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The Alpine
Big Wall climber
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Jul 20, 2012 - 06:01pm PT
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Life at sea- hours and hours of tedium followed by moments of STARK TERROR!
Don't forget: "Repairing your boat in exotic locations."
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2012 - 06:21pm PT
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All will be well when we shanghai eKat in Sitka.
Susan
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Jul 20, 2012 - 09:59pm PT
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Couple photos to help Silver with his Russion translation as it can be somewhat confusing. Michael was dealing with a loose battering ram that had every intention of wrecking havoc. Since Michael is probably sucking down some brewskis as I speak and I am bored on a fri evening here are a couple of photos.
The preventers run from the boom to the deck to the cockpit and winches, from both sides of the boom to control or prevent disastrous mood swings common to the fate of wind and sea action. On a boat the likes of Mouton the boom can be man killer. Much respect.
The topping lift holds the aft end of the boom up and is usually adjustable from the cockpit to raise and lower it. It runs to a block or sheave at the top of the mast and down.
The vang on this drawing that connects the boom with the bottom of the mast is small whereas Mouton has a very powerful boom vang.
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2012 - 01:36pm PT
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The party's over. The luau ashes have cooled so we shove off to Alaska for our next great adventure. Expect landfall mid August. Pick up eKat in Sitka and down the passage.
All the support of the ST community meant a lot to Michael. He was deeply moved as he read the whole thread shortly after landing. Mahalo!
Aloha,
Susan
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 24, 2012 - 05:33pm PT
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For those wishing to follow returning racers a few of us are keeping our trackers. This exact URL must be typed in to access the site. I'm not exactly sure what the site will look like because it's not set up as a race site and I no longer have regular Internet access
http://yb.tl.transback2012
Over and out till Alaska
Susan
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jul 24, 2012 - 08:51pm PT
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Your, Michael and eKat's trip has to be the most circuitous way of getting to the FaceLift imaginable!
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Jul 26, 2012 - 09:10pm PT
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ekat-drop me an e-mail por favor since yours on ST is disabled.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Jul 29, 2012 - 09:44pm PT
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Little update on Michael and Susan as they bash their way north then east to Sitka from Hawaii:
Hello all,
Many thanks for all the notes. It is great to hear from people when isolated at sea. Since leaving Hanaleii Bay, Susan and I have been sailing upwind into enhanced trade winds and the seas that they create. The last 4 days has been extremely unpleasant. We have rarely seen wind less than 20 knots, and mostly it has been 25 to 30 knots and large lumpy swells. We have been reaching at 50 to 60 degrees off the wind with a 90 percent high cut jib, and double reefed main. The boat has been a bucing bronco, twisting, heaving yawing, snap rolling 30 or 40 degrees. Any motion is very tricky, and it is very easy to get injured if you are not braced with three points of contact. Neither Susan and I have eaten much in the last 4 days, as she has been very seasick, and although not sick, I have felt like dog meat. Even getting enough to drink is a problem. The boat is sealed up to keep the foot deep waves sweeping over the deck off, although sometimes one will find just the right angle to make it under thedodger and into the boat. And then there are the squalls... This year there seem to be a lot of them. They are nasty large black things that set off the radar alarm before dumping firehose quantities of rain on us, while adding 10 or 15 knots to the apparent wind.
We are now at 32 degrees 17 minutes N by 160 degrees 17 min W, and finally entering into the region dominated by the Pacific High. The High is currently a massive, complex entity spread out over most of the Eaastern Pacific. Winds in the high are ligh and variable, and although the flatter water and lighter airs are a welcome break from life as a barnacle in one's own boat, we are about to run out of wind entirely, with the option of slatting and banging endlessly, ripping the boat to pieces in the residual swell, or motoring. We are currently about 1800 miles from Sitka, and only about 20% of the way there. We have enough fuel tomotor for about 140 hours (plus a secret reserve that aI refuse to consider as expendable). At 5 knots (low cruise speed), that is about 700 miles. Normally, with a conventional High, one proceeds north from Hawaii to around 34 degrees N, and then starts motoring NE to get across the top of the high and catch the westerly winds on the other side. Sadly, in this case, there is no real top or "other side". We are using the services of Commander's Weather, a professional weaather routing service to advise us on the best way to get to Sitka without burning all our fuel in a wasted attempt to go somewhere that ends up being the same as we started. Their advice (delivered with apopgies) is that there is no easy way out at the present time, but the best of a bad lot is to head due north to around 42 degrees north, about 600 nm from our apparent position, where we will (should, maybe, sacrifice a chicken...) get light northwesterly winds. Maybe...
In any case, we are making about 2 to 3 knots right now and plan to fire up the engine and head north for a while, stopping the engine and sailing if the wind comes up.
Mouton Noir is currently at 34.20 N and 159.50 W and since the wind is about 2 kts and they are traveling at 5.40 kts they have probably kicked on the engine.
Sailing has often been called the most expensive and most uncomfortable way to travel 3rd class.
Below is a current Pacific Streamline Analysis that will help clarify the position of the Pacific High and you can plot the approx position of Mouton Noir. You can see where he needs to get above the center of the High and pick up wind coming from the west.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Update on Michael and Susan and Mouton Noir on passage to Sitka from Kaui:
Mouton Noir is presently at 40:00N by 156:40W headed directly north towards the Aleutians. Not where we want to go, of course, but that is how this trip is going. More on that later.
First I want to say hello to many old friends who have been added to this list. For all the previous recipients of the newsletter, please be patient while I bring them up to speed. About 6 months ago I decided to do the Singlehanded Transpac, a singlehanded race from San Francisco to Kauai, Hawaii, which started June 30. THe boat is Mouton Noir, a French Garcia Passoa 47, a heavy aluminum expedition cruiser. I have been working on her for a long time, and was in the middle of a huge palette of renovations and upgrades. I spent the next 6 months working 12 to 16 hours a day with few breaks to get the boat ready to go.
I had always intended to get a comprehensive email list together for all of my friens and to have all of you on it during the trip. I am using an Iridium satellite email system, so I figured that I would be able to keep everyone in touch with how things were progressing. Ha!!! That never happened due to a bunch of factors, not the least the need to get the boat across the starting line. It was always the NEXT job, and never happened. Some of you had a chance to follow us on the tracking website set up by the Singlehanded Sailing Society (www.sfbaysss.org - follow the links to the Transpac site). Anyway, the email list never got completed, and in fact, I could never get the wretched home email client to spit out a transportable version of my address book. Anyway, we went off and did the race to Hawaii. It has been a terrible year for winds along the US-Hawaii route, and Mouton Noir is a heavy boat. The light airs, and a certain exhaustion after the preparations led to a lackluster finish. Somewhere around 16 days, I think. The turnaround in Hanaleii Bay, Kauaii was chaotic and very busy, and way too short. Susan was there to greet me, and a seemingly endless cycle of ferrying fuel, water, food, spare parts out to the boat with socializing with the fellow competitors in the late afternoon (the best part of the entire adventure) to dinner at night, and then back to it the next day. Anyway, there was no time or privacy to work on getting the email list together.
After a short week in Hawaii, Susan and I left Hanaleii, a week ago Tuesday for Sitka, Alaska. We plan to spend a month working our way down the Inside Passage from Sitka to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then sail down the coast to San Francisco, arriving in late September. If we ever get to Sitka...
The first 5 days out of Hanaleii Bay were truly awful. To compensate for too little wind from San Francisco, we were treated to enhanced trade winds. This meant 800 miles of beating to weather in large lumpy seas and 20 to 30 knot winds, with the boat sealed up to keep the large amount of water washing over us constantly from getting in. Life in a boat heeling 20 to 30 degrees while heaving, yawing, pitching, and in general acting like a bucking bronco, is not what people like to imagine ocean sailing is like, but sometimes it is. One lies on the settee, sick as a dog, sweating like a ball park frank- grease oozing from every pore.
All things end, and eventually we ran out of wind. The Pacific High is acting very strangely this year. Presently it encompasses most of the Pacific Basin north of the equator, with high pressure all over (no wind), and the isobars wiggling around in ways to make progress to wherever you want to go difficult.
Do for the last 4 days we have been trying desperately to get north to where wind might be found. In a calmer patch today, while motoring, I finally found the time and energy to try to reconstruct my email list. So if you are hearing about this for the first time, I apologize, but it was the best I could do. We are carryinga tracking beacon that shows our positions in semi-realtime on the website http://yb.tl/transback2012.
Now that I have brought all the new people up to speed, here is what is happening now. After several days of light airs, we have hooked into some gradient wind from a big kink in the isobars caused by a small low to the west which is driving us north. We have been using Commander's Weather to supply email weather and routing advice, and the only path to Sitka is along a storm track starting in a few days north of 50N as a big low pressure region sweeps along just south of the Aleutian Islands. Getting there in time to catch a ride on the edges of the gale will be tricky, as for the most part there is very little wind energy in the next 600 miles. At the moment, we are doing 7+ knots in around 19 knots of wind from the EAST!!, but this will probably not last very long.
The lower winds of the last few days have allowed us to bathe and get over the seasickness which plagues Susan, and bothers me. We finally had a cooked meal (eggs, hashed browns, onions, peppers, and cheese all in one pan- delicious). Many of the erstwhile competitors are sailing back to San Frqancisco and having very light airs. They are catching and eating a lot of Mahi-mahi, though. I don't fish at sea, as cleaning a big fish at sea is a messy process, and doesn't appeal to me. On my last trip back from Hawaii I had a friend aboard, Jean, who is an awesome cook. She was baking fresh muffins, and another friend on a different boat 30 miles away heard about them, and we arranged to meet so that he could trade 10 pounds of fresh Mahi-mahi steaks for a bag of just baked rolls.
Anyway, it is late and typing is getting a little harder as the boat is now bouncing around pretty vigorously. I will try to write updates more often, now that I have a bigger captive audience.BWA hahahhahaha!!!
I am reminded of Samuel Johnson (i think) who once said that "going to sea was like going to jail, with the added chance of drowning". I believe that he also said that "any man who would go to sea for pleasure, would go to hell for a vacation". He had obviously done 800 mile to windward in enhanced trade winds!
All the best,
Michael
Here is a current Streamline Analysis of the North Pacific and you can plot Mouton Noir at 40N 156 W and Sitka at 57 N and 135 W and get an idea of the immensity of it all.
That Low that is giving him a push for now is forecast to stay stationary for a spell. You can see the "kink" in the Low. Complicated passage to say the least. But then again they are headed for the Gulf of Alaska which is notorious for brewing up nasty Lows on short order. Since a Low in the Northern Hemisphere rotates counterclockwise you can visualize how he could utilize the outer edge of a gale to ride into Sitka if the Low center is north of the boat.
Click on image to enlarge.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Have fun! That huge Gulf of Alaska Low sets in in the fall as the subtropical jet comes back down and then just sits there spitting out trough after trough. I wouldn't want to get stuck in that sucker, as well as the big tides and currents in the islands of SE Alaska.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I too am enjoying the updates. I'm also pondering how vigorously I should
temper my pity for the beating-to-windward-in-a-stout-boat-lot. It is no
fun being sick but envy doesn't sit well either. Lay aloft and grease the
topping lift pulley ya wanker! :-)
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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This thread has me really stoked over sailing again. I have been cruising the classifieds for a good single handed cruiser. I have always wanted to get my ass off of our rather huge lakes and get to the oceans.
I have a friend who cruised for a couple of years, single handing an Irwin 52.
I have much less ambitious plans. I am looking at the shorter boats.
Hey. I have friends who are full professors in meteorology or work at the Storm Prediction Center here. I bet that they would help out with forecasts, at least in a general sense.
Learning how to understand the models is not that hard, and I can give you a link that gathers them all online, including the Navy's Nogaps, which is worldwide.
They can at least give you an idea of when the summer ridge will break down and fall weather will hit. Those guys are master forecasters. I have had some great Alaskan adventures with one Full Professor.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Michael and Susan are presently due North of Hawaii and about even with Arcata California.
Making 7 kts due North.
Michael's last email forwarded by guido reminds me very much of Sarah and my trip North from Hilo. Rough, tough, 20-30 kt winds, close hauled, rough seas till we got above the center of the Pacific High, then light variable winds.
That beat to windward, all on starboard tack, was a tough 8 or 10 days in a 30 foot cutter. We got really tired of walking on the bulkheads and sleeping on the cabin sole.
An ex-ocean racing catamaran we knew lost their mast about 36 hours N of Hilo while we were sailing parallel courses but out of sight. They had to motor back to Oahu for a new mast---and a 6 month delay getting the boat home.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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so who else is jealous of eKat???
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Good luck on Salmon this late in the year. Spawning is long over and they are out in the Pacific dodging Japanese nets.
Halibut, on the other hand...
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Update from Michael and Susan on Mouton Noir in the vast North Pacific headed to Sitka and the longest route to Facelift ever taken:
"Hello everyone!
It has been a pretty dull last few days. When we last heard from our intrepid heroes, they were bobbing about in the grip of a relentless high pressure region in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (which was, for a change, actually pacific). Frantic emails to the weather gurus at Commander's weather got little sympathy, although their emails did refer on many occasions to " unfortunately this, and unfortunately that...". Their advice was simply to get north as fast and as far as possible, so for several days we have been motoring across the trackless aquatic wastes, with little to do or see except for the momentary entertainment of hitting 2 30 foot tree trunks dead on. THAT was entertaining! We suffered no apparent damage, other than to our nervous systems. Hence the constant popularity of metal boats...
Our position at 1000 PDT on August 4 is 45:28N by 155:24W, which by my reckoning puts us a LOOOOONG way from the nearest Starbuck's. Our course is 009 degrees Magnetic, our speed is 5.9 knots, and our distance from Sitka is around 1020 nm. We are just beginning to feel the South Westerly wind flow that Commanders Weather has promised us. Currently we have about 10 knots from 213M, which is not enough to sail in because it is ALMOST STRAIGHT FROM BEHIND US!!!!! Grrrrr.....
We are, however, motorsailing, which brings the apparent wind forward a bit ( trust me, its math...), so we have set a small jib and guyed out the main and are getting a knot additional from it. The seas, which have been glassy, are now getting somewhat choppy, and a westerly swell is developing. According to our weather data, we may be able to start sailing without the motor by this evening, as the wind is predicted to come from more forward and to increase enough to give us some actual speed through the water.
The weather, which has been sort of sunny, but cool, has now become Alaskan sunshine, which is to say a sort of airy wet sponge. There is water on everything. Water on the deck, water on the sails, water in the cabin, water up our noses. This stuff is pernicious- water droplets are everywhere! And yet, there is no rain. Rain is completely outclassed by THIS stuff, and cannot compete. Before we left, we bought extra sunscreen. Haven't even opened a single tube yet.
Anyway, with a little luck (or maybe a LOT of it the way the weather has been) we will finally be able to turn off the motor this evening and start actually heading to Sitka. Up to now we have only headed in every other direction. I anticipate an August 13 arrival, although that could be off several days in either direction.
An interesting topic is resource conservation. A boat at sea has need stuff (water, fuel, electricity, wind, etc), and has very limited resources and few ways to renew them. At the start of this leg we had about 200 gallons of water and 165 gallons of diesel. Due to the very severe lack of wind across the Pacific, all our fellow competitors in the TranPac race, and we ourselves have been struggling to conserve these resources, but are also forced to use them. When and how much to motor is a tricky business. Several of our friends have also had serious problems with their fuel delivery systems (blocked tank pickup tubes, air leaks, dirt in the fuel, etc), necessitating horrendous adventures with diesel fuel all over the inside of the boats. We have not had any issues, other than a wish that we had twice as much fuel. Yesterday we pumped our deck load of fuel in jugs into the main tank and carefully measured how much fuel we have remaining. As of yesterday, we had 100 gallons left, of which I have reserved 30 gallons that WILL NOT BE USED outside of 30 miles offshore from Sitka Sound, the entrance to the straits that lead to Sitka itself. That gives us 70 gallons left to motor with, and at that point almost 1200 miles to go. We use between .75 and 1.25 gallons per hour at a low/moderate throttle (nominal 5.3 knots speed), so the 70 gallons gives us around 56 hours at 1.25 gph. That is a range of around 300 nm. When and where to use it in the next 1200 miles??? Based on our weather gurus advice, we are heading straight north (actually cheating a LITTLE towards the east), as we hope to find wind there. We will see if it worked, because when we reach the reserve limit the engine goes off (except for battery charging with the auxiliary charging engine, which uses little fuel) until we are within 30 miles of Sitka Sound, no matter how long it takes.
Sailors on an ocean passage are constantly confronted by these balance problems- how to use the resources to get to the destination, but still have enough for emergencies, and other issues. A really tough problem, and why being the skipper is not a simple matter. Hence the constant popularity of Maalox. If you hear of a black hulled aluminum sailboat arriving in Sitka crewed by glum looking skeletons, then I guess you can assume that it didn't work out all that well...
Well that's it for now. I think I will put on a snorkel and mask and go on deck and enjoy a little Alaskan Sunshine.
All the best,
Michael
p.s. I have heard that we are dropping off the tracker (http://yb.tl/traansback2012
at the northern limit. I have heard rumors that one can rotate the earth to reposition us and to follow us as we head further north. I do not know how to do this, but if anyone is interested and can contact the Yellowbrick site operators and find out, if they would let me know I will pass it along. If it is impossible, that is worth knowing also"
Ouch! trees and containers are every sailors nightmare.
Here is a current Surface Streamline Analysis and I have drawn in the approx position of Mouton Noir and Sitka for reference. I also drew in the wind direction associated with the position of the isobars on the High (clockwise) and for a Low (counterclockwise) for reference.
The following is a 48 hour Surface forecast and of note is the developement of a Low in the Gulf of Alaska. The top of he High and the bottom of the Low will together create a NorthWesterly to Westery wind for Mouton Noir. The big question is how deep the Low will be, how long it will remain stationary and the position of Mouton Noir.
The following is a 500 MB ( approx 18,000ft) forecast 96 hours out. Upper level predictions are extremely accurate for predicting future weather and it show a deep and stationary Low. Note this is not the predicted wind at sea level but there is a direct correlation. Could be a Mr Toad Wild Ride into Sitka?
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Not to worry Pilgrims! I just stopped eKat dead in her tracks and got her phoned in on The No Fly List. She is ALL OURS now!
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Salmon live most of their lives out in the ocean chowing down on plankton and little critters. That diet is the reason that salmon is healthier than Tuna, which is an apex predator where mercury and crap concentrates.
Only one annual generation comes in to spawn. The rest are out getting scarfed up by Asian nets. The only late running salmon are the silvers (coho), which are fantastic. I think it will be too late, though. Ask the locals.
Agree on the cod. Halibut is damn good, though. Make sure you have a license. I have had a warden land a Beaver on floats just to check our licenses. That was in Canada, though.
Berries are fantastic this time of year, and there is only one poisonous species that I am aware of in the whole state.
Stuff is so expensive up there that you need to have a vault to eat from the store. It might be worth it to hit up Costco on your way up and bring a pack of food.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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hitting 2 30 foot tree trunks dead on Now there's a good reason to have a metal boat...and plenty of sheet metal to patch things with.
Did they have "Made in Japan" and "Shipped direct to you via Tsunami" painted on them?
I've been curious. Do you have any personal observations of the Pacific Gyre trash heap?
That low looks as if it will be even more entertaining than the tree trunks.
Smooth sailing, God's Speed (as my atheist sea Captain Father used to say)
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