The Anecdotal Life Part: 30
A friend recently said, " Lighten up Jacqueline!" How do you lighten up around 9/11 or with terminally ill siblings and friends? Sometimes I feel like "I am the only running footman".Well the truth is you can, of course, and you can't let the guilt get you for skipping away for a while. Skipping away is what I got to do Sunday on a really sweet yacht with the unlikely name of BayBus. The part that gets to your heart is the ingrained kindness of the friend to treat you, distract you, and teach you about boating. Though I wish to God and soon, that I will get the opportunity to learn it all a little more incrementally. The terminology, in and of itself, is staggering.
However, it is always so amazing how something that puzzles you becomes more illuminated seemingly out of nowhere. Wandering through my favorite habitat, the library, I grabbed a book on George Washington and just for the heck of it, one on John Paul Jones. What an interesting pain in the butt he was. But lo and behold, the book turned out to have a small description about navigation that helped me understand the term , azimuth. ( A little bit. ) I had looked it up in the dictionary and in the holier than thou ( and me included ) Chapman book of piloting and all they both said was it had to do with the horizon and something about a thing being two ticks off azimuth. Well, whoopee. I am pretty sure I am more than a few ticks off azimuth anyway, especially since trying to figure it out. I read it to my more professorial sister and she didn't get it either. So here's the bit I read in "John Paul Jones" by Evan Thomas.
" John Paul's deliverance from the hardship of the lower deck was a brass instrument called an octant. His ascent began the moment the master of the "Friendship",Captain Robert Benson, summoned him to the rail of the quarterdeck one day when the sun was at its zenith, pointed to the horizon, and handed him the tool navigators used to find their way on the trackless sea."
"The octant could tell a mariner the angle of the sun to the horizon at high noon..." and so forth about their ability to ascertain latitude but forget longitude, which they couldn't figure. I bet that could wreck their whole afternoon. Nevertheless, I began to get the picture. Would you believe that very octant is on view over at the Naval Academy near me in Annapolis? Guess where I'm going today.
Copyright: September 13, 2006
However, it is always so amazing how something that puzzles you becomes more illuminated seemingly out of nowhere. Wandering through my favorite habitat, the library, I grabbed a book on George Washington and just for the heck of it, one on John Paul Jones. What an interesting pain in the butt he was. But lo and behold, the book turned out to have a small description about navigation that helped me understand the term , azimuth. ( A little bit. ) I had looked it up in the dictionary and in the holier than thou ( and me included ) Chapman book of piloting and all they both said was it had to do with the horizon and something about a thing being two ticks off azimuth. Well, whoopee. I am pretty sure I am more than a few ticks off azimuth anyway, especially since trying to figure it out. I read it to my more professorial sister and she didn't get it either. So here's the bit I read in "John Paul Jones" by Evan Thomas.
" John Paul's deliverance from the hardship of the lower deck was a brass instrument called an octant. His ascent began the moment the master of the "Friendship",Captain Robert Benson, summoned him to the rail of the quarterdeck one day when the sun was at its zenith, pointed to the horizon, and handed him the tool navigators used to find their way on the trackless sea."
"The octant could tell a mariner the angle of the sun to the horizon at high noon..." and so forth about their ability to ascertain latitude but forget longitude, which they couldn't figure. I bet that could wreck their whole afternoon. Nevertheless, I began to get the picture. Would you believe that very octant is on view over at the Naval Academy near me in Annapolis? Guess where I'm going today.
Copyright: September 13, 2006
posted by The Anecdotal Life at 5:20 AM
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