{"id":2356,"date":"2020-10-19T06:42:09","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T13:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2356"},"modified":"2020-10-19T06:46:02","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T13:46:02","slug":"nautical-terminator-tradewinds-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/nautical-terminator\/nautical-terminator-tradewinds-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Nautical Terminator – Tradewinds (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/
By Edmond Halley – http:\/\/libweb5.princeton.edu\/visual_materials\/maps\/websites\/thematic-maps\/quantitative\/meteorology\/meteorology.html, Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=69162530<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          Everyone knows that the trade winds,\nfrom which our club takes its name, are the reliable easterlies that were followed\nwhen most freight was carried under sail. But is this mercantile association\nthe real reason they are called \u201ctrade winds?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The contemporary uses of the word\n\u201ctrade,\u201d as in commerce, and \u201ctrade,\u201d as it applies to the winds, have a common\nancestor, but not the same meaning. Both come from the Old English \u201ctredan,\u201d\nwhich means course or path, as in \u201cpath of life.\u201d The word is related to\n\u201ctread,\u201d and refers to the habitual way one carries out one\u2019s day. Some of us\nare impulsive and changeable, but most folks spend their lives in a regular\nactivity practiced without much variation\u2014their \u201ctrade.\u201d By the same token, some\nwinds are fickle, but others have a regular, dependable course. It was this consistency\nthat originally earned these winds their name, not their commercial value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          The trade winds are among the most\nancient meteorological phenomena on the planet, but they were still unknown in\nEurope by the time of Columbus\u2019 first voyage. According to Samuel Eliot Morison,\nthe dean of Columbus scholars, the great discoverer set his course not\naccording to these as yet unproven winds, but directly\u2014or so he thought\u2014towards\nJapan, due west from the Canaries. In a normal year his departure from La\nGomera, at 28 degrees, would have been several hundred miles north of the trade\nwinds. Sailing west should have becalmed him in the horse latitudes, and he may\nnever have made his fabled discoveries. However, in addition to daring and perseverance,\nColumbus profited from excellent luck. He made his passage on a year when the\nAtlantic trades were much higher in latitude than is common, and he reports\nenjoying a perfect following breeze. But why would he have thought to sail\nfurther south? No one had ever gone before him, and it would be over 300 years until\nthe Atlantic and Pacific trade winds were systematically recorded by Mathew\nMaury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          On his second voyage, for reasons\nagain unrelated to the wind, Columbus headed West by South from the Canaries, finding\nsteady breezes at a lower latitude. Before long, navigators came to expect them\nand soon they were calling them the \u201ctrade,\u201d meaning constant, winds. Next\ntime, we will discuss why they are so constant\u2014so constant, in fact, that they\nhave been blowing forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Everyone knows that the trade winds, from which our club takes its name, are the reliable easterlies that were followed when most freight was carried under sail. But is this mercantile association the real reason they are called \u201ctrade … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nautical-terminator"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2356"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2665,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356\/revisions\/2665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}