Topic: Another Davis weather instrument

[Jstx]

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=278

And 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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[Jáchym]

Very nice John!

[Jstx]

Thanks, Není zač (according to Bing translator). You're welcome aboard any time, Jáchym.
Heck, with a sizable Czech population around here, we even have lots of Czech food and a few restaurants (numbers emigrated here in the 1800's).
Though I plan on heading in the opposite direction from the CR one of these days.

Even our huge, dominate grocery chain, HEB, stocks local Czech foodstuffs, like what we call 'kolaches', etc. HEB followed Texas "Blue Laws" long after they were removed, and wouldn't sell alcoholic beverages even longer; now they have a pretty good beer and wine selection in many stores   .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Texans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Czech-American_culture_in_Texas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praha,_Texas

ftp://ftp.thc.state.tx.us/nr_program/Painted%20Churches%20MPS.pdf

[Jáchym]

Surprisingly, Bing got it right this time

Yes, I know I myself have an uncle in Dallas, but I have to admit I have never met him, he emigrated in 1968 and he had very little contact with CR until recently. We talked to each other several times over over Skype, but his Czech got so bad I had to ask him to speak in English... I just found it too difficult to understand his Czech because half of the words were in English, his pronunciation was awful and it is hard when you have to switch from language to another all the time when someone uses half of the words from Czech and the other half from English.

[Jstx]

Surprisingly, Bing got it right this time

Yes, I know I myself have an uncle in Dallas, but I have to admit I have never met him, he emigrated in 1968 and he had very little contact with CR until recently. We talked to each other several times over over Skype, but his Czech got so bad I had to ask him to speak in English... I just found it too difficult to understand his Czech because half of the words were in English, his pronunciation was awful and it is hard when you have to switch from language to another all the time when someone uses half of the words from Czech and the other half from English.

Jáchym,
Actually, where I'm from, on the border (La Frontera), many Anglos (moi) and most Mexican-Americans (the majority of the population by far), often speak Tex-Mex (AKA: Spanglish).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanglish
Like the food/cuisine with that name, it's a blend of two languages, English and Spanish; switching the words at conversational speed.
We used to travel in the interior of Mexico (mostly the Yucatán, Quintana Roo‎, Nuevo León‎, Coahuila‎) and the language barrier could be 'amusing', when dealing with the average natively Spanish-speaking person there. And I took French in school  , almost never use it.