Tuesday, 29 October 2013

St Jude's storm

After listening the whole night long to howling winds, and mysterious thud-like sounds as presumably roof tiles, dustbin lids and fully laden lorries were being thrown up into the air with abandon, I opened my curtains with a certain amount of trepidation. 

Given that a warning had been given by the met office to expect wind speeds of up to 90mph during the night, I half expected to wake up in Kansas with the roof missing, but as it turned out I didn't think it was too bad, at least initially. That was, until I drove through the village of Marsh....

Saturday, 26 October 2013

90 Degrees South

While reading Scott's epic, 'The last Voyage' I've been entering all his latitude and longtitude co-ordinates from his journal and then inputting the data into an android app which literally plots the course he took to the South Pole by mapping it against google Earth. It's helping me to visualise his progress as he describes it.

It's such a heartbreaking read (on so many levels), but what really impresses me at the moment is the level of skill involved in such an extensive navigation.

Long before global positioning satelights (GPS), a mariner would have to first use a sextant to try to find Polaris, or the equivalent star in the Southern Hemisphere in presumably an often cloudy, night sky, then read the angle between that direction-assisting star and the horizon to work out the latitude, then he would have to use a nautical chronometer to establish the longtitude to extrapolate the approximate location and then do that EVERY single day to know exactly where he was. It fills me with absolute wonder. How on Earth did they manage? To me, that's like directing a rocket to the moon using an old ruler and a piece of string stretched taughtly against a map of the sky!

If the drifting pack ice, freezing temperatures, overloaded and leaking boat, strong tidal currents, leopard seals, killer whales, wildly spinning compass' (due to the proximity of the Pole) and ever dwindling supplies were not enough to contend with, it was nothing short of a miracle that he even got there.

Personally, if I was using the same navigation aids, I doubt I'd even make it to France even if I was half way across the channel and already pointing in the right direction!