where be high noon?

Thursday 10/1/09

It is the first day of my favorite month, not that it means anything but i guess its worth noting. The wind died down so we are motor sailing. We are doing about 8 knots. As far as sailing goes we have been averaging around 6. Today we have hit the quarter mark of our journey, right around 500 miles. Since the gale we have had very favorable conditions. What is strange is that we have been sailing in a small patch of clear skies for the last couple of days, and are surrounded by ominous clouds ringing us round on all sides. Maybe the thoughts and prayers from friends and family have made the difference, but at any rate it is a bit uncanny. Last night I poked my head out on watch and got a beautiful view of the stars in our little hole in the clouds. I think I saw scorpio. Yesterday morning when i woke up i was moved to tears when i saw the sun reaching down through the clouds in the most serene kind of way all the while seabirds dipping in and out of the big ocean swell. I feel so fortunate to be having this experience-not many people truly get to sea the ocean in its rawest form out here on the deep.

The wind picked up a few hours ago, except its right on our nose so it has been a tough ride since we started sailing again. We switched tacks and we're now leaning hard over on the starboard side. Everything in the cabin is on a steep 45 degree slant, and it is quite a task to move about-it is a bit reminiscent of childhood days on the monkey bar or jungle gym, swinging about on poles from point A to point B. For some reason this seems to be a particularly violent ride and we are really banging into the waves. The boat shutters with each crash, and its tough to sleep-it is a bit disconcerting on the heavier bangs. We are hoping the wind changes direction soon not only for a break from the beating, but it is blowing us south a good bit off course. There isn't much we can really do about it. Our other option would be to sail Northeast, but thats is even more in the wrong direction than due South. Eric gave us a lecture today during happy hour about navigation. He is probably the most learned man on such manners that i will ever meet. He gave us the history(at least the European way) of finding latitude and longitude dating all the way back to the Vikings. There was no real accurate way for them to know the longitude back then without a chronometer, but using the sun or "noon sight" they were able to know their latitude providing they had a sunny day. In fact, the reason so many pirates had eye patches was because they were burning their eyes out looking at the sun as they tried to align themselves with its zenith and the horizon. There are a few details that still elude my understanding but i plan to research it further as soon as we get into to port. In fact if we get a sunny day Eric said we could do our own "noon sight" and check it against the gps for accuracy. He navigated for 20 years with a sextant before using gps so he really knows far more then the average sailor. Anyways, in the 18th century, the brits(who were really the pioneers of marine navigation)put out a reward of  20,000 pounds to the one who could invent a system for finding longitude. A man by the name of John Harrison came up with the chronometer, a unique invention to keep the time. And because wikipedia does a much better job of explaining how it works, i cut and copied a quote from the internet; "The purpose of a chronometer is accurately to keep the time of a known fixed location, for example Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). This is particularly important for navigation. Knowing GMT at local noon allows a navigator to use the time difference between the ship's position and the Greenwich Meridian to determine the ship's longitude. As the Earth rotates at a regular rate, the time difference between the chronometer and the ship's local time can be used to calculate the longitude of the ship relative to the Greenwich Meridian (defined as 0°) using spherical trigonometry. In modern practice, a navigational almanac and trigonometric sight-reduction tables permit navigators to measure the Sun, Moon, visible planets, or any of 57 navigational stars at any time that the horizon is visible.

The creation of a timepiece which would work reliably at sea was difficult. Until the 20th century the best timekeepers were pendulum clocks, but the rolling of a ship at sea made a simple gravity-based pendulum useless. John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter, invented a clock based on a pair of counter-oscillating weighted beams connected by springs whose motion was not influenced by gravity or the motion of a ship. His first two sea timepieces used this system, but he realised that they had a fundamental sensitivity to centrifugal force, which meant that they could never be accurate enough at sea. Construction of his third machine, designated H3, included novel circular balances and the invention of the bi-metallic strip and caged roller bearings, inventions which are still widely used. H3's circular balances proved too inaccurate and he eventually abandoned the large machines. Harrison solved the precision problems with his much smaller H4 chronometer design. H4 looked much like a large five-inch (12 cm) diameter pocket watch. In 1761 Harrison submitted H4 for the £20,000 longitude prize that had been offered by the British government in 1714. His design used a fast-beating balance controlled by a temperature-compensated spiral spring. This general layout remained in use until stable electronic oscillators allowed very accurate portable timepieces to be made at affordable cost."  It was an extraordinary feat of engineering for its time. Eric went on about various other aspects of navigation that were a bit complicated for my novice brain and i have to admit i wasn't quite able to grasp. He also talked about how the Polynesion islanders devised their own system over hundreds of years. It was fascinating to look at the evolution of navigation as a whole, and the centuries of trial and error it took for man to figure out the pathways of the sea. It is much taken for granted now as we simply look at an electronic gps screen, but now at least i have a slight appreciation for it and certainly hope to educate myself more on the matter. Eric made macaroni and chili tonight, of which i was hesitant to eat too much once we started getting tossed about. My stomach still feels a bit unsettled, but then again i wonder if it wouldn't have anyways in normal conditions-there was spam in the chili and the macs were totally mushy(it is imperative they are aldante for the best taste). Eric does all the cooking on board and the crew is responsible for cleanup. He is not a bad boat cook- just very set in his ways and i don't think he is open to the idea of letting the crew cook. For lunch we always have some type of soup with a sandwich(we have had egg salad sandwich, salmon salad sandwich, and cheese and tomato sandwich). For dinner he has cooked spaghetti, canned beef and instant potatoes, rice and curry, and tonight's macaroni and chili. We have happy hour everyday at five with a snack(usually crackers and cheese)and a Fiona cocktail which is a splash of barbados Mount Gay rum and apple juice with a twist of lemon. It is quite nice and he is usually in his best spirits or storytelling mode during that time.