Had a beautiful sail from Cocoa Village to Titusville yesterday. At first, I put the sails up just for form while motoring along. The angle of the wind appeared too tight to get much momentum. I was wrong. Turned off the engine and sailed the whole way north in the channel.
Once past the NASA Causeway bridge, we started beating east against the wind. I wanted to get closer to the launch site. And besides, the weather was just perfect for an afternoon sail. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. The conditions reminded me of the Chesapeake Bay and the boat pretty much sailed itself.
I've heard reports that Geminis will sail as little as 35 degrees off the wind. Mine won't. It's closer to 75 degrees when forward speed falls off drastically on Split Decision. If I take my hand off the wheel and let her sail herself, she wants to go pretty much perpendicular to the wind with sails close hauled.
I anchored near some other boats and went to bed.
I got a call just before 2 am, and another soon after. Thanks again Grampa and Fred for the wake-up calls. Fired up the computer and boatcam, and waited. At 2:28 am there was a bright light and the Shuttle took off. It was eerily quiet as the Shuttle rose. It soon disappeared into the low clouds, and that's when the sound hit. The roar probably lasted longer than the view of the Shuttle, but it was all over in well less than a minute. It was disappointing how quickly it was over, but still very impressive.
Grampa says he was able to see the launch on the boatcam. Unfortunately, I screwed up the boatcam settings, so I don't have any saved images. And I didn't have time to snap a picture, it was over so quick. The image is one I stole from the NASA website.
Update: Grampa again saves the day, and the image from the boatcam.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
That was Quick
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9 comments:
Aw, sorry I missed it, but I was out cold. Did it look like the NASA picture?
Scott,
Fred and I saw the launch on the boatcam TV. It was a bit dark but there was one frame that you could see it climbing. Did you take the sunglasses off the cam?
We had also put on NASA-TV on the computer and would switch back and forth to get the full effect.
Nasa-tv is at
www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html. You do not have to press play and you can hear conversations between mission control and the astronauts. You can also click on the schedule to see what you are watching. There is occasional narration too to give more info.
We enjoyed the launch and thank you for making it available to us.
Rose
Scott,
Sorry - noticed link cut off. It is at
www.nasa.gov/
multimedia/nasatv/
index.html.
They are also replaying
the launch throughout
the day.
Just added the boatcam pic which Grampa saved. Woohoo!
I was in the Indian river, about nine miles out from the launch site. So my view wasn't as clear as the NASA pic, but it was pretty good. Wish it had lasted longer.
wow - grandpa's pic is alot brighter than what Fred and I saw on the cam.
That may be due to some synchronization issues between the upload from my computer to the server, and between the server and the flash viewer on your computer. It's possible that you could view slightly different images.
Or maybe grampa brightened the pic in photoshop. Or maybe something else. Who knows?
I printed the picture directly from the blog and then scanned it for you this morning. No manipulations of the picture beyond that.
well, grampa has the winning pic for sure. So glad you were able to print it out and scan it. On our end, it was too dark to see much except for a faint light.
Bet Rose and Fred missed the actual launch shot. There was a little red dot that appeared in the sky in several prelaunch shots that I thought might have been the shuttle ascending late in the launch, but I was patient and waited and captured the shot.
There appears to be a slight difference between the webcam time and real time.
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