Hog Island Race

 

 

Start of Hog Island Race, over-sheeted on the main:  Courtesy Jim Laws, Inverness Yacht Club

This is how we started and ended the Hog island race:  Oversheeted!  Phil Delarosa was great crew handling Jib and Trap like an acrobat and absorbing every gust that hit us.  It was a challenge to keep the boat flat, but as I learned during this 4+ hour race, it's better to de-power using the traveler and try to keep the main as a last resort.  I didn't feel confident enough to try this, but next time will for sure.

The winds started deceptively calm and built up to white caps off some of the beaches on the Western shore of Tomales.  45 degree windshifts, the hallmark of this bay that I call "gully puffs" kept us very busy during the main portion of the race.  Interestingly, we were able to convert a beam reach back to the finish into another upward leg due to our tremendous speed.  We were truly powered up and probably hit high teens and low 20 knot speeds.

There were a lot of boats.  Ryan Scofield visited with his girlfriend Emma and blew past the rest of the field.  A number of flying Scotts and Malcolm Fife in the 110 finished within the top five due to tremendous wind reading and low wind performance.  For our part, we probably finished somewhere in the middle after corrections are made.

A record number of four Johnson 18's were apparently on the water including Jim Pedigrew's boat which has recently found a new owner.  Sean Kelly and Mark Darley braved the puffs and singlehanded this year.  I think they both found excitement lay in store.  The day was largely warm and fogless with gentle breeze from the North shifting South Westerly in the afternoon.  The wind didn't play to our strong suit, but I think just as much came down to technique seeing that Ryan S. was able to cross first, probably about 30 mins+ in front of us.

Benjamin Franklin as a diplomat and covert operator

http://vulgarmorality.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/books-to-read-franklin-or-the-public-minded-man/

•   https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/benjamin-franklin.html

The article above discusses some of Franklin's contributions to aligning French interests with our own during the revolutionary war.  When trying to answer the question:  "Why did France come so much to our aid?" part of the answer seems to lie with the diplomacy and cunning of Franklin.  Franklin knew how to play the French against the English.  Henry Kissinger would later become famous for a similar skill in playing China and Russia against each other for our strategic benefit.

One particularly interesting episode that is mentioned is an account of how Franklin forged a letter from the Prince of Prussia to a military commander stating that the British would compensate the crown more for a dead soldier than a wounded one.  The letter stated therefore that the commander should let his soldiers die without attention!  This letter was apparently widely circulated among the Prussian troops and led to desertions.  It seems that the pragmatic Franklin learned propaganda from his roots in early US journalism.

Lethal Violence in the US is facilitated by firearms

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/09/mexico-security-1.html

We are a nation that prizes our freedoms, but I think its time to re-evaluate the need to have millions of guns floating around.  I'm not saying that you can't go to the gun-club and shoot, but do you need to have an AK-47 to feel safe?  Automatic or not, these are wartime weapons and should be tightly regulated.

Guns make impulsive killing easy, and lead to crazy rampages when the mentally ill cross paths with a guns-trader.  Every country has violence, but you only need to look at the statistics to see that per capita gun deaths in the US are higher than any of our industrialized peers, and right alongside many developing nations.

The article below discusses this issue in greater length:  The bottom line is that lethal deaths in the US can be avoided by more strictly controlling the tools that people use to kill, that is to say guns.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2004/09/death-by-the-barrel.html

Transparency in accounting

Reviewing a document titled Financial Statement Presentation (DataLine 2010-35) from PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is clear that current accounting methods leave much to be desired.

"existing requirements permit too many alternative presentations and that the information in financial statements is highly aggregated and inconsistently presented..."

This is exactly why I feel that one method should be standardized by all stakeholders (major financial institutions, ratings agencies, and governments) so that stock holders can rest assured that someone in the firm that they own isn't cooking the books.

The report went on to state that recommendations for clarifying financial statements were excepting Non-profits, certain retirement plans and other plans governed by another standard.  I am curious to learn about how Non-profits are structured because as my father pointed out:  Many non-profits seem to be very profitable for the individuals involved.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8646174/Banking-trio-fail-to-meet-accounting-standards-claims-Financial-Reporting-Council.html

Seven Years' War aka The French and Indian War

Here is perhaps where I am most puzzled by the motivations of the French during our revolutionary war.  Britain had backed our protection during the French and Indian War and required more colonial support to continue to protect the 13 colonies.  Yet, less than fifteen years later later, France was on our side, and rather than asserting colonial aspirations of her own, France basically sacrificed blood and treasure on our behalf, presumably to add another adversary to oppose Britain.  Is this then a similar situation as the US supporting Vietnamese "freedom fighters" and a fledgling democracy to oppose the greater influence of China?  It seems that many smaller countries typically become pawns in larger global struggles, but in the case of the US, we had enough talent and geographic distance for long enough to oppose old world influence and our incubation period was a success.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/sfelshin/saintonge/pictures/needham.jpg

http://www.masshist.org/maps/2726_NorthAm/2726_NorthAm.htm#

Revolutionary Assistance

Looking at the events in Libya, its hard not to reflect on the role that other nations play in affecting the outcome of a revolution.  France was a crucial partner in the US revolution against Britain, and the US, and its NATO allies were crucial in the success in the Libyan revolution.  It is interesting to note that revolutions, while filled with messages of self-determination and other such nationalist fervor seem to be as much the product of global power struggles as internal ones. 

General Lafayette

Looking back at the situation in the US around the 1770's I am amazed at the level of support that we received from France.  One thing that I don't understand is why the French were so keen to help us out!  Gen. La Fayette for example came here to fight on our behalf on his own dime and encouraged the French aristocratic class to contribute to our cause.  What was their perceived benefit?  Was is purely altruistic, or were their other motives?

National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films Link

http://web.mit.edu/hml/ncfmf.html

Featuring cool topics such as Hemholtz resonators (I didn't realize this is what you call wind blowing  across a bottle top!) and cavitation (when water boils due to pressure drop).

Demonstration of a Helmholtz Resonator

Discussion of the cavitation number determining when a flow will cavitate