Offshore at 30 degrees north latitude in May is not a seaworthy season for soft sailing boats, and only slightly troublesome for hard sailing boats. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

At this time, it is the season when the northeast trade wind belt moves northward, and this lonely continent does not have the size and mountains of the old continent, and it does not have a formal monsoon, but only has a certain influence in the coastal zone.

May is not yet the most stormy season, but smugglers who go to Qi to trade because of the direction of the wind or chaebol families who charter trade do not choose this month to sail.

Under these influences, the wind direction in May is changeable, and the hard sail can be sailed with the help of the wind with the least number of sailors, and even against the wind if necessary.

On the mast, an intern is using a telescope to observe the sea in the distance, and it is not the Purple Quartz that is at the forefront, but two cargo ships with watertight cabin structures.

In order to prevent dangers such as running aground or storms, the ribbed Purple Quartz lowered the jib in the bow of the flotilla in the middle of the flotilla, adjusting the windward direction of the mainsail and slowing down the ship somewhat.

At this time, the fleet was sailing northward, and the wind direction was changeable, but the speed of the ships was not very slow.

Intern Wei Yuan is measuring the water temperature on the deck with a sounding hammer and a simple thermometer, and the water here is strangely hotter than offshore.

Another intern next to him was roughly measuring the speed of a ship using a rope, and in the previous year's study, they had been taught that the earth was round, and had used a new unit of length.

The rope used to measure the speed is extremely long, and it is only knotted at a long distance that the length of the knot is called a nautical mile in the school, and the general speed of the ship will be used to say how many knots.

Wei Yuan knew what the distance of a knot was, and regarded the earth as a pure ball, and the doubling of the length of the meridian calculated according to the shadow of the sun is the so-called length of the equator, 80,000 li.

It sounds scary, but it's not so scary after using knots. Take this circle and divide it into one nautical mile, one is sixty minutes, and one circle is three hundred and sixty degrees.

He took out the HNA diary wrapped in an oilcloth, recorded the water temperature and sea depth at this moment, and shouted to the intern who was measuring the speed of the ship: "What is the speed of the ship?" ”

"Three sections."

Wei Yuan remembered in the notebook, and calculated it by division, if it is at this speed, it only takes 300 days to circle the earth.

Of course, the wind is not good at this time, and if the wind direction is better, the boat can be a little faster. It would be perfect if it could reach six or seven knots, and if it was faster, the sails would have to be lowered or the ropes would have been cut if necessary.

"The world isn't that big. If you have the chance, I'd like to go around the world and see it. ”

Young people occasionally imagine the future, and this has a lot to do with the people who take them with them. The year in the academy was indoctrinated with a lot of things beyond the seafaring - they were indoctrinated that their poverty was because they did not have enough land, and if there was enough land, and everyone had hundreds of acres of fertile land like the plains of the great river valleys, was there such a word as poverty?

In fact, this is not the case, but it is very tempting for these people who come from poor backgrounds.

The speed of three knots was already very fast in such a situation where the wind was not in the right direction, and Wei Yuan believed that it must be caused by the warm water below the boat, or what Mr. Chen called the current.

It's been the sixth day of sailing, and there is not a single ship on the sea, only the vast inky blue sea and the flying waterfowl.

After observing the North Star last night and today's ship speed, it was roughly estimated that at this time it was already at the so-called 33rd degree north latitude, and the distance from Mincheng was not known, but I knew that if only the distance from north to south was calculated, it was about 270 nautical miles north of Mincheng, and as for the east-west and straight-line distance, it was only the ghost who could know the number.

There is not much wind and waves here, and the weather is very good these days.

It was five or six o'clock in the afternoon of May 12, and it was not yet time for the shift change, and the weather was good, so there was no need for all sailors to go out, and the sailors on duty at night were resting in their hammocks.

As the sky darkened, an old experienced crew member stood on the deck, looking thoughtfully at the waves in the distance.

This is not the lowliest sailor, but an old seafarer hired by Chen Jian for money, and Wei Yuan and the others still need to learn from these people.

They have learned a lot of theories, but the gap between theory and practice is huge, and only by making up for each other can they make progress more blocks.

"What are you looking at?"

The old seafarer glanced at the young interns, wanted to tease them, and said, "I can see something, you have a telescope and an octant, but you don't see it." ”

Wei Yuan glanced at the sea around him, didn't know what the old crew was talking about, and asked with a smile: "Is there a reef?" ”

The old crew laughed and said, "If you don't believe it, let's make a bet on your wine tonight." After a while, the sails will be lowered, slowed down or stopped, or the ship will have to turn. ”

Wei Yuan looked at the waves curiously, looked up at the sky again, shook his head and said, "It doesn't look like it's going to be half a day, the book says ......"

The old crew laughed and said, "What the book says? Little doll, you have a lot to learn. To bet or not to bet? ”

Wei Yuan gritted his teeth and said, "Bet, bet on the shore money that will be issued after going ashore." If I lose, I'll give it to you, but you'll have to tell me why. ”

The two men high-fived each other, and the old crew climbed onto the mast with a smile and snatched the telescope from the observing intern above.

…………

In the widest cabin, Jian Chen was spitting on the theory of latitude and longitude to the first mate, the ship's doctor, and the navigator who were resting on the ship.

Everyone listened with relish, and someone asked, "Mr. Chen, according to what you said, we are already at about 33 degrees north latitude." If the statement of latitude and longitude is correct, if you go two more latitudes to the north, you will sail eastward with all your might, and you will be able to reach the mouth of the Xincao River, the trading port of Qi? ”

Chen Jian picked up a few books and said with a smile: "You can't be wrong, the territory of China is like a big mouth stretched out, and Mincheng is both at the southern end and in the east. Needless to say, the north route is indeed close, but what does it have to do with our Mincheng? In the past, the southern route sailed from Mincheng to the pirate-infested island group, and then turned north, how big a circle did it take? The north is newly established for a hundred years, far less rich than the southeast coast, and Mincheng is actually not suitable for trade in Qi, but one day trade will gradually flourish. Besides, could it be that Mr. Hatochu, who made the calendar, would be wrong about what he found out from the book? ”

What is in the book, these people don't know, some things that seem to be recorded unintentionally, but they can often play a huge role, especially after these things are confirmed by Chen Jian, it makes these people have a strange worship of the so-called "knowledge".

The six days had taken the same route that had been taken two days earlier, but then it turned into a course that no one had ever walked before, and it looked like it was going in circles.

Although there was a fifteen-day gentleman's agreement, everyone was still unconvinced, but Chen Jian took out a lot of things from some of the books he had sorted out before, and verified these words with facts.

"You see, many sailors or captains in the past would remember that part of the sea, the water was warm, and it seemed to flow northward like a river. If it were just one person saying that, I wouldn't believe it. But dozens of people have such records, and by and large this is certain that there really is such a thing. ”

"There are also books that say that from the extreme north to the south, the water is cold. At a distance to the south of the capital, there is a perennial fog in the sea, and there are many abundant fish and shrimp, which must be the place where the warm and cold meet in the place where yin and yang meet. It is not unreasonable to call these eternal flowing waters in the sea currents. When sailing, borrowing ocean currents sometimes seems to go around in circles, but in fact it can save a lot of time. ”

"Walking along the island, while safe, is certainly not the fastest route. In the past, it was only the wind, but in the future, it will depend on the wind, and the ocean current can also be borrowed. ”

Everyone nodded yes, and now they are relying on the so-called sea current to the north, and they really feel the effect, and they also believe in Chen Jian's statement that they will arrive at Qi in fifteen days.

If it really arrives on time, I am afraid that people will believe more in such things as "knowledge", so that ninety percent of them even believe blindly.

This is not Chen Jian's nonsense, but it is summarized from those generalized voyage records or sailors' legends, and then used ocean currents and trade winds and other things to reason backwards.

In theory, this is what it looks like, but in practice the sea is changeable, and it can only be said that it is roughly so.

Due to the fact that the Earth's rotation and the subtropical high basically affect the global existence, the Northeast Trade Wind Belt can be used as a route to return from Qi as long as the storm-prone period is staggered and sufficient hydrological wind direction data is searched.

The North Equatorial Warm Current bends northward due to the obstruction of the coast and the reason for the shallow waters of the Sea of Mist and the huge flow of water from the great rivers into the sea, and it is not known which route it took, but it can only be found out from the texts recorded by those predecessors, and the approximate direction of the flow can be judged by the estimation of the sea fog-prone areas and fishing areas.

The sea area where it is now is incorrectly called the Pacific Ocean, the Qi State is in the east of the pseudo-Huaxia, and it is Japan and the Ming Dynasty that continue to pass through the boundless vast ocean to the east, because the old world is upside down.

Europa is further west on the west coast of this continent, where the name of the outside world at this time should be the Great Eastern Ocean, but if the ethnic groups here seize the right to speak, it can still be called the Atlantic.

If we do not consider the differences in the east-west direction and the changes in the distribution of species in the topography and landforms, in terms of the normal world that Chen Jian is most familiar with, Mincheng can probably be regarded as California rather than Florida; The capital city can be thought of as San Francisco rather than New York, Washington; The state of Qi can probably be seen as a larger Hawaii, closer to the coast and farther north than Bermuda.

It's just an upside-down, normal-world comparison, not a real location, the terrain has changed, many rivers and mountains are no longer barren, and the mountains that run through the continent are deeper inland.

The devil knows how the world line beyond the fog has been modified to maintain its current state, and a slight change in ocean currents could make East Asia rainfall higher and warmer; The east and west are reversed, but the currents and trade winds do not change direction, and the chances of Europeans discovering the New World are normally much lower; Pulling a hair and moving the whole body can only be regarded as the self-correcting ability of the Old World Line.

In this case, under the condition of insufficient preparation, once you deviate from the course at this time, it is likely to sail into the most vast ocean in the boundless, where there are no small islands to stop and replenish, and the wind and waves are extremely strong, which is a dead end.

Even if it is a circumnavigation voyage, it must first go to the west coast here, continue westward along the North Equatorial Warm Current and the northeast trade winds, first to Europa, then go around to Daming, and then use the trade winds to go directly to the east coast here.

This correction has some advantages, and the direct access of East Asia to this new continent is a smooth wind, and it can be regarded as a slight balance between the unfairness of the distance and wind direction of this new continent to Asia and Europe.

Chen Jian was about to continue talking to these people about some large-scale ocean currents, trade winds, sea tides and the like that could be used, when suddenly a sailor ran over.

"Mr. Chen! There are echoes and semi-circular waves, and the captain said that it is recommended to lower the sails and dock or turn to avoid them tonight. ”