This cute Bubble Street comic seemed appropriate for the lovey dovey day that is Valentine's. The wife didn't get a chuckle out of this one as much as I did...go figure.
Round boats are a fascination, and the quffa, a basket-built boat from Iraq, is among the most fascinating because of its well-documented antiquity, its common use well into the 20th century, and its sometimes very large -- occasionally immense -- size. A quffa in Baghdad in 1914 (Source: Wikipedia) Click any image to enlarge. Known also as a kuphar and by various alternate spellings, the quffa was described in the 5th century BCE by Herodotus, who stated that they were built in Armenia for one-way trading trips on the Euphrates. In his account, they were round, built of willow frames and covered with leather. The insides were protected by straw. They carried wooden casks of wine from Armenia to Babylon, along with at least one donkey and two paddlers. One paddler would pull from the front; the other would push from the rear. Upon reaching its destination, the boat was disassembled and the leather cover folded up, to be carried by the donkey on the road trip back home -- th...
(image from Clifford Hawkins; The Dhow . Click to enlarge.) Tacking a dhow, with its huge and heavy settee spar, is apparently not as difficult as might be assumed, provided that a sizable crew is available. Clifford W. Hawkins, in his book The Dhow: an Illustrated History of the Dhow and its World , describes observing the process from aboard a small boat: "As we closed in on the sambuk [a common two-masted dhow of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, South Arabia, and East Africa] I could see that some action was about to take place. The crew, rising off their haunches, casually sauntered to working positions; one right up int he bows at the mains'l tack, four at the shrouds, two to the yard's backhaul and a small group ready to handle the main sheet. These were the action stations for wearing ship, the preliminary operation for sailing on the opposite tack. When the critical moment arrived the helmsman threw over the wheel to bring the wind aft and the big mains'l was a...
Just Launched Gulfstream 42 - Design 1624 - Circa 1960 (Note Ice Around Waterline!) Sparkman & Stephens and Derecktor Shipyards have a long history of design-build. Starting in 1953 with the Gulstream 36, 34 yachts have been built by Derecktor to our designs. Not a bad run. Here's a list. S&S Designed Yachts Built by Derecktor Design # Yacht Name Description LOA Year Built 2642 Zingaro World Cruising Sloop 112' 2000 2625 Sleighride Fast Day Sailer 77' 1996 2615 Valkyrie Auxiliary Sloop 95' 1996 2579 Mit-Sea-Ah Luxury Motoryacht 114' 1993 2527 Encore IMS Sloop 73' 1988 2512 Lady Frances Luxury Jet Yacht 105' 1989 2504 Obsession IOR Mini-Maxi 70' 1986 2164 Thunderhead IOR Sloop 56' 1974 1978 Valiant 12 Meter 63' 1971 1974 Skimmer Research Powerboat...
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