Library

[egon]

A few days ago I ventured into our local library for my weekly supply of reading material and was very pleasantly surprized.

At last word Rumpole of The Old Bailey was residing in hospital after suffering a heart attack in Court. His demise was immently indicated. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Fortunetly he managed to fully recover and resume a career defending one and all in front of The Bill and also recounting one of his more famous early cases. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

All is well. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Well not all; Inspector Morse did suffer from a fatal heart attack. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

Egon

[Pat]

Egon, Morse's seargent soldiers on in his stead but for my $ he is but a pale reflection. I'd rather watch Helen Mirrren do her New Scotland Yard thing, not pose for calanders.

Being a fair distance from the county library they send a "BOOK LADY" once a month to our area and you get to keep the books, audio books, DVD's etc for a month, as many as you like (fron her selection) or you can make specific requests.

I don't read all that much fiction but when I do it is Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, and the like. I can't invest the time because once I pick up a good thriller I am quite likely to only put it down for restroom breaks and snacks (eaten while reading) until the book is finished. Luckily I am still a relatively fast reader so it doesn't take but a few hours. Still, if I were to grab a lot of books I wouldn't get anything else done.

Was the absence of Poirot in your commentary an intended slight or oversight?

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[egon]

Poirot

Ahh yes, the small Belgian Detective with many gray cells and the perfect mustache.

It was a shame to see him " Literary " in his last days. I do miss him but so be it.

Hamish MacBeth of Lockdub on a far Northern Locke in Scotland is also of interest.

Constable Rhea also attracts my attention.

I have read that some authors have a calming influence on the reader. Agatha Christie was one of these.

My usual weekly library trip will result in several magazines and usually six or more books of fiction usually involving detecting or adventure. Our small Library has few books of non fiction that are current and the internet allows more scope.

I have read many books on sailing small craft about the world. Tristan Jones's accounts of voyages and experiences have, but one, made there way through my hands.

Most of Louis La'Mour's paperback novels reside on shelves in our house.

I have always enjoyed reading.

Egon

[Pat]

Egon, I have read exactly one Louis Lamour book, "The Walking Drum" and it is a historical novel that predates knowlege of the western hemisphere, not a shootem up. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend it.

I have seen at least one episode of every BBC production related to the characters you mention, many more of some.

Sailing around the world stories abound but to my taste there is NONE WHATSOEVER to come close to the tale of a single handed circumnavigation by a retired square rigger captain, Joshua Slocum, as chronicled in his book "Sailing Alone Around the World." Of course there are certain honors due him solely because he was the first person to accomplish the feat. As I recall he navigated with a system of "LUNATIONS" and claimed that his "ship's chronometer" was a cheap clock without a minute hand.

If you haven't read Slocum then you are in for a real treat. Some of his accounts of portions of his adventure are almost too funny. Things like going below, changing some of his clothes and coming back on deck carrying a rifle via a different hatch in order to appear to be a different person so as to impress the indians of Tierra del Fuego who were a threat to him that his vessel was well manned and armed. Once at anchor in "indian territory" he emptied a box of carpet tacks on deck before retiring for the night. When the indians surreptitiously borded him at night the fun really got started when their bare feet found the tacks and their jumping about howling in pain just got them more tacks.

I used to read a lot more but just don't seem to have the time with all the other things I'm supposed to be doing.

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[JazzDad]

We aren't reading as much as we used to. (The library is some distance from home.)
I guess you'd say our hobby has become watching movies. We subscribe to one of those services where they send you another as you send one back. We've caught up on some of the better TV series we missed, and some we don't get here in the western hemisphere. We are presently enjoying Foyle's War.

[Pat]

Jazz, I can go through movies likek a fat lady through chocolates. I wondered if one of the movie subscription services would be any good for me. They say there is no limit, take as long as you want or get as many movies as you want BUT... Snail mail being what it is you can't really get many movies in a month can you?

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[egon]

Pat:

The Walking Drum resides on our bookself.

I have not read Slocums book but have heard of the carpet tacks on deck.

Just made the discovery of boatbuilding forums.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Egon, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World" as the best not just the first.

I have read at least 3 true life stories about sinkings and the harrowing survival at sea stories from the family sunk by Orca to the couple sunk by a whale wounded by whalers plus an overturned multihull. I have this to say about sail powered multihulls in general. Don't take them to sea farther than you want to swim back if not in company of potential rescuers.

In physics (and in engineering) there are 3 types of stability known: 1. unstable, 2, conditional stability, and 3. unconditional stability. A properly ballasted keelboat has unconditional stabillity and will self right itself so long as its structural integrity is not compromised. Multi-hulls like cats and tris have conditional stability. Their stability is conditioned upon not exceeding a critical angle of list or heel. Once passed that critical angle the multi hull will then take on the characteristic of unconditional stability. Unfortunatley this condition of unconditional stability only exists with the vessel inverted. Once upside down, there it stays. Some ocean going multi-hulls have been designed with water tight hatches on the bottom and other internal arrangements so as to make the inverted vessel a life raft of sorts.

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[egon]

Thanks Pat. I will see if the local library can order it in. The library is a 5 min. walk away. I beleive I will have read at least two of the others you have mentioned.

Remember the Fastnet race of perhaps 25 or so years ago in which a storm hit and almost all the multihulls became inverted. There were some lives lost.

I've also read ?? Two years before the mast ?? . A recount of a young fellow's experience on square riggers sailing around the Horn during California Gold Rush days.

My sailing forays may be many but all are limited to my imagination. The very little I know is that small boat crossings can be hard cold wet work, cold food and cramped quarters. I tend to think they may also be of a boring nature if one has a well founded vessel and all is going well.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Egon, Let me tell you about sailing. By one wag's definition, sailing is the art of slowly going nowhere at great expense while getting violently ill. A sailboat is a hole in the water lined with expensive maintenance prone materials into which you throw great quantities of money, time, and labor. They say the two happiest days of a boat owners life is: 1. the day they buy the boat, and 2. the day they sell the boat.

I am not an around the world kind of guy. I have sailed from Acapulco to San Diego on a 63 foot Sparkman Stevens wooden racing yawl. We started with the owner and wife plus Nancy and I and finished with the owner, his son, a fellow San Diego Yach Club member, myself, and a crewman off a racing boat on the Manzanillo race needing a ride back home to San Diego.

I have sailed in Hawaii and from Baja to Point Conception and most all the coastal islands in between in Mexicao and the US. Except for the Acapulco to SD trip the longest time away from the dock with my boat was about two weeks or so.

Sailing has also been described as days of boredom broken by random periods of stark terror. Shortly after reading about the couple sunk by a whale I passed a blue whale on a reciprical heading. At the closest approach as we passed the whale was about 6-8 ft away. So close our wide angle couldn't get nearly the whole whale in the picture.

You refer to the book by Richard Henry Dana for whom Dana Point was named (just up the coast from San Diego.) His closest surving kin (attended the unveiling of the Dana statue at the Dana Point harbor) was Al Dana. I worked with a
Al Dana for a couple years. Pipe smoking alcoholic.

They have Dana posed with a hand shielding his eyes and peering into the distance as if looking way out to sea BUT in order to accomodate the tourists that wanted to just drive by the statue and not have to get out of the car, he is lookiing inland not to sea. BALDERDASH!!! The members of the chamber of comerce should be picked to death slowly with a hot dull rusty salty needle (or marlinspike.)

I have been aboard the America's cup racer that brought home the cup to San Diego Yacht Club, had my pix taken standing next to the cup and have been aboard the boat that lost the cup to the Aussies. I didn't do that much formal racing but did have a few fun times in races. I was crewing on the first boat to cross the finish line of the San Diego to Ensenada race after the finish line was closed (we were awared a DNF) The honor came from being ahead of so many larger and tremendously more expensive boats, some with professional crews, that by rights, should have passed us like we were going backwards but somehow didn't work through the night as hard as we did.

Cold food and cramped quarters. huh? What about bunks and clothes that never quite get dry and everything permeated with salt. On our boat we used to carry baby bottles with large slits in the nipples so you could get soup while at the helm without spilliing it or having it diluted with salt spray.

I went to a showing of some old black and white footage taken by a man (then called Capt. Johnson) but who, as a young man, had signed on as crew on a square rigger hauling lumber. I do not recall now if they were rounding the Cape or the Horn but it was magnificent footage. He climbed up the mast with his hand cranked movie camera and the force of the wind pressed him against the mast with such force that it left both hands free to deal with the camera. He had lots of annecdotes to relate of his sailing experiences. Quite a man but unfortunately gone now.

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]