Haul Away, Boys, Haul Away!

Hi kids!

Well, this lying around on a dock in Cape Canaveral is just about
over. We have spent three weeks here in one spot, tied up, hardly
rocking a bit. We waddle up to the showers whenever we get the urge,
ride bikes to the store or the library, just take it easy all day.
I've even given up studying the weather six times a day.

But now we've blasted off the rocket, I've studied and resolved the
shaft problem in Maine, and we are ready to go back to sea. Here's a
picture of Angel Jen studying the charts for the next leg of the
journey.

The snow storm that is bringing you another half foot of snow and east
winds will bring us northwest winds. Our course is a nice south east
direction so we will be 'running before the wind'. That's what it's
called when the wind is directly behind the boat.

Why do you get wind different than ours? Because wind swirls in a
spiral around low or high pressure areas. I'll show you a picture of
it some day.

Sailors have to know all about the winds and weather because, little
buddies, 'the sea takes no prisoners'. That means if we mess up, we
sink and drown. So we better watch out. That's why Angel Jen watches
the charts and weather so closely. So I don't get her drowned.

Well, kids, be good. Have fun playing in the snow and pity us poor
sailors out on the ocean again!

GGrrrrr-KaBrrrrrrrr-KaZoooMMM-Brrrrrrr-Psshhhhhh-Shheeeeeh.

Hi Kids!

 

Angel Jen and I got up at 2:46 AM, girded our loins (I LOVE doing that), packed our hot chocolate, cameras, monopod camera mount, blankets and lawn chairs on our bikes and waddled down to the end of the road, over the highway, down the dirt access road out to the Banana River for the 4:39 AM Saturday night launch of the last night time blast off  by a space shuttle.  We set up, drank our hot chocolate, unfolded our chairs, plugged in our radios and waited.  They canceled the stupid mission five moinutes before blast off time!  Those rats!

They said the sky was too cloudy to take off.  What kind of a cheap rocket can't even get through a cloud, you might ask.  Well, little buddies, the cloud isn't a problem if the rocket is ok, but it prevents the astronauts from landing the shuttle if the rocket messes up and they need to abort the mission.  The shuttle is a glider.  It has no engines of its own so the astonauts have just one chance to land it and they want to live, too, despite what you might conclude from their career choice.

So we packed up, dejected and went back to the boat.  On Saturday night we went to bed early then did it all again, this time without all the chairs, blankets and food.  That was just too much to carry!

This time the weather cooperated and the rocket took off.  The weird thing is that you couldn't hear a thing from the rocket for the first 15 seconds, by which time the thing was half gone into the sky.  That's because sound travels much more slowly than light.  715 mph vs 3x10^9 meters per second, actually.  Spend some time on the internet working out the conversion factors, ratios and physics of that, report and discuss.

During my time off I read an article on the internet about photographing the launch by an experienced photographer.  It was really helpful.  His advice was DON'T TAKE PICTURES.  It's much better to watch it without trying to handle a camera, messing up and missing the whole thing.  Good advice.  So I set up the camera, tied it to a telephone pole with a rope and when they ignited the rocket, I touched off the timed shutter release and watched the blast off.  After the single frame of the shutter snapped, I just kept punching the button as the rocket climbed but I wasn't looking through the camera viewfinder.  I just counted on the rope and the telephone pole to hold it in place and it worked.  Here are two pictures of the thing igniting and then way up in the clouds.

Freud would have a field day with this imagery, but all I see is money going up in smoke.

Quite a show, though!

Have a nice day going over the Newton's second law with the teacher!

Pelicans! So funny looking!

Hi kids!

We got up this morning and this pelican was sitting on the post outside out boat.  I don't care what anybody says.  Pelicans are weird looking birds.  There are a heck of a lot of them in Florida, that's for sure.  What is the scientific name for pelicans?  Funny you should ask.  It's Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.  What the heck is a scientific name?  It's a way scientist have of being very specific about the things they study.  There could be several different birds that look a lot alike and people might call them all pelicans but scientists like to differentiate between types very closely.  So they invented scientific names, usually constructed from Latin.  Why Latin?  Because it makes them sound smart.  Who else can speak Latin but a scientist?  Nobody!  

Have a good day up there in the snow and cold, little buddies.  Angel Jen and I are in the warm waters of Florida watching pelicans play and mermaids splash.  God, I love them mermaids!

How big is it?

Hi kids!

Here are two pictures from the space center.  They have this full size rocket hanging from the ceiling in a big building.  It is the type of rocket they used to send people to the moon back when the teacher was young.  One picture is from one end of the rocket.  The other picture is Angel Jen after she walked all the way to the other end.  It's SOME big, little buddies!

It was cool to see it taken apart and to see some of the displays of what's inside a rocket.  This weekend we are going to watch an even bigger rocket blast off.  Yahoo!

Whoa! What's that down there?

Hi kids!

I told you I took a plane to Maine last week.  When I was in the air I was busy looking out the window trying to identify places we had sailed past to see if I could recognize anything.  Of course, recognizing New York City or Boston is easy.  In New York you just look for the Statue of Liberty, the East and Hudson Rivers and lots of Big, Big Apples.  In Boston you just look for confused and downcast liberals, Red Sox Stadium and beans.

Here is a picture I took out the window while I was over Long Island Sound.  We sailed through this area and the three pronged thing at the top center of the photo is Saybrook Manor, Connecticutt.  The island at the bottom is Orient, New York.  The latitude and longitude are 41 degrees 12 minutes north and 72 degrees 18 minutes west.  See if you can find it on a map.  See if you can tell if it's closer to New York or Boston.  If you get it right, the teacher will give you a pat on the head!  Man, it doesn't get any better than that.  Usually.  Which is no ringing endorsement of this life we lead, but get used to it.

Long knot

Hi kids!
See? I told you we killed time by tying knots!
I took a plane to Maine last week to look at a problem in a paper
mill. They have a series of machines powered by 5000 horsepower motors
that keep snapping the giant 15" shafts. And when you have a problem
snapping shafts, I'm the man to fix it. I'm not just a pretty sailor
boy, see. I'm also an engineer. That means I can figure out machines,
how to make them and stuff like that.
While I was there I visited my favorite marine supply store. They
always have a barrel full of odd ropes and Pirates just LOVE ropes.
Well, this time they had a veritable cornucopia or sweet, desirable,
brilliantly white polyester triple strand ropes in various diameters
at bargain prices. "Eureka!" I said. "I have found it!" (Which was
first attributed to Archmedes who said it in his bathtub. You can look
it up.)
I loaded my arms up with all I could carry and borrowed a box from the
store. I filled the box and took it all back to the boat with me on
the plane.
Angel Jen says now I have to throw out some old rope, the boat is too
full of rope. Women!
So I took a sixty five foot length of beautiful new rope and turned it
into a floor mat by making this thing. It's called a 'long knot'. I
think it's very nautical looking. I even decorated the rope ends with
fancy knots and 'turks head' decorations in red twine.
Now where can I hide the rest of the rope I bought?
Be good children now, and maybe you can get that talented teacher of
yours to teach you how to make a 'long knot' mat of your own!

Marshmallows

Hi kids!

We are still in Cape Canaveral, Florida. We are waiting here to watch
the last night time launch of the space shuttle, scheduled for 4:39 am
on 7 February, Superbowl Sunday. We are just a few miles from the
place the rockets blast off. The local people have seen this plenty of
times and are seriously nonplussed at the prospect of yet another
shuttle launch. Of course, to us it's a big deal since we've never
seen one. We ask them 'Where's a good place to see the launch?'

They're like, 'oh, don't worry. You'll see it. The problem is not
getting your eardrums busted!'

My sister lives forty miles away and she says she can see them from
her back yard. Evidently they make quite a show when they blast off.

To kill the time we hang out in the boat, clean, straighten up,
practice tying knots, analyze industrial failures in 5000 horsepower
drive systems and write extensive reports supported by reams of
reference data (did I mention I got a consulting job in Maine last
week?) and invent desserts from materials at hand.

Here's Jen making 'smashers', a dessert made by smashing a marshmallow
into a pile of chocolate chips then picking them up and snarfing them
down. She says it's good. I, of course, can't have any because I'm
trying to lose weight.

Well, kids, be good. Be nice to the teacher, bring in chips and
marshmallows and have smashers for a treat.