My colleagues in Victoria were complaining about their weather this morning:

“Yuk!”

But I think I win.

December 12, 2017

That’s the day I baked my first loaf, 5 years ago, with sourdough starter I that I had barely got started — and that starter is still going strong. Here’s a post I wrote in January 2018 about the first couple of experiments using that starter. Spoiler: they were mainly duds.

My poor starter has gone though a lot: from being moldy, to almost starving after a months alone; it even made the journey to BC in air-cargo this past spring and I baked a bunch of loaves on board before bringing it home and reuniting it with the stuff that had sat neglected in the fridge for two month. Still, it has been 5 years and I guess the poor thing deserves some recognition on having made it through all that …as well as periods of me not baking much, a pandemic, a switch from white flour to rye flour, and back again—and then back to rye once more. It’s been almost dried, lived as a swampy sludge, underfed, overfed, developed some weird skins and spent a lot of time in the refrigerator beside the silk screen chemicals. But so far it seems it’s pretty impossible to kill.

And it’s made a lot of loaves along the way. Here’s some pics from over the years:

But it doesn’t really matter

The problem is that actually the bacteria/microbes in sourdough just don’t live that long. So really, the whole “old sourdough starter passed down for generations” thing is just a myth. But at least it’s a tasty one. Here’s a link to an article that explains the whole thing: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220711-the-worlds-oldest-sourdough

 

Addendum

I just found a note in my notebook dated Nov 29, 2017 with the sourdough starter recipe I used. So I guess the whole process was actually started a few weeks earlier than Dec 12.

Equity. Or Justice. Sometimes I just don’t know…

—https://dinosandcomics.com/

Accessibility is a big part of my new job, I don’t often add alt text to my images but I guess it’s something I will have to start doing.

Social Media offers some great options but we (the public) don’t actually use many of them, mostly because of apathy and  just general ignorance around the options.

Here’s a great overview:

General overview: https://usability.yale.edu/web-accessibility/articles/social-media

(In case you are wondering, this post is really just an excuse to play with alt text 🙂 )

It’s all over the internet but I can’t help it. What a glorious image.

The Pillars of Creation are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared-light view. The pillars look like arches and spires rising out of a desert landscape, but are filled with semi-transparent gas and dust, and ever changing. This is a region where young stars are forming — or have barely burst from their dusty cocoons as they continue to form.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).

— https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-takes-star-filled-portrait-of-pillars-of-creation

Founded in 1984, Orca Book Publishers is an independently owned Canadian children’s book publisher of award-winning, bestselling books in a number of genres. With over 1,000 titles in print and more than 80 new titles a year, Orca prides itself on publishing Canadian authors and bringing them to a wider market.

So I mentioned I had news in the job realm. I’ve accepted a position at Orca Book Publishers as a Digital Publishing Specialist. In essence I am taking over most things digital-book from the various people who’s responsibility it currently is and trying to both consolidate the workflow and streamline the process so Orca can better leverage those assets in the future.

As I mentioned in the teaser post his job is a direct result of the  the work I did at Standard and the ongoing attempts I’ve made to teach myself ebook production and accessibility over the years. Over the pst year or two I have really tried to focus on accessibility—it floors me how relatively “easy” it is and how many publishers continue to ignore it. Given the frustrations experienced in my family due to various disabilities, I don’t see why  these more cost-effective changes are made more rapidly. It’s not like we are  having to redesign entire buildings! Things are changing though.

Anyway, I have been trying to worm my way back into full-time book publishing for years and I am extra grateful for this amazing opportunity.

Onward and upward…always!

---

Oh, and I bought myself a present. (And yes, I know, I have some cable management to do…)

 

I haven’t signed on the dotted yet (actually it’s solid) but, barring unforeseen circumstances, I am once again gainfully employed in the publishing industry.

This is a direct result of my work with the Standard Ebooks project. Four years of volunteering for this terrific project both taught me the skills and gave me the will to learn even more about digital publishing and accessibility and that has resulted in this exciting opportunity. And did I mention it’s back in book publishing… living the dream man, living the dream.

More later when I actually sign.

In Japanese, the word for waves is nami, we’ve often heard the term nami usagi, or rabbit waves. This is a perfect way to describe the ocean, full of rabbit waves.

Or, I suppose, “Back at the helm once more…”

Three years (minus about 3 weeks) since we’ve seen our boat. I have to admit it was a a bit of a shock as, unlike when we purchased it, the rosy glow had worn off and she looked  a bit more… well… her age.

Luckily it didn’t take long for the critical eye to go take a header off the starboard side and we nice more settled into the happy, familiar and comfortable home away from home we remembered. Still, there is a lot of brightwork that needs attending to and the canvas  is a bit too green for my taste.

Where are we now?

I am writing this post pretty much real time because we are back at the marina. Here’s a rundown of the first few days:

Wednesday: flight and ferry ride in and a quick grocery shop to  tide us over one night (coffee, breakfast etc.)

Thursday: Our new main showed up so we put that up. Then we hauled our stuff out of storage, L prepped her class and taught. Pub for dinner.

Friday: Still pretty worn out. We finally did a big shop. Stopped to book a rental car and chilled at dock with a lovely ribeye steak for dinner.

Saturday: Walked up the hill in the rain to pick up the rental car and drove to Alberni. We stopped in Cathedral Grove to enjoy some rainforest, visited L’s Mom and brother and then headed back.

Sunday:

Finally time to cast off! We started the engine and … lo and behold … no tach (or engine hours). Sigh. So we called in, made arrangements to come back the next day and  headed out to sail around Protection Island for fun.

There was a south wind and we need to make a greater than 90° turn into the wind, so that wasn’t particularly auspicious or convenient and on top of that NYCSS’s chase boat Gotcha was tied up just off our bow — so there was no room for error. So we walked the midship down to the end of the dock with a long line on the bow so we could swing it south into the wind.

A friendly neighbourhood Dutchman gave us a hand when we needed it and we managed to get the boat pivoted without hitting anything or impaling our hull on the end of the dock. And then we were off.

We headed out into 10–15 knots and unfurled the (brand new to us but it had been used by a previous charter) jib, killed the engine and sailed peacefully along slowly regaining our sealegs and more importantly our sea brains. After about a half hour we tacked back to shore and, as the wind was down to 8 knots or so, finally rolled out the main for the very first time. Crisp. Very, very crisp. 🙂

Then the wind started to play mind games. Between the various islands and inlets and big cargo ships at anchor we were sailing in wind that literally rotated 180° in less than a minute and dropped from 10 knots to 2 knots and back up again in the same time frame. Great practice and more than a little frustrating. But we toughed it out and didn’t resort to the engine even though our speed through the water was 0 knots more than once.

Eventually we emerged from behind Gabriola, caught the outflow from Northumberland channel and had a lovely beam reach into the harbour, dodging ferries all the way.  We sailed into the anchorage, dropped anchor  and settled in for the night.

Around 8:30 pm we heard a thump on the hull and a scruffy young fellow who was living in a nearby anchored boat somewhat belligerently stated we were anchored too close (we weren’t) and kept passive aggressively stating he didn’t care but he needed a new paint job so it was up to us. I tried all of 2 minutes to convince him it was all good and then  said we were happy to move if that’s what he wanted. Repeat statement about paint. Sigh…I think he is going to be  very unhappy camper when summer comes and the anchorage is actually busy.  Speaking of which, it was empty. As far as I could tell there were one or two other transient boats at anchor and the rest were permanent or permanent moorages.

So we pulled anchor and decided just to grab a mooring ball rather than fuss with the anchor. Only one other person moored as well. And then it was back to Jeeves and Wooster.

Monday (today):

So we woke up to rain and cold (around 11°C) and I decided to fire up the heater. We had tested it at dock and it worked fine but now it just wouldn’t fire up. I really really hate that thing. Anyway I figured out the error code was low voltage so I tried firing it up with the engine running and it finally caught. I let the engine run for 10 minutes before shutting it down and the  heater kept running fine. I suspect new batteries are in our future.

Then it was back to our slip (with the wind from the north which makes it way easier and Rob was there on dock to diagnose the tach problem. Which was a disconnected wire. Easy peasy.

We headed up the chandlery and bought some canvas cleaner and a new fender, picked up our old chartplotter to see if I could repair it and settled in to wait out the rain.

It’s still a crap day and we missed slack Dodd Narrows, so  the decision is we will charge up the batteries and take off tomorrow morning. I will update this all again when we hit Victoria after Saturday. Probably it make it more intersting too, with details and stuff and actual drama and storyline and… then again, maybe not.

Regardless, its good to be back.
—Bruce #Cruising