Weather Class for Sailors

My son, Joseph Fillingham, will be teaching a class on weather for sailors through the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center. The class will be held on Thursday, February 28th, 2008. He’s posted about it on his web site and you can see more here.

Joe has a degree from the University of Wisconsin in Atmospherics and Oceanography. He has also been sailing the Great Lakes for many years and has been a sailing instructor for several years as well. If you have any interest in sailing and are near Milwaukee, Wisconsin you will want to sit in on this class.

Boat Aground, Surfer Aids in Rescue

I just heard that a sailboat went aground near here this weekend. It was just a few hundred yards from where I was surfing on Saturday. Here’s a link to the local tv coverage WTMJ4 . A local surfer, Alex Guerrero donned his wet suit when he saw the boat and made his way out to help in the rescue.

Alex is a great guy. He also owns his own sail boat. He works for Cramer Marine and I’ve known him for several years. The ironic thing is that I was just talking to Alex’s boss, Gene Cramer on Sunday about how dangerous that very area is to boaters, how I can stand on large boulders with only knee high water over them that are 400 yards or more off shore. Earlier this year I was out in the line up waiting for waves and a large sail boat, a ketch if I remember correctly, was sailing right towards me. It seemed that all of a sudden the skipper must have seen me and he tacked right out into the lake immediately.

The boat that went aground was a boat that had been in the Cramer Marine yard for sometime as the owners worked hard to restore it into sea worthy condition. Their plan was to sail around the world. This may be a picture of the boat before it was in Cramer Marine Chinook 34. I’ll have to check with Gene to be sure if that is the very boat. If it’s not it is a boat that looks just like it. I found it on Cramer Marine’s Chinook owner’s page.

The area where the boat went down is near these coordinates: 43deg 3mins 57 seconds N, 87 degs 51 mins 59 seconds W. It is near what is known as North Point and use to be marked by a light house on the bluff above the point. The light house has been restored as an historical site but is not functional as navigation marker.

Todd

UPDATE 10/31/07 10:00 AM: Joe and I just got back from a surf check and saw the boat. It is hard aground just a few yards north of North Point. It’s on it’s port side in about 3 feet of water facing in shore with a jib still hanked on and partially up. We couldn’t see if the hull had been holed and it didn’t have the look of a lot of water inside. The wind is supposed to back around to the west then north west today as a cold front drops through. This could be good for the wreck, however recovery is going to be very hard. It may be too far in and could eventually end up onshore and cut up. What a sad end that would be.

I probably posted the wrong image in that link above about the very boat. But at least you get an idea of what the boat looks (looked) like.

A sailing picture

Just thought I’d through a picture taken of the Orca last summer. We’re the dark blue hull with my son, Joe, on the bow deck.

That graceful structure in the background is the Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Photo credit should go to Peter Reick.

On My Desk

I’ve got a lot to do today as I will be taking tomorrow off to haul the Orca out of the water for winter storage and I took off a little early yesterday to go surfing with my son. Sailing on the Great Lakes means storing your boat on land during the winter. I also take down the mast, set it on two “A” frames I set up on the boat and cover it all with a huge tarp.

Anyway, I thought I’d just look through one of the piles on my desk to see what’s there.

On top is the December 2007 issue of Fine Woodworking with a couple of book marks I’ve stuck on (I like to use these little post-it sticky tabs as I scan magazines). One is for an article that discusses how to weave Danish cord for a seat. I love the look of a Danish cord seat and have been meaning to explore some ideas for seating based on that. I have a book that describes how to do it but this article has a lot of great pictures. The other article marked is about yet another set up for routing tapered, sliding dovetails which is a great way to hold shelves into the sides of a case for bookcases.

Next I have the December 2007 issue of Woodwork with an article marked that discusses wipe-on finishes and the “unfriendly” labeling many of them have. It’s important to get beyond the front labels and understand something about the chemistry of these finishes.

I also have the November 2007 issue of Dwell with a cover article about green architecture and sustainability. Designer Jennifer Siegal graces the cover as well. From skimming the article about her practice in the magazine she appears to be just my kind of designer, something about “crunchy-granola-meets-industrial-vibe”.

OK, American Style just arrived this morning with an awe inspiring article about the glass artist David Bennet. His use of blown glass and cast bronze in figurative sculpture is great.

I’ve got three or for sheets I printed out of mock-ups for my new web site with penciled in notes. I took a couple of them home to show my wife to get her feedback. Well worth the effort.

And now my copy of “The Yachtsman’s Guide to the Bahamas” originally compiled by Harry Etheridge (1910-1957) with Harry Kline as editor and illustrator. This edition came out in 1970 and was brand new when I got it. The cover is missing now and pages are well thumbed. At the time I was unpaid crew on board a chartered sloop, something about 40 feet long or so, that my captain had contracted to teach sailing and navigation on for the Bahama Sailing School based in Eleuthra. What a summer that was.

Moving on I see the Summer 2007 copy of Epoxyworks from the Gougeon brothers. This is a great little publication full of projects, tips and in depth data about using epoxy.

There’s also a July/August 1995 issue of Wooden Boat with an article marked about making the Six Hour Canoe. Earlier this summer I did a workshop for the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center in which we taught a group of teenage girls a little about boat building by building two 6 Hour Canoes in three sessions. On the fourth session they were able to paddle them around in the inner harbor. Many of these girls, although they live in Milwaukee, had never seen Lake Michigan.

Enough desk top excavation for now. Tomorrow I’ll haul out Orca so I won’t likely be back to blogging until next Monday. Have a great weekend.

Todd

Weekend

Saturday I was able to take a friend I surf with and his girlfriend, whom I’d never met, sailing on our Ranger 26, Orca. What a beautiful afternoon here in Milwaukee. The wind was out of the south south west around 20 knots. We’re on the western shore of Lake Michigan so that put the wind coming off shore which meant very little waves. The sky was clear, the air warm for late October. We reached on reefed main and big genoa north along the shore spotting sites we regularly surf.

After an hour or so the wind veered a little more south and we had to come about and beat back. The wind built some as did the waves and before long we had the occasional wave over the bow. I was a little afraid that one of my guests may get a little sea sick. Usually, that can happen as you’re sitting on a pitching boat, not thinking about much and just staring off into space. Luckily, my friend’s girl friend had taken 2 ginger capsules before coming aboard and my friend was an experienced sailor with little tendency to get sea sick. The ginger capsules worked great and we are able to carry on an animated conversation even as we pitched over ever building waves with the occasional spray off the bow hitting us.

M, my friend’s girl friend, works in internet sales for a large retail corporation and we began discussing my goals of a new web site with online sales capability. T, my friend is a writer and currently works as an editor for a sailing magazine. What a great afternoon we had out on Lake Michigan. We talked about classics, about the internet, about commerce all as the wind grew ever stronger. At one point M asked what kind of furniture I make. I found myself talking about the difference between Louis the IV and Louis the VI styles, about the history of Biedermeier, antique Asian finishes, mid-century modern and my own, organic, Scandinavian-influenced, studio based style. Luckily for M and T the harbor approached fast as we were really smoking along and I had to go up on the fore deck to take down the genny and could not carry on and on about furniture and art.

Sunday I ran into T at one of my favorite surf spots. The wind had built overnight and come more out of the south and we had chest high waves to ride that wrapped in around the sea wall along the north side of the Milwaukee harbor. Just as the wind backed a little to the west the waves cleaned up and offered a good 3 hours of surf. This spot is cool because we’re surfing right along the sea wall and rocks put in to protect the road that runs along the lake front and these both are great places for people to view us surf. Since it was again warm and sunny we had quite the audience. Too bad the waves tended to back off after the initial drop. Nevertheless it seemed that everybody was having fun.