Movin' and Groovin' and Workin' It

I've moved into my new place in Nahant. Needless to say, I like it a lot better than the old place in Lynn. Now I feel less like I'm in Massachusetts as a career necessity, and more like I'm here to enjoy the full spectrum of living. It helps that the last week has seen a sudden bloom of summer, with a 10 degree C jump in temperature. I'm on a three-day streak of doing beachy social stuff, which is amazing.

Yesterday I got a good windsurfing session with great company in warm-for-New-England, side-shore conditions. Jay Turcot from British Columbia took a bunch of nice pictures, some of which I've copied below.

Nahant Beach has gone from sparsely-peopled a few weeks ago to quite the scene now, with full parking lots and folks of all sorts doing things of all sorts.


They have lifeguards and they charge you $3 to park, but I reckon that's not too much money in the grand scheme of things.


Some people who are new to wavesailing were out there looking remarkably confident. Like Claudio, here getting out through the break...


In typical Nahant fashion the waves were long and came in well-organized sets, so you could even ride on the same wave as your buddy. (I'm on the red 6.8 Aerotech Phantom and the blue Exocet Cross 106.)












I think Jay is a really good photographer. Check out this seagull in flight, and the artsy sand ripples.




Jay also got this sweet sunset picture from out the window at my new place. Pretty cool, huh?


In other news, work has been going well. We finished a big weeding and surveying push for our seaweed biodiversity manipulation, and I put out a bunch of temperature dataloggers and wave force dynamometers so we can compare the physical conditions among our sites. The wave force dynamometers have been a bit of a headache. First the balls were falling off, then the carabiners that hold them to eye bolts in the rock were coming unscrewed. I think I've got things sorted out now, though.

This is a bunch of us up near Pemaquid, Maine doing the surveying and weeding.


This is my buddy Brendan at a restaurant in Canada. We had a little down-time between morning and evening low-tides when were working in Lubec, Maine, so we went over the border to explore. Canadians put gravy and white cheese on their french fries and call it "Poutine". It's OK.


This is a shaggy mouse sea-slug, scientific name Aeolida papillosa. It's in a tidepool surrounded by Ascophyllum nodosum rockweed.


The tube with the wiffle-ball is a wave-force dynamometer, and there's a temperature datalogger under the little PVC shade hut.


When a wave sweeps over the dynamometer, it drags on the ball, which is tied to a spring inside the tube, and a little rubber stopper is deflected some distance in accordance with the force of the wave. Assuming the dynamometer itself doesn't bust loose, you can go back later and measure the deflection on the rubber stopper to see how strong the strongest wave was.