iron, to the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. There were only five, or so, people on board for this evolution. This is before the Navy had crowes on the blue work jackets. I was all by my lonesome up on the forward line and we had no power for the winch. I was sweating like hell and some brand new Ensign was screaming at me to heave around or some such bullshit. I, at that time, was the youngest E-6 in the Navy and a young looking 21 year old at that. As I ripped off my jacket and flung it to the deck I and turned to him and hollered back that "You could give me a fucking hand". He was about to practice ass chewing but then noticed all of my stripes and sheepishly said "What can I do to help?" We finally got the mother tied up and I lit up a smoke and he bummed one off of me. We stayed chummy after that.

    On 28 August we commissioned the old girl and she became officially United States Ship Waddell DDG-24. DD for destroyer and the G denotes guided missile armed. Eighty per cent of the crew was straight out of NTC, boot camp and had never seen a real ship. Now that I was an "old salt" we screwed with the boots a lot which is part of naval tradition. I was assigned to helm/leehelm train the helmsmen how to steer a ship. I had steered a ship, a small ship but a warship, on Lake Erie when I  was in the reserves. Me and this other first class a GMG, Gunners Mate Guns as opposed to a GMM Gunners Mate Missile would come up to the bridge eating porkchops and the boots would end up barfing into a shitcan, a trash can. It was good clean fun but like most really good things, it didn't last long enough. The boys turned into men way too fast. 

Next Long Beach California.

DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS

In November of 63, I finally went aboard a Navy warship. An aircraft carrier USS Constellation CVA-64. It was docked at North Island in Coronado CA across the bay from San Diego.
  By now, I was a Missile Technician second class with a hashmark on my uniform, for every four years in the US Canoe Club you added a hashmark. I don't know the official name for them, probably service stripes, but everyone called them hashmarks. When I came on board, everyone assumed I had considerable sea time, which I didn't. No one asked me what my prior duty stations were and I never volunteered. A school, C school, shore duty and B school weren't real duty stations. I kept my big mouth closed and listened a lot and soon could talk a pretty good game as a real sailor. The adventure was finally beginning.

    I was very glad that I was now actually a crewmember of a ship but I didn't like life aboard a birdfarm. There are several navys. There is the submarine Navy, the battleship/cruiser navy, the gator Navy who transport the Marine jarheads to the beach head, the CBs, the aviation Navy and then the real navy, destroyers.   

    There are actually two vastly different Navys on a carrier, or bird farm. There are the black shoe guys who run the engines and make the electricity the engineers, or snipes. The bosun's mates, gunner's mates, signalmen, radarmen and Missile Technicians and all the others who make the ship run, supply the food and supplies are also black shoes.

    Then there are the aviation personell for which the birdfarm exists. In all fairness, it is their ship. Why the name brownshoe for aviation you may ask? I'm glad that you did. Pilots and other aviation officers wear green uniforms with brown shoes, hence the name. The captain of an aircraft carrier, by law, is a Naval Aviator. If you are an aviator you can't get promoted to Admiral if you hadn't had command of a birdfarm and you can't have command of a birdfarm unless you had command of a deep draft vessel. 

    Deep draft vessels are mostly supply ships that carry food and other stores, oilers that carry the fuel that the ships and aircraft need to have and ammunition ships that keep us supplied with munitions and bombs. Any time we went along side of a supply it was a good bet that the skipper of the auxiliary was a naval aviator. Naval Aviators are brave, smart men but quite frankly, they don't know shit about commanding a ship. Especially an aircraft carrier.
   On the destroyer one day over in WestPac we were coming along side an ammo ship. Mount 52, our after five inch gun was pointing up at an odd angle with a fire hose  stock in the muzzle splaying water all over the place. The skippers usually chat to one another via bullhorns and the brown shoe ammo ship captain asked what was up with the after gun mount. Our skipper hollered back "hot gun". The brown shoe usually has a black shoe commander right at his elbow. We could see him ask the black shoe what the hell a hot gun was. The other officer explained that a hot gun is when a projectile gets stuck in the barrel due to overheating. The gun gets a hose stuck down in it's barrel  to cool it down. When cooled down, a gunners mate sticks a long brass rod down the barrel and drives the projectile back down and out through the breach. A task I would be reluctant to do. The ammo ship did an emergency breakaway and got as much water between us as fast as he could.
   But I digress.
   Life on the carrier is like being on a cruise ship. You can eat twenty one hours a day. There is a one hour break between meals and they are back in business. There was closed circuit TV and you could go up on the oh eleven deck, IE 11 stories up and watch flight ops. It is an amazing sight to see but pretty soon you realize that you don't want to know what is going on "on the roof". Also like a cruise ship, it gets crowded. With an airgroup aboard, there is over 6500 sailors aboard. I was volunteered to be the Messdeck Master at Arms. Essentially the cop who keeps the peace and enforces good behavior and manners on the messdeck. Twelve hours on and twelve hours off. It was long hours but being I was bunked with the commissarymen, the real cooks, I and we ate real well.    
I spent about six months on the bird farm with a MidPac cruise to Hawaii. Did a few missile shots when one day I was summoned to the ships personell office. I had to have one of my strikers guide me to the office being the ship was so large. We passed a big compartment which looked like a Walmart. I asked the kid who was an older hand on the ship and he replied that it was the ships store. I said what the hell was that place back by where we slept sold cigarettes and lighters and watches and he replied that it was like a  quickey mart. This huge place was the ship's store. I was told at the personell office that I was going to new construction in Seattle and I was needed in three days.
   I packed my seabag and left the ship, went to where my wife was working and gave her the news. I didn't know how long I'd be there or where the ship was going to be home ported so we had our furniture and other belongings stored in San Diego the lucky wife went to her parents in Cleveland and I was Seattle bound.  

NAD CRANE, INDIANA AND MT B SCHOOL

After seven months of Guidedmissileman A School and three months of Terrier BT-3 C School, I was finally ready to get to my first duty station. As you complete a Navy school, you are given a "dream sheet". Most every sailor knows what a dream sheet is and why they are called such. You put on the dream sheet  three choices of assignment. They are called dream sheets because only in a dream will you actually get your pick. There's the doctrine of "The need of the service comes first". Out of our class of six, two guys got orders to NAND Seal Beach. Arguably the finest shore billet in the whole Navy. North Orange County and not too far from LA. Two others got new construction on the East Coast. George and me got NAD Crane Indiana. None of us ever heard of  Crane and thought that maybe this was some lame brain's idea of a joke. It wasn't a joke and George and I weren't laughing. 

Tom one of the East coast new construction guys was driving his brand new Corvair back to Maine so I bummed a ride with him so we could share expenses. This was in May of 1961 and the Interstate Highway System construction was just getting under way. We drove east on route 66 most of the way. Four years later when I drove the same route it was worlds different. The road was bigger , flatter, smoother and a lot less interesting. 

The Mojave Desert wasn't at all like the deserts that I saw in the movies. Phoenix was still a sleepy little cattle town. The was The Whiting Brothers' chain of gas stations on 66 placed strategically apart. Every time the gas gauge dropped to 1/4 of a tank, a Whiting Brothers loomed ahead. We gassed up at Whiting Brothers  until they ran out around Chicago. Damned near ran out of gas because we were so acclimated to stopping at the trusty Whiting stations along the way. 

While in Cleveland, I bought my first car. I must regress a moment and state what my definition of Cleveland is. Cleveland is anywhere between Harrisburg Pennsylvanian  and Chicago. The car was a 1957 Plymouth Fury. One of the very handsomest cars ever built in that era. It was as crappy as it was beautiful. It broke down almost as fast as I could fix things. For fifty years, I never bought another Chrysler product. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. 

Somewhere between Pomona and Cleveland my advancement became effective. I left Pomona as a lowly GSSN and arrived at Crane as a full fledged third class pettyofficer. Crane was like being in a comedy movie. Everything was very strange. Crane was in the boondocks, 125 miles south of Indianapolis in farm country. The place was 110 square miles of stored ammunition. The central storage facility for both the East  and West coasts. I was attached to Guided Missile Service Unit 219, gumshoe to the sailors. Crane had about 2500 civilian workers  and maybe twenty sailors at the GMSU. At 1600, all civilians went home except for the base fire department. Fire safety was a major concern there. We had special conductive sole safety shoes issued to us to prevent static sparking, you had to grab a brass handle and you had to pass an automated conductivity test in order for the pneumatic door to open and all windows on any second floor had sliding-boards to facilitate a speedy exit should thing turn to shit. As a very small group of sailors exiled in the middle of nowhere, there was no regular facilities such as clothing and small stores, so Claude our Storekeeper made a jaunt up to the very large naval station at Great Lakes. We would make up our shopping lists and Claude would buy everything for us. In 1962, Claude came back from Great Lakes without any GS crows. 

He was told that there was no such thing as Guidedmissilemen in the navy. He was offered no further explanation. Crows are navy talk for the rate insignia of petty officers. It gets it's name from the eagle above the chevrons. The officer in charge of the GMSU had to call Washington to find out what the hell was going on. What was going on was we were re-designated as Missile Technicians, MTs. In typical navy fashion, nobody bothered to tell the GSs, or the MTs or whatever. Next trip up to "the lakes", Claude came back with a bale of MT crows, no problem now. 

We. as sailors, had a reputation to maintain and it was as if the locals expected us to perform. We drank heavily and handled high explosives while in that state. My best friend was Bart Hart a wiry self-proclaimed cowboy from Wyoming. Bart and I remained friends until the day he died a few years ago and I miss him much. We terrorized the local farm country, got into brawls as sailors are required by law to do and wooed the local country girls. Or should I say that they wooed us. Most of the local gals didn't much care for the rural life and they knew that sooner or later the sailors would be moving on. Either by transfer or discharge. Not one of my mates said I like it here, I think I'll stay. Because of this, the local girls wanted to meet and marry a sailor and a lot of them did marry their ticket out. In March of 1962. I reenlisted into the regular Navy for six years for a number of reasons; a large reenlistment bonus, orders out of rural Indiana and a billet at MT B School in Vallejo California. MT B School was, at the time, the most comprehensive school in the navy. Forty hours a week of what amounted to four years of a college level Electrical Engineering program. Very intense but it was fashioned so that after you graduated from B School you could walk aboard any ship or submarine in the navy and take over the missile division. We learned all about the Talos, Terrier, Tartar and Polaris missiles. The idea of my going through MT B School was so I could get accepted into NESEP, Navy Enlisted Scientific Educational Program. In NESEP you reenlisted for six years and would study Electrical Engineering at a school such as UCLA, Northwestern, MIT etc. After two years of successful studies, you would extend for another two years. This meant that if Uncle Sam gave you four years of collage, fully paid, you would give Uncle Sam back four years of your life. It was a very fair exchange in my humble opinion. As it is said, the best laid plans of mice and men... For political reasons, a feud between the FBI and the US Navy over my secret clearance, I was denied NESEP. I didn't cry about it. To this day very few people know about this, so I just carried on as a proud and loyal sailor. I had received an excellent technical education that has served me well to this day and I got to be a real sailor. A real blessing.  

I finally got orders to a real ship as a PO2 with a hash mark on my sleeve without ever actually  being on a ship. She was the aircraft carrier USS Constellation CVA-64. She was the second newest CVA in the navy, Enterprise CVA-65 was the newest. Apart from the nuclear power plant and the square island on the Big E, they were the same ship.   

  

TERRIER BT-3

It was February 1961 and freezing cold when we left  the East Coast. We arrived at LAX at about 2100, nine PM to you civilians, and I bundled up before deplaning. I had on dress blues over a wool jersey with a scarf and peacoat. This was still the era when you came down steps and walked to the terminal. I walked off of the airplane and was engulfed in heat. Not jut warm, or very warm, but heat. This was February and I immediately knew that I was home. That this is where I wanted to live. We had transportation to the Convair plant in Pomona where the birds were built. Did you get it the missiles were now birds. I was picking up the lingo. You have to walk a very narrow line when you are a young sailor. If you look babyish, you get shit from your shipmates. If you have a squeaky voice, more shit. For whatever reason, maybe it was because I was already in for two years and had learned the "ropes" I didn't get too much crap. Terrier C School was fun. SoCal was paradise to me. The Navy had two and a half surface to air missiles back then. The Talos was a very long range bird. It had an approximately eighty mile range and was powered by a ram jet engine. FYI, ram jets don't even work under Mach 1. The first stage booster takes the Talos up to supersonic before separating. There was the Terrier also a two stage missile with solid fuel propellants. That's what we learned. The Terrier had a little brother the Tartar. Tartar was basically a single stage Terrier with a DTRM, duel thrust rocket motor. It was much smaller destined for use on Destroyers. It was the quarter horse of missiles. Very fast off of the launcher but it only had a little less than a twenty mile range.
I bought a tricked out 41 Ford coupe and was excelling at school. Sure there was state of the art electronics to learn, but there was those beautiful missile airframes that just took my breath away. I was the top dog in my class. The big kahuna. C School was far too short, only 11 weeks. And then I got my orders. I joined the Navy to see the world and I was being assigned to Guided Missile Service Unit 219, GMSU or gumshoe to the sailors, at Crane Indiana. It was the worst of times and the best of times. Crane is huge about 110 square miles and is where there is enough ammunition stored there to make a very big bang if the shit hits the fan. I pinned on my third class crow as I arrived. 

I bought a '57 Plymouth Fury  a very beautiful car but a real turd mechanically. Things broke on that Fury faster than you could get them repaired. The ammunition depot is surrounded by farms and the farmers used to burn their fields once a year and if the fire got out of control, they would call the base and say something like oh dear my fire is headed toward your ammunition and I'd hate to see the whole state become the sixth great lake. 

This is how and why I taught myself  how to sail. If I heard the base fire engines tear out sirens a blazing, I'd look out of the window and if the OOD was heading towards us, I'd jump in my car where I had the sails, rudder and centerboard stored in my trunk and head for Lake Greenwood which was rather large and completely on the base. No cell phones back then and no-one could get to you. My old buddy Bart Hart beat me to the dock one day and was bitching like hell. He said that he couldn't find the gear for the sailboat. No trouble, I said, I know exactly where everything is. Locked up in the trunk of my car.    

I made second class pettyofficer while at NAD Crane and reenlisted into the Regular Navy for six more years. I still wanted to see the world. Part of my reenlistment incentive was B School. Being that we were literally in the  back woods of Indiana, we sent the Storekeeper to Great Lakes to get us clothing and small stores. He came back after one trip and said that they no longer carried Guided Missileman crows. The OIC of the GMSU called someone and asked what the hell was going on. That's when we found out that our rate was changed to Missile Technician. 

I got married to my first wife while in Indiana and three months later we packed up the car put Tiger the wiener dog in the back seat and moved to Mare Island MT B School in Vallejo, California.

Next exciting chapter B School.

IN THE BEGINNING

For a few years now various people have suggested that I chroniclize   my life's story. I'll start out with my first years in the Navy. My life didn't really start until I went into the Navy. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. In May of 1959 while I was a junior in high school, I joined the US Naval Reserve. During the summer vacation between my  junior and senior year, I went to boot camp at NTC Great Lakes north of Chicago. I remember we came into The Windy City on a New York Central passenger train. We then had to transfer to The Chicago & North Shore railroad, which looked like it came straight out of a cartoon. It was very old elevated train and wound through Chicago until it got out of town and rumbled up the west shore of Lake Michigan. 

I should go on record that even though I started out as a titless wave. as reservists were called then, two years after going on active duty, I reinlisted into the Regular Navy with much pride. Navy boot camp wasn't all that difficult, at least to me. Instead of being the usual eight weeks, reserve boot camp was only two weeks. In my senior year in high school, after having been to boot camp, I was probably a very large pain in the ass. If a teacher thought he was being a hard ass, I just let him rave on. Monday evenings were reserve training sessions and due to the rigors of the bar(s) with other sailors I was usually too hungover to attend school. Most of the Chiefs were retired USN who just couldn't let go of the lifestyle. 

It was at the Reserve Center that I first realized that just maybe I was pretty smart. After taking the usual battery of test that all recruits take when joining, I was called in to see the head man, the captain of the base. He commended me and told me that he hadn't seen scores that high for years. He told me I could have any rate, job, in the Navy. I told him I wanted to be a Guided Missileman. He paused for a minute and told me that they didn't have any training or trainers for that rate. He then said that when I go on active duty next year that he was sure that I could work something out.

A month after graduating from high school, I was on a train to the receiving station in Philadelphia. When I talked to the personnelman in Philly, he explained that could go to Guided Missileman A School in Virginia but I would have to extend for a year. I figured that the three years was a bargain because the regular Navy guys had to extend their hitch from four years to six.

Two days later, I was on a Greyhound bus headed for Virginia Beach and A School. I sat near the back of the bus and bullshitted with another seaman apprentice from Chicago, who happened to be black, about what our lives would be like in the big bad world. When we got off of the bus in Virginia Beach I noticed that the whole bus station was all Negros as they were called way back then. When we walked out of the front door of the bus station, some old guy wearing a short sleeve shirt and clip on tie started screaming "Nigger lover". Neither me or my black friend from Chicago knew what that was all about. The old man pointed to a sign over the door that we just walked out of and the sign said COLORED. Then he pointed to another sigh over another door which said WHITES ONLY. Welcome to The South. 

I caught a gray Navy bus that said NAATC Dam Neck over the windshield. NAATC meant Naval Anti Aircraft Training Center.  Dam Neck was where it was located in the heart of The Great Dismal Swamp. 

I settled in and two weeks before my class started it's seven month run, I was informed that our trigonometry refresher course would start the next day. It was being taught by one of my classmates. The guy who was just bounced out of "The Academy" for behaving like a sailor. He was sent "back to the fleet" which is where he started out from. I told the guy that it may well be a refresher for most everyone else but that I didn't know nothin' about no Trigonometry. He and 

I went to the EM club every night for the next two weeks and I got "horsed" up. 

During the day, I had to stand watches at "The Old School" because my secret clearance hadn't come in yet. My first day as I was walking around I opened one door and there it was right in front of me an entire Polaris ICBM was lying around in pieces.

The first hour of our first day at Guided Missileman A School, the instructor started out with Ohm's Law. I assumed that a GS worked on ultra fancy missile airframes. When I asked why he was wasting time on electrical knowledge, who cares. I was told that I should care because this job was mostly electrical and electronic. Class standings were published each week and each week I moved up a notch or two. You couldn't get promoted to be a pettyofficer while in A School. Navy rules. Most didn't care because they didn't have enough time in rate to be qualified. Being a reservist, I had enough time in rate. A School ended on a Friday and on Monday was the Third Class Pettyofficer exam. It was the first time of many that I squeaked through.

On Wednesday, those of us going to Terrier BT3 C School were taken to the Norfolk for our flight to Washington National Airport. I had never been in an airplane so this was a real adventure. We took off in a DC-3 and ten minutes later the captain came on the horn and announced that we were turning around because it was too rough. We sat in Norfolk for an hour, or so, and waited for a Capitol Airlines Vickers Viscount turboprop. That beast went where angels feared to tread. At Washington, we boarded a Douglas DC-7 for a ten minute hop to Baltimore, and finally for our cross country flight a United Airlines DC-8 four engine jet.

Next time Pomona.

When It Rains, It Pours Part Two

Well today went much better than today. Not great, mind you, but better.

We got Carlos the Friendly Mexican Mechanic to come out this afternoon to replace the broken radiator hose.  I was expecting the archetypical shade tree guy to show up, but Carlos was in a word, good.

I had done my homework on the internet and knew absolutely all there was to know about changing the hose. In less that one minute, I knew that I should put my pie-hole in park and listen to the guy.

The hose clamps had no means of loosening and all of the "experts" on the web said cut them off and toss them in the trash. Then get new ones with screwdriver slots. As I started to splain myself, Carlos said no need to cut them and showed my why. 

He promptly removed the damaged hose and installed the new proper BMW type hose instead of a rubber tube. He added a gallon of new coolant and topped off the remaining with water and vented the air out of the system. I wouldn't have done such a good job myself. 

Because I was so impressed by his professionalism, I inquired about whether he could take a look at the tranny. He produced a very large professional looking SnapOn fault reader. I was already prepared to fork out $4500 to have the tranny rebuilt which is the going rate. I did show him how the BMW manual said to reset the Electronic Transmission Control manual. I am, after all, not just a pretty face you know. We got the damned thingy to finally reset and took a successful test ride. 

I asked him if he could service the tranny and he said he wasn't a transmission guy. Hell, nobody's perfect. Carlos' opinion was that the tranny was OK and it just had a sensor or solenoid problem.

He gave me the phone number of Jose, his amigo who has a transmission shop which is fairly close. Jose was a pain in the ass. He said he couldn't even look at the car for over two weeks due to his heavy work load. I told him all I really wanted him to do was take a look and figure out whether we can drive Loretta back home to Long Beach. 

I'm going to drive around Palm Desert tomorrow before heading back to the beach. If all goes well, we'll come home on Saturday when the traffic is lightest.

I know that you make your own luck,  but wish us luck anyway.

When It Rains It Pours Department

When it rains, it pours department.

I had Loretta serviced at my friendly BMW mechanic yesterday.

The tranny warning light was coming on sporadically so I took it in and had the fluid level checked and decided to change the fluid. I have never changed automatic transmission fluid before in my entire life, maybe because I usually had stick shifts. I have considered changing the fluid just another ploy to have a fool part with his money but the FBMWM said it could help and it certainly wouldn't hurt. While there, we also topped off the coolant as it was a wee bit low.

When I left the FBMWM the car ran better than ever and we loaded up the trunk and set forth to place where elephants go to die, Palm Desert. Please humor me a bit more because this is when the shit storm started.

Picture it, we're on the 91 freeway at rush-hour. We even took the seven buck toll road option because of the traffic. It didn't take long to figure out that all of the traffic was on the toll road because we were sitting in gridlock and the freeway, emphasis on the word free, cars were whooshing past us.

About the point where the toll road ended, we started to finally pick up speed, IE seven to ten MPH. Soon the dreaded light on the dash that contained a gear and an exclamation point and the notation about how we were so screwed came back on and the car went into "limp" mode and defaulted to third gear as the speed picked up to seventy.

That's when the little light that indicates when coolant is low came on. I was starting to feel like a commercial pilot who just had one of his jet engines fall off with all of those dash lights coming on. I absolutely knew that we had sufficient coolant as we had just topped two hours ago but never disbelieve a German car when it is trying to tell you something. Heed the warning(s). The steam wafting from under the hood is yet another sign that this isn't one of your best days.

We got off of the freeway and LIMPED into a Mobil gas station, gas station not SERVICE station. The long slide into the abyss was almost over, but not quite. I'll spare you some of the details but after waiting over an hour the AAA flatbed tow truck showed up. The world class hand wringing then started. There were four of us, the driver, Jamie, me and the dog. We all couldn't fit in the cab of the truck so Jamie said she'd get an Uber to take her to a hotel/motel that was dog friendly. Oh wait, Uber won't take dogs. I suggested that we humans sit in the cab and miss fur storm ride in the car now on the back of the truck. No, the poor dear doggie can't ride back there all alone, it will cause irreparable harm to her mental state.

OK, what do you want to do? Oh, I'll ride with her in the car. The driver chimes in that state law forbids that. By now, I'm in silent mode having made the only pragmatic option. Now we're in audible hand wringing mode. Alas, the frau suggests that we people ride up front and miss doggie rides alone in steerage.

Good choice dear, good idea.

I came across this and wanted to share it with everyone.

Typhoon

By Garland Davis

 There is not a roller coaster or amusement park ride anywhere that can hold a candle to riding a destroyer into heavy seas at high speed trying to maintain station on the carrier.  If you like carnival rides, then this is the place for you, it doesn’t cost anything and lasts for days.

It comes with swells that look like a three-story barricade moving toward the bow that bounce those in the ship around like a flea on Miley Cyrus’ twerking butt. The extreme pleasure of being thrown around like the peas in a baby’s rattle is something that the average person cannot even imagine.

The big assed carriers roll a little and just push through with a slight pitch and roll.

Not so the Tin Cans. It’s “roll and toss and pitch you rusty son-of-a-bitch.”

There is a majesty to heavy seas.  It is damned near impossible to witness the incredible power of heavy seas and deny the existence of a creator.  Only a God could wield that unrestrained power.

One moment, it seems the bow is pointed toward the heavens and the next moment is buried in a forty-foot swell with water streaming through the scuppers, scouring the decks of any unsecured objects, and smashing up over the pilot house.  “Put another quarter in Mama, I want to ride it again.”  Accompanied by lateral motions, figure eight stern gyrations, the slamming of the screws as they come out of the water, and the visible flexing of the expansion joints.

Inside the ship, men are tossed about, forgotten items fall out of hiding places in the overhead vent lines and wire ways.  Meals become an endless succession of soup, canned chili, cheese and horsecock sandwiches, coffee, bug juice and milk if available.  Now we know why they pay us sea pay.

If you are lucky and have bunk straps, you lash yourself into your rack to try to get a couple hours sleep, or else you hang on and hope to stay in the bunk.  Your teeth hurt from clenching your jaws. Your smokes go flying from your pocket to never be seen again.  Guys shoot their lunch.  Cockroaches are packing to go ashore as soon as you hit port.  The cooks in the galley are cussing as they try to put together a meal.  And guys safely in their racks who need to take a whiz ask themselves,

“Do I really want to struggle to get to the head to wade in vomit and water swirling across the deck and try to piss in a moving target while trying to not puke myself.”

“Stand by for heavy rolls,” means that all the shit that just flew by you from starboard will be coming back from the port side and you wonder is there anything left in the overhead that hasn’t fallen and hit you in the head.

“Now supper for the crew, watch standers head of the line.”

“Hey Dave, do you think it is horsecock sandwiches?”

“Does a hobby horse have a wooden asshole?”

“Bring me back some crackers, I’m afraid if I go to the mess deck and try to gag down another horsecock sandwich I’ll puke again?”

“Damn, who is steering this son-of-a-bitch?  Who has the helm?”

“I do, next watch.”

“How did I end up on a sea going vomit barge? Fuck it, I think I’ll strike for Corpsman and hide in Sickbay for the rest of my career.”

“Hey you know you love it, where else could a redneck like you from North Carolina with the I.Q. of a cockroach get a job throwing trash in the Pacific Ocean?”

“Hey, you assholes knock it off, grown folks are trying to sleep.”

And so, it went, for days at a time, crap banging around in lockers, shit sliding back and forth across the decks, the acrid smell of gastrically dissolved cheese and horsecock sandwiches mixed with stale coffee permeating the berthing compartments and heads.

Stumbling around, zinging off bulkheads, doors, piping and each other and being seventeen or eighteen years old and realizing that the recruiter who promised you a thrilling life of wonder, oriental girls, and adventure was a lying shore duty son-of-a-bitch.

Jackie, the movie

We saw the film 

Jackie last night.

It was fascinating. It was as if you were actually watching history being made first hand. 

I was at sea on an aircraft carrier when JFK was assassinated. So I missed a whole lot of what was actually going on ashore.

The pilots on the carrier were convinced that Castro was behind it, as I still am, and wanted to go bomb the crap out of Havana. It didn't matter that they probably didn't carry enough fuel to go from the Pacific Ocean to Cuba and then get back to a air station to land. They just wanted their pound of flesh.

We remained at sea for about three weeks after the shooting probably for security purposes being nobody actually knew, and still don't, what was going on in Havana and Moscow.  

By the time we returned back to North Island, most of the worst was over. The president was dead and LBJ was the new POTUS. Oswald was apprehended and Jack Ruby gave the poor schmuck lead poisoning. I don't remember whether, or not, JFK was buried by then. Parts of the whole wretched affair are somewhat blurry in my old head by now.

We all muddled through life for a few months and then I got orders to go to new construction in Seattle where I was part of the precom crew for Waddell. The veil was lifted up in Washington state and life took on meaning once again.

If you are too young, or too old, to remember those gray days, you should go see the film. It will maybe fill in a few blanks for you.

2016 END OF YEAR LETTER

Don & Jamie’s 2016 EOY Letter

We left on a “Bucket List dream trip” since my last EOY letter.

In mid summer last year, we were talking about a trip to Alaska with a travel agent, but by then the extremely small window for non-snowing in Alaska was almost closed. While talking to the AAA travel agent, I casually mentioned that the Panama Canal would be OK. So it was with great expectations that we signed on.

On 22 November 2015, we boarded Ruby Princess in POLA for a dream trip through the Panama Canal and what a dream it was.

So off we went with two days at sea to Cabo San Lucas. We both had been to Cabo many times so it was almost like going back to Cleveland only with mariachis and cervesa Pacifico. Well not really. We had to make the obligatory trek to The Giggling Marlin and Squid Roe and like all good sailors, walk around town. I bought a cigar and could smoke it anywhere. Life was good. Next, another two days to Nicaragua. Along the way, we had our Thanksgiving celebration while under way. Not a bad way, I must say, to spend the traditional eat until you drop off into slumber day on a cruise ship.

We pulled into San Juan del Sur a somewhat small, for a hundred thousand plus ton cruise ship, bay and anchored. After anchoring, the captain got on the 1MC and announced that the weather was too rough to lighter folks to the town pier, so off we went to Costa Rica which we really liked. We took a tour bus high in the mountains to a rain forest. As an aside, I have now reached the age where I no longer scoff at the codgers who take a tour bus instead of hitch hiking to parts unknown. I am actually very comfortable with it. After the rain forest, we lunched at a waterfront bistro in Punta Arenas. Fresh fish and Costa Rican beer made the day complete.

Next we transited “the Canal”. This has been a bucket list item for me even before the term bucket list was invented. Back in Ft Lauderdale we went to the Everglades to ride an airboat and shoot some alligators, with a camera that is.

In 2016, Jamie had her cataracts removed in February. The good news is that she has excellent vision. The bad news is that she has excellent vision. She can spot me walking around with my fly open and see me stuffing a bottle of rum under my shirt at Trader Joes.

Also in February of 2016 we drove to Houma Louisiana for a three week machine upgrade. If you’re going to Louisiana you better go hungry because those folks eat up a storm and it’s all good. We stayed at a La Quinta and visited the Gulf of Mexico and other nice places on the weekends.

In March, we flew down to Loreto BCS to go to Bahia San Ignacio to view and pet the baby Gray Whales. We first stayed at the La Mision Hotel on our birthday. Third floor room overlooking the beach. It was like heaven and you didn’t have to die to get there. After two days there, we took a van to the Bahia stopping on the way at Santa Rosilita for lunch. More about Santa Rosalia later. We spent three days there in semi-caveman style. The “cottages” had no electricity and the outhouse was far enough away to severely think about getting up at 0200, two AM.  The food was fairly simple Mexican fare, but good. There was a no-host bar with plenty of tequila and cerveza so the stay was most tolerable. After two and a half days at the whale camp, we went to the town of San Ignacio to sleep in warm beds and eat warm food and drink cold beer. All of which we had at the whale camp but it is a very nice little town. Next we took the van back to Loreto and stopped at Mulege for lunch and more cerveza. Upon returning to Loreto, we stayed a few days in the Oasis Hotel on the beach on the south side of town.

For the last twenty five years, or so, after making a trip down to La Paz to bring a 70 foot power boat back to Long Beach I started talking about retiring in La Paz. It was a smallish town with paved streets, running water, telephone service and electricity. All of which were on my must have list. But that was in 1987 after a few more trips down to La Paz to bring other boats back “up the hill” I started to notice changes in the place. In about 2011, Andy May and I drove his Dodge pickup truck down to la Paz with a Boston Whaler in tow on a trailer. By then, La Paz was no longer that cute little town in Baja. It had a Home Depot, a Walmart and a Burger King Etc. Etc. all of the things that I want to get away from.

In Loreto, we were walking down the street right on the Sea of Cortez at 0900, nine AM, and there wasn’t a car or truck moving on the whole street. All of a sudden, I had an epiphany and said out loud “I could live here”. My first inclination was to move down there on the boat, but the nearest harbor is Puerto Escondido which is twenty five miles to the south. I didn’t want to live 25 miles away from anything, so plan B was take the motor home down to Loreto and find a RV pad to rent. We did just that. We spent the next two days seeking a nice pad in location that was not over populated with snowbirds. We signed a five year lease on a RV pad immediately behind the La Mision Hotel that we had stayed at and about 100 yards from The Sea of Cortez. Now we had to get back to Long Beach and there wasn’t two seats on an airplane available for quite awhile.

So what did we do, you may ask. Simple, we took a bus. If you have never taken a 600 mile bus ride on a Mexican bus through Baja, you really haven’t tried some of the finer thrills in life. The trip took about sixteen hours through the night and made stops every mile, or so. There are about a dozen federal checkpoints between Loreto and Tijuana and everyone has to get off of the bus no matter what time it is. My personal highlight was the bus station tacos at 2 AM. Emm good. From TJ to LB is a walk in the park, figuratively speaking. Van to the border.  The red Tijuana trolley  to downtown san Diego and then an Amtrak to Fullerton station. A nice Uber ride to the marina and we were finally home.

Three weeks later we flew back down to Loreto for a week to take care of details like mail, telephone service, water and a dozen other mundane issues. We, now as old  Mexico hands, got along like natives. We stayed at the Oasis Hotel while there and this time flew back.

In May, after thirty four years in the same slip on Gangway 33, we moved into a new slip on Dock 10. When I say new slip, I literally mean new slip. The marina has been undergoing a renovation project for the last five years and we were forced to move because as of right now there is no more gangway 33. The dock is gone and the pilings are being pulled out after sixty one years of being stuck in the bottom. The new slips are made of concrete, no more splinters, this is very good because we can now scurry around barefooted. We are also away from that filthy shipyard which also raises the quality of our lives.

If it’s May this must be Alaska. We flew up to my old hometown of Seattle. I say hometown because Waddell was built in Seattle by Todd Shipyard and I was transferred off of the aircraft carrier Constellation in February of 1964 and moved to Seattle as part of the precom crew. In fifty years, the old town has changed. We boarded Coral Princess at Pier 91 the old Navy Supply Center and off we went. Up through the inner passageway to Ketchikan. In Ketchikan, we took a tour of the town by land and water in an oversized duck truck.

We got underway that evening and early in the next morning we were in a fjord. The ship got amazingly close to a glacier and small icebergs were floating all around us. These cruise boats have triple bowthrusters and three more thrusters aft and can go sideways if needed. The fjord provided quite a show. Next was Juneau. Juneau is the capitol of Alaska and the second largest city in the USA by area. Sitka is the largest and the largest outside of Alaska is Jacksonville FL which is fifth. LA which is huge comes in at twelfth. In Juneau we took a tram up another mountain and enjoyed one hell of a view. After Juneau came Skagway where we took a train up through some of the most harrowing in North America. The distance that we traveled in an hour on the train took prospective gold miners months to travel by foot with pack animals. As we rounded a bend and I looked up a cliff there was another train in front of us precariously on a cut in the side of the mountain. I said to myself dear God please tell me that isn’t that way we are going. But it was and ten minutes later we were right there clinging to the side of that mountain. Just past the summit, the train stopped and decoupled the locomotives that were shunted around us and recoupled on what now was the front of the train for our ride home down that same damned mountain

By now, I was starting to overload on Alaska. The real reason that I went is that I had been in all of the 48 contiguous states and Hawaii with Alaska as the only holdout. I had to visit Alaska to make it a clean sweep. By now, I was starting to long for some California sunshine but we had one more, albeit a brief one, stop which was Victoria BC. We stopped in Victoria on Waddell back in 1964 on our way to our new home port of Long Beach. It was a nice stop and then we headed back to CONUS.

In early May, Cassy who is Ed’s wife came down from Berkeley where she is enrolled in the UCB law school. She was here to be a summer associate which I still think of as an internship. Cassy stayed with us on Phase II for a week, or two. I think that the daily commute to downtown LA was too grueling for her so she ended up staying at various Air B&Bs in LA. 

In July, we finally got a chance to stir up the coffee grounds and leave the slip. I won’t bore you any more with the mundane trials and tribulations of converting from having a schooner for over thirty five years to going over to the dark side. We finally made it to the Isthmus at Catalina. After four days of lying about with a chilled drink in one’s hand we had to get back to that sucky of all things reality. On the darkside, in a power boat all one needs to do to go from point A to point B is twist a key and point to the desired destination. After turning the key and pressing the START button, I was startled with the deafening sound of silence. OK, we’ll try the other engine. After all, we do have two of them. More silence. As you may, or may not, know my life’s motto is I don’t believe in luck. But I do rely on it. Having said that, the very next thing that I did was stare out the door and on the very next mooring was another power boat getting a jump start from Relief Valve the Avalon based Vessel Assist boat. I asked the guy on RV for a jump start so he came over to us when he was done next door. We got the two engines fired up and hightailed it for Long Beach at eight knots. An hour and a half out of Two Harbors, the starboard engine shut down so we pressed on at six and a half knots which added maybe an extra half hour to our trip. As we approached the marina, I wondered how well I could put this big boat into the slip with only one engine. Maneuvering a twin engine boat is a chinch, once you get the hang of it. You can turn the boat in it’s own length. If you want to turn to the left, you put the starboard engine forward and the port engine in reverse.  I thought about how I’d been putting sailboats with one engine into slips for fifty years and nothing has really changed. The Whaler was tied in the front of the slip and I stuck Phase II into the slip without even touching Sadie Maru, the Whaler. FYI, it was so rough out on the way back that whatever water that was in the bottom of the tanks got stirred up and was spun out in the Raycors. The starboard had more water and once it’s filter is 100% water, no more engine. All is well once again. Filters replaced and fuel systems purged all systems are Go. Later in July Cassy was made an offer by the downtown LA law firm where she had her summer job. She then started  talking about getting a sailboat. Jamie had an old high school friend who is a somewhat shellshocked Vietnam vet who wanted to emigrate to Oregon. He was selling his Airstream trailer and had a thirty foot Newport sloop the he wanted to unload fast. He shot Cassy a very good price and wham bam, she bought it. Subject to the usual sea trial(s) etc. She is an aspiring lawyer after all. Everything looked good so off we went to the yard for a haulout and survey. While on the hard, she had the bottom painted and the hull and transom painted. On the transom, she wanted white and the hull seafoam green. Many years ago, a very old salt told me that the only proper colors for a boat’s hull was white and dark blue and only a damned fool would paint it blue. She also had the name changed to Coeur de pirate. So much for tradition on the sea. The boat is berthed in Wilmington and she is delighted with it.

Maybe soon we can go to the Isthmus where I can drink my Green Label each day.