Daughter - covered in our phone call, so no need to read further.
The Maritime Museum start-of-season open house was this evening, so I went in this afternoon, figuring that there would be some last-minute things to be done. I made "place cards" for the restaurants who donated food, located trash cans and plastic liners and distributed them around the grounds, put price tags on some things and labeled shelves in the gift shop, and some other stuff. I also stood guard over the big ice boat out in the yard for a bit.
I had looked at the ice boat in storage last week, and Russ had told me it could do 100 mph. The guys who rigged it today were experienced, from an ice boat club, so I asked them, and they said this particular one might make 75 (it's very old and made of mahogany, with sailboat-style sails), but the new carbon ones "with razor sails" easily do 140 mph. I said "How, when the wind isn't that fast?", and they said that the faster you go into the wind, the faster the wind is hitting you, so your speed increases almost exponentially. Cool.
At one time, there were lots of ice boats on the Hudson. But now, the river doesn't freeze smoothly enough, and there are ice cutters keeping shipping lanes open and throwing blocks of ice around, so ice boats don't rule the winter any more. If you've never seen an ice boat, they are beautiful - long and narrow and spare, a ballerina, a damselfly with a lot of sail, and they just plain LOOK fast. The first time I'd ever seen one, someone asked me, "What's that?", and I answered, "I don't know, but I'll bet it's FAST!"
The Open House was pretty good. Eleven restaurants from the Rondout donated specialties, there was wine and beer and soda, a jazz band, the mayor spoke, and there was supposed to be some big Coast Guard boats tying up (I left early, after the food and the speeches - the Coast Guard may have arrived after I left).
I'm tired.
No comments:
Post a Comment