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AMY SMITH LINTON

Everglades Challenge 2017: Spawn Looks Surprisingly Tidy

3/2/2017

6 Comments

 
The thing I remember with any real fondness from calculus is the term "successive approximation."

I love this concept of basically figuring out your answer by taking a series of increasingly more accurate whacks at the problem.

How much volume fits under a particular curve?
​Start by estimating it as a triangle and then adding or subtracting little triangles until it's close enough for your purposes. 

Math = carpentry.
Picture
That's how progress has been on Spawn this year.  

​OH Rodgers, the boat designer, came up with a pair of sliding foils that lifted the bow of the boat last fall. They looked sporty and worked to make the boat a bit more stable and quicker.  
Picture
Picture
After a bit of testing, however, Mr. Linton pronounced, "The juice isn't worth the squeeze." Sadly for fans of the coolness, the foils took up a great deal of room in the cockpit, which tended to make the boat much less easy to row. 

For the Everglades Challenge, with its 300 miles of sailing and rowing and camping across oyster beds and what-not, the faster performance of the foil didn't quite outweigh the possible need to operate the sweeps. 

So the slots where the foils were inserted got filled back in and the rowing seat received a bit of an update.
Spawn foil
Spawn cockpit
New, higher, metal rowing seat (stowed for sailing).
For the first time, Team Spawn seems to be ready with plenty of time to spare. No last-minute deliveries or modifications! No questionable flight arrivals. No drama!  Knock wood.

With the bonus days, Captain TwoBeers turned his attention to organizing. In the famous last words of Joe Hill: "Don't mourn, organize."   

Fact: The quotation was actually from the next-to-the-last letter the labor organizer wrote before being shot by firing squad, and it goes like this: "Don't waste any time mourning. Organize."

In his last letter before execution, Hill asked that same friend, "Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah." Gallows humor is the bravest of them all.    
Picture
Where's the first-aid kit? Here.
Picture
All the important numbers.
Meanwhile, BookWorm (that's me) channeled an inner domestic goddess to cook up piles of beef jerky, chocolate-pecan bars, and meat rolls for the hearty sailors.  

I also hunted-gathered treats, including tiny individually-packaged espresso shots for Ninjee, and wee propane tanks for the JetBoil stove, and a supply of peanut M&Ms.

​Whether the team has time or interest in refueling themselves is a whole other issue, but they could. 
Picture


Extra bonus fact:

Successive approximation is also used in behavior modification; I knew someone who worked with emotionally disturbed kids. As part of their learning plan, teachers would reward  "approximately" appropriate behavior.

As I recall, one of her most challenging students was doing well when he managed to call her 
Miss F*&ing B@#%.

Baby steps. What I learned from stories about working with emotionally disturbed kids is that there is a whole world of people worse off in every way than it's possible to imagine. We are most of us really lucky.

​Knock wood.

6 Comments
Greg
3/3/2017 04:03:23 pm

Looking good, is Facebook the place for racing news?

Reply
Bob Johnson
3/3/2017 08:09:46 pm

You are such a talented wordsmith. Really enjoy reading anything you write

Reply
Amy
3/5/2017 12:21:07 pm

Thanks Bob! It warms the cockles of mah heart to hear that!

Amy
3/5/2017 12:20:26 pm

Yup!

Reply
too much of a good thing ( N wind, that is )
3/4/2017 06:49:08 pm

Am selfishly bumming that today we didn't get our inspired annual shot in the arm across Sarasota Bay of the intrepid WaterTribe fleet sailin paddlin sputterin south, and knowing that Spawn and the lads was Bombing down the outside, just to our west. Even now at the Squadron, WaterTribers are newly prepping for tomorrow's 0700 scattered splash. Spawn and crew today would have neatly handled the washing machine across Tampa Bay's mouth, but perhaps too many of the rest - not so much.

Reply
Amy
3/5/2017 12:23:37 pm

I KNOW -- the hordes of small craft appearing and then disappearing. It's inspiring to spectate, and it's definitely part of the joy of the event. Bummer all around.

Reply



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