Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

I couldn't resist re-posting this fishing report that I found on a Bay fishing message board:

"----POSTED: 7/03/2009 ... The most unreal day of rockfishing in my life-----

I have to prelude this by telling everyone that this year has been stellar when you talk about catching rockfish. Methods of catching them has varied depending on the locations but most importantly we know for a fact that the rockfish population in the Chesapeake is strong to say the least. Regardless of how many fish we have caught this year, what we experienced on Friday morning takes the cake.

After about a 25 minute boat ride, we got there and had the spot to ourselves. 7:30AM came and I just happened to turn around and scan the bay for signs of fish. Bingo. I saw a few birds working about a mile from our location. Immediately we all agreed to head over and scope out the situation.

What we saw as we got closer to the birds shocked us all and dropped jaws. I thought I had seen a few birds and I was right. What I couldn't see from the distance was a tremendous school of feeding rockfish just tearing up the surface. This school was gigantic and had to be every bit of a half a mile long. The best part was, no one else was around except us. Rockfish were going crazy churning up the water completely surrounding us. They were feeding on what I have always called silversides, little 3" thin semi-transparent baitfish that others may call spearing or bay anchovies.

We started casting surface plugs to them and was averaging 3 or 4 strikes per cast. A fish was guaranteed almost every cast. The most intriguing part about it was that these were not your typical summer schoolie rockfish. They were big and hungry. Almost every one was over 25 inches with some of them over 35. We had our over/under 28" limits for all four of us in 25 minutes.

This is when it really began to get interesting. Typically, when you find fish breaking like this it might last for 35 minutes, an hour if you are really lucky, and then they will disappear deep again. This is what separated this trip into a whole other category. The fish didn't feed for an hour. Not two hours. No these rockfish either really liked what they were eating or the fish gods were smiling over our boat this morning, because this same group of rock fed--nonstop--for get this--SIX HOURS. They were moving really fast and we constantly had to stay on the outboard to keep up with them. After it was all said and done with, we had followed this same school of fish for 23 miles. Totally unreal.

How many rockfish can you catch in six hours of nonstop bailing rock on every cast between four people? I have no idea. We lost count but had a serious conversation afterwards and felt comfortable saying that we easily caught somewhere between 200-300 rock, almost all of which were over 25 inches. None of us could lift our arms over our heads afterwards and I personally was bleeding from almost every appendage. My thumbs were so raw that I couldn't do anything but hold a cold beer for 24 hours to cool the burning.

After about an hour of catching them on topwater I got so freaking tired of dealing with the lovely combination of thrashing boated rockfish and big treble hooks that I had to switch to something with a single hook. I caught them on everything i threw at them, bucktails, spoons, swimbaits...but I settled on a 7" white bass assassin on a jighead as my bait of choice for the rest of the day. They would hit this bait SO HARD that it would take the rod out of your hands if you weren't paying attention. It was amazing seeing all the feeding fish around us. They were literally jumping completely out of the water all around us.

I've caught a lot of rockfish in my few years around, but I've never seen such a huge school of rock, all of such quality size, that fed for so long in one morning without ever disapearing 23 miles across the bay. It was totally unreal and I think may have been the best day I have ever had on the Chesapeake.

JF"

Every day around lunch time I watch my next-door neighbor stumble up to his door drunkenly after his all-night shift. And he is REALLY hammered every time. For example, today, he opened the screen door and started knocking into empty air. I suppose he thought the main door was closed so he just knocked into nothingness.

Today I was doing some painting outside when I heard him cursing and shouting at someone -- maybe to no one in particular. A sure sign that he was plastered. Then I noticed his cab.

The rear bumper was dangling off and dragging the ground and his side view mirror was smashed and dangling by a single wire. As I walked closer, I saw that the entire right side had dents all along it -- an obvious side swipe of another car or a guardrail.

I hope he doesn't kill someone. Maybe I should report him. To all DC residents: perhaps be safe and choose the Muslim cabbies. At least they're teetotalers.

I'm addicted to a show on Animal Planet called Whale Wars that chronicles the high-seas tomfoolery of a "captain" who values the lives of whales more than humans.

The show reveals this raw truth in every episode. In the season opener the captain decides to plow through expansive iceberg fields in pursuit of Japanese whalers even though the ship's hull is not built to withstand ice. He sends two 20-somethings into the hold, allegedly to patch an oncoming breach in the metal hull (like they could actually do anything to stop water of that kind!) The kids nervously watch as the steel creaks and flexes and the paint cracks on the inside from the massive ice chunks trying to send them to Davy Jones' Locker. The entire crew was in real danger of dying, simply because the captain wanted to get to some evil whaling ship so they could throw stink bombs at them -- really, stink bombs. Their main tactic is to throw stink bombs at whaling ships, and nearly die trying.

In last night's show, we again see what a heartless bastard Watson is when he finds that one of the crewmembers from the Japanese whaling ship has fallen overboard. That evening, Watson spots the whaling ships' spotlight looking for their dead shipmate. But no matter -- Watson decides it's time to send out their fleet of fast inflatables to harass them with the nautical equivalent of toilet-papering an enemy's house. Most of the crew is obviously uncomfortable being pissant nuisances while the whaling ship is searching for a dead person, but captain's orders are orders. They suit up and go.

The only reason Watson is able to accomplish such dangerous acts is because he has surrounded himself with the young and the stupid. Some of the young people onboard are genuinely smart but, I think, blinded by their idealism that they're actually saving whales. The stupidest person onboard is certainly Peter Brown, Watson's sycophantic First Mate. We witness his terrible leadership one time when it appears that the scout boat is lost at sea, and he has no idea what to do. One of the younger crew takes over to begin a search pattern and they find the lost boat. Last night Brown ignored satellite images of ice flows because he trusts his own instincts better than "computer screens"; he misses the break in the ice which could have brought them to safety. It's not until the more intelligent younger members of the crew come on watch to save the crew from being crushed by ice.

And all of this brings me to the question of why these people think they're saving the Earth by playing kids' games with massive ships and a big budget in the middle of the most dangerous oceans. Let's be honest with ourselves: in 2009, people support people like Paul Watson because whales are charismatic mega fauna, not because saving the few that are currently hunted is key to saving biodiversity. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there's an international ban on whaling. Whales are beautiful animals and that's why they deserve protection. If whales were small and ugly, no one would give a fuck (or give less of a fuck). Japan kills 1,000 minke and fin whales per year and while there is disagreement, it's not a threat to the species. Even so, Japan should be stopped, but the main thing Watson's adventures do is make good TV. Even Greenpeace agrees with me.

UPDATE: I was wrong about Watson choosing to harass the whalers while they were looking for their dead crewmate. Watson radioed to the whaling ship that he would not harass them and would assist in the search for the dead man. However, the whaling ship radioed back and said they did not require cooperation from "environmental terrorists."

After a year and a half of trying, I finally put a baby in my lady. For all you in your thirties who're thinking about trying to get pregs, don't delay. It's not as easy as you think even for someone with an extrodinarily high sperm count such as myself [breathes on fingernails, brushes them on shirt]. As far as I know, pregnant women who're over 35 are considered high risk pregnancies.

I'm logging a mental list of all the things people say I am not going to be able to do after I have a kid. Then, I'm going to go through that list and check them off after I do them. I mean, come on, I can just bungie-cord the stroller to the mast and sail the seas like before. That's no issue as far as I'm concerned.

And I vow to talk on and on ad nauseam about babies and parenting around people who don't have kids. Childless people LOVE that.

One of the first people I looked up to and thought was a cool dude was my grandfather. As a kid I remember wishing I was more like him: bony hands, spots on his arms, always concerned about getting sunburned, loving fishing, taking me fishing, telling stories about being in the Navy -- the skinny red-headed guy who had fight in him down to the end (1997).

This may not sound becoming, but a year after his wife of 60 years died, he had some rough spots. The story goes that my mom found him alone in his Norfolk Virginia home with empty cans of Coors Light strewn about, passed out on the couch (he'd only been a moderate drinker). At the time, that was hard to hear, but now I think that was the best course of action for him to take. When his lady died, it was rough for the old man. Why not show some sympathy and say, hey, he at least deserved to get blotto one last time before the nursing home.

On the subject of getting old, you have to admit, one of the worst clichés in the universe is "Life is Short." God damn, it is NOT. I can prove it.

I am 35 years old and feel like I've been living for-fucking-ever. How many animals on the Earth can claim to have been around 35 years? It's amazing to think that I will likely continue to live for as long as I have already been living. You follow me here? My life is probably not even half over, if statistics are correct.

Here's another part: I've already got the old-guy habits and tastes down pat. Scotch? Like it. Classic cars? Got one. Old sailboats? Love 'em forever. Now all I need is golf, but I have no one to go with, despite having some of the best courses close by ... Derek?

For the first time, I bought a DC fishing license. I'm now determined to catch fish in some of the nastiest, most polluted urban waters in your nation's capital. The main fish that can survive in that type of water is the giant cockroach of fishes -- the carp.

This fish tastes disgusting so no one eats them -- always catch and release -- so they grow to be HUGE, like the one pictured caught in the Tidal Basin in sight of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

But damn, it's hard to catch these beasts because they're so wily and smart. Check out the elaborate carp rig I have to figure out how to put together. Note that the bait is not even supposed to be on the actual hook! WTF?



Apparently, carp are so smart that they can sense that there's a hook in the bait and won't take it. You're supposed to suspend the bait above the hook so they chew it and suck the hook in accidentally. I've been fishing since I was three years old and have never heard of a fish doing this or a rig like the one above. This is going to be a challenge.

I've found a spot on Rock Creek where I've seen big carp and have sat for a couple hours without catching a one. But I am determined to get one before winter.

I took a neighbor's boyfriend out sailing Sunday after he'd asked me to take him on several occasions, and he complained the entire time like a little dickwad. From this experience, I've compiled a short list of DON'Ts in case you happen to sail with me. These should be no-brainers, but some people have no social skills (maybe that's why "some people" have been divorced ... thrice).

1 - DON'T keep musing to everyone onboard how you can't believe that you hate being on the water this much, especially after I've given a few subtle reminders (FOUR TIMES) that "that's the last comment I wanna hear about this." Just because I'm smiling when I say that, doesn't mean I'm joking.

2 - DON'T continually make stupid jokes about how slow sailboats move. We are all aware that sailboats go considerably slower than stinkpots (motorboats). That doesn't take a masters degree in physics to understand.

3 - DON'T make anti-sailboat comments more than twice. You get two, but that's it. Yes, the rivalry between sailors and stinkpotters has a long history and has been well-catalogued on this blog. And it really is funny, but these jokey conversations are best had on land; at sea, they're just annoying -- especially after the 10th joke about how much my sailboat sucks to you. Fuck off. Really.

4 - DON'T continually spout off about how you cannot understand why anyone would want to spend the day on a boat. Why the fuck are you even here if you didn't "understand" that simple-to-understand phenomenon?

5 - DON'T pretend you don't know why some aspect of sailing is occuring -- like when the boat heels (leans) -- just so you can in turn make some snide comment that what's happening doesn't meet your standards or is annoying/ridiculous to you and would NEVER happen on a motorboat.

In short, you should treat someone's boat like it's their house. I would never come to your house and complain about your choice of paint or furniture or location to your face. That's rude. I've been on motorboats and had a great time, even though I would've rather been sailing. But to remind the owner of your disapproval multiple times makes you a huge asshole. Shouldn't that be common sense?

I'm not sure who's worse -- complainers or doomsayers. Perhaps the former.

After $2.5 billion dollars spent, the government finally figured out what I've been saying for a while:

"Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.

'You expect scientific thinking' at a federal science agency, said R. Barker Bausell, author of 'Snake Oil Science' and a research methods expert at the University of Maryland, one of the agency's top-funded research sites. 'It's become politically correct to investigate nonsense.'"

This news makes me feel happy while being angry at the same time. Generally speaking, people who advocate pseudoscience like all those frauds falling under the rubric of "alternative medicine" can go fuck themselves. All the crap you've been dicking us about is now officially bullshit. At least we can get back to the scientific method instead of messing around with kid's games.

I like giving stinkpot drivers hell on this blog because I'm on the cooler side of the boating set. The uncool side merely pushes a throttle stick forward, moves fast at high expense and speed from point A to point B, anchors, does nothing except get drunk and lie around, gets bored, then turns a key to go back home in 10 minutes -- loud-as-shit motor. It's easy and any dummy can do it.

But to sail a boat over 20 feet takes training, time, dedication, practice, lots of mistakes, near death experiences, bruises, blood (really), some muscle-work (feels like going to a gym sometimes), danger, old-school techniques, getting wet, cold, and when it's done, and you're close to mastering it, the best part -- pride. This is something most stinkpotters will never understand (ok, I can't fault them for wanting to lie around and get drunk on a boat, but you see my point: I WORK to get to that. They don't.)

And now that I've obtained a 1960 MGA from my friend Dan while he's working at the US embassy in Rome, I'm realizing that what he said was correct: stinkpots are to sailboats what regular ("reliable") cars are to antique cars.

When in high school I owned an 1966 GTO and a 1972 Cutlass so I remember what owning an old car was like, but it's been over a decade. Man, that smell -- that SMELL -- of an old car brings me back to those days.

And it's not the type of car any ole person can just plop into, turn the key, and go. For this 50-year-old vehicle, you need training -- even for the finicky-ass, mother-fucking stick shift -- and it helps tremendously if you've actually gotten your hands blackened while working on it to the point where the black spots only wear off with time -- often over a week. I have. And I feel like I earned my right to drive this sonuvabitchuvacar.

I always keep in mind that driving and maintaining this relic from the late 1950s takes some Fonzie-style intuition -- the kind of skills where you have to knock the thing just so with your fist or elbow, with the right amount of swagger and confidence, so things work and run correctly. Unfortunately, these are not my strong points; I try, giving it my best, but often fail at this intuition with cars and sailboats and houses all the same. Oh well.

Here are some similarities between owning an old sailboat and owning an antique car: 1) the wife likes it less than I do; 2) the wife sometimes gets worried, too hot, and uncomfortable while riding in it (while I'm having a fucking blast); 3) I need to keep an entire tool set, flashlight, and three fire extinguishers in it at all times; 4) When I get in the cockpit (or driver's seat) to take a trip, I am aware that there is a decent chance that I will have to pay someone to tow me back home; 5) I'm constantly thinking about where that dripping liquid is coming from, what color the liquid is, and how much time I'll have to spend replacing that liquid; 6) I have to put on sunscreen before I go out in it; 7) my full attention is needed to drive it; 8) old guys like it.

As an adjunct to that last point, I'll add one thing that's different from a sailboat, at least as far as public reactions go: black dudes, latino dudes, old white guys, and kids -- in that order -- seem to like the MGA more than any other group, whereas with sailboats, the interest is mainly white folks (male and female) from the ages of 34 to 90.

The BEST was when I drove up to Dad's house in Gaithersburg. My Dad's 80-year-old neighbor came ambling out after I parked the MGA in the driveway. His eyes were wide while he looked at this old-ass car I'd brought over --- running his fingers over the vinyl interior and fenders, talking and asking questions about it. He said he had a car like this in 1957. It made me feel great to then ask, "Wanna go for a ride?"

We drove down Needwood Road past the golf course, past Montgomery County's lush trees under a blue sky with some cotton clouds overhead. I drove this old guy 30 miles-per-hour and we didn't care if the car was old and unreliable. I looked over and the old man had a slight smile on his face, sitting silent. I think I made his day driving around in this 1960 car for 10 minutes. His wife said so. That one trip made all the hassle with this car worth it. I've had instances like that sailing a hundred times.

I bought a new camera so I was able to load my annual sailing photos. Here's the slideshow.

I described the places we went and what we did in these photos in a separate post, so I'm not going to re-tell it here. I will, however, give a recommendation for the new camera I just bought.

I got this camera and if you're considering buying a point-and-shoot, you should buy that Panasonic Lumix for the following reason: my wife works at National Geographic and knows people who work with the N.G. Photo Camp. Apparently, the Photo Camp photographers all use that Panasonic as their cheaper camera.

I just got it yesterday. It seems damn easy to use, not expensive ($249) and takes excellent photos.

In about 20 days, I will have been writing this blog for five years. I need to give myself a kick in the butt to crank out more posts.

We've been taking this trip for seven years in a row now. Jason uploaded his photos online which you can see here.

Sadly, we were not able to crossbow any cownosed rays, but we did catch a 25-inch rockfish, which you see at right.

The high-fives I'm giving in the first photo was taken right after we landed the fish. I'll post my own photos later, when I buy a new camera that can take the old (full) memory cards. I dropped my old camera in the saltwater and it's now dead.

Pictures from last year's trip are here.

Well, well, well, it looks like our recession is coming to a close in the foreseeable future, according to a survey of the National Association for Business Economists. If it's correct, this recession will have lasted -- gasp -- just under two years.

God damn, I can't stand doomsayers. This crisis really exposed them for the weakling, cowardly, ideologically-driven USA-hating ninnies that they truly are. The biggest D's are the libertarians.

The worst offender was that Captain Douchebag Jerome Schrift (or was is Peter Sift? Jeremey Shaft? I can't recall. Whatever, history will never remember his name). Do you remember this fuckface doomsayer? He'd be on Bloomberg every other night telling everyone to abandon the dollar because its imminent collapse was nigh. He was economic advisor to the Ron Paul campaign --- likely another name no one will remember in 20 years.

And these libertarians actually believe the words coming out of their mouths. The other day, a libertarian wrote this to me in an email:

"The Great Depression -- it wasn't market forces that causes it, it was the Fed and Hoover and Roosevelt's policies, which are similar to Obama's today."

This is part libertarian fantasy, and part correct, but not for the reasons proposed. It truly was the Fed that made the crisis worse --- by contracting the money supply rather than a (Keynesian) expansion of it like Bernanke has done. What's been done in the past year is called "learning from history".

This recession will last just short of two years, very likely, when a year ago there was a chorus of doomsayers saying it would be worse than the Great Depression. Please. If it were up to libertarians, we'd drag on for 10 years with collapsing prices and 25% unemployment to let the "wonders of the free market" do their precious work.

I have no time for fearful people with nothing positive to say and no honest workable solutions to large problems. Libertarians need to get out of the way and stick to wankfests at the Cato Institute while us Keynesians roll up our sleeves and get the economy moving again --- in less than two years, thank you very much.

I know everyone is supposed to believe that the ocean's fisheries are on the brink of total collapse, but I follow a blog written by a guy who's on day 765 of a 1,000-day worldwide sail, and today he wrote this from the South Atlantic:

"For 12 days straight the sea has been full of small tuna, constantly from dawn 'till dusk, feeding on tiny flying fish. Often fish will follow the schooner, but these are in every direction as far as the eye can see and through the underwater window. Since the tuna are everywhere and not just with me, it leads me to believe that the sea for almost 1,000 miles is full of tuna and flying fish! I have seen schools of fish pass, but never thick across the sea for weeks on end. This is a good sign and gives us hope for the life in the sea."

Yes, yes, I still believe most of the doom and gloom about the ocean's fish stocks, but stories like the one above make me wonder. Maybe there are just way more fish far out at sea, while the fish that used to be close to land are nearly depleted. Wait, that can't be right: Chesapeake Bay Foundation reported that for 2008 striped bass were present in the Bay at levels close to that during Captain John Smith's time in 1609.

I suppose it's always good to be a bit skeptical of environmental doomsayers, especially about something as vast as the world's oceans. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for the power of anecdotes over established science.

I anchored my sailboat over the weekend at the very tip of that sandy point to the left-hand side in this picture. -->

It's La Trappe Creek, located in the Chesapeake Bay. This is a rare anchorage for the mighty Chesapeake because the water stays deep right up to the land. We pulled my sailboat 12 feet from the sand and anchored, despite my boat's draft of 4.5 feet. It was COOL.

We set the hook in the pitch blackness, bleary-eyed and pissy with one another. Sailing at night to get to a place like La Trappe is a real effort -- especially if, like me, you like to keep the beers slowly flowing and the cigarettes slowly smoldering. Mixed with tiredness, these activities put a significant strain on the mind and body (in a good way though). Now, if I were a cocky person, I'd quote Sir Francis Chichester and give myself a pat on the back right here.

"Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk". -- Sir Francis Chichester

But I'm not a cocky person and I've never considered myself a "really good sailor", so I'm not with Chichester on that one. However, we had been sailing for hours and hours through the blackest pitch blackness, often wondering if we were going to run aground, straining to keep our dry eyes open to avoid crashing into unlit concrete marker bouys, trying to figure out which of the myriad tiny blinking red and green lights in the distance was the one we wanted, while the boat shook and rolled and the brass lanterns clinked and flickered in the humid salty darkness -- all that pushed the nerves, to say the least.

After I made the damn-fool mistake of trying to anchor too near the channel with too little depth and nearly being plowed over by fucking Rodney Dangerfield in his you-scratched-my-anchor stinkpot, my observant crew made the excellent suggestion to anchor off that beautiful point in the above aerial photo. Thank god we did.

The next morning, after grilling up the 25" rockfish I'd caught the previous day, we noticed a seaplane flying close overhead. I've seriously never seen a seaplane in all my Chesapeake days, but here was one right overhead and it appeared to be coming in to land. With all our eyes affixed on it, that seaplane set its pontoons onto the water about a hundreds yards from us. My gregarious first mate Colin, of course, ran over to chat.

After 15 minutes, the seaplane started the motors and off it went, back into the air and over the horizon. Colin came trudging back to the boat and said the guy had just landed his plane so he could take a piss behind a tree. Man, this is one of those things you don't think about occurring -- that some pilot would've forgotten his empty Gatorade bottle and had to land a seaplane on a body of water to relieve himself.

La Trappe Creek is an awesome anchorage, but summer weekends turn into a hardcore redneck/stinkpot extravaganza as the afternoon and evening progress. (I like rednecks most of the time so I can use that word). Man, the funny-ass things Bay 'necks do! I witnessed here a massive 11-boat raft-up and teenagers flirting, drinking and sucking face with one another in small boats with motors that were so high-horsepower that the sterns were close to swamping. Later, they fired up a big-ass bonfire and hooted and hollered late into the night. Also, one boat put on an ad hoc fireworks display, interspersed with a chorus of surrounding boats honking airhorns in loud approval of the show (ok, I honked too).

I recommend La Trappe Creek as high as I can. It's a damn nice place to spend Memorial Day weekend -- at least if you're flying in an airplane and have to take a piss real bad.

(Photo credit)

Every once in a while I'm reminded that many people in Baltimore have a strong, usually negative, opinion of my city, Washington DC. The strange part is that people who live in DC either hardly remember that Baltimore exists or they really like the city.

This is why I call it "unrequited" because while people who live in Baltimore seem to spend quality time fretting about and consciously disliking DC, we hardly even realize it's going on.

I suppose this is like the rivalry between Cambodia and Thailand. People in Cambodia HATE Thais, while the Thais generally react with a proverbial pat on the head and an, "Aw, isn't that cute."

That reminds me, I need to get up to Baltimore soon. I miss it no matter what it thinks of me.

My friend Colin has been able to chew the top off a beer can for so many years that I take that talent for granted. Sometimes I forget what an honor it is to know someone like this.

Here he is two years ago during my annual guys' sailing trip showing off this awesome skill. The video is grainy, but you can see his technique of tilting the mouth of the can so his left lower canine tooth actually cuts off the entire top as he turns the can. After he's done it looks about like this -- which you can't see in the video.

I've been going to the gym for the past month with my old friend J.C. who's from Venezuela. Since I've known J.C., he's shared stories from his family who are living under the Chavez regime. I am constantly amazed at the authoritarianism that goes on that you never hear about in the USA.

Here are two pieces of commie bullshit that J.C. has mentioned about Venezuela to me in the past week:

1) Venezuelans cannot send their own money out of the country. They are also restricted by a government-imposed spending limit of $2,500 per year when they travel abroad. J.C.'s father, sister and brother sometimes travel to other countries and they have to be strict with keeping all their receipts to avoid fines and government harassment if they exceed the foreign spending quota. J.C.'s father carried a three-ring binder when he recently traveled to Spain so he could keep receipts for things as small as a cup of coffee. Chavez maintains a black list of 600,000 people who are suspected of somehow sending money out of Venezuela.

2) The mayor of Caracas is in the opposition party so Chavez created a pro-Chavez governorship in the Caracas district. This would be like if the mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty, was a Republican, so Obama just decided to create a DC governor out of thin air to reduce Fenty's power.

I've never met a Venezuelan who likes Chavez but a fair share of American lefties who do. Weird how that works.

My first screw-you from Chesapeake stingrays was in 2003 when I was wading from a late-night barbecue back to the boat and stepped on enough big rays that I was knocked off balance.

And now these bastards are posing a dire threat to my precious Bay. From Bay Journal:

"And they can have voracious appetites. Cownose rays are, after all, relatively large. Adult males average about 35 inches in width and weigh about 26 pounds. At one aquaculture project ... a school of cownose rays ate 60,000 oysters in a single night."

60,000!! Those sons of bitches are taking my beloved oysters and destroying the Bay as they go. (Watch this video about the importance of oysters to the health of the Bay). And they're killing the Bay grasses as well:

“If a school of rays come in, the area looks like a bomb field ... There are craters everywhere, and we can see large mats of uprooted grass floating around.”

The problem is that no one wants to eat these beasts. Would you order "Cownose Stingray" from a restaurant menu? People have been trying to develop a local fishery and market for these terrible-tasting monsters to no success. I've heard cownose ray smells noxious when cooked and are bloody as hell when brought onto a boat.

So I'm going to do my small part to improve the health of the Chesapeake: Me and my friends are going to kill as many cownose rays as possible with a bow-and-arrow during my annual sailing trip. The plan is to tie a fishing line and rod to the end of an arrow. We'll then be on the lookout for rays schooling up the Chesapeake a la Captain Quint in Jaws. As soon as one is spotted, we shoot. I plan to try and eat the meat, but if it tastes as terrible as they say, I have no problem killing them and throwing them back as crab food.

This is the moral thing to do. It's not like we're gonna go out and kill spotted owls or spear rockfish.

(Photo credit)

Man oh man, how far we've come. I heard reports in the media that during this year's IMF protests an anarchist group took a break to have vegan cookies and naptime. I googled "vegan cookies anarchist naps" and sure enough anarkismo.net and several others confirmed it:

Saturday April 25

3:00-5:00
West End Neighborhood Library (1101 24th St NW)
Nap time, yoga, and vegan milk and cookies provided by the SDAC. This will give us time to rest up and re-energize after a long day on the barricades. Saturday Night is going to be fun, get rest, you’ll need it!

I can't make fun too hard because I used to be involved in anti-globalization protests back in the 1990s in my more sophomoric days, but man, this is just one more sign of the type of luxury and stability we enjoy in rich countries. Thank god anarchists pose no real threat and do not partake in any real anarchic actions like a long time ago (ok, to be fair, they did break some windows and use some spray paint).

Imagine the vegan-cookie-nappers compared to the anarchists who took part in the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in the late 1800s. Those anarchists threw bombs at police which resulted in a massive riot and four anarchists being put to DEATH. That's when the USA had REAL strife, REAL depressions, and REAL anarchists. Consider that right now our "worst recession since the Great Depression", by most extreme estimates, will last THREE years. Hoo boy! During the Haymarket Affair, they were going through a depression that lasted TWENTY-THREE FUCKING YEARS.

Life is good these days.

Today I honor my number one sailing hero, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. On this day, 40 years ago, Knox-Johnston completed a non-stop, solo circumnavigation of the planet by sailboat -- the first man to do so -- winning the Golden Globe Race in 1969. (Here's his wiki page).

To put that in perspective for non-sailors, even in 2009, only around 300 people have sailed non-stop alone around the world while many multiple thousands have reached the peak of Everest.

After a year at sea, and no radio contact with race HQ for several months, Knox-Johnston was thought to be lost and they were preparing his obituary. Then, out of nowhere, he just showed up in England -- the only race competitor to actually finish the race. He won 5,000 British Pounds as the winner of the race, but donated it to the family of another competitor, Donald Crowhurst, who had committed suicide at sea during the race. The picture above is so great because it shows Knox-Johnston still on board, enjoying his first beer in a year as he sailed up the Thames. What a damn good feeling that must have been.

I met Knox-Johnston two years ago after he'd completed another solo round-the-world race at age 68. Sixty-eight years old! Here's a picture of me and him on that day:



He was spry as hell and I loved the fact that his yacht was the only one in the race sponsored by a brand of whisky. I caught him partaking in some of the free product given to him by the sponsor:



If you haven't read Voyage for Madmen about the race in 1968, and you still call yourself a sailor, I'm not sure I can respect you until you go to Amazon right now and buy it. That book is hands down the best sailing race story ever written.

Why does someone partake in such a feat? Why do people even sail? It's often slow, wet, cold, and takes lots of work. What's the point? One of Knox-Johnston's competitors in the 1968 race, Bernard Moitessier, put it best: "You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all."

Amen.


(More blogs who're also marking April 22 as RKJ Day).

All my conceivable good luck charms were in place for opening day of rockfish season on the Chesapeake but despite my best efforts, I couldn't catch even one god damn rockfish.

What's it take to get the kind of fish I got last year? Do I have to rub my balls on the lures or something?

I got chartreuse parachute lures and decent rods. And as they say on the Bay, "if it ain't chartreuse, it ain't no use."

And man, rockfish received and A+ from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for 2008 -- the only parameter to get such a good score, making them near as plentiful as during Captain John Smith's voyage of 1608.

What's WRONG with me? Yea, maybe it's me. Maybe it's the fact that I only tow 2 rods. Maybe it's because my sailboat is too fast -- six to seven knots.

Anyway, below are my good luck charms on opening day. My lovely wife and two hounds:


Ms. Jessica did not complain that we got no fish, despite me getting her hopes up beforehand:


Rachel took the waves and wind tougher than some men I've seen. A good crew, overall:

My trouble is I don't believe most warnings and advice. This puts me in a position of experimenting way too much; 88% of the time I discover that other people's warnings were indeed true.

And this applies to carp. Everything you've heard about eating carp is true. Ok, it's not the worst meat in the world -- especially masked under a slathering of south-Indian (dot, not a feather) curry gravy -- but it's not a fish I would eat again. The expression you are what you eat couldn't be truer: carp are vegetarians who eat algae, ie, pond scum, and that's exactly how they taste. Stay clear.