Flying Car Engineer Nanodegree - Udacity

I really want to say this course was easy.  I want to tell you how much confidence I have now after a successful completion of the course and required projects.  Have you heard of the imposter syndrome?

At what level does one begin to apply one's skills meaningfully in gainful employment?  When is one ready to give back to the world?

Right now, feeling the surface of my mind, I don't feel like I have a working knowledge of anything that I completed over the past fifteen weeks.  Python, C++, rotor physics, PID controllers, probability, path planning, Gaussians, Kalman filters, Jacobians, Quaternions, what is this stuff?  I get it, all of the details of the more advanced math and physics are fresh and new to me.  Struggling is a part of learning.  One must learn to crawl before learning to walk.  Einstein also needed to learn to crawl. Etcetera, etcetera.. insert your favourite inspirational quote here.

I guess what I am searching for is that feeling I once had standing on the quarterdeck of a well tuned full rigger in a fresh breeze and knowing deep in my existence exactly where the wind is, when to toss off her tacks, brace about, and be gracefully on her way.  

For now, I must quite simply, push on.

Don't believe me?  Check it out for yourself.

FCND - The Flying Car Engineer Nanodegree at Udacity

What well-tuned full-rigger do you speak of?

SOIC - Ostindiefararen Götheborg

Invaluable heroic resource for learning math and clarity of physics concepts without the putdowns one might acquire querying stackexchange.

Khan Academy

"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I Just kept pushing"

- Rene Descartes

SpoolMasterTM

Years ago I was working for Kalmar Nyckel during a winter maintenance period where we were scheduled to make a pile of new stays and shrouds.  We had a few huge spools of white polyester cable and hawsers that eventually needed to be turned black for good looks and extra ultra violet light protection.  "We could paint them by hand." was one suggestion.

Eventually we decided on running the cables through a half latex paint, half water solution, which works very well absorbing into the cable giving a nice coating.  There was one problem.  How do we effectively dry such an amount of cable without taking up too much space, getting paint everywhere, or dirt on the new cable?

And thus the SpoolMaster5000TM was born.

*images, drwing, of the painting process coming soon

Today I work with the Swedish East India Trading Company ship replica Götheborg.  Here we also have our own unique problems.  We make all of our own rope for rigging the ship.  The material we use to make the rope is hemp, and the material we use to preserve it is pine tar.  One thing is the same, the rope must be coiled.

Please welcome SpoolMaster5000TM-OldschoolEdition to the club.

No glue was harmed during the creation of this SpoolMasterTM.

I promise you, all of the joints didn't fit this neatly.

Slingerbardun

Chafe - Skav

On the old strop - På den gammal stroppen

So I shall splice up a new one - Så jag ska splitsa upp en ny

Worm, parcel, and serve - Tira, smärta, och kläda

Should We Parcel Our Rig?

Has been some question to parcel or not to parcel.  One thought is that parceling will hold in the moisture, cause rot, and thus be not worth the time and energy to clap it on. 

I have seen the description of worming and parceling in some salty old books and technical descriptions of rigging from the days of tarry hemp rigs.  See: "The Elements and practice of Rigging And Seamanship"  Should we parcel just because someone took the time to typeset during the early days of the printing press? 

When I first started sailing the Eastindiaman Gothenburg, the rigging was quite new.  Some rigging had been paceled, some not.  Now as she has been sailing for around a decade, I am able to get a feel for where rigging is showing signs of aging, or where it fails.

Here is a piece of rigging that has been wormed, parceled, served, and tarred between all of those steps.

Hemp stretches slowly over time, and service that is laid on can aquire a small gap inbetween each turn.  Here one can see the parceling doing its job.  It is holding in the tar, and in the small gaps of the service the tar has built up on top.  Under the service the hemp is in very nice condition.  The yarns are all clearly visible, have a nice tarry brown color, are free of rot, and unscathed.

Bumkin Outhaul / Fockhalsdävert Uthal

Clapping on service / Klädning