New sail - 6.5 Ezzy Legacy + Hot Water

Now that I'm a responsible, married, middle-aged adult I'm pretty frugal about my watersports equipment purchases. So I used my ~2015 6.8 Aerotech Phantom sail hard for about a decade, including through at least one professional repair, before finally getting something new yesterday. The new sail is a 6.5 meter squared Ezzy Legacy. I also considered a 6.7 Ezzy Cross, a newer Ezzy freeride sail which Roy at Ace Performer had in stock. But I decided against the Cross for two reasons. 1) It was more expensive than the Legacy. 2) I was nervous about the extremely long "foot" length of the Cross, in which the bottom batten extends beyond the clew of the boom. I thought it might be in the way in wave riding and jibing and stuff.

Anyway, I was gonna try the 6.5 Legacy yesterday right after I bought it, but while idling my rustbucket no-AC minivan at Bonita Beach access #10, waiting for a nice young couple to leave the only available beach parking spot in Robert E. Lee County where only the aristocracy and landed gentry are deemed worthy of beach access, steam started billowing out from my hood and I had to flee to a shady spot to add coolant. I still salvaged a nice SUP session in the tree shade of the Imperial River and only hit one barely-submerged cypress stump at full speed causing one board-deck breaking knee impact and swan dive deep into the black water.

Today, with a full coolant reservoir and the van only making a few worrisome new noises, I headed back to Bonita Beach and had the good fortune to find an open spot at access #1. It didn't look windy enough to foil, but the water was a pretty color and the sun was shining so I figured the seabreeze might strengthen enough to foil while I was out there. The new sail rigged up easy and it looks good. The draft is really deep and close to the mast so the sail's center of effort is way forward. That tends to make sails powerful and light feeling- you don't feel as much "back hand" pull on the boom.

On the water it was definitely non-foiling conditions, but the wind very gradually built. I got up briefly in an isolated gust, and that gave me the gambler's hope of getting some more. Eventually there were some bigger patches of wind and I was able to fly for longer stretches, and even do some foiling jibes. The sail feels nice and stable at speed. I think the built-in shape that it has is better for foiling than the wind-induced shape of the Aerotech Phantom was. We'll see how it is for shortboard sailing once there's some more wind.

One more thing I wanted to say: The water here in South Florida is HOT. It's disturbing and in fact not normal. Doing fieldwork in the Caloosahatchee Estuary last week the thermometer on the fishfinder was saying 92 F - that's 33.4 Celsius - in the water. It would be neat if that heat would kill the germs from the 450,000 gallon (1,703 metric ton) sewage spill in the Caloosahatchee a few weeks ago, but germs like it hot.

The Florida Keys are also experiencing coral bleaching again - the worst since the terrible 2023 bleaching event that killed almost all of the endangered Acropora corals remaining on the reef. There are a lot of graphs and stuff on the NOAA Coral Reef Watch page where you can see the temperature and risk levels for various parts of the planet. I think one of the most telling figures is this "time series graph" which shows the cumulative heat exposure that the corals have had. It's still July but we're at a level now that we didn't get to last year until late August.

Proposed Solutions:

1. We stop CO2 pollution by switching to 100% renewable energy ASAP, and meanwhile we conserve energy by not doing energy-wasting things like building massive dystopian AI datacenters.
2. We plant lots of TREES and stop cutting down the ones we have. It was SO much cooler under the tree canopy of the Imperial River. Typical Florida developers are building for rich snowbirds who aren't here in the summer and have no appreciation for the value of trees, it seems.
3. We implement high tax rates on the richest Lee County residents and property owners, who can afford it, and use the money to buy much more public access along our beaches. Nothing fancy, just dirt/grass parking with tree shade.
4. We improve bike lanes and public transportation and stuff so it's more feasible to get to the beaches without a car at all.
5. We change the name of the county to something better, once we've earned it.

Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage

Are you known as, "that ______ guy" or "that ______ lady? If so, you have surely been gifted a book, or ten, about that ______ thing, for better or worse. As a standup paddleboarding (SUP) dabbler since 2007 and SUP race enthusiast since 2014 I'm actually surprised that I wasn't given a SUP book until recently. Library and bookstore shelves aren't exactly overflowing with SUP offerings- maybe that's why it took a while. You see, SUP is like tofu- it's very wholesome but (I assume) most people would rather die than read a book about it. I did a cursory search just now and there are literally more books about tofu than there are about SUP. (How to know your ______ is boring AF: there are more books about tofu than ______.)

I'm not a professional writer (my wife is) but I gather that there are a few tricks for turning a boring topic into something more palatable, much as a gifted chef can make tofu nearly edible. 1. Combine it with something totally unrelated and much more interesting. The small town bookstore owner also solves murders. 2. Raise the stakes. It not just a long paddle; it's a very dangerous solo ocean crossing. 3. Twine it into deeply personal or philosophical musings. 4. Use it as a vehicle to explore and opine on interesting aspects of culture, history, science, etc.

Dan Rubenstein's "Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage," which my mom gave me for Christmas, uses a bit of techniques 2 and 3, but mostly technique 4. Rubenstein is a Canadian journalist who seems to be a thoughtful, responsible, good-hearted person very concerned with environmental conservation, social and economic justice, and other important things now subject to anti-woke backlash in the US. Dan's long, inland paddleboard journey; a circuit on rivers, lakes, and canals from the Great Lakes region to New York City and back, is an impressive logistical and endurance feat. He often paddled ~50 km (30 miles) per day day on a 14' inflatable BadFish sup loaded with camping gear, and he had to deal with strong headwinds, wrong-way river currents, ocean-type waves on the Great Lakes, and "Deliverance" type peril in some run-down urban and rural areas. But he never frames the story in a macho, proving-his-greatness kind of way. He's humble and self-deprecating with dorky dad energy that I resemble and appreciate as a sane antidote to the toxic energy of the egomaniac males like Hegseth and Musk who dominate the news these days.

Picture from a nice TotalSUP article about Dan's Journey

Part of Rubenstein's responsibility is that he's working his ass off doing journalist stuff the entire time he's paddling. Almost every day he has a meeting arranged with some local-to-that-part-of-the-waterway environmental activist, scientist, historian, barge operator, quaint inn proprietor, urban youth outreacher, or other person who is deeply involved in honoring and improving their part of the world. It's inspiring to get a view of all these people in all these places rallying around green and "blue spaces" for ecological restoration, economic revitalization, equitable access, etc. We need that kind of water stewardship everywhere to reverse the harmful effects of pollution, privatization, shoreline "hardening," etc. At the same time, it's exhausting to read through so many sequential accounts of those do-gooders and the similar challenges they're facing, so I found myself reading the book in kind of small doses at a time. Dan also has random encounters with kind, quirky, and occasionally creepy people along the way, which adds some fun and keeps things down to earth.

The most awkward, painful-reflection aspect of reading this book was Rubenstein's constant, critical interrogation of his own privilege as an educated, middle-class, straight white male in a nation that (like the US) gained its riches through exploitation of nature, indigenous people, poor workers, etc. But as awkward as attempts of privileged people to be politically correct / woke always seem to be, I think it's still important that we keep awkwardly working to be better, more humble, more real human beings. The alternative is deepening the harmful divisions in society that prevent human progress and could lead to our destruction, and that's no good.

Anyway, cheers to Dan. Water Borne isn't going to sell like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, but it's an honest and intelligent book about the hope and challenge of healing our waterways and healing the social-environmental fabric of our world. Two thumbs up from this _______ guy.

Florida Democratic Primary Ballot for August 18, 2026 election - Thoughts

There's an election coming up soon in Florida, and since I signed up to vote by mail I have my ballot now. I'm registered as a democrat, so my version of the ballot lets me vote for candidates in the democratic primary elections, as well as in elections for non-partisan positions like judges and school board members. Interestingly, I also get to choose between two republicans in a "universal primary" for District 5 County Commissioner, because Florida law opens up the primaries to all registered voters if all the primary candidates are from one party.

I tried to do a reasonable amount of a research into all the candidates before I marked my ballot, looking not only at the candidates' own campaign websites, but also at what the local newspapers and trusted pundits were saying about them. The News-Press usually has some local candidate information, and I think it's viewable even to non-subscribers. (I actually subscribed to that newspaper recently, which is the first time I've ever purchased a newspaper subscription. It seems to be a good local news source that covers shit in more detail than you get on the TV news. Also, I know and admire some of the writers a lot, including Amy Bennett Williams and Chad Gillis who have often covered science and environment stories I've weighed in on.)

Anyway, this is what I marked (the X is who I voted for), with a little explanation of why:

United States Senator - 
Angie Nixon (X) 
Alex Vindaman

- Both senate candidates have admirable qualities such as being willing to speak truth to power at personal risk. However, I chose Angie Nixon because of her support for peace in Gaza where my friend Rachel was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 in a pattern of violence against Palestinian civilians, aid workers, and human rights activists that the US has abetted for far too long. This needs to change. 

US Congressional Representative for District 19 (Byron Donalds' seat) -
Victor Arias
Robert M. Neeld
Howard Sapp (X) - 

- Sapp is a respected local leader who has been in tough political races before. He has also raised the most money.

Governor and Lieutenant Governor -
Evelyn Castillo-Bach
Thomas Eloy Fernandez
Dayna Marie Foster
David Jolly / Gwen Graham 
Dotie Joseph (X)  
Stephann Norman

- Dotie Joseph is an legitimate democrat with 8 years experience in the Florida House. David Jolly is the favorite in this race but he was a republican until recently, which I think is suspicious. 

Chief Financial Officer
Earle Ford
Annette Taddeo (X) 

- Taddeo has political experience and seems to unequivocally support stuff I care about.

Commissioner of Agriculture
Joey Mendoza Atkins (X) 
Donald A. "Don" Prichard

- Mendoza Atkins says he'll actually follow the recommendations of the Blue Green Algae Task force, which includes some scientists I admire. Also, Mendoza Atkins is the only candidate with a website.

Board of County Commissioners District 5
Amanda Cochran REP (X) 
Trish Petrosky REP 

- Cochran is a rural Lee County resident opposed to sprawl and endorsed by the non-partisan "Vote Water" environmental organization. Petrosky on the other hand was appointed by Governor DeSantis, is not really from around here, and is expected to be a rubber stamp for environment-destroying special interests

Circuit Court Judge 20th Group 19
Vera Bergermann (X) 
James Stewart 

- Stewart was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Stewart has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Bergermann was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

Circuit Court Judge 20th Group 27
Ryan Kuhl (X) 
Amanda Levy-Reis 

- Levy-Reis was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Levy-Reis has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Kuhl was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

County Judge Group 5
Mike Colombo (X) - Not appointed by DeSantis
Javier A. Pachecho - Appointed by DeSantis

- Pachecho was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Pachecho has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Colombo was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

School Board Member District 6

Jada Langford Fleming 
India Palencia (X) 

- Fleming is one of those ultra-conservative "anti-woke" crusaders who I think are dumbing down and education and censoring important topics. Palencia is known for standing up for minorities. 

Stop the "rollout" of PLASTIC GRASS at FGCU

College campuses are usually quiet in summer, but Florida Gulf Coast University buzzed this week with an impassioned effort to stop the rollout of PLASTIC GRASS in the central quad. Plastic grass already sneaked its way onto campus in two other places this year, including a 4000 square foot area around the student center that used to be real grass and trees and is now an uninhabitable plastic heat-collector.

While mowed lawn is far from the best type of land cover for nature (you may have seen my other posts advocating for unnecessarily mowed areas to be "rewilded"), it's still WAY better than plastic grass, despite whatever BS hype you might hear from plastic grass salesmen. Some reasons real is better than artificial include:

1. Plastic grass is not alive. Nothing can eat it. Real grass, on the other hand, supports a food chain of bugs and worms and bunny rabbits and things that in turn support birds and other predators.
2. Plastic grass is made from oil in an energy intensive process that contributes to CO2 pollution and other types of pollution.
3. Plastic grass breaks down (quickly in the searing UV of the Florida sun) and introduces microplastic particles and toxic chemical pollutants like PFAS into the soil and water, hurting wildlife and endangering human health.
4. While real grass that's overmanaged with fertilizer, pesticides, watering, etc. can be a burden on the environment, grass actually grows fine in south Florida with no intervention other than mowing. It gets weedy, but that's a good thing because the biodiversity of the weeds leads to more efficient resource use and resilience, and the flowering weeds look pretty and support all sorts of beautiful and important pollinators like honeybees and butterflies.
5. Real grass with no chemicals added can also help sponge-up chemical pollution running off from other areas.
6. Real plants naturally cool the landscape via "evapotranspiration" (wicking water from the soil up through their roots and leaves into the sky), and also by conversion of light energy into chemical energy via photosynthesis. Sunlight hitting plastic grass, on the other hand, just turns into HEAT, making artificial turf areas much hotter than natural grass; even hotter than pavement sometimes. Trees cool better than grass, but grass is still way cooler than plastic. We've known this stuff about the heat problem of plastic turf since the early 1970s, at least, but just to demonstrate it again I deployed a thermometer on the real and fake grass at FGCU last week-

The plastic grass on campus is particularly galling because FGCU, my employer, is conspicuously branded as Florida's "environmental university." Environmental sustainability has been a central part of FGCU's stated goals since its founding in 1997. This may be partly to offset the original scandal of our campus' construction over sensitive wetlands and panther habitat that was supposed to be preserved. (This was part of a trojan horse deal to let land baron Ben Hill Griffin develop a bunch of surrounding property that was also supposed to have been protected. Very Florida.) Anyway, despite the dirty beginnings, FGCU has USUALLY done a good job of being green. We've kept most of the campus as natural preserve areas, we've let native plants grow around our stormwater ponds to the point that they've become diverse wetlands, we've integrated hands-on environmental education into almost all our academic programs, and we've hired a lot of biology, environmental science, environmental engineering, and marine science faculty who've been active in research intended to help protect the environment.

So how did we go so wrong with the plastic grass? I think it's because the business and operations parts of the university, in their enterprising zeal, have developed a very bad habit of making environmentally-consequential decisions about campus management and development without involving any of the environmental experts we have among our faculty. FGCU does have a Sustainability and Resiliency Council co-chaired by a wonderful environmental scientist who I sincerely love, but it doesn't seem like that group can do anything besides make recommendations that get ignored. I understand why the business and operations folks don't like involving faculty. We faculty are a bunch of opinionated know-it-alls who are never quite satisfied with anything, and decision-making processes we're involved in often become slow and painful. Also, we might say "NO" to some big building or project that the expand-the-enterprise folks are giddy about getting underway. Nevertheless, faculty from relevant disciplines MUST be included in decision making processes to avoid these kind of glaring, should-have-known-better, publicly-humiliating mistakes. What's the point of all our big brains and expertise if the people making decisions never ask us what we think?

In an official statement addressing the plastic grass controversy, given for a News-Press story about the plastic grass that I was also quoted in, our university's spokesperson pointed out that the planning folks did send around a survey last year to ask what people would like to see for the campus quad area. I remember the survey. It was pretty open-ended and of course I filled it out and said I'd like the quad area to be kept as natural as possible, and oh by the way please remember to ask us or at least tell us when you're making some big environmental decision. "Would you like us to replace the real grass with plastic grass?" was absolutely NOT one of the questions on the survey, and I highly doubt that any of the other staff or students who filled out the survey said anything remotely like, "I want to see more plastic grass." So I think the decision to use plastic grass was a poor interpretation of whatever feedback the planners got from that survey and one that, again, could have easily been avoided if there was anyone on the decision making committee with even the slightest knowledge and appreciation of science and environmental stuff.

The fight is still on. I have hope that we can stop the plastic-rollout from happening in the main quad, and maybe we can even tear it out of the areas it's already gone in. Some students from our ornithology club made an online petition that you can sign if you want to help. (790 signatures so far!) It's wonderful to see bravery and leadership from the students on these campus environmental issues. I was heartened to see their commentary in this Gulf Coast News TV segment, for example. I'm also excited to see one of our top research students, Anthony Dues Jr. has started a substack blog tackling the topic with a scientifically informed rant. This ain't over.

Sea Breeze / Land Breeze - The Gulf of Mexico Breathing

Florida doesn't have any mountains to look at but we do have some primo clouds. Clouds have interested me ever since I was a kid, but since getting into windsurfing and studying marine science, both of which require learning about the roles of ocean and atmospheric circulation in weather and climate, I've developed a cloud obsession bordering on the unhealthy. Clouds are neat in themselves, but their patterns and changes over time tell an awe-inspiring story of the planet's life; its giant, slow breathing and pulsing movements of water, energy, and heat. One cloud pattern I love to watch in summer in Florida is related to the seabreeze / land breeze cycle that unfolds each day and night.

Sea Breeze is wind that blows from the ocean towards the land. It's driven by solar heating of the land during the day, which causes hot air to rise over the land, drawing cooler air in from the sea. If conditions are right the seabreeze forms tall, billowing clouds as it rises over the land. These are the source of Florida's summer thunderstorms, which are particularly intense over the middle of the state where the Atlantic Coast sea breeze coming from the east collides with the Gulf Coast sea breeze coming from the west.

Land Breeze is the opposite of sea breeze. It's wind that blows from lands towards the ocean, when the ocean is warmer than the land so air is rising over the ocean and sinking over the land. It happens at night, because land cools off faster than water does. So when the sun sets in Florida the thunderstorms over land usually peter out, but majestic thunder clouds may form over the ocean. On summer mornings in Florida, especially on the Gulf of Mexico side, you can often look out and see gorgeous, side-lit walls of thunderclouds that formed over the ocean at night.

I can't see the beach from my apartment complex, but I know which direction to look to see those over-the-Gulf clouds, and they're often spectacular in the morning. Likewise, in the afternoon I look east to see the eruptions of storms forming inland, and I try to time my bike ride home from work to not get caught in them. Below is a comparison of the morning and afternoon skies today, demonstrating the pattern pretty well. (I should note that it's never exactly the same, and there definitely exceptions to the land clouds in the day, sea clouds at night rule, but the exceptions are interesting, too.)

Here's what the morning conditions look like on the iwindsurf.com radar. Land breeze pattern, with the activity over the ocean and nothing happening over land.

Here's what the afternoon conditions look like on the iwindsurf.com radar. Sea breeze pattern, with land heating generating rising air and thunderstorms over the peninsula, but not much going on over the waters.

This is the modeled wind strength and direction for the morning from iwindsurf.com. Air is still flowing off the land out into the ocean.

This is the modeled wind strength and direction for the afternoon from iwindsurf.com. You can see landward flow caused the seabreeze, plus locally increased winds around the thunderstorms.