2/20/2024 0 Comments Jim butler days![]() ![]() We sailed down the Straits of Magellan. We stopped along the way, traded with local fishermen, did some hiking, and fishing. Mostly we sailed. Up at the crack of dawn, and we sailed until dusk. Some days we would run along in moderate winds. Those weren’t the days we were there for, though. The good days would see us running with a 30 – 40 Kt breeze on the beam, booking down the straits, reeling in 180 – 220 miles a day. We finally maded it down to Ushuaia, got our permits to sail out to the horn, and did so that night. Sailing out in front of the horn all night was some of the most spectacular sailing of my life. It was blowing at least 65 knots that night, and we got hammered by the elements all night, and at the break of dawn, we headed back in to Puerto Williams for the flight home. Once we converted, we picked up a new reporting package, APPX, with a really nice data dictionary, and we pulled good reports. It seemed as if the business was really going to do well, but unfortunately, there was a fire, that destroyed the building in the Fall. I worked to help migrate the remaining business to North Carolina over the final few years. My dad, the Skip, taught me that even in the worst of times, you can always have a chance to “McGiver” your way out of a jam.ĭoing the conversion was one of those projects that had a lot of moving pieces. The MRP package had a lot of data files, over 250 if I remember correctly, and getting the whole thing converted and done was really a great project to work. I flew from JFK to Puerto Montt Chili, met up with New Chance. On board was Chuck Adams, and Neill Martin. Neill was one of my mentors, and Chuck is one of the best Sailors you will ever meet. I learned from Neill to “never take your eye off the ball”, in other words, don’t get distracted to the point of sacrificing your prime path with insignificant tasks. To be clear, the old Salt wanted to try the Hawaii trip again but Joe and I talked him down to simply sailing around south America. I had signed on for the southern part of the trip and I was due in Puerto Montt Jan 31. I cut the system over, it all worked, and the documentation was good. I knew it was good, because back in November, I got a call from my counterpart (Sue Devry, from Mad River Canoe), who used the same software, and she was struggling with a lot of the same stuff I hacked through during the prior 4 months. I fed-ex’d her about a ream of printouts, with a roadmap, and scripts to help with the conversion. She was so appreciative that she was able to cutover over the new years weekend, that she sent me some care packages for my trip around the horn (some great waterproof bags and other gear). Back in the day we had a Caelus Users Group, and we would help each other like that. ![]() In 94, the company I worked for was running their Manufacturing software (Caelus) on a Wang mini, and as Wang was going down the tubes, a migration path to HP-UX was presented to us, and we took it. I dug in and learned HP-UX, converted the Wang Basic Code modifications that we had to HP-UX basic, and reloaded the database, time after time. I would start the upload/ conversion from Wang to hp when I left work, pumping the data through the 2Mb network card, which I had installed in my 386 PC, running DOS in the pre-windows world. The conversion took me about 6 months to troubleshoot. Configuring the printers was interesting, as back in the day, OKI, Epson, and HP printers had slightly different pinouts for some of their serial printer interfaces. We needed to cutover to the new system after the end of the year, and Dad wanted to go around South America. ![]() That was in 89. It took a couple of years for him to get back out to sea, and one of his first ventures back was the 91 Newport-Bermuda race. Once he got back out to blue water, he enjoyed sailing, again, letting go of his fear, and eventually bought a North American (Morgan 40), and before long it wasn’t long before he was back across the atlantic. My Brother Joe and I drew straws for which one of us would go with the old salt, partly for the adventure, and in part to make sure the old guy made it home. My dad is a sailor (Bill Butler, 66 Days Adrift, by Bill Butler). After a pilot whale or two sunk his 38 foot Robert Clark Mystery Class Cutter in the pacific, between Panama and Hawaii, he drifted for 66 days, about 1500 miles back to Costa Rica, where he was rescued.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |