Clayton, NY

Saturday, July 19, 2008

044-14.220 N
076-5.400 W

Ahoy from Clayton, NY!

This is just a quick report to say that we're here. We left Sackets Harbor yesterday morning and actually had a chance to use wind power! We left with the wind on the nose, made a right hand turn and was sailing along at 7+ kts in 12 kts actual wind. I would have loved to have sailed like that all day, but unfortunately we had to continue turning right so that we could begin our trip down the St. Lawrence and eventually we ended up with the wind dead behind (which dropped the apparent wind into the single digits). Then the wind died even more and we basically had white triangular things above the boat which did little other than signify that we were a sailboat. So the engine came back on and we motored along.

The weather around here can be simply defined by HHH or Hazy, Hot and Humid. On the water it's just been Hazy and Humid with visibilities in the 1-2 mile range. By mid-afternoon the Hot has worked in and then come the thunderstorms which are being exacerbated by a stationary front just N of us. The big problem is that with the low visibility, you can't see them coming. The Coast Guard kept issuing warnings yesterday for severe thunderstorms in our area combined with winds in excess of 45 kts, so we were happy to get in. The sky just looked like something bad could happen at any moment.

We pulled into Clayton, which is a US town on the St. Lawrence which is best known for their Antique Boat Museum. We didn't get to see it yesterday as we needed to pick up some supplies, but we hope to visit today. We did get to see a lot of the town, and it's quaint, but I don't know that I'd want to live here.

I've had several requests to describe how I produce all of the video and images from on board the boat. You can find a description of the tools and equipment that I use at http://www.geoffschultz.org/photo_web_tools.shtml

The above does a good job of describing the tools, but it takes a huge amount of time to use all of the above tools. Processing the video takes a huge amount of computer time. I down-load the video to my laptop and then I have to pre-process it to a lower resolution format so that I can edit it visually on the laptop as the full definition files are too large to interactively edit. That can take 1-3 hours of computer time. Then I edit the clips, selecting segments that I want to use, place titles, add transitions and music. Then I crunch the full resolution video into a WMV file which can take another 1-3 hours. Then I convert that file into a DIVX format file which is about 1/20th the size of the WMV file. This get uploaded via a wireless connection to YouTube.

On top of that I'm also shooting stills, which need to be edited and uploaded as a photo album. Luckily that's not as computer intensive, but it still takes time. Then I get to write a log and insert images and upload that to my web site. This is part of the reason that I get up just after 5 AM every day. The biggest problem is that Sue has been waking up early and suggesting that we get moving. Hey, this is MY time that you're infringing on! :-)

Anyhow, that's how all of this gets produced. I hope that some of you find it enjoyable.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 1213