Centennial of Lyle C. Hess, 1912 - 2012

If I’ve done my calculations aright, in just over 42 days we reach the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lyle C. Hess.

On the basis that if we, the owners of Hess-designed boats, do not celebrate our hero then no one will, I propose to celebrate a Centennial of Lyle C. Hess.

I would hope that the Centennial inspires at least one Rendezvous. And that those of you who have personal stories of your meetings with Lyle take the role of skald to recount the wisdom you gained. And that those of you who are well-connected can motivate Larry Pardey, Bob Eeg, Roger Olson and other luminaries to add to Lyle’s reputation and standing.

As a humble offering, here’s the link for a *.pdf version of the latest version of my Word List for Zygote:

https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zwords.pdf

It’s a dictionary-type thing that tries to suggest:

  • why the additional fabric, beyond the imaginary line joining head to clew, of a sail is called a roach;

  • what three or four magical items on board a BCC were invented or perfected by Captain Nat Herreshoff (another of my heroes, I admit);

  • what magical item on board Zygote was designed or perfected by Norman L Skene, the MIT graduate who designed yachts and more;

  • the magic that is encapsulated in the word ‘hoist’; and even

  • what we (or at least me on Zygote, because I know that at least one of you doesn’t) owe to the helicopter engineer Henry Charles Shepherd and ‘Len’ Leonard Douglas Lewery, who are otherwise remarkably little celebrated (even though they may have been well remunerated).

Zwords is but a small thing compared to the exhilaration and wonder I feel at the performance of Lyle’s design on a close reach. So I hope that as a community we can devise meaningful ways to celebrate this Centennial of Lyle C. Hess.

Cheers

Bil

Bill,
Thanks for Zwords. Most enlightening and I am just through C. The parking tiller is made of Cengal but what is a “parking tiller”…I assume just a shorter one. The top lifeline attaches to the cranse iron. Where does the lower one attach?

A parking tiller is the tiller used when the boat is berthed. And then held centered, with lines to cleats. That (1) means the rudder is not free (Zygote does not have limiters to stop the rudder going hard over) and (2) the fancy laminated tiller does not have its heel exposed to the weather (the parking tiller is one solid timber) when it’s not in use (Zygote’s first tiller, the beautiful laminated tiller made by or for Sam L. Morse Co., started delaminating after four or five years in the tropics. I had a new laminated tiller made, using the first as the pattern, of teak. And then adopted the practice of a parking tiller. I then split the first tiller along the glue lines and reglued it. And was working toward converting into a folding tiller. But that project has stalled, for now). Cengal is an interesting timber - it was the timber of choice in Southeast Asia for centuries from which to make oars and paddles. Quite hard to work.

Zygote has no pulpit. The top life lines run forward to the crance iron. The lower life lines terminate at the forward stanchions.

Cheers

Bil

Most impressive Bil! Thanks for sharing.

Here’s a nice article I found today…

In response to suggestions, requests, and corrections, I’ve created a newer version of Zwords. You should be able to download it from;

https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zwords.pdf

I enlarged the entry on settee, in response to an inquiry (my new entry tries to show that settle came into English before the word seat).

I added entries for Cutless bearing, battery bank, diaphragm pump, flexible impeller pump, stave bearing, and stern tube.

Battery bank was fun to research and write.

Cutless bearing was a struggle - I’ve not found the name of the original inventor. And I now call the device a stave bearing. I’m sorry I didn’t ask my father, who taught me to call it a cutless bearing, about the source of the term.

I’ve so far resisted my temptation to add the fruits of linguists whose comparative pronunciation work has created a vocabulary of proto-Indo-European dating back 5,000 years. That vocab is interesting because it shows the Indo-European peoples, ancestors to most of us, using simple boats (called nehus, from where we have the word nautical) to cross rivers, marshes and freshwater lakes (mori, from which we have the word marine - note that the seafaring peoples of NW Europe developed new words for saltwater such as sea and ocean; and that Indo-European word is strikingly similar to the Nihongo maru for sea and, although different to the modern Chinese hai for sea, is not dissimilar to the ancient Chinese pronunciation of mheig). And the PIE vocab suggests that cleat and clew come from the same PIE word, something like gle or gel, meaning to make something round, into a ball.

Cheers

Bil

Happy 100th Birthday, Lyle Compton Hess!

born 19 March 1912.

Fair winds.

Bil

We were quietly celebrating the 100th birthday of Lyle C. Hess on shore last week when we received phone calls from the marina, reporting that strangers had boarded Zygote.

Story is a couple of wannabe Hess owners, from a southern state, had visited a local yacht broker to look at Tahara, the 36’ Hess that I’d written about in 2010 (see http://www.samlmorse.com/forum/read.php?5,9777,9777#msg-9777).

For the broker’s listing, in case you are interested in Tahara, see http://yachthub.com/yacht-broker-boat-dealer/qld/redcliffe-north/farine-boat-sales/1052 and look for the misnomer ‘Bristol Cutter’). Tahara would sell at $A129K (~US$130K).

The couple of wannabe owners decided against buying Tahara, but when the broker mentioned that a BCC was in the vicinity, the wannabes demanded the chance to have a look. Clearly thinking that Zygote was a gift from the gods for them, they were not happy when the broker and I suggested that clambering on my home without permission was trespass.

I’ve spruced up Zygote’s Stability Information Book. Should you want a copy (pdf, about 606 KB, complete with a new scan of the original stability test data), point to:

https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zsib.pdf

I’ve continued correcting and expanding Zygote’s Word list. The latest version (pdf, about 727 KB ) is at:

https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zwords.pdf

Cheers

Bil

Depending on your time zone, today is the day or the eve of Lyle C. Hess’s 101st birthday.

That brings the Lyle C. Hess Centennial Year to a close.

To celebrate Lyle’s 101st birthday, I have a new updated version of Zygote’s Word list.

The *.pdf version (about 1 MB ) should be downloadable from https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zwords.pdf

As before, send your feedback to me via PM. Thanks to those whose input has improved the document.

Happy 101st Birthday, Lyle C. Hess!

You designed the best long distance cruiser I’ve ever sailed.

Cheers

Bil
(edited to remove the *.epub version and give the URL of the July 2013 version)

A new improved and expanded version of Zygote’s word list should be available to you for free download from:

https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zwords.pdf

The *.pdf is just over 1 MB.

The 13th edition includes an improved and corrected thumbnail history of the Cutless bearing and stave bearing, a history of POL fittings, and the usual minor corrections and additions.

Bil

Yet another improved and expanded version of Zygote’s word list, version 31, is available as a *.pdf (about 1.2 MB) from:

https://sites.google.com/site/katshegne/Home/zygote/manuals/manual-files/Zwords.pdf

I’ve changed the body font from Goudy Old Style to Garamond, relaxed the leading of the entry on Yanmar to work around the maddening tendency of the Japanese font to cause overlapping of lines, and corrected typos etc. Changing fonts, allowing the number of fonts to be reduced, reduced the file size by about 10%.

I hope you’re not too offended by the relaxed line spacing in the Yanmar entry. Still truncates some of the glyphs. Irritating. Strange that the solution that works for mixing Japanese and Latin glyphs in the El Ni?o entry does not work for the Yanmar entry!

Building a *.epub version of reasonable size remains too hard; embedded fonts make the file massive.

Please continue to send corrections, comments, and suggestions by PM or e-mail.

I will be focusing my spare time, over the next month or three, on editing Zygote’s Information Book, to meet a request from an owner who needs something that would pass as a User’s Manual. That means I’ll likely update Zygote’s word list less frequently in the near future.

Bil