And, I am out of projects... It is time to build my dinghy!

With daily summer rains (and the Sunrise's AC system providing reasonable comfort), I have turned to inside work except for repairing almost constant bicycle flat tires).

The most interesting has been making and selling "Whoopie Slings" on eBay.

7/64" (& larger) Whoopie Slings

I sold several of the yellow slings made out of 7/64" Amsteel Blue (TM). Then, I decided to replace the boat's intermediate lifelines and found a great deal on eBay for 5/32" gray Amsteel Blue ('Blue' refers to a process of adding a UV-resistant colorant to regular Amsteel), which is twice as strong as the smaller, yellow size. By the way, Amsteel, made out of Dyneema by Samson Rope Company, is stronger than equivalently sized steel and lighter than water.

5/32" Whoopie Sling

I started making Whoopie Slings out of the gray rope, and sales came one right after another. I literally finished a sling, put away my tools, and found another order on the computer!
I increased my price to not be so busy, but still got orders until I finally found the not-so-sweet spot of $16/pair where nothing sold. Still, I ended up using most of my rope for slings and had to buy another batch of Amsteel Blue for the lifelines. That is when I found out that the $.23/foot I had paid for the 5/32" was not reproducible. Even 1/8" Amsteel Blue was $35/foot, which meant that a pair of 1/8" Whoopie Slings would cost me $8.40 in materials, allowing me to make about $8/hour at the $16 price, which was not selling (I bought 3/16" Amsteel Blue for the lines at $.75/foot--expensive rope, but a better installation--after all, they are "life lines"). Well, I had to end my eBay auctions when I went up to Tallahassee to help Lisa and Sara get Lisa's house ready for moving in and supporting a new baby.
I relisted the gray slings when I got back, but so far, there have been some lookers, but no sales. I am thinking I might have to add an Amsteel soft shackle to sweeten the sale and maybe charge twenty bucks for the package. It would make a nice cottage industry if I could get the material at a good price.

The most satisfying recent work has been refinishing the cabin floor. I spilled a few drops of paint on it from my cabin paint job, and when I rubbed them out, the rubbing lightened the floor. Plus, there was accumulated discoloration and scratches; finally, I wanted to put some non-skid patches under the ladder to keep it from slipping and figured they would stick better on bare wood (they don't). So, I borrowed Andrew's powerful Milwaukee orbital sander, bought 80 grit, 120 grit, and 150 grit sanding disks, got out my kneeling pad, and went to work. The sanding took one whole afternoon of enormous effort as the sander would buck every time it hit one of the yellow stripes that were higher than the surrounding wood. Also, teak is extremely hard and it ate sanding disks as if I were sanding metal. After the floor was silky smooth following the 150 grit,  I cleaned it thoroughly with a tack cloth, and applied Teak oil. Now, the floor is perfectly clean, smooth to walk on, and a delight to my bare feet.

I hate to say that I am sad to have run out of projects! Perhaps it is time to build my dinghy:

Eastport Nesting Pram

This boat comes as a kit that supposedly takes about a week to put together and probably another week to finish. It is 8' long, but divides into two sections that 'nest' together, allowing it to fit on deck of a small cruiser like the Sunrise.
So far, I have organized the financing and most of the necessary tools. All I need is a place to build it.
Having lost two little boats because of rough sea while towing, I have kind of vowed not to (mostly) tow another dinghy; thus, a rowboat that can fit on deck should be a real winner.

Violence Against Women

The theme of this blog is the adventures of the Sunrise and the Skipper of the Sunrise. Thus, I write about life in Apalachicola on my boat and related happenings (by the way, I found that the starting motor fault on my little car was due to a bad wire that supplied power to the starting circuit--for unknown reasons, it only had half the necessary voltage-- so I just ran a new wire straight from the battery). However, it is not my nature to be isolated from world and domestic events, so I want to make an explicit comment inpired the horrendous murders in Isla Vista, California, a place I know.

I am guessing that maybe four thousand years ago, there occurred some not trivial inventions in the populations of Homo Sapiens around the world. These were patriarchy and the worship of the "Sky Gods," modes which displaced the previous culture of matriarchy and worship of the "Earth Gods." I cannot speak of all the continents and all the peoples, but our Indo-European ancestors (ancestors of some of us) fully adopted these new modes, with concomitant militarism and authoritarianism, and came charging out of the East, heading west to Europe and South to India, conquering all the matriarchal tribes in their path. These were the Celts, the Aryans, the Greeks, the Latins, the Germans, and surely others, all establishing cultures that emphasized patriarchy and sky gods. Women, who previously ran the show, so to speak, were relegated to a role of servitude, as were the conquered peoples.

The modern world created by the sky god culture is about as much of a cock-up as I can imagine, with pollution, the possibility of nuclear annihilation, destruction by war, aberrant killings, violence against women, abject poverty, and global warming just some of the results.

It is not that matriarchy and the Earth Mother disappeared from our culture and our world. History shows that the patriarchy has kept quite busy repressing feminism. Think of the destruction of the Isis cults in the Mediterranean and burning of witches throughout Europe, the annihilation of Native Americans and other "indigenous" peoples. These days, women struggle to throw off the yoke of the patriarchy and establish themselves, but the patriarchy is battling desperately to maintain its privilege, a one-sided battle, because feminism does not fight with the same tools. Thus, women are murdered and repressed.

The matriarchy had a good, long run, probably in the hundreds of thousands of years. The patriarchy, in just a few thousand, has come close to destroying the whole world. This way cannot continue and I cannot imagine a patriarchal culture that can control itself; nor is it really possible to reinstate a matriarchal culture (although one might emerge if we do endure apocalyptic nuclear war or extreme global warming). So, what we desperately need is a balance, the yin and the yang forming unity.