Do you remember sun-drenched Wotje, with the little girl who presses a pretty shell into your hand and laughs? Do you remember Typhoon Kyle, and furling sails in 50 knots of wind and 40 foot waves? Do you remember a week out of Honolulu, already part of the family, when friendly Roger sailes out from Palmyra, sharing his island paradise? Do you remember sailing under the Golden Gate bridge, seeing parents waiting, and having the family scatter across the country, around the world?

Turn these pages, and remember the ports. Remember also the people. Your roommates, your watchmates, your teachers, the crew, your friends. Remember the ship, her tall masts towering above you. The sails filling with a snap and proud maple leaves billowing out as she leaps forward, dolphins and blue, blue waves her only companions.

You scurry about on deck, acid-washing your fingers to the bone. Scuppers, deck scrubbing, rust-picking, priming, painting. Scrubbing pots and flipping stir-fry, serving tables and being the juice-person.

Remember those endless nights on watch? Struggling to keep awake, keeping your eyes glued to the red glowing compass. Staring off at the horizon, watching the first faint rays of the sun creep up.

It's all in here, so you'll never forget. The voyages of the S/V Concordia, 1993 - 1994.

I'm revamping bmannconsulting.com. Right now I'm experimenting with putting flat files up on Github pages.

This is an example of me putting up my Class Afloat Yearbook, which I scanned in many years ago.

This is a transcription from the scanned image of the first page. I was the yearbook editor, but through a series of mishaps, never ended up with my own copy of the yearbook, so I only have these scans.

I obviously didn't have much room, so there are no line breaks. I've put some in for readability. And I'm pretty sure "rustpicking" isn't one word, so I added a hyphen.

Casting a critical eye on this writing, which is now 17 years old, written by my 19 year old self, it's…OK. I'm not emotionally removed enough (still!) from the memory strings it's tugging. As with most of my writing, it's very conversational; and by that I mean, I use the same cadence when writing as when I'm speaking.

I still haven't applied to speak at Raincity Chronicles, but if I do, it will be about some part of this Class Afloat voyage.

Cue the switch to tech talk…

Github pages? Well, it's a funny throw-back to be writing HTML directly in a lot of little index.html pages (never mind having a bunch of files all called the same thing open in your text editor). I need to learn Jekyll to actually build a site.

It DOES feel great to be "crafting" a site, with the links and organization of naming, file structure, and links all selected, rather than auto-generated. And it feels like work, in a good way.

Later on I will stand in one of these stores in front of a pyramid of Coke Zero bottles and consider the fact that a whole infrastructure exists for bringing this substance of no nutritional value from wherever it's bottled in Europe up to a place like this. I happen to love Coke Zero and whatever cyclopyrimidines or butylated phenols give it its weird fake sweetness, but seeing it stacked in quantity after coming off an island where everything has to be carried in by hand gives me pause. I feel like the Burfjord grocery store will someday form part of a sanctimonious diorama about the folly of late-period humanity in someone's well-meaning, sustainably-built museum or alien terrarium, and the thought fills me with irritation in advance. I buy a large bottle of the stuff as my way of shaking a fist at the future.

Found via @mezzoblue, and wonderful reading.

Reminds me of when I was on a small atoll that is part of the Marshall Islands. There was one cinderblock construction supply store for both visitors and locals. We all lined up to pay $1USD for… …a cold can of coke. It also seems that $1 is the universal price for a can of pop.

The Canadian tall ship SV Concordia, a sailing school vessel, heads past downtown Halifax in this July 24, 2000 file photo. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

A Nova Scotia-based ship carrying dozens of students has sunk off Brazil, but everyone is safe and there were no serious injuries, officials say.

The Brazilian navy said the tall ship SV Concordia went down about 550 kilometres southeast of Rio de Janeiro in rough seas.

West Island College International of Lunenburg, which runs the Class Afloat program, said all 64 people aboard were rescued from four life-rafts by merchant vessels early Friday.

The 48 students, eight teachers and eight crew had to abandon ship and spent the night in the life-rafts equipped with blankets and some food. A Brazilian navy helicopter spotted the rafts and dropped medical supplies.

I went on the Class Afloat program right after I graduated from high school, in 1993 / 94. I spent 11 months on board, starting from Vancouver and then sailing around the north and south Pacific Ocean.

It was an incredible experience, and one I've always encouraged other people to take part in.

The ship was custom built in Gdansk, Poland, specifically for this program. They're going to have to raise millions of dollars to try and replace it, if they intend to continue.