COMMITEE
|
President |
Pat Drake |
54793736 |
|
Vice President |
Mark Preedy |
54764254 |
|
Secretary/Editor |
John Desborough |
secretary@scmbc.org.au |
54929698 |
|
Treasurer
|
Jamie Garnett |
54447625 |
|
Harbour Master |
Clint Preedy |
54764254 |
CLUB OFFICERS
|
Webmaster |
David Waterhouse |
|
yeomanoz@westnet.com.au |
|
Librarian |
Mark Preedy |
|
|
|
One Metre rep. |
Terry Smith |
|
54927025 |
CLUB NEWS.
The AGM held on the 15th November returned most of the former
incumbents with the exception of the Librarian and Harbour Master with the
resignations of Dave Todd and Len Hurren. Most notable innovation was the
subsidy of members attending the Christmas Party where each participating
member will be provided with a ten-dollar voucher to go towards the purchase
of a meal.
PRESIDENT's REPORT.
NEW MEMBERS. No new members this issue.
COMMITTEE RAMBLINGS: left over for next issue.
IMPORTANT DATES:
CHRISTMAS DINNER 2006
Arrangements have been completed for our annual Club Christmas dinner
on Saturday 2nd December, 2006
This will take place at The Caloundra RSL Services Club,
19 West Terrace, Caloundra.
The meal will commence at 6 p.m. at The Rockpools Restaurant for members and
their guests.
This year the Club will be subsidizing this dinner by issuing Boat Club
members with a $10 meal voucher on arrival.
Please phone either the Secretary, John Desborough on 5492 9698, or President,
Pat Drake on 5479 3736 BEFORE the 25th November to book
seats at the table.
MULTI
HULL ASSOCIATION to be held on Sunday 12th November at the
clubs lake. This has been advertised as the 11th in previous
issues, but a recent phone call by the President of the MHA has corrected this
error.
JOKE
JOYCE
Two old blokes are pushing carts around K-Mart when they collide. The
first old bloke says to the second bloke, "Sorry about that, I'm looking
for my wife, and I guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going."
The second old bloke says, "That's OK. It's a coincidence. I’m looking for my
wife, too. I can't find her and I'm getting a little desperate."
The first old bloke says, "Well, maybe we can help each other. What does your
wife look like?
The second old bloke says, "Well, she is 27 yrs old, tall, with red hair, blue
eyes, long legs, big busted, and is wearing short shorts. What does your wife
look like?" ………reply "Doesn't matter --- let's look for yours”.
MEMBERS CONTRIBUTION
– none submitted
TRADING CENTRE:
Trash and treasure.
Advertise your trash and treasure here. Any item you may want to dispose of
can be advertised here. Club orientated, household items, personal
possessions, etc. Simply lodge your advertisement with the Club Secretary or
the Editor and it will be published in the next issue of the newsletter and
retained for three issues.
A selection of Items
from Terry Smith.
1 Metal turning
lath. Hobbymat. MD65 with all a accessories and attachments incl. End mills,
slitting saws etc. large range of Brass and alum. stock.
$2500.00
2 Balsa, brass sheets, strips, aluminium
offers
3 Strobe light for measuring prop RPM.
$100.0
4 Plans of Diamantina and Arunta.
$10.00 and $5.00.
5 Speed controller
$40.00
6 Futaba radios x 2 with crystals
$25.00 ea
7 Battle class destroyer 1/48th scale
POA
8 Hunt class destroyer 1/48th scale
POA
phone 54927025. Fax 54927570
Submarine for sale.
Shark class WW2 US Sub.1.9 metres
in length. Requires motor. Offers invited.
Phone Stephen Jetnikoff 0414656887.
THAT SAYING
Cut and Run
If a captain of a smaller ship encountered a larger enemy
vessel, he might decide that discretion is the better part of valour, and so
he would order the crew to cut the lashings on all the sails and run away
before the wind. Other sources indicate "Cut and Run,” meant to cut the anchor
cable and sail off in a hurry.
ARTICLE
THE WAR GALLEON VASA
Regalskeppet Vasa (also Wasa) was a Swedish 64-gun
ship of the line, built for King
Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden, between 1626 and 1628. The
Vasa
capsized on its
maiden voyage but was later
recovered and is now on display at the
Vasa Museum in
Stockholm.
During 1621-1625, the work at the Stockholm shipyard was led by Antonius
Monier, with Dutch-born Henrik Hybertsson as a hired
shipbuilder. The shipyard had signed a contract to build four ships, two
larger of around 135 feet and two smaller of 108 feet. Unfortunately, the
shipyard ran into economic problems, delaying the construction of the
contracted ships. At the same time, the
Swedish navy lost 10 ships in a
single storm and
the king worriedly sent a letter to
Admiral Klas Fleming, asking him to make sure that construction was hurried
along. The letter gave measurements for the ship the King intended, with a 120
foot
keel. That gave shipwrights new
problems, because the measurements given by the king were between the planned
larger and smaller vessels and the timber had already been cut. In a new
letter, on February 22, 1626, the king yet again demanded his measurements for
the new ship be followed. In the end, it seems likely that one of the started
designs for a smaller 108 foot ship was extended by adding another section to
it, creating the 135 feet ship that would become the Vasa
Ship builder, Henrik Hybertsson never had the chance to see the Vasa
completed; he fell ill in late 1625 and died in the spring of 1627. The
supervision for the shipbuilding was given to Henrik's assistant, Hein
Jaconsson, another Dutch immigrant leading to confusion and a lack of
leadership.
While the ship was being equipped, Admiral Fleming ordered the
stability of the Vasa to be tested.
The standard
stability test of the day was thirty
sailors running from side to side, assessing the tendency of the boat to rock.
When this was attempted on Vasa, the ship started tilting significantly
after only three runs and the admiral ordered the test aborted, allegedly
stating "had they run any more times, she would have went over".
During the construction period, the design requirements and calculations for
building a ship only existed in the head of the shipwright. Scientific
theories on vessel design or stability had not yet been developed, so
important factors like the ship's centre of gravity had to be estimated from
the builder's experience. The Vasa was a very advanced ship for her time, and
much of the design was changed while the ship was being built. Construction
was delayed and at the end, marked by a great hurry to get the ship finished.
The original plans only called for one closed gun deck, but the Vasa was
finished with two decks, at the king's request.
On
August 10,
1628, Captain
Söfring Hansson
ordered the Vasa to set
sail on her maiden voyage to the
harbour of
Stockholm. The day was calm, and the
only wind was a light breeze. Her sails were not set until the southern
outskirts of the harbour had been reached, about a
nautical mile, a gust of
wind forced the ship onto her port side
and water started flowing in through the open
gun ports. Vasa sank to a depth of
100 feet, around 100 yards from the shore. Despite the short distance to the
land, between 30 and 50 people were trapped in the ship and perished. The
exact number of casualties is still unknown because the only reports from the
accident are lacking in substance and are incomplete.
When the King heard of Vasa's fate, he was incensed. 'Imprudence and
negligence' must have been the cause, he wrote angrily in a letter, demanding
in no uncertain terms that the guilty parties be punished. Captain Söfring
Hansson who survived the disaster was immediately put in prison, to await
trial.
At the interrogation, Captain Hansson simply stated, "a gust came". It is
known from other reports that there was almost no wind at the time. It has
been calculated that if the Vasa's
centre of gravity had been a mere
5-10 cm (2-4 inches) lower, she would not have capsized in the harbour.
In the end, no guilty party could be found. The person responsible for the
design, Henrik Hybertsson, was long dead and buried. The ship was built
according to the specifications laid out by the King and one couldn't very
well punish the King. In the end, no one was punished or found guilty of
negligence.
After it’s sinking, most of the ship's valuable bronze cannons were recovered
with the use of a
diving bell. Access to the cannons
required removing the decking at several levels.
In 1956,
Anders Franzén, a marine engineer,
thought of the possibility of recovering wrecks from the
Baltic waters, since these waters
were free from the
shipworm Teredo navalis. He
started looking for the Vasa and
found her in an upright position, at a depth of 32 meters. The wreck was
lifted in a relatively straightforward way, by digging six tunnels under the
hull, through which steel cables were attached to a pair of lifting
pontoons. The ship was brought to
shallower water, where she was made watertight for the final lift. Temporary
lids closed her gun ports and all the holes from the iron bolts, which had
rusted away, were plugged. The final lift took place on
April 24,
1961, and she was put into a
dry dock.
Conservation of the ship itself was done using
polyethylene glycol, a method that
was also used years later in the conservation process of the 16th century
English ship, the
Mary Rose. Vasa was
sprayed with glycol for 17 years, followed by slow drying. Recent studies,
however, have shown that this conservation method, in time, makes the wood
brittle and fragile.
Over 26,000 artefacts have been found, including six, still folded,
original sails. After the lifting of the wreck, the site was searched for
artefacts and over 700
sculptures, once attached to the
ship, were found.
Stern view of the VASA
