the A or FAIL conundrum

This is just so seriously fucked up, some interesting reading, and a historical synopsis you might find intriguing.

I just finished "Knights Cross" by Cristine Kling which is a pretty good book this morning and, as usual, my Kindle asked me to rate it and I gave it four stars. I sorta/kinda feel a little guilty about that and it got me thinking...

For me, if you have a scale of one to five stars, one star is going to be an awful book and, by contrast, a five star book is going to have to be awesome work of art and life changing. So in my view of four stars for a genre adventure novel is actually very high praise.

So, why do I feel guilty?

I think part of it is that, for what seems like the majority, there seems to be no middle ground anymore. Something is either AWESOME or its CRAP and there is simply no real middle ground any longer.

You see it a lot in the way people talk about boats and gear. People need to have the BEST and it would seem that if it is not THE BEST it must be THE WORST which is very flawed thinking process and tends to give me a headache when I encounter it. I bet this has a lot to do with the reason I seem to eat aspirin like they were peanuts.

It gets worse though. A few weeks ago I bought something on eBay which I almost did not because in the description of the product and suchlike the seller pretty much demanded/threatened that there would be hell to pay if you did not leave positive feedback and give him five stars if you were to buy from him. Which, to my mind, calls into question all that glowing feedback since they could simply be in preemptive self-defense as leaving a less than awesome feedback just might be answered by a negative review of you the buyer in return.

Personally, I read reviews to get an idea of whether something is worthwhile or not but of late with no apparent benchmarks in place its nigh on impossible to make sense of things. Made even worse by the fact that, for instance, the Amazon five star rating system is not so much good or bad but good or better. "Stars" were always an attaboy back in my elementary school days when we were were rewarded with gold and silver stars (not that I recall ever getting a whole bunch of gold stars for my penmanship or good work habits). Maybe what they should do is add some negative ratings (one to five piles of crap?) to the mix to make for a more reality based scenario.

So, about "Knights Cross" in my personal scale Ill give it an eight as it had a good beat, kept me turning pages, and was easy to dance to...

Need I say more?

Listening to Brooke Waggoner

So it goes...

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Yawl should know the conundrum of getting a tiller round the mizzen mast

The details of how to design a yawl so that the tiller gets around the mizzen is an interesting topic. There are a number of tricks:

Using a line steering system: Here you can see Michael Storers Beth Sailing Canoe with the tiller forward of the mizzen and the lines connecting to the rudder, which is out of the picture.


Ill add that there are a number of ways to do line steering. My Deblois Street Dory has line steering coming into the boat from a rudder yoke but there is not a remote tiller as in Beth. The Coquina is another example of line steering in which lines are attached directly to the rudder and pass through the transom, via a pulley system, and the steering line goes around the perimeter of the boat.

Using a long push-pull tiller: Here you can see James McMullens Oughtreds double ender.


Using a curved, laminated tiller or split tiller


Using a normal tiller with an offset mizzen




For the Goat Island Skiff, we go with an offset tiller as in this model by a customer:




The other methods I mentioned just wont fit the situation we have in the Goat Island Skiff, mainly because there is not room for a split tiller and we want to keep the solution simple. We are deciding about just how much to offset the tiller. You can see above that the tiller will hit the mizzen before 45-degrees. The big question is how much room do we want to give the tiller to swing. In the pictures, we decided to test a 45-degree swing. That puts the mizzen a little further off the centerline than Id like. This boat is very light and pushing a tiller than hard over makes the rudder act like a brake and the risk of losing so much speed that you cant get through the tack is something to consider. Then again, we dont need it so close that things feel claustrophobic. In the picture above of the offset mizzen, notice how little offset the mast is...the tiller must touch the mizzen pretty early. Does that give enough steerage for the helmsman when the push the tiller in the mizzen direction?

Well have a solution soon after a full-scale mock up. The way we are doing this, collaboratively, is something I do on many projects. It always gets a better result because many thoughts and ideas can be sifted through. The more the merrier. Whatever the solution I draw up, the mizzen can always be moved a little more or less off the centerline according to the skippers preference. The important thing is to maintain the rake of the mizzen, which has been determined. My point is, that collaboration with designers, customers, and other folks with experience through the forums and boat shows can be an advantage in getting many thoughts onto the table and generating the best solution.

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the coffee conundrum

This might brighten your day, how past acts can tell you a lot about a man, and a very good cause I really hope some Boat Bits readers will support...

Why is it your propane bottle always runs out before your first cup of coffee rather than after?

One nice part of changing propane bottles this morning was the big charter cat anchored on top of us fired up its engines, picked up their anchor and left...

Maybe they didnt like the music from the Ukrainian Punk Polka band Ive been playing, though I will admit that pain threshold loud accordions, heavy distortion, and Black Flag (just imagine a Russian Henry Rollins on speed) covers are, at best, an acquired taste so not really everyones cup of tea.

Anyway, I mention the cats leaving not because of conflicting musical tastes but that I was actually shocked to see just how little scope they had out. It appeared that, at most, they had all of 45 of chain out in fifteen feet of water which is just frelling nuts for a 70+ foot cat with Godzilla-sized windage and very little draft.

In hindsight I should have been a lot more worried...

That said, of the five most common mistakes in anchoring I see played out all the time, insufficient scope is most certainly number one with a bullet. So, not exactly all that surprising when you think about it.

Listening to Les Rita Mitsouko

So it goes...

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