Not up to it

Sorry there hasn't been any activity here of late - I had neck surgery and I'm just not feeling up to it yet.

Liebster!

Bloggers do it for nothing.

Well, almost all of us do it for nothing.  I certainly do it for nothing anyway.

Well that's not exactly true.  I blog because I get enjoyment from telling stories and from helping others solve problems.

But every so often, something great just falls out of the sky...  in the blogosphere, there is a way that bloggers recognize other bloggers: the Liebster Award.  Like those coupons in the newspaper, it has no cash value (rats!).  But it is a huge honor to receive, because it is bestowed by those who know the business best: your fellow bloggers.

Aside from the awarding of honor to a fellow blogger, one of the purposes of the Liebster Award is to bring recognition to bloggers with small followings - bloggers who have a following less than that which they might deserve.  We certainly fit into that category here.  Well, the "small following" part anyway.

Like most things on the InterTubes, the meme of the Liebster Award has morphed as it was passed from blogger to blogger, thus there are any number of rules associated with it.  This is the set I like and choose to follow.  Except for that nagging and presumably arbitrary "11" part.

Thank you Brian, of Dock Six Chronicles for nominating Small Boat Projects for the Liebster!  But I cannot in good conscience take credit for the award.  This is a community blog - it exists only because of its contributors (over there on the right).  The Liebster belongs to them, not to me.  Because of that, my response is going to be a little unconventional - it will come in two parts.  First, I will answer the questions posed by Brian myself, because I cannot imagine any way to get 35 (if I counted right) folks to agree on answers:

What cruising destinations are on your sailing bucket list?

• BVIs
• Bahamas
• Barkley Sound
• Obviously (or perhaps not...) the first two would involve bareboat charters.

What piece of gear onboard did you purchase in the belief it would be essential, yet has hardly been used?

• A Happy Hooker.  Eolian's bow is a long way above the water.  Hooking the ring on a mooring buoy and then lifting that really heavy chain up high enough to thread a line thru is a task that takes both of us.  After pulling the bronze end off of our boat hook at Fort Flagler State Park, we bought a Happy Hooker thinking that would make it much easier.  But we have not taken a buoy since that event.  Frankly, anchoring is just easier.

What was your longest passage?

• Define "passage". If you mean the longest distance over which the boat was in continuous motion,

What has been your scariest, "I'm gonna die!"  moment?

• We were at the south end of the Strait of Georgia, coming up on a lee shore at Silva Bay in a howling downwind gale.  Jane went forward to douse the sails, but just as she got to the mast, the staysail jibed and its boom knocked her over.  From where I was at the helm, I couldn't see her - my heart was in my mouth because I feared she had been knocked overboard.  Then she stood up, holding her head.
  
  Things like this don't happen on a calm sunny day - they almost always happen at the worst possible moment.  If she had gone overboard, even on her tether, I would have been faced with a man overboard incident while roaring down on a lee shore with the sails still up, singlehanded.  Oh yeah, and the water was lethally cold.
  
  Yeah, it scared the daylights out of me.

What tools do you keep aboard?

• All of 'em.  No, really.  It's a fetish that Jane has to live with, but we have enough tools aboard Eolian to handle just about any eventuality, short of a complete engine rebuild, maybe.  He who dies with the most tools, wins, right?  And besides it is a two-way street: I have to live with Jane's shoes.

What has been your most satisfying sailing accomplishment?

• I think I would award this to out trip to Desolation Sound.  We were off the dock (off any dock) for more than 30 days, a simulated trip to the Marquesas, but without the warm water.  The only thing we ran out of was stowage for garbage.

How has your sailing life changed you?

• We have been sailing since 1972... it is difficult to remember a time before sail. Surely there were changes as a result - was there a time when we did not worry when the winds went above 25 kt?  Certainly there must have been.

Are you sailing your perfect boat?  if not, what would you change?

• For us, Eolian is the perfect boat. She is the fourth boat we have owned, each successively longer (of course), and the ballast in each outweighing the entire previous boat. For the kind of cruising we do, I cannot imagine a boat better suited to us.

Link your most popular blog post.

• As you might expect, this changes over time; the current favorite is this one.

Link your personal favourite blog post.

• To date, there have been 510 posts on this blog, nearly all of 'em by our contributors.  No way am I going to show favortism by singling out one of our authors.  But so that the question doesn't go unanswered, I'll link to one of my favorite posts on a blog that I do write: here.

Now for the second part...

OK all you contributors, here is your challenge.  Please supply at least one nominee, and at least one question that that nominee will have to answer.  You can do this in a comment, or via email (to smallboatprojects at gmail dot com) if you do not want your response to be made public.  I will compile the nominees and pick the top 3-5 (11?) of them, and I will compile the question list from those you supply.  Then I will make a second post with the Liebster response.

OK - it's your turn... you're up.

Not for profit

I run the Small Boat Projects blog as a service to all of you out there.  I get nothing from it, financially or otherwise, other than a feeling of having helped the boating community.

But apparently what we do here has value, real financial value. 

I recently received an email from a promoter in Florida that said in part,

"I've learned real quick that putting together articles is detracting from getting the site where I want it to be prior to launch and am reaching out to boating sites for reprint and link back permission."  

I interpret this statement as, "Creating actual content is getting in the way of my making money.  Please do it for me."

I want you, the voluntary contributors to Small Boat Projects, to know that I formally and explicitly denied this request.  First, because I disagree with it, and second, because it is not my work that is published here, and therefore it is not my permission to give.

Bob
s/v Eolian
Seattle

Moderation

Google is important.

To commercial outfits, Google ranking is crucial.  And one of the things Google uses to rank sites is the number of links to them.  As a consequence, some of the less scrupulous sites pay people (Work from home!  Make $10,000 every month!) to increase the number of links to their sites by posting comments on blogs - any blog at all will do - that contain these links.

Lately, the number of these bogus comments appearing on Small Boat Projects has skyrocketed.  I have always disliked comment moderation, and have held Small Boat Projects as an open site - but sadly, this now must be over. 

I apologize to you, the legitimate readers of this blog for the necessity, but comment moderation is now turned on.

bob

Oops

I apologize - due to insufficient caffination, I had re-scheduled a previously published post for posting again this morning.  I've taken it down (the original is still there) and replaced it with a new one.

bob

Out o' bullets

That's it - I'm out of projects.

The next post here will come when someone contributes one, or when I do one on Eolian...

Blogcation

I'm going to take a break from blogging for a week.

See you again in August!

bob

Credit where credit is due

Part of my falling behind was the woeful and embarrassing failure to keep the "Contributors" tab over there on the right up to date.

I think it is current now.  I hope

Running behind...

I'm running behind this week - sorry

Pot luck

I am flattered with the attention this blog is gathering - apparently this is something you folks out there in the blogosphere want to read about.

But I can't keep it going forever, on my own. There just aren't that many things on Eolian that are bloggable. For this to work out for all of us, everybody needs to contribute - think of this as a pot luck dock party.

Come on now. All of you have a small project of one kind or another that others would be interested in seeing. Contribute to the feast:

• Write it up and send it to SmallBoatProjects at gmail dot com

- or -

• If you have already written it up on a blog somewhere and are willing to share, tell me where in the wide world of the Internet to find it , and I'll come and get it.

- or -

• Give me permission to "mine" your blog for projects. Anybody who is writing a blog about boating has numerous small projects buried in there. I'll ferret them out, if you let me. No, I won't put your content on here without your permission.
  

- or -

• Send me what you have, and I'll do the write-up, with full credit going to you as your project, of course.

Every posting will feature a link to your article (if there is one) and a link to your blog (if you have one). In addition, all contributors will permanently have a link in the "Contributors" box on the right side of the blog. This ought to drive some of the traffic that this site is seeing back to your site. I will not take any recent posts - that way this site will not be in competition with yours. Instead, it will hopefully serve to "reactivate" some of your older posts.

But the most important benefit you'll get is the warm feeling of having helped someone thru a problem - one that you have solved. And we will all be the richer for it.

Pitch in!

Slight Course Correction

After just a short time, I have decided that I need to make a slight change to the approach I have been using here.

In cases where I have been given permission to "mine" others' sites for Small Boat Projects©, oftentimes, the best nuggets of information are not the subject of a posting, but rather are part of a post with a different subject altogether. So - I will change to a stronger editing role, making excerpts from the postings, adding editorial content if required to give context.

As always, every post will contain a link back to the original article and another to the blogs main site.

Hope that's OK.

bob

Introduction

Hello!

Whenever boaters gather, they are frequently proud to share those small additions and modifications to their boats which have made living aboard easier - sometimes far out of proportion to the size of the projects. Books have been published, filled with such ideas - the concept behind this site is similar, but hopefully much more responsive to the boating community, because of the immediacy of the blogosphere, and the ability to communicate with the author or others thru comments.

So, pay it forward: make a contribution that will help your fellow travelers out on the waves. To do that, send your contribution to SmallBoatProjects at gmail dot com. Your contribution will feature a link back to your blog, and contributors will permanently appear in the contributors listing over in the sidebar. If you'd like to make your contribution a "teaser", which provides enough information to interest the reader, but requires him/her to go to your site to get the whole story, please feel free to do just that. Only be sure to provide enough information to make the post here coherent.

If you do not want to take the trouble to do the work, just give me a hint where an old post of yours is, and permission to copy it, and I will do the work.

To get things going, I'll put a couple of my own up here. They have appeared elsewhere, but I don't see that as a detriment - this site should serve as a consolidator - one place to go for neat ideas invented by your fellow boaters. And for contributors, an additional way to drive traffic to your site.

Your turn. GO.