2024-03-18 21:30

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Frequently Asked Questions
Our attempt in answering the questions we have been asked the most, maybe too many times ... J ... or for the shy ones the questions you might not have dared to ask, you might after all find the answer right here.
General
Are you guys out of your mind?
Yes maybe ... but what else is new ... :-)
Where are you guys?
Right now, we are in San Diego ... and we will be there until winter of 2005, when we are planning to REALLY leave for our sailing adventure code-named Project Marquesas.
When are you now finally leaving?
OK, ok, rubb it in ... yes we miscalculated when we would start cruising but then again, we actually did leave our home port Santa Cruz as planned in winter of 2003 but we made an extended pitstop in San Diego. Seriously and I know we have said this before, but we think we are now leaving for Mexico sometime in winter of 2005 to then head to the South Pacific in spring of 2006 ... By the way, this is my LEAST favorite question ... to my own fault ... :-)
What's this 'Project Marquesas' all about?
When Niki and I started talking about this whole sailing thing, taking off work and so forth, we had a few different options in mind ... in good old Schmid fashion, we made a spreadsheet and each option got a code name ... no laughing ... the sailing one we named 'Project Marquesas'.
What does Marquesas mean?
Actually, the Marquesas are an island group in the South Pacific ... we learned about it watching one of our favorite TV shows ... yes you might giggle ... Survivor. Remember who won that series ... the sleezy used car sales man ... do you think he is back to selling cars!?
Sailing
When did you guys start sailing?
Actually, we are pretty new at this sailing business. Nevertheless, Robert has been windsurfing since his teens all around Europe and some in the US and been practicing good judgement and weather analysis for paragliding for over 7 years ... in other words, we are not new to wind, weather and the sea.
Aren't you afraid going off sailing with that little sailing experience?
Well yes and no ... we do have a lot of respect towards the sea and its forces and we do realize that we have a long way to go, but that's one of the reasons we delayed our trip by a year. We also took quite a few sailing lessons, took extended trips with our sailing instructors (thanks Dave and Frank, not sure what we would have done without you), talked to VERY SEASONED sailors ... they all say the same ... the sailing part you can learn.
Boat
What kind of boat is Lawur?
She is a custom design by Ron Holland (quite well know designer in the US) and was built in New Zealand ... she has already made it across the Pacific once so we hope that she will take us back to its origin safely. She was built in 1983 and then raced quite extensively in Seattle and San Diego until 4 years ago. We purchased Lawur in May 2003 and then converted her in 2 years from a race boat into a great family cruiser.
How big, how wide, ... where are all the boat details?
OK, here is the short answer ... Lawur is 43ft/14m long and 13ft wide ... she is a great cruiser boat and we have put a lot of time into her getting her ready for us ... For the long story, click on the 'Our Boat' link on the top of this page.
Website
What took you so long to get this damn website together? Why did you sit around our house all day working?
Good question ... as always IT projects take longer then expected ... of all people I should know that ... :-) ... but seriously, we wanted to have a good looking website but more importantly, a website we can update while we are on the way and that means in addition to the pages you see, a lot of tools for Niki and I to maintain and upload content thru email ... that was the most difficult part.
Who did this awesome looking design?
SCOTT ... yes my friend Scott came up with this whole design and the layout, Niki and I love it and we are very proud of it ... I did the coding and programming ... if you like it, Scott's company also does professional webdesign ... I can get you his email ... plug, plug ... :-)
Why is your search showing an old page?
For search I am using Google technlogy and their data which only gets updated about once a month for personal sites like ours. As a result, it will take another couple weeks for the search to show meaningful results. Thanks for your patience.
What technology did you do this webpage in?
This is all standard ASP.Net and C# ... used Visual Studio.net for the coding and Macromedia Studio for most of the graphics work. Had a lot of fun doing it and got a lot of grieve from friends and family for spending too much time writing it ... supposedly I get too absorbed in it ... I disagree ... :-)
Why does your website look so odd on my Mac?
Sorry, but the site is optimized to look best on IE for Windows ... I tested the site on IE4+ and it seems to work great ... when looking into what it would take to convert it over to any Mac browser (IE and Safari) it would have taken even more time ... had to go with a 95% solution or Niki would have killed me.