"Ah, but if the man that was doing the waking buys a beer for the fellow taht was sleeping whilst said fellow listens to a plan, then the fellow that doing the waking is ...
Or...
"Curse you for breathing you slack jawed idiot!"
How to tell the distance on the water?
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Posted: Sep 25, 2012 - 09:07 AM
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Posted: Sep 25, 2012 - 09:10 AM
A friend once asked me; "And just how far can you see through those beer googles?"
My reply; "All the way across the bar to that beutiful woman sitting on that barstool!" -
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Posted: Sep 25, 2012 - 10:56 AM
mmm pie -
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Posted: Sep 25, 2012 - 11:00 AM
African.
PS i have done more searches on this exact topic than probably any other (and i have been a webmaster for over a dozen years)
Edited by MN3 on Sep 25, 2012 - 11:12 AM. -
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Posted: Sep 25, 2012 - 07:12 PM
Agree, when drinking beer you must piii...
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Adam Bartos
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Lake Zurich, IL
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Posted: Sep 26, 2012 - 03:15 PM
40 years ago, we used a technique learned in Cadets to judge distance by what was called "visibility of common objects",(it was derived from old school military spotting tactics, & a search there might yield results). That is, the distance a commonly known object could be discerned & identified as such.
Most common objects were cars, transport trucks, houses & people. IIRC a standing adult can be discerned at 3 miles with the naked eye.
When discussing how far a horizon can be seen, the equations ignore three things, clarity of atmosphere, sharpness of light, & refraction.
Obviously anything that reduces atmospheric transparency, think haze, mist, smoke, reduces the distance at which the earth & sky become one, & severely impedes judgement of distance. This, combined with flat light is what killed JFK Jr. The visible horizon was not that far, but lighting conditions made it impossible to discern. His lack of instrument flying skills sealed the coffin.
Clarity of atmosphere cuts both ways. Many tend to think the clearer the better, but this is not always the case. You can see further the clearer the air, but that does not mean you can judge distance better, especially in landscapes with few objects, or landscapes where all objects are the same. Human eyes are very poor at distance estimation if they have few objects of known size in simultaneous view. This is easily demonstrated by looking at a distant single light, on a clear dark night, or a single floating object on a calm sea, you simply have no real accurate idea of how far away it is. I think we have all looked at what we thought was a distant object, sitting on glass calm water, only to put up the binoculars & realize it was in fact a fairly close bird.
Relatively flat snow/sand covered terrain, or even prairie results in the same optical illusions. This deficiency of the eye has been known for centuries, hence the development of rules of thumb for seafarers & military spotters. Change the atmospheric conditions, & that distant marker you accurately judged yesterday becomes the reef you wreck on today.
There is a well known phenomenon in aviation, known as the black hole approach. In my experience it resulted from tiny (pop 300-500) villages situated in the high Arctic Archipelago. The air was exceedingly clear, there was no Air Traffic Control or tower, no radar, only a small speck of lights perched in blackness. Many times it was impossible to differentiate where terra firma met sky, even though visibility was 100+ miles. At night you would swear the lights,(or were you confusing village lights with a newly risen star?) were only 10-20 miles out, & be tempted to begin a descent, when in actual fact they were 80+ miles distant. The fatality reports are full of such occurrences.
Refraction is another bugbear. Did you know that the setting sun is an optical illusion? It actually sets several minutes before you see it go under. Light rays are refracted, or bent, when passing through different densities. this is what makes corrective lenses work. The rule is, when passing from a less dense to a more dense medium, they are bent towards the norm. You are looking at a refracted image of the sun, the actual disc passed below the horizon minutes ago. This is more pronounced in a marine environment, hence the different definition of civil twilight, & nautical twilight.
In a nutshell, the eye, unless trained, is a poor judge of distance, when the distance becomes further than we can throw a ball. Binocular vision is what enables us to "know how far" an object is, via triangulation The further the object is, the less the degree of triangulation.
The wider your eyes are apart, the better you are at it, though past 100 yds the advantage becomes negligible. Damon, being a big guy, probably has a big head, with eyes set further apart than average. He could be expected to be a better judge of distance than average.
Try playing catch, or shoot baskets with one eye closed, monocular vision, it becomes very difficult to judge how hard to throw the ball.
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Posted: Sep 27, 2012 - 05:34 PM
i got tickled when i read this!...good one ed!
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bill harris
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prindle 16- "BLUE RIBBON"
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Posted: Oct 10, 2012 - 01:01 PM
I just ask the guy sailing with me. -
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Posted: Oct 10, 2012 - 01:16 PM
Take your average speed, and multiply Time = Distance
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Daniel Evans
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I have a hard time passing up a good deal on a big cat.
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Posted: Oct 10, 2012 - 07:25 PM
Personally, I get nervous when I lose sight of my cooler!
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