French and Italian meteo, I'm onto you

This blog entry started out about weather prediction but turned into a rant on economics, partly because the media is going crazy about the EU debt crisis again and partly because it's hard to pass through multiple countries without subconsciously comparing them, but here goes...

So, I saw the following in France over three consecutive days:

Day 1 French forecast: sunny, calm, Force 2
Day 2 French forecast: sunny, calm, Force 3
Day 1 actual weather: Force 6 wind, rain, thunderstorm

Day 2 French forecast: Force 6 wind, rain, thunderstorm, small craft advisory

Day 3 French forecast: sunny, calm, Force 3

Day 2 actual weather: sunny, no wind, but with big waves

Day 3 French forecast: sunny, no wind, but with big waves

Day 4 French forecast: sunny, calm, Force 3

Day 3 actual weather: sunny, with Force 3 winds, no waves

It's easy to tell how the weather prediction system works in France: they simply forecast yesterday's weather for tomorrow, and forecast the seasonal average for all days thereafter. This system must work really well when the weather is not changing drastically every day, and it usually isn't. But when there is a storm passing through, this is the absolute worst forecast strategy.

Perhaps this situation was an anomaly. Perhaps Météo-France does not consist of 3700 idle bureaucrats suckling at the teat of the great French Republic. Perhaps their computers were down, or perhaps they were all on vacation because it was the Bastille Day weekend when I was paying attention to their forecasts.

But the situation was much the same in Italy. They said it would be sunny and nice, and we had Force 7-8 winds with Force 9 gusts. Then they predicted Force 7-8 winds with gusts up to Force 9, and we had calm weather.

Weather prediction in the Med is not really rocket science. Especially in the summer, weather patterns move from the northwest down towards the southeast. You can just pick up the phone to your buddy who lives a few hundred miles northwest of you, say "alo Jean-Michel/Pierre/whatever," ask him how the weather is up there, and forecast that weather for tomorrow. If you're too lazy to make that phone call and forecast your own weather for tomorrow, you're doing it wrong!

To their credit, the Greek forecast is often spot-on. It's time to replace the French and Italian meteo offices with an HTTP redirect to the Greek website. That simple 302-redirect message would save about $1B/year immediately, not even counting savings from the pension plans and retirement packages to come later. There, I just did my part to help fix the great big European debt crisis.

As an aside, there is a lot of stereotyping and criticism of Greeks in the press these days. It's as if the whole world is on the side of the rentiers who loaned money to the Greek government, criticizing Greeks for being lazy, for instituting plans that allow government workers to retire at age 37, for having a large beaurocracy, and so forth. For all these people who are being so critical, I have one observation and one question.

Observation: I traveled through Spain, France and Italy on this trip. I saw absolutely nothing, either culturally or structurally, that would distinguish these countries' work ethics from each other. Frankly, all of Southern Europe seems stagnant, full of beaurocratic barriers and generally non-competitive to me, and, based on previous trips, I think this observation easily covers Northern Europe as well. Young people do not attempt to invent new things; they seem to want to migrate to finance centers to become cogs in the money-shuffling engines, or get slow jobs in the public sector or, if they are tech savvy, become mid-level managers in a tech company where they stop being creative. And everything works at a snail's pace. Try exporting anything out of France, and call me back when you've prepared the necessary paperwork. Or let me know if/when you've fully satisfied the requirements for a "translated document with apostille" required by the EU states (I have a diploma in Latin, and finding a certified Latin translator has been a bit difficult, to say the least). Commodity items whose prices I checked on this trip (e.g. things whose identical duplicates can be purchased elsewhere in the world, from outboard engines and cameras down to wires and electrical connectors) cost roughly 30-100% more in the EU compared to the US, and I can only attribute this to friction within the system. To make it concrete, it costs as much to extract an outboard engine from customs and sell it in Europe as it did to manufacture it from raw metals (WTO ensures that the price differences are not due to tariffs; and the profit margins seem similar in the EU because they seem to lead similar lifestyles as their American counterparts). That's insane. And I had the benefit of having been to India in the middle of this trip. The energy I saw there is just nowhere to be found anywhere else in Old Europe.

So the question: It's not as if the folks who loaned money to Portugal, Italy, Greece or Spain went through an anonymizing "microloan" service which masked the name of the loan recipient. They knew perfectly well to whom they loaned their money. They knowingly undertook the risk of not getting paid back. They actively chose to ignore other developing markets, with demographics that are young, eager and willing to work hard, and place their bets on Old Europe instead (yes, I'm looking at Turkey in particular, and every other country on the EU fringe, along with the manufacturing giants in the far east). So why is everyone, and I mean just about every talking head on TV and every idiot who has been granted real estate in newspapers, criticizing the sad-European-country-du-jour (Greece at the moment, but Iceland, Ireland and Spain have all been there recently) for being lazy/not saving enough/not investing well and demanding prompt payback along with severe austerity measures, damn the consequences? Since these noisemakers cannot be receiving kickbacks from the bond holders who actually loaned the cash, I can only assume that they're like the poor underclass in the US who votes Republican out of a desire to identify with the rich and powerful.

Anyhow, I've seen nothing that makes any EU country 'better' than any other. France has a tiny handful of sectors that bring in money; the rest of the country seems to be running a successful wealth redistribution scheme. England is buoyed by the finance sector, and I cannot name a British invention that came after the radar. One could go on and on, so I won't, except to note that economic growth seems to be a function of demographics first and foremost, and it's a pity to see people ignore groups of highly productive people who needed capitalization in favor of people whose only accomplishment was to vote for their neighbors' bad songs in the European song competition, and then get upset at them.

Red, White and Blue of a Different Kind

I ended up seeing the Bastille Day ceremonies in Menton. The French take their Bastille Day seriously: I ended up seeing part of the military parade in Paris on TV, where there was a representative troop unit from every part of the French armed forces.

One of the most impressive units at the parade was the French Foreign Legion. France is unique in letting foreign nationals serve in a special unit in its army. In return for serving France and her interests, the foreigners get to become French nationals after three years, with a new identity of their own choosing. In essence, you join the Foreign Legion, pick a fake name, and if you serve for three years or your blood is spilled on the battlefield, you become a French national. Of course, this attracts a certain kind of personality, specifically, the kind that has committed atrocities in multiple countries and has run out of options. Interestingly, Wikipedia says that the Legion had a reputation for allowing felons into its ranks in the past, but the admission criteria are much tighter now. Well, I'm sure that that line was added to Wikipedia by a French PR flak. In fact, if there had been a Wikipedia during the Franco-Prussian War, presumably written on pieces of loose paper and disseminated on horseback, it would still have said the same thing back then.

The French first responders followed the Legion, staged a car accident in the middle of the parade and cut apart a car with the jaws of life. I guess they need to show the public that they know how to respond to calls for help. I'd like to see the port dude in Menton do the same. Interestingly, it was a very slow operation, and at some point, it looked like the jaws of life they brought along was not going to be sufficient for the larger car they had for the mock rescue.

And finally, there was a group of tough guys from French Polynesia who got into formation and started hitting themselves in the chest. Apparently, they were doing some kind of tribal dance where the objective, presumably, is to indicate to your opponent that you're so strong that you can go into battle where you beat yourself up first, fight your opponent and still win -- it's kind of like pre-drinking before a night of partying.

Even in the tiny town of Menton, the celebrations were quite elaborate.

"Down with the King!"

WWII outfit alongside Bastille-stormers!
That guy can single-handedly mow everyone down with a machine gun.

Large contingency of allies

Jeeps and muskets. It looks just like upstate NY before the start of the regular deer season.

Vive La France! Mort aux oiseaux de mer!

There was, of course, a large fireworks show at night. They're not very big on safety precautions in Europe, so I got to see the fireworks barge up close. Very close.

Every single piece of fireworks gets its own mortar tube

It turns out that photographing fireworks is very very difficult, even with a tripod.

Monton Old Port to Menton Garavan, A Tale of Two Ports In One City

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How many ports must a small town build, before you call it a racially and culturally-integrated town? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

So Menton has two ports. One dates back to the Phoenicians, and the other is  only 30 years old. They're practically side by side, and have duplicated all services. One look at this situation in this small border town, and I just knew what it was all about: one port, the older one, is for the French-speaking contingency in Menton, while the other is essentially an Italian colony. It's kind of funny, considering that the entire region used to belong to the House of Savoy and was, in essence, Italian until not too long ago. And oddly, most people here have last names that indicate Italian ancestry.

If this is the situation with the ports, I don't even want to know how the school districts work. Maybe they can make some headway towards unification by bussing Italian boats into the Old Port, and the reverse for the French boats into Port Garavan. A port costs $20+M, it is ridiculous to build two of them as an edifice to cultural separation. As an aside, the entire "unified currency in Europe" idea is predicated on the notion that labor can move freely to wherever the jobs are. Well, you can see why people might be reluctant to move across boundaries.

Stella, sans transmission,
trying to get her groove back yet again

In any case, I needed to show Stella the Engine to a mechanic, as it developed a gear problem. It was Bastille Day, so the mechanic in the French port was off. I thought I'd have to sail to the nearest Italian port, in Ventimiglia, to get the engine serviced -- a 4-5 mile sail, not long enough to be fun, on a windless day to boot -- but then decided to check out the new port within Menton. I was greeted with "Buon Giorno" by the guys at the port, and sure enough, the mechanic, Segnor Osvaldo, spoke only Italian and, naturally, was at work even though it was Bastille Day. He pulled apart the lower engine assembly, ground down a part, and reassembled the shifter, so now, there is absolutely no part of the engine that I have not personally touched. Stella the Engine seems to have gotten its groove back again. I was about to chuck it overboard and buy a new one, but at this point, I just can't get rid of something whose every piece I have lovingly touched, took apart and reassembled. She's coming with me to wherever Guizmo's final destination might be.

Menton

This is a quaint little town. Reminded me of Antibes and Cadaques in a way, even though it lacks Antibes' city walls and the giant bay that defines Cadaques.

Menton, town view

This Greek warrior welcomes you at the port.

The kids act slightly differently here than they did elsewhere in France, closer to what I saw in Spain -- there is much more screaming and running away from the vicinity of the parents. So the parents entrap them in plastic balls and keep them there until they run out of oxygen. I'm not kidding; the kids remain in those balls for 20 minutes or so and come out much more subdued.

There is no way you can stay in there for that long in the US

Any kid not sufficiently punished in the transparent ball prison gets to be tied up onto the trampoline thingy.

Note little shrimp at right, trying to emulate the upside-down girl

Menton has yet another shutter technology, very different from the ones in previous cities. This one seems to have higher degrees of freedom.

High-tech shutters. Apparently, these are Italian-style.

The place is full of ice cream stores. I liked this one.

Saw this on a menu.

Good deal? I guess it all depends on the piece of the butcher one would be getting

 Random street view from Menton.

Holy Mother gets the best window.

There are quaint little bookstores here.

This one is going after the Somalian youth demographic.

Monaco to Menton

The short 3.5 mile jump from Monaco to Menton turned into a nightmare. Meteo prediction was for "Force 2 winds and cloud cover." Anyone can handle that in their sleep. Left the port, put up all the sails, sat back, was about to worry about music selection on the stereo when whitecaps and a substantial swell arrived suddenly. Went down to two reefs and a reefed jib. There was so much wind that when Guizmo jumped from the wavetops and splashed the waves, the splash on the windward side would come into the cockpit in its entireity, without a wasted drop. Which is fine, it's what foul weather gear is for, except it sucks to plan for a nice warm outing and instead have to trade your soaked clean clothing for foulies. The wind was only around 25-30 knots, which is still totally fine and nothing Guizmo has not faced before. But the thunderstorm was a bit too much. I heard some rumbles, and tried to attribute them to planes on approach to Nice, except it was pretty clear these weren't planes. I hate lightning storms at sea. The tall mast on a mini makes me feel like I'm doing a peer-review replica of Benjamin Franklin's experiment, and I know what happened to Franklin's assistants in that experiment.

Approximately 0.8 miles away from Port Vieux Menton, the big cloud cover reached the boat, the wind died down, Guizmo's engine lost her groove again, and the lightning was all around us. Sitting in the cabin and waiting out lightning flashes was an interesting experience. Tossed out the sea anchor, but the action of the waves must have undone the knot, as it was lost (incidentally, first time I lost anything overboard on this trip). I was slowly moving towards the shore, and thought, "ok, it's safer over there anyway, and if I get really close, I'll drop the anchor and try to hook land before I hit it." I tried to hail someone on the VHF, but no one responded on channels 9 or 16 to my first-ever PAN-PAN call (though it later turned out that the portmaster actually heard my call). I called the port on the cellphone and asked for a tow, also for the first time, but the connection was bad and the fellow was in the worst mood: he understood my plight, but said that he was alone at the pier and could not help. It seems odd that he could not ask someone else. I can only hope that Dante's hell has a special level designed for these beaurocrats, where they get pitchforked in hellfire with random devil's helpers who frolick all around them, could help them if they wanted to but don't because of a badly-written policy document. That level will undoubtedly be reserved for French government workers and AT&T employees.

Suddenly, the clouds cleared, there was an enormous rainbow, and Stella the engine started working again. I pulled into the port, had a nice conversation with the portmaster where I acted all cool like nothing had happened. He was a bit sheepish and overly nice to me, like he knew what he did was wrong, which gave me a bit of hope for mankind.

In the end, the storm was probably no big deal for any real pro sailor, but it was a little over my comfort level. Will check Greek meteo, reputed to be much better for the Med than any other, religiously from now on. No pics, even of the rainbow, as it was too wet to take out the camera.

Holy See or Holy Sea?

Saw this off of Antibes. Initially, I thought that that cool triskelion was the Vatican ensign, which made me wonder if the Pope had ever taken a vacation. And who, besides the Pope, could register a boat in the Holy See?

Does the Pope own a boat? Why or why not?

It turns out that the ensign belongs to the Isle of Man. The same questions hold for the Isle of Man as well. A little looking around indicates that the Isle of Man is a haven for "offshore banking," which is really a euphemism for money laundering. Also, the island has a number of real space travel companies. Weird mix.

Smoke on the Water

As I pulled into Port Vaughn in Antibes, there was some smoke outside the pier. In a matter of two minutes, it turned into giant flames shooting into the sky. The picture does not do justice to the size of the flames. For them to be that big from my vantage point, they would have to shoot 60 feet into the sky.

There can be nothing but water behind that pier

Thought it was just some kids making a bonfire, but the location seemed to be in the middle of the water. Came across this shell of a boat in the harbor the next morning that wasn't there the evening before when I came in, which I think explains what happened. It's a huge pity, and a reminder that every boat needs an extinguisher, preferably one that works on oil fires.

Dommage, as the locals put it, for the terrible damage

Full Service?

Saw this late-night spot in Antibes.

I need two exorcisms, one for myself and another for my outboard engine, do you do those?

Sometimes, the devil leaves my outboard in a puff of smoke, and it works uninterrupted. But then he gets back in.

Antibes

Got sick and tired of Cannes and sailed over to Antibes. Antibes is only 5 miles or so from Cannes, but there's a world of a difference between the two cities.

Antibes is an ancient town. Originally settled by the Greeks in 5th century BC, and maintained as an important trading outpost by the Romans thereafter, it has the aura of an established town that will last for another twenty centuries, whereas Cannes seems like a pop bubble that has expanded beyond its capacity and burst. The city walls, a castle and a fort, all within a mile of each other, provide testimony to the complex history of the town.

Antibes Fort. Large holes for cannons mark a city that has not been sieged or sacked that often.

Street view

This city seems to attract an entirely different kind of visitor. It has almost no beach, so there is little beach culture around here. Instead, there are lots of families, strolling around on narrow streets.

My particular entry into Antibes was very complicated: I hailed them on the radio, whereupon they asked me for the dimensions of the boat. And, having spent too much time in Spain, I totally messed up: I got the 6.5 meters out fine, but instead of 3m, i.e. "trois metres" in French, I said "tres metres" as in Spanish, which sounds like 13 meters in French. The poor guy at the marina asked if I was 13 meters long and 6.5 meters wide, which I misunderstood and thought "what a moron, who would make a boat that is 3m long and 6.5 meters wide." Simultaneously, he must have been thinking "what a moron, he bought a boat that is 6.5m long and 13 meters wide." Anyhow, in the end, he announced that he could not fit me into any slot and that I'd have to anchor in the bay that is open to east winds in an easterly. This was rather frustrating, as I could see a lot of empty slots inside. Anyhow, I pulled into the fuel quay, whereupon we sorted out the misunderstanding and got the permission to stay in Antibes overnight.

Picasso was invited to Antibes and granted a stay at the castle, where he built an atelier and produced 10+ paintings, 20+ drawings and lots of pieces of pottery. The locals then built a museum and acquired more pieces by Picasso, as well as other cubist artists. I was most affected by "The Man in the Hat," whose picture I could not take because it is forbidden and there was a lady, who enforced the no camera rule. But it's a museum well worth the price of admission.

Picasso Museum in Antibes

Little girl with doll

Three Picasso statues

There are lots of quaint little corners in this town.

Houses on a hilltop

Discovered these weird vegetables here. They're micro-cucumbers. Incidentally, I'll file away "micro-cucumber" or its French equivalent as an insult to shout at people in traffic.

Tasty, but inefficient

Off of Nice

I skipped Nice, but got this shot of people out for an afternoon sail just outside. Note the little bumpers, the young skipper taking his family around and sails made out of a bedsheet.

Way to go!

How Other People Sail, Part 3

To adopt an Internet meme: "Yo Dawg! We heard you liked boats, so we put a boat on your boat, then another, then another, and then we put a chopper on just for good measure."

What's he missing?

Cannes should be Canned

Sailed over to Cannes -- given how much noise people make about Cannes, it would have been unthinkable to skip it.

Well, Cannes was a huge disappointment. It's just an overgrown urban environment, bigger than a village, smaller than a city, that combines the worst of both worlds. The famous beaches are pretty narrow and incredibly crowded. This is really no different than Jones Beach or the beaches in New Jersey. There certainly is enough silicon on the beach to build millions of the next generation multicore processors, and this is without counting the silicon dioxide that makes up the sand.

Typical beach scene in Cannes. Bring out the eye bleach.

The weather is pretty much crap around here -- the humidity from the Atlantic makes its way down to here unimpeded, so it's sickly sticky and hot. The Med is not supposed to be humid; it's supposed to be the kind of place that, even if you had TB and no antibiotics, you could move here and live for another 30 years, the way people did before the invention of antibiotics. Well, even if you're perfectly healthy, you won't last long in Cannes.

The architecture is bland and without character. It's just multistory concrete buildings, oriented mostly away from the sea. There is a commercial street, Rue des Antibe, way far away from the water, and full of the kinds of stores you can find in any midscale mall. There is nothing appealing about shopping at any of them.

The place needs such a complete makeover. I did not meet anyone around here that I would consider anywhere near "nice." In fact, people seemed actively annoyed and unhelpful.
To add to the cacophony, there is constant helicopter traffic from the Nice airport to the Cannes marina. It's not sufficient to be an Important Person. You have to show to the world how important you are and how valuable your time is by helicoptering into this town. There is so much chopper noise that it's impossible to sail in peace off of Cannes.

Apparently, these flights from Nice actually cost only 110€, so you can
pretend to be important and make a lot of noise on a budget

There were a couple of interesting sights around town, so to be fair, I should mention them.

The stars have left their handprints on the main promenade. Some of these are cool.

Came across Belmondo's hand print

Cannes has excellent cafes and pastry shops.

Tasty

Came across a nice street market.

Cannes street market. Do not expect free tastings though.

So Cannes turned out to be one of these things that lots of people make a big deal about, but turn out to be not the least bit cool if you have any sense of taste. It reminded me of the time I was an undergrad on the east coast in the US, and all these snooty classmates would act all haughty about having "climbed all 13 4000 footers on the east coast." A 4000 footer is barely higher than a hill. They don't get names where I come from. There is no count of how many 4000 footers there are, and there certainly are no annoying people making a big deal of having been to any one or all of them. It's just not cool, unless you have no taste. Cannes is in the same category.

Left Cannes behind, hoping to never have to come back. If I win a Palm d'Or, and it'd have to be for "best background character accidentally filmed" or something like that, and I can't send someone else to pick up my award, I might be back. Until then, adieu!

B-5, You Sank My Battleship

Came across a bunch of military vessels on this journey. These two are particularly striking.

The first is a vessel that, when I was growing up, was the coolest destroyer ever devised, with the best weapon systems. This was before AEGIS, the American on-ship communication system, which is reportedly way better than anything else, but is in reality probably just an overhyped, poorly coordinated piece of software. Anyhow, it was sad to see this French destroyer turning into a rust bucket.

Once upon a time, this used to be the best of its class

The second is a vessel that was anchored off of Cannes. It's probably a transport or a destroyer tender, or maybe a submarine tender. I don't know where the French are sending their materiel -- not sure where, at the moment, the Frenchies are busy being ineffective and later surrendering -- but I suspect the most likely destination is Libya.

Where is the French tender #41 destined for?

The odd thing is that, any undergrad who has taken a course on computer vision can design an unjammable rocket that can autonomously find, lock onto, and destroy such ships. A Soekris board, a cheap webcam, and a simple kernel method for detecting corners is sufficient to aim at this poorly concealed boat. Surface ships are all essentially sitting ducks for any enterprising individual with a tiny amount of know-how. The American navy conducted war games to test its readiness against asymmetric threats, that is, threats from small groups of determined people with few resources. Instead of playing war games according to a pre-set scenario, kind of like a modern day version of the Moros y Cristianos festivals in Spain where the Moros are destined to lose every year, they brought in a retired admiral to head the asymmetric attackers. They would carry out his orders (say, "deliver message by bike messenger") in the field, during peace time (e.g. using a courier in this case), and use the actual success rate in the war game simulations. Within about a week, the admiral had destroyed or disabled all the surface ships of the once-famous Sixth Fleet, using small zodiacs, suicide attacks, light couriers, mopeds, motorcycles, fishing boats and RPGs. It was so embarrassing for the US Navy that they had to stop the games, resurrect their sunken boats, and change the rules on the admiral. Surface ships are passe. They have no chance of staying afloat in a real conflict against a determined force. So taking these pics felt like photographing endangered species.

How Other People Sail, Part 2

Here are some boats I encountered so far.

Here is the enormous boat I had to go past in St. Tropez. It's a brand new boat launched in 2010, called Kolaha: here are its vitals. Get this: its maximum speed is only 16.50 knots!!! That's way lower than Guizmo's max recorded speed of 24 knots. And Guizmo does not require drilling holes in the earth's mantle for its forward propulsion.

Maybe if it had fewer sombreros, it'd go faster?

I like cruise boats, but then again I've never been on one. I wonder if this one has a festering Norwalk virus problem. Or a Captain named Stubing, and a happy barman named Isaac. It looks okay to me, as it is fairly small by cruise boat standards. I would like to play shuffle puck at some point in my older age.

Cruise boat off of St. Tropez. Note the quaint water taxis that it can launch

This, I really like.

Classically beautiful

This thing hounded me as I approached St. Tropez. Not sure who designed it, and for what purpose. If it was designed to be anything other than a Kamikaze assault vehicle (either literally, or on the senses), it failed.

I bet this abomination won a design award in Germany,
in the electric iron category

The guys with the white powerboats must have thought they were hot stuff until the black powerboat rolled into town. Just the floating toys launched from the black boat could make up a sizable flotilla.

When the black boat anchors, it opens a hatch from which lots of other floating little noisemakers emerge,
just like in Waterworld

Random

Here are two pics of me to remind people that I have not yet been replaced by a blog-entry-producing artificial intelligence program, and will, some day soon, be back to normal life and work. And a bonus shot of Sir Humphrey, which has been trailing (of course) Guizmo throughout this journey.

Leaving St. Tropez behind, and not looking back

Pensive after a passage

Sir Humphrey