Category Archives: Sailing

Sailing

Charleston Tall Ships

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The wind died on the tall ships trying to sail into the Charleston Harbor Fest, leaving them adrift at sea with inexperienced crew:

Weather is not the only factor contributing to the Urania’s challenge. The 78-foot, double-masted ship is owned and used as a training vessel by the Dutch navy. At each port stop throughout the six legs of the race, the ship swaps crew members. Between five and 10 new midshipmen who are training to be Dutch naval officers join Van Schoonhoven and four other permanent members. Some of the men are already naval officers, but the majority have no sailing experience, Van Schoonhoven said. He became captain of the Urania last year but has been in the Dutch navy for 24 years.

The new crew may get four or five days of “dry training” on land but, for the most part they are cast out to sea when it comes time to get sailing experience, he said. The rookie midshipmen are exposed to every aspect of life at sea.

Exposed to swimming around the boat? What? No oars? No sponges and mops? Captain, crack that whip.

Energy, Sailing, Security

Plastiki: Waste as a Resource

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This could be a follow-up to my post about waste surveillance. Is the future really behind us? Bad joke, sorry. Seriously, though, the Plastiki project is an attempt to use some VERY low-tech recycling to make a boat:

David de Rothschild’s plan to sail across the Pacific Ocean, from San Francisco to Sydney in a 60-foot catamaran made of used two-liter plastic bottles, isn’t just an adventure. It’s a crusade. “Our philosophy of throwing everything away has to change,” says de Rothschild. “I want to use the Plastiki as a platform to help people think of waste as a resource.”

Rather than develop or innovate new ways of converting waste, however, the Plastiki seems like mostly an aesthetic and marketing-oriented project. It’s reality show drama more than real discovery or a leap in science and engineering, but nonetheless it carries a good message.

Sailing, Security

Flying Under Water

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The flyingpenguin is excited to find Deep Flight Submersibles has achieved success in artificial underwater flight.

We have evolved the art of underwater flight for its own sake through three generations of pure fliers. The butterfly has finally fully emerged… Deep Flight Super Falcon, the first production underwater flier.

It seems the name falcon has something to do with Tom Perkins’ Maltese Falcon.

Now available for sale to private owners. The first full productionized submersible capable of sub-sea flight. HOT is currently building a Super Falcon for Tom Perkins, founder of Kleiner Perkins Venture Capital. Perkins owns the largest privately-owned sailing yacht, S/Y Maltese Falcon. Deep Flight Super Falcon replaces the experimental prototype Deep Flight Aviator which was sold to another organization as a decommissioned submersible and they are operating the Aviator without any support from Hawkes Ocean Technologies.

The aviator was named for the late, great Steve Fawcett who intended to use it to set a deep-sea diving record. New investor, new functionality, new name…

Imagine flying to shore in rough weather. This could be the best escape path for inclement or emergency sea-state conditions, as well as an awesome interactive experience in regular ship-to-shore travel.

I was already planning to fly above water, but I might just have to enroll in underwater flight school as well.

CNN tries to make a statement about human originality and the usual nonsense.

“It’s not just that they look like airplanes, they actually are,” Hawkes said. “The machines we build underwater should look like airplanes, not submarines. Airplanes don’t look like balloons.”

He won’t take credit for the idea, saying the idea of a submarine with fins and wings has been thought of before. The 1943 French comic book, “Red Rackham’s Treasure,” included a shark-like submarine with dorsal fins and a tail. Hawkes said that although the idea of wings may have been obvious, “The prize goes to he that does.”

Looks like an airplane? Shark-like is more like it because it actually is underwater, but let’s not forget that penguins do actually fly underwater. Let’s give some credit to the little feathered guys who did it first, eh?

Now there’s a graceful image of a flying machine. CNN also provides some stomach-turning marketing speak.

He said Deep Flight submersibles are designed to be more agile than any creature living in the ocean — with the exception of dolphins.

More agile than a penguin? I don’t believe it. Show me some numbers. Dolphins are certainly not the measure, but it makes for nice imagery. I mean I doubt they’d say it’s designed to be more agile than a killer whale, or a colossal squid. That might scare away potential buyers. After all, the Falcon runs at a max speed of just 6 knots, which is slower than many fish (Mahi mahi like to catch squid at 7 knots), and some squid are known to sprint at 20 knots. Like I said, show me some numbers.