WHY THE PACKERS SUCK

JAN 16 UPDATE: Tough loss for the Meat Packers today, but boy, that A-Rod sure can play. You heard it here first: The Packers will never make it to another Super Bowl with him at QB. C'est la vie.

JAN 6 UPDATE: As expected, the Pack lost to Minnesota on Sunday. At least the Packers have lots of great fans, like those at right. Let's hope for more good news next Sunday in Washington, DC. (And we'll get back to sailing soon!)

Happy New Year and welcome to another non-sailing post. It's January so there's no sailing in Wisconsin these days. Nor do we care about the boys arguing over their toys every other Wednesday evening in the Hoofer lounge. Does it really matter whether the club accepts that poor sap's beat-up Laser or some other junk?

Meanwhile, with the Vikings-Packers divisional championship game looming this Sunday, we thought it appropriate to recall why the Packers suck so much:

1. Brett Favre is gone.

2. Aaron Rodgers, nickname "A-Rod" (you know what the "A" and the rod stand for, right..?) is a jerk. Plus, he looks like a poor-man's Ben Roethlisberger. Rodgers has some talent to be sure, but much of his skill and success owe to the fact that he got to observe Hall of Fame QB Brett Favre play for three years.

3. Green Bay is friggin cold. Like Siberia, but without the gulags.

4. Wisconsin is the West Virginia of the Midwest. For instance, most residents believe that the Earth popped out of hyperspace about 8,000 years ago fully populated with modern humans. That's what happens when you drop out of high school at age 21 and take a job in your family's auto salvage business. Naturally, most of them also believe wholeheartedly in the Packers.

5. The team's name is a salute to meat packing (i.e. the Meat Packers, but they dropped "meat" for some reason). Meat packing is big industry in Green Bay and elsewhere in Wisconsin. That, toilet paper production, and auto salvage (because so much salt is used on the roads here in winter).

And people wonder why the high tech industry struggles in Wisconsin.

Well, be sure to see the movie "Concussion." Football—it's "America's game"! (and especially Wisconsin's)

We'll try to bring you some ice sailing news if and when the lake freezes over.

Buck, Buck

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! There's not much sailing news, but people have been contacting us with specific questions.

While we are always happy to receive useful info from sources (and are appreciative of it), we generally don't reply directly to questions via email.

However, to answer three recent questions.... One, we have not received any further details yet on the child/sexual harassment complaint alluded to in recent comments, but we are hopeful that details will be forthcoming.

Two, the only HSC rule covering swimming off boats is on p. 18 in the Ground school manual, which states that you must wear a lifejacket at all times unless you're "Hoofer swimmer rated" (although I've never even heard of that rule being enforced). Of course, you should still get the skipper's permission before jumping in. NOTE that the rule was changed after the June 2015 drowning to require all sailors to wear their lifejacket at all times, in a classic knee-jerk reaction.

And three, no we do not accept or solicit monetary contributions for this blog. (was that person really serious?)

Meanwhile, I assume everyone is eating something other than turkey this Thanksgiving given the tens of millions of deaths from the H5N2 bird flu virus in the U.S. this year and widespread infection of the remaining fleet, er flock....

REPORT: DROWNING OFF O'DAY

Well, it looks like the sheriff's report on the June drowning off Cinger is finally available.... someone posted a link to it yesterday in our earlier post. (Thanks!) Here's the link:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=53085929967739185235

The report answers many questions but also raises some new ones. This is what we got out of it (you may want to read it yourself):

Michaela Rabas is partly responsible for the death of Mohammed Bagabir, but it was mostly his own fault. It seems he was a hard partier and/or loose cannon--he had been punched in the face a week before the fateful cruise (breaking his nose), had a 4 inch special stogie in his backpack, apparently hit his head hard on the boat before going swimming, and was still eager to jump into cold water. But he was apparently a decent swimmer.

As for the former VC, several things jump out that are alarming:

1. 60 degrees is very cold water. We always hear about 55, but that's because anything below 55 is deadly. And the air was only 72. And Bagabir was from Saudi Arabia! The only way I'd go into 60 deg water is if I were drunk or stoned. In light of the big joint found in Bagabir's backpack (see p. 21) and the THC in his bloodstream (see p. 50), it seems it might have been the latter.

2. Michaela apparently put the boat into irons for swimming. That's a piss poor idea (unless you're on a tech) because it will immediately start to drift away. On the other hand, if Rabas came hove-to as another witness suggests, she obviously didn't do it right. In any case, the fact that she stopped the boat shows that she was aware people wanted to go swimming in cold, wavy water--and approved. Well, ya know, some people have bad judgment even when they're not drunk or stoned.

3. On p. 14 it says "Michaela had put the sail up and was running the boat by herself" but on p. 30 it says "Rabas said she also dropped her sail during the man overboard procedure." If she was sailing the boat by herself, it sounds like maybe they didn't have a headsail up (the report isn't explicit as to which sail was lowered). It would be great if someone with firsthand knowledge could clarify this for us.

4. According to witnesses, Michaela fracked the MOB maneuver and then started yelling for other people to jump into the water to try to swim over and save Bagabir. That's a cardinal no-no because then you have at least two people overboard, in cold water, and someone who's panicking can easily endanger a potential rescuer unless that person is an expert swimmer.

Of course, the tragic death is also partly Union Director Mark Guthier's fault for his endless stream of bad ideas and other screw-ups. The new alcohol policy, for instance. Note that apparently no one on board Cinger--in particular Michaela or Bagabir--was drunk. Yet people were behaving like stunt men anyway. If mature adults were allowed to have a beer on board a keelboat, maybe Bagabir wouldn't have felt compelled to light up beforehand and then do crazy stuff. One also has to wonder how the two pitchers consumed by several of the guests on the Terrace right before the cruise--a result of not being allowed to bring any alcohol on board--affected things.

Guthier's draconian alcohol policy is not only strangling the social side of the club but is causing people to do screwy things in response. More on this in our next post.

Conference Sail Party

SEPT 1 UPDATE: We've learned that Peter just turned 21 at the end of 2014. Thus, if the photo was taken before this season, he was under 21 at the time, and if it was taken this year, he was blatantly violating the Hoofer alcohol policy. Worst of all, if it was taken in 2014, then he was doing both--drinking illegally and violating the new alcohol policy, while he was commodore!

Now that a mostly-alcohol-free Pirate's Day is in the books, here's something amusing, er, shocking.

The HSC conference sailing website reads: "Imagine relaxing on the bow of a sailing boat while a qualified Hoofer instructor guides you across the clear, blue, waters of beautiful Lake Mendota..."

That should probably be changed to read, "Imagine slamming an ice cold beer served by a Hoofer instructor as you relax on..." (and what the heck is a "sailing boat"? Do they mean "sailboat" or "boat under sail"? Who wrote that anyway? Sorry, I digress.)

That is a beer in Pete's hand, isn't it? In fact, it looks like everybody on board has one, including people who appear to be under 21. And our source says this was a conference sail.

But it can't be that because that would have been a flagrant violation of the Hoofer alcohol policy not to mention state law (underage drinking/serving alcohol to minors)--especially for a former commodore and education rep.

Maybe Peter can clarify some of this for us.

NOTE: If you have news to share, always try to send it asap because sometimes we are busy, out of town, partying, etc.

CATCH P.D. IN 2015!

(Wow, that headline almost makes it sound like a disease, doesn't it?) And it may well be, but Pirate's Day is also a lot of fun!

Where: The lakefront
When: Next Saturday
(see the flyer at right for details)

Speaking of flyers, it looks like someone has been taking them down almost as fast as we can put them up. So here are some tricks that might help:

1. Don't make them all the same color. If they're all exactly the same, they might be easier to spot from one kiosk to the next. But I think we're already doing this.

2. Use different flyers. Oh wait, I think we're doing that too.

3. Make them in different sizes. Again, harder to spot all of them. But dang, I think that's been tried as well.

4. Leave a stack of them at places like Ragstock, although that's been tried too, I believe.

5. Completely cover them with clear tape, thereby making them harder to tear down. At least, it will take a few seconds longer.

6. Superglue plexiglass over them?

7. We could recruit club members to stand guard at each one, and if someone starts to take one down, we can say: "Excuse me m'am/sir, but we're trying to publicize an important cultural event, and even though you can't participate, everyone else can.

Why are we posting flyers advertising P-Day to the public anyway? Are we actively trying to entice non-members to come steal boats at night..? Aren't there enough club members to man the boats? That may be since PD isn't the drunken party it used to be.

Also, a couple of our flyers had been covered up by someone else's. Not much we can do about that, but we did remove the offending ones.

Captain Partee!

So it looks like former VC Michaela Rabas was the skipper on the fateful June 6 cruise in which an Edgewater student died after jumping overboard. We checked Michaela's ratings and she does appear to have an O'Day rating. But was she in any way responsible for what happened?

No one who was on board is talking, maybe because the incident is still being investigated. The rumor is that there was plenty of alcohol on board. Yet, it still doesn't seem like it's the skipper's fault if someone who can't swim decides to jump overboard. Is it the pilot's fault if I pop the emergency door and bail out of an airplane at 37,000 feet? Not really.

However, the incomparable Michaela could be held accountable if Mohammad Bagabir was obviously drunk at the time he jumped into the water. That's because the skipper controls the flow of alcohol on board and is thus responsible for the behavior of drunk people on board. The skipper should also know who on board can swim and who can't. When I skipper and it's not all good friends on board, I ask everyone straightaway whether they can swim, just like on a lesson. That's common sense. I am frequently hammered, but that doesn't affect my decision-making with regard to swimming ability because people have been known to drown in their bathtubs, which means the lake is a dangerous place indeed.

Note that the HSC Ground School Manual states repeatedly:

Remember... you [the skipper] are responsible for everyone’s safety!! (p. 11)

You are ultimately responsible for the safety of the vessel and all crew. (p. 13)

it is important to recognize that the skipper is responsible for the safety of all your crew and equipment (your boat) at all times. (p. 15)

As skipper of your boat, you are ultimately responsible for the safety of your crew (p. 16)

The skipper of a boat is ultimately responsible for the safety of the crew and the boat at all times. (p. 17)

The skipper of a boat is ultimately responsible for the safety of the crew and the boat at all times. (p. 22)

Here's a link to Michaela's Facebook page... let her know what you think!