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Seeking Reality in the Temple of Denial

Back in the day, the Seattle Boat Show was full of cruising sailboats - the middle of the King Dome (Seattle's domed stadium -- demolished in 2000 to make room for a bigger one) was a forest of masts and rigging that tugged at my soul like a kite - dreams of adventure, tropical islands, freedom.

No more. The current venue for the Seattle Boat show (Qwest® Field Event Center) is nearly empty of sail. The new for 2005 'Sailing Center' is in fact a ghetto - a small rectangle of floor space off to the side devoted to the quaint anachronism called a 'sail boat' - like a Native American Cultural Center that white people visit in our smug superiority; admiring the skills of a people too backward to invent gunpowder or television.

We all know where the real action is: Powerboats! And what powerboats they are; Bigger, Faster and More Luxurious every year.

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The Warning of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

NYT : Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed; by Jared Diamond; Viking, 576 pp., $29.95

"Easter's isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.... The parallels between [the island] and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter's dozen clans. [The island] was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase.... [The] collapse of Easter Island society [is] a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future." NYT Review of Books

New Everglades Challenge Record

The 2005 Watertribe Everglades Challenge has finished with a new course record of 3 Days, 3 Hours, 9 Minutes - by Robert Williams and Scott Smith [aka sirbobsalot and beerslayer] sailing a Norseboat in Class 4 [small sailboats]. Class 1 [expedition kayaks & canoes]: Warren Richey in 3 Days, 13 Hours, 23 Minutes. Class 3 [sailing kayaks & canoes]: Steve Isaac in 4 Days, 4 Hours, 3 Minutes. Class 2 not yet finished. Congratulations to all!

The Everglades Challenge is a 300 mile expedition style adventure race for paddle, oar and wind powered small boats from Fort Desoto, Florida to Key Largo. Watertribe

Manu Kai : Hawaiian Sailing Canoe

Manu Kai [Bird of the Sea] is a voyaging double canoe: a sailing catamaran for raids, beach cruising, and coastal sailing. It's designed to be simple, tough, swift, safe, environmentally friendly, and economical to own and to manufacture. It is the sort of small cruiser that I wish were on the market -- that Hobie Cat® would make.

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Rig Options - Overview

The proa has unique requirements for a sailboat rig, the main one being that it is reversible fore and aft. Since no Western craft have this ability, we who are developing the proa for use here in the West are truly in uncharted waters.

The obvious place to look for inspiration is with the traditional proa rig: the Oceanic sprit, developed over thousands of years of ocean voyaging by the Pacific Islanders. This rig, often called the crab claw, is an ingenious blend of clever engineering and powerful aerodynamics, that is ideally suited to the great voyaging canoes and their sailors. The rig is very powerful for its area (with perhaps the highest lift coefficient of any rig), it is close-winded, has a low center of effort to keep heeling moments low, is structurally robust with low loads on the rigging and spars, is easy and forgiving to trim, and when combined with the asymmetrical Micronesian canoe hull, creates a very well balanced sailing machine that can be steered without rudders or oars on most courses.

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Rig Options - Crab Claw

The Traditional Oceanic sprit rig (aka crab claw) has, in Western eyes, been considered a romantic if not particularly effective rig that most likely compared to the Mediterranean lateen in aerodynamic performance. That is, until famed sailboat aerodynamics researcher C. A. Marchaj published this startling graph in his research paper Planform Effect of a Number of Rigs on Sail Power.

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Surfing With Hemp

From OceanGreen Surfboards: The aim of OceanGreen is to produce custom surfboards that are 100% bio-derived, that is, made entirely from natural materials. Most surfers feel compromised by having to use equipment that is ecologically damaging in what should be a natural environment. OG give surfers the choice of showing respect for their environment as they interact with it.

OG aims to replace each of the surfboard's 3 base materials with an environmentally friendly alternative which has equal or better qualities for the job. Using Hemp cloth instead of fibreglass, we have started the process. Combined with polystyrene foam and epoxy resin, this produces boards which are lighter, stronger and greener. OG are continually sourcing new products to replace the foam and resin whilst developing new methods to use older, sounder natural products.

Green Boatbuilding - Hemp

From TreeHugger: We have profiled so many products made from hemp, thought it might be useful to provide a little background as to what makes it so significant. If hemp has a downside, its the mythology and hype that has attached itself to the name. It is hugely versatile but the claims that it can save the world, all on its own, are rather misleading. Eco Tip: Hemp

Rig Options - Bolger

The Bolger proa rig echos the unique symmetry of the proa: the airflow reverses direction during a shunt, just like the water flow on the hull. The rig has many powerful advantages that have led to a 50-year series of attempts to develop it into a useful sailboat rig. It is a wonderful example of the maxim: "In theory, theory equals practice. In practice, it doesn't." Though the rig has become known in proa circles as "The Bolger Rig" due to the fact that it was Bolger's proa cartoon that became widely known, the rig in fact was invented in the 1960's by members of the Amateur Yacht Research Society (AYRS) who thought so highly of its potential to christen it the "AYRS Sail".

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The New Age of Sail

NewScientist.com news service: The coming of steam sent the world's great sailing fleets into decline. The internal combustion engine finally finished them off. So it would be a strange twist of fate if the age of sail was resurrected by what amounts to a child's toy. Newscientist.com Page 2 of 3 pages  <  1 2 3 >