The Captain Bligh-Polynesian-Lost at Sea Refugee Escape to the Promised Land

[RE]

Now that I have more or less completed the work on the RE Tombstone, in order to keep improving on my Sketchup Skills I have taken on a NEW project, which is designing more efficient Hulls for the Molly Brown!    Boat Hulls are HARD to do in sketchup!  Well, not so much hard as INCREDIBLY tedious!  This in response to Eddie's requirement that I study up on hull design for a couple of years and then get back to him with my designs for Molly.  I can't see why it should take me a couple of years here, since so many designs are already extant on the net and the principles for hull design are also pretty straightforward too.  What is fucking HARD is to get your design rendered out so you can have good accurate templates to build from.

Hard as they are to do in Sketchup, they were even harder and more tedious to do on a drafting table in a 3-Up drawing, and you couldn't get a 3D visualization of the hull until after you actually built it, so you had a lot of Trial & Error here over many years millenia.  Utilizing the computer, once you get all the parameters set and the hull virtually constructed, you can then immediately test it for its hydrodynamics.  BIG advantage for the modern boat hull designer!

So, how DO you construct a 3D Hull in Sketchup from near-SCRATCH?  Basically, you do it the old fashioned way, from a 3-Up, a Top, Side and Front view of the Hull, which on the transverse axis is laterally symmetrical making things a bit easier since you can duplicate your port side to the starboard side, but otherwise you gotta go step by step to get the whole hull constructed.

As an example of how this is done, here is one fellow's exercise in reproducing the Titanic in Sketchup (it is around 15 minutes long, you may not have patience to watch the whole thing):

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/d0IA4CmMdqk" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/d0IA4CmMdqk</a>

To synopsize here for most of you who will not have patience to watch the whole thing, what this guy does is import the 3-up of the Titanic, and then proceeds to copy the lines in each section. Then he uses the various tools Sketchup has to extrude planes and to rotate planes around a given axis, copy groups and rotate them and erase construction lines as he moves along here, at fucking INCREDIBLE speed because after working with this program for a month almost now I can tell you that the speed he is working at has to be close to impossible to do in real time.  This Vid has to be sped up IMHO.  This 15 minute vid IMHO in real time had to take 1-2 hours or so, but that is still pretty good compared to how long such a process would take on a drafting board, and even after that on the drafting board as mentioned before you can see the full 3D of the design until after it is built nor can you test its hydrodynamics in any way at that point.  You at least need to build a scale model for that.

Now, thing here is for myself in designing the Molly Brown, I could follow this exact same proceedure with any 3-Up design up on the web, such as designs for Ian Farrier's Folding Trimarans, which I am a big fan of but were overpriced although now often available on the used market for pennies on the dollar.

Here's one 3-Up pulled down from Google:

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That's not a Farrier, it's just a basic design for a small trimaran, and as you can see the hulls are all just basically symmetrical torpedo shaped.  I don't need to go through through the tedious steps necessary to make a torpedo shaped hull, I can just extrude an ellipse!  That I can do in about 2 minutes!  lol.  It's going to approximate the shape of a real hull quite well.

A REAL Farrier Hull has more curves, particularly on the front section of the 3-Up, as you can see at the left here.  To do this one I WOULD have to extrude in sections and do quite a bit of cleanup work along the way to getting a smooth rendering.  BUT...do I REALLY need to do this? 

No, I don't, because you see although this design for the hull likely does maximize its potential speed and ability to point into the wind, really any torpedo shaped hull is going to work here at some level of efficiency on a trimaran.  The most important parameter is the Hull Length/Width ratio, that determines the maximum speed the hull can achieve.

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Details Molly leg 2

Molly leg 2

While Ahmed was hiking into town for the prep run, Ibrahim decided to get in some practice with his Slingbow and try his hand at some spear fishing.  From the deck of the Molly Brown in the shallow and clear waters of the cove.  There were small schools of sardines swimming around and some larger fish as well, which looked like Red Mullet although he wasn't sure.  They did look big enough to hit with the darts from the slingbow though, so he tied some fishing line to the end of one of the darts and had about 100' of it in a loose coil on the deck tied off to an eyebolt.

After numerous misses he finally realized that he had to account for the diffraction looking at fish through the water surface and accounting for that.  After a few more misses, he finally hit one just behind the gills and reeled it.  Just after he got the fish aboard Molly Brown and started gutting it, Ahmed reappeared from the brush carrying his now full tactical backpack with the chicken and vegetables and fresh water.

With the sun beginning to set, Ahmed dug the Solar Oven they had constructed which also functioned as a Smoker, got it set up on the beach whicle Ibrahim collected wood to do the smoking with.  They smoked them for around 4 hours and steamed the vegetables, then feasted prior to returning to sleep aboard the Molly Brown at anchor.  They would leave the following morning at sunrise for the second leg of the Journey, across the bay to Silifke.

This would be their longest leg so far, around 80 miles, and further offshore than they had been before, as far as around 30 miles at the midpoint of the leg.  They awoke in the pre-dawn hours to clear skies with the stars still visible, and had breakfast of hardboiled eggs coated with vaseline they had prepared for the journey to keep them good for a week or two without refrigeration, along with leftover smoked chicken and steamed vegetables from the night before.  2 days into the journey, they still had barely touched their supply of prep foods stored on the Molly Brown.  Before the sun rose over the horizon, they practiced with their sextants to get a fix of their position, and compared it to the GPS position coughed up by the Magellan GPS.  Ahmed came in a little closer than Ibrahim, although still a good 2 degrees off the GPS position, which would not be too good over a long distance.  The sextants would take practice.  They took more sights as the sun rose over the horizon, and then checked to see all their gear was well secured, all the lines were clear and the standing rigging was still nice and tight.

The wind was light as they weighed anchor with an onshore breeze of around 5 knots, and after rowing out of the cove, they hoisted the sails, tacking their way out and then pointing Molly Brown for Silifke.  With the Prevailing Winds behind them, the sail looked to be a straight downwind run to Silifke, and with the light winds they estimated it would be 20 hours or so across the bay.

They were making steady progress until about midday, when the winds died down to 2 knots and they were barely creeping across the bay.

"What should we do Ahmed?  Should we just hang out and wait for the wind to pick back up, or should we do some rowing, or should we run the electric motors?"

"Let's fire up the motors Ibrahim.  We need to test them anyhow and the batteries are still topped off.  We'll only run them an hour or two and not run down the batteries more than 25%.  After that we can do some rowing if the wind doesn't pick up."

"Sounds good." replied Ibrahim.

Ahmed flipped the switch to get the motors running and...NOTHING.

Panic set in briefly, but Ahmed pushed it down.

"I know the batteries are good Ibrahim, and the motors too.  There must be a short somewhere."

The problem turned out to be minor, one of the wires had come loose from the main power switch.  Ahmed got it reconnected quickly using a Leatherman tool he always kept on his belt, and upon flipping the switch again the motors purred to life, moving them along nearly silently with the sails now down.  Molly was doing around 2 knots at the low setting, and Ahmed opened the rheostat to full to see what kind of speed they could get under power.  With the throttle open full in calm waters with little current, they appeared to max out at around 7 knots, although that was just a guess made by dropping a cork in the water at the bow and seeing how long it took to bypass it.

Ahmed backed off the throttle to conserve power and they motored along at around 4 knots for a couple of hours.  Ahmed was about to shut down the motors and suggest they start rowing when the wind picked up again, they raised the sails again and once again were under sail for Silifke.  The sun was still out and bright, and the small solar panels were trickle charging the batteries back up, along with the now turning Wind turbines.  While Ibrahim held the tiller, Ahmed went to all the connections with his voltmeter to make sure that the current was flowing into the batteries.   This time, all was working properly.

After a couple of more hours sailing as they got further from shore, the swells began to get larger, although nothing too big for the Molly Brown to handle.  Ahmed did begin to feel a bit seasick though as Molly bobbed her way up and down over the swells.  He threw up twice, but it didn't seem to bother Ibrahim at all.  Finally the queasiness backed off, and they felt hungry enough for their first meal at sea, which was a simple afair of lamb jerky their mom had prepared for the journey back in Syria, nuts and dried fruit.

They fliipped a coin, and Ibrahim was the first into the cabin for a 3 hour sleeping shift, while Ahmed manned the Tiller.  Ahmed did hook up the auto-tiller to maintain the heading, but neither was confident of it enough to just let it go while they both slept.

The first night at sea went mostly without incident, although both Ahmed and Ibrahim could see the lights of a few commercial shipping vessels a couple of times during the crossing.  None of them were close to Molly Brown, and they both observed their heading and watched to see if the lights grew brighter and closer, but for this leg of the journey they did not.  Ahmed wished he could have afforded a small radar unit for Molly, but it was out of budget.

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Ibrahim and Ahmed were both exhilirated and nervous at the same time as they left the beach in Jableh.  Although they both had done some sailing in small boats, they had never ventured more than a couple of miles offshore.  They were pretty certain of the Sea Worthiness of Molly Brown, since they had overbuilt everything to the point Ibrahim claimed it would stand up to a Bomb dropped from a NATO jet.  They were pretty certain they had enough supplies aboard to survive a month at sea without replenishment.

Their inexperience with Blue Water sailing made then nervous however.  In preparation for the journey, they had read all of Thor Heyerdahl's books about the voyages of the Kon-tiki and Ra I and Ra II, the voyage of the Hokulea, and stories of teenage Yachties like Zac Sunderland and Laura Dekker who had made circumnavigations in Yachts, although none nearly so small as Molly Brown, and not home built.

They studied the night sky and the constellations, testing each other on their knowledge.  When the sky was not clear enough to view the stars, they would use Apps on their Samsung Galaxy Mega Smart Phones that would pan through the night sky. They practiced taking sights with their sextants, and calculating their postion from the sights by hand if necessary. Even with all the reading, study and the dry land pratice though, taking Molly Brown to Blue Water right off the bat was not something either of them felt too comfortable with to start out.

Their initial destination was the isle of Cyprus, around 200 miles of blue water sailing directly from Jableh.

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[RE]

The last couple of weeks prior to leaving the beach at Jableh were hectic for Ibrahim & Ahmed.  They kept thinking up new preps that would be worthwhile to have.

"What will we do for Weather Reports Ahmed?  Once we are out of range of the cell phone towers, our smart phones won't work to get weather reports and charts." Ibrahim asked in the nightly problem solving session.

"We will need to get a Barometer and Thermometer, and watch the cloud formations and wave action Ibrahim. I will go to the marina and see if I can trade for them.

"We need some way to scope out beaches to land on from offshore.  Since you cannibalized papa's Zeiss Binoculars for the sextants, we will need something else with good magnification."

"My Samsung Camera will work fine for that  Ibrahim.  It does 30X magnification optical and 100X digital.  But I will order 2 sets of Minolta Binoculars from Walmart for $50 each just in case the camera craps out." replied Ahmed.

"We're going to need some fishing gear too." Ahmed noted.

"That's EZ to get, I'll trade for it down at the docks, and mom can make us a fishing net too.

"We should also have a Solar Oven to do cooking with.  We need to conserve our cooking fuel as much as possible."

Squeezing everything aboard the Molly Brown became difficult after a while, and some things had to be triaged off.  Some bulky clothing items had to be eliminated, but Ahmed reasoned they would be able to buy them when necessary, at least in the near future before TSHTF completely.

Ibrahim argued for some level of protection weapons in case attacked at some point, and finally convinced Ahmed they should at least have Slingbows & Fast Hatchets for final defense of themselves and the Molly Brown.

The Molly Brown was packed carefully and then loaded on the trailer, the Main Hull first and then the two outrigger pontoons on top of it, with the steel tube cage parts and the Mast & Boom lashed on top of that.  The total weight with all preps loaded came to around 3000 lbs which was beyond the rated towing capacity of Nassim's Jeep, so they would have to take it apart and thought they would need 2 trips to get all the preps to Jableh.  At the last minute though, Nassim's father hearing about this volunteered to pull everything with his 1969 vintage International Harvester Tractor, which he used for pulling freight around Syria.

The Plan to GTFO of Syria was to make the departure as quiet as possible, even though there is nothing illegal about going out sailing for a day on your own boat.  I&A did not want anyone the least bit aware that they had left the country.

A quiet beach in Jableh was selected as departure point, and they timed it to arrive at 2AM.  With the help of Nassim and his father, Ahmed & Ibrahim were able to get the Molly Brown ready to sail in 5 hours instead of the 8 hour best time they had achieved on their own.  They worked through the night, and Molly was ready to go at 7AM for the Voyage to the Promised Land.

Upon leaving the beach in Jableh, both Ibrahim and Ahmed were totally legal.  They both had valid Syrian Passports and valid Syrian Driver's Licenses, along with their Birth Certificates from a Damascus Hospital.  For money, Ahmed had sold his motorcycle for $500 in Amerikan FRNs, and Ibrahim sold his AK-47 and his Ruger pistol for €800.  Although it was tough for Ibrahim to give up his weapons, he agreed in the end with Ahmed that getting ammo for them would be hard to impossible, they weighed a lot and took up too much room on the Molly Brown.  The bargain was that they would use primitive weapons for self-defense and defense of the Molly Brown, almost one in the same thing because their lives were dependent on Molly, they could not make it to the Promised Land without her.

In addition to the money they themselves were able to raise (they got some parting gifts from friends as well), their parents gave them half their Life Savings of €2000, and their mom gave them her Gold Wedding Ring and her two Diamond Stud Earings of 1/4 carat each that were handed down to her from her grandmother along with the pedal powered Singer Sewing Machine.

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OK! We are up to Scenario 4 in Seafaring Refugee Escapes to GTFO of Dodge and get to the Promised Land! 

Advance Disclaimer: Scenario 4 is more a Fictional Narrative than it is too realistic.  Call it Doom-Fi.    However, like good Sci-Fi, it's plausible and in theory could be pulled off.

So here we go. 

Captain Bligh Scenario 4

As readers of the Diner know, one of the most amazing aspects of the Mutiny on the Bounty, where Fletcher Christian and his fellow Mutineers took hold of the Bounty was the fact that after being put off the ship in a small lifeboat, Captain Bligh managed to pilot this boat across 100s of miles in the Pacific Ocean to get back to "civilization", and then eventually made it back to Jolly Old England where the Mutineers were tried and convicted, although I don't think they ever were brought to justice, they mostly lived out their lives on Pitcairn Island with a few Native Women and left a fairly inbred legacy.

Our story today is about 2 Syrian Brothers, Ahmed & Ibrahim, ages 25-35 or so who live in Damascus.  Ahmed works on the docks in Damascus as a Welder and general fixup guy, or at least he did prior to TSHTF in Syria a few years ago.  Ibrahim is a Carpenter who worked building McHovels in Syria prior to TSHTF.  They did a little sailing in small boats when they were young and life was better in Syria.

Ibrahim is also a net junkie, and in the last year since being out of work most of the time has been researching the collapse blogosphere, where he discovered the Doomstead Diner. 

A couple of Ahmed & Ibrahim's cousins, Muammar and Mohammed made the Journey on the Refugee Highway last year, and made it through the Gauntlet at the Balkans in Macedonia, past the Gates of Vienna and are now STUCK in the Jungle in Calais, trying to get to the Promised Land of the UK.  A & I are aware the Fences have gone up in Macedonia and Serbia, and they can no longer make their escape this way, and besides they don't wanna be stuck in a burning refugee camp in France either.

While Internet Surfing one night and Lurking on the Diner, Ibrahim runs across the design for the Molly Brown.  He shows it to Ahmed and asks him, "Do you think we can build this boat Ahmed?"

Prior to this Ahmed has suggested to Ibrahim that they steal a boat from the tourist Marina, but Ibrahim is opposed to this on moral grounds being against stealing, plus the security at the Marina is very tight.  He also points out that while Allah might forgive them for stealing a boat given their situation, there is a good chance somebody would get killed trying to do this, and Allah would not forgive them for that.

Ahmed ponders on this for a while, then finally replies, "Yes Ibrahim, I think we can build this boat".

"Will it be safe enough to get us to the Promised Land Ahmed?" Ibrahim asks.

"What is safe Ibrahim?  Is it safe to stay here?  We gotta GTFO of Dodge!"

Ahmed sighs and nods his head.  "Yes we must risk it.  We will build the Molly Brown!"  The brothers clasp hands and vow to get this done.

The scavenging begins, and the brothers pool their savings and get some financial help from their aging parents who themselves cannot make such a journey but pray to Allah that their sons will make it safely to the Promised Land.

The brothers are building the Sail version of the Molly Brown, not the power boat version.

Details Molly Brown Sail 1

Molly Brown Sail 1

As you can see, the Sail version of Molly Brown differs from the power boat version.  In this case, rather than being below the normal water line of the boat, they are slightly above it.  They are stabilizers, they are not designed to aquaplane up on.  The tubular superstructure  is now a cage rather than a simple triangle, so that the Sail has free movement.

There are Daggerboards on the outriggers to keep the boat tracking well when pointing into the wind, and electric trolling motors to maneuver in and out of anchoring locations along the way.  The main hull is a 15' long aluminum rowboat, and the pontoons are around 12' long.

Ahmed finds a beat up rowboat which needs some patching up, and gets it for free by fixing the roof of the guy that has it on a trailer in his backyard.  He gets the trailer with it.  They borrow a car from some friends to pull it over to their backyard to work on it. No cost yet.

Ahmed is able to scrounge plumbing pipe from some bombed out buildings to build the superstructure, so still no cost, except for the Acetylene for his torch to cut and weld the sections together.

They can't find the right size kayaks or canoes to use for the outriggers, so Ahmed goes to the junkyard and peels sheet metal off the cars and welds up his own outriggers.  On the same trip to the junkyard, he picks up some 12V Starter Motors to use for the trolling motors, and some still in good shape batteries for juice.  This costs him $100.

While Ahmed is working on the Outriggers, Ibrahim works on fitting out the main cabin.  He builds the deck out of plywood sheeting. He buys 4 brand new 8'X4' 3/4" pieces for the main deck and doghouse construction, this costs him $50.  The rest of the wood for interior construction is scrounged from bombed out housing.

Details Molly Brown Sail 2 sm

Molly Brown Sail 2 sm

The interior cabin is big enough for 2 people to lay down and sleep comfortably, and has plenty of storage for food, water and fuel for cooking on the journey.  You also might squeeze a reverse osmosis water maker in here if you can afford it and get it delivered to Damascus. Otherwise, you just need some water containers.

The Outriggers are each their own Independent Lifeboats, which can sail, be rowed or use the electric trolling motors for propulsion.

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OK! We are up to Scenario 4 in Seafaring Refugee Escapes to GTFO of Dodge and get to the Promised Land! 

Advance Disclaimer: Scenario 4 is more a Fictional Narrative than it is too realistic.  Call it Doom-Fi.    However, like good Sci-Fi, it's plausible and in theory could be pulled off.

So here we go.

Captain Bligh Scenario 4

As readers of the Diner know, one of the most amazing aspects of the Mutiny on the Bounty, where Fletcher Christian and his fellow Mutineers took hold of the Bounty was the fact that after being put off the ship in a small lifeboat, Bligh managed to pilot this boat across 100s of miles to get back to "civilization", and then eventually made it back to Jolly Old England where the Mutineers were tried and convicted, although I don't think they ever were brought to justice, they mostly lived out their lives on Pitcairn Island with a few Native Women and left a fairly inbred legacy.

Our story today is about 2 Syrian Brothers, Ahmed & Ibrahim, ages 25-35 or so who live in Damascus.  Ahmed works on the docks in Damascus as a Welder and general fixup guy, or at least he did prior to TSHTF in Syria a few years ago.  Ibrahim is a Carpenter who worked building McHovels in Syria prior to TSHTF.

Ibrahim is also a net junkie, and in the last year since being out of work most of the time has been researching the collapse blogosphere, where he discovered the Doomstead Diner. 

A couple of Ahmed & Ibrahim's cousins, Muammar and Mohammed made the Journey on the Refugee Highway last year, and made it through the Gauntlet at the Balkans in Macedonia, past the Gates of Vienna and are now STUCK in the Jungle in Calais, trying to get to the Promised Land of the UK.  A & I are aware the Fences have gone up in Macedonia and Serbia, and they can no longer make theirescape this way, and besides they don't wanna be stuck in a burning refugee camp in France either.

While Internet Surfing one night and Lurking on the Diner, Ibrahim runs across the design for the Molly Brown.  He shows it to Ahmed and asks him, "Do you think we can build this boat Ahmed?"

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