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Navigating the Endeavour 05/03/2013
On Thursday 28 February the Scottish Branch was once again generously hosted by the Port Edgar Yacht Club at their excellent clubroom ...more
Submarine Meeting Leads To Lively Discussion 17/02/2013
On Thursday 7 February, the Scottish Branch was hosted by the Port Edgar Yacht Club at their very comfortable clubroom in the Port ...more
On Thursday 28 February the Scottish Branch was once again generously hosted by the Port Edgar Yacht Club at their excellent clubroom in the Port Edga After our usual informal bar supper at the Hawes Inn we were entertained by John Jeffrey to a fascinating account of his experiences in sailing and navigating the replica of HMB Endeavour from Cairns on the East Coast of Australia through the Torres strait to Bali in Indonesia. The replica of HMB Endeavour was built in Freemantle in 1988 and launched in 1993. She is as near a replica as possible of James Cook’s original Endeavour that he sailed between 1768 and 1771 on his first voyage of discovery to the South Seas. She is three masted; 44 m in length; displaces 550 tonnes and carries a crew of 40 in addition to an afterguard of 16. There were no concessions to modernity and John’s account started with sailing the vessel with her 10 squaresails (courses; topsails and t’gallants) on each of the bowsprit and fore; main and mizzen masts together with nine assorted staysails and spritsails. Eight hour watches were kept and the crew were expected to quickly learn their way; even in the dark, around the considerable number of sheets; halyards; braces and other sail control lines.Navigation was carried out by John in the tradition of the time with sextant; hourglass; log and lead lines. No reliable clocks were available at the time so Greenwich time was computed by sextant observations of lunar distances (angular distance between the moon and other celestial objects namely the sun; planets and notable stars). This enabled the determination of longitude and latitude and plotting the position on a chart of the time.In all this was a fascinating evening and if the questions and discussion were anything to go by very much enjoyed by all those in attendance.
On Thursday 28 February the Scottish Branch was once again generously hosted by the Port Edgar Yacht Club at their excellent clubroom in the Port Edga
After our usual informal bar supper at the Hawes Inn we were entertained by John Jeffrey to a fascinating account of his experiences in sailing and navigating the replica of HMB Endeavour from Cairns on the East Coast of Australia through the Torres strait to Bali in Indonesia. The replica of HMB Endeavour was built in Freemantle in 1988 and launched in 1993. She is as near a replica as possible of James Cook’s original Endeavour that he sailed between 1768 and 1771 on his first voyage of discovery to the South Seas. She is three masted; 44 m in length; displaces 550 tonnes and carries a crew of 40 in addition to an afterguard of 16. There were no concessions to modernity and John’s account started with sailing the vessel with her 10 squaresails (courses; topsails and t’gallants) on each of the bowsprit and fore; main and mizzen masts together with nine assorted staysails and spritsails. Eight hour watches were kept and the crew were expected to quickly learn their way; even in the dark, around the considerable number of sheets; halyards; braces and other sail control lines.Navigation was carried out by John in the tradition of the time with sextant; hourglass; log and lead lines. No reliable clocks were available at the time so Greenwich time was computed by sextant observations of lunar distances (angular distance between the moon and other celestial objects namely the sun; planets and notable stars). This enabled the determination of longitude and latitude and plotting the position on a chart of the time.In all this was a fascinating evening and if the questions and discussion were anything to go by very much enjoyed by all those in attendance.