Tropical Storm Tomas...Approaching the Caribbean

San Rafael California

For long time blog followers, my sometimes irrational obsession with weather is well established. Don't think for a second, now that I've turned in my Sou'wester and trusty compass, for tweed jackets and Guzman Lecture Hall, that I don't get up in the morning and do a quick round of weather analysis. Old habits ya know. A couple of days ago a "yellow blob of doom" otherwise known as an area of disturbed weather had formed near the equator in the Atlantic way east of Trinidad. Much to my surprise during this mornings round up, the yellow had turned to a "red blob from hell" otherwise known as a tropical depression forming. Blam! Tropical Storm Tomas formed very rapidly and is a huge storm. Never has a tropical low formed this far south or east this late in the h-season. Tropical storm warnings are now up for Trinidad, Grenada and all of the Windward Islands. The center should track over St Vincent and the Grenadines. I took the picture below in Salt Whistle Bay, on the island of Myreau, in the Grenadines when I visited aboard Christa. Glad I'm not there now! They should see close to hurricane force conditions. Generally sailors this far south feel comfortable as almost all storms track much further north. I'm sure people are concerned.


I pulled this really excellent youtube forecast clip for all the other weather obsessed.


 

From Christa Mast Top. Salt Whistle Bay Myreau St Vincent and the Grenadines May 2009

I worry for my second family aboard Wandering Dolphin and Kristopher is in Wyoming attending his fathers funeral, while the rest of the gang, minus Jimmy is in St Thomas. Also, Tom and Amy and Sadie Sea are in St. John. So Tomas is forecast to spin up into a major hurricane by middle of next week when the forecast track becomes uncertain. 


Capt Chris
P.S. Two posts in one day. Who would of thunk it?

Racial Identity in America

San Rafael Califoria

 I dashed off another difficult research paper for school. Racial identity is controversial. My parameters for the paper was 3 to 5 pages long, but I slipped a few lines into page 6. The paper was a serious challenge, in that most writing I've been doing has been closer to 20 pages in length. Plenty of room to develop an idea and support said idea by research with 20 pages. In the case of my  racial identity paper,  I had to leave out a substantial amount of blathering. 

I'm out of the sailing world now and in the Humanities and Cultural Studies world, so this is why I would post this on my blog. What can I do?

Racial identity is a very emotional topic, so leave comments if you like!

Capt Chris


Racial Identity in America

Randy Travis in the Spurr of the Moment

San Rafael California
Burr, hit 37 degree's last night

I was hanging out with Lena, a fellow art student, at the print shop on campus the other day. She says, "I want to see Randy Travis and I think he's playing soon." She launched Firefox and wouldn't you know it, he was playing in three hours. She surf's on over to Craigslist and some lady won tickets, but couldn't make the show. She was giving them away. Lena sends an email with phone number, contact is made, and in a flash we now have phat tickets for that evenings show. After a spasm of joy, we lit out for Napa! We had a great dinner, enjoyed the show and pretty much had a great day. These are important little breaks in life.

Lena & I at the Uptown Theater Napa CA

I apologize for the terrible picture quality. Taken on my iPhone4 in a rush by cowboy folks not so adept at technology. It's cool though!

Capt Chris