Thanks to my good friends - Steve Williams from Brazil for the fun picture of Set Fair, the other Steve for 'Yottie' advice and
Cap'n Threadbare for such a bonny boat.
The name of my boat 'Set Fair' - comes from Barometers which often have words engraved opposite points of their scales as:-
31 inches - Very Dry
30 1/2 inches - Set Fair (meaning that the weather will be fair for some time)
30 inches - Fair
29 1/2 inches - Change (meaning expect a change soon)
29 inches - Rain
28 1/2 inches - Much Rain
28 inches - Stormy
The weather is foretold by a change in the barometer rather than by the actual height of the quicksilver. If the quicksilver is rising, then the
weather is changing towards fair. If it is falling, then the weather is changing towards stormy.
I tapped it again the next morning, and it went up still higher, and the rain came down faster than ever. On Wednesday I went and hit it again, and the pointer went round towards "set
fair," "very dry," and "much heat," until it was stopped by the peg, and couldn't go any further. It tried its best, but the instrument was built so that it couldn't prophesy fine weather any
harder than it did without breaking itself. It evidently wanted to go on, and prognosticate drought, and water famine, and sunstroke, and simooms, and
such things, but the peg prevented it, and it had to be content with pointing to the mere commonplace "very dry."
