Be careful!

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Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Guys and gals, you will get some intense weather late this weekend and early next week.
The storm is predicted to be a Hurricane 2 when it hits land, so you will get a pretty strong storm inland.
Do not go to the beaches, watch out for falling flora in case you camp. Even a small branch can do serious damage on the human anatomy.

Be careful, be safe!
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
38,937
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S. Lanarkshire
I'll put the fig and the begonias into the greenhouse, and move the standard gooseberries in against the hedge.
Might cut the willow wands I've been eyeing up though. I want them for Christmas wreaths and they've still got all their leaves.

Last time we had a really good blow, we built boats in the Galgael from the fallen trees in Glasgow :)

[video=youtube;m4x32hqOpHg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4x32hqOpHg[/video]

M
 
Jul 24, 2017
1,163
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somerset
But Janne storms at sea are epic! Me and the little woman do have plans to go coastal, the combination of fear an awe in the face of raging nature is tempting to the likes of me and her, foolhardy as that my seem.
 

Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
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You seem to be mature, so you know what not to do....
Some younger people, fed the 'extreme sports" crap over YouTube and other ways, tend to think they are invincible.

after each storm here, a bunch of young people arrive at ER injured.
I witnessed myself a group of youngsters trying to swim and use boards just after a storm. One girl got thrown face first into the beach.....
Plastic surgeon job. I had the 'pleasure' of fixing her teeth.
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Well, it seems the main storm will miss UK, is predicted to hit Ireland.
I guess it will just be windy in western UK.

I follow National Hurricane Center in the US.
 
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Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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S. Lanarkshire
It's a Birlinn. It's the ship of the the Scots, Picts and Gaels. Smaller than a longship (which we had too, but again, it has a rudder, not a steering oar)
The Pictish 'navy' saw off the Romans....we had virtually no roads until after the Jacobite uprisings, mostly people and goods in Scotland and Ireland (Wales and England too really I suppose, though they'd a lot more roads) moved by water.
We have an enormous plethora of traditional craft in these islands.....and this style of boat continued right through until the advent of gunpowder cannon and the determination that the King of Scots was also the Lord of the Isles. So, King Jamie had the birlinns blown out of the water, and slowly their building declined and they disappeared as larger boats were built...like the scaffie, and right through to the Zulu, until we launched one in Scottish waters nearly four hundred years later at dawn on New Year's day 2000, on the Clyde. The ship was called the Gift of the Gale, because she was built from the timbers of a really bad storm that felled trees right across Glasgow.

Norse ships of a similar style (one square mainsail on a hoop system) had a steering oar while the birlinn had rudders....it's how we can tell them apart on the carvings on gravestones and the like. Later, and larger versions developed with higher raking stem and stern, and sometimes with 'cabins' too.

The birlinns were fast, really fast, and nimble, with three men to an oar they could (and do) really shift. MacDonald ruled using them, and we have good evidences of sea roosts, channels cleared into castles and the like for them to berth.

I'm told that the two handled steering 'yoke' is much easier on the person using it for long in our decidedly uncalm waters. They used to take them through Corryvrechan, which is kind of hairy :)

M
 
Jul 24, 2017
1,163
444
somerset
You seem to be mature, so you know what not to do....
Some younger people, fed the 'extreme sports" crap over YouTube and other ways, tend to think they are invincible.

after each storm here, a bunch of young people arrive at ER injured.
I witnessed myself a group of youngsters trying to swim and use boards just after a storm. One girl got thrown face first into the beach.....
Plastic surgeon job. I had the 'pleasure' of fixing her teeth.

I guess that's the thing of chasing excitement with a mature mind, there is a point of reserve, more leeway is in place and a plan in mind to be able to step back from a danger point, in youth you are more bold and a fair bit more headless chicken! bless em! what would youtube be without there foolhardy spirit! also I think the little woman would like that someone thinks I'm mature, and love to point out how in so many ways I'm not!
 
Jul 24, 2017
1,163
444
somerset
Toddy! Am I right in thinking the old way of steering a boat was in part why you have port and starboard or more like steerboard?
 
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Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Starboard = Steerboard - most people are right handed so it is easier if the steering oar was on the boat's right hand side.
And as the vulnerable oar was on the right, it was logic to put the boat's left side against the shore, quai and similar. So Port side.

Some clever person developed the rudder with a different mechanism to move it. But rudders were and are quite vulnerable to damage, and difficult to replace while on water.
Steering rudders are dead easy to replace.

'Steer' in English is 'styra' in modern Swedish, and something similar in Norse. I guess that where the English word came from.
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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S. Lanarkshire
Steering oars aren't so nimble though, good metalwork makes it easy to lift an rudder safely out of the way, especially when a boat is oared too.
Speed and manoeuvrability led to the steering oars' obsolescence.

M
 

Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
12,330
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Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
I have seen old timers on Swedish lakes not only steer but also propel a small boat with a quite wide steering oar.

A kind of movement like an '8'. Canoeist do the same. Silent way to move.


I find the old boat tech fascinating, they had an immense knowledge of wood and materials.

Many of the Norse era long ships had components built of wood harvested a long way to the south, and presumably imported. Straight boled, straight grained trees, which are quite rare in Scandinavia.

The smaller vessels were built using local timber. Shorter so no need for the same quality timber.


Boats have been very important in Scandinavia since the beginning of time. Far quicker to move and transport over water than over the hilly, boggy stone filled inland.
Summertime nobody moved over land. Water was the highway.
Wintertime it was easier. Skis and presumably sleds have been used for many Millennia.

Unfortunately the Romans never conquered Scandinavia. If they had done so then maybe the Scandinavians would have benefitted from a good road network at least a Millennia earlier.
 
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Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
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S. Lanarkshire
I kayaked, and yes we can scull with the paddle, but it's tiring if one needs speed....canadian canoes usually used more than one paddler, or did as the kayakers do and use a double ender.
I knew about the steering oar because I watched my Father do it in a dory when I was little. It lets the rower see forwards. Not a lot of fun in a wind or rough seas though.

Scotland (and Ireland, the woods of Ulster were famed) had/has forests of oak as well as pine. The great woods of Caledon weren't just pine forest.
There's a Gaelic phrase that means a useless task, it translates as taking wood to Lochaber, just like the English talk of taking coals to Newcastle.

The rudder can be simply an extension of the stern, though on small boats a centre board is very effective, but then, so is a skeg.

M
 

Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
12,330
2,293
Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Bit Off Topic, but what the heck......

In Sweden the smaller lake bots had either the rear steering.propelling oar, to scull (thank you for the expression) or they had two oars. The oars were not fixed to the hull, there were only one loop of rope or Pine root rope to keep the oar in place. The loops were about 25 cm in diameter, so incredibly loose.
Dad knew how to row with the oar just stuck in the loop, I only could row if the loop was of rope and large enough for me to do a twist.
 

Toddy

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Jan 21, 2005
38,937
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S. Lanarkshire
Mostly our small boats had rowlocks, but the older ones used thole pins, or like the birlinn they used a shaped piece of timber, like a sharks fin, fastened to the gunnels.

I still have two pairs of hand made sea (shorter) oars that my Father made, leather grips and copper tips to the blades, up my loft. He made them for my brothers, but I think my sons will get them instead.

Dad built boats, every year we had a new boat. Everything from sailing dinghies to dories, flat bottomed, with keels, with masts, without, he just like building and using boats. I think we grew up knowing every wee boatyard in the Clyde and it's esturine sea lochs. My older brother sailed on a schooner with my Dad and his friends around the western isles. He now lives in Australia, but greatly admires the work of one of his countrymen who now lives in Scotland. Iain Oughtred designs beautiful boats :D
http://www.oughtredboats.com/

Gaillaine and Grooveski have some of his, but their images were on photobucket.
This is one from song of the paddle though. A tiddler of a boat, but beautiful lines :)

http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php/10726-Oughtred-Stickleback
 

Janne

Sent off - Not allowed to play
Feb 10, 2016
12,330
2,293
Grand Cayman, Norway, Sweden
Those are some fantastic boats. Had I lived close to a lake I would get something similar.

But only a small rowing one.
In my youth, I scraped, sanded and varnished (4 coats) a mahogany 25 foot motorboat hull.
I spent a whole winters worth of free time on my back doing that. Did it only once. Learnt my lesson.
 

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