How a 16th Century Explorer's Sailing Ship Works
youtube.com
youtube.com
If you're into reading/watching fiction about the Age of Sail (more so late 18th/early 19th century, so later than this video), I can't recommend Master and Commander (also known as the Aubrey/Maturin Series) enough. It's a lot of fun, witty, and full of all the jargon you just watched.
Of course you can also learn to sail - if you're lucky like we are here in Boston, there's affordable options for this that also do great things for the community, such as a sliding scale membership for adults + kids, accessible races, and more: https://www.community-boating.org/
After reading Aubrey-Maturin 5 times through I didn’t think I could appreciate it even more but this podcast revealed a whole new depth of awe for the author. Like Steve Jobs insisting the inside of the Apple II looked beautiful even if no one would see it level of craftsmanship.
When I first read it I was like - yeah right, another exasperation l. But a few years later I happened to go to a sailing coarse in Greece (Thessaloniki) and OMG was the author right. There are a lot of seas / oceans about, but very few places with so many small islands to scoot about. And honestly going on a boat as a tourist does not really prepare you for the experience of sailing yourself. When the wind powers the boat there is no noise, you’re just gliding through with the power of your wit and ages of engineering.
Dolphins swim around you, cause its fun for them and no smelly propellers, and the camaraderie you form with your fellow sailers is intense, cause you depend on each other for survival.
And at the end of the day you anchor in some cosy beach, swim around and go to the local taverna for cheap drinks and amazing food.
Sailing the aegean sea is definitely something you should do at least once before you die.
Have no idea how one would search for such a thing…
They are a little less contemplative than the O'Brien's works but no less excellent.
The launch had me in tears.
For the uninitiated: Dude buys a rotten sailing yacht. Rebuilds it from the keel up, starting with sourcing the lumber! Lots of tedium and ups and downs… and oh so much amazing craftsmanship!
Spoiler alert: it’s beautiful.
It took 7 years with seemingly 5-10 skilled volunteers, an (almost literal) boatload of free or subsidized products, as well as direct income from sponsorships/ads/patreon.
His initial plan was to spend about half of each year working as a sailor and the other half working by himself on the boat, which he had moved to the empty yard of some generous friends who also let him take over their unused woodshop.
[edit] I dunno, “smart” isn’t even right to describe my ideal YouTube—I’d want to include stuff like those “slow”-style videos that aren’t necessary smart. Just non-clickbait YouTube? Low-dopamine-abuse YouTube?
Nine times out of ten, this one included, I'll see the video on YouTube THEN here in HN.
Here's one with some good stuff https://theawesomer.com/category/videos/
It has some recency bias on "junkfood" I might watch from time to time but it clears away quickly.
Sometimes my wife will accidentally watch something on the TV's YouTube app without signing in to her account first, and then the history delete feature comes in quite handy to ensure I don't get any knitting or kpop videos in my feed.
Yet it still learns from what I watch and though it throws some clickbait into the mix it's mostly stuff that's relevant to my interests.
You never know what it's leaving out though, so a service that curates videos based on stated interests might be interesting. On the other hand I already spend too much time on YouTube so it's not like I need more to watch.
Youtube has a tremendous library of videos, tremendous in volume and topic. You are going have to give the algorithm a little more to work with. A curation service seems nice on paper, but I think you will actually miss out on more that way, as it'll remain static over time. My YT interests ebbs and flows between various topics over time. Sometimes the algo throws something unrelated in, that takes me down a total rabbit hole for months. My current rabbit holes are synthesizers with a dash of urban planning. I basically self-curate by using subscriptions, and if the latest batch of videos from a creator move beyond my current tastes, I unsubscribe.
Another channel producing excellent work like this is Blue Paw Print, for example the B-17 Flying Fortress [2]
Going on a mission involved facing the prospect of death every time, the odds were not good, they didn't know when the next mission would come and they compensated for the stress by getting drunk a lot.
His words came back to me with extra force when I read Catch-22 years later.
To beat it you need to learn a lot about the ship and crew.
If you like detective games the only problem with it is that you only get to play it for the first time once.
Bonus fact: Lucas Pope publishes very interesting dev logs [1] that go into depth both on the setting and the technical challenges.
Funnily enough, I was at the Vasa museum yesterday in Stockholm! I enjoyed it very much, would recommend to anyone visiting Stockholm. Incredible salvage achievement.
Kudos and congrats to the creator!
was saddened by the ending abasement and skipping the last minute of the video leaves you with a nicer memory of it. (the end comment uses the whole thing as a vehicle for a genuflection about the "sordid" history of the sailing tech. really, don't be so humble, you aren't that great.) Otherwise, what an absolutely fantastic project!
It's not like he ends with a lecture to educate people about what happened, he just makes it known with brief and general language that he's knows some bad shit happened and he's not glorifying those acts. Somebody who was clueless about all of it would more or less remain so; it's a message directed towards people who are already familiar with the subject and might conceivably be offended by his video if he didn't include the end bit.
it's like performing a Bach piece and ending with, "...and he was probably a racist too." it's degrading to the art, and I don't think anyone is served by self abasement like that.