Bob Hunkins dot com

Kathy Goes to Denmark

I had the opportunity to visit Denmark several weeks ago while doing 2 days of equipment testing for my job. I flew into Copenhagen and took a 2 hour train to Odense, home/museum of Hans C Andersen. Highly recommended city to tour.

After Odense, I traveled back to Copenhagen for an afternoon of sightseeing. Of course, a boat tour through the harbour and canals was my first choice. Here's some pictures including the Queen's Palace and the back side of the little mermaid.

Early Sunday morning a cold front passed through our area. I was asleep and was awakened to the sounds of an enormous lightning storm. Blinding flashes of light followed by the loud crash of thunder, as the air, momentarily shoved out of the way by the electrical fluid, collapsed back into the void left created by the static discharge. There were at least three lightning bolts I recall that hit so nearby that the light and sound were nearly simultaneous. Once I'm in bed, not much will get me out, even the alarm clock. Kathy, on the other hand, gets up for a nothing. As I lay in bed, I saw her poking her head out the window which looks out at the street. I said nothing, but just continued to lay there hoping that the storm would soon pass so I could get back to sleep. I guess I don't get worried about thunderstorms when I'm inside the house. I suppose that if lightning did strike, it would probably find an easier path to ground than through me. After a few minutes, a final bolt struck nearby and power went out. "Well," I said, "I guess it will be a few days before we get power back." Kathy made some remarks, perhaps about pessimism, but I was too sleepy to remember. I did lay awake for a while, however, and noticed the temperature in the house begin to rise as the lack of air conditioning and ceiling fan action began to make itself felt. Apparently the cold airmass had not arrived yet, because I found myself sweating underneath the bedsheet. After an hour or so, the power returned, and I fell back asleep.

I didn't think much of the storm the next day except recalling the loud and terrible fury of an atmospheric electrical discharge that occurs within a few hundred feet. I glanced at the flagpole on the pier from the house, remembering the windstorm that toppled it a few months back. Nothing was apparently wrong, so I returned to whatever I was doing.
Sunday was cool and refreshing. A nice change from the normal swelter of August and early September. K. suggested we go watch the sunset from the pier as it was an extraordinarily pretty one. As we approached the end, we saw that one of the lightning bolts had apparently struck the pier. Although the flag mast was unaltered by the experience, the discharge seemed to have travelled through the upper decking at the base of the mast, blasting out a chunk of the wooden 2X6.The charge entered the nearby piling, probably via the steel bolts securing the upper deck. The lightning blew out large splinters from the side of the piling

and continued down toward the water, passing though an old 4x4 timber I had bolted on the base of the piling, shattering it in the process.

We found several large splinters lying on the deck nearby and some were even lodged in the fabric of the rolled up sunshade a few feet away.

One thing that puzzled me for a momnet was the lack of scorching. No burn marks. But then I realized that with the rain it had been wet. Of, course, it wouldn't be likely to burn under those circumstances.

The damage looks worse in the photos than it really is, and the upper deck still seems sound enough to use. I will probably attempt to glue some of the partially attached splinters back into place and try to find some means of replacing some of the lost wood. An investment in a fairly large gage wire to run from the base of the mast to a point near the water would probably also be a good idea, in case another strike occurs.

There goes the neighborhood

Clear Lake, that is. There are not one but two high rises going on on Clear Lake. The first is next to Clear Lake park on NASA Road 1, the second will be further down the road near the Repsdorph intersection next to the (former) Marker 1 marina.

From:
http://www.wiredin.cc/admin/business/Bussiness%20page.htm
"-----Endeavour Parkside has altered plans for their new $55 million, 34-story condominium tower. The 146 units will now be for sale instead of lease. Units from the $300’s with penthouses $1.5 to $3 million will be available, 750 to 3,000 SF. Construction will begin this December; location is in Pasadena next to Clear Lake Park."
and
Sold! Endeavour Holdings, Inc. and Sun Resorts International, Inc. have purchased the Marker 1 Marina in Seabrook and have renamed it Endeavour Marina. The complex is on six acres, has a full-service indoor marina with dry stack storage for 400 powerboats, two banquet rooms accommodating up to 300 people each and 25,000 SF of office/retail space. It’s homeport to the Spirit of Texas Paddle Wheeler. Redevelopment plans include additional wet slips.

http://www.bizjournals.com/bizspace/houston/local_column/?story_id=1291002
"Endeavour and equity partners plan to start construction in December on a second Clear Lake structure 20 stories tall with 125 units initially for lease and later to be converted into condos for sale."

What I don't understand is where the demand for these places are coming from. There are at least two condominiums on Clear Lake already that cannot find enough people to buy into them. The first is Moon Caye Apartments on FM 2094, the second is on NASA road one, I forget the name, but they are just to the West of the Seabrook beach club on Nasa Road 1. I knew someone living at that condo and they said the management were having troubles keeping it maintained because there were so few occupants. Moon Caye has been looking for tenants for at least three years, if not longer. K and I looked there before we bought our house. We were concerned about them not finding enough tenants there either to keep the maintenance costs down.

So now we have two Endeavour properties going in. If they were just going in and were not going to affect the way the winds blow on Clear Lake I wouldn't mind. Indeed, the first tower probably won't do much since it's on the north west side. The second will probably affect the winds from the east.

Gulf Coast Sailing Center on the south side of Clear Lake next to Moon Caye is for sale. This is one of the last places on Clear Lake that someone can launch small boats, and the only place for multihulls like trimarans. They want $2.5 million. It appraises on the tax roles for $145,000. I'm afraid that if it sells it will be turned into another high rise condo. If that happens, you can say so long, farewell, kiss my hand to sailing on Clear Lake. Is that the fate of small boat sailing here? That the available venues are slowly destroyed by development? That soon the only boats here will be the penis boats? Where will the small boats go? LArger ones can usually handle the bay, but even boats like the Stars don't like that chop. If I were fantastically rich, I'd buy GCSC and turn it into a community sailing center. But, alas, I have no head not to say the pocketbook for such things.

Sailing the Whole #@^^! Ocean

I finally sailed from the Texas City Dike to April Fool Point as I had been meaning to do for a while. My friend Jim and I put Lively into the water at the eastern end of the Texas City Dike (29°22.031'N, 94°48.921W) and left at about 3:25pm. About 20 minutes later, we sailed past Half Moon Shoal (29°24'N, 94°50'W) which is now just a set of old piles. In the olden days there was a lighthouse located there. (A replica of it is on display on the shoreline to the west). We had cloudy skies, and winds from the ESE at 10kts. We made a steady 5-1/2 knots average and had top speeds around 8-1/2 knots.

After leaving the dock, we hoisted the spinnaker, we fumbled with it, took it down, fixed the problems, and hoisted it again. Jim seemed a little nervous and said as much, saying something about "...a whore in church." I administered a medicinal Tecate and things proceeded well thereafter. The swells were about 2-3 feet at the most, which is more than you typically see in Clear Lake, or any other lake, (except perhaps a Great Lake.) The boat moved well through the water. Dollar Point passed under our port beam after about an hour. The time seemed to pass much more quickly to both of us and when Dickinson Bay channel passed by it seemed like we ought to just sail on to Redfish Island. So we did, and for the second time in a week I sailed there. As we sailed up the coast of the Peninsula, We saw a lot of PVC pipes sticking out of the water. We couldn't figure out what they were for; they were set up far too regularly to be for fishing. Some of these PVC poles were arranged in a large rectangle that we traversed. It took us a few minutes to cross this rectangle, but we could definitely see the lines the poles were laid out on and even one of the corners of this rectangle.

We passed closest to Eagle Point at about 5:07pm, and continued north to ensure we were clear of any obstructions before making our approach to Redfish. We handed the spinnaker about 5:15pm, and came up on the wind a minute or so later. Sailing closehauled on the starboard tack, we approached the northern end of Redfish island. We tacked onto port to head towards the shell beach nearer the southern end of the island. We passed within no less than 400 feet of a lone fisherman, who for some reason thought we were too close. I only draw 3'9", I make little wake, and I was over a football field length away from him. To hear him complaining in a loud New Yorker accent about sailing here when "We had the whole damn ocean" was annoying and a little upsetting. Neither of us are particularly combative types, and we respect other peoples' space on the water. I know what it's like to be waked by a sport fisherman and I don't appreciate it, so I know to stay a reasonable distance away from other boats that I'm not racing or don't know.

This undeserved rebuke shocked and annoyed me. I was amazed that this individual took exception to our distant presence. I could have understood if I had been within fouling distance of his fishing lines, or had risked a collision, but I wasn't. I think he must have been in a bad mood. Perhaps he hadn't caught anything or had a fight with his wife or something and was out there trying to cool off. Who knows? I do wish I had given him more room if only to avoid being within earshot of his bad attitude.

As it was, we responded to his politeness in a reciprocal fashion and continued on. We landed at the beach at about 5:40pm. We stayed there to watch a couple of tows go up and down the Houston ship channel and departed at 6:20pm, sailing south towards April Fool Point, passing it at 7:05 and arriving home at 7:12pm.

It was fun sailing on the "Whole Damn Ocean". Far more fun, apparently, than fishing on it.

Here's the tracks. I broke them into three files since it was rather large.

Sailing Lively to Redfish Island

I had had enough labor on Labor Day: Doing Homework, flooring a laundry room, and griping about it. I know it doesn't sound like very much but this was a holiday weekend after all and I felt entitled to some fun. So we put Day Sailer Lively that I've been working on this summer into the water at April Fool Point (29°28.3'N, 094°55.6'W) and sailed her to Redfish Island, bearing 36.5°, distance 3.2 nautical miles. Winds were Northeasterly between 5-10 knots according to PORTS( see below).
I managed to get a GPS track of most of the trip, but I'm missing the first part because once again the thing wasn't recording tracks. Luckily I noticed it before we got to Eagle Point where there's a lot of shoals and obstructions. I've been through the pass between Eagle point and Redfish before, the last time was in May.
I've been to Redfish once before, but that was several years ago, and Kathy had never been there. The last time I was there, I hit a few things underwater and had some work to do on my rudder and centerboard as a result. Since I didn't wish to do that again, I decided to take a route I knew was safe. Why go to redfish island? It's not that there's much to see, unless you like seeing a pile of rocks. It's just a place to go. Because it's there.

On the leg up, we were definitely sailing against the current, which makes sense given the high tide was at noon and we set off around 3pm. I stuck close to shore so that I could make it through the gap just off Eagle Point. We arrived at the island after a couple of hours and saw about a half a dozen larger craft anchored there. Many boats go there and the people stay overnight. Most of the boats there when we arrived were powerboats, but there was on large Trimaran and a large sloop. We watched a few ships pass by the island and returned home, setting the spinnaker. Arriving back at April Fool point, we found we had to tack up the marina channel, since the wind had shifted to the north. Three short boards and we were back at the dock. A nice way to end the long weekend.

RIP Steve Irwin

It's funny how living in this world of global communications can make one feel sad about the death of someone you have never met. I admired Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter". Irwin had a passion for his calling, did things his own way and was amazingly effective at spreading the word about preserving wildlife and understanding their behavior. He had a way of getting to you with his enthusiastic banter and theatrics. He came across as daring, at least on camera. Sadly, it seems that he let his guard down. That, combined with some very bad luck allowed a Stingray to get him. It seems so terribly unjust. He's wrestled crocs, handled poisonous snakes with no permanent injury and a stingray gets him? Certainly they are dangerous animals, but how many people are killed by stingrays? What were the chances that the barb would hit him right in the heart? Couldn't it have hit his arm or leg? or the shoulder?

On the other hand, he left this world doing what he loved, which is a better fortune than most of us have. I've never been to Australia, but in the back of my mind I knew that if I had gone, I would have gone to his zoo and hoped to see him. No chance of that now, alas. From what I could tell of his on screen persona, he was an original. God broke the mold after He made Steve Irwin, and now he's no more.

Cheers, Steveo. You made a difference and will be missed.

Update: 09-05-2006 12:43CDT:
Mike Boone has a far better entry on his blog about Steve also. Check it out.