"Started sunny, then some thundershowers in late morning, then cleared for the Sinbad Games. Each of the cadet divisions, with Cal Poly students added in here and there, participated in various contests. Such as the hawser toss. Hawsers are the really big (and really heavy) ropes they use to tie up a ship to the dock. Participants had to try tossing the loop at the end of the hawser over a horn about 8 feet away. Most couldn't throw it that far, much less hit the horn. Then there was 'line tossing,' both for distance and for accuracy. Accuracy required trying to get the weight on the end of the line into a large bucket about 50 feet away.
"Especially popular was the bosun's chair relay. One of the ship's cranes held a pulley about 20 feet above the deck with a rope over it. Each student in a team of 4 had to tie one end of the rope around themselves in a double-loop fashion called a bosun's chair. One loop goes around the waist, the other under the butt so that you can sit on that loop and get hoisted. (This is how sailors were hoisted up the mast in days of yore to do rigging.) Once roped up, another student hoisted them up and they had to touch the pulley at the top. One all Cal Poly group of 4 did quite well. I think they were shown how to tie the rope a couple of days ago and had been practicing. A couple of CMA cadet teams failed because one or more team member couldn't manage to get themselves tied up correctly.
"But the most popular - at least for us spectators - was the 'leaky pipe.' The ship's engineers had rigged up the most horrid looking conglomeration of pipes that had holes in them, missing gaskets, missing plugs, missing bolts, etc. And it was all hooked up to the fire hose, which runs at 100 psi pressure. When they opened the value, water came spraying out absolutely everywhere in a huge geyser. Teams of 5 had 10 minutes to try to patch as many holes as possible - all while the water is spraying everywhere. And this is salt water, mind you, although the team members did wear goggles. They were scored by how much they could raise the pressure at the end of the pipe, which was less than 10 psi at the beginning due to all the holes. Some teams made absolutely no progress in 10 minutes, but one team, while not patching all the leaks, managed to get it sealed up enough to get the pressure up to 60 psi. One team had two Cal Poly women who had never seen a pipe wrench or a hose clamp. I gave them some quick 'Plumbing 101' coaching, but it wasn't enough. Theirs was one of the least successful teams.
"But a good time was had by all, and the games were followed by a barbeque on the fantail. Ribs this time, although not as good as the ribs at our first barbeque back in early May
"Mom managed to get my birthday dessert out for lunch today. It wasn't actually chocolate mousse, but a black-and-white cake with a rather mousse-like frosting. Quite tasty. I suspect there's some left in the ward room, and I'm going to go check after finishing this email.
"I've got to get some end-of-quarter course materials together. Just 5 days of classes left, through Friday, then final exams on Saturday and next Monday."
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