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Salty Tims Nautical Facts |
Caption Competition |
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The Titanic wasn't the first ship to send an SOS, as is widely believed; this distinction belongs to the American steamer Azaohoe, which used the signal when disabled with a broken propeller shaft in August 1909. The internationally agreed-upon wireless distress call had recently come into force and did not stand for "save our souls"; the letters SOS were chosen simply because the Morse code for them (three dots, three dashes, three dots) was easy to remember and transmit.
Scientists near the Straits of Malacca in 1932 reported a continuous mass of 10-foot-long poisonous sea snakes that stretched as thick as seaweed over 70 miles along the ocean floor.
The great Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator published a book of maps the frontispiece of which was a picture of the god Atlas holding the world on his back, as he does in Greek legend. Almost from that time on, any collection of maps has been called an atlas.
The word cruising, from the Dutch kruisen, to cross, was at first applied only to the zigzag sailing of early pirate ships which searched all the shipping lanes for unescorted treasure ships. Because such sailing obviously wasnt done on an exact schedule, yacht owners many years later borrowed the word kruisen, altered it to cruise, and applied it to any carefree pleasure voyage.
The greatest tides occur in the Bay of Fundy, Novia Scotia, where there is an extreme range of 57 feet (17.4m) between high and low tides.
The strongest current is in British Columbias Nokwakto Rapids, which travels up to 16 knots.
The worlds greatest current, also called the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which flows at one point at the rate of 9.5 billion cubic feet per second and ranges from 185 to 1240 miles.
The Greek navigator Pytheus observed and explored ocean tides in the third century BC, but it wasnt until Isaac Newtons time that scientists widely believed that the moon had any effect on the oceans tides.
Tidal friction slows the earths rotation and makes the days longer. This occurs when the tidal bulge scrapes shallow sea floors in traveling about earth, the frictional heat slowing rotation by about 1 second every 100,000 years which may not seem like much but comes to over six hours in two billion years (a conservative estimate of the age of the earth), or the difference between an 18-hour day and a 24-hour day. |
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Last weeks caption competition winner was Pete from Roseanne.
Oi! Crumpet! I love the new earrings! |
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Page 6 |
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Claudia & Moshe s/y Janette 0536 2464183 Sails, awnings and professional repairs |
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11th January 2008 |