Atlantic Passage

Nautical quotes, thoughtful quotes and other interesting bits of information.

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Why a “passage” instead of a “voyage”?

A Passage is a trip from one port to another a Voyage is a trip that ends where it began.

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The square rigged ship setting out on an ocean voyage follows no straight line between two points; useable winds matter to her more than mere distance, and she must seek always to follow such a route as ought normally to give her the best winds. The sailing-ship runs to no schedule and finds no winds made ready for her; she has to make her voyages largely under God.

Allan Villiers The Cruise of the Conrad 1937.

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One nautical mile converts to:

* 1,852 metres (exact)
* 1.150779 mile (statute) [1] (exact: 57,875/50,292 miles)
* 2,025.372 yard (exact: 2,315,000/1,143 yards)
* 6,076.1155 feet (exact: 2,315,000/381 feet)
* 1,012.6859 fathoms (exact: 1,157,500/1,143 fathoms)
* 10 common-definition cables (exact, as one common definition of “cable”)
* 10.126859 “ordinary” (100-fathom) cables (exact: 11,575/1,143 ordinary cables)
* 12.152231 US Navy (120-fathom) cables (exact: 9,260/762 US Navy cables)
* 0.998383 equatorial arc minutes = traditional geographical miles (approx.)
* 0.9998834 mean meridian arc minutes = mean historical nautical miles (approx.)

1 knot = 1.15 mph

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If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900 - 1944

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“A ship is never finished until she’s sunk”

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“Normal” is getting dressed in clothes you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car you are still paying for, in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes, the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Ellen Goodman The Boston Globe

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What is it in the sea life which is so powerful in its influence? What is it which one meets there with such certainty, and which is not in crowded places nor in men’s applause, not printed in newspapers nor telegraphed by Reuter? It is in the laugh of the little child, in that look of the woman you love. It is on the bosom of the great river, in the breast of the wide moorland. It whispers in the wind of the veldt it hums in the music of the tropical night. To some, it is borne on the booming night-notes of the deep forest, to others it speaks on the silent snow-peaks But above all it is there to the man who holds the night watch alone at sea. It is the sense of things done, of things endured, of meanings not understood; the secret of the Deep Silence, which is of eternity, which the heart cannot speak.

H. WARINGTON SMYTH
MAST & SAIL IN EUROPE AND ASIA 1906

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Distance to horizon in km is very roughly 3.5 times the square root of one’s height in metres; distance in miles is roughly the square root of (1.5 x height in feet).

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“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

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We must all suffer from one of two pains:
the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
The difference is, discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.
Jim Rohn