Zephyr (sail): Slackwater Marine

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Slackwater Marine

Some great feedback on the "Yacht Monkeys" post (just two back) - now that the writers are on strike maybe there is an opening for someone to bang out a pilot.

Pat points out that I failed to mention the movie "Dead Calm." One of my favorites (love Nicole) but still, it's a movie not a serial TV show. He also cites Quincy. Did that take place on a boat?

Tillerman swung in with "Yachtrock." Ol man Proper Course knows his stuff so I guess I betray my ignorance here...but I've never heard of it.

Finally in the "take your real life and make it a TV show" category we had the below post on "Slackwater Marine" from Yuri. If I was a producer I'd be intrigued, no doubt...

FROM YURI: Ooh! Ooh! (Raising arm at the back of the classroom) How about "Slackwater Marine"? All of the above, plus misc. drug-running, crazed alcoholism, blatant racism, and a dead-hatred of all South Africans? Of course, there will be the standard glorious Caribbean backdrop. Oh. Yeah. I already work there.

3 comments:

Tillerman said...: Yacht Rock

Not strictly speaking a television show, and not really about sailing, but, hey, it's a great name for a show.

Why are the last 3 letters of your word-verification anti-spam thingy for me tonight, DFL? Do you know me?; 4:53 PM
Unknown said...: And oh yes, I forgot to mention that every last employee at Slackwater Marine owns a yacht which they have each been planning to launch "sometime next week" every week for the past 6 years...; 7:30 PM
wingssail said...: OK, lets look forward a bit into the trends in media and entertainment. The future in TV seems to be "user published", as in You Tube, and reality. Instead of writing and producing a show the way TV shows have always been done, maybe you solicit footage and clips from boaters and sailors and yard workers and put your production team onto the task of turning it into a show each week. Of course the dilemma of this, and the the elegance one would seek, is to wind up with a show with a semblance of a plot and dialog which seems to be "good writing" but is real, based on reality...how many clips do you dig through each week to find the gems you can use and patch together into a show, and how do you keep the sub-plots running week after week?; 10:43 PM

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"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective."
-Henry David Thoreau

"Sailors work like horses at sea and spend their money like asses ashore."
-Anonymous

"Never go into strange places on a falling tide without a pilot."
-Thomas Gibson Bowles

"They that go down to the sea in ships; and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord; and His wonders in the deep"
-Book of Common Prayer

"There was a grandeur in everything around, which gave almost a solemnity to the scene; a silence and solitariness which affected everything. Not a human being but ourselves for miles; and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great pacific."
-Richard Henry Dana

"It was with a happy heart that the good odysseus spread his sail to catch the wind and used his seamanship to keep his boat straight with the steering-oar"
-Homer

"Why is almost every robust, healthy boy with a robust, healthy soul in him, at some time or other, crazy to go to sea? Why, upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land?"
-Herman Melville - Moby Dick

"To insure safety at sea, the best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship, self-reliance, and sense of ultimate responsibility which are the first requisites in a seaman and naval officer."
-Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made, for somewhere deep in their oaken hearts the soul of a song is laid."
-Robert N. Rose

"O Captain! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done, the ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won, the port is near, the bells i hear, the people all exulting."
-Walt Whitman

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking."
-John Masefield

" Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. "
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power."
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Zephyr - May 05, 2005 - Sailors are intrinsically storytellers

Technology is having a significant impact on sailing culture, particularly in how sailors communicate with one another and share information about key aspects of voyaging and cruising (weather, friendly ports-of-call, sheltered anchorages). Some of the best examples of this are found in the multitude of individual sailing weblogs being published with more popping every day. Unlike Zephyr, which focuses on a specific topic (sailing culture) and covers it broadly, these sailing blogs are written from the perspective of voyagers, boatbuilders, weekend warriors they're mostly about the individual journey and serve as a two-way, grassroots window into the sailing world. When I was mate on the Maxi in the late 90'€™s I used to punch out email updates to all my desk-bound friends back in the States, compile a mailing list and send them whenever I could find an Internet cafe when we paused in Roadtown, English Harbor, Culebra, etc. I remember people enjoyed them, forwarded them all over their offices, to friends across the country. Sailors are intrinsically storytellers and the Internet has magnified this attribute. Consider the shift from the viral, uncontrolled mass email to a narrow-casted, self published weblog. We are witnesses to this technology proliferating, evolving and beginning to virtually knit together the larger sailing community...not surprisingly the results are (like many things in life) heterogeneous - we discover compelling content side-by-side with the trite, sublime with mundane, unique with conventional...

Zephyr (sail)

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Slackwater Marine

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Zephyr - May 05, 2005 - Sailors are intrinsically storytellers