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Shake and Break Part 10
On Fri, 05 Jun 2015 06:15:59 -0600, Paul Cassel
wrote: On 6/4/2015 6:20 PM, wrote: On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 06:00:10 -0600, Paul Cassel wrote: A friend of a friend was designing a "dream boat" which would be completely computer controlled. We finally convinced him that it was a poor idea and then the oil business went to hell and he didn't have a job any more so the project ended :-) Re big sail boats. I was aboard a two masted Maine schooner that was built in the early 1900's. Apparently it had been in the lumber trade originally hauling sawed lumber from Maine to Boston. The original crew size was said to be five men. -- Those old timers must have really worked. The old fishing schooners were, by some standards, short handed and they sailed during abominable weather. I also sailed those waters at that time of year and cannot fathom how these guys, lacking modern garment materials, lived through the experiences. Yet they did including long line handling in dories. Lumber schooners and fishing schooners were different breeds of cats. The lumber ships were built for fairly short trips back and forth from, say Penobscot Bay, Maine, to, probably, Boston, while the fishing schooner was built to fish the Grand Banks. But the "gimmick" with early 20th century lumber schooners with their tiny crews was that they had a gasoline "donkey motor" approximately mid ship and the heavy line handing was done using a power capstan :-) Then again, I suppose these folks had heat below decks from coal stoves which I didn't. My first boat had a coal stove which was better than nothing but when I was sailing in the New England area it was a different boat with no mobile heat. It did have a terrific reverse cycle heat pump but shore power only. I'm sure that they did. Certainly a Nova Scotia built 40 ft. wooden trawler that a friend acquired from an insurance agency had a coal stove in the forward crew quarters. In fact that is how he got it. The coal stove caught the bow compartment on fire and he put the fire out and towed the boat into a creek just before a "Nor'easter". Still, these guys had no power other than muscle and winch yet handled gaff rig schooners with canvas sails, sisal lines and so forth. I'm in awe. I suspect it was a matter of "that is the way it is" so they just went ahead and did it. Read the book "White Jacket", my Melville, for an account of a voyage from San Francisco to New York (I believe) not so much for the brutality but for the matter of fact attitude of the crew. "Oh, the wind is blowing, we got to reduce sail. Well boys, lets get at it". -- Cheers, Bruce |
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