Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Nowhere Else on Earth

It was a stunning setting: the warm afternoon sun was still high above the sheer cliffs that sheltered Maria Island's Riedel Bay from wind and swell, and the incredibly turquoise waters of the Tasman Sea splashed onto the crescent of sand that stretched from our camp all the way south to the towering sea cliffs at the foot of Mt Perpendicular. As I strolled down the deserted beach, my usual anxiety at being camped on such an exposed coast was strangely abscent, and I felt a sense of overpowering contentment ...

I was alone with my beautiful and amazing life partner, in a place of staggering beauty. We had just finished a day of paddling down the spectacular east coast of Maria Island on Tasmania's East Coast - an exposed journey in a sea kayak that had taxed us both physically and mentally. Our trip had required skill, courage, and careful planning ... staying safe relied on lessons learned over a lifetime of adventures. The commitment required to get here was part of why I found this secluded spot so enchanting.

 At that moment, there was literally nowhere else on Earth I would rather be.

I have learned that moments like this are so powerful, so poignant, so moving, that they stay with me forever. In fact, I find some experiences, representing mere fleeting moments, vanishingly short in the context of my lifespan, receive unreasonably large allocations in my memory of my life. The red-point of that sport climb I thought was beyond me, success in style on that mountaineering route that had so scared me, that epic paddle to isles unknown, that remote vista so impossibly beautiful that it can't be real: these experiences never leave me. That afternoon on the Maria Isthmus will surely be one of those moments.
Sometimes life feels like a treasure hunt of euphoric moments. These activities I do and the adventures I chase are clearly pointless from any sensible perspective, but at the same time they are what fills my life with joy and provides me with a sense of purpose. There is always some scheming to be done, some training required, an objective to be worked toward. Always working towards the next big adventure.

I like to think of myself as a bit of a thinking man. Not too deep, mind you, but I do like to think about things. I carefully consider life decisions and always have a goal in mind, I enjoy figuring out how things work, I like creating new things, I like to find fault with conventional wisdom (fertile hunting there!), and resist social norms when they are silly (and sometimes just because it is fun). Consequently, it comes as somewhat of a surprise to me that virtually all of the most powerful memories of my life involve physical adventure. My adventures typically involve equal parts physical and mental challenge, but still, no cerebral accomplishments on my life's CV? I am much closer to the leading edge in my work than my play, but it is the hard-earned mountain peak that sticks with me.
Why is that? A known unknown I expect, and that is OK; it is enough to know that is the way it is. I am a compulsive goal setter, and physical adventure in wild and beautiful places really floats my boat. I can't image a life that isn't full of challenges. Otherwise, what's the point?

Carpe diem. I can't believe I am quoting something I picked up from a Hollywood movie, but nonetheless, words to live by, if, perhaps, not quite literally.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Gram This

I am pretty tech savvy, having made my living, such as it is, in IT for the last 20 years or so. I had a front row seat to the commercial explosion of the Internet, working as a software developer in the early 90s. The Web was cool and I wanted to a part of it – even going so far as founding a dot-com.

But when it comes to technology, I am not always, as it turns out, an early adopter. You see, I am pretty cheap, and buying first versions of consumer electronics is not a good way to optimize the household cash flows. Nor is buying the latest hot product when you're old one works just fine. Following the same logic, I would rather put hot pins in my eyes than buy an Apple product – just the fact they are super trendy and garner the highest profit margins of any legal product devised by man is enough to put me off for good. Yeah, I am a bit of a curmudgeon too.

In addition to being pretty savvy, and pretty cheap, I'm also pretty old, so can be pretty late to the party with whatever is the latest uber hip thing. I resisted Facebook for a long time (and sometimes still rue the day I caved), but now have admit it is great for keeping up with friends and family scattered around the globe. And, OK, it does offer a new and interesting perspective of a news feed.

However, for the longest time I just didn't "get" Twitter. In fact, I still don't get Twitter. What's with the 120 characters thing? Need more than 120 characters? Easy, type it into a Word document, take a picture, and tweet the image of your essay. Twitter is stuffed with such photos. Stupid. Or do eight 118 character tweets in quick succession, which are really just one long tweet. Also stupid.

Much to my annoyance, more and more bloggers in the business/investment world have started do their thing on Twitter. So now I have a Twitter account. But really, it is because this specific community happened to congregate there, and Twitter is just a really awkward way to apply a filter to my news and social feeds -  it has nothing to do with Twitter's technology,  and in fact the technology gets in the way more than it helps, hence all the tweets of pictures of text.

OK, so I've got a Twitter feed for finance, and Crackbook stream for friends and cat videos. But it never ends. I hear Instagram is trending well, and everybody who is anybody is on Snapchat. I definitely do not get Instagram, and don't even get me started on Snapchat. How is Instagram really any different/better than Flickr/Facebook/Twitter? I do not have an Instagram account, but I'm sure the answer is "it's not". Except all the really cool people are there. And apparently dedicating frightening amounts of time and money in the pursuit of the perfect selfie that will "trend" well and get them all sorts of new Instafriends. Can human culture get any sadder?
Shutterstock/Aleksandar Stojkovic
Keeping up with this madness means staggering from one site to another, each with their own special shtick tailored to self-obsessed narcissists (is there any other sort of narcissist?). What goes without saying, but I'll say anyway, is that by the time most of the wannabe hipsters have Gram accounts, all the cool people will have moved on to Vacupost, Narcissite, or Selfies-r-us, which are all seeing their traffic volumes explode. No doubt they'll all be unicorns by next year.

In life, there comes a time when you have to accept that things must change for you, and you can't go back. In my twenties, I avowed to never drink to excess again. In my thirties it was never work to in an office again. In my forties ... well mostly I just skied a lot and didn't bother with life-changing resolutions. So it is high time to put my foot down.

I just say "no" to Instagram and the long line of putrid, vapid, narcissistic, and pointless web-based social pits that are sure to follow.

Gram that!

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Smug Doug Productions “Storm Action” Sail System

In the Antipodean autumn of 2013, after a chance encounter on coral-fringed Kent Island off the north Queensland coast, we hooked up with a fantastic group of sea kayakers in Cairns. They foolishly invited us, virtually sight unseen, to join them on their upcoming epic paddle from Cooktown to Lizard Island.

The trade winds on the north Queensland coast blow pretty reliably, and at times quite strongly, from the southeast. Most paddlers use this to their advantage by doing one-way trips from south to north with sails mounted to the front decks of their yaks.
Sailing to Rattlesnake Island
Taking the old saw “when in Rome ...” to heart, Sandy and I borrowed Pacific Action sails for the trip to Lizard. The very far north Queensland coast is famous for its strong winds, and seeing as our trip had lots of big crossings, we were lucky to have light to moderate winds all the way from Cooktown to the tranquility of the Lizard Island lagoon. We had minimal problems managing the sails in the modest winds, and even managed to the keep our boats slippery side down the whole way.

Having crossed to the Dark Side, there was no turning back – much to our surprise, any delusions about reverting to "pure" paddlers quickly fell by the wayside, as we had to admit kayak sailing could be an awful lot of fun, and added a whole new dimension to the sport. But the fun really starts when the winds push north of 20 knots. We have pretty tippy boats (Prijon Marlins) and being sea kayaks, they are without keel or even dagger-board. The heeling force generated by even a 1 square metre sail can be hard to handle, especially with a lightly loaded boat in heavy seas. And even more for a couple of aged mountaineers recently transplanted from The Frozen North. We have sailed in winds gusting over 30 knots, but it is pretty much hang on for dear life, and once the sail is up, I've got Buckley's of getting it back down without capsizing. At that point, it is clearly a bit too much of a good thing.
Sailing to Lizard. PC:SM
Our sails, made by Pacific Action in Sydney, Australia, are a well made two-masted sail designed specifically for kayaks. The two-masted design works well, allows sailing a moderate amount into the wind, and means you don't have to worry about the boom swinging back and forth clocking you on the side of the head.

I have, however, found there to be a couple weak points in the Pacific Action design:

  1. The shape of the sail puts the widest part of the sail on top, which maximizes the heeling force for a given wind speed.
  2. I find the sail very difficult to pull down in high winds/heavy seas. In hairy conditions I can't let go of the paddle with both hands, and pulling the sail down with one hand is almost impossible. If you do manage to start pulling the sail down, the first thing that typically happens is the sail catches the wind in a more beam wind orientation, thus dramatically increasing the heeling force – and it is time for a cooling dip in the drink.
  3. The sail can not be reefed, so depending on conditions, becomes generally too much to comfortably handle above 15-20 knots, depending on boat and sea conditions.

I like fiddling with my gear and making it better, so I took this as a challenge. I made a couple of key modifications to our sails.

Dedicated sail pull-down line.

I have run an extra line from one mast's mid-point D-shackle through a carabiner clipped to the other mast's D-shackle (acts like a pulley), and then through a cam cleat mounted on the kayak deck just in front of the cockpit. This line is used exclusively to pull the sail down.
Anchor point of pull-down line.
Carabiner "pulley".
Full pull-down including cam cleat.
This pull-down has a few advantages:

  1. When I pull on the line, the first thing that happens is the two masts get pulled together, taking the wind out of the sail. Long before I've got the sail down, most of the heeling force is gone.
  2. As this line doesn't go through an intermediate clip like the trimming line, I have better leverage to pull the sail down quickly.
  3. As this pull-down line runs through the cam cleat, I can easily pull the sail down one-handed. I generally get the sail completely down in 2 to 3 good pulls, and if I need to throw in a brace part way, no problem, I can let go of the pull-down cord and the sail stays partially stowed and mostly not catching the wind.
  4. Once the sail is fully pulled down, the pull-down cord through the cam cleat keeps the sail more-or-less stowed on the deck so if things are really hairy, I can focus on staying upright and wait until I've stopped wetting myself before properly stowing the sail.

A reefable sail

Modification #1 notwithstanding, I find a 1 m2 sail too large to comfortably handle with a beam wind > 15 knots; with > 20-25 knots from any direction, or a confused sea, the odds of a capsize start to become uncomfortably high.

With a key suggestion from a shady character in the paddling world, who goes only by the moniker "Kev Kayaker", I came up with a design to allow the sail to be reefed. It is effectively three sails for the price of one.

The stock “1 square metre” sail is 129cm tall, 22cm wide at the bottom, and 126cm wide at the top; by my calculations it is about 0.95 m2. It slides onto the two masts with sleeves on each side of the sail.

The Smug Doug “reefable” 3-piece sail system is comprised of three separate sails that “stack” onto the masts. The storm sail is 70cm tall which makes it about 0.35 cm2. The sail has full-height (129 cm) sleeves on each side so it slides onto the masts the usual way but the main area of the sail is at the bottom. The sail is secured to the bottom of the masts by a bungee, just like the stock sail.

Storm sail (clear).
The next size up is a sail section 38cm tall which slides onto the masts and “stacks” on top of the storm sail. A horizontal strip of Velcro along the top of the storm sail matches a strip on the bottom of the middle sail that secures the middle sail to the bottom sail. This makes for a sail of about 0.7 m2.
Middle sail.
Middle sail installed.
Finally, the third sail stacks on top of the middle sail in a similar manner to bring the sail area back up the stock 0.95 m2.
Full sail.
After completing the design, I simply handed the drawings off to Sandy and said “Make it so”. With some assistance from Gary at Pacific Action and Mick at Flat Earth Sails, and a few prototypes that gallantly made the ultimate sacrifice, my seamstress skillfully produced some reefable sails.

We have been very happy with the performance of our reefable sails, and haven't used the stock sails since trying out our new ones. Once the wind is 20 knots or better, we find it is considerably less effort to sail with the 0.7 sail (less bracing, easier to keep on track), and we go just as fast (straighter, more efficient track and/or approaching hull speed). The sail area is reduced by about 26%, but it feels like the heeling force is reduced by at least double that – presumably because the sail area is lower, making for less leverage.

If the wind picks up some more, or if the seas are large or messy, we drop down to the 0.3 sail which still works amazingly well in strong winds. The sail area is reduced by about 63%, but again the heeling force is reduced by much, much more than that.


The only drawback to the reefable system is that it does not sail into the wind quite as well as the stock sail. The Velcro joins are much stiffer than the sail fabric, so the sail doesn't fill out to the optimal airfoil shape as well. Also, the smaller the sail, the narrower it is, and the storm sail is too narrow to properly fill out the ideal shape, so again, less optimal sail shape results. But in practice, by the time we're down to the storm sail, we wouldn't have any sail at all if were using the stock 1 m2 sail, so it seems like a pretty fair trade-off.

Overall, these two mods have made a huge difference in our enjoyment of these sails.

I'd like to thank Gary Housley at Pacific Action sail systems who provided a factory “second” sail for our project, and Mick MacRobb at Flat earth kayak sails who sold us some quality sail making materials at a very reasonable price.