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Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

gotheborg.se

81–90 of 144 posts

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#81
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least it wasn't Wasa showing up.. *Vasa

In Swedish, the v and the w only became distinct pretty recently. There are still people alive today who don't know which to pick if they don't already know how a v-sounding word is spelled. Also, the same person might say "Vilma" one day and "Wilma" the next, just as an example of the confusion (and Wilma is their own daughter...) Also, also, I have had older Swedes be completely unable to hear a difference between…

Similar in Norway. One of the most common pronunciation mistakes Norwegian makes when speaking English is failing to get the v/w distinction right. "Wally" instead of "valley" etc.. I've lived in London 23 years and spoken English for 38, and I still often need to consciously pay attention to that.

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#82

Wonderful story of comraderie on the high seas. It's one of the best things about cruising. Its as close to space travel as you're going to get, and you really stop taking humans for granted out there. I've been sailing my whole life, but never lost a rudder (thank God!). With dinghy racing (as opposed to cruising) it's common to learn how to steer without the rudder, using the trim of the sails and your weight in th…

I've lost a rudder but on a small boat in a river. We made it back under our own efforts but was hairy.

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#83
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who doesn't know about the Vasa, you can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship) It was a Swedish warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 after making it less than a mile (1,3 km). It was salvaged in 1961 and is today one of Sweden's most famous tourist attractions.

Think it's my favorite museum ever I have visited. Didn't think I would end up spending the whole day there when I was in Stockholm.

So while in Stockholm you found you grew to like some of it much more than expected…

You may want to find a good therapist, this is classic Stockholm Syndrome.

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#84
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would never tow so close that it would become a risk unless manouverering the disabled vessel in close quarters, and then it usually is preferable to tie the vessels alongside each other. You can see the distances they chose in this particular case in the third image from their Instagram post. https://www.instagram.com/p/CryES46tgWl/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2...

Yeah and that's further than it looks. I doubt the smaller vessel would have enough line on board to reach that! It's really far. Of course with two boats easy to find enough line.

For commercial vessels like Götheborg they usually bring many hundreds of meters of mooring lines. Easy to get 20-30m runs on several lines when mooring.

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#85
post #38

I know nothing about sailing so this is probably wrong, but I was slightly surprised at the fact that the people on board the small boat didn't get rescued onto the Götheborg. Given the concerns in the article about the size difference possibly causing problems, wouldn't that have been safer?

I suspect they were not in immediate danger, the small boats rudder was inoperative, so they had little to no steering control. I suspect mainly poising a navigation hazard for other boats in the area. What they needed, and got was a tow. The funny thing is, they were grateful for the assistants of the Götheborg, but a bit incredulous that such a large ship would go out of it's way to help them. (they were also worri…

>such a large ship

It wasn’t quite the size that made it notable ;)

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To German ears, the difference between v and w is really difficult to hear. I speak from experience…

What part of Germany are you from? Isn't there a clear distinction between Wolke (cloud) and Volk (people). I ask this as Dutch speaker (so, speaker of 'West Germanic') where there is a very clear distinction between volk and wolk (which presumably have the exact same meaning and origin as their German counterparts). Anecdotally, I once spoke with Russian students (this was long ago) who insisted that there was a Rus…

Yes, but "volk" is IPA /fɔlk/ while Wolke is /ˈvɔlkə/. That's a major difference.

But in this context, the "v" we're talking about is the English IPA /'v/ (e.g. valley /ˈvæli/) vs. IPA /w/ (e.g. wool, IPA /wʊl/) and that difference is far less noticeable.

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#87

I know nothing about sailing so this is probably wrong, but I was slightly surprised at the fact that the people on board the small boat didn't get rescued onto the Götheborg. Given the concerns in the article about the size difference possibly causing problems, wouldn't that have been safer?

The towing was a fairly simple procedure and they could maintain a safe distance. Transporting crew between ships on the high sea would be a dangerous and complex task. They might not even have the equipment for it.

I have a question. this is going to be a really uninformed question but keep in mind my knowledge of boat transfers come from movies and I don’t consider Pirates of the Caribbean authoritative on the topic.

What makes it so difficult, and what sort of special equipment is required?

I know, I know, cargo nets on the side of the ship are not going to be sufficient, easy as it looks in pop entertainment, I just don’t know why.

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#88

> This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it? If only the rescue crew dressed the part they could have believed they somehow managed to time travel.

There a literally books written with nearly that exact premise for the plot

Re: Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg

#90

Just imagine in the 1500's deciding to set sail to Asia. Hardly having a map. No communication means, food that's not easy to store, nothing more then a compass and if lucky a shitty map. If things go wrong no one is coming to help. Wild times. Was actually the reason they founded the Amsterdam stock market to spread & share the risk of the ships not returning. I know many bad things happen at well, but it's still a…

This makes me think of this haunting 1919 painting of Elcano's return from the first circumnavigation of the earth in 1522:

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/gAXBe3j1qN_gLQ

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