Almost 3 years ago now my wife and I bought our Pearson 365 Ketch “Jenny La Ver” (now THIRD DAY) in Santa Cruz and have been getting her ready for a multi-year cruise with our two kids ages 10 and 11. Our plans our to Cruise down through Central America and through the Canal, to the US East Coast. Along the way we plan to film our experiences for DVD release, so your productions are a great resource in a quality production!

All the best to you and your crew.

Rich Boren
S/V THIRD DAY

Some historical fictions are rather pervasive. When I was a pup I was taught, in school no less, that Columbus challenged the common knowledge that the earth was flat. I learned much later, when I read a rather authoritative biography of Columbus, that the flat earth nonsense was a fabrication of the author Washington Irving. As I recall, he invented it to punch up a play, or some such, but the myth caught on and even today people believe the flat earth fiction with respect to Columbus.

Cheers,

— Eric

Now, tell us, exactly what does “…freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” mean?

Capt. Marc

The ship’s cannonballs story is refuted in several places on the ‘net. Wikipedia is a good reference. The Oxford English Dictionary is a more-authoritative one, and snopes.com is a pretty good summary.

The only known problems with the cannonballs theory is that:

- cannonballs were not stored on deck in tetrahedronal stacks; rather they when on deck they were placed in wooden racks (shot garlands). The tetrahedron might serve well ashore, but it’s not a particularly useful stowage system at sea.

- the OED cites other anatomical parts for the phrase “cold enough to freeze the off a brass monkey. There did seem to be some references to brass monkeys, but none to my knowledge have been found in the context of the ship’s cannonballs story.

The popular story suggests that the cannonball trays were made of brass so as to prevent a problem with rust. Any naval vessel would indeed be concerned about rust, but for the cannonballs themselves and not so much for their trays. Rusty balls would make for diminished or dangerous performance, and so would not be routinely stored on an open deck in any event.

I used to like the ship’s cannonballs story and like I say I used to repeat it myself, but when I looked at it more closely I concluded, as have other researchers, that it’s just a popular fiction.

Regards,

— Eric

Also, I configured my applications to run from my second SD-card drive (e.g. D:). Remember, the ASUS is not a full-blown desktop replacement PC so don’t overload it.