We are pleased to welcome Christopher Morin, MD as our replacement for Lee Anne. He is a retired vascular surgeon, ex-Marine, ex-Navy and thoroughly delightful person. In his own words, "I felt like I needed something to do." You can reach him at: [email protected]

Model Ship World is an on-line forum of over 39,000 ship modelers. Topics range from kits to scratch builds, in-process continuing stories, tips, manufacturer information, technical topics. Too many to list here. Go take a look!

Barratry - Broadly, an illegal act or breach of trust by a ship's master. The word comes, via Middle English, from the French barratarie, fraud.

Draft (also Draught) - The underwater vertical dimension of a craft, "the depthe of water she requireth so as not to touch the bottome." The word comes from late Middle English, and possibly goes back to Old German.

Quarterdeck - Now an area on a naval vessel reserved for ceremonies and honors, located on the ship wherever the commanding officer dictates; formerly it was a high partial deck aft, from which a ship was conned, and which sheltered the quarters of the afterguard and passengers.

Scandalize - A term for shortening sail quickly. In a gaff-rigged vessel one good way is to lower the peak of a sail. Earlier terms were to scantle or scantalize. The origin of the term is uncertain. It probably is a corruption of scant, in the sense of making smaller; or ot may relate to Scant. the former seems more likely.

Scant - An old term, said of the wind when a sailing vessel could just make her course good when close hauled. The word came, via Middle English, from Icelandic, scampt, of the same broad meaning.

Information is from the book "Origins of Sea Terms" by John G. Rogers

Dan C of IL took our simple skiff model and added so much detailing that it won a Gold award at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum Annual Model Ships and Boats Contest. He made seat cushions, bail cocks, sawhorses for display, new sail rig, special metal parts, the list goes on and on. Look at these pictures and see for yourself. And if you would like to see the entire build process, you can see it here:

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/28749-skiff-by-dcicero-finished-bluejacket-shipcrafters-112/?tab=comments#comment-821778

Last month's name was written in Morse code, and spells MARY. We had 6 people guess correctly. Steve B of PA, Martin G of FL, Brian W of RI, Joe G of ME, Bill M of FL and Howard B of IN. Well done guys. And, one of you noticed that the Morse code was also a palindrome.

Martin had this to say:

"I'm not a ham, but I can program a bit, so I wrote a program to generate the possible ways to turn that Morse code into letters. The trick is where to break the dots and dashes into separate letters. Turns out, gasp, there are 684 ways to do that. At a glance, though, none start with a vowel, so I guessed that the second letter must be a vowel. That cut the list down to a little less than 200, which I looked at more closely.

Most people send me a photo or two, and maybe a few sentences. Bill K of TX went delightfully overboard and sent me a 6-slide PowerPoint presentation with captions.

Nic's bench - I am back to working on a boat for a client. It's our popular kit the Maine lobster boat KLW207, 21 1/2" long

Al's bench - Al has been having a lot of fun with this stage of the Oregon kit development.

Many times in kit building, the pre-cut tabs and slots don't quite fit, meaning the tab is a tiny bit wider than the slot it goes into. The easiest solution is to sand some off the side of the tab.

But sometimes, you need to keep the tab at its thickness, like if it comes above the slot for some other purpose. In that case, you have to widen the slot. Using a knife never produces a straight cut. Sanding is much more effective. Freehand sanding is a no-starter. The best way I have found is to put the sandpaper on a Popsicle or craft stick to do the job. Those sticks are strong enough to take some pressure, but they are thin enough to go into the slot. Problem solved!

JUST A LITTLE PINCH

Sincerely,

BlueJacket Shipcrafters, Inc.