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Thread: New Boat 4 Sled

  1. #4101
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    If I recall correctly, the sailor was Joshua Slocum on Spray, and his singlehanded instrument was an alarm(?) clock missing its minute hand. Not much of a chronometer but he couldn’t afford one.

    I thin I have his book around here somewhere but it might take hours to find it, so I’ll have to go with memory. Probably 45 years since I read it.

    Tom K, on the beach, formerly of the Wylie 33 Constellation

  2. #4102
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cover Craft View Post
    If I recall correctly, the sailor was Joshua Slocum on Spray, and his singlehanded instrument was an alarm(?) clock missing its minute hand. Not much of a chronometer but he couldn’t afford one. I think I have his book around here somewhere but it might take hours to find it, so I’ll have to go with memory. Probably 45 years since I read it.Tom K, on the beach, formerly of the Wylie 33 Constellation
    Bingo! Tom K wins the dessert and extra scoop. Great memory, Tom. It was indeed Joshua Slocum who carried a "tin alarm clock with a smashed face and minute hand missing" for navigational purposes..a "singlehanded instrument." Apparently, the clock, which Slocum got at discount for $1.00, had its idiosyncrasies and needed to be boiled in water before use....No calibrated chronometer aboard SPRAY.

    Sleuthing recently tracked down a replica of the clock, which wasn't really an alarm clock but rather a "carriage clock made by the E.N. Welch Company and being of the "Little Lord Fauntleroy" model.

    Searching for Slocum's Clock is great little story and I applaud its author, maritime historian Richard SantaColoma. https://www.oceannavigator.com/searc...slocums-clock/


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    Just who is Richard SantaColoma and how would he know about Slocum's clock? A sailor, iceboater, and boat builder, his biography provides the clue:

    "Heliodoro Richard SantaColoma was born in New York in 1957. By age 13, he was working as a jeweler, the first employee of David Yurman. At age 15, he was managing a small jewelry manufacturing shop in upstate New York. This led to his becoming, by the age of 20, a bonded diamond setter in New York City's world-renowned Diamond District. While later working in several widely varied fields, he researched and wrote numerous articles and lectured on subjects as varied as early submarine development, yacht design and construction, navigation, cipher history, forgery, and the history of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. Richard is working on several research projects, and is a consultant for, and/or appeared in several historical documentaries."

    Thanks also to Jackie for quoting Joshua's Slocum's wonderful description below, an affirmation how ol' Joshua mostly navigated by Dead Reckoning, (as DaveH notes) and kept a sharp lookout when close to land.

    "I sailed with a free wind day after day, marking the position of my ship on the chart with considerable precision; but this was done by intuition, I think, more than by slavish calculations. For one whole month my vessel held her course true; I had not, the while, so much as a light in the binnacle. The Southern Cross I saw every night abeam. The sun every morning came up astern; every evening it went down ahead. I wished for no other compass to guide me, for these were true. If I doubted my reckoning after a long time at sea I verified it by reading the clock aloft made by the Great Architect, and it was right." Joshua Slocum
    Last edited by sleddog; 12-17-2020 at 04:16 PM.

  3. #4103
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    Whaaaat? Tom gets my treat? Well, Tom, in case you don't make it down to Capitola until then, I invite you to meet me in Half Moon Bay the day after the SSS race on September 11 later this year. We can sail down to Capitola together, using my Navik which you helped me tweak earlier this year. That way, at least, I'll get some macapuna.

    Slocum had such a sly sense of humor. In 1894, as he was provisioning for his journey, Slocum made jest about other options:

    "The want of a chronometer for the voyage was all that now worried me. In our newfangled notions of navigation it is supposed to be a mariner cannot find his way without one; and I had myself drifted into this way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good one, had been long in disuse. It would cost fifteen dollars to clean and rate it. Fifteen dollars! For sufficient reasons I left that timepiece at home ... at Yarmouth ... I got my famous tin clock, the only timepiece I carried on the whole voyage. The price of it was a dollar and a half, but on account of the face being smashed the merchant let me have it for a dollar."
    Last edited by Philpott; 12-17-2020 at 02:15 PM.

  4. #4104
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    Off the news radar, Cat. 5 cyclone YASA has made landfall in the Northern Fijian Islands with gusts exceeding 160 knots and 30 foot storm surge . Fiji is no stranger to cyclones. But apparently this one is off the scale and whole villages have disappeared. In the South West Pacific, YASA is the earliest Cat. 5 cyclone on record, but not the first Cat. 5 in 2020. Cyclone Harold devastated Vanuatu and Fiji last April. Cyclone season in the South Pacific runs November through April.

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    YASA in this photo is traveling from the NW to the SE (upper left to lower right) and made landfall on Vanua Levu Thursday night. YASA had extreme "rapid intensification," gaining 75 knots of wind speed in 36 hours.

    Scientific studies show climate change is causing tropical cyclones to dump heavier rainfall, and intensify more rapidly as sea and air temperatures increase. In addition, some ocean basins are seeing an extension of the storm season, with tropical cyclones forming in regions they did not used to birth in. As a result, Fiji was the first country to ratify the Paris climate accord.
    Last edited by sleddog; 12-19-2020 at 12:30 PM.

  5. #4105
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    YASA has had plenty of fuel for growth, as the storm developed and evolved over warm South Pacific waters which fuels cyclonic storms. The map above shows current sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the region as measured on December 15, 2020. Scientists have established that ocean temperatures at or above 27° Celsius (80° Fahrenheit), orange/red on the map, will sustain a cyclone or hurricane. The SST data come from the Multiscale Ultrahigh Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (MUR SST) project. MUR SST blends measurements of sea surface temperatures from multiple NASA, NOAA, and international satellites, as well as ship and buoy observations.
    Last edited by sleddog; 12-19-2020 at 11:17 AM.

  6. #4106
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    Quote Originally Posted by sleddog View Post
    Off the news radar, Cat. 5 cyclone YASA has made landfall in the Northern Fijian Islands with gusts exceeding 160 knots and 30 foot storm surge . Fiji is no stranger to cyclones. But apparently this one is off the scale and whole villages have disappeared. In the South West Pacific, YASA is the earliest Cat. 5 cyclone on record, but not the first Cat. 5 in 2020. Cyclone Harold devastated Vanuatu and Fiji last April. Cyclone season in the South Pacific runs November through April.

    Name:  yasa.jpg
Views: 827
Size:  108.2 KB

    YASA in this photo is traveling from the NW to the SE (upper left to lower right) and made landfall on Vanua Levu Thursday night. YASA had extreme "rapid intensification," gaining 75 knots of wind speed in 36 hours.

    Scientific studies show climate change is causing tropical cyclones to dump heavier rainfall, and intensify more rapidly as sea and air temperatures increase. In addition, some ocean basins are seeing an extension of the storm season, with tropical cyclones forming in regions they did not used to birth in. As a result, Fiji was the first country to ratify the Paris climate accord.
    J.H. a 30 foot storm surge will submerge most atolls. This is really bad.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  7. #4107
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    Amazing what we discovered on Seabright State Beach this morning....

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    Happy Solstice, All!
    Enjoy the Celestial Jewelry in the southwest sky, shortly after sunset.

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    Last edited by sleddog; 12-21-2020 at 03:32 PM.

  8. #4108
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    Sleddog traversing the Seabright Beach Solstice labyrinth, still extant after 3 days.

    A labyrinth, different from a maze with branches leading to dead ends, is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path to the center, representing a journey to our own center and back out again into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools.

    If you want to read more about who and why created the Seabright Beach labyrinth, it's description is here. Apparently built by one person, taking 8-12 hours by hand, and recreated quarterly. http://www.appliedeurythmy.com/labyrinth

    This morning walking the dogs felt the coldest yet, even an hour after sunrise. Howard Spruit found his chair at coffee club at the breakwater covered in a thin layer of icy glazing.

    Seabright Beach lies immediately west of Santa Cruz Harbor, and extends a half mile to the San Lorenzo River Mouth, after which it becomes "Main Beach" in front of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

    Seabright Beach was once known as Castle Beach, named for a now-gone landmark, the Castle. The Castle was first built around the turn of the 20th Century as a bathhouse. Over the years it was added to and operated as a restaurant and art gallery before it was demolished in 1967, three years after Santa Cruz Harbor opened.

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    Last edited by sleddog; 12-23-2020 at 10:25 PM.

  9. #4109
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    At sunset Christmas Eve, an apparition appeared seaward of CBC. Hard to tell how far off until looking at AIS. You don't normally see Naval vessels in Monterey Bay. This one was zig zagging.....and is still offshore this morning, 12 miles distant.

    It's the USS MIGUEL KEITH, a "mobile expeditionary ship", damaged last year during maiden launch when the drydock failed. Presumably, when sighted yesterday evening, the KEITH was on a shakedown cruise, inshore of shipping lanes, doing her gyrations,, under command of the Military Sealift Command.

    MERRY CHRISTMAS, all.

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    Last edited by sleddog; 12-25-2020 at 10:38 AM.

  10. #4110
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    Oh, I like that beach labyrinth!

    Merry Christmas, Skip!
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

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