I HATE SHOES

I knew full well when I got Soveraine  that the transmission was stuck in forward. I thought it was probably a linkage issue that would be easily fixed. Once that possibility was ruled out, I toyed with the idea of leaving it stuck in forward, since I had throttle control. I would really only need reverse and neutral coming into a dock, and, and in all practicality not even for that. I got to the dock I'm at now slowly coasting in after cutting the engine a few yards before gliding alongside it. No sweat. But, since I have the time, I decided to get it looked at professionally. A friend of all Newport boaters and a lifetime diesel mechanic John Whitney came over to look at it and promptly said it had to come out for him to really diagnose it. He said it probably was just a worn part that needed to be replaced (he even narrowed it down to one or two specific pieces, given an exploded diagram of the reverse gear), not a huge deal, just not something he could do with it sitting in m

I recently, as in last night, watched a documentary called Mansome. More or less it questions the present state, in our uber-modern society, of what makes a man, a man. It made me ask myself, as I near 3 decades of life on Earth, what kind of man-mold do I fit it into? When I graduated college and moved to Boston, I loved the idea of clean pressed solid colored shirts, with a color complimenting striped neck tie, shiny (but not too shiny) shoes stepping gracefully onto the T and starting up a conversation with the lady standing next to me; maybe something about how I recognized her for wearing a fragrance from Channel. Things changed though, once I got there and started living out that vision of what I thought I, or myself as a man, should be doing. Fast forward a few years and I'm a pretty scruffy guy with oil stains on his clothes, holes in his sweaters, and a slight musk of diesel and general "boat" scent. Does this make me less of a man? More so? I'm able to do

**WARNING: Due to the blizzard in Newport, I have written a technical blog post detailing how I went about designing new chainplates. It is dry as a bone and there is only one, uninteresing picture. You have been warned. I should also mention that to the right of this post is a link to Amazon and you should see some products scrolling by. These are not random ones chosen by Amazon, but ones I have personally hand-picked because I use them almost daily. I'll go into more detail about them in subsequent blog posts. You'll also see a sprinkling of books, movies and other media I come across that I've found interesting, useful and/or inspirational. Yes, I do get a small kickback from each sale, but in return you get a product that has not only met my standards, but has held up to my daily use in the marine environment. Chainplates are important. For the uninitiated, they hold your mast up and keep you sailing in all kinds of weather. Not something to skimp on. I discovered