Feb 04 2010
The Lack of an Anemometer
A little over two and a half years ago, Jason was sailing the boat from Emeryville to San Francisco, to visit me while I worked at JavaOne at Moscone Center. And while he was on the way, he cut it a little too close to the new Bay Bridge, and shaved the top of the mast off against the overpass. Thank god, the mast cleared. But the anchor trilights, anemometer, windexes (we had two), and VHF antenna all got scraped off.
He was horrified and chagrined. I was just relieved he hadn’t demolished our rigging entirely. The rest is just stuff that can be replaced, right?
But as anyone with a boat knows, projects stack up, and stuff you meant to get around to gets put off. The only things that have been reinstalled are the windexes. And yes, we mean to get to the rest. But in the recent fairly energetic weather we’ve been having, I really, really miss having the anemometer. I’d love to know what the actual wind we’re experiencing, right here right now, really is.
And that is completely goofy.
See, there’s this thing called the Beaufort Wind Scale. It’s a very precise description of what happens to water when air blows over it, and to within a few knots of speed, you should be able to look at the water, see what’s going on, and then figure out your wind speed. And practically, that’s enough. The split second you ask “Hm. I wonder if I should reef the sails?” you should. It’s a given. Past a certain point, you know you should be on bare poles. For the practicalities of a basic cruising sailboat, as long as you have the right general vicinity of the windspeed, the difference between 2 and 3 knots, between 10 and 11, and between 40 and 41, are for all purposes irrelevant.
So why this drive to know the exact speed?
No clue. But every time it gusts (as it’s doing right now), I look outside, think to myself, “Wow, that’s probably Beaufort (whatever it is), but man I wish we had the anemometer so I could know for sure…” Talk about dependence on technology.
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This makes perfect sense to me. I have always wondered if the wind instruments advertised on boats for sale are really necessary or if they are another mechanical / electronic item to fail when we would rely on them the most.
Do we really need these items, or can we learn what to expect from the weather by observing our immediate environment? It seems that people have sailed for many, many years without these instruments. Has anything really changed?
Speaking for myself (and I’m not that smart to begin with) it seems to me that if I had good wind instruments on my boat, I would learn how to use them and what it all meant that they were telling me – and in the process, perhaps I would forget what the wind and water are telling me by observing them.
I don’t know. But I do know, that I will likely not invest in them simply because they are more expensive than I want to spend money on!
Dependence on technology? or another example of that dependence in ‘our’ culture of someone or something else to tell us ‘for sure’ what really we know already for ourselves… just a thought….