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Boats of Guatemala: Lake Atitlan Launches

The Mayan crew, pounding the boat across Lake Atitlan, just ahead of a storm.

 

(to start of project)

I’ve started on the toe rails, and hope to have progress to report soon, once I get it figured out.

In the meantime, here’s some boat related reporting from our trip to Guatemala. Coming from such a car-centric culture, the widespread use of boats for transportation there was fascinating; not only the extent of it, but the types and their construction, as well. Continue reading “Boats of Guatemala: Lake Atitlan Launches”

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Home Port

Lake Atitlan from Casa del Mundo, after a storm

 

(to start of project)

We’re back.

A couple of times a decade we manage to take a nice trip somewhere. A few years ago it was the northern California coast. This time it was Guatemala, and what an amazing trip it was. A truly stunning landscape that left us literally speechless more than once. Continue reading “Home Port”

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Room With A View

Mirror Pond 

 

(to start of project)

Our house is surrounded by over 300 acres of woods and overgrown hay fields. The land was bought by a big-time developer just days before we moved in, but has laid fallow for almost 30 years. We’ve savored the quiet it provides, a buffer between us and the rest of the world, and it’s a haven for all sorts of wildlife. We frequently take walks there in the evening. Continue reading “Room With A View”

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MASCF Part 3 ~ A Parade of Sail

”Marianne,” one of the Museum’s Log Canoes

 

(to start of project)

How do you get a hundred or so independent-minded skippers to sail their boats in a tight formation in the same general direction for a few miles?

Tell them it’s a race. Continue reading “MASCF Part 3 ~ A Parade of Sail”

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Decked Out and a Swim

Tom supervises the deck operation.

 

(to start of project)

Spent the weekend on more prep work. Though there’s not much to see, a lot got done. Used a round-over bit to take the sharp corners off all the exposed edges on the framing. It’s a small detail, but keeps the wood from splitting and splintering when stuffing gear inside. It also keeps you from getting bit when reaching in to retrieve things. An especially nice touch on grab surfaces, where hands naturally go for carrying or moving a boat. Continue reading “Decked Out and a Swim”

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The Antipode of Autumn

Listening to Peepers, outside in the yard.

 

(to start of project)

I hope you can hear this. The vagaries of computers and the web makes some things uncertain. But if you can, this is what it sounds like here, right now, tonight. Driving home from work late, just after dark, I rolled down the windows just to listen when passing a wet place in the woods, or a farm pond overgrown.

Nothing sounds more like Spring to me than peepers on the first warm night of the year, the same way calls of geese coursing southward overhead on moonlit nights, plaintive and cacophonous, sound like fall. Minstrels announcing the entrance and exit of a very hard season, with a harmonic flourish.

Continue reading “The Antipode of Autumn”

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The Road Ends in Water

Brickyard Point Landing, photo by T

 

(to start of project)

The week following New Year’s was cold – record breaking cold – so it wasn’t the best time to visit the seashore; but that made it a good time to visit family. My folks now live on an island  outside Beaufort, South Carolina, which is about halfway between Savannah and Charleston. When I was growing up we took vacations here every summer, back when the place was still a little wild, so we have a lot of memories scattered around the island. When the last of my siblings left home, my parents sold everything in the suburbs and bought a house there before real estate got crazy. Now my own kids have grown up spending summers there, too, and on lucky occasions like this one our visits overlap with my sister or brother and the girls get to see their cousins. Continue reading “The Road Ends in Water”