Chesapeake Bay (12/30/2014)

Time to pull in one more sailing day this year!

Me (photo taken by Ben)

Ben, a friend of mine invited me to go sailing on his boat today (a Catalina 30).  It was cold, temperatures were in the mid 30s and we actually had flurries.  Wind was approximately 15 knots and it diminished to 10 later in the day.  In other words it was cold, but it was fun.  The boat had a good heel, and at times, according to our GPS, we were going well over 6 miles per hour.  We had a four our sail from the York River Yacht Haven to the Seaford Yacht Club.  A nice sail.

Here we are coming by Yorktown, I'm on the helm (photo taken by my wife)

There was very few people out on the Bay today, which is understandable, considering the weather.  We saw a few pleasure boats with people fishing, no sailboats but even one kayak, with a brave soul. There were a lot of migratory waterfowl on the bay; always a pleasure to see them.  By the end of our sail the clouds broke and there was even a peak of sun.  It was a pleasant sail, but as of this writing, I have not yet warmed up.

Yorktown (12/27/2014)

It was a wonderful day for a walk in Yorktown this past Sunday; and yes we had to bring the camera, dogs etc,  The fathers of Yorktown had the foresight to construct this wonderful walking trail along the river.  It officially goes from one victory center to the other (kind of the Feds competing with the State).  These photos were taken during our walk.  There is the one near the state's center overlooking the York River with part of the beach visible; you can barely see the rooftops of Yorktown (on the other side of the bridge.

The next two pictures were taken from the walking trail when it runs in front of the River Front Walk restaurant.  The reflections in the window were very cool and you can see the bridge and in the other the York River and my family.  Next door to the restaurant is the "Tap House".  Both restaurants are great, and they are nice places to visit with friends and family.  My only gripe still is that there is no good breakfast place in town; but then when I drive there early in the morning, there are not many people out and about (in particular in the winter).  Oh well.  At least there are no chain restaurants in our little town; although the "Carrot Tree" has another establishment in Williamsburg that carries the same name.

During our walk, the river was glass, in other words no ripples were seen for a while.  For us sailors this means there was no wind.  Sailors learn very quickly how to read the water for any wind, puff, or increases in wind that we can use to propel our boats; in particular racers.  We also saw one sailboat in the distance, which I immediately recognized as a boat of a friend (and that I've sailed on twice this year).

In all a great day to be near the water and enjoy the views; something I need, since I have "horizon deficit disorder".

Newport News Park (12/25/2014)

Christmas day and time to play with our new toy camera (an Olympus TH-3 ... kind of Olympus' answer to the Gopro).  This camera is waterproof and shock proof, and this was our chance to try it out in water.  Thank goodness it rained the day before and the ponds had some water in it.  Below are two pictures, the first one was just before I submerged the camera and the second one is actually an underwater picture in the pond.  The water is somewhat murky with leaves and pine needles sticking up.

It is definitively a camera what we will be having fun with, in particular on the boat and in other more nature oriented situations.  Everything I've done with the camera is very satisfactory.  I love it.  Time will tell is we keep that opinion.

To everyone, hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year.

Yorktown (12/23/2014)

It is really nice to be outside in the woods early in the morning after a day of rain or when it is foggy.  Today it was both.  All the trees were still damp, which makes the bark turn really dark and makes the lichen and moss stand out.

Lichen are very interesting organisms.  They actually are a symbiotic relationship ship (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours) of algae, bacteria and fungi.  Somehow by living together they are able to create these wonderfully colored structures that live on rock, and in our woods on the trunks of trees.  This symbiotic relationship makes them strong and able to live under very harsh conditions.  Typically they live on the northern sides of trees and rocks, where they are not baked by the sun.

Here is a picture I took today during my walk this morning.  It was great to be out in the woods again.  Life is still dry, the ponds have no or very little water in them; but regardless it is so enjoyable walking in the woods.  Foggy day walks are my favorite.

Stormwater Management (12/21/2014)

What, no location on this post?  My back yard, Yorktown or even Newport News Park would be a decent heading as well, but this post is more than that.  It speaks more to one of the things I like to do (landscaping, architecture, building, paving) and things I teach (stormwater management).

Over the past two weekends we decided that a strip of grass between two paved areas in our back yard was more of a bother than an asset.  The few things it was good for was that it had some clover (good for bees) that sometimes did reasonably well early on in the year, and that it is the area that receives the overflow from one of our rain barrels and thus serves as an infiltration area for water coming of our roof.

That water infiltrates into the soil is a very important thing to me.  I give impassioned talks about this subject in the classes that I teach and talks that I give throughout the state, in particular since we are definitively seeing a drastic drop in groundwater tables in areas that are developed.  Areas that are turned into subdivisions and shopping areas become less pervious to rainwater than the forested area or agriculture land they were before development.  Rain falls onto impervious surfaces (roofs, roads, parking lots, etc) after which it enters some form of stormwater management system and is piped into the nearest stream or river.  As a result, rainwater that used in infiltrate and recharge our groundwater tables now runs down ditches into a river and out to the sea, or in our case the Chesapeake Bay.  All this added water in the streams also causes flooding downstream and more erosion in the streams during rainstorms while in dry periods the streams are drier than they used to be.  In essence, building subdivisions is not the best for our natural environment; although it is a necessary thing to do; we need to live too.  But I believe in sensible development and less urban sprawl (search my blog for the label urban sprawl and you'll see what I mean).

What I teach is also known as Low Impact Development.  Yes, we need homes and subdivisions, but we can build them sensibly, with respect for our natural environment and for the ground water resources.  When we do that we alse take care of the water quality and quantity in our creeks, rivers and streams.  Instead of piping the water away, we need to help it infiltrate with things like rain gardens, bioretention permeable pavement and other measures.  That was what I was looking at when doing my paving job. 

In this job, I used all kinds of recycled materials.  When we lived in Cincinnati my wife and I would even clean up the Ohio River and pick up old brick that were dumped along the river.  In this job, the tiles were from a walk way we took out and the brick are all recycled from old building projects (my wife and I spent long hours chipping away the cement that clung to some of these brick). 

Giving the brick and tile a bit of a grout line will help with some water infiltration; but we had to deal with the overflow from our rain barrel.  Luckily we had what I call holy brick, or brick that is uses as veneer to a home.  These brick all seem to have three holes in them (hence the holy in holy brick).  So we constructed a slightly depressed channel of these holy brick between the tiles.  We routed the water from our rain barrel through this channel in the hope (expectation) that any overflow will infiltrate through these holes into the soil; thus achieving what I teach: runoff reduction.  We will have to monitor it and see how it works.  The photo below show the results of a two-weekend job, minus the sore back.