The St. Croix River can be wide and even windy, with clouds sneaking up suddenly from their western perch just above the hilly bluffline on a boater, but I knew not: I’d never been sailing despite having lived in Hudson since 1989.
Then I got hooked up with a subtle sailor who was captain of his own ship, although a small one, half beached or should I say moored just off the dike road.
Hey Joe, let’s go for a ride you won’t forget.
I never knew there was so much to a sailing excursion. My main man was constantly adjusting the sails, towering well above me when doing so, about once a minute on average, to catch the wind right. His ropework was riveting and he seemed to have a version going here of duct tape meets Millennium Falcon. Safely, he assured me.
— The Number Nine is said to represent completeness. As in the CD by Ozzy Osbourne, called Patient No. 9. But all good things must come to conclusion, (and per a concerned friend who is not that astute about social media, rest assurred Ozzy is still alive and kicking, sorta, and can we say the same for Simon Cowell, whom he also said he’d seen, as far as demise?)
So for the ninth annual Alzheimer’s Fundraiser Ride, ending at the GasLite with live music, their was a last-minute change and the tunes were instead supplied by Steve Jacoby, a style-now-catching-on one-man rock band, not the originally slated Motley Crue tribute band Theater of Pain, so cry me a river … Although the hard rock/metal tribute act is an occasional regular, so they’ll likely be back, and catch them then, since they weren’t an actual show come middle of this month. Such things will be announced here.
But to make up that difference, this Saturday, June 22, its the SCVR Rally in the Valley that also features Rough House Rox (your sox off.) Camping is available, as always.
But hats off to The GasLite for putting it out there and saying in advance who will be playing, on places such as this website, and there are not many who will Lay It On The Line like that. And you just might hear that rock song on Saturday. And get ready for another combo motorcycle rally/rock ‘n’ roll show in mid-July. Check back here for details. —
I’d thought in my 16 years with the Hudson Star-Observer, we never covered much the boater culture, even though it was right there in front of us.
Well here we go, and I hope my boat-virgin dearth of knowledge doesn’t show through too much. Or lack of using the right lingo. And no sailor cussing, as this old cuss as my host is a religious man.
But that new wide-eyed look is the point of this post.
And bringing in songs, particularly the twisting-plot ocean journey and after that is The Rime (spelled right) Of The Ancient Mariner, and as you’ve seen I love the sea. But in this epic tale of transport, there are no sea monsters like the catfish at the bottom of the St. Croix, only a righteously vengeful albatross. Killer(s), as per the album.
At the start, there was the question of, once up and around on the Hudson dike … just how do you get on the boat. It was perched about 12 feet off the shoreline, and between was a series of foot-wide rocks at also, a steep angle. He was able to traverse them easily, because of practice I assume, but I was less so. Then making our way over to the boat … It required a very small “skiff,” twisting and turning from when he was steering and when I was left momentarily alone atop the deck. One last turn toward the river, and I somewhat stumbled on, carefully.
At first the boat looked sparse, not a lot up top, except for the immediate front bulkhead-type-thing onto which my host negotiated his footing with ease, although I’d thunk he’d be off-balance. But there was a much bigger compartment below deck, and this would end up being checked out later when a sprinkling of rain came, on the way back, all the way at the end of the trip when past the ritzy suburb of Afton, a place where most people have bigger boats. That’s about 10 miles one way.
But now then, for the here and now …
Some “rigging” done, then we were careening away from the rocky shoreline toward the center of this near lake. Then back in a half circle. Wind again effects?
I didn’t know which way we would go, but because of certain conditions we headed due east back in the direction of what across the ahead road is … a sewage treatment plant? Then we meandered in the clean water around the broad part of the river/lake.
I was surprised at how when the wind hits and is used right, and it seems like you are really getting going, the boat slants to the point where the lip, of its side edge, is almost the height of the top wave’s lapping. I was told not to fear, the chances of it swamping are about like if trekking through … a typical swamp. Still, you can feel the pull as the boat is bent at more than a 10 degree angle. Approaching 15 degrees when you are in the midst of the bigger sections of water. (I’ve often thought that the 20-or-so-degree-grade of a huge hill on a road seemed worse.)
He then described a tale more potentially fateful, a trek worthy of Columbus and maybe that Ancient Mariner who Had No Motor, down toward near the Bahamas. Then around Florida and up around the (Sweet) Carolinas. Looping on the way, the boat needed to hit the also sweet waters of Chicago and toward Alabama too; as everything is about using the breeze, for travel, at 45 degrees when “tacking,” and again that’s from me, a newbie, and might not be the right term? There’d been the mystifying and mysterious Greater All The Way Down The Mississippi Trek, to Southern then Eastward and North Loop around this eastern half (actually one-third?) of the U.S. And the Gulf of Mexico and then Atlantic.
Hey, even locally, the water is often “confused,” and dazed with the brackishness coming and going and you can tell the differences in these sets of breaks from about 20 feet away. So the main sail is the one you need to adjust, obviously, when winding down from the wind. This was the most pronounced time that his lingo shown to be very ship-shape, more then mine.
He went on to verbalize many sailing terms befitting a bordering-on-chaotic guitar solo from a crazed pirate on the dock of the bay; I’ll just stay in my response to him with the safe word of “rigging.” Leave the expansion (redundancy?) to the several-minute solo in Stairway to Heaven, something I’d later find this captain was really after. Or Rime of the Ancient Mariner, weaving several difference segments into a 14-minute song, to also go long.
I thus sloppily mix into our conversation, inserting my own lingo in as story, the fore (the fort we passed at night?) and aft (often), starboard (that above-the-ocean star dogged moon from Iron Maiden?) and port(side-ways term that always is easy to insert), I think, then need to be port-mannered in my minding and when we get to that point, Afton-ishified(?) as dazed from the sun, I make-up words never before seen on the seas. So maybe just say right and left, front and back. As we were all the way south toward Afton, then made an easier turn back the other way than I expected, at a time when we needed to make haste and get back before nightfall, as some other sailors in other ships were already bunked in their beds.
Here, the end of the south-going half (if you discount slight and small deviations) of our journey.
So circle around, again, and in doing so watch the wake, and it was a good thing there was a big bay here. The new quiet was only disrupted by a certain Mr. Hubbard’s great big boat, almost a quarter cruise ship in size with its multiple decks, and my host noted that he knew the actively on-duty chef and his apps.
But still-life it has become, our newfound life. Now just enough wind to chug us along as storm clouds suddenly started to brew, taking the sky away from the hot sun, both fighting to claim the horizon.
Then the rains came, lightly. So I went into the below-deck space built for three down below, and he only ventured above when needing to (for wind’s sake?) It was time for these sailors, old and new, to talk.
This man and I have a love of lyrics, or at least what they (can) convey. And here we go again, spiritually based. And beyond.
He is a Jehovah’s Witness. I am not, although I appreciate some of their points. But meeting of minds? This is one reason we went on this (smaller) journey. And it worked. We discussed long on the way back, as the breezes now had blown out and blew only slightly. We were bringing many topics into our yarn. For my part, I thought I was only blowing smoke.
He went on in several stages about what will await us after this (earthly) death, and what it takes to (being subtle?) get where you want to go after the shift.
But my fave take on “salvation is his task” was this. I love the song Exciter by Judas Priest, with what I think is yet another messiah character. But if you are evil, he will also “burn you to a crisp.” So is this character that wholesome?
One phrase, though a mash-up, from the song is that depending on the life you live, your tongue may taste the wrath of his “thermal lance.” My new captain quickly responded, and elaborated, this term is a direct quote from The Bible, attributed to Jesus himself.
At least I myself find that interesting, even if trivial.
Just the waters themselves are more enduring.
Now more to hunting, not fishing.
Is this like having the attack to play guitar at speed-metal pace? With the advent of bumpstock, you’d better hope they all can shoot straight.
I am still trying to take stock of what The Supreme Court ruled on bumpstock.
For those of you out hunting, in a cave, the High Court just decided that a type of back housing for assault guns that can make them fire much more frequently is now legal again. The ban on them has been overturned.
The upshot is that while machine guns continue to be banned, this type of firearm apparatus can now again be bought, based on a suit filed by at least one person who had invested his hard earned pennies, or dollars, to buy them.
A bumpstock, as it is called, is reported to enable a rifle to fire up to 800 shots a minute. That’s a whole lotta bullets that have been given back, or forth. That dreaded machine gun fires at a rate of 950 a minute.
To this non-hunter, that does not seem that significantly different, percentagewise. Why does an average competent, sane person need to fire that fast? For what purpose? If you don’t let up on your staccato (word chosen carefully) right away, you are going to blow every last feather or piece of fur off of what you are shooting at. If you are so bad a shot you need that much quick firepower, better take up golf as a hobby. Even Tim Conway as non-nimble Dorf could shoot straighter and have better command of a weapon! Not to mention thinking between shots.
Of course, there is always an answer. The NRA types sayeth that this supercharged (my word) gun only fires only one bullet per squeeze on the trigger. So you’d have to have a super-athlete’s hands to gain the kind of advantage I’m talking about. You basically have to pull the trigger forward, then let it rest back, then pull forward again as quickly as someone like Eddie Van Halen would pick on a guitar string. And look where he has ended up! In the same status as those in the deadly Vegas shooting who’re among the unfortunate few to be in those added 150.
Rich Justice Clarence Thomas, in writing for the 6-3 conservative majority, said that this amping up of bullets-per-second does not upgrade to machine gun status, “anymore than a lightning-fast trigger finger does.” Hey, this coming from a man who is so adept that he allegedly can spot a genital hair or two from well across an office desk.
In a dissenting brief, it was written, by a woman, that if it quacks like a duck, it is likely … Charles Heston. OK, I took liberties there.
Yes, the poor (apparently not) man who lost out on his bumpstock gun investment is out some shells, or should I say sheckles, and laments it because the thrust of his deal was nixed after the fact. But the inventor himself made out like a bandit. So here is my solution.
Have the poor fellow who is the inventor fork over a couple of bucks per sale he made on this killer of a device, and turn it over to the investor, tit for tat and he’s equal. Yes, this is like a tax after the fact, but you could say that its much the same as having people who were erroneously sent too much on their social security checks pay it back — before these benefits are ended completely. You could in both cases argue that they should have known better, or at least that these were kinda ill-gotten gains. I don’t have the kind of up-front capital required to make or buy such an apparatus, so maybe they should thank their lucky stars for having such wealth to start with, or their chickens before they are shot at if not in the henhouse.
I of course, am being glib. But its about scratching up dough, in the best ways we can. So seriously folks, our country and indeed our world has some hard decisions coming up, and a lot of them come down to forking over the money, by those who have it, to fund things like having more feet on the floor, rather than more guns in the hand.