Pages

Minggu, 03 April 2016

Most popular posts


Todays Posts

EntryPageviews
Yellow boat 4 Arduino code with HK-TR6-A V2 RX PPM...
Sep 28, 2013, 
69
Picasa time lapse of Tee-Bone tricopter
Sep 22, 2013, 
21
Arduino Xbee Receiver Arduino Nano V3.0 Microcontr...
Oct 2, 2012, 
20
Todays most popular posts
Sep 29, 2013, 
Circumanic Higher Res from Scott McDougall on Vimeo.

More information on the "Eye of Quebec" from Wikipedia.

Read More..
Diposting oleh lakibani di 00.00 0 komentar
Label: , , , , , , ,

Jumat, 01 April 2016

Tallinn Estonia Maritime Museum



We were let off the boat here in Estonias capital from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm and took a shuttle bus from the cruise ship dock to the edge of the medieval walled city up on the hill. Lene rode back (round trip bus fare $10.00) but because the Maritime Museum was half way back, I walked.

We were without the company of our companions, Mike and Linda. Her broken wrist was causing increasing pain so they went to a Tallinn doctor who replaced her hard cast with a soft one at a ridiculously low price, by US standards.

In town Lene and I took a free two hour walking tour led by students or recent graduates of the local University who majored in "Cultural Theory".
She spoke with flawless English, quite engagingly, with humor about Estonias tangled history of centuries of occupations by Scandinavian nations, Tzarist and most recently communist Russia and with a briefer time under Hitler. Its current period of freedom, since the early 1990s, is the longest in its history, and while it has a sizable Russian speaking minority, this history makes it highly unlikely that they will seek "protection" from Vlad Putin.

The huge freighter load of logs we saw come in at Warnemunde likely was loaded in Tallinn, lumber being Estonias chief export. While Lutherans form the largest organized religion, they are a minority in a nation which is overwhelmingly secular or as our guide called them Athiests. As a result, many of the large churches whose spires dot the skyline, are now museums. LOTS of towers:
Small one with Lene





This one is called Look Into the Kitchen




Estonias independence was won in "The Singing Revolution". The nation has huge mass organized singing festivals, but under Russia only government approved songs were allowed. But in the year in question, at the end of the officially approved program the crowd broke out in uncontrollable spontaneous leaderless disapproved anthems of freedom. The Russian army chose not to mow down the crowd and victory was won. There is a bas-relief sculpture honoring Boris Yeltzin. 

Here is Freeedom Square and next the top of a huge glass cross dedicated to freedom.


Trip Advisor gave our daily tour exceptionally high praise and it covered the same sights that Celebrity sold for $45 per person. We happily gave our guide €10, about $13.50, as a tip. So with $20 as bus fare, it cost us a total of $33.50 instead of the $90 that Celebrity was charging.

I bought a small bottle of Vana Tallinn, the local 90 proof Estonian Liqueur, but our guide warned us that the local specialty, amber, is all imported.

This cathedral was built in the late nineteenth Century.














From the top of the walled city looking to the new modern city and then from the base of the old city looking up to the top.
 

I am a sucker for Maritime Museums, and I have to admit that Tallinns was not the best I have visited. Built with a modern concrete structure inside the shell of a medieval tower, it sought to cover fishing and caning, military, freight, cruise ships and sailboats from prehistoric times to the present and while part was in Estonian and English, the history of the Estonian-Russian naval war of 1918-20 was in Estonian and Russian, which left me ignorant of this obscure chapter in world history. Here is our ship from the rooftop of the museum, where they have a nice cafe.



After the steam room we took in our first show. It told a new story of a couple overcoming obstacles to their marriage, consisting almost exclusively in 1980s pop songs and set in Wonderland and Oz. Whimsical fun with high production value. Then another great dinner aboard.
Read More..
Diposting oleh lakibani di 23.52 0 komentar
Label: , , , ,

July 3 4 Parade up NY Harbor with LHermione 60 Miles

The New York Times of July 3 had a full page article on the visit of The Hermione. (We learned that while we pronounce her The Her-my-oh-knee, the French call her LAir-me-own.) A replica of the French square rigged wooden gunboat that ferried Lafayette across the puddle to help us win independence from the Brits. She visited Yorktown VA, where the original boat helped defeat the British resupply and re-enforcement fleet, thus causing General Cornwallis to surrender to General Washington, effectively ending the military aspects of the Revolution. We visited Yorktown on our way south and on our way north. Hermione is doing this as a good will tour, to remind us of our friendship with the French and making stops up the eastern seacoast to Boston. 

As Fleet Captain I put this out as a potential Club adventure and three other members joined us for the parade, though only two of us on  HYC registered boats. My friend since 1972, Marty, joined us at ten a.m. at the Harlem and we got underway at 11. But a failure of communication caused us to spend half an hour, drifting, waiting for "Shanghai," a Pearson 31, the other Harlem boat, with CJ and Jenny, while they had gone ahead. During the wait the NYC police burned off a vast stash of fireworks they had taken.
No problem once communications were restored; we caught up with Shanghai at about 90th Street in the East River, making great speed with the favorable tidal flow and engine.





ILENE, shown here passing 25th St.,used mainsail pretty much the whole way, but the wind was so light that except for a few puffs it mostly just prevented rocking.
 We anchored in Gravesend Bay, off the west end of Coney Island, Brooklyn, On the way we were passed by Gandalf 3, another Saga 43 out of Stamford, which I had visited to study its dinghy davit blocks before connecting ILENEs
Gravesend Bay is huge but exposed. But its very near where the parade was to start and there was very little wind at night, so we anchored out on the flat in 17 feet of water, with 70 feet of snubbed chain. There is a deeper channel, 25 to 27 feet, closer to shore, so we stayed further off. Our new smaller stainless steel snubber hook was deployed and it works like a charm. Finally!
Having left at 11:30, we arrived at 3:00 and lowered the dink. You cant miss the spot, Toys R Us put out a big welcome sign. The boats to the left are among the four French flagged Beneteaus,  Waquies [the key for the last letter of the alphabet is inoperative] and hard chined aluminum sloops "dressed" for the parade with their signal flags. They came in after us and anchored far enough away from us. I had expected more boats.


Then came a few hours rest, except I used the time in an unsuccessful attempt to get the cockpit VHF radio to power up. It is so convenient and useful because VHF Channel 8 was used for communications during the parade, but we had to use the inside radio turned up loud.
A shared dinner aboard ILENE for the five of us: Lene, Roger, Marty and CJ. Thanks for your pictures Jenny!
Everyone had brought food that did not need to be cooked and the menu was varied and delicious, starting with a bottle of champagne and cheese provided by Shanghai. We were together from 6 to 9 before I dinked CJ and Jenny back to Shanghai and everyone had a good nights sleep. Jenny, became infatuated with our cats, and can you blame her.











Sunset under the bridge:
In the morning, mango- sweetpotato pancakes were on the agenda, sweetened by honey that we had, and peanut butter that Jenny brought, not that the pancakes really needed to be sweetened much. And I forgot the bacon as well as the maple syrup! And the final system to seemingly go down was the fresh water pump. I can hear it run but it is not bringing water to the tap. So the dishes were rinsed off in a bucket of soapy seawater and will be properly washed once order is restored.

The parade formed up: about a hundred boats at its peak, all at the sides and rear of Hermione once she turned at the start.
I felt bad that I had not yet purchased a new American flag and flagpole after ours went missing during our winter excursion. But marty wore a sweater during the parade which eased my guilt.

The leader had a fetish about arriving under the Veransano Bridge, and at the Statue of Liberty, at precisely pre-scheduled times
presumably for the coordination of a US Navy flyover by two jets, for the media and for fire boat blasts, center in next photo.
But this caused me problems because Hermione did not maintain the five knots speed over ground that had been the plan and was repeated via VHF. I had only the small jib up and engine but it is hard to go straight when you slow down to 1.8 knots and when boats are perhaps fifteen feet away on both sides of you. I should have furled that jib but no harm done.    Here is Shanghai:
 The other expected Harlem participants were Gene, not on "Chandi Nerissa", but on a friends boat out of Stamford, which I did not see, and Rear Commodore Peter, not on "Annandale" but on Ricks boat, now in Jersey City who hailed us immediately after the parade formally ended. Several other Harlem boats rafted up in a rendesvous in Oyster Bay these days so there were plenty of guest moorings available.

I felt guilty for not having purchased a replacement for our American flag and pole, which went missing during our winter travels to Florida. But Marty assuaged my  guilt somewhat by wearing an appropriate sweater.
It was too early to go home when the parade ended because the tide in the East River and Hellsgate were adverse. So we drifted slowly down the Hudson from midtown to the Battery under only the small jib and tide.

The wind was down from the 15 knots out of the north that had faced us during the parade: still from the north but perhaps six knots. And a light rain was falling. When we reached the Battery Lene wanted to go home as soon as possible to see the fireworks from our roof so we did what was silly: we went up stream against the tide using motor, full main and small jib. Unlike the eight plus knots we had enjoyed on the way down, we made speeds that got as high as 4.2 knots, briefly, and as low as 1.1 knots at times.  But we were back on the mooring by 7:30, an hour before sundown. If we had waited two hours before starting, I think we would have arrived only fifteen minutes later, having expended a lot less fuel in the process.
A good time was had by all.

Read More..
Diposting oleh lakibani di 14.52 0 komentar
Label: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Melges 14 Vaporware

Melges Performance replies to this post....
A couple of months ago there was a flurry of sightings of a prototype Melges 14 on the water and at the Chicago Boat Show. Since then, not a peep about the Melges 14, at least not that I can tell sitting here on the East Coast. Anybody know if Melges is going forward with production of this singlehander?

No matter what the timeline is (or not) of the Melges 14 actually emerging to the market, they did put out a very nice promotional video, complete with drone footage:



Melges 14 Promo from Melges 14 on Vimeo.

Read More..
Diposting oleh lakibani di 08.50 0 komentar
Label: , , ,