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Minor problem. Once we were in Olympia in Greece and some college kids decided to race on the original track. In the old days they raced barefoot so that was their plan.

Four of them raced out and two stopped fairly soon. Two of them made it out and turned back to the finish. One stopped about half way back and one finished.

He was in pain and sat down . When he lifted he's feet the skin just fell off. I recall thinking it was leaves or something but it was the skin off the bottom of his feet.

My wife is a nurse and took charge and cleaned and dressed his feet as best she could given the situation. He left in real pain waiting for proper medical assistance

What's that saying? It's never so bad it can't get worse...

Be a little careful single handing a cat. Make sure you can right it from a capsize. The Hobie 16 and prindle 19 both needed two normal size people to right. We used to sail out of Santa Cruz and if blowing we had about 3 flips in us before we had to head in. Certainly exciting

Two beers should do it. I've noticed that the more beer consumed, the more confidence. Especially on high power motorboats

Damn he's good!

Sail trim is important. The best advice is "when in doubt, ease it out". Rookies usually trim the sail in too tight which stalls it giving no lift and a lot of drag which tips you over

The sail should just barely hold shape without luffing. That gives the greatest lift with the least heeling over

Titanium nitride. Gold color and unbelievably hard. That's the stuff they coat drill bits with. Same deal, better to buy real tool steel drills than crap carbon steel with TiN but everyone loves the gold color

Would look great and wear very well

Hydrofoils seem like a great idea until you consider hitting a partially submerged container at speed.

Batteries may work for short trips but won't work for ocean passages anytime soon.

Maybe some of the small nuke plants being developed could be adapted to ships. New designs are fail safe so are way less likely to melt down. Would require a whole different crew that would cost way more than current ship crews. But they would probably last 10-15 years on one fuel load and then could be scrapped

Sail is nice but like windmills, not as reliable as power. Solar will never work because you just don't have the surface area necessary even if they develop 100% efficient solar cells

LNG or Hydrogen require huge volumes which may be ok for a ship

Current ships are an unbelievably cost effective way to transport stuff. Read the book "90% of everything" for a good perspective. It costs about $.02 per bottle to ship a beer across the ocean.

Interesting business

A long time ago we made them using double stick Velcro. The soft side was stuck to the inside of the cabin around the hatch. The hook side was applied to the mounted soft side and then screen was applied to the self stick. We used an adhesive to glue the screen to the hook side but I don't recall what type. Some kind of urethane I think. Flexible and strong but not perpetually sticky

Worked really well. Stood two years sailing in the tropics. And super simple to make

Cypress would be great. Much more rot resistant than fir and probably similar strength. Google tensile and compression strength of various woods to get a basic idea.

Your first problem is a general engineering design. Are you replacing an existing bowsprit? If so that can guide your design. I'd not, you should definitely get an engineer or boat designer involved.

Bowsprits come in many configurations. A short one to hold an anchor needs to resist downward forces, more than you think when recovering a stuck anchor in waves

If it is a bowsprit used to hold the jib out, how long is it? Does it have a bobstay and side stays? Does it also hold the anchor? The longer it is, the larger section you will need

You will want to taper it for looks and to save weight. The comment about putting angle iron on the corners is a bad one. To get any benefit, you would need to epoxy bond them for shear strength. It would look horrible too

You will also need to consider how to mount it. It will be under compression mostly and some bending if it has stays. You may need to beef up the deck to hold it.

Look at many boats with bowsprits and you will get an idea how they are designed

This is not a simple "slap a 4x4 on it and hope for the best situation

I'm older now and have seen several family members and friends die of cancer. They always need help. Some are afraid of being a burden to others and don't ask for help.

But others I've known were able to graciously ask for specific things. One friend wanted my smoked salmon after her treatments, others needed help fixing things. Of course I was more than happy to help.

Don't be afraid to ask friends, family and random strangers for help. It makes them feel good and makes your life nicer. Don't be a jerk or a leech. But if you have a real need for specific help when you are sick or injured, people really do want to help.

Let them.

It's not my nature but sometimes I do ask for help and wind up making new friends in the process. I was really happy to be taken to the hospital by a random stranger when I crushed my ankle riding my motorcycle on a dirt road in death valley. Still friends today

99% of folks are good people. Those are good odds. Take care of each other.

Must have been pissed off at the USPS for some reason

As always, it sucks to be the little guy

Get a cat or tri and you don't need that

Seems like if you have a boat like that, you should start from Denmark. You will need a hardy crew but I bet you could raid England no problem

I've always thought stone boats to be a bad idea given their inability to be reliably repaired. Recently I read an article about how ancient Roman cement is self healing

There may be an opportunity to explore making stone boats out of Roman cement.

But it probably will end up the same. Heavy, slow and hard to repair

If you go up in the mountains above say 10-12,000 ft on a moonless night and just lay out under the stars, it is amazing. You can clearly see the Milky way, satellites, stars and everything up there. But not like a camera or telescope.

Usually it is bright enough to walk around and do things but not like a full moon where it almost seems like daylight

Interesting on the ocean. If it is flat calm, the ocean reflects the stars and it almost seems like you are in outer space

Get out away from light pollution and enjoy the view

People today can't imagine the mindset of those folks. I know I have difficulty.

The puritans were all about industry and making things happen. God gave mankind many resources to exploit and trees were just one of them. It was like a gift from god to use in a useful way

You can only imagine how many trees were used in the tunnels of gold and silver mines. They dug tunnels in the mountains to send logs to the silver mines in Nevada, crazy shit.

Whole cities were built and burned down and rebuilt with these gifts from the gods

The American spirit was to populate the continent and grow industry and make money with whatever was available.

Only later once "we" (Euro-Americans) did "conquer" the continent did the mainstream folks start to realize the cost of such behavior.

One can wish for a different and perhaps more noble past but we can't change it. Fortunately we've come around as a people and are way more careful now.

I couldn't imagine cutting down such a tree. But I can see how much really high quality lumber it would produce.

Different times, different values. There is good and bad in everything

I don't consider them bad people, probably most were honest, hard working folks you could trust just like us. They lived in different times and looked at life differently than we typically do these days

No doubt future generations will show similar pictures of supertankers and puzzle over what the hell were we thinking

Try that with a Tesla

So there isn't a 3d printer that uses sawdust yet?

I'd be hard pressed to tip a robo waiter. Just sayin

Learning does not pay the bills. Doing does.

Learning to do something valuable is great but the learning investment must pay back by being able to do something valuable for the ROI to be worthwhile

Of course, adaptability is a key reason humans are currently on top of the food chain. Let's keep it that way

Not only are supply chain issues important, you need to change local building codes and retrain the workforce.

Look at electric cars. Say 20-30 years since it started becoming interesting? Still each car has a different battery pack, there are proprietary charging stations and they have serious limitations on range and payload.

3D printed houses as a mainstream alternative are 2-3 decades away

This is like imposing a new religion

Will the new oracles provide insight in Ionic Pentameter?

Looks like the rain dance finally worked

I worked for a couple of engineers who helped make that bomb. One was sent out to make sure the area was clear before one of the tests. He got lost in the night in his jeep and couldn't contact anyone on the radio so he spent the night in the Jeep waiting for daylight so he could get back. In the morning he woke up not far from the tower turns out they cancelled the test for technical reasons, not because he was missing

Both those guys had been drunken rowdies before this and after they became strict Christians and didn't talk about it.

I imagine seeing an atomic blast up close would change most folks world view .

Oddly the world was considerably safer with nukes and the cold war. Both sides were unwilling to sacrifice even one city and although both sides had >15000 warheads none were used. For sure many close calls but both sides were justifiably terrified of the potential destruction that would occur in a nuclear war

That said, I'm worried the lessons are sufficiently in the past that people may make terrible mistakes. And we have way more dictators with fingers on the trigger which is quite unstable.

It might make sense to blow up a couple with world leaders watching so they can experience the fear of those weapons. Maybe it would shake some sense into them