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Who Needs Yamaha, Mercury or Evinrude?

30 August 2016August 30, 2016rebecca.childress@yahoo.comLeave a comment

1 IMG_2888 (Small) Who Needs Yamaha, Mercury or Evinrude? Like in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, they only need, what we think of as, a lawn mower engine of any horse power, or if they are running a tourist boat and really have the financial resources, a 3 or 4 cylinder car engine. The engine is mounted on a gimbaled bracket so it can swing sideways 360 degrees and move up and down. But also the bracket has to balance the engine so it is easy to maneuver. With a little imaginative engineering, a long tube is attached to the engine, inside of which, the slightly longer prop shaft rides. Two bladed props are sold locally to fit common drive shaft sizes…..or a machine shop can make it fit. “Long Tail” is a common name for this home made outboard. 3 IMG_2892 (Small)

When not in use, the long drive shaft is swung forward to rest inside of the boat.

Some of the fishing boat engines run with no muffler or just a straight pipe. They can be heard like a Harley a half mile away. Obviously that fisherman says “What??!!” a lot, to his wife.

A similar sort of arrangement is used to make an inboard drive.

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The pictures of the big car engines were taken of boats that never leave the confines of narrow fresh water canals. There is no room to really open up the rpms and get much more than an idle speed. It is like owning a Ferrari and never getting out of the city limits. The men who really work hard out on the ocean fishing, have the more practical engines.

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Bridge On The River Kwai

13 August 2016September 4, 2017rebecca.childress@yahoo.comLeave a comment

The first bridge was a low level wood bridge later removed after the primary bridge was built.

Bridge On The River Kwai was a hit movie released in 1957. It won 7 Academy Awards. The World War 2 movie was about the constructing of a tall wooden bridge over that river. I saw the movie and read books about the “death railway”. If you think the Nazis were despicable because of their Holocaust, the Japanese were far worse as their focus of abuse and cruelty knew no bounds. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners died working as slaves for the Japanese military, and many of them, on the “death railway”. Anyway, the movie turns out to be fiction and has nothing to do with the real bridge. The book, from which the movie was based, was written by a Frenchman. Apparently the book was a way to show the authors displeasure of the pompous, elitist attitude and unwavering bent to follow rules, when common sense would have been a better option, by the British military officers.

The first bridge over the Kwai was a quickly built low level wooden service bridge. The primary bridge was actually a bridge from the island of Java in Indonesia. The spans were disassembled and shipped to the Kwai river near the city of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. POW slaves constructed the concrete supports while the spans were in route. When the arched spans arrived by barge, they were lifted into place and fit perfectly. The movie portrays the Japanese engineers as inept. 2 The primary bridge (Small)

Another thing, the movie has British soldiers whistling a merry tune as they march into the POW camp and, assumably, as they march off to work on the bridge as though they were happy elves. Most POW slaves were little more than skin covered bones, from starvation, and could hardly get to a job site.

Eventually the two arched center spans were bombed by U.S. aircraft. The Japanese built box beam spans to replace them. So Hollywood has always made entertainment, not documentaries.

The Japanese made the box beam center spans to replace the arched beams destroyed by bombing.

5 Crossing (Small) — The Kwai is not the deep gorge shown in the movie.

Turtle Swim

9 June 2016September 4, 2017rebecca.childress@yahoo.comLeave a comment

Scores of stingrays swarmed around us, their soft smooth bodies slithering around us and obscuring our vision in a cloud of gray. That was in only 6 feet of lagoon water on the north side of Moorea, the island just west of Tahiti. Tourist boats come daily to feed the stingrays and give their snorkeling guests a fun in the water experience, up close and very touchable. But I never would have guessed the same could be done with sea turtles.

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Here on the north side of Redang island, in Malaysia, boats come in the morning full of snorkeling tourists and chopped up fish and squid. The turtles had a fascination with the silvery glint in my camera lens. When they approached too close, I had to turn it away or they would bite at it. Once when I was not looking, a turtle came up from my side and bit down on the camera but catching more of my pointer finger. The turtles are not used to their food pulling back so he let go without much of a struggle but leaving a slightly bleeding laceration. The tour boat drivers are constantly warning the snorklers not to wave their fingers around in the water.

There are people who would be disturbed to hear turtles have become a tourist attraction and are hand fed. Feeding wild animals is not always a good idea but for sea turtles, I agree with the Malaysians; the turtles have been decimated by over fishing, egg poaching and disappearance of habitat. They need all the help they can get, including some extra grub. Plus, the encounter gives the tourists a better understanding of what cool animals they are and so, are more inclined to help with their conservation.

This morning, the white beach had fresh turtle tracks leading to the brush line. There is where the turtle spent a lot of effort digging a deep depression then burring its eggs. Even though I was on the beach at first light, human foot prints were already planted around the new nest. I couldn’t really tell if the nest had been disturbed. It would be helpful if we had a heavy rain to wash away the tracks and help obscure the newness of the nest.