Shanghai's New Year's Light Show

Shanghai's spectacular New Year's Eve light show.  China invented gunpowder and fireworks.  Today the pyrotechnics are done digitally.  It takes place on The Bund - the river walk in downtown Shanghai.  And yes, there's a countdown!

Sofia Clare Conk and Clare Marie Trautfield Conk

Jon Gelman Photography: Moonbeams

Jon Gelman Photography: Moonbeams: 
December 26, 2012, sunset, 94.8% waxing gibbous moon




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After the storm - Friendship, Cushing and Thomaston

Friendship (lobsterman's wharf and traps), Cushing (Salt Pond, South Cushing Baptist Church, Acorn Grange No. 418), and Thomaston (Town landing - St. George River) [click pix to enlarge and for slideshow]

A Room of One's Own - Cave Dwelling

My room.

Dusk before the storm.- Friendship, Maine

Friendship Harbor at dusk, an hour after the snow began to fall.  December 29, 2012

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!  Stay Warm!

- George & Marilyn
 

New Mast - Sitka spruce

scarph - 12/1 ratio

Pat Montalbano, the fine boat builder at Barron's Boatyard on City Island has built a new mast for my Buzzards Bay 14 - North River 2 which was dismasted in the September 2012 storm. It is a 24 foot, tapered, glued wooden box mast made of Sitka spruce.  The joints types are rabbet and feathered edge scarph.  The glue is West System G Flex.  That glue held when I was dismasted.  The wood split, not the joints.

A guy I found on a chat room Boatdesign.net, T Cubed says: Box masts are easy. Well, conceptually, but not in practice.  T Cubed has a lot of good advice. (beow)  Pat set up on a solid, level surface = a 2x8 plank, right next to the re-assembled broken mast so he had a full scale model right there.  Above  are some shots of Pat's work:

T Cubed's work plan: Get your work surface true and straight and draw on them marks to follow when gluing. If you use work horses get a half dozen of them and use wedges and taut string to get it all straight mark the horses (As in the mast needs to go exactly between this mark and that mark on each one).
Draw chalk around each leg so if you nudge one you'll know about it and you'll also know where it should go. Set up on a hard surface.
Don't use fat bulkheads inside the mast as they create 'hard spots' that actually make it weaker and add weight. Minimal bulkheads made of thin stuff is fine.
It is very much worthwhile to rabbet each side of front and back planks so the side planks have somewhere to press against when you clamp it all together . Once everything is lubed up with epoxy and you're working against the cure time clock you'll be glad you remembered the 6 P rule.
(6P rule ; proper preparation prevents piss poor performance)
Make a scarph box and scarph up the four planks first into their full lengths. Then work in all the tapers paying close attention to precision. Rabbet crisply where needed. Setup everything. Mark everything. Have twice as many clamps as you think you'll need , even if they're jury rigged clamps. (rope, sticks, wedges) Don't forget lots of plastic shopping bags to place between clamps and glue (plastic bags release well from hardened epoxy).
Do a mock run with your helpers to make sure there are no glitches.
Then glue it all up in one go with slow epoxy. Do a final check by sighting along it that it is indeed true and straight, as you still have a ton more clamps to place and a few more minutes of working time. It should be perfect since you set up the guiding marks with care.
If it ends up with a half inch of (it should not if you did everything right) curve, don't get depressed, it will not make the slightest bit of difference."

In Vendée Globe Yacht Race, Riding the Waves on Eco-Power - NYTimes.com

Javier Sanso has an all-electric system
no fuel carried on board

In Vendée Globe Yacht Race, Riding the Waves on Eco-Power - NYTimes.com: by Chris Museler
"This week, in the same storm-tossed Southern Ocean... the British sailor Alex Thomson is struggling to conserve diesel fuel while competing in the Vendée Globe, the offspring of that first race in 1969, then called the Golden Globe Race.

Diesel is the lifeblood of Thomson’s Imoca 60 racing yacht. All the electrical systems on the boat are run off a battery, which is charged by the diesel engine on board once or twice a day. Without energy produced by the boat’s diesel engine and two hydro generators, the autopilot and essential navigation systems would be lost. After losing one of the hydro generators that trail from the back of the boat in November, he is at risk of running out of fuel and abandoning the race...

[B]ut there is one boat today that can [go] on, seemingly indefinitely: Acciona 100% EcoPowered. It took three years of intense trial and error, but Javier Sanso’s eco-powered, 60-foot racing yacht in the Vendée Globe has been fully charged since the start of the race in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, in November. And he is poised to make gains on the eight skippers in the front pack based on that fact alone.

“People have a decent amount of diesel,” Sanso said in a satellite phone interview last week while entering the Southern Ocean. “I’m hoping they don’t have an energy problem, but I believe eco-power is a really good advantage.”

Sanso’s boat has an electric engine, the first in the history of the race, and an array of solar panels built into a large part of the boat’s deck. Two wind and two hydro generators are additional power sources, and a fuel cell can charge the 15 lithium ion batteries twice over if needed, and run the engine."
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Gaza Cease-Fire Expands Fishing Area, but Risks Remain - NYTimes.com

photo by Wissam Nassar/NY Times

Gaza Cease-Fire Expands Fishing Area, but Risks Remain - NYTimes.com:By STEVEN ERLANGER and FARES AKRAM
 "GAZA CITY — Khader Bakr, a 19-year-old fisherman, was thrilled to hear that he could now fish up to six nautical miles from the coast, up from the three-mile limit Israel had had in place since 2009. The change was part of the cease-fire deal that halted last month’s fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

The deal that halted fighting between Israel and Hamas allows Palestinian fishermen to go six nautical miles out to sea, instead of three, increasing the quality and quantity of catches — at least at first.
But testing the waters late last month, Mr. Bakr apparently sailed out too far. An Israeli gunboat patrolling against arms smuggling ordered him to stop and strip to his underwear. As the Israelis sank his boat, he jumped into the sea, and was hauled aboard the Israeli vessel for questioning."

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