PotC 4

Pirates of the Caribbean 4, On Stranger Tides has been announced with a summer of 2011 release date.

The title may come from Tim Power's novel by the same name. I don't see much of the plot being usable for a new Disney movie. The novel follows a puppeteer named Jack Chandagnac as his ship is taken and he falls in with pirates. Jack rises in the ranks to become Captain Jack Shandy and win the girl. Along the way he witnesses Blackbeard immersing himself in a mystic fountain and gaining supernatural powers.

I've read several of Tim Powers' novels. His cosmology is consistent between this book and the Anubis Gate which is set in the England of Dickens. The Anubis Gate is a sprawling novel and possibly Powers' best although On Stranger Tides has its own following. Many people consider it to be the pirate novel.

According to Ron Gilbert, On Stranger Tides was one of his inspirations for the Monkey Island games along with the Disney ride. This could bring the creative cycle full circle.

The Lost Coconut

This is a neat ship. It has a foam base covered with lumber salvaged from a back porch. It is 30 feet long and looks like a real ship.

More pictures here and a video here.

The Last Sail

I went sailing Saturday for probably the last time of the season. It went well. I finally found the secret to tacking a Whitehall - cheat. If I give a few strokes with a paddle then it tacks nicely. I've noted before that Whitehalls are meant to go straight so making a quick turn before it loses momentum doesn't work very well.

I didn't drop the centerboard. It didn't seem to need it. We were racing back and forth across the lake pretty well without it.

It had been out of the water for three weeks so the seams had opened up. I recently bought a battery-powered pump and this took care of the water nicely. It isn't as fast as the hand pump I've been using but it's a lot easier to use. I just push the start button and keep an eye on it.

We started in late afternoon then had a family picnic. I was worried about getting the boat back to the boat ramp before dark so I took down the mast and rowed back. I had two family members rowing, two others riding, and I took the tiller. It works nicely with five people (especially when the front bench isn't blocked by a swivel gun).

Probably the Santa Maria Pirate Event will be its last time in the water this year. After that I expect the water to be too cold to launch.

Pirates of Paynetown 2009

The 2009 Pirates of Paynetown was a major success. Around 150 pirates gathered making a decent-sized town for the pirates to attack. There were around ten boats, some of them stored in camp. I think that five or six participated in the pirate attack and these held more people than last year. New events included an improvised naval battle and night cannon firing, both on Friday. There was dancing after dark on Saturday and a pirate funeral on Sunday when the skeleton pirate hanging as a warning was finally laid to rest.

This was the 4th PoP and the third that I have attended. Attendance has jumped each year and may be nearing the limits of what the site can support. There are good and bad points about this. The good points are that more people means more going on and it is growing in a good way - accuracy is not being sacrificed and the new people are adding new displays. The Saturday night Pirate Pitch-in dinner has improved a great deal with nearly everything being cooked on-site and not a single bucket of KFC to be seen.

There are a few drawbacks to the increase. With 25-50 people, most people congregate at the tavern after dark. With over 100 people, a smaller precentage went to the tavern. Groups were big enough to support their own gatherings. Also, fewer groups include pirate or nautical items in their camps. It is really a canvas village that happens to have some pirates in it.

The beach has become a problem. In 2007, the water level in the lake was down and there was plenty of beach available. That Winter the lake flooded and the beach eroded making it smaller. This year the water level was much higher and rising while we were there, covering a lot of the beach. That doesn't leave much room for the boats. There are plans to add a floating dock for next year.

The wind was a problem on Saturday. The boats had a lot of trouble being in the right position and the waves were pretty high for a lake. I didn't measure the wind until it had died down a bit. Even then it was in the 9-10 MPH range. On Sunday it was in the 6-8 MPH range and things were much easier. In fact, the Sunday battle went about perfectly. The pirates attacked, the shore batteries opened up, the pirates landed and were opposed by British regulars and militia but a band of "land pirates" appeared at their flank and routed them (which gave the "boat pirates" a chance to land safely), and the camp was taken.

This event is becoming one of the best events of the year for pirates who are serious about history.

Hook - What Went Wrong?

Hook just showed up on cable. This seemed like a great idea when it was first announced. Speilburg was still highly acclaimed and he said that Robin Williams was the only actor who could pull off the role. The result was poor. What happened?

One basic problem was that it mixed two worlds. A corporate lawyer with no time for his kids had to travel to a place where people can fly and someone can lose his shadow. The two were too dissimilar.

A big problem is that the movie was just too long. Every part of it goes on and on, especially the beginning and end. The movie could easily have had a half hour or more cut from it and it would have been better.

Robin Williams' child-like act has been over-rated. The same thing happened with Popeye, another Williams movie with high expectations that flopped at the box office.

The script assumes that the viewer is totally familiar with the original book.

The end has several problems. Hook kills Rufio, one of the Lost Boys. So what does Peter do? Gathers his kids and prepares to leave. It is only after Hook threatens his children that he fights. Even then, he humiliates Hook then leaves. Hook is finally killed by the crocodile from the book. Despite being dead and stuffed, the crocodile still falls on Hook in slow motion and devours him. Hook has een stopped but Rufio is unavenged.

A more interesting version would have been to show Neverland from the pirate's viewpoint. Why are they hanging around Neverland? Why don't they leave? Have they become as ageless as the Lost Boys?

This just in - Cannonballs can sink a ship!

A cannonball was found wedged into the keel of a ship that was sunk during the Napoleonic wars. The big question was if the cannonball could actually pierce the ship's extra thick oak hull? The University of Haifa in Israel answered that question using scale models. The answer is yes, even at low velocities a cannonball can pierce a thick oak hull.

This part is interesting:

The lower the velocity, the more energy was absorbed in causing damage to the hull, and the more the wood splintered, which would have caused more harm to the ship's personnel. The results of this experiment, Kahanov said, are of much significance to the study of the vessel and to the study of naval battles in this period.

Remember the Mythbusters Pirate Special (they just reran it last weekend)? One myth they investigated was the danger of splinters. They decided that splinters were not all that dangerous. This experiment shows the flaw in the Mythbusters' experiment. They used a real cannon but they had it at close range. The ball cleanly pierced the hull, doing even less damage than their air cannon. If they had moved the cannon back a few hundred yards they would have gotten a different result.

Sailing the Whitehall

We took the boat (now named "Firefly") out sailing today. This was our second time sailing (plus a third time at Saint Mary's City with the boat overloaded). The wind was from the West and the lake runs North and South so we sailed up and down it a few times. Combining this with our experiences the first time we took it out on that lake I can say a few things about sailing the Whitehall.

First - when the wind is right it goes like a bat out of hell. We were overtaking the modern sailboats. At one point I was hoping to literally sail rings around one (or at least pass it, tack and pass it again) but the wind died and out boats separated.

It tacks poorly. Whitehalls are designed to go in a straight line. It overcomes this while under sail but during a tack you are sort of coasting, using forward momentum to carry you through the turn (for landlubbers, tacking is making a turn while sailing into the wind so that the wind is on the other side of the boat).

The alternative is to jibe. This is the same as tacking except the wind is coming from behind. This works fairly well although the boom swings rather sharply and I have to be ready with the tiller for when the wind catches it. We did this several times and it worked fine. I was just reading up on jibing and I see that it is recommended that the centerboard be raised for this maneuver. The boat tips as the wind catches it from the other side and that would help since the boat could be pushed sideways instead of tipping.

Firefly had been out of the water for three weeks in dry weather and it showed. A lot of water leaked through the seams. Pumping it out let me more tired than rowing would have.