Feeds at www.morganscloud.com
posted by John & Phyllis
Web Site
When I (John) am not being compulsive about my boat, I’m being compulsive about photography, my other great passion—aside from Phyllis, of course. I used to check about five photography web sites I liked every couple of days to see what was new. This was time consuming and not very elegant.
Then in early 2007 I discovered feeds—I can hear the more technical among you now, “what cave were you in John?”—a great way to see just what is new on all the web sites I’m interested in, in one place.
We are now providing the same service on www.morganscloud.com in three ways:
Email Feed
To subscribe, type your email address in the field below and then click on subscribe. From then on you will receive an email containing the first few lines of each new post. If the subject interests you, you can then click on the post title within the email to be taken to the full text. Of course we will keep your email address completely confidential.
RSS/Atom FeedClick on the button below and subscribe using a feed reader such as that contained in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (earlier versions of IE did not support feeds) or the FireFox browser.
Email Subscription
If you only want to know when we make major revisions to www.morganscloud.com, just send an email to subscribe@morganscloud.com.
For more about RSS and Atom feeds and other ways in which you can read them see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed
Labels: Rants and Musings
New GMT Composites Carbon Mast for Sale
posted by John & Phyllis
Web Site
Update March 15th 2007
Sold
If you are interested in a slightly used carbon fiber mast or if you are considering the purchase of a carbon mast or in fact undertaking any large custom marine project, like building a boat, you will want to have a look at
http://www.morganscloud.com/gear_failures_fixes/gfmast.htm.
If nothing else, you can learn
how not to run such a project by reading about the worst and most expensive mistake I have made in 45 years of boat ownership and maintenance.
Labels: Maintenance and Refit
A New Year’s Blog
I gave up smoking 30 years ago. Sure, I could lose a few pounds, but that’s no fun. And I’m not giving up wine. So the only New Years’ resolution I can think of is to write more.
In the past Phyllis and I have vented our writing urges through various sailing magazines, but since my last couple of technical articles were edited into drivel to match the general state of much of the sailing press, that won’t satisfy. So here goes my first blog with some more reasons that we are taking this on—other than New Years’ self improvement—and where we want to go with it:
First, a blog is interactive. Unlike our web site, http://www.morganscloud.com/, you can contribute. Agree or disagree, it doesn’t matter; we want to hear what you think about what we write and we want to learn from you too. All we ask is that you keep it civil. If we find a commenter’s answers particularly helpful, we will invite them to write for the blog and thereby expand the opinion and experience pool.
Second, we are both concerned about some trends we are seeing in offshore sailboat design, gear and techniques. (Of course this could just be early onset—well fairly early—curmudgeondom.) So we will be writing about boats, gear and techniques that work offshore without having to worry about the pressure placed on our editors—it’s not their fault, they have to eat too—by the need to sell advertising to the very companies that make the gear we are concerned about. We will also be challenging some old and dearly held “wisdom” about how to go voyaging. Hint: it is not as hard or scary as many would have you believe, although there is some basic stuff you need to do right.
Third, we are currently answering several in depth technical questions a week. To do these answers right takes time and the process often makes us really think about the subject. It would be great to share that effort with a wider audience. As always, generally applicable questions and answers will be added to our web site.
Fourth, because we can add to the blog by e-mail, it will be much easier to share our experiences when out sailing.
We are going to try and make the blog interesting and useful and, when we are particularly cranky about something, it may even be outrageous. It will certainly be opinionated; something that I, as Phyllis points out, am supremely qualified for.
Let us know how we are doing, either with a comment on the blog or an e-mail to info@morganscloud.com.
Labels: Rants and Musings
