Hey Al,
"I'll report back my results as soon as we get an ideal day (and once the ice melts, of course)."

If you do it before the ice melts you`ll clock a really fast time. Just don`t put the centerboards down .

I'll make sure my will is up to date first as well.

Silly thing...You just don't use kilometers or miles on the water when measuring distances because each degree of longitude is exactly one nautical mile. A knot is the speed of a nautical mile per hour.

Wyatt

You mean each minute of Longitude I assume.

One definition of a knot



Another site that has some good def...or:"blue"] blue [/color] to drill down)

And a meter was (initially) defined as :

"1 / 10 000 000 of the distance from the pole to the equator."

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/meter.htm

So by the same reasoning the meter is a perfect nautical measurement as well just as the nautical mile the definitions are very similar.

So in this sense there is no difference. The only difference between old school (nautical miles/knots) types and new school (meters, m/s) is that it is a sh!t load easier if you do calculations in a decimal system.

But of course nautical life is fully dominated by tradition. So 60 bow seconds in a bow minute, 60 bow minutes in a degree, 360 degrees in a full circumnavigation.

Wouter

Come on you guys, get it right! Nautical miles has never had anything to do with longitude.

ie One minute of longitude at the poles isn't even a bees dick.

One minute of Latitide is however getting close, but still not correct. Since the earth or not a perfect spere the length of one minute of latitude at any location is correctly called a sea mile, if you take the arithmatical mean of the distances for one minute of latitude you get 1852 metres, tho it was actually 6077 feet rounded up to 6080 feet.

What ever a foot is!!!

Cheers Phil

If you read my quote above....

The so-called "imperial" system of weights and measures was formulated over centuries of "practical application" before the advent of "mass" education and the understanding and application of "higher" maths etc.
For centuries the usage by the "common person" of weights and measures was conducted by a largely "illiterate" population so that weights and measurements had to be something that all could understand on a practical level.
For example the inch related to the distance between the tip of the finger to the first knuckle of the second finger of an average sized man (average then being approx 5'6-7' in height). Similarly the foot was an average sized mans foot from heel to longest toe. The yard was the average "stride" taken by an average man. It so happened that the ratio of 12 inches relates very closely to one average sized foot and three feet similarly to one yard. An average sized man could pace out one mile with 1,760 paces (or 5280feet, although the mile was previously set arbitrarily by the monarchy as a means of determining incremental distances for land tenure) and so forth etc, it was a system that everyone could understand and "carry around” with them at all times. Mathematics, as we understand it today was never a requirement for day-to-day life for the vast majority.
The metre on the other hand was a "theoretical" distance promoted by the French based on the division of a distance that, as history has determined, they got wrong in the first place, and because the French could not "get their heads" around anything very complicated, they divide or multiplied everything by the number 10.

It has become quite fashionable to piss on the French. I don't really understand why. They have been a the bedrock of many great things. From Trias politica to movie pictures. From the complete fundamental mathetics to the principle of humanism. They do have their quirks and they have gotten some great help along the line for some brilliant Germans and Russians but they have not much to be ashamed about. And loudest voices bashing the French are often the ones with remarkable humble backgrounds themselfs.

It seems to me that a new wind of even greater arrogance is blowing around the globe lately.

Sure the French can be elistist and arrogant but on the other hand they got heaps to justify that and it must never be forgotten that they often are THAT good. Especially in sailing as Bruno Peyron has proven once again beyond a shadow of doubt.

I personally quite thankful for the SI system and anybody still prefering the Imperal system is living in the dark ages as far as I'm concerned. I mean how many order 20 fingertips of tubing. (which finger do you use ?)


Wouter

Wouter,



I thought Mathethics was invented by Johan Amos Comenius, a Czech humanist philosopher.

In other news: Marc Reiter and I conducted some speed trials on a 25 ft mono hull acquired for $500. We achieved a peak speed of 6 knots while sailing in over 20 knots of wind. Ye hah!

Chris.

State-sponsored terrorism comes to mind.

Good lord, and I thought all the mathmatics and measurement system had hijacked the thread...now this is downright punishable!

(did you break anything?)

Only my heart....I could have been reaching up and down the dike trying to get some real speed data with a GPS over a 3 mile course with very flat water...instead I had to watch all that good wind go to waste while we crept around Galveston bay on the S.S. Slug.

Chris.

And I always thought that Pythagoras (569-475 BC Greece) was one of he first practisioner of Mathematics. May have had a different name then but it is still mathematics. Hell the Chinese invented the solution to a matrix equation as early as the 2nd century AD. The old sumerian and Assyirian societies had mathematicians as well. Comenius lived in early 1600's. I think you will find he did far more in the field of education.

6 knot on a 25 ft mono, still some (1.34 * sq.rt (25) - 6 = 0.7 knot to go before you hit theoretical hull speed. In big wind you should be able to up to 1.7 knots out of it.

Wouter

I very much like this idea. How long do you think the measured distance should be -- one nautical mile? Use stopwatch or GPS?

I was thinking that beach cats could have a time-distance record like the big multihulls do with their 24-hour record (except maybe a one-hour record in the case of beach cats). But Al's idea of having a pre-measured course would be much more feasible.

Catamaran fleets and sailing clubs all over the country/world could have a speed course like this and anybody could run it at any time and keep a copy of their GPS track and speed; right?

It would not be as official as what the big boats do, because there would not be an outside observer, and their GPS results would not be broadcasted to an independent agency for verification. But at least it would give us a lot of anecdotal evidence on the honor system (somebody could do the run on a powerboat, and who would know the difference?).

I think most people would be honest about it. And it would be a FUN thing to do and give a goal to shoot for. Better than a video game. And something for fleets to do on fun days when they aren't racing (or when there is too much wind to actually race).

And doing it as part of a group activity, would help to ensure validity of the speed claims, as opposed to just going out and doing it when nobody else is around.

That was my point - you used the term Mathetics in your post - not Mathematics.

I think that 1 nautical mile would be about right. If you averaged 20 knots, then it would be 3 minutes elapsed time.
You could use GPS or stopwatch, however, getting stopwatches at the start and syncronized with the finish might be difficult if not on the boat (RC?).

I think you would want to divide the "records" into classes. I don't expect that Bill Roberts on the RC-30 would be especially proud to show that his boat beat the H-16 record, but would like to show the rest of the RC/ARC enthusiasts just what that beast will do. And I think all the H-16 guys would like trying to do the best 1 mile time of all H-16s, not really caring if it was faster than a Fox or Tiger or H-18. In the beginning, it would be fun to show all the people who attempted the 1 mile run, type of boat and average speed. I would also like to see what the true wind direction was relative to the set course (beam reach, broad reach w/ spin, etc.) and wind speed.

How do you explain then than the big (very big) majority of the world uses the metric system? even the english converted to metric years ago.

This imperial system is a joke. I work with engineers who have to use conversion books and tables. A joke...

Remember the mars probe which crashed years ago? a misuderstanding feet/meters. A joke...

If there is one thing which CANNOT be criticized, it is the metric system. Every scientific person will tell you that.

There was NO "criticism" of the metric system, only a "tongue in cheek" anecdote of the way in which the French derived it!
You guys should lighten up a little, it seems that a few of you have difficulty in recognising a humorous or facetious comment when presented with one.

some people are way to wound-up to even sense sarcasm.

See, watch this: