Walk at Ty Grean, Tues 9th November

Our walk on Tuesday, 9th November starts at 2pm from the large parking area at Ty Grean, on the main road (D785) between Pleyber-Christ and Plouneour-Menez. There's a well-signed caf�/bar there. It's a very pleasant rural route, mostly very easy, but be prepared for mud in places after rainy weather. Some uphill stretches, but nothing too strenous, and not too long (about 7kms). Look forward to seeing you there!

November

"November always seemed to me the Norway of the year."

EMILY DICKINSON

Hauling a boat is a ritual that I often try to postpone. When the calendar reaches November, a strain of denial seems to overtake me. I become convinced that there will be plenty of warm days ahead. I try to remind myself of the years when I sailed on Thanksgiving weekend. A few peppers still growing in the garden reinforce this delusion. Unfortunately, the calendar and the thermometer do not lie. Sailors, like aging starlets and men with bad combovers, need to acknowledge the passing of time.



The sail from Noank to the Connecticut River boatyard is an easy one. It is the preparations that are most consuming. I needed to make sure the yard had a dock space available. I also had to make arrangements for getting back to Noank to retrieve my car. Finally I had to dig through my bedroom closet for gloves, a wool hat, and the rest of my winter wardrobe. A gentle autumn day on land can sometimes feel like January just a few miles from the shoreline.



November is lonely on the water. An occasional commercial boat is the only other vessel you may see. The shoreline in the distance seems deserted too. Gone are the crowds that flocked to these beaches just six weeks ago. Waterfront homes that overflowed with guests, look empty and silent. Their awnings and Adirondack chairs have been removed from the lawn. Only an occasional whiff from a fireplace tells you that someone is home. A lighthouse that seemed like a quaint image for artists and tourists in June, becomes a utilitarian navigation aid in November.



November is also a sad month on the water. No matter how enjoyable the time might be, you know the days are numbered. This year is no different, as my day is spent looking back in time, rather than forward. I think of my trip to the Thimble Islands, and a starry night anchored in West Harbor. Any sort of thought to suppress my approaching winter ashore. The seasons of the year have come full circle.



I arrived in Saybrook without a hitch, and made my way to the train station the next morning.

It was a spectacular fall day with sunny skies and temperatures in the 60's. As the train passed through Niantic, Long Island Sound came into full view. There were several boats in the distance, taking advantage of the lovely weather. For a brief moment, I started thinking that I should drive back to Saybrook and take one more sail. There would certainly be enough time, and it would be a shame to waste such a nice day.

Eventually I realized that this would not be possible since I had already removed the sails from the boat. My sailing season was over, and there was no way to delay its inevitable end.



But in spirit, it never ends.

 

This was originally posted in November 2008; but I had no readers then.

Cakewalk V

Who says we can't build things here anymore? This August, Derecktor Shipyard of Bridgeport launched and christened Cakewalk V, the largest private yacht built in the United States since the 1930's. Measuring 281 feet in length, with a beam of nearly 47 feet, the $82 million vessel is the newest toy for Charles Gallagher, a private equity investor from Denver.



With her six decks and massive beam, Cakewalk V might very well be the largest yacht (by volume) ever built in the U.S.. The largest yacht lengthwise was J.P. Morgan�s Corsair IV, a 343-foot steam ship built in the 1930's by Bath Iron Works of Maine.



Derecktor's Mamaroneck shipyard has been a staple of the landscape for years but it is limited in size. Their Bridgeport location opened about a decade ago with the intent of attracting larger projects, both commercial and private. From oil skimmers to large yachts, the drydock here can accommodate vessels up to 4,000 tons.

In October, I  got a zoom lens view of  Cakewalk V from across the channel in Steel Point. After a month of sea trials and outfitting, the crew was busy putting the final touches on her. Within days she was gone; bound for warmer waters to make her world debut at the Ft Lauderdale Boat Show.

Derecktor: Cakewalk V specifications

CT Post: Cakewalk Makes A Splash

Bloomberg Profile: Charles Gallagher

Bloomberg Profile: Gallagher Industries

Derecktor Shipyards



photo credit: (bottom) Derecktor

Route 146

With the fall colors now quickly disappearing, I took a short detour yesterday and drove Route 146 from Branford to Guilford. I have traveled portions of this road before, but it was always with a destination in mind. Yesterday's drive was simply a diversion from the monotony of the interstate.

Leaving Route 1 and its forest of leftover campaign signs, Route 146 winds through an assortment of landscapes, from rocky vistas to wooded marshlands. At times, I would turn onto a side road when the name sounded interesting (Sachems Head Rd, Old Quarry Rd etc), but I never explored too deep before continuing on.

Route 146 is probably my favorite drive along the Connecticut shoreline. But it is not a great "let's film a car commercial here" sort of road. It's too disjointed, too narrow, with causeways that seem prone to flooding. It's not the open road, it's a back road,... traveled by slow pokes like me, listening to Herb Alpert and taking pictures out the car window.

Soundbounder: Shell Beach in Guilford

Soundbounder: Stony Creek

Soundbounder: Chaffinch Island Park

Herb Alpert: Route 101

Map

Lesley's Nature Watch. AUTUMN................

...............SPEAKS FOR ITSELF. Go out there & enjoy!

Royal Palace. Incorporated

This building (right) is the original Longobard royal palace built about 774AD.The corner you see here collapsed probably about 80 years after the palace was built and the discendants of Arechi II built an other residence. Interesting is not the fact that this is extremly rare example of the civic Longobard building but that the persons continue to live in the 2000 years old constructions. More. All Salerno is based on Roman foundation, and the houses were repaired and adopted to the modern uses all the time of existance of the towns, because persons continued to live always inside the town walls. You have to visit Naples to see really extreem solutions in this sense.

Today, I wanted to show you, how antiquity is discovered where nobody could imagine it.

If you walk in the Old Town of Salerno, you can see Roman columns here and there. I even took some shorts once but could not find them now. I always asked what are they doing here, those columns? And they said me: medieval persons liked beauty too and they put these columns here in the streets to make the town more beautiful.Everybody thinks so, probably. But the citizens of the towns were more practical. They did not do such hard work only to put something "beautiful" in their streets. There were reasons for every component. This concept (mine) was proved recently during the renovating of the wall of the house near the column that was near the ex-royal palace (right on the photo).

They found the arcades of the royal palace! From the documents was known that the actual church and excavation site were the end of the palace that continued in the direction of sea and was covered with the pieces of marble from the Roman villas so that it sparkled in the rays of the sun. Now, it's clear that the palace had these splendid arcades too. It had to be really beautiful. The envoy of Charlemage said in 787, he heard about the beauty of this palace but did not wait to see something similar. They said, this envoy was disguised Charlemage that wanted to see Salerno himself. In fact, Charlemage built than a similar palace for him -it is known that that palace was built later than that of Salerno.

 

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Wow... Seriously, Wow!

As you may remember, I recently had to go to San Jose to renew my passport at the American Embassy. I was a bit skeptical because the United States certainly has its share of bureaucracy, and I assumed that if it were surrounded by Costa Rican bureaucracy, it might take me a few years to get a new passport.

However, after 9 days I got an email from the embassy informing me that my passport had arrived and that it was ready to be picked up. Excuse me? 9 (nine) days? Far away, in a foreign land? When it takes upwards of 6-8 weeks to do the same process in the US? Indeed, it was true. I got my new passport this morning:

As you can see, it's the newer "biometric" style of passport, which means that it has the RFID chip embedded in the cover. A more tangible result of the redesign, though, is that I was issued what my friend Annie called the "America: Fuck Yeah!" Passport. This picture above shows the page right above my picture, and it's not terribly subtle. In fact, each of the 52 pages has a different quotation from a "model" American, as well as a picture of some genuine Americana (for example, Mount Rushmore, Cowboys riding around on buffaloes, NASCAR, and lots and lots of freaking eagles).

Don't get me wrong; I consider myself proud of my country, but I do wonder if the sharply increased passport fee might have something to do with this redesign. Plus, this sort of ostentatiousness won't exactly smooth things over or impress the officials at foreign immigration booths. I don't apologize for my dislike of eagles, however. There's just something about them that strikes me as comical, and I crack up every time I see one. Maybe I just side with Ben Franklin in wishing our national bird were a turkey: at least that way we'd be able to be both thankful and patriotic every Thanksgiving.

In any case, all bitching, moaning, and joking aside, I was truly surprised at how fast, efficient, and even polite the staff at the San Jose embassy was (to me, at least, but I can't imagine non-U.S. citizens get such a warm welcome). It literally took about 4 minutes from the time we entered the embassy to the time I had my new passport in my hands. In fact, Angela had to wait longer in line for the women's bathroom. And to celebrate my heritage even more, on our way out of San Jose we stopped at the other American Embassy: Denny's! (Let it never be said that I don't know how to treat my lady right.)

I guess there's only one thing to say about all that: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!