What does steering by a star mean




















The risks are high, and careful investors should steer clear. I need a steer on what to do next. Translations of steer in Chinese Traditional. See more. Need a translator? Translator tool. What is the pronunciation of steer? Browse steeplechase. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day have a heart of gold. Blog Outsets and onsets! Read More.

November 08, To top. English American Business Translations. Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:. Free word lists and quizzes from Cambridge. Tools to create your own word lists and quizzes. Word lists shared by our community of dictionary fans. Nainoa observed the magnetic compass dial—20 degrees. Big Dipper was to port, its handle almost vertical to the horizon. The Southern Cross was astern, the Scorpion on the starboard quarter. He covered the compass with a T-shirt.

Clouds sailed across the Big Dipper so he steered by the star Mau called Mailap, also known as Altair, just forward of the starboard beam. Hold her there. When the clouds hid Mailap, he found the Southern Cross astern.

Right where she should be. Time, measured by the hands of his wristwatch under a flashlight, ticked by. Fifteen minutes. He uncovered the compass. Twenty degrees, right on course. A small beginning perhaps, but it proved he could find direction by the stars alone. Still, there were problems. It was easy to steer by a star low on the eastern horizon, hovering just above the house from which it had risen, but after an hour or so, it was too high to be an accurate guide.

Confounding the problem, he knew the stars rose four minutes earlier every day, so a star rising at sunset when the canoe departed would be useful for only a week or so. As the canoe sailed north, crossing parallels of latitude, the houses where the stars rose and set shifted on the horizon.

Data are facts—the stars rise in the east and set in the west. Knowledge is applying those facts to a practical end—finding your way across a vast ocean.

They were old salts. These guys are amazing, he thought. They feel everything on the canoe. It takes a lot of experience to be like them. During the first week at sea, he had carefully observed his crew. I had a lot of confidence in everybody.

But everybody helped on the canoe. Whatever you needed to do, people were there to make it easier. On July 10th, six days out, the wind piped up. Passed the halfway point to the equator yesterday.

They sailed on a beam reach, the wind steady from the east-southeast. Nainoa lifted the sweep to bring the canoe into the wind, put it down to steer off. Sometimes he steered by the clouds. While this may seem improbable, the atmosphere in the Pacific is so clear you can see cloudbanks far away and their motion, pushed along by steady trade winds, is so predictable you can adjust for it.

Must know the speed of the clouds and the direction they are moving and estimate how far away they are. Plus they change. He wrote about ways to improve the rigging.

He considered the cut of her sails, how to properly use the sweep, the shape of its blade and how to make it better. He observed the booms bending where the sheets were attached. Can the pulleys, or blocks as mariners call them, be moved to better guide the sheets? The closer you haul in—the closer the angle to the mast step the sheet line should be.

When you let the sail out—the farther the sheet line should be from the mast step. Ben had never been to sea before. He was concerned about boredom and the frustration that it might bring, especially in the Doldrums.

He kept busy. He made mental lists of what to do in emergencies. He played chess and studied medical books. Catamarans are considered a recent innovation inspired by racing sailors seeking speed. But in Polynesia, such craft were invented thousands of years ago—during a time when ponderous single-hull vessels were evolving in the western world. Limited by stone and shell tools and the lack of iron fastenings, Polynesians could not fashion large European style plank-on-frame ships.

Small outrigger canoes would not be seaworthy for long voyages, nor could they carry the cargo and people necessary to settle new islands. Large outrigger canoes would be unwieldy. So someone, thousands of years ago, thought of bridging two canoes with a solid deck. An advanced sailing craft was born out of necessity confronting the limits of a primitive technology. A sailing vessel with a single hull heels away from the wind, so monohull sailors must constantly deal with a tilted world that, over many days at sea, produces fatigue.

And her hulls are lean and narrow, so she does not pound into the waves. She slices through them with what can only be described as grace. The contrast in oceangoing comfort between one hull and two is like that on land between a truck and a Cadillac.

She danced one way if she was running with the wind and another if she was sailing into it. The possible combinations are infinite, so the choreography was complex. If they faltered, she reminded them. She turned up into the wind and slowed and shook her sails. Or she might turn downwind, speed up and pull at her tiller. All these were clues to maintaining a steady course, an important task for any navigator, but particularly so for one finding his way without instruments.

Determining longitude depends on dead reckoning, and dead reckoning, in turn, depends on keeping track of your course. As Nainoa became more familiar with the canoe and the ocean around him, he recognized three patterns of swells—from the northeast, east and southeast. Steering almost due north, he noticed that when he fell off the wind only a few degrees the canoe quieted down.

Turning further downwind, with the breeze now off the quarter, the canoe assumed a gentle corkscrew motion: one half of the front hull riding up the face of the wave, one half of the back hull sliding down the face of the wave, with the lee hull digging in. Turning back into the wind it got noisy, the ride became ragged—the canoe pitched and rolled, she took spray over the windward hull and Nainoa felt her pound in the soles of his feet.

Under a totally cloudy sky, when no celestial clues were observable, the canoe provided plenty of information to sail a steady course. Any vessel will do this but none so completely as a catamaran. Twin hulls, each reacting separately to the shape of the ocean, tell sailors much more than a single hull can.

The double canoe, shaped by a long evolution, communicates almost perfectly with a sensitive human being. The days merged in an easy rhythm of rising and sinking suns and of spinning stars. Nainoa was comfortable with all of his crewmates, but he felt a special connection with his old friend Snake Ah Hee.

Snake was generous to a fault, naturally caring and considerate. He worked hard and said little, except to smile and make light of some difficult moment. And what a smile! I told him I would take him off the watch list but he said no. Snake is the epitome of the true ocean man. You can see it in his eyes, you can see it in his hair, in his skin. He is a quiet man, very thoughtful, deep.

Most of the crew members would focus their steering on the compass. They would watch that needle. They would not pay that much attention to the rest of the world around them. Just hold that needle in its place.

But Snake would watch it the least. He used all his senses to steer the canoe. What type of power steering cords do you use on a Chevy Caprice Classic? How do you unlock the gold steering wheel on Mario kart 7? What is the difference between power assisted steering and power steering? What does it mean when your steering wheels makes noise when turning?

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