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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Boxing Day ??????
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| Paul_L Guru  Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
I'm confused. What is "Boxing Day" anyway? Does it refer to: a. Servants receiving boxes of leftovers to take home after they have worked all day on Christmas. b. A left-handed reference to St. Stephen's day. c. A grudging acknowledgement of the Polish practice of celebrating 8 days of Christmastide. d. A reference to some obscure practice of packaging the leftover parts of bodies from a Rugby match on the day after Christmas. or e. An outright attempt by the people of the Commonwealth to befuddle, bemuse, confound, perplex, bedevil and generally mess up us Polaks from NY. Anyway, have a great Boxing Day anyway, whatever that is. Pavel Artur Jan Waclaw Lepkowski in NY |
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TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5911 |
I think the main reason was a.Servants receiving boxes of leftovers to take home after they have worked all day on Christmas. Different religions/nations do the gift giving on different days. The day has been taken over by the big retailers and the Boxing Day sales are a big event - much like your Black Friday sales. The sales are not something I have every precipitated in, even when I was a retailer. I preferred the tradition of watching the start of the 'Test Match' (cricket) and the start of the Sydney - Hobart yacht race. In the words of my guiding light: "Bah... Humbug" Jim VK7JH MMedit MMBasic Help |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Hi Jim. The Sydney - Hobart race is something that I could get my teeth into. It appears to be about 750 miles, if my charting is close. I would expect it to take a 40 meter boat to do it in about 44 hours running at 15 knots if the winds were good. I spent much of my youth during WWII mooching off a great aunt and uncle who lived in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Uncle Martin had a 1937 Wheeler 64 foot flush deck displacement cruiser which he named after himself, "Martin B. Uzarowicz". (With a name like that people used to think it was a Great Lakes ore carrier.) It was a twin to the one President Franklyn Delano Roosevelt owned. Before WWII got going Uncle Martin and Aunt Manona, (a very unusual diminutive of the French name "Manon"), used to sail from Boothbay to Greece and return every summer. That was a round trip of about 10,400 miles! They would do the one way passage at about 12 knots in 16 days nonstop. I never did get to go to the Mediterranean but after Uncle Martin died in 1950 I used to pilot the "Martin B" back and forth between Boothbay Harbor and Saint Petersburgh, Florida each year, a distance of about 1580 miles. It would take me about 5 days nonstop. Aunt Manona liked to have the boat available in the winter in Florida and the summer in Maine. Now the Cricket 'Test Match' is just another one of those attempts by the people of the Commonwealth to befuddle, bemuse, confound, perplex, bedevil and generally mess up us Polaks from NY. Are you sure you guys don't make up those rules on the spot when you're attempting to explain the game to us 'Yanks'? Pavel Artur Jan Waclaw Lepkowski in NY |
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| TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5911 |
The race record for the 628 nautical miles is one day 18hrs 23mins 12secs but it looks like being beaten this time. One of the lead yachts has just retired with a broken hydraulic ram, which operates the canting keel (too many fancy mod-cons). Usually the weather changes half way through and we have lots of retirements. Occasionally things are much worse. http://www.rolexsydneyhobart.com/tracker/ Now, where did I leave my cricket bat... Jim VK7JH MMedit MMBasic Help |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Jim, Those are hot boats! Hydraulic operated canting keel indeed! The record time seems to be about 14.8 knots. Are they 40 meter class boats? It's too bad the old "J" class had to be discontinued. The last Americas Cup race with the J boats was back in 1939 I believe. I saw one of those monsters once. They ran with a crew of 30 and their hull speed was about 22 knots! It's pretty amazing that there is such a big difference in the tracks of the leaders. The #2 boat, Giacomo, took a much shallower tack earlier than the other top six boats. I see from the tracker map that you have a Kosciuszko National Park just south of Canberra. I thought you Aussies were smart enough to not allow Polaks in Oz. Hmmmpf. Why do you guys call it a cricket bat. It's flat .... it's a paddle, not a bat! Paul in NY |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2870 |
GDay Paul, Why do you blokes call it a Baseball bat? It is a matchstick not a bat ..  Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Bill7300 Senior Member  Joined: 05/08/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 158 |
It's an open race, rather than a class event, Paul. The fleet therfore consists of boats of many various sizes. The race record is likely to be contested by the boats with longer LWL, given the laws of physics, but there is also much interest in the Handicap Winner each year, where the much smaller boats get their chance to strut their stuff. Small in this instance can go to 30 feet or even below, although I vaguely recall there was some effort to restrict the entry of smaller boats after the tragic weather encountered by the 1998 race. 40 feet might be closer to the average length. Lots of Polaks in Oz. Many arrived as displaced persons after WWII and they made major contributions to building the country, with particular contributions to our Snowy Mountains hydro electricity generation and irrigation scheme and on a smaller scale, the hydro electricity scheme here in Tasmania. Kosciuszko happens to be the highest mountain in Oz, in the Snowy Mountains, and from memory, named after the Polish hero by one Pawel Strezlecki, another distinguished Polak and a very active explorer in the 19th century. Bill Bill |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Hi Bill. A handicap race is always fun. In the old days you never could tell who's ahead until the math majors finish crunching the numbers. Computers have removed the suspense. I don't think I ever heard about bad weather for the 1998 race. I imagine that the southern oceans can be particularly bad at times. We never had an really spectacularly bad weather in Maine. The Gulf of Maine is pretty deep and is effectively cut off from the open Atlantic by the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. I used to crew on a purse-seiner where we would motor across the gulf for about 180 nautical miles in about 12 hours, spend 6 hours locating a school of cob, run the sein around them in a half hour with dories, pull the sein for 3 hours, then head home with 20,000 pounds of cod in the hold. There was a lot of fog, due to the colder air over the warm Gulf Stream waters, but the only rough stuff was when we crossed over the bank. Waves would comb and break in 40 feet of water. I'm sorry that the Polaks invaded. I'm afraid that you just have to put up with us. Just keep in mind that we were put here for a purpose .... to confuse the rest of you. Pavel Artur Jan Waclaw Lepkowski |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2870 |
GDay Paul, Polaks are no problem here, don't forget we are a mixed bunch over here.. Starting with our Aboriginal brothers and then many years of convict blood then Greek and Italian immigrants and post war Eastern Block (including my Wife's Ukranian Family) then the Asian influx then the Somalians and Islamic intakes. Australia is a constantly changing place, both good and bad,. No doubt like most places in the world.. (My surname derives from Norway so I would probably have been a Viking if born 1000 years ago. The 1998 Sydney-Hobart was a disaster that cost 6 sailors their lives.. Of about 115 boats that started only 44 made it.. You can do a bit of a read here: Syd-Hob 1998 That was the year I got married.. Kind Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
HI Mick, I still say it's a paddle, not a bat! That 1998 race was a mess. The idiots who ran it should have been drawn and quartered. I feel sorry for nations containing only a monolithic population where everybody tends to have the same viewpoints and reactions to events. I'll take a polyglot population anytime, even if it does contain Polaks. Just pretend they don't exist and you won't have a problem with them. You really are a youngster! In 1998 I had been married for 30 years, and I didn't get married until I was nearly 30! Paul in NY |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3661 |
Cricket goes back hundreds of years so it's rather late to argue that a cricket bat ought not to be called a bat! (Especially by anyone of a nation founded quite recently.) Now, on to "football"... Oh, or the "world series"... John |
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