July eBook pages 1-91 (16.1 MB) - Latitude 38

PHOTOS LATITUDE / LADONNA
SIGHTINGS
Page 82 • Latitude 38 • July, 2010
gold — cont’d
request assistance. White sails, white hull, white mast — all are diffi
cult, if not impossible to spot against a background of frothing seas.
And while dark blue hulls are a feast for the eyes at the dock, they’re
essentially invisible on the water.
So, short of placing a bulk order at DayGlo.com, how can average
sailors increase their visibility at sea? Inspired by the solution found
by friend Jon Eisberg, I started researching options. While Jon’s
answer of painting the top third of his mast red would certainly be
the easiest route — we already had the mast down for repainting — I
was less than satisfi ed with the color choices available through Petit
and Interlux. Red would be more visible than white, certainly, but I
wanted something that would scream, “DON’T RUN OVER ME!”
In my quest, I naturally browsed the aforementioned DayGlo site
but found that fl uorescent paints require fresh coats every year. Um,
no. Then a lightbulb went off: the vinyl name on the transom still
looks pretty good after a decade . . . what about fl uorescent vinyl?
continued on outside column of next sightings page
Refl ective personality — Clockwise from below, 3M Scotchlite 680, seen here glowing in the sun, is much easier to handle when cut
into smaller pieces; an epoxy scraper works perfectly to smooth out wrinkles and bubbles; we used thin strips to ‘fi nish’ the vinyl
job and added SOLAS-approved white refl ective stickers at the top of the mast; at night, our mast really shines; Spaulding Center
boatyard manager Michael Wiener was really impressed with our handiwork. “Your mast is beautiful,” he said. We think so too!
hopkins
'Yes We Can' was a rallying cry in the
'08 presidential campaign, and one that
was embraced by voters in June 8's Lake
County primary elections. Incumbent District
Attorney Jon E. Hopkins — the man
who decided to prosecute sailor Bismarck
Dinius instead of Deputy Sheriff Russell
Perdock in the '06 boating death of Lynn
Thornton — was soundly ousted from a
spot on November's general election ballot
by Don Anderson and Doug Rhoades.
While the numbers seem surprisingly
close — Anderson received 37.8% of the
vote, Rhoades 32% and Hopkins 30.1%
— the thing to keep in mind is that nearly
70% of the ballot-casters voted against