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Alphabrewski: Fonics of the Phuture

Sailing has a history of being closely linked to superstition. I suppose this stems from the belief that there are reasons behind trauma at sea. Perhaps it's easier to believe that a vengeful deity sees fit to punish us for the things we've done (bringing clergy on board, for example), rather than for simply being on the water - a place where there's a fantastic statistical probability for things to go dramatically wrong. Maybe the root of this problem is that we as cruisers are just gluttons for punishment. Why else would we opt to plod around the world so ridiculously slow?
Sure, we can laugh at the Old Salts and their superstitions, but sometimes we must examine more closely what makes us suffer:

•Never bring women on board - This, I think, was made up by sailors who couldn't get any women aboard regardless of circumstance. This, however, is diametrically opposed to a remedy for a gale, namely: a female baring her breasts before the wind. This, in turn, is probably the only way the sailors of yore could "peep the hooters" claiming this was the only possible way to survive a storm at sea. I'm sure it's just as successful today. Unfortunately, we on Project Mayhem suffered more than our fair share of storms for lack of breasts to bare.

•Never whistle for wind - You might get way more than you bargained for, which is a sure way to get your ass handed to you, and whistling might lead crew to burst into show tunes, which can be significantly more frightful than a gale.

•Never bring bananas aboard - Okay, this one doesn't sound too ominous. However, Project Mayhem left the Marquesas with two full not-quite-ripe stalks of delicious bananas. Upon reaching the Tuamotus, we had to eat something like 70 bananas per meal to keep from wasting food. By the end we were having banana pancakes made of 14 bananas and a spoonful of Bisquik. The weather was fine, but our potassium levels were off the charts.

•Never leave on Friday - Not only does this mean that you stand to miss out on the Friday night parties, it also means that you could be subject to the dubious navigational practices of the weekend crowd. Project Mayhem had her own terrible experience when leaving on a Friday. Leaving Tahiti for the nearby island of Moorea, we made the quick sail to Cook's Bay, Moorea, and dropped the hook in the fantastically beautiful anchorage. As often happens when cruising, there happened to be many friends sharing the anchorage, and as it was a Friday evening, a party ensued aboard Project Mayhem. Let's quickly digress to the topic of Tahitian beer. It's called Hinano, it's wildly popular, has a cute girl on the bottle, though not baring her breasts, and comes conveniently by the liter. Long into the night, liter after liter of Hinano were consumed, and following the Law of Horizontal Surfaces, large empty brown bottles were all over every available surface of Project Mayhem. This was fine in the calm anchorage, but we didn't count on the Ono Ono. The Ono Ono is the large passenger ferry, about one hundred and eighty feet long, that comes screaming into Cook's Bay at 4:00 in the morning. The demented captain, who must have been wronged somehow by cruisers, found it amusing to go as close as possible and as fast as possible by the anchored boats. Perhaps he thought it was funny seeing spreaders touch the water, but the occupants of Project Mayhem, passed out and sleeping like only the morbidly drunk can sleep, thought the world was coming to the end. As the four foot waves rolled beneath the boat, the sound of the bottles on board matched the sound the horses of the Apocalypse would make tap dancing across your skull. All things considered, never leave on a Friday. This might be a moot point for cruisers, for to us, every day is a Saturday.

•Never change your boat's name, and never name it something which may bring misfortune - Right, Project Mayhem lives up to her name, and never fails to bring wind regardless if her occupants whistle or not. The Baring the Titties thing comes to mind, but again an area we in which we seemed sadly lacking, no matter how much money we offered. My next boat is going to be named something like Force Two. I'm pretty sure that means winds under 30 knots.





So we've determined that it's a good idea to adhere to superstitious beliefs. But another annoying facet of cruising life is the use of antiquated verbiages. Americans, for example, say "Roger" in acknowledgment of comprehension on the radio. For the rest of the planet, this has an entirely different connotation. Aussies, for instance, will use "Roger" like:

"I gave me old lady a good rogering last night."

We'll leave it to the readers imagination to figure out it's meaning. I'm not going to ask you to stop rogering, it's just too funny to listen to your friends rogering this and rogering that on the air. But I propose a change in something else: The Phonetic Alphabet.

Okay, I can hear the harrumphs all the way over here on my boat. But think about it! What is all this Alpha, Bravo, uhh, I forget what C is, stuff? Now, what I propose is something a little more innovative. Don't close the magazine yet, I think you might like my proposition. So here it is, as we've already talked at great length about beer today, we use it for the new Alphabet!

Beer? You're wondering:

How the hell are we going to use beer as an alphabet, throw it at each other? Try to get someone's attention with a quick bonk on the head or shower of suds?
No, no, no, that would be a flagrant abuse of alcohol.

We only use the beer's name. See, it's simple, when you're talking on the radio and you have to spell out your name, instead of saying Bravo, India, ahh L, L, I don't know what L is in the current phonetic alphabet, but in beer talk it's easy: Becks, Ikale, Labatt, Labatt. (Keep in mind this only works if your name is indeed "Bill.")
So, you get to learn about new beers. In this example, we are representing beers from Germany, Tonga, and Canada, so it's very international. I don't know about you, but I would much rather learn beers names than Alpha Tango Whatever. God help me to avoid getting screwed by Mother Ocean again for messing with a time honored tradition. But you know, every time I cross the Equator, I share a libation with her so I think she just might appreciate the concept.

Think of the fun you could have when the Coast Guard decides to do a "Safety Inspection" a thousand miles out at sea:

"Please spell the name of your vessel." And you can glibly answer:

"Sapporo, Corona, Raineer, Elephant, Waikato, Youngs, Oranjeboom, Usher."




It's also a good learning tool. You could have your kids learn the Phonetic Alphabet by collecting beers from all over the World, and then trying to spell words with them. Better yet, you could try a specimen from each letter and see if you could spell anything at all. See what a great role model you could be? You would be giving them something to strive for when they come of age.

We could also keep it a little loose. For instance, if you like another beer, like Coors (Heaven help us), instead of Corona, we could adjust the Alphabet accordingly, or even use it to honor the country you're in by using local beers. A personal benchmark could be to circumnavigate and get a representative example from each country.

We have here a versatile, interesting new alphabet. So let's throw off the shackles of our forefathers and do something original. If nothing else, it¡¦s also a great excuse to drink, like we need one.

Well, that's a big Roger from Project Mayhem to you, out there somewhere you wish you were, but not getting there by leaving on a Friday, and having no breasts whatsoever on board. Damn!

Originally published in Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine

Bite Me: Beverage of the Future

Boredom. Strange as it may seem, many cruisers are often beset by boredom. This can happen anywhere, whether on a long crossing, at a dull anchorage, or even trapped in a Custom Office line. Fortunately, a great number of cruisers have found alcohol a brilliant remedy for boredom. Yes, alcohol can give any situation an interesting air of unpredictability. Depending on quantities consumed, alcohol has the capability to make mundane activities like standing, walking and speaking formidable challenges, requiring every functioning synapse available to successfully accomplish. There are many levels of alcohol consumption that everyone should be aware.

It is all too easy, in the course of, say, a cruiser’s party, to go from “pleasantly buzzed” to “I have exceedingly flammable urine – luckily most of it is in my pants” in an extremely short time. Moderation, or at least a relatively slow progress from one stage to the next, is essential. Liver transplants are expensive everywhere. A good litmus test to see how much you have imbibed is to let yourself be bitten by a mosquito. This is not a difficult thing to do in most cruising countries; mosquitoes having something like 10 times the population of the People’s Republic of China in a single cubic meter of airspace. Observe the mosquito after it has bitten you. Be wary of breathing on the mosquito, as it’s difficult to perform a rigorous experiment with wilting or stone dead test subjects. Keen observers can see just how much blood alcohol the victim contains by the mosquito’s behavior, i.e.


•Mosquito flies away unscathed – you’re doing fine, have another round.

•Mosquito explodes – you probably had a muscle flexed after entry; try again.

•Mosquito flies into ground, and/or becomes unconscious – time to taper.

•Mosquito bursts into flame – go home before you meet a similar fate.



Unfortunately, such rigorous drinking, with little regard for beverage menu variation, can also lead to boredom. Therefore resourceful cruisers must be ever vigilant in the quest for new and interesting drink combinations. Circumdecision, cruising the West Coast of Mexico, became a stalwart envelope-pusher in the quest for interesting drinks. The cruiser’s Mexico has two main indigenous and ubiquitous types of alcohol: beer and tequila. Naturally, we aboard Circumdecision often neglected beer (preferring it for breakfast only) in favor of tequila. Margaritas are wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but are far too elaborate to make once the sun is substantially over the yardarm. But we sought something more, something that could be made with simple ingredients and little to no hand-eye coordination. During her trip northward, Circumdecision visited Tenacatita, and was there long enough to attend the compulsory Friday Night Raft Up in the lagoon. A Raft Up is like a mixer for yacht people, except it’s held in the general anchorage area where all of the yachts are, there’s no dress code, and instead of walking around chatting, everyone is tied together in small inflatable rafts. Come to think of it, it’s really nothing like a mixer at all, more like a potluck where you have to nudge about 16 tons of inflated rubber out of the way if you wanted to talk to someone outside of your immediate vicinity. There is also the problem of being stranded with whatever food items you or your adjacent neighbors have scrounged up, so you could conceivably eat a dinner consisting solely of popcorn and guacamole. Yes, I don’t think I could have picked a more inappropriate comparison. Choosing where to raft up can also be a challenge. Everyone seems to be constantly waving you over. This is not because they are interested in your company. This is a direct correlation to the amount of mosquitoes occupying the air above the Raft Uppers. Flailing limbs belie invitations, when in fact the waver is just attempting to staunch the loss of blood by swatting at airborne vampires. Exposed skin becomes slapped with such increasing intensity that the entire anchorage becomes filled with a continuous state of ambient applause.



Bereft of any real food ingredients to bring to this potluck-type gathering, we settled instead on bringing a gigantor bottle of tequila. We had yet to set out, however, when we noticed we were lacking the basic ingredients that make low-grade tequila remotely palatable: namely the infamous salt and lime. Captain Brett rummaged around the storage bins and came up with a can of chipotle adobados – a container of smoked, marinated chiles. Primary functions of chipotles include soup recipes, marinades, and the defilement of hapless gringos.

Experimentation commenced, and we arrived at the Raft Up inebriated to the “I can’t feel my legs” but before the “Able to stun an ox at 10 paces” stage. Roaring up to the forty-odd dinghies from the numerous yachts in the anchorage (I might have been seeing double at this point), we managed to avoid serious injury, at least until the drinking commenced in earnest. The organizers of the Raft Up feel that tying one’s dinghy up to a bunch of others and bobbing around the lagoon is a great way to meet other cruisers and make new friends. They hadn’t figured us into the equation. We came blasting up with an enormous bright red 14 foot dingy, christened the “Stiff Red Wahoo,” replete with wheel console, 30 hp outboard motor, and Dudley the agitated bulldog of Circumdecision barking from the bow. The initial recipient of the drink combination looked at us with wild, rolling eyes.

“Can I just drink the tequila alone?” He said nervously, hoping for support from his fellow raft-uppers.

“NO!” We cried in unison.

The lucky individual, with shaking hands, tilted back the tequila shot glass and raised the dripping chipotle to his quivering lips. He consumed it in one great inhalation. A hush fell over the crowd.

“He’s still alive!” Cried an onlooker. The tester resigned himself to a pensive look: he had just performed a cruiser’s right of passage.

“What’s this called?” Another asked, after trying the combination.

“BITE ME.” We shouted.

Overcoming initial shock at a would-be insult, it dawned on the questioner that this was the name aptly bestowed upon a previously unexplored combination. Festivities continued until we were all out of both tequila and chipotles. The air was filled with the smell of flaming mosquitoes, and many of their kind lay stunned in the bottoms of dinghies, legs clawing feebly at the air.

Now, despite the notoriety of the beverage in Mexico, until it gains in popularity, I implore you not to ask for it by name in a bar, as this leads to uncomfortable situations:

Bartender: “What can I get you?”

You: “Bite me.”

Bouncer (hands secured around your throat): “You’re outta here, buddy.”

Instead, tell the bartender how the drink is constructed, then broach the subject of its title. Above all, have fun with exotic drink combinations, and when experimenting, make sure not to pee around sparks or open flame.



Originally Published in Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine, March 2005

Head Problems? Head to Fresh Start

Project Mayhem left San Diego in May 2001, bound for the South Pacific. As with most boats, we spent countless hours preparing and addressing every aspect of our boat for the voyage. There is an old saying, that we think we just made up, that when you buy a used boat, you also buy the previous owner’s crap. Knowing the potential for disaster with old and dubious plumbing, we performed major refurbishment, replacing all lines, fittings, and even installing a shiny brand new toilet. Unfortunately one tiny-yet-not-at-all-trivial item escaped installation - the vacuum release valve. The entire system functioned perfectly at the dock and on test-runs, but soon after we left for the Marquesas Islands, the toilet vacuumed shut.

Now, at sea, far from sensitive eyes and stomachs, it’s not such a bad thing to simply hang your ass over the side - sometimes even getting a saltwater douche. It’s as if the Pacific Ocean is your very own and incredibly large saltwater bidet.

Unfortunately, this practice tends to make one lose friends in small anchorages. After landfall in French Polynesia, something had to be done, lest we be completely bereft of friends. So with a quiet sense of desperation, we soon settled on our old laundry detergent bucket as an alternative to pre-dawn elimination.

Thus began the phenomena of The Fresh Start. Project Mayhem is a racing design. As such, it lacks some of the privacy features available on more cruising-oriented boats. So what a perfectly appropriate euphemism to be able to grab the bucket, casually voice your need to Start Fresh, and head below, thereby allowing your shipmates to seek sanctum topside. One of the features of a bucket is its mobility. In the evenings, with guests aboard, the bow of Project Mayhem became a quiet place to contemplate a beautiful sunset while contemplating a Fresh Start. Of course you needed to block out the cheers of your fellow shipmates – who have been in the same situation and can commiserate. And hey, they’re only trying to help. But what the hell, you’re Fresh Starting in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. It takes more than a little jeering to ruin the view of, say Makemo in the Tuamotus, or maybe Daniel’s Bay in the Marquesas. Perhaps we should send the bucket to the Survivor television show so they can contemplate their own defilement of the place.



At this point a new problem arose on Project Mayhem: the lack of a guest log. After drinking our last bottle of tequila and chasing it with a can of chipotle peppers, we found a remedy to this problem as well. So began a long-standing Project Mayhem tradition – if you use the Fresh Start bucket, you must sign it.

Given instructions for use, a calm quiet place, a large black magic marker, and a roll of environmentally friendly toilet paper, visitors never failed to leave a memorable memento. Unfortunately, such rigorous uses were never intended for the Fresh Start bucket. After months of being put through the paces, Fresh Start began to show considerable wear. A cracked rim led to many a cut butt, to say nothing of the obvious design flaw of its incredible sharpness to begin with. Finally, the old faithful Fresh Start bucket had inconvenienced one too many female guest. So like a sequel to a Japanese horror flick, the Son of Fresh Start was born. While in Tonga, the girls of the Canadian cruising boat Elakha decided that Project Mayhem needed a new, larger, and more comfortable bucket. After initial decoration by the Elakha girls, the Son of Fresh Start spent several days at Mermaid’s – the cruiser’s bar in Neiafu, Tonga, where fellow cruisers and locals got a chance to flex artistic muscle on the new throne. The Son of Fresh Start, with its comfortable rim and formidable diameter, posed some issues concerning our Caucasian Asslessness, but ass good and creative sailors we have overcome this small inconvenience.

Perhaps you’re wondering why we never simply installed the vacuum release valve? As luck would have it, nowhere in the entire South Pacific could we find this trivial piece, not in Tahiti, nor in Pago Pago. Only after reaching New Zealand was the search finally successful. After a simple five minute installation, Project Mayhem has a new, functioning head. We still keep the old buckets around just in case.

When cruising, there’s enough to take seriously. So have your fun where you can find it, be serious when you have to, and above all, do anything to save your ass.

Originally published in Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine

Praxis Universal reaches 100,000 views on YouTube

As Praxis Universal is a video company which creates videos for clients, we typically give our clients a copy of the finished product, and let them upload it to wherever they like, or we can embed the video on their site. A few years ago, the non-profit organization WiLDCOAST contacted us to create an advocacy video to shut down illegal pollution by development companies in Mexico. We uploaded this video to YouTube, at their behest. Since then, we've made many other videos for clients, some of which have gotten tremendous amounts of views.

We're proud to announce that we've reached the 100,000 video views mark!

Come check out our videos at our YouTube Channel.

Note: all of our Favorited videos are entirely Praxis Universal's content.

Have a great day!

Marketing in the Social World of the Web

The concept of viral, or social, online networking marketing is not very well understood nor have many figured out how to make it work. Viral of course means spreading via word of mouth or person-to-person where it grows exponentially.

Integrating a marketing project into a the social media environment is more complex than simply listing your product or services onto Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn or any of the myriad of online social networking sites - many of which are topic specific.
The key is consistent integration, you must become part of the social environment online.

To quantify the impact of social networking, think about this: Social Networking has grown bigger than online pornography. Ten years ago pornography accounted for 20% of all time spent online. It has now dropped to 10% with Social networking supplanting it, and also emailing, as the single most used WWW activity - says researcher Bill Tancer in a 2008 interview in Clicked magazine.


Meanwhile, 33% of small businesses indicated that they would keep spending on social networking about the same, while only 5% reported that they plan to spend less than in the previous year. Surprisingly, while 37% of small businesses in the survey don’t use social networking at all, that’s a smaller percentage than any other medium, including email marketing, search engine marketing, and even just maintaining a company website.
The numbers would seemingly point to what might be a better-than-expected year overall for businesses that depend on online marketing dollars. Small businesses indicate they are growing (or keeping the same) and not shrinking their marketing budgets.
Costs are certainly being cut elsewhere – the unemployment rate in the US is at a 16-year high – but online marketing is a bit better off than other areas of the economy.

Optimizing Your Social Networking Marketing

Social Networking has blossomed very quickly and traditional Marketing has not quite figured out how to configure a marketing strategy for this medium.

In the current climate of social networking where Facebook alone has over Four Hundred Million (400,000,000) users, social marketing is an incredibly efficient way to get your products or services in front of the people that need and want them.

The most useful and/or poorly underutilized tool of Internet marketing is video.
Using video, you can optimize the impression and message you want people to see. Your videos are you putting your best foot forward every time.
Think about this: How long would it take you to get face time with 1000 clients? And how often would you say the perfect thing? By using video online you can optimize your message and your face time. When someone is looking at you online, and thousands will, you’re always getting it right.

But, it is a two sided sword; a boring, poorly done, or as in most cases, overdone video will turn off as many people as it attracts. Like most of the antiquated advertising strategies, marketing videos tend to be overdone, and too long. Marketing videographers should work more towards reality-based, short, honest videos with a marketing schedule that incorporates regular videos into the program. Nothing gets the message across quicker or for longer than a video. Your videos will be watched for years online. Every one of your videos is an introduction for you and business.


Social Network Marketing Model

The social network world is not a place for false promises or hard sales techniques. No one needs to listen to you. The potential is enormous and the key is consistent honesty, and sincere availability.

In the social network world you meld video, blogs, smart phones, your website, the social network sites, and a myriad of additional tools into a cohesive marketing entity, all interactive and cohesive - a web if you will.

Your website becomes more a depository for your product and relevant information. It is less a sales site and more the corner market where your customers already know why they’re visiting.


Social Networking

To use social networking organizations to market your product means one must be consistently interactive offering almost daily information interlaced with video media to create a relationship with your clients.
As the title “social networking” infers, this is a relationship based on networking, where you and your clients become integrated and interactive participants in the social organization of the online community. For success, it should be a permanent role that is rewarding for you as well as your clients, a community that evolves to the betterment of the whole.

Viral marketing in the social networking sphere, as the name implies, necessitates a long term commitment where your clients become a part of your social network, and in your respective field you are an authority.

Quite simply, you are selling you.

This long term commitment is based on your passion, the quality of your product, and your expertise. Your interactivity and availability are critical.


Ancient Marketing

Consider this; the Super Bowl attracted 106,000,000 viewers in 2010. It is the largest single event on TV and advertising during this event costs $2.6 million for a 30 second Ad. Advertising on the Super Bowl has become more about bragging rights than having any significant dollars translation. Most advertising companies talk about ad retention and its significance, but it’s hard to equate a dollar to video translation, so once again we turn to the internet for a definitive perspective

According to Bob Parsons, CEO of The Go Daddy Group, via his blog, “it was a great way to spend advertising dollars.” Mr. Parsons opined, “I’m proud to report that Go Daddy unquestionably had the very best ad in this year’s Super Bowl.” According to data provided by Go Daddy, the company experienced an incremental 1.79% increase of visitors to the Go Daddy website over two days.

Many marketing companies and websites have simply tried to translate the antiquated, passive, and often times deceptive marketing techniques to the Internet.
Like ads in a magazine or on TV, the flags, banners, and pop ups on Internet sites and the boring over-produced videos on websites, they were never very effective and are much less so in the world of Social Media Marketing.

The reality is advertising in magazines, newspaper, or on TV, is quickly losing its effectiveness.
Bill Gates while speaking at the IAB Engage 2005 conference told delegates that “traditional media such as television, newspapers and magazines would move to being delivered via the internet within the next decade. The debate about internet versus non-internet advertising will become obsolete over the next 10 years.”

Bill Gates prophecy is being proven correct every day.

Marketing techniques of the past are not going to work any longer, and most advertising companies don’t have a clue how to make this interactive consumer information network work for you. In this environment of a poor economy, consumers are generally smarter about their purchases, researching and checking quality through their social networks.


Website Management

You should view your website as part of the whole, and it should be clean, simple, efficient, and safe. There should be no need to hard sell yourself or product because your social network marketing has already convinced them about you and your product/service.

Integrating your website with your social network marketing is key your company’s survival. In this scenario when your potential client comes to your website they are generally there for a purpose. So long-winded videos or sales pitches are wasted.

The simpler your purchase process is the more likely your client is to purchase and return. Videos should be seen as the new written informational panel on your site. The less written information you have the better. Product videos, like everything on the site, should be clean and efficient.
Videos should be succinct and entertaining. We live in a fast paced world so don’t waste your clients’ time by thinking more is better.


Creating your own Social Marketing Web

Your marketing has to be out in the social media venues and from there clients will come to your website. Video is key to developing your social media persona and integrating social media and technology is part and parcel with your marketing. But your marketing needs to be consistent, interesting, informative, and entertaining (which is one of the few things Super Bowl ads have in common with this venue).

Obviously to optimize these tools is a growth process and can take some time. Make no mistake this is a campaign, viral in nature, self-sustaining to a point, but something that needs to be maintained and constantly upgraded.

The longer you keep the information flowing the larger your net will grow and the larger your customer base will become. The web world is evolving at an incredible rate, and like any highly specialized field you need to work with specialist in this venue.

The reality of a business’s survival is integrating into the World Wide Web’s social spheres and creating your own social and business web; simply having a website is not enough. Creating and integrating all the tools available allows you to increase your sphere of influence by orders of magnitude in a proactive manner.