OK the wind was very light and ranged from zero to about a knot more or
less. Even at 0.1 knot in one hour the air would travel 528'

"Jeff Morris" wrote in message
...
"FamilySailor" wrote in message
...
Winds were below 1 knot and we were making headway.

I'm curious, how do you measure that? The various annemometers I have
stop
turning at speeds that low. Even smoke rising from a cigarette is
close
to
vertical when you go much below a knot.

Well, one could pee in the water and then watch the bubbles. I just
watched
the water moving past the rudder and the sediment in the water moving
from
the bow to the stern. How would you detect movement? We also had a GPS
that
was leaving tracks. Another thing, we ended up at a different location,
so I
believe that would indicate some movement was involved.

I wasn't questioning whether you were moving, though I doubt very much you
were
going at wind speed in a drifter. In fact, the only reason I commented at
all
is that I've never heard anyone talk about a windspeed of a tenth of a
knot, and
I thought that was a curious concept to explore.

You act like 1 knot
is almost stationary and smoke would go straight up, but think about it.
That is moving at a rate 5,280 in just one hour, or 1.47' per second.

I did the same calculation (though I used the correct value for one knot,
which
is 1.69 feet/second) before posting, which is why I said "much less than a
knot." The smoke from a cigarette rises pretty quickly. so you actually
have
less than a second's worth to observe. In reality, in very light air like
this
the wind can be virtually zero in the cockpit, but a knot or two, or more,
aloft.

It is
easy to detect movement and using a GPS to measure distance and the
amount
of time required to cover that distance. Anyway, I did not do all that,
I
just made an observation and said the wind speed is about 1 knot or
less, no
measuring device needed. Give me a break.

Never! No nit can go unpicked!!! ;-}