Can't figure out what this is

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Hudson Force

Well, here you are correct again! The paddle-wheel in the water provides you with your speed relative to the water and a knottmeter function using GPS satellite data gives your speed related to coordinates. Having both gives you current set and drift information.

There is no substitute that I know of for the speed relative to water data. I ditched mine with my reliance on my GPS data. I can subjectively infer current data from progress, but not with the accuracy of having both inputs.

My coastal cruising habits present me with more dynamic current shifts than long offshore passages, but often more visual clues of the current. I guess people choose their tools by their use and experience.

Bottomline: Your right,- I don't know of a substitute

Ultrasonic speed transducer. But they are not cheap!:

Airmar CS4500 Speed Transducer
NEXUS, A GARMIN COMPANY NXR Ultrasonic Speed Sensor | West Marine

[Don C L]

[QUOTE=TrentePieds;2146859]
In the bottom of the “lead”, literally a slug of lead with an eye at the top to attach the line, is a recess. Into this recess you put tallow. When the lead comes up, the bits of sea bottom stuck to the tallow will tell you what your holding ground is for anchoring. There is a set pattern of knots and bits of cloth and leather that are used to mark the fathoms along the line so even in pitch dark you can still take your “soundings” by feeling these distinctive marks. "Mark the twain" is the second mark on the line, and the author took his pen name in commemoration of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi."

I was lucky enough that my boat came with one. Tallow is fairly rare, very traditional though! Lard, yes, but I don't cook with that. A bit of butter or margarine will do. In my case no knots, just pull up full arm span fathoms... I have pretty low freeboard. I kind of prefer it to slip out through my hand easily once cast forward.

[TrentePieds]

Yes, Don - we all develop our individual styles :-) I think I've described elsewhere that in preparation for dropping the hook, I haul the desired length if rode up on deck using the "full arm span fathoms".

The knots in my leadline really came about because, as I've also said elsewhere, MyBeloved is totally new to the seafaring life. Had never set foot in any kinda boat till she was of retirement age. So teaching the fundamentals was paramount during that first season. I have found with her, as with all other sailing students, that "spinning yarns" about how and why we do things the way we do them is what makes the lessons stick. But the yarns are not fiction of course. They are vignettes from the history of seafaring.

You would obviously already know, but there may well be people here who do not know that the measure we call "a fathom" is what it is because it is "all you fathom", i.e. all you can get your arms around. When someone says "I can't fathom it" he thinks he means "I can't get my head around it", but really what he is saying is "I can't get my arms around it".

Measures used in all the fundamental things men did (and do), building ships, building houses, breeding horses, are all measures that relate directly to the human body. The metric system is all very well for astrology and for microbiology, but for "real life" give me "English" measures — or pre-metric Danish measures — every time :-)!

Cheers

TrentePieds

[Don C L]

My Dad always said we were direct descendants of King Canute. I was never sure if that was a good thing or bad! Perhaps you can straighten me out on that!

[TrentePieds]

Hmmm... Your name desn't give much of a clue, but here is some background en bref:


King Canute(Knud den Store “Canute the Great”) was borm around 995AD and was indeed great by the measures of the time. He was the son of Svein Forkbeard and married to Emma of Normandy for strictly political and dynastic reasons. The love of his life was Aelfgitha, daughter of a sherriff (“shire reeve” - King's representative in a political division of Anglo-Saxon Britain). The dynastic arrangements and the movements of these people around northwestern Europe as the millennium turned are fascinating.


Lest I be drawn too far afield, suffice it to say that in 1013 King Forkbeard sent a mightly fleet against king Aethelred of England. Svein and his son Canute led the fleet, and attacked London. To this day children sing “London Bridge is falling down...” in commemoration of the defence of the Londoners who destroyed the bridge to block the advance of Forkbeard's forces. Remember that vikings fought essentially as what we call “marines”. They were seaborne infantry.


Forkbeard feinted, and instead of forcing the attack on London and Aethelred, he had himself proclaimed king of all the country east of the Pennine mountains from the Thames as far north as the Tyne. This land became known as the Danelaw – for obvious reasons – and paid monetary tribute to the Danish “crown”, a tribute known as “danegeld” (“money for the Danes”). Aethelred wet his skivvies and fled to Normandy. Highly treasured among the loot was Queen Emma – Emma of Normandy, Aethelred's missus. Forkbeard keeled over of a heartattack in early 1014, and Canute succeeded him. In 1017, as I recall, Canute “made an honest woman” of Emma, no doubt because her surviving sons, now in exile in Normandy, were growing restive.


So northeast England (Northumbria) to this very day is marked by Scowegian place names, Scowegian mores, residual Scowegian dialects. Since you are in California, you have access to PBS. Check out such “whodunits” as “Vera”. Those “Geordie” (Newcastle-on-Tyne) accents are music to my ears. When I lived in England I felt right at home north of a line from Ipswich to Fishgard. South of that line I had the same feeling I get when these days I walk in Seattle around Pioneer Square. I don't trust them! I keep a heavy bundle of keys in my hand!


Well, given the extent and the history of the Danelaw, it is entirely possible that you have Viking roots :-) Remember also that the Orkney Islands, and the Shetlands too, are Viking lands. The Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay (“The Bay”) recruited principally in the Orkneys when they needed the brawn and the toughness to penetrate and conquer Rupert's Land (the west and north of British North America) for the Crown.


But we are trying the moderators' patience with such exorbitant thread drift :-)


Cheers


TrentePieds

[Manos1955]

Is there any other like this in the boat? It reminds me the anti fouling system i had once

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

Hmmm... Your name desn't give much of a clue, but here is some background en bref:


King Canute(Knud den Store “Canute the Great”) was borm around 995AD and was indeed great by the measures of the time. He was the son of Svein Forkbeard and married to Emma of Normandy for strictly political and dynastic reasons. The love of his life was Aelfgitha, daughter of a sherriff (“shire reeve” - King's representative in a political division of Anglo-Saxon Britain). The dynastic arrangements and the movements of these people around northwestern Europe as the millennium turned are fascinating.


Lest I be drawn too far afield, suffice it to say that in 1013 King Forkbeard sent a mightly fleet against king Aethelred of England. Svein and his son Canute led the fleet, and attacked London. To this day children sing “London Bridge is falling down...” in commemoration of the defence of the Londoners who destroyed the bridge to block the advance of Forkbeard's forces. Remember that vikings fought essentially as what we call “marines”. They were seaborne infantry.


Forkbeard feinted, and instead of forcing the attack on London and Aethelred, he had himself proclaimed king of all the country east of the Pennine mountains from the Thames as far north as the Tyne. This land became known as the Danelaw – for obvious reasons – and paid monetary tribute to the Danish “crown”, a tribute known as “danegeld” (“money for the Danes”). Aethelred wet his skivvies and fled to Normandy. Highly treasured among the loot was Queen Emma – Emma of Normandy, Aethelred's missus. Forkbeard keeled over of a heartattack in early 1014, and Canute succeeded him. In 1017, as I recall, Canute “made an honest woman” of Emma, no doubt because her surviving sons, now in exile in Normandy, were growing restive.


So northeast England (Northumbria) to this very day is marked by Scowegian place names, Scowegian mores, residual Scowegian dialects. Since you are in California, you have access to PBS. Check out such “whodunits” as “Vera”. Those “Geordie” (Newcastle-on-Tyne) accents are music to my ears. When I lived in England I felt right at home north of a line from Ipswich to Fishgard. South of that line I had the same feeling I get when these days I walk in Seattle around Pioneer Square. I don't trust them! I keep a heavy bundle of keys in my hand!


Well, given the extent and the history of the Danelaw, it is entirely possible that you have Viking roots :-) Remember also that the Orkney Islands, and the Shetlands too, are Viking lands. The Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay (“The Bay”) recruited principally in the Orkneys when they needed the brawn and the toughness to penetrate and conquer Rupert's Land (the west and north of British North America) for the Crown.


But we are trying the moderators' patience with such exorbitant thread drift :-)


Cheers


TrentePieds

Wonderful, and brief too, thank you! Last name is Litton and I know some roots stretch to Cornwall certainly, but up to the other side, unknown. But I think I can bring this back around to mollify any trepidations among mods. Was it not King Canute who was able to hold back the tide at his command? Perhaps the device is a tidal sensor and restrictor? Ok, a bit of a reach.

[TrentePieds]

I was indeed Canute who tried to teach his nobles a lesson by demonstrating that not even a mighty king can command the tide. The story is apocryphal, but the theme of the tide governing the lives of men is taken up again in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "There is in the affairs of men a tide which when taken at the flood..."



Litton (alternatively Lytton) occurs both as a place name and as a family name both in Yorkshire and in Essex, both of which were, in Canute's time, part of the Danelaw. I don't believe the name has Norse roots, but the Danelaw was extensively settled and farmed (Vikings were also farmers) by Danes. The miscegenation was something wonderful, for the lassies of the Danelaw, like the colleens around present day Dublin, had a particular fondness for the strapping lads that came ashore from the long ships with the stripey sails. They, unlike the local swains, smelled of good clean briney seawater rather than sheep :-)


You will remember that in Folketro (or Altro), the religion of the Norsemen that existed before Christianity was imposed by the sword, dying in bed of old age was dishonourable. A Viking died loins girded, boots on, sword in hand, and the ability to enter a trance and go berserker (a frenetic, violent state akin to a methamphetamine high) was greatly admired in a man. Such men, slain in honourable battle, would enter Valhalla, a waystation where they awaited the ultimate battle twixt good and evil, Ragnarok, that would end the world. While waiting, they practiced their swordplay. In earnest! But at dusk the slain men would come alive again and retire to the great hall of Valhalla, Gimle, where feasting and drinking would proceed until sun-up. The meat for these feasts was providedby a magic pig, Saehrimnir, whose flesh grew back as fast as you could carve it from him. Mead – fermented honey – flowed, in MySaintedFather`s telling phrase, “like **** from a calf”.


Now, one morning early, when Thor, the God of Thunder, had retired from the feasting rather early, having partaken liberally of the mead, and was sleeping it off in his alcove at the far end of Gimle, he woke with that feeling one gets that there is someone in the room. When he opened his eyes he saw, leaning against the doorpost, a particularly voluptuous little valkyre (a handmaiden to the gods). One strap of her sark had slipped off her shoulder, and she was breathing hard.


Thor, being Thor, came instantly fully awake and said: “Hi! I'm Thor”


Said the valkyre: “YOU're thore — I can hardly pithth!”


TrentePieds

[Don C L]

Apologies to those interested in ancient transducers, but Trente, you have made this thread far more interesting! How about a thread with more on Viking lore and history in England!

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Apologies to those interested in ancient transducers, but Trente, you have made this thread far more interesting! How about a thread with more on Viking lore and history in England!

I'd forgotten what the thread was about

[TrentePieds]

Well – since you ask. And begging the moderators' indulgence :-)


It is commonly believed in the English-speaking world that the Viking marauders materialized out of nowhere and then disappeared again into the mists of history. You can lay that at Hollywood's door. It's codswallop :-)!


We know from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the attack on “Holy Island”, Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria perhaps 50 miles north of Newcastle-on-Tyne, took place in 793AD. A hundred and fifty years before that, monks had come from Iona, led by St.Aidan, a fanatical missionary and proselytizer, and built a monastery on Lindisfarne – thus “Holy Island”. The monastery and priory founded by Aidan had become enormously rich, as priories often did given the political realities of the time, and the Norsemen had become familiar with those riches on several prior visits.


We do not know who led the attack on Holy Island, though we surmise that it was motivated by the prospect of spoils. Reliable records of Scowegian dynasties and of their derring-doo begin only shortly after 800AD. But there is little doubt that Norsemen held a dim view of those arrogant Christians who persisted in meddling in decent people's spiritual affairs, and there is no doubt that “the blood eagle” was a splendid tool for achieving “rapid dominance” - for inculcating “shock and awe”. It is said – but we don't really know – that the raiders laid the blood eagle on the abbot of Lindisfarne.


The blood eagle was administered by staking a man to the ground, spread-eagled, face down. A knife was run along the sides of his spine and the ribs severed one by one from the spine so the rib cage could be opened up and spread “like the wings of an eagle”.


But ultimately, Christianity was victorious, and today Denmark has a state church, which, I'm sure, must sound odd to Americans with their fetish for “separation of church and state”. But back to seafaring: So how do you get from Scowegia to Lindisfarne?


As you come westbound out of the Skagerak, the water twixt Denmark and Norway, Lindisfarne bears about 240T or, in the old terms Sou-West a point South. The wind comes howling down from Iceland, roughly out of the Nor-West at, say, 30 knots on a calm day, and you will be on a nice comfortable beam reach. Longships were very light on a long waterline. Ormen hin Lange (the Long Serpent) was about 150 Feet BP, so say 130 LWL for a theoretical hull speed of roughly 15 knots! And she was semi-displacement, so in favourable conditions she would plane! The Skaw to Lindisfarne is 390NM, so the passage time woulda been something like 26 hours, maybe 30. The drift would be southerly, but the set , due to the Gulf Stream reaching this far north at something like a knot and a half, would be northerly. So how could you miss?


The vikings used a lodestone in the daytime and a lode star at night. “Lode” is a gloss of “to lead”, thus “leading stone” or “leading star”. A lodestone was, and is, a piece of magnetite floated on a bit of wood in a bowl of water. It seeks magnetic north. Danish vikings got their magnetite from their Swedish cousins. Once calibrated in waters where your bearings are known, the lodestone is quite an accurate compass, and vikings were not in need of absolute bearings, only of relative ones. The lodestar, of course, gives you absolute bearings, as long as you can see it, so holding course for a day and a night to get to Northumbria was totally a piecacake. Vikings, BTW, knew how to “shoot altitude” with the crossstaff, a precursor to the sextant. Again, it yielded only relative altitudes, either “too high” or “too low”. “Bang on” musta been rare :-)


Speaking of glosses: “Vik” is the Norse word for bay or bight To “go a-viking” was to go to foreign bay or bights, which is where settlements were found that were useful either as trading partners or as objects of pillage, depending on their military strengths.


Some of you will have shaken your heads at my insistence on keeping things simple in our toy ships. Now, having plumbed the depth of my interest in history and my reverence for my forebears, you know why :-)! I still take my distance off by sighting over the tips of my fingers on an outspread hand, or, if I'm close in, over my underarm held horizontal and sighting over fingertips and elbow. Silly damn thing to do, except it pleases me. My hundredandfiftybuck retrofit GPS outta TrentePied's van gives me accurate coordinates if I really need them :-)


So next time [if the mods haven't kicked me out :-)] I'll tell you of the Danish maritime tradition that made her a principal power in 17th century Europe, and of the Danish East Asia Company (EAC) whose cargo containers you can see all over ports like Galveston and Seattle even as I write this.


And of how all that relates to Blighty :-)



TrentePieds

[Hudson Force]

Sure, the rule says, " Stay on topic .... keep discussions relevant and on track " , but once the original issue seems exhausted, it is fun to drift away.

I don't recall a more interesting drift!

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Hudson Force

Sure, the rule says, " Stay on topic .... keep discussions relevant and on track " , but once the original issue seems exhausted, it is fun to drift away.

I don't recall a more interesting drift!

[fgd3]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

The drift would be southerly, but the set , due to the Gulf Stream reaching this far north at something like a knot and a half, would be northerly.

TrentePieds

That doesn't make sense. "Set" is the direction of a current. "Drift" is its speed. Did you mean leeway would set the boat south of its heading while the current would offset that effect?

Fabbian

[GILow]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

RC,

After you have done as Jim suggested, when you start to get a little growth on it, the log readings will be lower than the actual speed through the water in neutral tide conditions. That is a hint to do the following, after you're moored or at anchor. Put enough white vinegar to cover the paddle wheel into a coffee mug or a plastic tub, and soak the fitting to soak the paddle wheel. The acid in the vinegar eats off the calcareous marine growth. Repeat as needed.

Ann

I second all this but would like to add, even a tiny bit of antifouling on the paddle wheel of our Raymarine ST60 sender unit buggers up the speed reading by a good 10% low. Yes, I said that right, the ANTIFOULING itself messes with the speed reading (though not as much as a few attached marine critters).

So lately I have been more vigilant about removing the sender and putting the plug in its place whenever I leave the boat unattended. Thankfully the sender has a flap valve inside the through hull fitting that reduces the amount of water that gets in to a cup full or less when performing the swap. Also, some panic-merchant I met one day assured me that the sender units can somehow fail internally and sink your boat. Yeah, like I said, probably a panic-merchant, but hey, that special plug that comes with the sender unit looks pretty near bullet proof to me.

Matt