It turns out that I do have some Davis instrumentation. After seeing and reading all the Davis related stuff around here I went to their website, and realized that they offer much more than just 'weather stations'. They market equipment that I've bought and used for decades, wind indicators, sail tell-tales, sextants, lots of other stuff.
Here are two pictures of my current Davis Windex wind indicator.
http://www.davisnet.com/product/windex-15/(man, is the Davis website a clumsy POS or what?)
The windex spends it's time about 46 feet above the waterline (air draft), around four stories up in building terms. It is a very useful visual indicator of apparent wind direction, facilitating sail, course, and boat trimming.
(BTW, pic taken underway with genoa only, mainsail down, wind was quite brisk (15-20kt, IIRC) and the genoa generated all the power needed to push a ten ton hull at above 7.5 knots, which is pretty much the max hull speed for this displacement hull (obviously non-planing hull). A pretty good example of
"solar power", eh?
Little noise, no fumes, and you can hardly
see what's going on, just harnessing the effects of one of Natures most powerful forces.
I've seen calculations of just how much power gets generated by a sailboats sails. I'm just going to take a SWAG here and guesstimate that that one genoa, ~250-300 square feet of canvas (actually a special Dacron or something material, some are even mylar/kevlar composites$$) is probably producing 3-400HP+ in those pics, without any mechanical fuss or fuel at all.
In the pic, the boat is running a "beam reach" point of sail, the apparent wind is roughly 90 degrees abeam (true wind direction is abaft the beam, perhaps 120 degrees relative bearing), usually the most powerful point.
I'll be danged, out of curiosity, I just found and used a sailor wind calculator, and I was only off 0.4 degrees on the true wind direction guess above.
http://www.hydesailsdirect.com/Articles.asp?ID=278And humans have been using them for thousands of years.
That genoa is a fairly new "Rolly Tasker Sails" sail, and one of those rags run about what an ICE new/rebuilt motor for a road vehicle costs. Get a whole suit of them and you could've been driving a Caddy Escalade or big Merc around.
Well, maybe a Camry or Suburban.)
(edited 20170213 to use reduced size pics, hope these are small enough, and add some
) (still too big but I give up
)
Davis Windex 1:
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Davis Windex 2:
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Davis TellTails/wind indicator strips, drooping on depowered genoa:
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Bow, RollyTasker genoa on Harken roller furler:
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Bowriding dolphins enjoying the WX and playing w/daughter photog:
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