A SAILING SESQUICENTENNIAL.

Late in August, 1874, General Phil Sheridan went on a fishing trip into Wisconsin.  He mentioned that he'd enjoy seeing a sailboat race.  On Wisconsin's inland lakes, the well-off had been sailing for bragging rights almost as soon as statehood, and the local sandbagger sailors were more than willing to show off for the general.

That's a modern rendition of a sandbagger, so named because crews shifted bags of sand from one side to the other to give the sloop the proper heel.  What happened to "flat is fast?"  Only demonstrating the folly of a rule governing waterline length.  If you can build a boat with a short waterline when she's flat and a longer waterline when she's heeled, you have more waterline length, and you're faster.

Everybody had so much fun that the local sailors had ideas to hold the race each August, and hopes that the general would return to award the trophy.  The local sailors commissioned a silversmith to create a replica of the winning yacht, Nettie, and made plans to race on or as close to August 31, the day of the initial race.  The general, however, had other plans, some of them involving a twentyish civilian aide in the quartermaster's department, and as far as I know did not observe any more races on Geneva Lake.

The sailors, on the other hand, had a trophy, and a race to race, and the Lake Geneva Yacht Club, which became a corporate entity later, treats the Sheridan Race as the act inspiring its founding.  August 31 was a Saturday, and the tradition continued.

The Race Committee is in proper period attire for the event.  Fortunately, the weather wasn't dog-days-of-August hot.  By tradition, the race starts and ends off the club pier, you know, just in case a cavalry commander shows up and he's willing to award the trophy.

In place of the sandbaggers, the A Scows, which is to say, the largest of the Inland scows, race.  The scow honors the sandbagger principle in that it is sailed heeled, which means less wetted surface and a longer waterline, and when one is on her lines, she's fast.

Five yachts raced, here they are maneuvering to start, which is between the blue flag on the pier and the yellow can floating close to where two skippers are jockeying for the pin end, which is in better air.  A few vintage launches still sail Geneva Lake, and at the pier, a Melges 15 is about to sail out to its race, being set up mid-lake off Black Point.

The race course was a modified windward-leeward, sail toward Fontana, then sail toward the Narrows, then sail back to the yacht club.  One skipper opted out, and the fleet separated into two match races.  Here come the leaders to finish.

Yes, the wind conditions were challenging, and yes, it being Labor Day weekend, the powerboats were out churning the lake, and both pairs of races were won by the skipper who stayed to the south shore on the leg home.  Those are carbon-fiber sails.  The A scow is in the class of racing yachts where if you have to ask what it costs, you might be wise to consider the smaller scows.

The latter-day sandbagger came alongside the pier at left for a while.  She has inboard power, something that might have intrigued General Sheridan.  The smaller one-design races (C and MC scows and the Melges 15 fleet) are done for the day and the club flagship is secured on her lift.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Americans have had enough.  Americans started paying attention.  The punishment cycles of the grim strategy begin.  "Normally polite and courteous citizens can only be pushed so far, before returning insult for insult."  Temporarily unhinged Americans are slowly reviving.  The left is America's narcissistic abusive spouse.

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

FAIR WINDS.

The Wizard of Zenda sails to the final horizon.

On a warmish March Saturday in 1987 I went to the Melges Boat Works shopping for a sailboat, and Buddy himself was minding the store. I subsequently purchased a used M Scow from him and enjoyed it for a dozen years; got schooled by his sons and assorted other serious sailors racing it; worked with Gloria on race committee, and enjoyed the America³ America's Cup campaigns, which featured Inland scow sailors in important positions, and used the non-political Koch brother's money.

The Melges Boat Works might have some new winners among the one-design sloops, and the grandchildren are making a name in sailing.  Thanks for being helpful to at best an amateur day sailor.

A NEW RACING SLOOP FOR LATE ADOLESCENTS?

Years ago, the Inland Lake Yachting Association trained aspiring America's Cup champions in the X Boat, a hard-chined sloop, and many of the youngsters graduated to the M Scow.

The Melges Boat Works later introduced the Melges 17 as a Reichel and Pugh adaptation of the scow hull and a few things learned in America's Cup competitions as a successor to the M Scow.  That boat was a good performer, which was a Boat of the Year a few years ago; but it might have been a handful as a transition out of the X Boat.  Back to the drawing board ... put some of the same adaptations in a hard-chined hull and call it the Melges 15, which also won Boat of the Year in its class.

The Lake Geneva Yacht Club hosted a season-opening regatta for the class over the weekend.

I'm pleased to report that the Yerkes Observatory will continue as an observatory, rather than as office building for a condo complex or something.  That will be for another post.  That was Saturday's racing conditions, the kind of spotty early-season easterly I knew all so well.

Here's the fleet sailing in.  I got busy helping people with a balky hoist (club management are aware of the problem, like the Tin Man it can't be left out in the rain for long) and didn't get any pictures of the rigging.

They might have a winner.  We'll see if it catches on with the rising youngsters.

Otherwise, there will be another round of creative destruction (see the M Scow, the M-20 and later I-20, and prior to those there was a Class D racing scow) on the inland lakes.

THE LACK OF A VALUE PROPOSITION IS HURTING THEM.

The only thing worse than not being able to trade on your image as a college athlete is being able to trade on your image, and nobody is interested.

A higher education policy group wants the Biden administration to launch a Title IX civil rights investigation into collegiate athletics programs because the vast majority of so-called name, image, likeness sponsorships go to male athletes.

In a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and assistant secretary for civil rights Catherine Lhamon, the Drake Group said that the disproportionate amount of sponsorship money going to male college athletes, often with the cooperation of university athletic programs, was a violation of Title IX's prohibition on sex-based discrimination and warrants a federal investigation.

There's a Louisiana State gymnast, Olivia Dunne, who is doing well under the new rules, but that's what a value proposition looks like.  Among the men, it's not participants in the Harvard football program or any Mid-American basketball program that are making bank, either, but those inequities are not (yet) worth making a federal case over it.  I'm not sure how the federal government can compel interest in the women's sports, but that doesn't stop Drake from trying.

"We do not write to suggest that [the office for civil rights] stem this flow of cash to college athletes, but rather to alert OCR that this cash is, with the blessing and/or cooperation of the 1000+ universities in the NCAA, flowing predominantly to men," the group said in the letter. "Such inequitable financial aid, treatment and benefits provided to men are a violation of Title IX. OCR must provide guidance to the schools that this is improper and will be pursued with enforcement proceedings as necessary."

NIL deals, which allow student-athletes to profit off of their name, image, and likeness, became a widespread practice across collegiate athletics after the Supreme Court ruled the NCAA's prohibition on non-academic student-athlete compensation violated federal antitrust law.

Squaring antitrust law with civil rights law, two ways our political masters suppress competition in the name of promoting competition, will at least allow cohorts of attorneys to earn a comfortable living, without once doing a product endorsement.  Pushing for more redistribution, in the form of additional royalties for players who don't sell a single Madden game, might appeal to the egalitarian sensibilities, and, surely, the lawyers will make a good living off it (get all the Ivy League law faculties to compose their best amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the ladies, as well as the footballers on their irrelevant-in-January teams, and maybe their sailing teams?) but will that do anything to get a single butt in a seat at a basketball game?  "Look how unfair this is" doesn't sell those tickets?  How do I know?  Because that's been the lament for years. 

COME SAIL AWAY.

A few years ago, sailing enthusiasts built Denis Sullivan, a replica Great Lakes cargo schooner.

I got in a cruise toward the end of the 2016 season, that set sail despite questionable weather.

The Great Lakes sailing season, and a few other things, made the venture costly, and now Denis Sullivan has been sold.

Discovery World announced in September it has sold the tall ship to Boston's World Ocean School, a non-profit educational sailing organization founded in 2002. The ship will now pursue a new mission of connecting students to the natural environment. The non-profit provides students with at-sea opportunities. World Ocean School hopes to make return visits to Milwaukee. They also hope Milwaukee youths will participate at its Boston and US Virgin Islands locations.

That's right, Boston and the Virgin Islands.  You don't fool around with the Great Lakes.  Historically correct construction techniques should prove seaworthy.  Fair winds.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

These will be the final Friday short takes until after Three Kings.  I'm going to take a break from events, whether events will give me a break is another matter.

1.  It is time to abolish "emergency" corona powers.  Make it past time? "Maybe it's time to break them."

2.  May the corona tyranny go the way of the 55 mph speed limit.  "It’s time for people to ignore that false speed limit and use their own judgment in driving safely, until Covid-19 policy is back in the hands of sensible people."

3.  Never again?  "What has this freakish experiment in federalist dictatorship taught us?"

4.  Cracked icons.

5.  Do not be deceived.  "There are no 1967 Stingrays in the Build Back Better utopia. "

6.  We're noticing its absence. "A hallmark of a free society is a free press."

7.  Live not by lies.  "That is not valor, that is vandalism."  And we will be judged by the monuments we've destroyed.

8.  Why Raggedy Ann ages a year each month.  "I understand she’s just a mindless mouthpiece for a senile president, but you can tell she’s starting to crack. Piling untruth on top of untruth has to be grating."

9.  Donald Trump is his own worst enemy.  "The primary political battle is to get the right people in office, first in the midterms, then in 2024, all while continuing to push for election integrity on every front."

10.  Deny coherent beliefs, enjoy the incoherence.  " When our political class can no longer distinguish between citizen and non-citizen, male and female, a more muscular defense of truth is needed."

11.  Small children think in binaries.  A sampling:  "You don’t get to be 'against the rich' if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not 'a supporter of free speech' if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you."

12.  The Dems do moan and groan well.

13.  Mrs. 'Arris goes to Paris.  "Harris’s pain has to be the feel-good story of the day."

14.  The latest in unlimited class spinnaker reaching?   "Shouldn’t we get supply chains sorted out again before returning to the era of Horatio Hornblower?"

15.  What's missing from this assessment? "America faces such possible disasters unless the political system can detach itself from the massive corruption of corporate lobbying and campaign financing by the rich."

16.  History rhymes.  "The policy responses to post-1965 mau-mau were lax policing, lavish welfare for single mothers, racial quotas and preferences. The results were sky-high crime, broken families and overmatched students on campuses."  Da capo al fine:  "All this hearkens directly back to 1979-1981, the late Carter years and the peculiar emotional combination of confusion, powerlessness and rage that seemed to emanate from the liberal ruling class when its off-the-shelf answers to pressing questions just didn’t assure anyone that they knew what they were doing."

17.  Amen.  "Please Stop With the Omicron Panic."

WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMER'S YACHTS?

That's the ironically intended title of a book from the American High expressing some, shall we say, skepticism about Wall Street's efforts to promote a peoples' capitalism: "Because if advice worked, there would be more yachts belong to the customers."

On the other hand, consider what's happened at the Head of the Lakes.  The harbor facilities of Duluth and Superior were once quintessentially Rust Belt: coal, and before the pipelines, petroleum products in, iron ore (lots of iron ore) and grain out.  Only the Port of New York and New Jersey used to move more tonnage in a year, and more than a little of that might have been food or manufactured products for export that made use of that ore or grain.

A recent visit, though, got me thinking about the sort of privilege hoarding and upward concentration of wealth I keep hearing about.  It would make sense of a sort for the people of Duluth and Superior to preserve a lake freighter or two for the benefit of tourists.

William A. Irvin was the flagship of the United States Steel fleet until the late 1960s.  It never paid to rebuild this boat as a self-unloader.

Look across the slip, though, where one of the warehouse complexes once stood, and behold a yacht basin.

Something about this isn't adding up: with all that upward concentration of wealth, what's the value proposition in converting a Great Lakes harbor that ices over earlier and unfreezes later than almost anywhere this side of Port Baikal into a series of yacht basins?

That's another look over Irwin's rail, showing lake-faring sailboats, with some of the converted industrial buildings behind.  All over the Duluth harbor are former warehouses converted to lofts or hotels, and on the Superior side, where the bigger grain terminals once were, there's a massive yacht basin as well.  Should be impossible given all that upward hoarding of wealth, shouldn't it?

Actually, no.  The information technology capitalists might have been able to capture a lot of value a nickel at a time.  The people paying the prices for the use of Amazon or Apple or Microsoft or Google products or services might have placed a subjective valuation of more than what they paid for those items on those items.  Enough so, in some cases, to be able to spring for a yacht?

Three sailboats at play.  There might be a few powerboats out there as well.  It doesn't take as many iron boats to move the taconite any more, as the iron boats are bigger, and steel recycling has advanced so as to be able to produce a broader range of products.  It's not just for garbage cans and reinforcing bar any more.

But the iron boats go, as the mariners all know, with the Gales of November to come.

Mesabi Miner, perhaps my favorite iron boat name.  I'm not sure who the successor operator of Interlake Steel currently is.  It's still quite the show for the tourists thronging the Canal Park area of Duluth.  (Outdoor eateries!  Carriage rides!  Microbreweries!  Short walk to the Duluth Trading store!)

Who knows, might even be a few owners of the customers' yachts among those spectators.

Laker traffic isn't what it used to be: after Mesabi Miner's arrival at eight p.m., a saltie was due around eleven.

WHAT IS THE STANDARD OF PERFORMANCE?

Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been hosting Jeopardy, and the entertainment mavens teased a frustrating moment.  "[Executive producer Mike] Richards also shared a nugget about the second week for Rodgers, telling [sports pundit Peter] King that there will be a '[f]un moment' that is 'Packer-related' and that leaves Aaron 'exasperated.'" Here it is.

One of the contestants was from Chicago, and she missed it.

So the guest host of “Jeopardy!" is Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and he’s reading this clue from the Title Waves category: “In the 1960s these Midwesterners earned 5 NFL championship trophies.”

The response from the three contestants ... crickets.

“Green Bay Packers?” Rodgers said, making the appropriate face and stretching out his arms in disbelief.

Not Erick Loh, the pastor from California, or returning champ Dennis Chase, the biotech project manager originally from Massachusetts, or Norah Webster, a meeting planner from Chicago, could come up with the answer.

That was the only entry in the category no contestant had a response to.  "When Loh correctly responded to the next clue from the same category about the Boston Celtics, Rodgers couldn’t resist. 'Oh, you know that one, huh?' he quipped."

No references to the 132 year winning streak on the seas, although the Yankees and Edmonton Oilers were in the mix.

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE WATCHING PAINT DRY INTERESTING AGAIN?

Washington Examiner chief editor Hugo Gurdon asks, "Whatever happened to America's Cup?"

The best way to understand America's Cup racing over the years is as the waterborne version of Unlimited Class motor racing.  But it's a bit jarring to Mr Gurdon.

Sailing has been radically transformed since I caught the bug as an early teenager in 1970. That summer, when I was learning to plane in a sailing dingy, big, sleek sloops were racing off Newport, Rhode Island, to see who’d defend the America’s Cup, which the New York Yacht Club had won against global competition again and again without interruption for the previous 119 years. The trophy became known as the America’s Cup because no one could take it away from the Americans.

It might be more accurate to think of the "radical transformation" as, first, coming up with racing sloops that could plane on the power reach (America³ had that capability in the 1992 defense) and, later, writing the rules in such a way that souped-up planing dinghies could compete in the races.  That's long been the tradition in America's Cup racing.  In the beginning, a pilot boat called America sailed to the Solent to compete for the Fifteen Guineas' Cup in a race around the Isle of Wight.  That yacht put such a horizon job on the local boats that somebody informed Queen Victoria, "Your Majesty, there was no second place."  It's also possible that America cheated.  But, as America sailed the Atlantic to get to the race, the New York Yacht Club's rules required that any contending boat had to sail to Long Island Sound for subsequent races.  That kept Canadian boats from floating down sheltered waters on the Hudson.

But that was then, and this is now. Australia, in 1983, became the first non-American boat to win. Controversy over its winged keel led to a period when designs went haywire and totally different types of boats raced each other uselessly. A little American catamaran beat a 90-foot New Zealand monster off San Diego in the 1988 final. Teams spent most of their time in court wrangling over the rules. To prevent a repeat of that fiasco, uniformity was reimposed, but with a completely new class of boats. On March 6 this year, the latest America’s Cup finals will start off Auckland, New Zealand, where the defending hosts are challenged by Italy. Both will be racing AC75s.

These “boats” are a lot closer to the Sailrocket than to the elegant yachts of yesteryear. Like the world record holder, they lift entirely out of the water on hydrofoils, one on each side amidships, as long as the wind is 10 mph or more. Usually, only one foil is in the water, with the other hanging in the air to reduce drag. The only other part of the boat that is submerged is the rudder, which is extra long so it can reach down from the elevated stern and steer. Thus, a 75-foot boat weighing nearly 8.5 tons surges out of the water, balances on one leg, and moves at three times the speed of the wind. When these boats are up and flying, they really — fly. They’ve been recorded at 49 knots, or 56 mph, and New Zealand’s team claims to have topped 50 knots.

On occasion, qualifying races take place inland, such as in Chicago's inner harbor in 2016.  Fitting.  Those foils are technological extensions of the bilgeboards on the Inland scows, some of which had a tunnel hull to mimic the waterline profile of a catamaran, which is what the AC75 boats are, if a bit more expensive.  But by reducing your resistance you are able to move your apparent wind forward, which is the trick for getting speed out of your Laser, your Inland scow, your windsurfer, or your catamaran.  In fact, "coming about" on an AC75 is a lot like "coming about" on the Inland scow.

When tacking, they lower one foil and raise the other, looking similar to those desert lizards that avoid burning their feet by lifting them alternately off the scorching sand. But these are not land lizards. They are marine predators. With their black hulls and black triangular sails shooting over the water, they look like a velociraptor crossed with a shark fin. The sails carve the air like blades, hardly changing position whether they’re running, reaching, or close hauling. The sails are really wings, not old-fashioned canvas buckets to catch the wind. You’ll never see a spinnaker on one of these.

Why not? On a performance aircraft, the engine exists to drive the airfoil through the air. On a performance sailboat, the skipper trims the airfoil to use the air most effectively. The fundamentals of racing are still the same.

Some sailing purists complain that the AC75 races aren’t exciting because sheer speed eclipses canny tactics, and the races are sprints, only lasting 20 minutes. There is some truth in this. But the America’s Cup still pits the best race sailors in the world against each other, and they still dog each other, for example trying to force opponents to luff up and fall off their foils sluggishly onto their hulls. And then there are those supreme moments when these vast black scalpel blades are skimming over the blue of the southern Pacific, leaving motorboats floundering in their wake. If that doesn’t make your heart race at least a bit, you should check whether it is still beating.

I suppose Laser sailors don't qualify as "sailing purists."  Fine.  You can get a five-race regatta in in an afternoon and still have time to close the bar that night.  In addition, a number of those "best race sailors" have some Laser hardware in their trophy rooms.

Find an America's Cup trial near you and go watch it.  Extra props for chasing the action in your Laser.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN A WATERFRONT FIRE HOUSE?

One is going to be available in Milwaukee.  Here's a look.

I wonder if it comes with docking privileges.  "Also, a Wimmer Communities affiliate is converting a former Milwaukee Fire Department firehouse, on the Milwaukee River bridge at 105 N. Water St., into a three-unit private residence for Wimmer family members, according to city building permits."

The adjacent, but land-locked, former shoe polish factory (and sail loft) is also to be converted.

A Wimmer Communities affiliate in 2019 bought the five-story building for $3.3 million, according to state real estate records.

The vacant Harri Hoffmann building overlooks the confluence of the Milwaukee and Menomonee rivers near East Erie Street. It has long been eyed for redevelopment.

Harri Hoffmann Co., named for its founder, made shoe polish at that site from 1962 until selling off its equipment and inventory two years ago.

The building was constructed in 1892, and was originally used by Joys Brothers Inc., which made sails and other ship equipment, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Harri Hoffmann Co. was the last manufacturer in the Historic Third Ward. Most of the neighborhood's former factories and warehouses have been redeveloped into housing, offices, restaurants and other new uses.

I wonder if the big "Hoffco Shoe Polish" sign will stay on the lofts.  I'm surprised the shoe polish company stayed there as long as it did.  Does anybody polish shoes any more?  Laacke and Joy are no longer selling to the public.

THE DESPERATION OF LATE-STAGE MERITOCRACY.

Ruth S. Barrett probably has The Atlantic's bottom story of the year, unless you're one of those parents who wants to wangle an athletic scholarship to a non-revenue sport in the Ivies.  I'd say embrace the suckitude, but for a few salient passages.  She starts with a lament by sport sociologist Harry Edwards.

In 1988, the University of California sociologist Harry Edwards published an indictment of the “single-minded pursuit of sports” in Black communities. The “tragic” overemphasis on athletics at the expense of school and family, he wrote in Ebony magazine, was leaving “thousands and thousands of Black youths in obsessive pursuit of sports goals foredoomed to elude the vast and overwhelming majority of them.” In a plea to his fellow Black people, Edwards declared, “We can simply no longer permit many among our most competitive and gifted youths to sacrifice a wealth of human potential on the altar of athletic aspiration.”

I wish I had known of that quote when I was posting about the gladiator economy. Put in something about how so-called social justice pedagogy embraces illiteracy, innumeracy, and insolence in the name of diversity and we've got a positive program for improving life in the 'hood.

Later comes Ms Barrett's lament: this is what always happens in a positional arms race, but there's no reason not to review the lessons.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic brought all sports to a halt, a pall was settling over the phthalate-free turf fields of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Palo Alto, California. Over the past decade, the for-profit ecosystem that has sprouted up around athletic recruiting at top-rung universities has grown so excessively ornate, so circular in its logic, that it’s become self-defeating. More and more entrants are chasing an unchanging number of prizes. The Varsity Blues scandal exposed how hedge-funders and Hollywood B-listers were turning their progeny into football kickers and coxswains through the magic of Photoshop. But more commonly, alpha sports parents followed the rules—at least those of the meritocracy—only to discover that they’d built the 80th- or 90th-best lacrosse midfielder in the country. Which, it turns out, barely qualifies you for a spot at the bottom of the roster at Bates.

Now if only Bates, or Ohio State (one of the arms race parents the article features is confronting the reality of her fencer (!?) spawn paying in-state rates at Ohio State, the horror!) understood that they were in the same business as the Ivies.  I wish more people running higher education institutions attempted to behave as though they were, and that more parents (the kids can get fake ID at Youngstown State as easily as at Yale) would not view themselves as failures if they couldn't put an Ivy sticker on the hatchback window next to their stick family.

“Parents need to open their minds,” [college water polo association head Dan] Sharadin said. “They’re not likely to be as excited about Millersville University or Bloomsburg as Penn or Columbia. I get that. But that’s something that these families will have to come to grips with.”

“Sorry, but there’s no way in hell,” said the water-polo mom from Stamford. “What parent wants to have a child who’s going to be playing for a bottom-tier school with bottom-tier academics in the armpit of the United States? I want to be polite. But there’s no way in hell.”

Look at fencing or crew, and the trends are the same: a doubling of junior players, and flatlining collegiate openings. For lacrosse, the situation is perhaps worse, if only because the absolute number of kids playing the game is higher. Lacrosse has topped the list of the most-added high-school sports for the past seven years, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, but again, its growth at high-status colleges has been anemic.

Bottom tier academics can be fixed, if the faculty and administration want to. On the other hand, the shake-out of country club sports, which the article documents, might be a long-running casualty of the quarantines.

A TRUMP FLAG AT A DOCK OF THE BAY?

There's a Republican Party chapter in California's Marin County, and at the end of August, they showed the flag under the Golden Gate Bridge, at the same time that some marchers on foot were headed into the lair of Lord Mayor London Breed and Princess Nancy Antoinette.  The video, which is heavy-handed in places, does not embed.  Go there and watch if you wish. 

LESSONS LEARNED AT NORMANDY?

Strategy Page posts a photograph of an amphibious landing rehearsal somewhere in the antipodes.

Unattributed photograph retrieved from Strategy Page.

There are a few follow-on forces wading ashore from that latter-day Higgins Boat, but those "amphibious assault vehicles" appear to be sufficiently armored that the troops could ride ashore and then disembark.  I hope that ship of the line on the horizon is capable of providing some sort of supporting fire if required.

WHO HID THE HOLY GRAIL IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING?

The latest half-season of Vikings on The History Channel is about to wrap up, perhaps with a coalition of several chieftains about to march into Kattegat and topple Ivar the Boneless.  It's got the makings of a civil war, with Ivar's brother Hvitserk and half-brother Bjorn making common cause with Harald Fairhair and assorted others on the invasion, while Ivar's other surviving brother Ubbe has bested yet another anonymous warlord in single combat, perhaps losing an eye and gaining wisdom in the bargain.

Somewhere to the west, Floki thought he had found his way here.

To his great shock, he winds up in a different opera.

I exaggerate, but only slightly. Here I thought it was Bishop Heahmund who was going to connect with the Templars and spirit the Grail off to Oak Island, but he's finding out whether St. Peter or the Valkyries are in charge.

Meanwhile, Ivar has gone completely around the bend, declaring himself divine, having a totem pole carved in his own image, and taking his revenge on people who desecrated the idol or otherwise displeased him.

Perhaps I'm finding too many contemporary sensibilities in Vikings, but look at the banners in Ivar's great hall.

Once you see what I see, you'll have trouble unseeing it.

Let's see if there's a "Who Shot J.R?" moment to stimulate interest until the final season airs.

TWO FOR THE INLAND LAKES.

Big Foot (Wisconsin) scow sailors Harry Melges IV and Finn Rowe are thinking big, as in Olympic sailing big.  Yes, that Melges name might suggest some inherited human capital, and yet that is as nothing without the time on the tiller. "In [the 2014 E Scow Blue Chip at Pewaukee], the pair, along with three teammates, won all six races to take the top spot overall — an incredible accomplishment for a seasoned crew of racers, let alone a group of kids still in eighth grade."  Note, dear reader, the Inland Lake Yachting Association's Blue Chip regattas are the post-season: a crew must finish in the top three places in either of the summer Inland regattas or in their home club's principal racing series (usually the "A series" in the racing schedule) in order to be invited.  The kids start learning young on the inland lakes, and they're pretty good.

Get a good start and sail on the lifted tack!

TO THE SPANISH MAIN, WE SAIL AWAY.

Specifically, to the Azores, which, with their connections to the Era of Explaration and the Battle of the Atlantic, have long intrigued.  Our conveyance is Regal Princess, relocating from the Caribbean to the Baltic for the summer.

The cruise ship terminal in Fort Lauderdale is adjacent to the cargo port.  It figures that if Fort Lauderdale is home to the yachts of the oligarchs (as well as a Laser fleet, there are days I miss dinghy sailing),

... there are probably customers for German land-yachts nearby.

Höegh operate a large fleet of these ships.  Didn't get close enough to read the name.  There are still a few bulk carriers plying the oceans.

HTC Delta is a Marshall Islands registered bulk carrier, proportioned to fit the Seaway, although she's currently somewhere in the Caribbean.

Nearby, there are some intracoastal barge-towboat tankers.

Here.  We.  Go.

There are some freighters waiting to enter the port.  I wonder what sort of security the Harbormaster must maintain, the passenger ships in coming and going do have waterborne traffic cops observing their movements.  Regal Princess did not slow to discharge a pilot, rather, the master sounded the whistle (the Love Boat theme, for television watchers) and off we went.

A crossing of the North Atlantic in April is ... multiple opportunities to go swimming, and get sunburned.  (No, I'm not expecting sympathy.)

The master and the navigator work with the meteorological offices to stay clear of the storms that are still bringing snows to the Great Lakes, and south of the iceberg limit.  Lake Michigan in August is not necessarily as nice as this!

The bridge wings are at about the fifteenth deck, no flying bridge here.  No Chadburn, either. Each of the two power plants is controlled, directly from the bridge, by a single lever with gradations of forward and reverse speeds.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight.  Conditions aboard were conducive to sleeping in.  No jet lag here.

After a week at sea, Ponta Delgada on São Miguel is the first landfall.

Regal Princess is slightly longer and slightly wider than Mesabi Miner, but a great deal taller as up to 2700 passengers and a full crew of 1400 people take up more space than a load of iron ore, particularly as one of the objects of a cruise is to sell a lot of duty free stuff and offer concerts and magic shows and other entertainments.

One ship pretty well fills the harbor.  The next day, 23 April, they expected five!

The Azores?  That came as a bit of a surprise, the local economy is dairy and tropical fruits, not so much a fishery, and the islands are volcanic, making for hot springs and the kind of upscale retirements that involve taking the waters.

HE'S MORE MACHINE THAN MAN.

That's part of the evolution of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, and there's something similar at work with Ivar the Boneless.

Speaking of Ivar, he's almost starting to turn into a movie villain.

With that hood over his head and that evil look in his eyes, was anyone else reminded of Anakin Skywalker from Revenge of the Sith?

Ivar is about to go complete Darth Vader, guys.

He looked like he was completely losing his mind just sitting there laughing, his face covered in blood, while a whole battle commenced around him. If he were going for an insanity plea in a trial, I would believe it.

Ivar has a new set of orthotics, his helmet is more substantial than those of the other berserkers, he alone has a war-chariot, and he's been schooled in the mystic arts by Ragnar and Floki.  So why not?

Yes, Vikings returns, complete with cheesy Geico commercials and selective compression of the sagas.

Or perhaps, we're looking at extended remakes of classic swashbucklers.  So far, there's no half-brother to restage Tony Curtis killing Kirk Douglas, but we do have Bjorn and Halfdan on their way to the Mediterranean, if not on a quest for a great golden bell, Floki off on a day sail that has not yet brought him to the coast of Nova Scotia, and way too much twenty-first-century sensibilities among the women running Kattegat.

Ivar and Ubbe are clearly at odds, with Hvitserk as the wild card. Floki and Bjorn are off on their own crazy adventures. Lagertha retains a tenuous grasp on power in Kattegat. And Harald is off to gather his strength.

Both Ivar and Harald have their [sights] set upon Lagertha---the former for revenge, the latter for power. But Ivar, at least, will have his hands full in England. Aethelwulf was a poor strategist, but Heahmund strikes me as a more clear and present danger to the vikings' ambition.

Perhaps. The bishop is almost as crazy as Ivar.  "Ivar has the potential to be a very interesting character, but he also has the potential to become Vikings' own Ramsay Snow---essentially an Evil Mary Sue who is always victorious, always right, always one step ahead of his enemies."  Mr Kain notes that Vikings is doing a lot of selective compression with the chronicles as we have them, which means there is likely a church-yard in Manchester with Ivar's name on it.

I love that we don't know where any of this is headed (beyond the broad-strokes historical stuff like Floki and Iceland or Rollo in Normandy or Ivar in Ireland and so forth---basically all the major historical points in vikings history condensed into one abbreviated timeline where all the great heroes of these sagas come from Kattegat.)

I do have my concerns over Ivar, but I have faith that at the very least this show always complicates its heroes and villains enough to make them more than just one-dimensional. And I'm curious to see where all these shifting alliances and betrayals go as the season progresses.

More to come. We'll be following along.

THE PACIFIC OCEAN IS NO PLACE TO PLAY.

Last week's feel-good story was the rescue of two women, supposedly missing at sea since sometime in May, turning up alive and well with their dogs along, somewhere off Japan.

One of the sailors, Jennifer Appel, joked years ago about things going wrong at sea.

Appel said she was reminded of a conversation about sailing she had with an acquaintance some 10 years ago.

“I was joking with someone,” she said. “And they said what happens when you go out to sea and you get broken? I said, ‘Oh, the Navy will come save me.’ ”

And these intrepid mariners have in fact been at sea since May.

The rescued women had departed May 3, intending to sail from Hawaii to Tahiti, [Joyce] Appel said, but her daughter’s phone was lost overboard the first day she was at sea, and she hadn’t been able to call since.

Then the women lost their engine in bad weather in late May, but believed they could still reach Tahiti using their sails.

But there's something, er, fishy, about that 'phone going in the drink.

Parts of their story have been called into question, including the tropical storm the two say they encountered on their first night at sea in May. National Weather Service records show no organized storms in the region in early May.

When asked if the two had the radio beacon aboard, the women told the AP on Friday they had a number of other communications devices, but they didn't mention the [I'm Sunk Near Here device].

Apparently Mrs Appel never told her daughter to be careful about picking up sailors in bars.

Key elements of the women's account are contradicted by authorities, weather reports and the basic geography of the Pacific Ocean. The discrepancies raised questions about whether Appel and her sailing companion, Tasha Fuiava, remember the ordeal accurately or could have avoided disaster.

The Hawaii residents reported that their sailing equipment and engine failed and said they were close to giving up when the U.S. Navy rescued them last week, thousands of miles off course. They were taken to Japan, where they didn't immediately respond to an email and call seeking comment Monday.

The Navy said they do not investigate incidents like this and they were only there to render assistance. The Coast Guard said its review of the case is ongoing, but that there is no criminal investigation at this time.

The two women met in late 2016, and within a week of knowing each other decided to take the trip together. Fuiava had never sailed a day in her life. They planned to take 18 days to get to Tahiti, then travel the South Pacific and return to Hawaii in October.

On their first day at sea, May 3, the two U.S. women described running into a fearsome storm that tossed their vessel with 60 mph (97 kph) winds and 30-foot (9-meter) seas for three days, but meteorologists say there was no severe weather anywhere along their route during that time.

Let's be grateful they didn't go to Davy Jones, and wait for the television dramatization that is likely to follow.

Sometimes, south seas adventures don't end so well.

BEFORE THE SNOWS FLY.

Chelsey Lewis tours the inland coasts of southern Wisconsin.

One of my favorite spots to do that close to home is the Seven Bridges Trail at Grant Park in South Milwaukee.  A network of trails winds along wooded bluffs and down to a rocky beach on Lake Michigan.  It's a beautiful spot for hiking in summer and fall.

To the south in Racine, the expansive North Beach is similar to Milwaukee's Bradford, with volleyball courts and a concession stand (open Memorial Day through Labor Day). The beach was the first in Wisconsin to be certified as a Blue Wave clean beach by the National Clean Beaches Council.

Perhaps, more inducements for Foxconn to establish that factory near the state line?

But the real jewel is Geneva Lake, once upon a time the midwestern home of the America's Cup.

One of the best ways to get in the know is on a boat cruise with Lake Geneva Cruise Line.

Captain Nancy Baldwin told our group of about 40 that the cruise line has offered public tours of the lake for 160 years as we boarded the Geneva at the Riviera dock in downtown Lake Geneva.

In the past, boat was the only way to reach our destination: Black Point Estate on the lake's southern shore.

But first, a 45-minute cruise along the north shore narrated by Baldwin, who told us about the great estates that used to and currently line its shores, from nearly one mile of shoreline owned by the Wrigleys (of chewing gum fame) to the white-columned Harris mansion (originally built for Chicagoan Norman W. Harris of the Harris Trust and Savings Bank, now owned by Chicago investment manager Richard Driehaus), where an annual birthday party with a huge fireworks show is a July staple.

The things you learn.  Summer season, one of the cruises is also the mail boat, and on hot days the youngsters who serve as messengers might cool off by accidentally on purpose missing their return to the mail boat (never, though, if they've picked letters up).  But that Black Point is a state historical site, accessible only by boat (so as to damp down those motoring visitors) is new information to me.

There's also a museum of yacht racing lore on the south shore.

Among all that yachting memorabilia, and the travelling trophies of the Lake Geneva Yacht Club, are prizes endowed by the likes of the Wrigley and Elwood families, created in honor of General Sheridan, and won by the non-political Koch brother.