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uwhilna
03-03-2009, 04:31 AM
excerpt from the -British Columbia Magazine 1912

http://www.archive.org/stream/n3britishcolumbi07vancuoft/n3britishcolumbi07vancuoft_djvu.txt

Last year there was some excellent racing at the meeting of the North Western Yachting Association at Victoria. For the outstanding event of the regatta five boats started, with the wind blowing at thirty knots an hour. A series of minor disasters marked the start. The sails of Haidee were blown to ribbons ; Gwenole, a Victoria boat, retired ; Gazeeka, of Vancouver,had her peak-halyards carried away and was left limping along like a beautiful bird with a broken wing.

Thus Uwhilna, of Canada, the present flagship of the fleet of the Vancouver Yacht Club, and Aquilla, representing the United States, were left alone to fight for victory. The Uwhilna trounced the foreigner by five minutes. She caught her rival on the way out to the second buoy on the last round and after that the Blue Peter flaunted jauntily ahead of the Stars and Stripes until the end. Mr. R. H. Alexander, the present commodore of the club, was a member of the winning crew on that and many other interesting occasions, and proved himself an efficient sailor. He was the first boy to be born
in Vancouver, and from his knickerbocker days onward has always been sailing in something. He once formed a model yacht club, and the deft handling of those toy models doubtless imparted to him the marine artistry he now displays when manipulating the stately Uwhilna.

The yacht with the impossible name, the Indian for Osprey, was evolved by Mr. Mower, the well-known New York designer. She is constructed of teak, and copper fastened, and was constructed across the Pacific at Shanghai, where labor and wood are cheap. She was brought to Vancouver in the S.S. Monteagle. Mr. Alexander calculates that it would have cost him twice as much to have had the boat made in Canada.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff350/fakeperson/100.jpg

Thad
03-03-2009, 06:06 AM
THERE is a beauty!

uwhilna
03-03-2009, 06:46 AM
And more recently with a marconi rig...http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff350/fakeperson/Boat2.jpg

rbgarr
03-03-2009, 07:26 AM
... the wind blowing at thirty knots an hour.

This expression seems to have fallen from use. A knot (to me) is an expression of speed over time: a nautical mile per hour. I suppose a knot in earlier times was just another term for a nautical mile, thus the seeming redundancy of "knots an hour".

Yet I have heard airplane pilots still use the term "knots per hour" on a few occasions.

Anyone know the conventions?

johngsandusky
03-03-2009, 07:49 AM
I agree that usage has changed. Knots now are nautical miles per hour. Reading old books one finds professional seaman using "knots per hour".

ahp
03-03-2009, 11:47 AM
If you want to be persnickity and pay strict attention to dimensions, "knots per hour" is a measure of acceleration, not speed.

Peter Belenky
03-03-2009, 01:31 PM
Knots are recorded over a time-span of 28 seconds. That number bears a one-to-one correspondence with nautical miles per hour. "Knots per hour" is not only an inappropriate usage linguistically but also numeric nonsense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log

Thermo
03-03-2009, 01:47 PM
That's great! I hope you have a copy of the article framed inside the cabin somewhere.

uwhilna
03-20-2009, 05:34 PM
Hi there, I won't be putting antything up in fact I've taken a ton of stuff off the boat and bought a couple of terrabyte drives. But I would be interested in a half model after finding this..lhttp://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff350/fakeperson/LineDrawing.gif