> 'knots' is actually a measure of speed Absolutely right. My first interpretation of that "something like 70 knots out at sea" was that it is the purported li

> 'knots' is actually a measure of speed Absolutely right. My first interpretation of that "something like 70 knots out at sea" was that it is the purported limit speed over which they must lower their keel. But that interpretation would be... improbable to say the least. 70 knots (~130 km/h, ~80 m/h) is ridiculously fast for a sailing ship. I just checked and the fastest ever instantaneous speed reported by a sailing ship is lower than 70 knots. (68.33 knots to be precise)