Thursday, March 18, 2010

Goofus and Gallant explained.

I thought doing a Goofus and Gallant themed piece was humorous, and clever, but maybe it was just a little too obscure. So as a brief footnote to the story, Goofus and Gallant was written Garry Cleveland Myers and drawn by Anni Matsick. It first appeared in 1948 in Highlights magazine. As a kid I read it whenever I was at my pediatrician's office waiting for a shot, or some other terror to occur. The short story of these two panel comics is Goofus is a jerk, and Gallant is a nice, but goody, goody two shoes kid (they are brothers you know). The story is alway the same, and goes something like, "Goofus yells at his wife to haul up the anchor." "Gallant nicely asks his wife to take the helm while he hauls up the anchor." All mothers wanted a Gallant, but there is a little Goofus in all of us. I will try to be not so clever in the future, maybe. You can zoom in with your browser to get a closer view of the strip.

Spring fore, fall aft.



I have been on several boats this week, and when I checked the chartplotters, I noticed that the time had not been changed since we sprang forward, so this is a gentle reminder to do so. We all set our microwaves, and clock radios to the correct time, and this needs to be done to many brands of navigation devices.

Not having the right time offset throws off the tides, and current data, and ETA's by an hour, and this can cause problems, especially if you boat in a tide sensitive environment. This notably affects Furuno and Raymarine, but many other brands need the time offset manually adjusted.

So the current offset for "Eastern Standard Time" from GMT, UTC, and Zulu time (all names for the same thing) is now -4 hours. Central time is -5 hours, Mountain time is -6 hours, and Pacific time is -7 hours. Not to leave Canada out, Atlantic time is -3 hours. So the next time you're on your boat, check the current time on your chartplotter. If the time is not correct, change it, and life will be better, or at least more accurate. I will remind you again in the fall to go aft on the clocks..