Darwin Awards

Saturday was kayak race day! I volunteered my time, and boat, to do communications, logistics, and support for the event.

It was fairly uneventful. This is good. Uneventful means nothing bad happened. That is until the end of the event. More on that later.

What I was doing was simply keeping track of who was where. I tracked the kayaks on the long course - which was 12 miles. The water got really shallow in some places, and the kayaks went through motorboat exclusion zones - so I could not follow them for the whole time.

When the kayaks crossed the ICW channel, I used my boat to "block" the way. The kayaks are hard so see. So I would keep up with them as they crossed the channels. My boat is a lot more visible.

Anyway as the last kayak was finishing, and going into safe water, I hear over the radio that some people had jumped off the bridge. I was right there next to the bridge. The bridge is actually the old Rickenbacker Causeway going to Virginia Key. There used to be a draw bridge there, but the draw bridge was removed decades ago and a high span (60 something feet) was built. There is a lot of boat traffic, so the draw bridge was just not going to work. Also the new span is 4 lanes.

Anyhow the old span is still there - minus the draw bridge part - and is used as a fishing pier.

So I look and see two people in the water. They one was trying to climb up a thin rope that someone was using to keep a bait bucket tied to. The rope was maybe all of 1/8 inch - impossible to climb. And then someone else jumped into the water and started to swim away.

So what the hell is going on here?

Meanwhile, Spider Man has decided he can not climb the rope, so he is now holding onto three thin ropes and people on the bridge are trying to pull him up.

Oh yea, there is a current flowing under the bridge, pulling the people away from the bridge. The water is 8 - 12 feet deep.

So I position my boat under the bridge to see just what the hell is the major malfunction. It turns out they all jumped in "for fun". For fun? OK. Whatever.

I ask if they want to be taken to the beach. One guy (Spider Man) climbs on. The other guy insists on not using the swim platform, climbing up the hard way. The current takes my boat into a piling. No damage is done - but now I am getting fed up. I can not engage the engine because the fucking moron in the water could get chopped up. Meanwhile the idiot is not using the swim platform to get in.

Anyhow, both geniuses manage to get in. So I head out against the current and head to the nearby public beach.

And I find two more people. They are swimming from piling to piling, stopping at each one to rest. But the current is pushing them against the piles.

Barnacles and shit are growing on those things. It is very easy to get cut up.

So I ask them if they want to get in. They say "no, we are going to swim in".

OK enough of this bullshit. I tell them that there is a current that WILL pull them away from the bridge. Nobody is wearing a PFD. They are swimming near things with sharp edges. They can either get in the boat, or get carried away from the bridge by the current. The tide was changing and the current was only going to get stronger. They had to decide to get in or not.

So they opt in. One guy climbs in - the hard way - not using the swim platform. The current is bringing me into the piles again. I can not engage the engine because of the danger from the prop. Nobody seems to understand the concept of the swim platform and swim ladder.

The 4th guy was getting worn out. He could not pull himself out of the water. The boat is now getting really close to the piles.

At this point - I had all I can take. So I tell the other 3 people in the boat to pull their buddy out NOW because the boat was going to hit the piles, and if the swimmer was pinned against the boat and the piles it could kill him. Death by drowning. At the very least, he could be seriously injured. Cut the bullshit and pull him out now.

So they did. And I put the boat in gear and powered away from the bridge again. Then I went by the beach and everyone jumped off and swam into shore. I got them into about 4 feet of water before they went in the water.

2 of them jumped in - HEADFIRST - before I could say they were only in 4 feet of water. The other two looked at me after I said the water was shallow - and dove in also.

Now at this point all I could do was wonder - maybe I should have left those guys in the water. I mean, morons are best at reproducing. They will be able to spread their defective DNA in the gene pool.

If you are going to be stupid, you have to be strong. Maybe I should have just allowed natural selection to do its thing?

Paperwork Day Cometh.

T minus one day. Friday is paperwork day! The good kind of paperwork. The kind of paperwork that signals a return to normal.

See right now I am underway, just not making way. I am like a vessel not under command. Red over red on the masthead lights.

However, all this is about to change. After paperwork day I will be making way again. This is good, for the current situation is not very optimal. But all this is ending, with paperwork day.

New things will begin. And here is the best part - I will be able to predict with great accuracy how much money I get every other week! I will have regular hours like a normal person, and from one day to the next I will know what is going on. I will like this.

So it is time to move on. Go with the flow. Let the wind blow where it wants to. See where the road goes. And so on.

I am really happy about all this. I really want to get paperwork day over with right now! I do not want to wait for Friday. I want to get in the vehicle, go to the designated paperwork filling out location, and get this ball rolling!

The process will be a lot of fun. I get to get fingerprinted! I am an expert at being printed. Every "real" job I have had required fingerprints. In fact, this is how I define what a "real" job is. If you did not have to be fingerprinted for your job - it is not a real job.

I think at this point everyone is laughing at the agencies who do not have my prints, because they are so far out of the loop. The other agencies point and laugh and say "look at the Bureau of Indian Affairs! What a bunch of losers! They do not even have Lazy's prints on file!! They have no idea how useless and outdated they are! Let's pretend we are going to invite them to the grown ups table, then say the invitation must have been lost in the mail!".

So yea, I am looking forward; with great excitement, to getting the process completed and going back to fighting morning and afternoon rush hour traffic. I miss that.

Saturday there is going to be a kayak race. I will be out on the water providing communications, logistics, and support for the event. The race benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of South Florida. I will not be in my kayak, I will be in the 19 footer. Should someone taking part in the event require assistance I will be there in my boat to give em a hand.

Most likely all I will be doing is the communication role. I am assigned to one leg of the event, and I will patrol the area. I will periodically report what I see. If someone is in trouble, I will be there to render aid and call for help if need be.

The Post That Will Never Be

So I had this great rant written, as well as a comment for another blog. I like to read other blogs and comment while I am writing stuff here. Do not ask why, nobody knows. Not even me.

Anyway, I click "publish post" and..........Blogger was updating something. The comment and post were both lost. Oh well. It has happened before, and will probably happen again.

If this were not bad enough, I totally forgot what I had typed. Short term memory loss. I can remember things like Great Slave Lake somewhere in Canada (in the Northwest Territories) is the deepest lake in North America - but not by much. It is less than 100 feet deeper than Crater Lake. See I can remember useless crap like that - for it is firmly in long term memory. But other stuff that is more important is forgotten as quickly as I can spend money at a boat show. Really fast.

What was that chick's name again? Lisa? Linda? I think it was a L name. Or was it a M name? CRAP! No that is not is, I am sure her name is not "crap".

Everyone should just wear a name tag all the time. It would make things easier.

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I got some cool outriggers for my kayak. They are foam floats on metal poles that strap on the hull. The floats have a considerable amount of flotation and should add a decent amount of stability. Maybe this weekend I will put the kayak in the water and attempt to use the sail. This will be a good test for its stability. And if they work - great! I have something I can learn how to sail in. Once I get good with sailing the kayak, I may sign up for sailing school and get into a 25 - 40 foot sailboat. Not to buy it, unless I really am crazy enough to just live on a sailboat. I have it figured out already. I could join the Miami Yacht Club, and then just find a spot in the free anchorage. I could keep the truck at the yacht club for a mere $100 a month. When I need to go on land, just take a dingy to the club and beach it. No problem. The yacht club has showers and stuff.

And what about electricity? Solar and wind. I would have to live off the grid. Dock space with shore power is costly. Very costly. But the sun and wind is free.

Am I nutty enough to do this? Can I still get satellite TV on the boat? Will I have enough electricity generation power? Will I go insane without AC in the summer? And what about internet access? Will people still find ways to knock on my door to share the good news that they are handing out some kind of propaganda? Who knows.

But I am crazy enough to learn how to sail a decent size boat. And then I can rent a sailboat for a weekend when I want to. The sailing schools will rent you stuff once they know you are not going to run their boat into something. A weekend on a 25 - 30 foot sailboat every few months would be cool.

And it all starts with my 16 foot kayak and its small sail.

Kayak

You know what it is time for? A photo post. Why the hell not. It is my blog and I can post whatever crap I want! Do not like it? Get your own blog. Then you can post whatever crap you want. See how that works? Pretty slick.

So I will start things off with my kayak. I have posted about it before. It is pretty cool. Here is what it looks like.

Here you can see it in action, so to speak. Only this is not my kayak. Apparently it belongs to some random chick. Chicks like kayaks it seems. Could this be why I bought the thing? Who knows. It is possible. But anyway, this kayak belongs to some random chick. Or maybe not. I stole this photo from the Hobie website. So maybe the kayak belongs to Hobie and they are just letting some random chick borrow it so they can photograph her using it so that people think chicks like kayaks so they buy one. You think? Now if you look closely, you can see she is not paddling the thing. The paddle is stowed off to the starboard side. That is the right side. She is working the foot pedals and using the rudder to steer. Oh yea and my kayak is yellow. Not red. I figured the yellow would be more visible and reduce the odds of my getting run over by some idiot in a Bayliner. NOTE - I do not know if that last link is a photo of an actual Bayliner or not.

The foot pedals are unique to Hobie kayaks. No other kayaks have them. Using the pedals I can get the boat to hull speed. This is about 5 mph or so. Much faster than I can paddle the thing. And I can keep up any given speed for a longer amount of time. The foot things are cool. Click the animated icon of the fins under the kayak to see how the foot pedal things work.

But that is not all! Oh no. Here is another photo of a kayak that is not mine, but is very similar. Remember mine is yellow not white.

A sail! Yes a sail. Now the dude in this photo does not have to row or pedal or anything. You just hang out and use the rudder to steer. The sail kit is a lot of fun, but in this photo the winds had to be light. Or directly behind the boat. Or the photographer was snapping photos like crazy. Because the kayak is tippy with the sail up. The kayak is...well a kayak. It has a narrow beam. That is what makes it a kayak and not a canoe. The sail tends to push the boat over in one direction. This is known as "heeling over". On a real sailboat this is not a big deal. On a kayak, it is. So you have to lean in the opposite direction or flip over. And when you tack (change directions because you can not sail in a straight line due to the direction the wind is blowing so you take a zig-zag path) you have to coordinate your leaning to match the forces on the sail, or else you flip.

Now of course I figured out what the kayak needs. Outriggers! But sadly there is no easy way to add outriggers to my kayak. The boat was not designed for them. So the sail kit is just something fun to use when I am in the kayak and the breeze is very gentle. Hobie makes an inflatable outrigger kit, but I do not know how well it will work. They are not very big.

So what Hobie needed to do was make the same kayak, with a larger sail, and include twin outriggers that are the length of the kayak itself. This will effectively make the beam much wider so the kayak will not be tippy. And the larger sail will make it go faster. So Hobie made this that I saw at the February boat show.

Now we are talking! This is a sailing kayak! By the way, this kayak is the same yellow as mine. Sadly. my kayak can not be upgraded to this model. I lack the metal inserts that have to be there to deal with the stress created by the outriggers. I can put an insert in the front, but not the back. There is no access hatch in the back. The kayak is made of plastic, not fiberglass. So I can not simply cut a hole, put in the inserts, and then re-glass it. The plastic would be tough to repair once cut.

As you can see, the wind is blowing harder here. One outrigger is totally out of the water. The weight of the outrigger is pulling the kayak in the opposite direction the wind is pushing it. And the other outrigger is in the water, pushing up in the opposite direction the wind is pushing the kayak over. The operator does not have to worry about leaning to compensate here. Just relax and let the wind do its thing.

The sail is self furling. Just pull a rope and the sail mast spins around, furling the sail up. Pull the rope in the other direction, and the sail is deployed. So if you have to move right into the wind and can not tack, furl up the sail and there is minimal wind resistance to paddle or pedal against. The outriggers also fold up against the hull. They are hinged. Excellent design. They really thought of everything. I jumped in the game one boat show too soon.

So I have to eventually sell the old kayak, which is in great shape, and buy this one. But I do not really want to sell the old one. I will have to see what I can work out. I will probably keep both, because I do not know how much I can get by selling the other kayak. It is not very old and is not used that much. It will be two years old in Feb 08. So is it worth selling? I do not know. I will have to see what the financial situation is for next year.