What's New
Home About the Boat Charters Private Specials About the Bay What's New Other Links	What's new with S/V Seanchai: May 2008 We’re up and running! Seanchai sports a new jib (the forward most sail) and a few new sheets to control it. If I do say so myself, it looks and sails great. One of the changes to the boat this year was to replace the last of our old, Edison filament light bulbs with LED lights. The filament lights drew nearly an amp and a half while the new LED lights give off the same amount of light while using only about a third of an amp. The big news though as far as we are concerned, is that the light from the new bulbs looks just like the light from the traditional bulbs. This is big because we’ve been trying out different LEDs for several years now and up until now they have all given off a disappointing amount of cold, bluish light. For those of you who don’t know, Seanchai was designed to operate without the intrusion of a noisy generator for electricity. Instead, we use a large battery bank with an inverter to get our 120 volt power like you have in your house. We don’t need to really scrimp on electricity, but we don’t like to waste it either. It’s nice to get the maximum out of our batteries. When we originally powered Seanchai, our goal was to get a combination of available power and efficient use that would let us operate for three days without having to recharge the batteries from either shore power or by using the engine. The original design was a success. Further advances in technology have made this even better. The cost of fuel is driving everyone a little nuts these days and driving up the cost of everything. The fuel costs have led us to . . . well . . . pretty much do the same things that we’ve been doing along. We’re a sailboat. We like to sail. So in response to the rising fuel costs, here at Seanchai Charters we’re not changing a thing. Our prices are the same as last year. If you’re trying to figure out what to do for your vacation we hope that you’ll think about going for a nice sail with us. It might cost you a few dollars more in gas to get to us, but once you’re here, The rising prices end. James Montgomery Flagg. Those of you who read this section each month know that around September I asked if anyone had any idea who he was. What lead to the question was a WWI poster that I see every day at work (in real life I’m actually a Beltway Bandit). This poster has a tough looking fellow who has just thrown his hat on the ground and is in the process of pulling off his coat. He is clearly getting ready for a fight and his jaw is set in firm determination. At his feet is a newspaper whose headline reads “Huns kill women and children.” The caption at the top of the poster reads “Tell that to the Marine.” Now at first glance the message would seem to be that when a Marine hears about this kind of thing, well, he’s just the guy to set things right. You want to be a marine, don’t you? The only problem is that the phrase “Tell that to the Marine” is actually a polite way of telling someone that you think that they are talking through their hat. The question I had was whether Mr. Flagg was aware of the actual meaning of the phrase. Did he simply use (misuse) a phrase that he had heard, thinking that it presented the first message or had he actually known what it meant and slipped an inside joke past the WWI era censors, poking fun at the obvious propaganda in the newspaper? Well, I still don’t have a definitive answer but one of my readers steered me onto a website that had a little biography on Mr. Flagg. It seems that he drew a great many recruiting posters including the famous “Uncle Sam wants YOU!” If you’d like to know what Mr. Flagg looked like you need simply to look at Uncle Sam in the poster. Yep, that stern looking fellow pointing out of the poster at you is none other than the intrepid Mr. Flagg who used himself as the model for Uncle Sam. He also painted some pretty scandalous political cartoons as well. He was intelligent, rather disgustingly rich and pampered, and not at all above pulling a fast one on the government that was paying him handsomely for his work. I still don’t know for sure if the poster is a tweak of the government’s nose or simply an innocent mistake, but I think that I’m coming down on the side of sedition. At the very least, it makes a better story. If anyone has any insight into this matter though, please drop me a line and let me know. The truth will set me free :o) If you’d like to reserve Seanchai for your own private cruise this year or you just have a few questions, don’t hesitate to give us a call. Even if you don’t charter from us we’d like to hear from you. Until next month, fair winds and following seas.
	For more information, or to make reservations, please call (301) 503-1101, or send an e-mail to Sailseanchai@earthlink(dot)net Note that if you want to type in the e-mail address above instead of clicking on the link, the (dot) in the e-mail address should actually be typed as “.”. We’ve had to resort to this clever ruse to avoid those charming pleas by Dr. Abo Don Salari (et. al.) who wants us to send him our bank account number so that he can send us several million dollars. Though we appreciate his confidence in our discretion, we fear that our Captain would spend much of the money on hard liquor and fast women, but then he would probably just waste the rest, so we’re trying to avoid the temptation. Thanks anyway Dr. Salari.