Tour of Jessica Watson’s Yacht

Jessica Crosses the Equator

Jessica’s Christmas Video Message

Jessica Watson Rounds Cape Horn!

i’m like a schoolboy with this jessica watson story. love this kid. and yes, i’m fluent with the arbitrary dicta of the WSSRC and supposed deficiencies of her route, and i know that the state was all up inside her accomplishment from start to finish (including a silver-level sponsorship from the criminal agency calling itself the government of new south wales). i also know her blog entries were likely edited by others before presentation, technology blurs the “unassisted” line, her parents are supposedly wealthy, she’s a “global warming” gulper, she used a self-steering aid, and blah blah blah. oh, and you’re probably sick of her.

some things that kick ass about jessica watson and her adventure:

• she’s intelligent, soulful, enthusiastic, cheerful, artistic, and independent. balls included.
• she was a 16-year-old girl, now 17, who chose to be physically alone for seven months, some of it in the earth’s more desolate places.
• on her first major test voyage she collided with a ship… then didn’t slink off into a corner and disappear. how she handled the collision is alone worth a short book.
• she has a squeaky voice that lulls her detractors into further stupidity.
• she’s unapologetic and supportive of her private sponsors.
• she’s insanely photogenic even though not an overt knockout.
• she rammed one up creepy kevin rudd’s arse.
• her team chose mechanical instead of electrical self-steering, which may be a major reason she succeeded.
• her video clips from the trip are usually more interesting than the average full-length movie.
• sailing rules. sailing solo nonstop “unassisted” around the world jams steady.

her interaction with sailing circumnavigator jesse martin is fun to watch. his 1999 circumnavigation and book/documentary inspired jessica to do her thing, and he supported her energetically, as did solo sailor mike perham, who now apparently asserts boyfriendship to our jess. cool watching those three sail the boat back from the sydney harbour finish line to the dock. also interesting that sailor jesse martin is a far more intuitive interviewer than the career hacks who at the worst times kept shoving their sponsorship in jessica’s face. yes, i know too much about this story. pathetic. it’s a good’n though. hope when the book’s written they don’t obscure her voice in the process.

now i’m going to yap off about the “around the world” controversy:

it’s impossible to sail around the world according to a geometric mind set. the pristine course must bisect the globe (e.g., on the equator, around the poles), holding the line exactly. land, ice, and physics demand massive deviation from that ideal, which then leads to arbitrariness. are antipodes enough? how many pairs? when does the distance requirement become mere sailing in busywork circles?

i agree that crossing the equator’s a minimum absolute criterion, but after that it tends toward dogma. i don’t think a single pair of antipodes makes it unambiguous. i don’t think anything less than infinite antipodes (perfect great circle course) is clear, and that’s impossible.

i can dig that walking a 20′ path around the south pole doesn’t qualify for a rollicking celebration of your circumnavigational achievement, but maybe it’s good behavior to not knee-jerk every non-WSSRC-sanctioned ATW trip into pooh-pooh nothingness. look at the course and celebrate accordingly, far from binary fiction land.

last bit, and someone to watch: laura dekker is another independent sailor girl, but one the state’s fucking with in the extreme because of her age (14). goons have inserted themselves beyond parental control, and it sucks heavily. however, even with their interference she may become the youngest solo unassisted ATW sailor.

shallow wikipedia cheerboys — many of which have obviously never edited heavily at the site — point to a study which supposedly tested accuracy of wikipedia articles against encyclopedia britannica. instead of noting the obvious — that wikipedia normally sucks ass — they wave this study around and get brother fools to fall for their distortion, ignoring entirely that the study compared only select scientific articles — cut and dried topics that attract accurate geek editors and little debate. step outside that tight set and you find untold gigabytes of dreck — horrible writing infested with snippet disease (no owner of the whole), opinion dressed as absolute, and sourceless drivel by the boatload. with the popularity of wikipedia, garbage in becomes garbage propagated. wikipedia lies are now “truth”, more widely promulgated than truth, often simply because of the sloppy inaccuracy of a single “contributor”. admins are sure to miss most of these fuckups, but damned if they’ll allow a “personal attack” on a discussion page.

good example of the complete syndrome: in articles related to christopher mccandless (the subject of the book and movie Into the Wild), lat/long coordinates are offered for the deserted bus where he spent most of his time in the alaskan wilderness. though off target by approximately ten miles — horrendous error given the precision of the method — they remain. some shyster dummkopf (or prankster) plugged those numbers in and they took off, across wikipedia and thus the internet. wikipedia’s wrongness is parroted almost immediately via automation at sites such as answers.com, then becomes the source for any lazy hack writing a blog post or travel article. google returns at least eight non-wikipedia sites passing along the wrong coordinates as correct or potentially correct. in turn, those sites are used as authoritative, and the false data appear at more places, such as in IMDb forums.

never use wikipedia as a source. if the article’s worth a damn, its source for each detail will be listed, and you can simply use that (if appropriate). all information should be questioned, but much more so at wikipedia, with its laughable “community” mentality and equal access to fucking up articles, regardless of editor reputation.

here’s how much wikipedia sucks: in the Christopher McCandless article body, it gives the wrong location along with a footnote. the footnote refers to a YouTube video of a guy driving to the bus. however, even disregarding the questionable practice of using a YouTube video as a source in this instance, nowhere in the video will one find those coordinates. i won’t waste time tracking the full heritage of the error, but it appears that the video was used merely as a citation for the description of the bus’s location as “an overgrown section of the trail near Denali National Park”. apparently (again, i’m not wasting my time verifying this information disaster’s origin, so this is just a guess), hack editors then lifted that bit from the McCandless article, and it shows up in the Into the Wild article, now missing the bit about “overgrown section of the trail near Denali National Park”, transformed to a mere “an abandoned bus”, followed by the wrong coordinates and bullshit footnote to the YouTube video — a video that now does nothing as a citation but show the abandoned bus. wow. still, the footnote is placed immediately after the coordinates. the kicker: at the end of the article, in the “External links” section, appears this nugget:

63° 52′ 4″ N 149° 46′ 16″ W – Approximate geographical coordinate location of the abandoned bus.

there, added as an apparent afterthought — in direct contradiction to the primary dreck of the article body — is essentially the correct location of the bus.

good thing about wikipedia is that errors may eventually be traced to the culprit (at least the culprit IP), if one wants to go to the trouble of sifting through the edits. i burned myself out on that facility long ago, as with all editing there. my experienced opinion is that repairing wikipedia errors has the opposite result overall, just as socialism breeds more of what it claims to solve. washed my hands of the project and its abysmal administration years ago. now i’m simply regularly appalled that so few people have caught on.

though i’m always puzzled (and at least a little pissed) by those who fly the rebel battle flag alongside the USFG goon flag (almost always below it, which makes no sense), i guess a rebel battle flag’s better than not having it, assuming a flag must be flown. the owners of white’s ferry do fly a rebel flag on shore under the USFG toilet paper replica, and the ferry boat’s named Jubal A. Early, which is superior to 99.9% of the other names they could’ve adopted.

after grabbing a snack at the store/restaurant near the landing on the maryland side, i asked the lady at the cash register if i could drink beer bought there at the picnic tables across the street. she said (bless my soul), “it’s all private property, so you do whatever you want.”

walking to the beer cooler, i said, “beautiful. private property; the only kind there should be.”

“that’s right.”

no shock i loved hanging out at white’s ferry today. apart from the obviously independent spirit of the owners, who last year told the US “coast guard” to fuck themselves, there’s a strange time warp element about a ferry so close to DC. while run very efficiently (the shore cycle takes only a few minutes), it’s also very inefficient compared to a bridge or tunnel. but a bridge or tunnel would fuck away the entire area. the ferry draws a nice mix of people either ideally situated geographically, or temperamentally suited for the enjoyment that goes with waiting for the ferry, soaking up the view and the neato factor of crossing water old school, on a barge linked to each shore by submerged steel cable. that cable makes landings a reliable matter of merely backing the engine at the correct point. the same guy operating the gates and directing traffic hits full power immediately after the cars are loaded — no steering. the ferry eases back from the ramp, gently accelerating to a leisurely pace across the narrow river, during which the same guy collects the $4 fare from each car. if it’s a full load, he barely has time to get to each car before it’s time to do the cycle again.

drivers are generally quick and organized getting on and off the barge. the mood of the participants seems appreciably different from those at the 3 other metro crossings of the same river. unlike those bridged, congested, unfiltered throngs, white’s ferry’s an adventure where waiting has merit. i congratulate the men responsible for this.

White’s Ferry Defies Coast Guard Order To Shut Down
September 13, 2006
WHITE’S FERRY, Md. — The operators of White’s Ferry defied a Coast Guard order to shut down.

The Coast Guard said it revoked the 24-car ferry’s certificate of inspection because it was using an unlicensed operator and due to safety concerns. Coast Guard officers boarded the ferry and revoked its certification Wednesday.

Lt. Connie Williamson said the family-owned business has been cited previously for the same violation, but this is the first time it has been ordered to stop operating.

But Malcom Brown, one of the ferry’s owners, said the boat is still running despite the Coast Guard’s order. He said the Coast Guard has overstepped its bounds and the ferry will continue to operate until it gets a court order.

The boat is named for confederate Civil War Gen. Jubal A. Early. The ferry has shuttled passengers between the Maryland side of the Potomac River, near Poolesville, and the Virginia side, near Leesburg, since the 18th century.

even in the alaskan bush, socialism shows its jackass self, but this 55-minute 6-part series at YouTube is probably as free as it gets in the US. take the time to savor this transport to another world (ignoring who the narrator is, if you can).

uh oh. not this again.

as usual, i give these immoral thugs the benefit of accepting them as the representatives of the property “owners” (no man in the US owns real property). since i’m often out and about late at night, cop encounters are more frequent than i’d like. still, i am polite unless further provoked by what are usually nazis, and don’t have a problem explaining why i’m somewhere i don’t “own”. as a private property advocate, i normally have permission for being places.

so i tell this guy that i couldn’t stay awake anymore at my computer, and went to sleep. then he does the usual, and asks if i have “identification”. having recently been rousted by the same “department” and threatened illegally with kidnapping if i didn’t produce “ID” while sitting in a parked car, engine off, i decided to go active on this one, not asking if he was demanding ID. gave him my name, said i had permission to be where i was, and reminded him, before he had a chance to demand it, that still in the post-2001 United State(.) a man is not required to even have ID to sit in a parked car, much less produce it. surprisingly, he said, somewhat defensively, “now you’ll notice i didn’t demand ID.”

“i appreciate that, because… do you know deputy [dipshit]?”

“yes, i do.”

“he recently came up to me in my parked car, keys not even in the ignition, and explicitly demanded ID, threatening me with kidnapping if i didn’t comply. you know how this goes; if i refuse his illegal demand, he asks me to step out of the car. if i don’t agree with that, we have a problem. for a cop, of all people, to make an illegal demand is a very serious thing.” blah blah blah. he wasn’t objecting.

i then did my usual education check, saying that i often open-carry a gun in his state, and asked what he’d have done if when i was awakened i sat up and my hand ended up closer to my gun. he said he’d probably draw, because he doesn’t know me. “oh, man,” i said. “i hope you’ll understand what that’s like from my point of view. i don’t know you guys either, and shouldn’t be expected to, upon surprise awakening, stay far away from a gun that i’m required to keep visible. in the case of deputy [dipshit], for example, you have a rogue cop, and it’s not a good mix.”

that reminds me of something. i don’t have any recollection of this guy slamming the fuck out of my car window — another very nice change. i awoke relatively smoothly, without unnecessary and escalating startling.

he related a recent story of his where he awakened a drunk guy sleeping in his car with an open gun nearby, and that while it was tense at first, the guy wasn’t a threat to him. etc.

he was ready to leave — always a good point in any cop encounter. since i spend some time at this location when i’m traveling, and because he was, force aside, the model of what security services should be (of course i’d highlighted this force monopoly to him. ), i told him that i was going for my pocket. i then pulled out my “driver’s license”, asked him to not run it, but i wanted to introduce him to the property owner, who happened to be awake and working. he returned my “license”, and i said i was going to get out of the car. in a laudable show of respect through body language, he half turned his back on me, diverted his flashlight (which hadn’t been in my face for a while), and said it was fine.

took him in the building to meet the property owner, and let him know what hours we’re often there, and what to expect around the property. i also let him know i very much appreciated his handling of what should always be a casual encounter. sadly, he is not a normal cop. ignorant or not though, he’s still a thug. sadder still, i hope the cops stop patrolling this neighborhood.

when a man forced to pay for “services” would rather not have them, that is tyranny. i’d rather be not disarmed via legislation and practical result; it’s more dangerous, possibly deadly, to be armed around these “protective services”. they’re fine with that. you must trust them.

in these two parts creep shots of the Double-R Diner (Mar-T-Cafe/Twede’s), Great Northern Hotel (Salish Lodge), Snoqualmie Falls, Roadhouse (Colonial Inn), Big Ed’s Gas Farm, Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Station, the railroad trestle, and more. part 2 is somewhat redundant, but shot during the day.

my traveling pal for this trip was a lass i’d met online. she picked me up in portland and drove us to the northwest TP paradise just east of seattle. jackie, if you happen to see this, i still remember our trip fondly, and thanks for your patience. looking at all this raw footage, it’s hard to believe you didn’t get seriously pissed (well, externally anyway) about all the taping. your birthday trip too!

oh what a TP geek was i. even rented a VCR in north bend so we could watch the pilot just down the street from the double-R. crazy days, in a beautiful part of the world. there is nothing that compares to watching the series for the first time. a friend and i used to pine for our TP virginity days. that was some serious TV watching. over and over, the episodes flew. second season DVD? thank you for asking.