FlyGirl

Wow... Did about 45 minutes today of autorotation and I am wiped. Autorotation, for those unaware, is the method whereby you "glide" a helicopter if you lose engine power for any reason. Like hovering, there's a lot of things to balance at the same time... In the R22 you have to keep the forward airspeed as close to 65 knots as possible while trying to keep the rotor RPMs in a pretty narrow range (max dev of 5% of max speed) all the while while steering the helicopter -- both translationally via the use of the cyclic as well as controlling the yaw using the tailrotor pedals....

Well, I've been talking and thinking about it for years and finally just decided to go and do it. Had a helicopter lesson last Saturday (2010-06-19). Awesome! 0.8 hours in a Robinson R22. We took off from Palo Alto airport, did some "off-airport operations" (i.e. landed in a field) flew back and did some hovering at KPAO.

Haven't posted in a while, but this was just fun. Went and took a "Which Serenity Character Are You?" test (did I never mention that I *love* Firefly and despise Fox for canceling it?). Well, the answer surprised me, but not a whole helluva lot: Kaylee.

Last Saturday (Aug 15, 2009) we took another sail on Serenity. It was a beautiful day with all kinds of weather --- from cold and 30+ kts winds in the slot, to sunny and hot with less than 5 kts winds behind Tiburon. We must have reefed and unreefed the sail more than 4 times... But regardless of what kind of weather one might like, it was a great day with good people and nice food. :-) The sail track is here.

I sailed on a Seawind 1160 with some friends (co-skippering with my friend Cheryl) on Saturday (8/8/2009) out of Sausalito. It was a great day and my first time going very far north (under the Richmond - San Rafael Bridge). To see the track of the sail click here. We have another sail on the same boat scheduled for this Saturday.

This past Friday, the day after Christmas 2008, I took my first charter out of Sausalito, CA. I chose Zara, a Beneteau 311, for a few reasons -- I had sailed other Beneteaus before and I assumed this would be similar and it was a boat that Cheryl, on of my crew for the day, had never been on. Cheryl has sailed out of Sausalito many times and this allowed her to make comparisons to other boats for me as well as for herself.

Just one week after BareBoat certification, I took it another step. I knew three of the people in the catamaran class (including the instructor who was my instructor for BBC) and so, given how much more fun it is to take classes with people you already know, I decided to take it.

Two more days on the north bay, including quite a wet one on Sunday, and I am now "Cruising Catamaran" certified. This, I believe, now qualifies me for catamaran charter for up to 50 feet.

Well, last weekend I got by Bare Boat Chartering certification which allows me to rent boats up to 50 ft in length.

Lots of people have been making Ron Paul videos and some of them have been quite good. You can see a lot of them here. But, to me, one stands out above the rest. (it was on this page but, unfortunately, it's been removed from YouTube).

Obviously I am not keeping this blog up very often. Of course, it was set up mainly for me to fiddle with how to set up a blog and not because I thought I had much news on a frequent basis that anyone would be interested in.

Ah well...