Saturday, June 11, 2022

Shipping

So, I am curious about the boat. Nevermind about the woman; she's dressed in perfectly normal clothes. I have no idea how that spot got on the picture. Nonetheless, if anyone would like an unexpurgated version of the image, I'd be happy to comply. It's from August, 1977.

About the boat, then. How old is it? Did it have to be towed to get the shot, or is there a photographer hanging on the tippy-tip of the bow to take the picture.  I'm sure some fish-eye lens is involved.  What sort of boat is it?  I'm guessing a sloop, but what do I know?

How old is the boat; I mean, how old is it at the time the picture was taken, 45 years ago.  We may be certain that the woman on the boat, Barbara Corser, is at least 63, or a few months shy, given the legal age of models.  So, young enough to still be sailing.  Would she need to be a sailor to some degree to get this shot, so she could jump up and lend a hand if something unexpected happened?  Or is the sea calm enough that there's no real danger here.  Judging by the small whitecap on the right, the Beaufort scale calls it a gentle breeze, as crests begin to break.

Anybody want to make a guess at the coastline in the background.  It won't look like that any more.

I swear, whenever I see the word "shipping" now, I think someone is going to talk about the word that ends in "-ship."

6 comments:

  1. I sailed on a boat about that size, it really only requires about one person... at least for the modern iteration.

    That said I was in a delta/bay, so I'm not sure if it would be worse out in the ocean.

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  2. Oh, I'm sure that the vessel "needs" only one person ... what I wanted to know was the possibility of the wind changing suddenly and the photographer, Earl Miller, being way out on the sprit. If the sailboat's being towed, it doesn't matter ... still, should Barbara know how to sail?

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  3. My brief attempt at discovering what vessel this was didn't bear fruit and with just the information in the picture it's impossible to be sure about much, but as your resident sailor I feel compelled to try to answer your questions.

    First, this vessel is almost certainly not being towed. The angle of heel clearly shows the sails are drawing and she is moving under them. There are a couple of lines around what appears to be the Sampson post, but they are not under load and don't appear to lead overboard to a tow vessel ahead. It would be more hazardous to tow a vessel under sail like this than merely escort it, so as a practical choice I can't see it being made.

    The photo is taken directly down the centerline, so I can't be sure there isn't a mizzen mast hidden back there, but assuming not, with the mast stepped that far forward, your guess of sloop is a decent one, however, given that the foresail in view is club-footed and there's possibly a forestay on the end of that sprit, behind the camera, I would guess she's a cutter rig. Could be either, for sure.

    As to her age. Again impossible to answer, at least for me, with what I can see in the photo, but it looks like a fiberglass hull with a teak deck. At the absolute earliest, that would be 1942, but much more likely 60's or 70's. Considering the glamour factor of the magazine in which this appeared in 1977, I'd imagine she was fairly recently built. There's no reason a boat that age couldn't still be sailing. My boat's hull was laid up in 1968, I'm still sailing her, and I expect to die before she does.

    I don't know anything about Barbara Corser either, but she could easily participate safely in this shoot without needing to be a sailor. By the set of the sails, the wind is about 30 degrees off the port bow and any likely fluctuations in that will have a minimal effect on her in that position. In the worst case scenario, the wind backing more than 30 degrees, more than momentarily, which would be very unlikely with that sky that distance from the shore, Barbara would need to be prepared to shift her ass aft to the main mast for a moment. I would have briefed her on what she should do and how I would indicate it to her before she went forward if I was at the helm and I'm sure that sailor did too.

    The only danger here would be if the helmsman had no experience as a sailor or lost control of his or her faculties somehow. Even then, stuff mostly happens quite slowly at sea. They are moving at maybe 5 miles per hour over a soft surface with nothing around them after all.

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  4. Very, very cool. Thank you Sterling.

    I knew you'd answer ... I only needed to wave a bit of cheese under your nose.

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  5. That's a very entertaining answer, thank you Sterling !

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