Captain Keith Koppelman

Master of the Cosmic Hippo

General Background

I haven't used a formal resume in years, but my clothes locker will do in a pinch. All you have to do is look at the logos on my T-shirts to get an idea of my past: Cornell University, Hump and Dump Movers, Belmont racetrack, Schooner Rachel and Ebenezer, TimberSmiths Construction, UnCONCHable Belize, Tilden's Dive shop, SCOPE (Suffolk County Organization for the Promotion of Education), National Geographic Television, and RV Cosmic Hippo.

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I've delivered pizza on motorcycle, taught students to build cabins with just an ax and a stand of trees, exercised thoroughbred race-horses, played polo, traveled, framed houses without any nails, and fabricated metal sculptures for famous artists in a New York city shop. But mostly I've spent a lot of time on the water, under the water, and near the water.

First let me tell you that I am not a real marine biologist... I just play one on the Internet. I have studied animal behavior, and biology, but only as part of a broad interest in just about everything. Eventually, I realized that the only field that could bring so many different avocations together was writing. So, halfway through my bachelors degree I added a concentration in communications to my science degree. This was back in the days when students didn't own personal computers. No word processors, Internet, or CD Roms. Today, we feel obsolete without a pentium or power PC, but in the late 70's, engineering students were still required to do calculations on slide-rules!

Particulars

• Age38
• HometownStony Brook, New York
• Education
  I received a bachelor's degree in environmental science from Cornell University in 1981. I am most often remembered back in Ithaca for the log cabins I built on the Arts Quad to commemorate Earth Day.
• Early years
  Under the influence of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance --I traveled the country on a BMW cruising bike and started to build a timber-frame house in the Catskill Mountains with antique hand tools.
• Middle years
  I discovered electricity and the building process sped up. Months of hard work in the woods was rewarded with a one-day house raising and celebration.
• Still more years
  I sell my house in the woods and move into the first of many ocean cruising boats. Sailing trips are punctuated with building projects and jobs teaching outdoor education for the Suffolk County Organization for the Promotion of Education. (SCOPE) .

  click on picture for full-size image.

• And yet more years
  I became a professional sailor and got licensed as Master of motor, steam, and auxiliary sailing vessels of not more than 100 gross tons. I added a dive master's certificate and began teaching diving, driving charter boats, and handling on-site logistics for National Geographic expeditions.

Sailing Background

My first boat was an Olympic class Star- a 21 foot open cockpit keelboat. I spent a summer rebuilding the hull and then went sailing on Cayuga Lake. That first experience really spoke to me. Literally, it spoke to me: The foredeck started peeling off the hull under the tension of the forestay. With every passing wave, the hull-to-deck joint opened and closed, looking like the gasps of a giant mouth. Groaning with distress, the wood fibers seemed to plead, "help me, help me" while that gaping maw swallowed gulp after gulp of lake water. How could I ignore those cries? I knew that more than one Star lies at the bottom of 400 foot deep Cayuga Lake. So, I pressed my chest against the flapping foredeck and threw my arms around the needle-like bow. My more experienced mate sailed us back to shore while I endured plunges into the frigid water. It must have looked like I really loved that boat when we docked at the yacht club, but I was just too cold to release my bear hug. After that, I was hooked. Go figure.

Vessels

I've driven almost every type of boat from small outboard driven runabouts, to the largest passenger carrying sailboat in the United States, to what once was the largest and fastest charter catamaran in Key West. Here's a partial list:

• Fury--I'll start with the most fun. Fury is a sixty foot ex-OSTAR trans-Atlantic racing catamaran that was converted to a passenger boat for coral-reef trips. Highlight: Sailing at well over 20 kts with fifty passengers getting drenched and loving it, with sheets of atomized water flying off the transoms and forming rooster-tails of spray.
• Clipper City--160 foot topsail schooner which carries 150 passengers in Baltimore, Maryland. Highlight: Standing at the wheel while gazing at that huge expanse of deck, and the teamwork of handling ship on a traditionally-rigged vessel.
• Rachel and Ebenezer--I was just a deckhand on this midsize schooner. We had the distinction of being the slowest boat in the 1983 schooner races near Mystic, Connecticut. Highlights: Watching the America's Cup races off Newport, Rhode Island, and learning from sailing master and schoonerman extroadinaire Peter Boudreau.
• Binker --A gleam comes to my eyes lads and lasses. Binker was my first love- a 47 foot antique wooden cutter, with a rakish rig, hourglass sections, and heart-shaped transom. This boat caressed the seas, turned heads in every harbor, and made me so proud. She also leaked like a sieve. At times I had to pitch a tent inside the cabin when it rained. Highlights: Turning around to look at her two or three times every time I walked away. I call these the bruised shin years.

Knickname

The day I passed my captain's exam was one of the proudest I remember. Brand new "ticket" in hand, I bounded about the streets of lower Manhattan, really happy that I could start making a living doing something that I enjoyed. So, you can call me Captain any day. Or Cap'n. Or Cappy. I also answer to Keith. But my nickname is jigs. It has nothing to do with dancing, although that is one of my favorite pastimes. It refers to my tendency to solve seemingly simple technical problems with complex mechanical contraptions also known as "jigs".

--The Acme Shark Snare--

Using industrial strength tie-wraps, surgical tubing, and fishing tackle, this floating frame was meant to automatically harness underwater video cameras to free roaming oceanic sharks. It was inspired by Wily Coyote and worked really well in his universe where you can run off a cliff and not fall until you look down. Beep, Beep.

Another invention of note is the Acme dome sucker. A jig that uses vacuum pressure to form Plexiglas domes for underwater camera housings. The name says it all. When the machine works it sucks. When it doesn't work, it also sucks.

My latest work in progress is the Acme Virtually Real, Virtual-reality sailing simulator. (AVRVRSS 2000) Coming soon to a school near you.

Present Goals

• To develop wetnet.org into a resource for anyone interested in the marine environment.
• To build a shore-station/media lab for the Marine Exploration Society.
• To produce a multi-media show version of the WetNet and the Internet.
• To publish The WetNet and the Internet-- a travel adventure book.

Philosophy of Life

I take this from a line in Star Wars: --"Laugh it up, fuzz ball."-- But it also can be quoted from Tao-chi: If it doesn't make you laugh, it isn't sufficient to be Tao. I really have a serious nature, but life seems to flow so much better when I am surrounded by people who laugh a lot, at life, at themselves, and the absurdity of a name like Cosmic Hippo.