The Walrus and The Carpenter

This is a wonderful poem. We had to share it and hope you will enjoy it!

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright–
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done–
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead–
There were no birds to fly.

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America’s Cup Updates As It Trawls for Viewers

Originally published in the NY Times by June 27, 2012

Two years ago the officials who run the America’s Cup made an important decision: they were going to change professional sailing into a sport that was actually fun to watch.

Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times

A new catamaran being used in America’s Cup World Series in Naples, Italy, in April. New data and graphics will provide television viewers a better sense of the race’s progression during the America’s Cup. Stan Honey, center, has led the innovations in technology for telecasts of America’s Cup races.

This was a big shift for a sport that has traditionally been indifferent to the idea of an audience. But new revenue was needed to help sailing teams struggling to raise the tens of millions of dollars needed to build and sail the boats for the Cup, so the organization decided to chase the broadcast television deals and sponsorships that are the lifeblood of many other sports.

The basic strategy was to add increasing speed and danger to sailing, by using winged catamarans, boats that move much faster, but also capsize easily, and holding races close to shore, where wind patterns are less predictable.

The America’s Cup will get its first chance to test its product with a United States audience this weekend, when a part of the World Series race in Newport, R.I., will be broadcast on NBC. This is the first time a professional sailing race will be shown live on a major American network in 20 years.

Assuming that faster, more dangerous races can generate interest, there is still one major challenge: even sailors acknowledge that their sport can be almost incomprehensible to the naked eye.

Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times

The task of changing this belongs to Stan Honey, whom the America’s Cup hired as its director of technology last spring. Honey has made a career out of creating augmented reality for sports broadcasts. He is best known for the glowing first-down line in football telecasts, and he has also developed glowing hockey pucks for N.H.L. games, the illuminated strike zone for baseball and various graphics for Nascar races.

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John Dillow- An interview

Written by Ashley Sozzi

There just is something about sailing.  Many of us have experienced it.  Someone asks you what it is that draws you back time and time again to the water, and it’s that something you can never seem to grasp in it’s entirety. It’s the pull to step on a sailboat for the first time and have the power to glide across the ocean’s surface.  It’s that same pull that grows into the desire to become a skipper, and master the skills needed to be free as a fish (only much dryer).  It’s the adventure, the challenge, the company of loved ones, and the confidence to know you can handle it when your engine sputters out and you have to sail into your slip in the crowded Berkeley Marina.  Everyone starts his or her journey of falling in love with sailing somewhere, and for John Dillow it was a small amount of time before his 32 years at OCSC began.  So, my friends and fellow sailors, please meet the beloved John Dillow, sailor, math teacher, father, husband, and OCSC instructor since May of 1980.

When and how did you discover your love for sailing?
My wife introduced me to sailing on Lake Tahoe in 1972 in a 13 ft dinghy. After braving huge seas (probably 8 inches) and gale force winds (probably 10 kts), we finally made it back to shore in spite of a rudder that kept falling off. That was pretty exciting, so the next weekend we bought a Hobie 16 and wetsuits. I started reading every book I could find about sailing – learn-to-sail, cruising, and racing. I became enthusiastic about sailing (my wife deemed it obsessed).

What lead you to doing all the blue water sailing you have done?
I love sailing the Bay, but reading about great ocean passages made the Golden Gate seems like a mystical portal to a wondrous world of adventure.

Can you detail for us one of your favorite sailing memories?
I file away favorite memories for each sail I take, so it’s difficult to pick out just one. They keep popping up. Here’s one more *favorite memory*. Being surrounded by 5 whales on the trip to Hawaii in 2010. We were about 400 miles off the California coast. They paced us for about an hour, swimming under and around the boat, and actually turning on their sides to make eye contact. Just before they left, one of the whales slid up along the side the boat (38 foot whale – 40 foot boat = slightly intimidating), blew and covered us all with whale slime. See picture below

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