Max Ebb: Rainy Day Projects (Perfect for the Weekend Ahead)
“Another strike against land-based weather forecasts,” Lee sighed as we both looked out the windows at torrential rain falling on the docks. I had volunteered to help with youth sailing classes on winter weekends. We would have canceled for the day, but the optimistic forecast that morning promised “clear skies by afternoon.”
Lee was there because she had convinced a traffic court judge that this would count as her required public service after she was busted for blowing through a four-way stop sign on her bike. It was not her first offense.
“Get real. I could see there was, like, no cross traffic,” she insisted, still annoyed by the whole incident. “Anyone can watch that intersection all day, and, like, not a single car comes to a full stop. They all roll through at a safe speed once they see that it’s clear, and I do exactly the same thing, exactly, on my bike. It’s just that I’m higher up with a better view and my safe speed is like, a little faster….”
“You’ll get over it,” advised the club’s official youth sailing instructor, recalling his grandfather’s advice about traffic tickets from the distant past: “Just pay the two dollars.”
“If it were still two dollars,” Lee complained.
“But our immediate problem,” I reminded her over our lunch of expertly prepared macaroni and cheese, “is that we have to come up with indoor activities for all these restless young sailors. I guess we could do another knot-tying session.”
“We did sailing knots last week,” the instructor reminded us. “And frankly, they seemed a little bored even then.”
“But the weather was perfect for sailing last week,” Lee recalled.
“Right, the weather was perfect last week; the kids could have been out on the water all day. My bad.” The youth instructor was a college student and a great sailor, always in demand as big-boat crew.
“You’ll get over it,” Lee returned the instructor’s advice.
“Remember what they say about tacticians,” I added, seeing no need to give this kid a break. “You’re only as good as your last call.”
“All right, here’s what we can do today,” the instructor suggested after watching the rain for another minute. “Paper boats. We can float them on the puddles in the parking lot.”
“Even better,” said Lee, “let’s teach them to make paper self-righting lifeboats. A little more complex than your basic paper boat, but they demonstrate the significance of the roll metacenter: It’s at the center of the rocker radius, a virtual center of rotation of a floating object. And if it’s below the center of gravity, the boat will be unstable in roll, and if the boat is placed upside down on the table, the boat will right itself.”
“No, but I know where to find them.”
Continue reading. [This story is fun!].