JohnHuth

Congratulations! And, thanks for passing on some of the details of the assessment.

Well? How'd it go?

I'm looking forward to hearing some reports. I would have participated, but this is the weekend of my anniversary. 33 years now. I'm down at Cape Cod, enjoying the weather and my wife's company - but still getting some paddling in. Great weather this weekend!

Replied to the survey. I'm unfamiliar with MeetUp. I like the current format, but am sympathetic to people who don't want to be saddled with up-keep - or the problems of finding new people to fill in. Maybe someone can comment on the amount of work that goes into maintenance of the website?

Looks like a good time!

Let me give my rationale for the 'direct' leg from the F R 4s to Jewell - maybe it'll get some route discussion going. In my first thought, I would've hugged Long too, and jumped to Cliff and then Jewell. But, first I saw that there was a bar that uncovered between Vaill Island, and Long. The bar might be covered approaching high tide, but would still be shallow. I haven't been to Long or Cliff, but it doesn't look like a lot of landing opportunities, so that advantage seems not great. Then the southern end of Cliff and the SE end of Long has a lot of rocks and shallows. If there was a swell coming out of the ocean, from the S to the ESE, you could end up with breakers when it impacts the shallows. What can fool me with a swell is the surf beat. Higher crests will break farther out. You might approach an island with a shallow approach, and things seem normal with waves breaking in close, and then when the higher crests hit three minutes later, the waves start to break a lot farther out, and a person can get caught. In the fog or dark, this can be more of a problem. Also, at night, I find that buoys make good beacons with visibility from some distance. Since a straight-line shot to Jewell from that channel buoy F R 4s passed by a buoy with a bell south of the shoals south of Cliff, it seemed like a good reference in the night, and can help orient a person and give a sense of progress by the relatively location of the ringing. This presupposed that the sea is reasonably calm, and one only has a swell running, but that's not uncommon just after sunset. On the other hand, I'd definitely take a look at conditions at launch time and make a decision based on that, not something I planned in my living room a month beforehand. Plans are useless, but planning is essential, as the maxim goes, or something like that.

May 19 2016 Departure – Bug Light Portland ME (Fl 4s) Sunset 20:04 local (EDT) End Civil Twilight 20:38 Moonrise 17:56 – waxing gibbous 95% High tide 22:46 Highest current Hussey Sound Max Flood 0.9 kts @ 19:48 Leg Dist (NM) Head (mag) Min/nm Min/leg Description 1 0.6 123 20 11 Bug Lt - Spring Point 2 0.3 181 20 6 Spring Pt. cross chan before Fl G 4sec 3 2.5 59 20 50 House Is, Fl G 20 ft N end, Fl G 3 sec diamond pass, Fl G 2.5 sec, N channel of Peaks, turn when Fl G 4sec vis 4 0.7 176 30 21 Pass Fl G 4s 5 0.5 129 30 14 Slight turn to Fl G 4s 6 0.3 57 20 6 Fl G 4s - cross chan to Fl R 4s 7 3.1 89 20 61 Fl R 4s, pass R "6" bell buoy left Total 8.0 169 2 hr 49 min

Yup, Tuesday is the 19th, but I switched up the exercise to the 16, as that's when I read Gary's post and I had the most accurate forecast. In my mind, I was thinking of using the R "4" buoy as a jumping off point to Jewell because it's an obvious landmark, and use a compass heading to allow for a fair amount of error in hitting the island. I wouldn't do too much coast hugging, as I get concerned about sneaker waves over a shoal at night (or fog), but that depends on wave and swell conditions. I'm curious to hear comments on the route. Good topic for discussion, Gary.

With some reluctance in getting a trifecta of forum posts, what the heck.... Night of April 16th - near full moon -overnight parking I'd have to look into it, but I'm thinking I'd just pay a local hotel/motel to let me park over the weekend. -group size, vetting of "strangers", and paddler/boat decorations No more than 4 in a pod, stick together, have a proven leader. Glow stick behind deck compass, one on back of hat - known colors for different people. -tides and weather Conditions weren't so good last night. 40 degree water temp, sustained wind out of the NE gives a lot of waves, big fetch - high tide around 8:30, so some flood, going to slack. Since it's a 3 mile exposure to Jewel into a headwind with a lot of fetch, I would've bailed for something more sheltered. -contingency planning, including go/no-go decision, bail outs, and alternate camping spots I would have gone up to Yarmouth - camp ground there. Once you get to the jump off light near Long and Peaks, no real shelter till Jewell, and a slog against the wind. Given the current forecast, I'd look for a local camping area and then a day paddle tomorrow. -redundant safety/nav items Probably good to have a GPS with programmed way-points. I like to list the amount of time, NM for each leg and mag headings for each leg. Since the Moon's nearly full, this makes it easier to spot islands, but with the wind up and cold water temps, I'd be pretty cautious unless I knew I was paddling with really seasoned people. I'd look at how people do until I get to the channel between Peaks and Long, and then decide whether to jump to Jewel or head to more sheltered waters. If water temps were warmer and there wasn't so much fetch, wind, I would have more or less memorized the legs in time/distance/mag heading, and the buoy lights along the way, and keep in the back of my mind the boat channels (if it was summer boating season).

It's Arabic - derived from a root word, meaning "perfection". In the earlier days, people used the width of a finger or fingers at the end of an outstretched arm to measure angles. As it turns out, the ratio of the length of the arm and width of a finger is pretty uniform between people. The width of my index finger spans 1.5 degrees at the end of an outstretched arm. I can use combinations of fingers and my hand to measure from about 1/3 to 20 degrees. This can work in navigation two ways. In the voyage across the Arabian Sea, or elsewhere close to the equator, your latitude is equal to the angular height of Polaris above the horizon. Also, you can measure distances - remember the mnemonic that 1 degree spans the width of a 100 ft object that you see at 1 mile. If you can get the scaling - a 200 ft object is 2 degrees, a 50 ft object is 1/2 a degree. One story in a house is 10 ft - that house is 3 stories, 30 feet, spans one degree so is 1/3 of a mile away when it spans 1 degree (approx). In Arabic, an isabah is the angular width of a finger at the end of an outstretched arm. A kamal is an angular measuring device that does much the same thing. It has a string with knots tied at various intervals and a small board that is calibrated to different angular widths, depeding on which knot you use - you hold the knot in your teeth and stretch out the string until it's taut, and then measure the height of an object in the distance, or measure the altitude of a star above the horizon. It should be more precise than the finger technique - they're relative small, lightweight, and easy to make at home.

I looked it up - the house is open June 15 through Labor Day. An interesting day's paddle might be to Eagle and Jewell, where there are WWII gun emplacements. I hear that part of the passage from Eagle to Jewell can get standing waves from the tidal flow in and out of outer Casco Bay.

Saturday, April 9th - Like other people, a nearly-first season rust-buster - see how the gear holds up kind of trip. My friend, Dan Carr, and I launched from the Dolphin Marina in Harpswell, around 11:30 AM. There were big tides on account of the new moon. Water temperature was 40 degrees, some SE swell from the Gulf of Maine, air temp between 40 and 45, winds variable from 0 to 15 kts. We were originally thinking of paddling out to Jewell, which is farther out. Eagle Island is the site of Admiral Peary's house, one of the big heroes of Bodwin College in Brunswick, ME. We started out with the tide flooding, which was against us, but not too strong. Rounding Upper Flag was pretty tame, but after passing from Flag, the swell was up from the SE - not a big deal, but made landing on Eagle interesting. We walked around on Eagle, looked at Peary's house, which was boarded up. High tide was supposed to be around 1:30 and our beach was rapidly disappearing. We decided to launch again and toodle around the harbors near Harpswell, just to get more shelter. There was nothing terribly eventful, but the wind began to pick up, and even though we were mostly dry, we got cooled off (I hesitate to use the word 'chill') in our drysuits. I suppose the most interesting part was that we had a fair NW wind (maybe 10-15 kt) approaching the Dolphin Marina, and then, within maybe 15 minutes, it shifted to SE. Overall, 10 miles, about three hours. Again nothing super amazing, but just nice to get out, and the bit of work into the wind and the bumpy conditions made that beer taste good at the end of the day. Eagle, looking back toward Harpswell. Peary's house, boarded up.

Tonic water = quinine? It would be interesting to share ideas - I really don't want to pay huge money for some expensive product.

Hi, Leon - It's all true wind speed. I was given a day and a crew to test out the performance characteristics in the Majuro Lagoon. I took an anemometer reading at rest when the sail was moved from one end to the other, also, I took readings when underway and noted the direction and speed, and then after a run, also took an anemometer reading. For the readings under sail, I calculated the true wind from the apparent wind, direction and speed (from GPS). I looked at the before-during-after readings for consistency. The wind was reasonably stable over the course of any given run. I suppose we could call it a proa - in the sense that the outrigger is always to wind and the sail is shifted from one side to the other when shunting (the proa version of tacking). We didn't have rudders, but a large steering paddle that shifted from one end to the other. Technically, it's called a tipnol in the Marshall Islands. The hull is asymmetry to combat leeway and drag from the outrigger. The leeway is quite small. I have some video footage of the steering and also of the activity of moving the sail front-to-back. Best, John

Hi, Leon - It was great, yes! Here's my plot of the performance characteristics of the Jitdam Kapeel, based on a day of exercising it in the Majuro Lagoon. The comparison vessel was a version of what became the Hokule'a - a double hulled vessel that's gotten a lot of publicity recently, with its round-the-world trip. When they sail into the wind, they 'shunt' the sails, rather than tack - this keeps the outrigger to windward all the time. This also allows for an asymmetric hull shape that combats leeway. One problem with shunting is that it places the crew at risk when sailing in a heavy sea. Alson Kelen, who was in charge of the expedition didn't want to risk shunting in a heavy sea on our outbound voyage, so we had to tow it some distance to calm water.

Hmm...looked it up, you're right. For some reason I always went with Cinqua Terra. Lost grey matter. Anyway, it's a wonderful place.

I don't know about outfitters, but one great destination is Cinqua Terra on the northern Italian coast. I've walked there from town to town in the hills and along the sea, and I've thought it would be a great place to kayak. The only outfitters I could find had plastic rec boats, though - maybe worth some digging around. Cinqua Terra are five towns on the coast - no automobiles permitted in the town centers. They're linked by trains - you can walk from one town to the next, and hop a train - one rail pass will take you for a number of days of unlimited trips. I highly recommend it (even if not with a kayak).

I think think this should work. Inside the folder are two powerpoint files - one on weather, one on waves. They have links into the animations/videos, so if you run it directly from the same location as the associated files, you'll pick up the animations (or just copy them over): https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B35Z4TtP-ZZheUFXaFRrQTJ4QUk&usp=sharing If there are any problems, please let me know.

You're quite welcome! If there's a way to upload slides to this website, please let me know and I'll do so. I can't attach anything as they're way over the limit for posting. BTW - as for writing - Feb 29th at 13:05 - this morning was a SW wind, mackerel scales and mares tails. Now it looks like altostratus clouds moving in - lowering cloud bank.

Thanks for the update. One item on the topic of waves I'm going to try to cover is interpreting NOAA forecasts. After that, there's what does *not* appear in NOAA forecasts, so I will talk some about observing swells versus wind driven chop, multiple sources of waves, and surf beat. In part, I'm posting mostly so I remember to include these in the workshop.

If anyone has particular things they'd like to see in the course, please let me know. I'm probably going to mix some aspects of predicting and handling conditions with some aesthetic considerations. Under aesthetic considerations - I've done some work learning wave piloting in the Marshall Islands - variants of this can be done along parts of the New England coastline.

Yes, Phil, that's the sticking point I ran into. I was looking at Lovels for the first night, then a night somewhere, then, Thatcher Island , but need to fill in the gap. I'll nose around and see what I can find, meanwhile suggestions continue to be welcome. Assuming I do get this to work, I'll publish up a trip report, with what one might visit on the way, that kind of thing.

So, the usual winter day dreaming, but planning. I'm tying to put together a kind of 'urban' tour that includes Boston Harbor. I plan on starting in Cohassett and taking a multi-day trip to Newburyport. If people have suggestions for good places to visit along the way, and, most importantly, accessible places to camp, or I suppose even a motel/Inn with access to the beach, I'd appreciate it. I've only looked closely at the Cohassett to Boston Harbor - there are a lot of places to explore - the reversing falls in Cohassett, Little Harbor, the Life Saving Museum in Hull, the Boston light house, and then camp on one of the Harbor Islands. Going up the coast, there are other possibilities, but since this is probably *the* group to ask, I thought I'd solicit suggestions for a kind of urban/suburban kayak camping tour.

I have to understand Hill's equation better - I see you have some links earlier in the posting. You'll have to give me some time to digest it. I *am* a biophysics fan, but I'm not as familiar with his work. On general grounds, I switched to a shorter paddle because I 'test drove' one and for some reason the increased cadence and ease of draw through the water felt like I could maintain a certain speed longer. Not very scientific, I realize, but it seemed to work for me.

I haven't had a chance to analyze it. One question is whether you're double counting things that go into Burch's estimate, or, put a different way, what goes into Burch's estimate? For example, if resistance due to encountering waves is a factor, might that not already be present in what Burch has? I *will* get around to checking it out, but the Holiday Season has me hopping.