Sea knots

As I mentioned in my updated CAS plan, I will be learning sea knots. It is useful to me since I do sailing and will also be useful when I will start making rigging for my ship model. It is also related to the CAS outcomes because it involves learning a new skill.

So to start with I will show to basic knots that I already know.

Bowline:

The Bowline is considered to be the boaters' prime knot. It is used to tie a loop in the end of a rope. It has the advantage of not jamming, compared to some other loop forming knots.

Reef knot:

Reef knot or square knot a general purpose knot for tying two pieces of string. However, it cannot be overly stressed. The knot gets its name from its use on sailing ships, when the sails were "reefed" - rolled up and tied to the cross spar with a reef knot.

Project: film

As I already mentioned, I decided to make a film out of the clips that were recorded when my father went to Galapagos islands with the diving club.

I have spent some time watching what was recorded and and thinking of the best way to join it together. One the questions that I faced was to decide which editing program to use. I thought that using a advanced video editing software like Final Cut Pro would not be the best idea for this particular project because it would take a lot of time just to learn how to use it. Taking into account that the project should not be too long I decided to use iMovie. It has most of the necessary tools and is not too complicated.

However, iMovie had one considerable disadvantage: it did not support the MPEG file format in which the clips were recorded. So the next step was to find a good video converter. After reading some reviews I decided to download Micro Video Converter. It is a cheap but surprisingly good program. I tried it on a couple of clips and it  converted them to apple mp4 almost without reducing the quality. So I am currently converting the clips and thinking on the best way to join them together.

Ship: planking

As I already said, I have started planking my model. I used stripes of 1mm plywood. Because of their thinness they were very fragile. Only after a couple of them have broken I remembered that it is useful to put them in water for 15-20 minutes before gluing.

On the photo below you can the keel. It consists of three parts (one of the joints is visible on the picture) and is glued over the paper that supports the planking. The forward part, which is called the stem, was very hard to cut out. With an electric drill I made a lot of small holes on the perimeter until it was possible to break the part off. After that I adjusted its shape with a sharp knife.

Updates to the activity plan

Project: film

My Dad went with a diving club to the Galapagos Islands where he made some video clips. I thought that it would be great to make a film out of those. So I offered my help for the diving club. I think that it is a nice project for my CAS program because I will be learning some new skills and doing a bit of service. Also personally I would like to do it. After the CAS film competition I wanted to try to make a film using better software. And now I have a chance to do that.

New skills: sea knots

For the last two summer holidays I have been learning to sail. An essential part of sailing is learning sea knots. Of course I already know some like ‘bowline’ and ‘reef knot’ but I want to learn more. So this term I am planning to learn some more knots, maybe one knot a week.

Personal challenges

This is just a set of targets for me to work for. They involve activities that I have been doing before I started my CAS program.

• ·      Golf. Practice sings: improve distance and accuracy. 120 m with 7 iron.
• ·      Sailing. Improve run (going downwind), gybe with minimum loss of speed. In future perspective Iam planning to get a captains license (that is after I will be 18)
• ·      Skiing. Develop technique in general.
• ·      Diving. Improve my buoyancy.

These are activities that I usually do on holidays. I will post reviews on my progress when I will have chance to do them with a more precise explanation of the challenge.

I will also continue the activities I was doing before.

Ship

I have spent quite a lot of time on this holidays working on the model. I have finished the deck. It is now almost ready for gluing. The next step will be the planking. I have spent a lot of time thinking what will be the best way to do this. For the scale that I have chosen the planks must be quite thin. Finally I decided to glue stripes of thick paper between the ribs and than glue the planks to the paper. At the bow and the stern where the curvature is maximum I used pieces of foam plastic which I than shaped to the desirable form. First I glued only half of the strips so that it would be more convenient to glue the deck.

Then I glued the deck and the rest of the stripes.

I have already started gluing the planks. I will post some photos of that later.













P.S. I almost forgot to mention that the mission statement (I wrote about it earlier) actually won the first place together with another group. Thanks to my teammates: Han and Benny.