Norwegian Steam: Noon Report -- Kauai

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Noon Report -- Kauai - Neah Bay, Day 17

Another day trying to keep the boat moving and as close to the course as possible. Mostly grey, mostly cold, although not quite as cold as yesterday.

We are seeing a lot more cargo vessels. Every day there are four or five of them of which at least a couple come within five miles. We are very grateful for the AIS, which enables these vessels to be displayed on our Garmin 4212 chartplotter. The 4212 computes and continually recomputes the point of closest approach. Yesterday when a Korean container ship was going to come within three miles of us, I attempted to call the bridge with the VHF transceiver, using a feature called digital select calling (DSC) which makes VHF marine communications a bit more certain and more like the telephone. The call was not acknowledged, which is a bit troubling.

The last two days we have been seeing almost no debris. I wonder why we saw so much for the previous few days? Could we have been traversing one of those large circular eddies (gyres) that are said to collect junk?

At UTC 2200, July 29, 2012, we are at 46 02.649 N, 146 00.657 W. Our day's run was 99 miles. We are now 886 miles from Neah Bay.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Norwegian Steam, the vessel

Norwegian Steam is the name of our 35' sailboat. She was designed by Ted Brewer. About 40 hulls were constructed by Miller Marine on Bainbridge Island, Washington between 1976 and the early 1980s. It is rumored that additional hulls were constructed in eastern Canada. Because many of these boats were completed by owners, there is a very great diversity in the fleet. To learn more about the basic design, you can find information about Ted's Jason design on his web site.

NS was completed by Alan with the help of friends, some of them professionals, over many years. She has been sailing since 2001. She differs from most (perhaps all) other instances of the Jason design in that her mast is 6 feet taller and she is rigged as a racing cutter, with large overlapping staysail. This rig design was inspired by the work of John Illingworth, the great English yacht designer and sailboat racer.

Norwegian Steam, the name

The phrase, Norwegian steam, may originally have been somewhat pejorative. When a vessel was powered by sails or by oars instead of by a steam or diesel engine, it was said to be powered by "Norwegian steam", the implication being that the Norwegians were so poor they could not afford engines for their boats. As time passed, the Norwegians themselves adopted the phrase to indicate a "can-do" attitude or doing whatever it takes to get the job done, even with limited resources or under adverse circumstances.

During the great era of America's Cup racing in J-Class yachts, the term took on a slightly different meaning. Many of the American defender boats had Norwegian crews and thus were said to be powered by Norwegian steam. A website has been dedicated to this bit of history.