By Francis Slakey
A trip to the main severe issues in the world and deep contained in the human spirit
Before Georgetown physics professor Francis Slakey got down to climb the top mountain on each continent and surf each ocean, he had close himself off from folks. His lectures have been mechanical; his relationships have been little greater than how one can fill the evenings. yet as his trip veered dangerously astray, every little thing approximately him started to swap.
A gripping event of the physique and brain, To the final Breath depicts the hunt that leads Slakey around the world, virtually takes his existence, demanding situations his fiercely held ideals, and opens his middle. The scientist in Slakey explores the historical past of Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed Antarctica day trip, the know-how of hiking, and the geophysics of waves. however it is the demanding situations he endures and the folk he encounters—a Lama who supplies him a mysterious amulet, a life-or-death selection atop Everest, an ambush at gunpoint in Indonesia, a head-on collision within the excessive desert—that culminate in a relocating lesson approximately what it capacity to be human.
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Additional info for To the Last Breath: A Memoir of Going to Extremes
Example text
Unbreakable battens have yet to be developed, and if it is necessary to replace a broken batten at sea it is convenient to be able to shift a lower batten up into its place, or better still to bring out a spare batten that will fit in any position. A secondary advantage lies in simplifying the construction of the battens and the cutting of the sail. When furled, battens 1-5 show regular positive stagger at the leech, while the top batten and yard have little or no stagger. In Fig. 26, as in the preceding ones, the furled battens and yard are shown diagrammatically, lying on top of one another.
6 can be ignored, and it can be assumed that Fig. 4 shows the actual situation we have to deal with, namely with all battens lying as far forward as the diagonals of the sail panels will permit. STAGGER. The amount by which the ends of furled battens overlap each other is called the 'stagger', and is positive when the upper batten projects further and negative when the lower batten projects further. In Fig. 4 it will be seen that batten I (in relation to the boom) has positive stagger at both ends; batten 2 has very slight positive stagger at the leech and more positive stagger at the luff; batten 3 has negative stagger at the leech and very slight positive stagger at the luff; batten 4 and the yard both have negative stagger at both ends.
26 shows the form that we are currently using, as onPilmer(Fig. 10). It is simple to design and make, handles easily, and performs well. It is a combination of two of the basic shapes already described, having a double triangular head on top of a parallelogram lower part whose battens are equally spaced. It is designed to use single sheets but the top batten is usually left unsheeted. The yard, battens, and boom are all of the same length, or to be precise the net lengths of the sail along these different lines are the same.