Mark
Matarella - Alexandria, Virginia
I live in Alexandria, VA, near George Washington's Mt Vernon estate on the Potomac river. The land was part of his farm. I've been working for a defense contractor as a IT manager since 1991. I manage the IT team that oversees our Crystal City site and our Washington D.C. site near the Navy Yard.
My pastimes include sailing, motoring, & restoring my sailboat Toyot (Toy Yacht, get it?). She's a beautiful British built 1969 Westerly Cirrus. Like most British boats she's a exceptionally sturdy boat with amazing construction. A British built boat and car too. Odd how things turn out...
Photos of the boat done up for Christmas are over on one of my
other sites,
http://www.VintageSail.com
Temporary bunch of pictures from Britain On The Green 2005
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s/v Toyot a 1969 Westerly Cirrus She has a V berth forward to sleep 2 and a small enclosed head. Across the boat to port is hanging storage. The mid section of the boat, or saloon has a dinette to starboard that can be converted to another berth, and to port has a sink, ice chest, and stove. The aft area has a quarter berth to port to sleep one more person and storage to starboard.
You'll find photos of her below and on some linked pages below. I've also created a web site about Westerly Yachts in general and mine in particular at http://VintageSail.com.
Below are a couple of shots from a sail with my Dad and here's the
video!
Some Weather links I use before heading out. DC area Tides Weather @ DC's National
Airport NOAA's Interactive Marine Observations I run a web site about Westerly Sailboats, VintageSail.com. More Toyot stuff Here's a group of pages where I keep some older photos of Toyot.
I documented a lot of the
exterior restoration work on Toyot. These
pages show the bottom job, blister job, fairing, barrier
coating, and painting of the bottom plus prepping and painting the
topsides.
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On the 'Tail of the Dragon' a.k.a. TN Route 129, summer 2005...
The other 'set of wheels', the newly refreshed 'Vinny the Van' & I
Got him repainted in a nice 'nautical' blue and had some custom graphics done. The pin stripe down the beltline looks like rope, and there's white caps along the bottom with a assortment of sailboats cruising around. The fenders and running boards being fiberglass I renewed myself. |
Recumbent Bicycles
I have been involved with recumbent bicycles for quite a few years. I created and used to run what is likely the biggest and busiest site on the internet about Recumbent bikes, http://Recumbents.com. I've turned the domain over to a very active group of HPV'ers, the WISIL group. Recumbent bicycles are designed for comfort and SPEED.
My 'Fleet' includes...
The Rans Stratus
An awesome touring bike, and pretty quick too. Not pictured here are the Aerospoke carbon fiber rear wheel and HED CX carbon front wheel for serious cruising. The seat is modified to allow a more reclined position, and the bike has a 24 inch fork and wheel up front, vs. the standard 20 inch, to improve the ergonomics. I find it climbs much better since this making this change.
Working on a M5 I bought used too. No pic of mine yet, here's one I scrounged from the web.
Here's my Russian built fully faired Recumbent bike, or
Human Powered Vehicle. It was designed and built in the former Soviet
Union as part of four bike team sponsored then by Aerofloet airlines.
I've heard this particular bike held the one hour time trial record in
the Soviet Union for a few years. There's a bicycle inside that body.
The body makes the bike more efficient aerodynamically. The current best
of breed of these HPV's are capable of speeds of over 80mph, all by
pedaling, with no drafting of a motor vehicle or any other assistance
like some so called 'fast bikes'.
My handy link to some smiley for forums...
http://www.primetimehobby.com/100_1223.jpg
http://www.slotcars.org/tunkeltracks/tracks/index.html
http://www.slotzoneusa.com/
http://www.domsraceway.com/
