I like the cut of your jib!

Winter maintenance on the Lady Mayland: 
Halfway through unbending the jib on this cold December morning, I suddenly couldn't find my coffee mug. I wandered the deck, and then the dock.. and then I finally found it.

The task shown in this photo is the unbending (removal) of the jib, which is partially held on by tarred nylon cords tied around metal rings (hanks) that are strung onto the jib stay. The cord is looped though metal grommets on the luff (leading edge) of the sail and then through the metal hanks. To unbend the jib, you just cut away the cord and unfastened the shackles on the head, tack, and clew and try not to let it fall in the water.


After the fall sailing season, the boats are docked over in Fells Point by the main campus for winter maintenance. This involves inspecting, repairing, and stowing the running rigging and sails. There's also scraping, sanding, and painting of anything that needs it. Blocks (pulleys) are disassembled, inspected, and replaced or rebuilt. The engines, two 85hp 4-cyl Cummins diesels, are overhauled and winterized. Did I mention the scraping, sanding, painting? Brightwork (varnish) is touched up, or sometimes redone completely. All standing rigging is inspected, shackles are re-moused, and stays are treated. The list is long and so are the work days. The maintenance period is about three months long and there never seems to enough time to get everything done

Pictured above are some single and double reeved blocks from the Sigsbee, a reconstructed skipjack built with salvaged parts from her namesake. These blocks have had their straps, sheaves, pins, keepers, and beckets removed and tagged. The shells, the wooden housings, are scraped and sanded and are hungry here for painting. The pins and sheaves are cleaned and regreased before reassembly in the shells.

S/V Lady Maryland

The Lady Maryland is a replica Chesapeake Bay pungy schooner. A shallow draft allowed these vessels to carry cargo up and down the bay, which has an average depth of just 21ft. She's painted pink and green, like a watermelon and serves as the flagship for the Living Classrooms' small fleet of educational sailing vessels in the Baltimore Inner Harbor.

Shown here, she is in Chestertown, Maryland in the fall of 2005.

Hiking the Hudson Valley

Took a hike last weekend on the Sugarloaf Hill and Osborn Loop Trail in the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve, one of 180 smaller parks that make up the New York State Park system. It was a little chilly but very pleasant. In the above photo, you can see Highland Falls and the West Point Military Academy in the distance, across the Hudson River.

S/V Sigsbee

Late fall, Sigsbee is prepared for haul-out as John Jay is lowered from its blocks on the strongback davits.

This is Bea

Named after Bea Arthur, Bea does Bea things. She is what some would call flighty and perhaps a little slow. We, however, assume she is running about doing Bea things, taking care business and generally being cute. As this is a full time job for her, we let her be.

I love the shallow DoF (Depth of Field) this 35mm f/2 lens gives me. Fully open at about 1 foot from her face, it gives a focal plane of about 1 inch, which for this was perfect. For a human person it might be a little to shallow. Their, eyes may be sharp, but their ears and nose might be out of focus.

For a given lens at a given focal length, 35mm in this case, there is a plane of focus in which subjects will appear to be 'in focus' or acceptably so. Imagine looking down a long hallway and focusing your camera at an object midway down the hall. That object and anything else in the frame that is in the same plane (parallel to the film plan and perpendicular to the lens axis) will be in focus. Objects behind and in front of that point will fall out of focus. Now imagine taking a group shot of people standing in front of you and all at the same distance from the camera. If you focused on the person in the middle, the people on the left and right should also be in focus for the most part. If however, there were to two rows of people, one behind the other, you may find that by focusing on the person in the middle of the first row will keep the first row in focus, but the back row will be out of focus.

There are two ways to handle this (oversimplified) scenario. The first is to stop the lens down, that is, to put your camera in A(perture Priority) mode and raise the F number. The second is to change the focal length of the lens if it is a zoom lens. Changing the F stop will decrease the amount of light being let into the camera, but will increase the depth of the plane of focus.

For Bea, this would have brought her nose and ears in focus. If you zoomed in your lens, you are changing its focal length which has a similar effect. By controlling the aperture and focal length of your lens you can create images that reflect what you saw in your mind and made you pick up your camera to begin with.

This post was originally written 4 years ago, Bear has since passed, to our great sadness. She was affectionate, and gentle, and weach  miss her very much.

New Job, New View

My new job is very similar to my old job. I develop Drupal websites. We've moved back to City Island, NY with our two cats Gary and Bea. On Monday night, one of our clients, The James Beard Foundation, held its annual awards ceremony at the Lincoln Center. As part of the media for it, the Empire State building was lit a brilliant orange.

From my porch, I took a few photos with my D80 and a 300mm lens. On a sturdy tripod, lowest ISO, and self-timer (no MLU):

My name is Chaz, and I like boats.

Years ago, I used to walk around with an FM3a permanently loaded with TMAX100 everywhere.
This is from the SOWEBO Arts Festival in 2005.



I mean, how can you not love TMAX?

Here is another,
Pride II just in from a sail- the crew was doing some light repair to the jib.