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2024 US Presidential Election
greyfader
Well-known member
fixing up old boats is not cheap. for the same money you could build a new one using modern materials and methods.
my big ocean dory like the one i showed earlier was built using regular 4x8 sheets of plywood over standard lumber frames. then fiberglassed with regular polyester resin on the outside. if you do it right it will stay waterproof for years. i coated all frames and interior wood with cheap industrial oil based enamel. you use thinned polyester resin to soak into the wood and then thin the first coat of enamel so that it soaks in deep, bonding to the resin coat, thin the second coat lightly and then no thinning on the 3rd heavy coat.
for it to really bond well, the first enamel coat should go on the resin coat just as it flashes off and is still tacky.
a cheap way to make a strong waterproof hull.
you can make a boat like this last a long time if you don't keep it in the water. i trailered mine. at 24 ft it was about as big of a boat that can be easily trailered and launched, retrieved. i could do it alone easily.
another thing is that it is hard to sink one on a trailer in your yard.
as you know the ocean has two types of wave forms. open ocean swells and wind generated chop.
these dory hulls excel in both conditions. the big ones, like 20 feet and up, go through steep, close frequency chop with very little up and down movement at 10 knots, just barely on plane. in large open ocean swells you don't plane but you can still make 7-8 knots heavily loaded.
i've had mine out in 25 ft breaking seas, where the crests were producing white water. 40 knot winds.
i didn't choose to go out in heavy seas intentionally but sometimes it happens while you're out and you have to deal with it.
the little island that looks like a dot on the map is desecheo island. it lies 13 nautical miles off the coast at rincon.
one day there was no heavy weather forecast so i decided to go collecting there. usually about an hour and a half each way.
i left at first light and the ocean was like a sheet of glass. perfectly flat and smooth. it is rarely that flat on the best of days so it was an easy ride over.
i usually did four tanks a day but in the middle of the second tank i started getting tossed around at 80 ft so i knew there was a swell developing and i went back to the boat to check it out.
to the north, on the horizon, was a thin black line coming my way. as i watched i realized the line was getting larger fast. i pulled the anchor and took off back home. i had gotten less than a mile off the island when it hit. huge swells and heavy wind. 40 knots plus.
it took about 6 hours to get back and i was running on fumes in the gas tank. i felt lucky to have gotten back to safety.
novices don't realize how much more fuel you can consume in rough weather and frequently run out and have to be rescued.
if you run out of fuel or have a total breakdown in the mona passage the water is 2000 ft deep so you can't anchor. the winds take you southward out of the passage and into nothingness as you get blown away from land. the next landfall is colombia, about 330 nautical miles. there are not even any shipping lanes once you get away from the islands.
i had a puerto rican fisherman buddy and he and another guy were out in the passage fishing in a 17 ft boat when they had an engine failure. they drifted for 3 days with no food and about a gallon of water between them. no cover from the sun. they had already drifted past the shipping lanes when a sailing yacht almost ran over them. they were in bad shape and had to be hospitalized for a while to recover. dehydrated, starving, and totally sunburned. they were lucky to be alive.
that is why i ran 2 motors running on 2 different fuel tanks, inline fuel filters, and, after the time i barely made it back, i increased fuel capacity by 2/3 rds.
this was before gps was a thing and all we had were radio direction finders. we used those to find the large am radio towers in mayaguez to get direction if necessary. but most of the time we were within site of the big island.
desecheo island. it's 377 acres in size and 715' elevation at the top. the underwater topography is shaped just like the above water part. it slopes down to 2000'. underwater visibility is superb because there is no run off from rivers. i could see over 300' some days.
because of the clarity and the steep slope you got to see pelagic animals that normally don't get close to land. giant manta rays, open ocean sunfish that weigh 2000 lbs, schools of tuna swimming by. a whale shark. i saw the only short finned mako shark i saw in 20 years of diving there. about 12 ft, brilliant blue above and snow white below, sharp pointed head and thick, powerful body. beautiful animal.
the reef around it is covered with caribbean reef fish and invertebrates. every color you can imagine.
view from rincon
close view different angle showing the clarity of the water. it looks shallow but the reef structure you can see in the middle bottom of this pic is at 80 ft.
i didn't mean t0 write all this but i am bored with politics and thought some of you might enjoy it.
i forgot to mention that there are a bunch of rhesus monkey's on the island. they are political animals and don't like humans much. if you step onto land they will throw big fist sized rocks at you. more than one tourist has gone home with a big knot on their head.
they're not indigenous, they were put there by the us government after ww2 to be trapped and used for medical experiments. the troupe became trap wise and wouldn't go in the traps. they became a pest and were eating endangered sea bird eggs. there's a helicopter pad on it and one day i looked up at the peak and there was a dude up there with a scoped rifle. he waved at us. what a job! sitting on top of an island shooting monkeys by yourself.
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Looks like beautiful seas. I've been in a few of those storms myself on the west coast. Considered myself lucky to make it to harbor. The biggest waves I experienced were through Queen Charlotte Sound, about 30-40 feet; sun shining bright. I was on a smallish ferry and spent the crossing at the bow. It was fabulous, the bow smashing down into the waves, big trawlers dipping out of sight, orcas skipping along beside. Me and my buddies had the dining room to ourselves that night.
The scariest was in Lake Huron, bringing supplies back to a little island from Manitoulin. Our 12 foot aluminum packed with groceries, two of us and a large propane bottle got smacked with a mother of a black storm about 2 miles into an 8 mile trip. Probably 6 foot waves but felt like ten. As the propane bottle rolled back and forth I hoped we would stay upright and our 25 horse outboard wouldn't quit. When we pulled into our quiet harbor, nobody quite believed how rough it had been.
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CaptainDankness
Well-known member
Just so everyone is aware, Trump is going to win a landslide victory...
The amount of open crime going on with Trump is astonishing. There's no way MAGA wouldn't be screaming on the rooftops if it was a dem doing the same. I've never seen this amount of open criminality and not being indicted. That $10m campaign violation is huge.
there's an awful lot of civil war talk for a landslide victory
what makes these even funnier is Grimes left him and immediately started dating a trans woman.
greyfader
Well-known member
maybe you're just cheering for your team! it doesn't look like you've done any research.
the latest combined polls on the swing states. this is not an abc news poll, it is a 538 poll that averages all the major polls to get a larger sample.
these changes occurred over a 15 day period!
greyfader
Well-known member
and here is the average of the combined polls on the overall standing of both candidates. aug 5. showing harris as the leader with a 1.9% lead. again done by 538, who averages all major polls so you are not seeing the results of just one poll but all of them combined. in just 15 days and she is still gaining momentum!
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moose eater
Well-known member
Even exit polls have been off in the past, sometimes notably so, causing me to scratch my head more than once..
Predicting a firm and clear winner of an election before the fact, especially when the numbers have been what they've been, is a bit like walking into a horse or dog racing event and saying one knows which horse or dog is going to win. Only if the person knows the others have all been poisoned can they say such a thing with any certainty, and even then, shit can happen.
Predicting a firm and clear winner of an election before the fact, especially when the numbers have been what they've been, is a bit like walking into a horse or dog racing event and saying one knows which horse or dog is going to win. Only if the person knows the others have all been poisoned can they say such a thing with any certainty, and even then, shit can happen.
greyfader
Well-known member
another point to consider is that harris has won every race she has participated in. and scored 2 historical firsts in all of them.
san francisco da, attorney general of california, us senate, and vice president.
she is both the first woman and the first person of color to win these elections in each case.
editing to add that trump lost the popular vote in both previous elections. one by 3 million but he won, and one by 7 million and he lost.
his only chance of winning is with the electoral college.
people lie (even to themselves), esp if asked in front of witnesses.
Cope Harder
To be fair she dropped out of the 2020 race before her home state convention because she was trending so poorly.
As part of my degree I studied qualitative and quantitative research and ended up working for a research company that ran one of the two major political polls in my country. The surveys were well designed and the demographics taken into account (age, sex, etc). The polls were highly accurate (of course not always) but we have compulsory voting here. I have no idea how you would go about correctly polling where voting is optional? However you would think that exit polls would be accurate?
