Apparently the forum is doomed to discuss this ad nauseam from time to time. Perhaps every time you wonder why the US is this way you could just watch this for the origin story. It makes perfect sense.
10 Likes
I think there’s two different things being discussed On the one hand there’s the ability to directly visualize or imagine distance when given in various systems of measurement.
On the other hand there’s just doing the math. For draft, depth and UKC no visualization required.
If the chart is in meters and the draft marks are in feet and tenths it’d be better to convert the draft to meters and stay in one system.
4 Likes
“Bartender, get me 500cc’s of lager, stat!”
This thread cannot end until someone advocates for using Smoots for length.
There, now that the bridge has been crossed, we may return to debating more weighty matters, like mass vs. weight vs. displacement.
3 Likes
Makes sense to me - on our little boat, the only folks driving are my wife and I, so little chance of confusion. But for big ships, crews are constantly changing, and not knowing what the last DF set up the system for could be a major problem!
Seems a useful bit of standardization.
1 Like
Very true. But I really think it the understanding is in auto mode. Same guy for example is working on a mechanical drawing and is dimensioning in both feet/inch and metric units in parentheses below is completely familiar with both. And when he is out of the office and meets a buddy and the guy talks about his home in his hometown is 200 sq mts, quite sure he would need to some mental math to convert to sft. I think most of the time it is really the concept or idea of comparing to what your mind is familiar with in terms of size. For example any measure of length beyond what you can put your hands around or what your eyes can imagine (maybe over 100 ft?), you mind tends to compare – such as a football field, etc to get an idea.
Same thing right? 1 meter OR 3 feet? In any case if maneuvering into such areas I would make sure all the sea filters on the low and high sea chests are clean.
Same with the Doppler log and echo sounder, neither have any option for depth except for meters.
And the market cap of quite a few American corporations are bigger than the GDP of most countries!
1 Like
There was the famous, failed Mars Orbiter rocket…
…the rocket failed because some high rise scientists meddled with the millimeters to inches transformation.
1 Like
If you’re loaded to 28 feet and in a 10 meter deep channel, if you just thought 10 meters=30 feet you could be waiting for a tide, when in reality you’ve got a foot to spare.
2 Likes
that was a pleasureboat system,
had they done route planning on an ecdis it wouldnt have happened.
whats a metric tapered thread?
I could really confuse the next guy on watch with this!
(looking for the furlongs per fortnight setting)
Ahh the old BSPP and BSPT threads.
I was thinking npt, the only proper tapered threads
Very much a dead horse because we like it the way it is. As Farmer Jones said to the deacon who tried to convince him that switchel was better than rum, “I don’t want nuthin’ better than rum!”
4 Likes
So you multiply by three and add ten percent. Almost as easy.
1 Like
This is (mostly) true, I don’t know why the U.S. using a mixed system apparently bothers Europeans so?
My guess is the metric system is best when it’s the only system in use but with the American system adding the metric option actually makes it more useful.
1 Like
Aboard ship I use the ship’s dimensions as a reference, One ship length (in my case) is 200 meters the beam is about 30 etc,
When mooring for distance off containers are often nearby, the 20’s and 40’s are about 6 and 12 meters, other common objects, vehicles etc come to mind. A standard school bus in the U.S. is about 10 meters long.
1 Like