Coincidence? I Think Not!

It all began with AWA713. Then (years later, I admit), I bought my first Accord and received at random a license plate on which the letter characters were MLC. Then Ross got his VKK license plate. Now the state of California has finally sent me the plates for my new car: 5RLS868. I want to know how come they left out the D?

Mark Your Calendars

Only 47 days 10 hours 56 minutes until the December 14th release of the 3 hour long King Kong remake!

Race Two

What could be more different? Gray, overcast, drizzly skies where the previous race day was sunny; light (almost no) wind when before there was plenty; and in place of the experienced Kyle, a jib trimmer who, it turned out, would be stepping into a sailboat for the very first time. Still, my lucky hat remained the same; let’s see what it could do for me.

First, the new crew (to introduce him) was Tyler Olmstead, a fellow Aikido student. After working out with him for several years, I knew that he possesses considerable stores of balance, timing, and natural physical ability, so despite his inexperience, I was confident. And by the end of the day, I was not at all disappointed.

We sailed another random-leg course, but because the wind was light, this course was considerably shorter than the first one (a fact that will resonate later in the story). The course meandered here and there through San Diego Bay, and, in an unusual touch, ended right off the Harbor Sailboats dock. This meant leaving the wide bay and traversing relatively narrow passages around the western tip of Harbor Island and then down its northern side.

Unlike the first race, this one decidedly favored a starboard-tack start, and we got the best of it. Midway up the first leg, though, we had a little “crew training” moment, which was enough to allow one boat, skippered by a guy named Dennis Burks, to reach the first mark just before us. That first mark was red 20, quite close to what is at that point the southern bank of the bay (called North Island; go figure). As so often happens, Dennis and I focused on one another, reaching out toward the middle of the bay, and let a third boat sail off on another heading, along North Island, to pass us. That would be our old pal Steve McNally. But before he could go too far on his own, I broke off to cover him while Dennis continued on to the left. The result was that Steve was first to the second mark, I was a close second, and others were farther behind.

Rounding that second mark (red 22, once again in case you have a chart), I managed to turn inside of Steve, and we were neck and neck. From here it was a long dash to the finish, close-hauled most of the way. (There was another mark along the way, but the course to the finish made it almost impossible to miss, so we pretty much ignored it.) At times, I was ahead of Steve; at times, he was ahead of me; and as we focused on one another (do I never learn?), Dennis came up into contention. As we approached that narrow passage around Harbor Island, they were both a bit ahead of me, but I was farther upwind and so narrowly in first.

When, doh! I tacked toward the passage around the tip of Harbor Island and discovered that I had miscalled the lay line. Needing therefore to make two extra tacks, I watched both Steve and then Dennis go by me.

But it wasn’t over yet. Close reaching around the western tip of the island, Steve and Dennis took each other a little wide, and I gained. Then broad reaching down the northern side of the island, I seemed to get my sails set a little better than the others. I didn’t have a chance to catch Steve (who ended up finishing first), but as I approached the finish line, I heard a voice from Dennis’s boat — “Oh no!” — as I came along side him with much better speed. And it ended .... with Dennis about a foot ahead of me. If the race course had been ten yards longer, I would have taken second. But I got an exciting third instead.

And so, with two races down and two to go, it’s McNally with three points, Christie with four, and the next nearest competitor with eight.

As long as we're on the topic of etymology

As long as we're on the topic of etymology:

"'Every man meets his Waterloo at last,' wrote the nineteenth-century American moralist Wendell Phillips, and the phrase has indeed slipped into the English language to imply that there is a fate, an inescapable destiny, awaiting us all." Andrew Roberts, Waterloo: The Battle for Modern Europe (HarperCollins, 2005).

So - the next time you're playing Hearts, think of the three-threes as a matter of morality.

Eat it & have it or Have it & eat it ?

I was net surfing and came across this:


[Q] From Colin Rogers and Alison Braid-Skolski: “We are perplexed by the confusing phrase have your cake and eat it. I have always thought this a common misconception and it should be eat your cake and have it?”

[A] Whoever expected English idioms to be logical? The usual way in which one sees this one is as the negative you can’t have your cake and eat it, expressing the idea that you have to make an either/or choice, that you can’t reconcile two mutually incompatible situations. It would be a little clearer if it were written as you can’t both have your cake and eat it. It would be more obviously the same as the other form if you also rewrote that as you can’t eat your cake and still have it.

Quite why the saying has settled on this form isn’t clear. I learned it as a youth as you can’t eat your cake and have it, too, and there are more examples in my databases that way than in the can’t have your cake and eat it inversion. Those who first used it certainly agreed with your sense of logic. Though presumably rather older, it is first written down in John Heywood’s A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes of 1562: “Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?”. John Keats quoted it as eat your cake and have it at the beginning of his poem On Fame in 1816; Franklin D Roosevelt borrowed it in that form for his State of the Union Address in 1940; a search of nineteenth-century literature shows it to be about twice as common as the other. But a quick Google search shows the have your cake and eat it form is now about ten times as frequent, and all my dictionaries of idioms and proverbs cite it that way.

One of life’s little mysteries, I suppose. But whichever way you say it, you can be sure that it will be understood. So there’s no need to worry much over the logic!

It’s All in the Hat

You know the story. I bought a Harvey Cedars Marina hat, I wore it while taking two firsts on the first day of the Barnegat Light Regatta, I cavalierly gave the hat to Linda and bought a new one, only to have Linda clobber me in every race on the second day of the regatta. Obvious conclusion: I’d given away my luck along with the hat. The new chapeau was a dog.

Well not so fast...

I’ve been crewing quite a bit on Valhalla all the remainder of the summer, but I haven’t had a chance to skipper my own boat until last Saturday; working up in Irvine has prevented me from taking part in the Tuesday evening Capri 22 races. At long last, however, the racing shifted from Tuesdays to Saturdays, and there I was, with Midshipman Krabby Kyle as my able crew (he having found that his usual skipper has his own work-schedule conflicts). And I was wearing my second Harvey Cedars Marina hat. Yeah, my dog was barkin’.

There was a fairly strong breeze more or less out of the south — didn’t have an anemometer handy, but it was enough to raise whitecaps on a deepwater bay and make it something of a challenge to handle a small boat with enough sail area to be easily overpowered.

And on that breezy day we had a “random leg” race, stretching somewhere between 10 to 15 nautical miles around channel buoys in San Diego bay. (From off the eastern half of Harbor Island across the bay to red 20; on to green 15, about halfway between the southern end of Shelter Island and the end of Point Loma; back again to FM 19, off the eastern tip of Harbor Island; down to red 26 on the other side of the San Diego–Coronado Bridge; back to FM19; and then finishing where we started. Just in case you happen to have a chart.)

The start unequivocally favored a port tack, but of the eight boats sailing, only three of us seemed to notice. Of the three, I got the best start (I’m delighted to say), with Jon Miyate above but behind me on the unfavored end of a lee-bow placement, and Steve McNalley alongside but below me. The other five effectively put themselves out of the race at the start. (Although Traci Miller, a Valhalla shipmate skippering one of the starboard-tack starters, did manage to finish in third when all was said and done.) There were a couple of tacks along the way, but at red 20 Kyle and I were in first place.

Then it got interesting. The route from red 20 to green 15 was, for more than a mile, close-hauled on port tack; then (owing to the shape of the bay; our course had been westerly but veered into the south and into the wind) a quick starboard tack and another quick port tack. Along that long port tack, Jon neither gained nor fell behind, but Steve steadily gained, and gained, and gained, and finally got about a boat length ahead and upwind of me. But he took his starboard tack the moment he could, and I split tacks with him, staying on port perhaps five to ten minutes longer. By the time I went over to starboard and he came back onto port, I crossed ten boat lengths ahead of him. We talked later, and neither of us knew why. Maybe I hit a favorable current. Maybe it was my hat.

But anyway, the suspense ends there. Once I rounded the second mark (ahead), almost all the rest of the way was off the wind — beam to broad reach. Perhaps because I pay better attention to the trim of my sails (ask Kyle how often I made him make adjustments; I’d say about every 10 seconds), or have more experience sailing off the wind, or both, I just pulled away from everyone. Really, for your entertainment if for no other reason I wish I could make this more exciting, but I led by a lot at every mark — 10 to 20 lengths ahead of Steve and more than are worth counting ahead of everyone else.

(Yikes! Am I tempting fate! Allow me to remind you that I am an undistinguished technical writer and my Aikido is laughable.)

So, there’s nothing wrong with my hat after all. Of course, that means I can no longer blame it for my loss in the Barnegat Light Regatta. So let me say this: All you Harbor Sailboats racers, if you thought I was tough, just be glad you didn’t have to sail against my sister!