WHO AM I

I am, most importantly,  a father and grand father. I've also been a husband and a sailor, a veteran of the US Navy. I am a retired business owner. I owned and operated a plastics forming machine building company. I am a dog lover. I've had three dachshunds, two German Shepards, two rottweilers, one mutt and a Golden Retriever. I've always maintained that the best dog that you ever had is the one you currently own or your last dog.

I love all things transportation. I love cars. I've had sports cars, cars with big engines and cars with turbochargers. Convertibles and cars with single overhead an double overhead cams. If I had the money and garage space, I would keep them all.

Motorcycles, I've had two Ducatis, a two Hondas, a Yamaha, a Suzuki, a Triumph Bonneville and saving the best for last two different Norton 750 Commandos.  Far and away the Nortons were the best of all.

I love to travel on trains. I first went to Navy bootcamp at Great Lakes Naval Station in 1959 all by myself on a New York Central train. A Pennsylvania Railroad train took me to the receiving station  in Philadelphia in 1960. I had a roomette and I loved the trip. I've taken Greyhound and Trailways buses on long distance trips. The buses were not as exciting as the trains, but I was still on the road.

I love airplanes. I first flew in an airplane in a DC3. On the same day, we flew from Norfolk to Washington DC in a turboprop Vickers Viscount. DC to Baltimore on a DC6 and lastly to LAX in a DC8 jet. I arrived in LA on a February evening when it was literally freezing back East wearing my woolen Dress Blues with a woolen a Navy issue crew neck sweater  and a Peacoat. I stepped off of the airplane, pre jetway days,  at eight PM and it was 77 degrees outside. My first thought was, I want to live here. My second thought was I am going to live here. Since those days, I've flown in 707s, DC10s, L1011s, 747s, 757s, 767s and my favorite a VC10 back from Australia.

I took most of my flight instruction in a Piper tomahawk.I've flown a Ford Trimotor a lot. I could go on all day but modesty prevents. 
Ships and boats: I was stationed on an aircraftcarrier  USS Constellation and a destroyer USS Waddell. I didn't much care for the birdfarm but the tincan was all I was hoping for. Waddell was a DDG, a guided missile destroyer. I first saw her at Todd Shipyard in Seattle in February of 1964. I was on, in Navy parlance, new construction. We commissioned her at Bremerton Naval Shipyard in August of 1964 making all of us in attendance, Plank Owners. We'll save that for another tale. In 1968, I was discharged out of the Navy at Seal Beach and began my civilian life. As for boats, I sailed on Lake Greenwood in southern Indiana while stationed at NAD, Naval Ammunition Depot, Crane Indiana. While in Seattle, I rented twenty two foot sailboats on Lake Washington. While stranded at Midway Island, I circumnavigated the island in a 18 footer that I checked out from special services. Later on, as a civilian, I had a twenty two foot Venture which was a spiffy little trailerable boat that we also used as a camping trailer. Next I had a 28 foot Columbia that I lived aboard on in Marina Del Rey and later Redondo Beach. We bought a brand new Yankee Clipper a 41 foot Taiwan built Bill Garden ketch. After that I bought a 38 foot Downeaster Schooner which I lived on in Alametos Bay for the thirty five years that I had her. Now I live on a forty foot  Choey Lee Trawler also in Alametos Bay and have a thirty foot Newport sailboat which we keep in Wilmington. I just couldn't kick the sailing habit after fifty seven years.

Where I am, who I am and where I've been

Part One   Where am I? 

I am home on our forty foot trawler power boat. I've been a sailor since 1961, that's fifty eight years. That's a long time. I started sailing in Lake Greenwood at Naval Ammunition Depot, NAD, Crane Indiana. What the hell was I doing in southern Indiana while being a sailor in the IS Navy is another story for another time. We had a 17 foot fiberglass Rebel sloop in special services and I kept the sails and rudder in the trunk of my 1957 Plymouth Fury. Why, you may ask? That is another story for another time. Lake Greenwood was about five miles long and about a mile wide. It was my own private lake. After two years in Indiana, I was transferred to Missile Technician B School for a year and on to Coronado by San Diego on an aircraft carrier. I really didn't have any time back then to much in the line of recreation until I ended up at New Construction in Seattle. I rented twenty two footers and sailed on Lake Washington while in Seattle.

My destroyer was commissioned at Bremerton and we headed to Long Beach. While in Long Beach I used to rent Sabats which are eight  foot sailing dinghies at Naples Island. On our first deployment to WestPac, we, the ship went aground at Midway island. Being the screws, propellers to you land lubbers, got their tips knocked out of balance requiring us to be towed back to Pearl Harbor by an ocean going tug. While waiting for an entire week for our tug to arrive at Midway, we, the sailors had nothing but time on our hands. On the third day, we had managed to drink the entire island dry. The beer lasted two days, the hard stuff another day and the we were getting antsy. There was a little used beach shack on the island and it had a few little sailing dingies stowed away. I and my mate checked one out and we proceded to circumnavigate Midway Island. 

After my eight plus years in the Navy, I ended up living in Glendora, California. There I bought a 22 foot trailerable Venture sailboat which I named Tumwater. Probably few of you know the significance of the name Tumwater and if you don't that will have to be yet another story for another time. I had Tumwater for two, or three, years and used it a lot. We went everywhere using her not only as a boat but also as a travel trailer. Then came divorce number one and we sold the house and the boat. I used the procedes to buy a Columbia 28 in 1975. Tumwater II was a real boat, inboard engine, wheel steering and I lived aboard her for two years. 

In 1978, we bought a brand new forty one foot Yankee Clipper ketch which was built in Tiawan. We named her Bianco, yup another story, and she was huge. She even had a seperate crews quarters. 

Four years and another divorce later, Bianco was sold to friends and I bought a thirty eight foot, on deck, forty three feet overall schooner. Her name was Merrymaid and she was famous being she was Downeaster hull number one so I didn't rename her. Merrymaid is Middle English and is what morphed into the word mermaid. I had her for thirty five years and lived aboard her for over thirty of those years. I loved that boat and I still do but due to my two strokes I found that I didn't have the mental capacity to handle her with her five sails.

Which brings me around to the dark side which us, yes us, sailors call power boats. She is a forty foot Cheoy Lee trawler and it is like living in a floating condominium. Her name was Queen Bea when we bought her. While we were on the hard, I renamed her to Phase II. Yes, there is another story here. 
That's where I am right now. Aboard our little ship, or should I say yacht. In case you don't know the difference between a boat and a yacht. The yacht has an icemaker. 
Also, a boat is a vessel that can be hoisted aboard a ship. 

To be continued.

  

RMS QUEEN MARY

Over fifty years ago when I was a young twenty six year old short time sailor with a one month old new  baby RMS Queen Mary pulled into our lives. By our our, I mean both myself and the City of Long  Beach. The old regal gal has sit inside of her little breakwater across the bay from downtown Long Beach all of this time.

During this time, I have been aboard the ship over a dozen times. Usually on tours and once to meet and greet QM2 to Long Beach but I never got around to spending a night on board. It's like the time I took my sister to Disneyland years ago. She said that i probably got tired of going to Disneyland and I told her that the only time that I went was when someone from back east came out and wanted to go there. Which wasn't that often.

Well we took a page out of the tourist's guide book today and went to RMS QM. The Sunday brunch is said to be, according to a traveler's magazine, the best in the world. I don't know about "the best in the world", but I would rank it in the top five. The best I've ever been to is at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Fran. But good eats in San Fran is no big surprise. 

Spending an overnighter on a ship is not a real big deal. I've lived on an aircraft carrier, a destroyer, I lived on my schooner for thirty five years and on the trawler now for four years.  The Queen however is a whole new experiance. She is the stuff of legends. She is the one and only Gray Ghost. 

USS Constellation, the carrier that I was on was big, one could put both  Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth on the flight deck at the same time and neither would hang over the edge but the true measure of the size of a ship is it's displacement. The Queens both top out by over ten thousand tons over Connie and you can feel the magnitude of this ship while walking around aboard. 

The view of downtown Long Beach from our porthole is also incredible. This is the stuff that my dreams are made of.

AMERICAN FOOTBALL

AMERICAN FOOTBALL

I was born in Cleveland in 1942. Near the end of the forties, Cleveland had two teams. The Browns and the Rams. The NFL deemed that Cleveland didn’t need two teams so the Rams were moved to LA. A few years back on a PBS series called The Greatest Moments in Sports, I saw a film of the 1950 NFL playoff game. The Browns verses the Rams. The Rams had a bone to pick. They wanted to show the world that the wrong team was moved to LA. Right before the end of the game, the Rams were leading by five points. With about five seconds to go Otto Graham threw a hail Mary pass to a receiver in the end zone. While the ball was in the air, the gun was sounded to indicate that all the time on the clock had elapsed. Back then, I don’t know about now, the game wasn’t over until the play finished. The ball was caught in the end zone and the Browns remained the NFL champs. I truly believe the the Pro Football Hall of Fame is in Canton which is close to Cleveland because of the Browns. Players like Otto Graham. Lou Groza and Dante "Glurfingers" Lavvle were heros back in the day.

For many years, I was an ardent Browns fan, even after I moved to SoCal. I remember watching the NFL playoff game on the messdeck on my destroyer in 1967 when the Browns beat the Colts. I was on the ship because I had the duty on that day. The AFL joined into the NFL and the Superbowl became the paramount sporting event. Alas the only times the Browns attended the Superbowl was as spectators. That didn’t lessen my enthusiasm one damned bit. From about 1977 to 1982 I had season tickets for the Rams but they were only the Rams not the Browns. For that reason and for certain economic reasons, that era had run it’s course and I eschewed the tickets.

What really hurt was when Art Model, that son-of-a-bitch, moved my blessed Browns to Baltimore.  The Raiders moved back to Oakland and the Rams were moved to Saint Louis. My mantra was a sailor version of screw football, who needs it.

My attitude improved when a new Browns emerged into Cleveland. I used to say that this new Browns team was a facade, the real Browns were hiding in Baltimore hiding as the Ravens To add insult to injury, the damned Ravens not only went to the Superbowl the next year. They WON the damned thing. By about 2010 my patience with these loser new Browns had run it’s course. I simply quit being a football fan.

Along comes 2017 and not only do the Rams move back to LA after a 23 year hiatus and the Chargers move back to LA also. It’s an embarrassment of riches and to sweeten things, they both do very well. The Rams actually won the NFC game and are going to the Superbowl.

Back in 1982, when I was a season ticket holder, I got a letter in the mail stating that if I were to send $600 in the mail, if the Rams made it through the playoffs, I would be the proud possessor of Superbowel tickets. The Superbowl that year was to be held at The Rosebowl which was less than a hour’s drive up the freeway. Not only was I was certain the Rams Wouldn’t make it through the playoffs, and as I said above  I wasn’t actually rolling around in loose cash, so I passed. You guessed it. I missed going to a Superbowel game.

Well now our/my Rams are going to the Superbowel again and I don’t have four of five thousand dollars in my retirement funds to blow on a football game. If the Rams win, the odds makers in Los Vegas have them pegged as a one point favorite and they are playing the Patriots, maybe my enthusiasm will be restored. We’re in wait and see mode right now. 

TAKE THE BULLET TRAIN

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 gauge 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 with a hot rock to help keep me warm..

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. He was drafted near the very end of WW2 at the tender age of sixteen. He had about four hours of flight training and then was shoved into a Messerschmidt. He was happy to have survived his three of four missions before the war ended. One evening, after work hans and I went to a local bar and had a few Kirins. Hans made a benjo call. When Hans was out of ear shot two round eyed guy s at the next table wanted to know if Hans had been in the Air Force. He said to me that he had been a pilot in the Air Force and he had never heard of any of the airplanes that Hans was talking about. I said the question should be who’s Air Force. He asked who’s and I replied Hitler’s.  

When the job was done, I tried called our trading company’s office in Tokyo. I had no idea on how to use a pay phone to make a long distance in Japan. Besides, my Japanese language skills weren’t up to the task. I ended up standing in front of a bank of green payphones looking very pitiful with my hand extended a handful of Yen saying Kudasai dingwa.

A Japanese guy with short beard walked up to me and said in English “Don’t you know how to use a pay phone in Japan? No, I did not. 

 

 

Back then, at least, while you were talking, when you heard a tone in your earpiece, you had to feed the beast more coins. I talked to someone in the Tokyo who instructed me to buy a ticket on the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train, and then call back and tell them what train and what carriage I’d be riding  in and someone would be waiting for me on the platform. Right now I should explain two things. The first is if the ticket says that the arrival time is 2:32, the train will arrive at 2:32. No sooner and no later. When you board, or get off of, the train there will be a big colored square painted  on the platform precisely where the door to your carriage will be. The second thing is should you get lost in the Tokyo train station, you are screwed. You’re a goner. It is below street level and is massive. I did get turned around one time and I had to go up stairs to get my bearings and then go back down again.

As for the guy who came to my rescue, I said that I was very lucky that he came along when he did and asked him where he was from. He replied “Chicago”. I asked if he was here in Tokyo on a vacation or on business. He replied a little of both. He explained to me that he had a Japanese restaurant in Chicago and the price of the wooden one use chopsticks that you break apart was getting very pricy. The chopsticks were made in Japan but there was no real timber so the wood had to be imported from another country. Manufactured and then re-shipped to the USA and elsewhere. He knew there were a few manufactures in the Kobe area and his family was from Kobe so he thought he’d come over and visit his long lost distant family and do some business. He went to a manufacturing plant and looked at their machines. He told them these were beautiful machines but they only make bamboo chopsticks. He wanted to buy a machine that made wooden chopsticks. He told me the guy looked at him and said “They make those in Chicago”.

Sailing 102 The Schooner

Way back in May of 2017 I thought that I would write a few words on sailing a schooner. First of all, few people actually know what a schooner is let alone how to sail one. 

On my schooner, Merrymaid, we normally sailed  around with five sails up. As an aside, Merrymaid was the Middle English word that morphed into Mermaid. I didn't name her. That was her name when I bought her in 1979 and that was her name her when I sold her in 2014. That was thirty five years of unadulterated joy for me. But back to the "How to" part. 

A ketch is, what us  purists like to say, a schooner going backwards. The ketch has two masts, a mainmast in front, and a shorter mizzen mast aft. FYI, a yawl has it's MIZZEN MAST aft of the steering station while a ketch's MIZZEN is forward of the rudder post.

A schooner has it's shorter mast, called a FOREMAST, forward and it's taller MAINMAST farther aft. There is a JIB sail all of the way forward.  Aft of the jib is the FORE STAYSAIL and aft of the foremast is the MAIN STAYSAIL. Above the MAIN STAYSAIL usually is the FISHERMAN SAIL. It spans the two masts and is raised by two halyards, one on each masts. The FISHERMAN has four corners unlike the three on a traditional Bermuda rig. In addition to the TACK and CLEW the HEAD is replaced with a THROAT and PEAK as on a GAFF rig. Lastly there is a MAINSAIL which is hoisted on the MAINMAST. The MAIN SAIL can either be three sided as on a Bermuda rig or four sided if the boat is Gaff rigged.

The trick to sailing a schooner, and yes most every skill set  has it's tricks, is maintaining the "slot". IE keeping the air flow complete all of the sails. I used telltales inserted at two strategic points on the JIB and FORE STAYSAIL. I also had telltails tied onto the outer shrouds of both masts. I initially used two telltails at the luff of the main but after thirty five years I felt I could stop using them. Some people use strips of magnetic recorder tape but I preferred using bright red knitting yarn, it was easier to see. 

The JIB and FORE STAY SAIL telltails were trimmed to keep them all flying straight back, the MAIN STAY SAIL was trimmed so that the shroud telltails would fly horizontally. The MAIN SAIL was trimmed like a main sail as on any other sailboat. The FISHERMAN was trimmed so that it "looked right".

When reaching, which is as good as it gets on a schooner, we took down the FISHERMAN and raised the GOLLYWOBBLER. A  GOLLYWOBBLER is "a very large quadrilateral staysail set between the foremast and mainmast of a schooner". It fills all of the space between the two masts. Because the MAIN STAY SAIL blankets the wind to the GOLLYWOBBLER, we would take the
MAIN STAY SAIL down after the GOLLYWOBBLER was hoisted. The TACK of the GOLLYWOBBLER was led through a snap shackle on the end of the MAIN MAST BOOM. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but this should cover most everything. 

Blue Hawaii

BLUE HAWAII

We’ve been busier than a one armed paperhanger traveling this year. We’ve been to England, Fort Bragg, Oahu, South Carolina, Italy, back again to Italy and then to Kauai and Maui.

We spent a week in Waikiki at a time share condo. I haven’t been to Oahu since my Navy days which is about fifty years ago. Jamie wanted me to see the USS Arizona memorial among other things. I’d been past Arizona dozens of times on the aircraft carrier and destroyer but never stopped to see the memorial.

Well off we flew to Hawaii and I was in for a surprise. Actually two surprises. The first surprise was how much Waikiki had changed. The second was how much was still the same.

We did all of the tourist things. Coach tours around the island, foodie tours around Honolulu, a big luau  at the Hawaiian Village, a catamaran sail around Waikiki beach, a sunset dinner cruise on a very big  boat and then a trip to Pearl Harbor to see Arizona.

We bought the required tickets to take a boat over to the old battleship. After we boarded the launch was announced that the dock at the memorial had been damaged and therefore the memorial was closed. Thanks a lot bureaucrats. So I was motored around Arizona as I had dozens of times before. We were in Hawaii for a week and there was an ABC store on the street level of the condo building so all in all, it was still  a very good visit.

On December 29 we boarded a Hawaiian Air jet and flew to Kuai’i. I had been to Oahu and the big island of Hawaii but never to Kuai’i. Kuai’I was a blast. It wasn’t crowded like Oahu and very green. In fact it’s called the garden island. We stayed in another time share and drove all around the island in a rental car. As we were pulling out of the Dollar Rent a Car place at the airport there was a chicken standing right next to the security lady at the gate of the lot. I said “Oh look, a chicken”. She gave me a funny look and off we drove. Little did I know that on Kauai’I there are thousands of feral chickens running around. At no time is a chicken not in sight. They are everywhere. Big really beautiful, colorful roosters and their hens with their chicks. We drove all over the island and had one hell of a nice time.

We went to an old rehabbed sugar plantation and spent time there at a rum tasting and took a ride on the old diesel powered narrow gauge sugar train. A stop at Hanoi Hanna’s, AKA Hilo Hattie’s was a must. We spent six days in the town of Kapa’a.

A quick fifteen minute jet flight took us then to Maui. We stayed in a remodeled suite the was once an Embassy Suite. I love Embassy Suites and stayed at one when I traveled when ever there was one located where I had traveled so I was more than OK with it. We were in Kaanapali Beach  and took walks down the beach, toured the Island in our rental car and took the Holiday Express on the sugar train, an old narrow gauge steam train complete to Santa’s village where we got cookies and milk along with all of the other kids. A drive to Hana  was a must do. The legendary road to Hana is only 52 miles from Kahului, It's fraught with narrow one-lane bridges, hairpin turns and incredible island views. The Hana Highway (HI-360) has 620 curves and 59 one lane bridges. We went to the town of Paia and strolled around town and ended up at Mama’s Fish House and what a delightful experience that was.

There was a day trip to Lanai’I on a sixty two foot catamaran. We spent the day on a beach and had a motor tour of the metropolis of Lana’I City. Larry Ellison owns 98% of the island and since the pineapple industry has collapsed, he has been the island’s sugar daddy.

We stayed in Kaanapoli Beach for six days and then moved to the Pioneer Inn at the harbor in Lahina. The inn is in the National Registry of Historic buildings. It was built in 1901 and is a three star Best Western Hotel. It is literally feet from the harbor’s wharf.

Two day before Christmas, my son Dave and his wife Amy flew in to Maui and we spent two days with them. We went to another rehabbed sugar plantation for lunch and it was fantastic. The next day we met at The Lahina Yacht Club for lunch. The LYC is very exclusive but Dave is a member of the Long Beach YC we got in. Decent food but another Maui great view. The same evening, Christmas Eve, we had dinner at Duke’s back at Kaanapoli Beach. Very good food and, guess what, another great view. We ate outdoors on the beach.

At ten PM Christmas Day, we flew back to good old Long Beach.