#Sail Choice

[alan-woodyard]

SAILING OUT OF RANGE || Quantum Sails

TAKING A SAIL OUT OF ITS DESIGNED RANGE AND MAKING IT WORK

In a perfect world (certainly in this sailmaker’s one), we would have a sail for every racing condition. This would mean a graduated series of headsails with six- to eight-knot optimum wind ranges. Four would be about right to take us up into the low 20s. 

Many one-design classes eliminate this option, limiting the number of headsails and controlling sizing in the hopes of keeping costs down. This sometimes backfires since the wear and tear of using one or two primary sails just means they need replacing more often. For handicap sailors it is nice to have a full quiver of sails even if we don’t bring all of them for every race. It is also nice to have a flexible mainsail capable of taking us through the whole range. 

Unfortunately, sailboat racing being what it is, it is not always easy to have the right sail up at the right time. Invariably the breeze ends up dropping or building unexpectedly, and we all know how painful a sail change can be. This is especially true when just as we make the change, things go back to the way they were. There is also a good argument for keeping things simple and light and minimizing the number of sails we drag around. The key is being able to take a sail out of its designed range and make it work. There are a number of tricks to turn that medium/heavy headsail into a light-air sail. We can also turn that sail into a heavy-air headsail if the pressure is on.

Full Article Here…

https://go.sailsouthern.com/sailing-out-of-range

[posallys]

one of the most appealing things about black sails is the fact that flint has been dead since the beginning. we know how it ends. you can't change it.

[peri-helia]

Anyone: Hey, you alright?

Me, internally experiencing a change in brain chemistry: Who's Billy? We'll be partners till they put us in the fucking ground. Know no shame. What the fuck did you do to that? I cooked it. You absolutely did not. Let me tell you a story. Tell your governor, you tell him I'm coming. So we dance the dance. Never was there a Caesar who couldn’t sing the tune. Is that the truth? We might be friends by then. Whoever tied this bandage was either blind or drunk. I think both. They took everything from us. And then they called me a monster?! The moment I sign that pardon, the moment I ask for one - I proclaim to the world that they were right...this ends when I grant them my forgiveness, not the other way around. I am your King. This isn't what I wanted. I recognise you. Do you recognise me? You fucking lied to me! Of course I lied! Fruit, fruit. Tits, tits. You must know this. You’re too smart not to know this. It's done, wouldn't you agree? You did do all those things. If he were here, he would agree with me! Everyone is a monster to someone, since you are so convinced I am yours, I will be it. In the end, that's all I want. To walk away from the sea and find some peace.

Me: Not bad, thanks yeah. You?

[frau-kali]

Black Sails Anniversary Week

Day 2: Favourite Dynamic - Flint and Silver

"I have earned his trust. I have his true friendship, so he is going to have mine. And as long as that is true, I cannot imagine what is possible."

[fuck-you-jack]

can we please take a moment of silence for disaster bisexual eleanor guthrie girl dated two of the hottest hotties on that island and blew it with both of them. then she got knocked up and killed by the government rip

[cryptixotic]

⚔︎ 𝕷𝖆 𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖈𝖊 𝕽𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖊 ⚔︎

Nostalgia made me watch the One Piece live action - And i loved the ships so much it made me want to draw my own spin on them - inspired by both anime and film, but also by antique portolan charts (and their lovely sea monsters) !

• The Baratie • The Going Merry • The Miss Love-Duck •

[jaynovz]

Everyone is always like "oh my God Silver you sent six men ashore to kill Captain Flint!!" and they never ask instead "how was the mimesis, was the mimesis fun? did you have an exciting and great time becoming the thing you feared in the beginning?"

[heycarrots]

There’s been a lot of discourse about the nature of James and Miranda’s relationship. There’s even been a lot of discussion on my podcast about it. One thing I want to make clear is that my podcast is a platform for discussion on all points of view. I’m not going to agree, 100%, with everything that’s said, but it makes the views of my guests no less valid. There’s no right or wrong, here, because this is art and therefore, it is subject to interpretation.

My intent, however, is to attempt to get as close to the original intent of the actors as possible because we look at a show or a film or a play as going through several layers of distillation. Each level purifies the intended narrative leaving its truest essence.

When we make a reduction sauce using an alcohol of some kind, let’s say a red wine, the heat applied to it burns off things we don’t need for flavor. You’re never going to get drunk off of red wine reduction because there’s almost no alcohol left in it. That all gets burned off, leaving only the flavor components, which is what we wanted all along, anyway. We want that extra element that enriches the flavor of the steak, by adding nuance.

So let’s take apart that meal.

We start with the birth of the idea. The story kicks around in an author’s head, trying to get out, growing bigger and more persistent until it outgrows the confines of the mental box inspiration is stored in and has to be let out. That idea, that’s the cow.

The author raises that idea, feeds it, watches it grow, and then, ultimately slaughters it. That sounds awful, but once you have that idea pulsing, growing, evolving and then finally commit the final draft on paper, it is a kind of death. The life of the story comes to an end and it becomes memorialized in a mausoleum. Readers will come to visit, spend time with it, lay down flowers, cherish it, and mourn its passing.

The next level is adaptation. That’s the steak. There are many ways you can slice the story, large roasts encompassing the whole story or a smaller, hyper-focused character study fillet mignon.

A writers room gets hold of the cow and carves it up. They choose what gets cooked and what gets tossed. A GREAT group of writers saves the bones. They take in the entire supporting structure of the piece and while the whole story may not make it onto the screen, they will have slow roasted the bones for a stock. When you watch a show like Black Sails, where themes are introduced that won’t fully be explained or explored until several seasons later, that’s what that is. It is the stock being used to flavor the whole dish. You’ve distilled the entire cow to its purest essence and so every scene, every line of dialogue, every acting choice, encompasses the entirety of the story. A line from episode one is defined by knowledge of the finale and in regard to dialogue, defined by an actors’ knowledge of a character’s backstory. There are many writers rooms who are creating the bones of the story as they go, which means they aren’t starting with a rich stock. You can’t trace back character motivations or choices to begin with because those motivations changed throughout production.

Black Sails, again, isn’t one of those shows. Steinberg and Levine came into the writers room with their stock pot full and sloshing, spilling story everywhere. The richness of the details they were laying can make season one a bit hard to consume unless you are ready for a story on that level. Viewers need to come to the table with some bread to sop up all those character details because we WILL need them later.

Over the course of finalizing scripts and blocking out episodes, the steak is cooked. Like any great steak, this story is medium rare. More juice comes out with every bite. It’s what makes the show infinitely rewatchable. It continues to cook on the plate, but because it wasn’t overdone, it never dries out.

When the actors get ahold of it, that’s the reduction sauce we were talking about. That sauce provides nuance and flavor. That’s the emotion. A line of dialogue on a page is just ink. It’s nothing until it’s spoken aloud. And like any bit of language in this world, it’s subject to interpretation. In this case, it’s the actor who does the interpreting.

I spoke on the podcast about the art of subtext and how huge a role it plays in Black Sails. One example we used is Jane Eyre. It’s one of the most frequently adapted novels in the English language and with each adaptation, we get a new version of our characters. The most volatile and subject to change is Rochester. There are MANY versions of Rochester that I find appalling (including the original beast in the book), but each actor has formed him into something else, based on their performance. Toby Stephens takes Rochester and turns him into a silly tragic romantic, broken many times over by a society he never really fits into, despite the status of his birth. He connects with Ruth Wilson’s Jane because she fully and happily inhabits that space on the fringes that Rochester thinks he needs to climb out of. Jane takes his hand on the outside of the wall, turns him away from the guarded palace and shows him the wild world that was at his back this whole time.

This is what Toby Stephens, Luke Arnold, Louise Barnes, Zethu Dlomo, and really all the actors for whom their subtextual choices make them reflect like prisms, have done with their performances.

In the final distillation, character motivations and emotions are finalized by the actor. Writers can pontificate, the source material lies dead in its lovely tomb, but stories live and breathe by their storytellers.

What we’re left with is Toby’s face telling the world how deeply Flint loves Silver. Every single choice tells this story.

We’re left with Luke showing us how much Silver is repressing in his feelings for Flint. Luke’s face shows us an incredible depth of feeling and a door slamming shut.

We’re left with the incredible intimacy between James and Miranda, which speaks of a decade of shared physical intimacy. There’s an openness, a freeness to it until the moment in episode 3 when Miranda learns that James has found the Urca and is leaving soon to pursue it. She gives some of it away when she says “I thought I’d have you all to myself”. She is mourning the loss of intimacy that she only gets in short windows of time. They aren’t strained because James isn’t attracted to her, but because he’s rarely there. She has him for a few days at a time before he’s off on another hunt. The coldness starts from the moment he tells her he’s leaving in a few days because I believe she thinks he won’t be coming back, that this is the hunt he won’t survive and she’ll finally have lost both James and Thomas. From the moment Richard Guthrie darkens her door, she’s looking for a way to weaponize him and get them out. For her, it’s a race against the clock and she’s willing to sacrifice a bit of her relationship with James in the present to secure happiness for them in the future.

This is also why James still has sex with her before leaving, even though he’s furious for her reading Meditations to Richard. This is how they connect. They connected through physical intimacy in the flashbacks, as well. Him stroking her thumb in the carriage before the kiss. Tactile contact to seal their understanding of each other. Miranda bracing her hands on his chest during important moments in the Hamilton’s home, something she also does to Thomas, to show physical connection, physical intimacy. Miranda thrives on physical touch.

To think that, for 10 years, James is lying there like an object for Miranda to use, is, to me, short sighted. To think that James doesn’t love Miranda outside of a group, is also ignoring the fact that, 10 years on, James will not leave on a hunt (angry as they both are) without physically connecting with her, trying so hard to reach beyond his anger and the wound freshly opened from sight of that book he’s chosen not to look at for probably the better part of those 10 years. The way his hands hover over her back after she comes and he desperately wants to be with her in that moment, like the best of their moments, but he just can’t, speaks to the depth of his love for her.

So many fans of the show point to this sad sex scene as one of the most important character moments for James and Miranda, but I consistently come to the opposite conclusions about WHY it’s important and what we learn from it, because I’m taking my cues from the actor’s choices, not the director or the writers. On the page, in plain ink, he hates having sex with her. Toby and Louise show us, however, that they are trying to recapture a thing that is fleeting, reaching out to each other to patch up an old wound from which the scab has been picked off, leaving it seeping and raw.

From Toby’s performance, regardless of the words he uses years later to describe it, we see not a character who “loves men” or a character who “loves women”, but a character who LOVES. I don’t see Flint defining that love in terms of boxes and parameters. He’s a character who must be coaxed out, but then loves without reason, without a safety net, as he proves with his love of Silver. As was also referenced by a guest on the podcast, he places a sword in Silver’s hand and says “do it”.

Anyway, this post got away from me and took several turns, but the love between James and Miranda being dismissed by so many in the fandom has been bugging me for a while and I just needed to emotionally vomit on tumblr.

[etoilesombre]

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Can you elaborate on the Our Flag Means Death thing? If you want

Yeah! So I get that realism isn't the be-all end-all of fiction, but. I really wish Taika Waititi et al. had done even 30 seconds of research on 18th century American history before they wrote an extended joke about the protagonist having a "man for sale" in episode 3. Yes, it's a white man being sold, but a guy still gets led to a market by a rope around his neck and then auctioned off... and this is played for laughs. I don't know a ton of Caribbean history, but even I know that no one in Nassau in 1717 would have been confused by the idea of selling a human being, the way they are on OFMD.

That was all before I found out that the real Stede Bonnet was a known enslaver and possible rapist. I think his story could be a horror comedy about a horrible person being horrible (see: What We Do in the Shadows) but the Stede we see on OFMD spouts progressive pop-psych slogans and is allegedly here to teach us radical self-love. Not a great combination.

Also, I'm one of the people who found OFMD unwatchable partially because I'd seen Black Sails. Black Sails came out 8 years before, features a lot of the same historical figures and Treasure Island characters, and has more queer rep than OFMD. But Black Sails's main plot is about a doomed-yet-glorious fight to end slavery in the Americas in the 1700s, and it is unflinchingly honest in its depictions of racism, imperialism, and homophobia. So it's jarring and deeply unfunny to see some of that same material cleaned up (the polyamorous main character is now a monogamous gay man; the kill-or-be-enslaved stakes are now potted plant thefts) or else swept under the rug (acknowledging slavery and homophobia would ruin the fun! let's pretend they don't exist!) for a different show that gets lauded as "groundbreaking" for its milquetoast repackaging of queerness.

[vapolis]

note 2 self: never have a choice have choices that branch off into other choices even if it's tempting

[to-hope-against-hope]

Hyuna... A curly haired blonde boy ruined you why are you (presumably) dating another curly haired blonde boy

[flashhwing]

if you think that Flint is in love with Silver is that really shipping or is that just media literacy

[asaethiel]

black sails redraws 2/?

+ video

[arom-antix]

Viktuuri week day 4: Reinvention

[butcharyastark]

i cannot explain how simultaneously complexly fascinating and deeply hilarious this fucking intimate coming out scene between flint and silver is in the s3 finale of black sails.

like. imagine you are james flint. you have a horrible secret tragic backstory you won't tell anyone about how you became the fearsome and capable pirate captain you are today. that tragic backstory involves being the bisexual unicorn for a rich couple's poly triad dreams in 1700s england. you confide in someone outside of this dynamic for the first time after everything happened about what happened because they asked to know. you bare your soul uncharacteristically about being bisexual, polyamorous, and griefstricken. nobody else but one person in your life has seen this of you. the person you confide this to is someone that genuinely worried about you killing them in front of your entire crew like, literally 10 days ago, for confessing to betraying you abt smth that took months of efforts and dozens of death to try to achieve. this person, who is the most kindly understanding and softspoken person on your ship of ragtag hardened pirates, looks you in the eyes by the soft lighting of the campfire under cover of nightfall after burying literal and now metaphorical secrets, and says, in order, to your FACE, that 1) firstly he is a hashtag gay ally (in the 1700s) and so sorry for your loss but 2) he's been thinking lately it's kind of weird everybody around flint dies and he doesn't want to be next bc everybody flint trusts is a dead man walking bc 3) hey flint have you ever considered maybe it's your fault this happened and that you are doomed bc of just who you are as a person? and 4) but it's okay actually bc if it came down to it i think i've grown as a person enough that if anyone dies in this partnership it will be you 😤

like. to his face. i repeat, to the face of the most feared pirate this side of the americas, who has considered killing him within the past month or two, who opened up to silver in the most baring way possible for a regular man, much less a man like flint--to his FACE silver said that "maybe the homophobia you experienced that ruined your entire life was actually your fault for existing and everybody you love is doomed to die because being around you is a curse :/" in the most GENTLY understanding tone of voice while staring deeply into his eyes and professing genuine care and friendship and respect for him.

i'd lose my mind. i'd implode. no fucking wonder flint takes a preparatory, longsuffering swig of liquor with the most exasperated expression i've ever seen on a 40+yo man's face the literal second silver's mouth is open for longer than 2 sentences. silver is SO goddamn lucky this man stopped seeing him as an enemy 6 weeks ago and instead switched to begrudgingly ominous mentor and weird older brother.

and they're both still being friendly about it like silver isn't casually portending one of their deaths because of the other because of the inherent darkness of their souls and like flint hasn't killed men on his own crew for saying less than this behind his back. this is fucking insane energy. i want to study them both. i want to microwave them at high heat. i want to put them in a jar and shake it. you two really live like this?