La Ciclone – Pagliarulo Blog

Hey, all you girlfriends I’ve told about my sailing life – Here’s an opportunity for you to learn to sail… Oregon Women’s Sailing Association does Wednesday Night Sails all summer, every other Wednesday. You must be an OWSA member, but it only costs $25. to join. Go to OWSA.net to join the group and find out more about OWSA (and about the Sail for the Cure event in September).

After you’ve signed up as an OWSA member, go to this page to sign up for Wednesday Night sails…

http://www.owsa.net/cruising.htm

They also have a cruising class (Saturdays June 7 and 21) culminating in an overnight sail June 27-29.

Once you have some cruising experience, if you want to take your sailing to the next level you will be in a better position to volunteer as crew on race nights, Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are also races some weekends – and these often end with parties at Portland Yacht Club and RCYC and other fun venues – a way to meet single guys. (Few and far between, but out there in the sailing community never the less – Phil proves it! We met on the Long Distance race to St. Helens and Sand Island.)

OWSA has moved the Women’s Introduction to Racing to Monday nights in July, which I won’t be doing this year because I’ll be traveling for most of July. (Whidbey Island Race Week and a river trip down the Snake River – Hell’s Canyon it will be for certain!) This is a REALLY great way to get into racing without being thrown into the fire with a bunch of burly guys out for serious competition.

Beyond OWSA, if you want to sail more, get yourself on the crew list – see www.sailpdx.com. Although honestly, most skippers seeking crew find them by word of mouth. To get to know members in the sailing community, you must get out there and sail, and let it be known that you want to crew! Also on Sailpdx.com you can find out about the racing series by looking at the SYSCO page – Small Yacht Sailing Club of Oregon.

Let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to pass this along to any of your girlfriends.

Folks, I don’t know how I missed this amazing commentary, er, social experiment, but when I heard the story won the Pulitzer Prize for feature reporting yesterday, I tuned in.

Gene Weingarten, who writes for the Washington post, had an idea. Are we so self-absorbed in our American workday world that we might pass by a virtuoso on a morning commute and not hesitate for a moment to listen? When YoYo Ma turned down the offer, Weingarten turned to concert violinist Joshua Bell, who is arguably the finest violinist in classical performance today. In January of 2007, the Post set him up to perform during rush hour for morning commuters at a metro station in Washington, D.C.

The entire stunt was recorded by video camera, and you can find it here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401

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While I read, because I was disappointed that the video was only presented in snippets throughout the article (a clever interactive device), I opened another tab in my browser and listened simultaneously as I read to the entire 43 minute performance. – You can click on the link above the article that says “Listen to Johsua Bell’s Complete Metro Station Performance”, or paste this into another browser window:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/04/09/VI200704090053

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Though the scenarios the producers imagined and prepared for ran the gamut from a few people taking notice to uncontrollable crowds, during the 40 minutes he played, only seven people stopped to listen — and only one person recognized him. The article is entitled Pearls Before Breakfast, and is a terrific commentary on whether we have time for beauty.

Bell, who on the Tuesday before the piece was published in the Post, won the Avery Fisher Prize for outstanding achievement in classical music. He was interviewed about the experience on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9521098

Now, if you’re really captivated by this story, you can have an interesting look back upon the conception of this event and some postlude social interpretations by tuning into Gene Weingarten in the Post Magazine Online and reading his discussion with readers:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040

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There is an interesting backstory to this event, and some discussion about whether it reveals something enlightening about the nature of government bureaucracy versus private industry.

“I first got the idea for this story about two years ago, when I emerged from the McPherson Square Metro station on the way to work and saw a ragged-looking man playing keyboard. He was quite remarkably good, and no one seemed to be noticing him. He had maybe a buck or two in change in his open case.

I walked away kind of angry. I thought, “I bet Yo Yo Ma himself, if he were in disguise, couldn’t get through to these deadheads.” When I got to the office, I actually tried to reach Mr. Ma’s agent….”

“People are spiritually starved, and feel, just below the surface, that their culture is strangling them. I think that’s it. I think that’s what people are feeling.”

Yes, indeed, we on Skookum Too (Martin 24) had a little TOO much fun! With only 7 minutes to go before our start, we lost our rudder – literally! It sunk to the bottom of the river. We had been cruising around happily in the rain before that, me and George and a very new sailor named Janine. George kept mentioning his tiller connection to the rudder felt a little loose. I offered (twice) to have a look, Leatherman tool in hand. He said, “Nah, it’s not something you can probably fix on the water.” Another 5 minutes goes by, 2nd start about to go off, boats are all around us. The wind is picking up and we have good power in both sails, maybe 12 knots. George says, “Gee, this thing is getting looser” and shows 4 or 5 inches of play in the tiller now. So then he stands up, takes a step behind the transom and lifts the tiller handle OFF the post – like a Keystone Cop driving a Buick, who pulls the steering wheel off the column! Then he says, “Oh, that’s not good…” and I dive for the mainsail halyard, yelling at Janine to pull the orange line that’s the the jib furler. Of course, the sails are flogging and we were out of control, driving in circles and figure 8s with all these boats around us dodging us and wondering …what the Hell…

So we limped back to our moorage at Portland Yacht Club, steering with just the motor. Sat around licking our wounds, drinking wine and eating cheese until everyone else came in. We were so disappointed – what a great evening it became once the rain stopped – fantastic sunset view from the docks at PYC. Now George will have to get Bill Brennan working on another rudder. No doubt George will be nominated next year for the Sandbox award – he’s broken 3 masts in 12 months. It’s FUN sailing with a guy who doesn’t mind breaking stuff on his boat!