The Marine Installer's Rant

You haven't come a long way baby.

2013-05-19T11:28:00.001-04:00

"Frank, long time no hear, what's up?" "I need a GPS Bill, I'm maybe thinking about racing one of my boats in a new class." "Okay I guess, but's what's wrong with your Garmin 545?" "It doesn't meet the rules Bill?" "What do you mean it doesn't meet the rules, does it need to be newer?" "No, it has to be older. The rules say, "The following is the SBIP APPROVED LIST OF GARMIN GPS’S 172, 172C, 178, 178C, 182, 182C, 188, 188C, 192, 192C, 198, and 198C." "Crimniy Frank, none of these are even manufactured anymore."

The rules are explicit that boats in this class can't exceed 117 mph as measured by a GPS, and exceeding this limit automatically puts you in last place. But it appears to me the rules could use just a wee amount of updating for a variety of good reasons.

This is the Garmin 182, and it was state of the art when it was introduced in early 2002. The newest machine on the list, the 198C was introduced in 2005. None of these are still made, and haven't been for a long time. So if you need one, you will have to search eBay or the ilk to find a used pull out.

All of the specified Garmin units used the Garmin data cards, and USB readers. Here's mine. It took a while to find it because I hardly ever need it. Nowadays it's just used on rare occasion to transfer waypoints to a newer system with my Andren software. I only have a few Garmin chips left.

But there is another issue to contend with, and that is the ability to get current charts. If you can find them at all. The newest possible update is circa 2008, and no other updates will be forthcoming.

So let's sum up. None of these unit are still manufactured, only used ones can be purchased, and the charts can't be updated. It seems a bit outdated. Console real estate in these boats is typically very limited, so if you have an antique installed, there may be no room left for a more modern chart plotter with safer current charts.

So it begs the question. If what you want to do is monitor max speed by GPS, why are you specifying old used Garmin equipment when there are so many better solutions?

Here is an example, the VBOX Sport. It updates 20 times per second, has an internal antenna, and is IP65 rated. You can pull the data using wireless smart phone apps, and it also logs data onto an SD card, for analysis using their free software. It's used all over the world to verify racing results. It costs less than $500 in round numbers.

Although it is designed for race cars, this or the many other systems available will all do a better job of speed logging than a used 10 year old Gamin. Come to think of it though, there is no reason why this can't be done with a new Garmin if you check. So make some calls on your cell phone to some GPS data logging companies, and I will search E bay for a "new to him" used Garmin GPS for Frank.

The photo above is of Martin Cooper the father of the modern cell phone holding the DynaTAC cell phone prototype circa 1973. the photo is from Wikipedia and was taken by Rico Shen.

The photo of the race boat is also from Wikipedia and provided by Rennbootarchiv Schulze. It is not in the SBIP "Extreme Class," but tells the story.

The "Garmin" rule is from the Super Boat International's 2013 Technical rules publication.

I have no comm port so I must scream

2013-05-15T10:56:00.002-04:00

Six weeks ago I embarked on what should have been a fairly mundane task of getting NMEA data from a GPS and some older Simrad gear imported into a laptop running Nobletec's Odyssey Time Zero navigation software. This wasn't my first time at the NMEA data rodeo, and the results were pretty typical. Using the existing Prolific serial to USB converter I could only have one talker, and one listener, not that I didn't try to get a second talker to work. Alas, but not unsurprisingly one talker only for you, and some of the older NMEA version data was getting lost in translation. To help with these issues a Actisense NDC-4 was purchased.

The little box arrives, and I install it. It's a pretty straight forward job. The NDC control panel software loads up from the CD, The comm, and USB port drives get installed. I find the comm port (6), and set it for 36,400 baud. Open the control center, and click on port 6, and also 36,400, and it all works as advertised.

I connect the GPS, and data flows to the Nobeltec system. Excellent methinks. I create various configurations to learn how to do them, and whoa, it's almost five. The lure of happy hour tugs at me. Everything gets shut down, and I'll come back in the morning to wrap this install up. That was six long weeks ago, and until yesterday I couldn't get it to work for love or money.

A fresh new day sees me on the boat. I fire up the computer, and add a second talker to the Actisense box. I open the control panel, and it's there, but now insidiously ghosted. Something must have gotten changed. Control Panel/Device Manager/Ports, and there it is on comm 6 labeled as Actisense, just like yesterday. I check the speed, and port configuration. That's all fine. I look at the USB port. That's fine also, and it says in both cases "The device is working properly." No it isn't you piece of claptrap PC junk. It ain't working properly at all. Back to the control panel and check the speed, and port. Both are correct, but the little box won't connect to the comm port. The PC knows it's there, if I unplug it from the computer, it disappears from the port list. Plug it in and it reappears. It's just mocking me.

An email goes off to Actisense in my usual windy fashion describing what I have done and how I wired the little box. A response comes soonest suggesting I shouldn't have really connected 12 volt power to the little box, ground looping may occur causing my connection problem.

The first aha moment occurs. It seems the manual in the box, is not the full user manual. I download the full manual which discusses powering the box in greater detail, and ship's power is promptly remove from the box. But this doesn't solve the problem. More emails, uninstalling, and re-installing occurs. Crap, I take the disk, and the little box home and install it on my computer. It works perfectly on my computer. More emails, and then the question appears can you verify the drivers you are using are version 2.8.24.0.

Back to the boat I go for the umpteenth time and check. Yes it is. So what do I now know? It doesn't work on the boat's laptop, but it does work on my computer at home, and now my little net book also. It has to be a problem with the laptop unit, although I don't know what. The owner gives the laptop to an IT guru, and it gets scrubbed clean, updated, and all of that promotional stuff you get on a new computer is removed. Meanwhile I'm yachting on the Salton Sea. I get back and try the computer again, nope, same thing. The little box is there, but it isn't. It acts like it can't connect, because it is already connected.

I'm running out of options here. There is one more thing to try. The IT guru did not have the little box when she cleaned up the computer, so I arrange to meet her with the computer, and little box in hand. I plug it in, and show her how to set up the ports, and how it's used. I also show her that everything seems to configured correctly. She takes off fingers flying, and then gets a little frustrated, and confused. Then the really big aha moment occurs. On a whim she rolls back the driver for just the USB port back one generation to 2.6.2.0, and the little box works. It was an orgasmic moment, in a geeky sort of way, and I now know what happened.

When I took the little box back home, I plugged it into my computer, and it no longer worked. Mr Gates had been my undoing. When I first installed the little box, the CD was the source for the drivers, and the USB driver was version 2.6.2.0. Both my computer, and the boat's laptop had an automatic Windows 7 update, which noticed the out of date USB driver, and did us the favor of updating it to a current version. This was not currently compatible with the Actisense NDC-4. Subtle it was. See it you could, but work it would not. PC's just drive me nuts. Six freaking weeks. The really smart IT guru set up the laptop to never allow an update for all time to come, and I'm fine with that.

The Actisense products are great, and their tech support people stuck by me in spite of my mildly acerbic emails at times. I understand they are working on this quirky little automatic update wart.

Hello, my name is Bob, and I'm a battery abuser. Hi Bob!

2013-05-12T13:23:00.000-04:00

Behold the flooded lead acid battery, unfortunately a perennial favorite of all too many boaters. Why? They cost less than better battery types such as sealed or AGM's. When I say they cost less I mean they are the cheapest battery you can buy. They do work well, if you can, and do check them on a regular basis, and the hotter the ambient temperatures become, the more often you have to check them. The words of the day are "evaporation, and accessibility."

I look at Bob shuddering, and wringing his pasty white smooth hands as he stares down into the crammed full engine room. Battery problems again Bob? You had these changed just last year didn't you? Where did you get them from, Wallymart? You did? Hum-mm ahhh, who installed them Bob? Your skinny nephew did? When was the last time you checked the water levels in these Wallymart batteries?

I already knew the answer. There were never checked, and in south Florida this is an issue. I try to wriggle out of changing batteries when ever possible. I have through the years schlepped in and out more than my fair share of impossibly heavy lead boxes oozing sulfuric acid from locations that are virtually impossible to access.

I believe that when many boats are built, the factory employees that are used for battery installs are the ones who spend so much time at the gym, they no longer have a neck. They wrestle the huge batteries to the outboard sides of the engine compartment. The engines are then hoisted in to block access. Lots of other stuff is installed to insure that it will take a herculean effort to get to them. I see your problem Bob, I think you should get your mechanic to change the batteries. It looks the exhaust system needs to be removed to get at them.

This week was less than auspicious. Jupiter had aligned with Mars, and were both trying to molest Virgo. While casting my chicken bones to project revenues, the wishbone broke. I should have stayed at home. There were two identical problems. The first one occurred when a chart plotter I had just installed was reported to be cycling on and off during a sea trial. The second problem was exactly the same, but it was happening to a chart plotter I had installed years ago.

At dock, while on the charger, both units performed perfectly. But while underway, they would cycle on and off. Since funds for the new install would not be promptly forthcoming until the owner was satisfied it was not all my fault, it instantly became the first on my list. When I tell you it's not about the money, my inside voice is yelling it really is. I go to the boat, which is thoroughly enclosed in canvas. I unzipped a bunch of yardage to get the temperature down to about 100 degrees. The chart plotter is turned on, and works great. I pull the unit to measure the input voltage, and it's 12.80 volts. This number strikes me as being a bit odd. Since the charger was on I was expecting at least 13+ volts.

I don't have keys to the boat, and in the heat I was a little short on the patience needed to pick the lock. I killed the power at the pedestal to turn off the charger, and remeasured the voltage. It was now instantly at 10.50 volts. At least one of the batteries had a shorted cell, and nobody had realized it until the new chart plotter was installed. The boat had a sea trial a few days before. The engines were started while the charger was plugged in. But the the power needed to keep spark plugs, blowers, refrigerators, and chart plotters happy wasn't occurring despite the efforts of the alternators. The voltage levels were high enough to keep the engines running, but it wasn't adequate for the chart plotter which was now turning on and off.

The second boat had an identical problem, but in this case it had diesel engines. Once started they didn't need any real Mr. Electricity to run, but this boats DC panel was lit up. Everything was on. TV's satellite system, ice makers, frig, head, you name it. Mechanics were on board doing routine maintenance when I looked at it. In this case there wasn't a shorted cell, but when the charger was turned off, you could see the voltage count down slowly to about 11.9 volts. Looking at the batteries one had obviously been boiled into oblivion, and refilled in the hopes it would be okay. It wasn't.

In the latter case, there was no way to tell when the batteries were installed. No Sharpie had written a date, and those little circles you can remove to indicate the install date were intact. This is a big pet peeve of mine. It just takes seconds to do, and even as distracted as I can be at times (Oh, look at that! It's sparkly and shiny) I always mark the date.

So back to the words of the day. A boat in southern latitudes closed up with canvas can easily achieve temperatures of well over 100 degrees, increasing the evaporation rates from the batteries. This when coupled with the temperature rise that is a side effect of charging exacerbates the problems. Add to this mix poor access to the batteries making checking them difficult. Lack of maintenance inevitably leads to the early demise of flooded lead acid batteries, resulting sometimes in a bang or worse.

There are two class of owners. Those who are ever vigilant, and those who are less so, or physically unable to. In the case of batteries, in all scenarios sealed (maintenance free) or AGM's are a better choice in hot environs. It's one thing you can look at less often. By that I mean you can't ignore them completely, but in the summer time here, flooded lead acid batteries should be checked prior to every use, and not less than once a month.

My rule of thumb is that flooded lead acid batteries should be replaced every two years. Stop that wincing right now. I know they may last longer, but when the batteries fail on the big trip you planned for months with your mother in law on board, stranding you in a godforsaken location you will wish you had heeded my sage advice. I think maintenance free batteries are good for about three years, and AGM's for at least four years. My attorneys have suggested the disclaimer be added that this depends on use, loads, and doesn't include charging systems that have psychotic episodes.

Gosh Bob, your mechanic won't change the batteries for you? Gee I'd like to help install the new Wallymart flooded batteries Bob, but I'm on vacation in..... Greenland, yeah that's right in Greenland, and I won't be be back for months.

There is a simple way to get a general idea of your battery's condition. Turn off the battery switches, and everything on the DC panel. Turn the charger on, and leave the boat for a day. When you come back to the boat turn off the charger, and go to lunch.

After a long lunch, turn the battery switches on. If your DC panel shows voltage, use it and write down the voltages of each bank. If you don't have a fancy panel gauge turn on the ignition switches for each engine, and record the voltage on the dash panel gauges. A DC multimeter measurement directly from the batteries works better, there is some voltage drop by the time you get to the gauges. Another other good option is to have your tech periodically load test the batteries.

Now look at the chart. If you have 12.6 volts or better you're good to go. At about 12.3/4 volts you have about 70 percent capacity. At about 12 volts only 50 percent, and you would be lucky to get an engine start. My advice is if your standing fully charged voltage is much less than 12.4 volts, you better start shopping around for new batteries. By the time the fully charged voltage drops a mere .4 more volts you're going to wish you had a fully charged handheld VHF radio to call Seatow.

What again? The attorneys have asked me to advise you this is just a general rule of thumb, and I'm not responsible for your batteries exploding, and catching the boat on fire, or the loss of eyebrows.

Yachting on the Salton Sea

2013-05-09T14:55:00.001-04:00

I was excited. A week in Palm Springs, a place I had never been. Looking around online I found there were lots of things to do. Go canyon hiking fending off gila monsters and tarantulas. Nope, not for me. The cable car ride, sure that's fine. Joshua Tree National Park, that sounds interesting. Are there tarantulas there? The Salton Sea? What's that all about?

It was the perfect storm. Bad engineering, greed, financial desperation, and the belief that the Colorado river could be managed, all combined at the turn of the century to create the Salton Sea. Today the Salton Sea, California's largest lake has an apocalyptic miasma about it, and a very uncertain future.

Mother nature has put water from the Colorado river into the Salton Sink at various geological times in the past, but the extreme desert temperatures have caused the waters to eventually evaporate. When mother nature does this its been named Lake Cahuilla.

The Salton Sea's history is a bit more sordid, and starts with the California Development Company. It was incorporated in 1896 for the purpose of building a canal from the Colorado river to provide water to the Imperial and Coachella valleys in the Salton Sink.

In just two years they built a head gate on the Colorado River, dug the Imperial canal, and in 1900 water was flowing to the valleys. If you build it, they will come, and they did. Agriculture flourished, and thousands of new residents moved in. This is when things started to go awry.

The original canal was quickly, and some might say poorly built, and started to silt up reducing water flow. Residents looked to the California Development Company for a solution. Facing financial disaster, a second canal was dug downstream from the original canal, but this time there was no head gate, they thought they had time to build it later. Happy days were back again as the water gushed into the valleys.

In the winter of 1905 heavy rain fall, and snow melt caused the Colorado river to bulge and overflow through the canals into the Salton sink. Before anyone could turn around two new raging rivers were carrying the entire flow of the Colorado River into the Valley. This continued, for nearly two years and was exacerbated by what one engineer at the time referred to as "The bummer flood of 1906."

The dry Colorado river bed south of the breach in 1905

Things didn't get under control until the Southern Pacific Railroad intervened to protect their own investment. The larger of the two new rivers, the Alamo canal (the same as the original Imperial canal) was back cutting toward the Colorado river, and had created a water fall that was now 80' high.

It was realistically feared if this continued to move toward the Colorado river stopping the flow would become nearly impossible. A trestle bridge was built over the Alamo river breach in 1907. For a two week period all train traffic to LA ceased, and all railroad assets were used. Cars would stop on the trestle bridge and dump rocks, and move off to be refilled. They succeeded at a cost of over $3,000,000. But now there was a new lake in the valley that was well over 800 sq miles in size.

There are two other major events that will bring us up to current times. In 1924 President Coolidge issues an executive order declaring the Salton Sea a drainage reservoir, and because of continued intermittent flooding of the valley, the Hoover Dam was constructed.

Things became quiescent for the Salton Sea. Mullet was introduced and harvested during the first world war. Later came tilapia, and game fish such as corvina and sargo. More people moved into the area, and then a boom of sorts occurred.

The Salton Sea became a recreational hot spot starting in the fifties. First camp grounds on the sea, and by the sixties yacht clubs, marinas, and new waterfront communities flourished. The rich and famous came to boat race, fish, sail, and play. These were good times for the Salton Sea
.

The Salton Sea however has been doomed from the beginning of its very accidental start.

The good times ground to a halt in 1976 when tropical storm Kathleen swept in and caused extensive flooding. This was followed by tropical storm Doreen the very next year. The two "100" year floods largely destroyed everything built on the sea's shoreline. Gone were the resorts, marinas, yacht clubs and communities.

Things then got ominously quiet on the Salton Sea. In the early sixties there were warnings that the salinity levels were increasing at an alarming rate, and this proved to be true. Since there is little inflow to the sea other than agricultural runoff, the sea has been shrinking from evaporation.

There was already a lot of salt existing in the ancient Salton Sink lake bed from earlier geological times. Agricultural run off has picked up even more salt, increasing the sea's salinity. The Salton Sea hasn't become as salty as the Great Salt Lake, but it's nearing it.

The only fish left are tilapia, and some estimates place their numbers at around 400,000,000. That's the good news. The bad news is in 1986 the state of California warned adults to limit their intake of tilapia because of high selenium levels. The even worse news is that the salinity levels will in just a few years be too high for even the tilapia to survive. As bad as the Salton Sea smells now, I can't imagine the odor and mess that would accompany 400,000,000 dead fish.

The increasing salinity, and chemicals in the sea have already taken a huge toll on local bird and fish populations. In 1992 the Salton Sea gained unwanted national attention when of 150,000 eared grebe water birds died off in the Salton Sea. About 15 percent of the western population of white pelicans have also met their maker on the Salton Sea. Massive fish die offs have not been uncommon. Adding to the problems are the fertilizers transported by the runoff causes algae blooms that eat the oxygen in the sea.

Okay things are bad, but there may be another way more dramatic problem. The Salton Sea contains about 7,500,000 acre feet of water. Each acre foot of water has 325,000 gallons. Multiply these numbers together and you end up with a total of 262,500,000,000 gallons. A gallon of water weighs about 8.33 lbs. So that makes the total weight of water in the Salton Sea about 2186,625,000,000 lbs.

This is 2,186 trillion pounds of water and it's all sitting on top of the southern end of the San Andreas fault. A recent Scripps Oceanographic Institute study found that the Salton Sea's weight may be causing the rupture of stepover faults in the area. Report lead author Danny Brothers said that, "This research does not improve the ability to predict such a quake but suggests that heightened preparedness for a major quake immediately following smaller quakes in the stepover zone is warranted."

So let's now go yachting on the Salton Sea. Despite its size, to the best of my knowledge there is only one boat ramp that is usable on the Salton Sea. The ramp is located at the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. I asked park staff how often the boat ramp was used, and the answer was not often. There is a small group of regulars who do use it on occasion. Kayaks are launched at this ramp also. I saw other abandoned boat ramps, but due to receding water levels, none were usable. I never saw a boat out on the sea.

But for speculations sake, we get our yacht into the water. Where's that chart? Oops there aren't any charts. As close as I could find was a 1995 hydrographic survey of the Salton Sea reservoir. Remember the Coolidge guy in 1924? Okay we can live without the charts and still boat. Are there boating hazards? Yes, and we can start with a most unique one, sand storms. The sea is in the desert and these events can reduce visibility to zero, not to mention getting your yacht really dirty.

Wind storms are also possible, and the shallow waters can really kick up a fuss. The summer temperatures can reach 110 degrees, so put on sun screen, hat, and gallons of water will be needed. The shoreline in places has old remnants of docks and structures to watch out for. Need help? The State of California recommends red flares, or calling 911. There is no real Coast Guard presence here, and remember there is only one boat ramp I'm aware of for 525 sq miles of inland sea. No marinas, no dockage, other than the state park, and no fuel rounds out the list of Salton Sea amenities

The answer is at a practical level you can't really boat on the Salton Sea anymore, and I wouldn't put any boat I owned into that saline solution.

What does the future hold for the Salton Sea? I don't think anything good is going to happen. The lake will continue to shrink from evaporation, and the salinity will continue to increase. Most life in the sea will quickly disappear.

In the long run given the choice between southern California's water needs and the needs of the Salton Sea, and the billions it will take to even save a portion of it, the sea will lose. It seems to be a self fulfilling prophesy. Is it worth seeing the Salton Sea, and its environs? Yes. It's beautiful, but in a devastated sort of way. Just don't bother to bring your boat.

Wikipedia on the Salton Sea

"Homeland Security" memo

2013-04-28T13:56:00.001-04:00

MEMORANDUM FOR: John LaPoint, chief of marine vessel tracking directorate.

FROM: Bob Aliason, R&D manager, personnel tracking group.

SUBJECT: New vessel tracking technology tests.

John, I can't tell you how pleased I am with the initial results we have gotten from this newly proposed vessel tracking technology we have code named "WiFiEye."

We all remember the reaming we took over the costs of installing all of those coastal AIS receivers disguised as cell phone towers. We're also still getting claims from the Department of the Interior for damage to coastal wetlands when they were installed. Complaints from all of the cell phone users complaining they weren't getting a signal from them didn't help things either. What made all of this worse was we never identified a single threat by collecting AIS data. I think the perps were just turning off their AIS transmitters before they offloaded their nerve gas, or suitcase nukes. I told everyone at the time that you shouldn't be able to shut them off before the legislation was passed.

WiFiEye hardly has any costs, and provides much greater detail on when, and where boats have been, almost to the exact foot. The concept is deceptively simple. Marine chart plotter manufacturers are rapidly implementing WiFi systems in their systems, and year by year the market penetration will increase. We published a vague research RFI and ended up awarding a sole source contract to a clever software company in India for almost pennies. The bids we got from Boeing and SWRI, staggered us. This wasn't a manned Mars mission we were proposing.

Anyway John, the task was to see if we could internet hack a WiFi enabled chart plotter, and install a small program. This little subroutine tells the chart plotter to turn on it's "Track" function. Once that's done, the little resident program uploads all of the track data to our secret cloud server when ever it gets internet access. Since we have our WiFiEye program active on the boat, we can also monitor mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and use them to identify the owner, and look for potentially suspicious behavior. The Indian software group successfully accomplished this in just two weeks, and are now pitching us on some very interesting Apple store apps that could be created.

Now we recognize we would get some flak if the liberal boating public found out. As an alternative we have planned a meeting with the Republican House Committee on Homeland Security's Cybersecurity subcommittee to pitch our proposed "In Defense of Boating Safety Act." This would require chart plotter manufacturers to implement this important life saving security technology, and save us some development bucks at the same time. I'm confident that truly patriotic boaters would endorse it. At any rate we could also sneak it into the back of the budget bill with some fuzzy language, and no one would ever notice. Who reads that stuff? Most of the public doesn't boat or care anyway.

Since we have all of those fake cell towers anyway, we could add WiFi transmitters to them to increase the detection range of illicit boating activity for the enhanced safety of all us. Some good security will keep the public off of these hot spots. I'm preparing a phase II program budget, and I will let you know how the subcommittee meeting goes. I'm sure they will be enthusiastic because they need to keep us happy because we know a lot about them.

John, let me know what you think, Bob.

Boat sale observations, the cast and crew

2013-04-27T11:14:00.000-04:00

Being s shewed observer of human behavior I have noted some traits that seem to be common to most used boat sales. The first observation is that when people tell you it's not about the money, it's always about the money. The second one is the seller is going to lose money. It's all about the old joke" What are mixed emotions?" It's watching your mother in law driving your new car off a cliff.

So let's take a look at the participants involved in a boat sale. First there are the brokers. They come in two flavors. The first is the broker who will list your boat for what you think it's worth, and the second one tells you what it's really worth. Both types of brokers immediately start to salivate anticipating that sweet commission check soon to come.

The former gets more listings, but eventually has to lower the price, much to the owners abject chagrin. This often results in loss of the listing in the process. The later broker initially gets less listings, but in the end sells more boats.

Now for the sellers. They will most likely lose money, and the really unlucky ones will have to write a check. Sellers often have a resigned look on their face, and seem to have constant stomach pain. They also know what issues their boat really has. Most won't lie about them if very specifically asked, but they aren't going to bend over backward to bring them to a sellers attention.

The buyers on they other hand are already dreaming of that exotic trip while sipping beverages in coconut shells festooned with paper umbrellas. They are often seen clutching dogged eared West Marine catalogs. But much to the sellers dismay, in the process of negotiating a contract, the buyers are going to mercilessly beat that dead horse named "Selling Price" with a really big ugly stick.

Now for the marine surveyors. The prudent buyers are going to pay a professional to meticulously examine and probe every aspect of the vessel looking for anything that is less than perfect. Lack of perfection is not hard to find in a used boat. The results of the 25 page long survey are then cast into ingots, and used to add more heft to the big stick that is still constantly whacking the dead price horse.

The sellers job is to now take the surveyor's long list of deficiencies and, and either reduce his price again to make some of them go away, or agree to rectify them as a condition of the sale. Finally a deal is struck, contracts are signed, a final sea trial is scheduled. Time is now of the essence. The buyer wants the boat, the brokers want their commission checks, the seller just wants it to be over.

Now enters the Installer clutching the surveyors report. The sea trial is three days from now. You didn't even know the boat was for sale, and have never seen it. Often you're contacted by a broker, and you don't have a clue who the owner is. You just know you're to spend as little money as possible, and you've got three days.

It seems the radar is broken, and has been for several years. The old chart plotter is acting up. You grind through the list, and make everything okay, by hook, crook or baling wire if needed.

The seller has already been keel hauled, and the sea trial is the final plank to be walked. Brokers who now need cups to catch their ever increasing drool flow, a captain, and the buyer all go for the metaphorical three hour tour. Inevitably something else is found. I didn't feel that vibration before, is it normal? Is the radar making a funny noise? But on the whole it goes okay, and the brokers press for the deal to close.

The buyer gives the now very bloated dead price horse a final good kick. If you just do this, I will sign the contract contingent on you keeping your word. It's not that we don't trust you, just initial the addendum right here, and here, and here, and here. The deal is done. The installer is given one more job to do, and does it. The boat is immediately relocated to another state. The seller goes back to his home in the north. The brokers are now celebrating in the Bahamas.

Excuse me, here is my bill. Is anybody here? Where did this echo come from? Hello? Hello?

Since my milieu is generally marine electronics, I have some advice for sellers. Before you list the boat, give it a good look over yourself, or better yet hire a marine surveyor to do it for you. Knowing what's going to come up in advance is valuable.

The second piece of advice is buyers typically won't miss what isn't there. By this I mean if the radar hasn't worked for years, remove it. Have a dead marine electronics something or another in the dash, make it go away. If you don't, the buyer will want it to work, at your expense. Once the pictures are taken of the boat with the dead radar on the arch or hardtop, and spewed all over the internet, you're going to be stuck with making it work.

Next, cleanliness is critical, especially in places a good marine surveyor is going to look. I can always tell how well a boat has been maintained by the condition of the engine room, under helms, and all the hidden recesses. Filthy engines, gross shower sump boxes, oily bilges all say the owner isn't paying attention. And lastly get everything that's not going away with the boat, taken off the boat. It makes it easier for me to get to things, and there is no confusion about what comes with the boat.

Hello, is anyone here? Where did everyone go?

Boating flare guns, or testicular terror?

2013-04-23T14:01:00.002-04:00

Recently a Florida man, of course it's a Florida man, inadvertently or at least I hope so, shot himself in the groin with a marine flare gun. He subsequently required notable medical attention for damaged anatomy located in said region. So the question occurred to me, "What is the viability of using a marine flare gun as a weapon for self defense on a boat?"

You're sitting in a quiet anchorage when all of a sudden the boat is swarmed by zombies and pirates looking for rum. Your trusty 50 caliber machine gun is unfortunately disassembled and safely hidden out of sight from the gummit, laying under a foot of greasy black water in the bilge. All you have is your plastic orange flare gun, and six outdated 12 gauge red flares. With a glimmer of hope, you chamber a red flare. The trigger is pulled, and you fire at point blank range at the nearest zombie. The flare bounces off the zombie, and falls on the deck.

You, the zombies, and the pirates all stop at once blinded by the ball of red light until in just seconds it burns through the deck and falls into the bilge water. The ensuing chemical reaction blows you backward off the boat now completely devoid of any eyebrows. Swimming away you try to keep your head real low to avoid your 50 cal ammunition that's now randomly hurling exploding bullets in all directions caused by the conflagration. A zombie near you tries to give you "the finger" as it flounders in the water but it falls off.

Two weeks later, you take a brown sharpie, and draw on eyebrows in preparation for the hearing. It seems that 400 gallons of diesel washed up on Longboat Key's shoreline, and the 50 caliber machine gun was found when the Coast Guard raised the boat. The Paradise Condo Association is upset about the bullet holes in the building's stucco, and a resident is claiming her Sphynx cat became so scared all of its hair fell out. There's even a zombie that's missing a finger and wearing a cheap suit who wants to testify.

If you search around very few people have ever successfully used flare guns for defensive purposes. Mostly for those who have tried it, the end results tend to follow Murphy's laws of unintended circumstances. In the end, despite what you see in movies, it's a very poor choice for a weapon, especially on a boat full of fuel. It is however a great option for emergency distress signaling.

The primary ingredients in a flare are black powder used to propel the flare to altitude, and Magnesium which provides the light. We will pause here for a moment to just consider this metal.

The property that makes magnesium good for flares is its very high burning temperature, of up to about 5600 F producing a bright light. The down side of magnesium is it's difficult to extinguish when burning. Throwing water on it makes the problem much worse. Not only does the water immediately turn to steam, but then the steam reacts with the burning magnesium creating hydrogen gas. Things instantly go from bad to much worse. Your typical small B & C boat fire extinguisher won't help here either. Only a class D fire extinguisher can put out a magnesium fire, and it should be a large one.

Other chemicals added to distress flares are various forms of strontium, and a oxidizer to help it burn. This creates the cheery red color.

I'm not going to belabor the point, but all recreational boats over 16' operating in coastal waters must carry USCG approved day and night visual distress signals. Manually powered boats, and open sailboats under 26' are excluded.

These can be pyrotechnic devices, or as simple as a distress flag, and an electric light that blinks SOS in morse code, as if anybody in this iPhone age actually remembers what this is. In the end three non-expired USCG approved red hand held flares meets the test for most boaters. Beyond that the prudent captain can make further decisions based on how and where they boat.

A couple pieces of advice. RTFD (Read the directions first) before you need to use them. Light and hold hand held flares over the water on the downwind side of the boat at an angle that won't let it drip hot stuff on your hands. Remember this stuff burns pretty hot. Shoot all aerial flares down wind, and not over land or other boats. Don't ever point a flare gun at your groin, or at anyone else even if you're joking.

Lastly check the expiration dates, and properly dispose of expired flares. By that I mean you can't take a bottle of rum and a bunch of expired red flares and fire them off in the bay with your buddies. It's illegal. The good news is you can do this with white flares, although I wouldn't have the rum on the boat when you're blasting away in these paranoid times.

For those who would feel emasculated by using a cute feminine looking orange plastic flare gun, there are other options such as the manly B&D ExD 37mm Extreme Duty Top Break Launcher.

As scary as it looks it's legal, just as long as you only have 37mm flares on the boat. It can shoot a lot of other things too, but if that other ammunition is found on board it automatically becomes a weapon. I understand that Magnifico Yachts is giving one to each buyer of their new 2000 hp Phallic Fifty go fast boat as a buyer incentive. If you have one one of these on board, I would tell the USCG in advance of any inspections so they don't get too excited when they find it.

The photo of the 37mm launcher is from Wikipedia, and taken by user incitatus.

The small burning flare photo is from Wikipedia user Dvortygirl.

The flare gun photo is from Wikipedia by user MMX

You're kidding me right? You're not?

2013-04-21T10:02:00.000-04:00

"Igor, I'm ready, hand me the brain, and my magnifying glasses. Give me a little space Igor, and what have you been using for mouthwash? Road kill? Good I'm done Igor. Throw the big knife switch... AND IT'S ALIVE!.... Hmmm sort of at any rate. It drools a lot, it's picking its nose, and sniffing the acetone. Igor where did you get this brain from?" "Ah that's a long story boss, but you know that bar across from the Magnifico boat factory?"

I'm perpetually flabbergasted at the inane things I find on production boats. They slap them together, and let someone else worry about the consequences. Here is today's prime example of a basic task made excruciatingly difficult, if not impossible. This sail boat came from the factory with the wind instruments and autopilot installed during construction. I'm adding a new Raymarine e7D to the starboard steering station, Ram mount for the Ipad on the port less used steering station, and a SR6 network box with a Sirius receiver for weather.

The weather receiver antenna is a Shakespeare SRA 40. I'm removing the pedestal so what will be seen is just a 3 1/3" white hockey puck. The big plus is its wee small wire, and tiny little connector. It's typically very easy to pull this wire.

The perfect place to mount this little antenna is in the instrument housing above the companion way on this sailboat. There are only two instruments installed, plenty of room on the flat top, and access is really easy.

The two wind instruments are daisy chained together, and a single black and white spur cable leaves the compartment.

This cable routing was done during construction. There was no headliner, no trim yet, and everything is easy to get to. Apparently there was never even a passing thought you might want to add anything else here, for all time yet to come.

The wire passes through the fiberglass. Someone fitted a small piece of pipe that was raised up so water couldn't get into the hole. That was good idea, someone was using brain cells. The wire ends up under the headliner, turns ninety degrees, and then again ninety degrees and ends up behind the corner of the bulkhead heading downward. Hmmm this isn't starting to look good, and it wasn't.

The wire routes downward behind a wood panel strip that has been screwed on with small # 4 screws, but the trim has been installed over it, and the screw holes have been plugged, and finished.

Someone even went to the trouble to make sure the small screws were accessible, by relieving the area around them. The bottom of the panel strip is behind the flooring thus insuring you can't pull the bottom out.

I called the factory and asked, "How do I do the wire pull?" There is a pause from the nice guy I spoke to, "Did they plug the screw holes on the trim? I'm not sure they were supposed to. Well you could pull the plugs out and remove the trim pieces, You know how to do this don't you, You take a drill.....

My inside voice starts screaming at me. "Yes, I know how to do this, and after I've done it, I have to find the matching wood somewhere, make new plugs, glue them in, take a sharp chisel and trim the plugs, sand them smooth, find and apply the exact matching stains and finishes. You're killing me buddy. Why didn't you just make the trim pieces shorter in the first place so they didn't cover the strip? If you had, I might of had a chance of pulling a new wire. It still wouldn't have been easy, but at least maybe possible. The hole at the bottom of the strip was just large enough to pass the spur cable and nothing else. Do you know what conduit is? That round flexible plastic pipe stuff you pull wires through?"

The boat is leaving on a long trip tonight, and I still have other things to do. Reluctantly I go aft and install the antenna on top of the teak combing cap. The teak is thick, and I can't attach the nut underneath so it gets spot welded down with 3M 4200. I do a slithering spelunking run under the autopilot ram, and steering arm to route the antenna wire to the SR6, and get it plugged in. Later in the early evening I make phone calls to the boat while it's still in cell phone range to make sure everything is perfect, and things are not. A spur cable didn't lock in properly, and the auto pilot stopped talking to the e7D. Some brief screwdriver activity exposes the tee, and it's re-seated. I will know later today if there were other issues that need to taken care of.

"Igor, take our drooling friend Frank over to the Magnifico plant, and help him fill out an application for employment, I think he will fit in well there. And the next time get me a baboon brain like I asked for. I wanted an intelligent brain to work with."

The Celestronic M3. The perfect chart plotter?

2013-04-18T21:02:00.004-04:00

I was surprised I was even invited to see it. I met the boat at a private dock, and departed for a two hour cruise. This nav system looked sleek, but unimposing at first. It's only 1/2" thick, 14" wide and 10" high. But one should never judge a book by it's cover, and the wireless Celestronic M3 proves this.

This daylight viewable LED backlit unit uses advanced Lithium battery technology, and will power the unit for 16 hours on a full battery. What's impressive is it only takes five minutes to recharge batteries to full capacity. The helm station cradle has a built in inductive charger that is powered by 12 VDC to 24VDC ships power.

When I said wireless, I meant wireless! The base Celestronic system includes WiFi, WiGig, ANT, and Bluetooth functionality. A 50 channel WAAS along with an integrated 3 axis, gyro, magnetometer, and accelerometer are all internal to the MFD.

All of this just scratches the surface. The Celestronic M3 uses low power quad core processors running at 3.7 GHz and operates on a Linux based open source platform. This means that thousands of software developers worldwide can produce apps for this system using their free developers kit. Specialized wind apps for sailing, engine interfaces, media management, and much more. Want to be warned about shallow water in your path, there is an app for that.

Who doesn't offer touch screen technology today? The Celestronic engineers have taken this one big step further with the integration of the 3D Leap Motion technology. Now you can sit at the helm and like Tom Cruise in his best Minority Report fashion, wave a hand to move a data box or camera view. Use your fingers in the air to grab a waypoint and transport it to a new location. Snap your fingers and menus appear, pinch to shrink and zoom, and with a small movement of a fingertip overlay weather radar on the display.

If your hands and fingers get tired, the built in 40 megapixel camera supports ETT (Eye Tracking Technology). Turn the Celestronic system on with a glance, turn down the stereo. If it sees you fell asleep at the helm, it can sound an alarm to wake you up.

If that isn't enough, there are plenty of voice recognition apps and AI apps. Move over Siri, meet Celeste. She will get you home safely.

Celestronic's primary modules communicate with the display using WiGig technology allowing data transfer rates up to 7 Gbit/s. No waiting around for the data to make an appearance in this system.

The powerful media module supports multiple cameras and monitors along with music, and video management. HDMI, component, and composite inputs lets you plug and play almost anything.

32 channels of high resolution analog to digital conversion allows you to use your engine senders, and other analog sensors as a system input.

Powerful multi-core DSP processors, and power supply are the perfect platform for sonar and radar apps. Check out their new 3D forward looking CHIRP sonar app. You can clearly see what is under, and forward of your boat.

NEMA 0183 and N2K plug and play into this unit. Check out the 0183 translator app that takes any version of NMEA, and converts it to Version 4.10.

Telecommunications galore in this high speed clock driven system. Receive and transmit VHF, XM, and almost everything in between (FCC licence may required for many frequencies). Multiple handset, and antenna ports round out the module.

Their new AC/DC distributed power module can be used for monitoring, switching, and load shedding if needed.

You can now utilize extensive mapping systems. Along with traditional marine charts, you can now overlay bathymetric, topographic, raised relief, isochronic, orthophotomaps, and many more chart forms.

The Celestronic M3 system has now opened the marine world to the latest in electronics, and the ability to communicate with all of your mobile devices such as watches, phones, and tablets. Easily integrate IP cameras. Stream Netflix in port and surf the web. And who has such a simple and easy to use user interface? Thousands of worldwide developers are working hard to provided you with the latest, newest, and most innovated software technologies available at the lowest prices. I'm impressed, and want one.

Visit us at MarineKickStarter.com today and reserve your system now.

"If you imagine it's possible, someone else is already trying to doing it, or has already done it." The Installer

Boats that spread their wings

2013-04-16T05:54:00.001-04:00

Just as soon as the Wright Brothers figured out how to get an airplane off the ground, inventors were trying to get them to work on water. The first successful float plane flight was in the flimsy looking Le Canard in 1910. By 1923 short hop commercial flying boat service became available in Britain.

The pinnacle of commercial flying boat service was the iconic Pan Am Pacific Clipper (Boeing 314) starting in 1939. Service ended in 1941 with the US entry into WWII. The introduction of the Lockheed Constellation and the Douglas DC-4 rendered large commercial transoceanic and flying boat service obsolete. None of these aircaft exist today. The last one was scrapped in 1950.

Here is the vocabulary. Seaplanes can take off and land on water and runways. The subclass of this genre is amphibian aircraft. They divide into floatplanes, and flying boats, with the later being defined as having a hull. What you're looking at is a sleek Seawind 3000 flying boat, and you have to build it yourself, or at least more than half of it. You can also buy one someone else built and had certified.

Now let's meet Chris Doughtrey. I know from personal experience he is a highly skilled, and talented builder of boats in both wood and fiberglass, a pilot, and a builder of aircraft.

Chris, and his business partner John Januszewski are the owners of Sarasota airport based Planemakers Inc. This unique business consists of helping aircraft kit builders to complete the more sophisticated aircraft kits such as the Seawind, and the completion of kits owners have found that they either don't have the time, or skills to complete.

I think think a lot of the impetus to have Planemakers professionally finish aircraft kits comes from gentle spousal urging, along the lines of, "It's been filling the garage for years Bob, finish it or get it out of here. We look like the flying Clampett hillbillies." So a trailer arrives at Planemakers and off comes a partially built kit aircraft that has been languishing for too long.

There are a lot FAA regulations about kit plane building, but the big one is the 51% rule. Simply stated it means if you buy a kit plane, you must, and be able to prove you did 51% of the work yourself on the aircraft. The other 49% can be done by outside professionals. It's actually more complicated than that, but you get the general idea.

Like building a boat, there are lot of man hours involved, and much personal dedication is required. For kit plane builders, if the job is done properly you end up with a FAA experimental aircraft airworthiness certificate for recreational usage. The other huge plus of building a kit aircraft is the substantial savings when compared to buying a new aircraft from a manufacturer. Planemakers have assisted builders in the completion of about one third of the Seawind flying boat fleet, and many other projects.

The space age looking canard winged Seawind is certainly an elegant, and futuristic looking aircraft. The pylon mounted engine removes a lot of the noise associated with engines mounted to the bulkhead in front of you, and the huge bubble canopy gives you well over 270 degrees visibility.

The Seawind cockpit is very wide (52") and seats four comfortably. The design also provides lots of space for avionics, and flight controls. In this case there is a familiar name to boaters, and that is the Garmin 696 GPS that is mounted above the console. There are many other aspects of the Seawind 3000 that are boat related.

The hull is very similar to a power boat. When it's powered forward the craft lifts up on the hull steps and starts to plane. At speed, a small pull on the yoke pops the hull out of the water. Level off and climb out.

The graceful down turned wing tips provide in the water stabilizing flotation. Planemaker's designed the small planning fins to give the wingtips some reduced water drag during landings and takeoffs.

And every boat needs a rudder. On the Seawind the rudder is retracted during flight. In the water the rudder is deployed, and it's motion is linked to the air rudder improving water taxiing performance.

For a single engine aircraft the Seawind 3000 is really quick. A top speed of 200 mph, and a cruise speed of 180 mph at 65% power. The range is impressive too. The standard configuration has a no reserve range of 1040 miles, and with extended range tanks this increases to 1460 miles.

There are a number of other projects going on the the Planemakers hanger. A Velocity is being completed. In this case though, this sleek aircraft does not have the typical pusher prop configuration.

The twist to this project is this small aircraft is being equipped with a jet engine. It will end up in a mountainous region, and the jet engine will allow it to fly at much higher altitudes.

Building a composite airplane kit is similar in many ways to building a fiberglass boat, but the attention to detail, and precision required is far greater. This no place for delaminations, air voids or uncured materials that I find on occasion in production boats. The use of high quality aerospace grade epoxies predominate, and often carbon fiber is used requiring additional fillers and fairing.

After the fuselage and wings are completed, things sharply diverge from typical boat construction. Electrical wire has to meet FAA specifications, and is typically ETFE insulated. Some avionics do use NMEA 0183, but several other communication protocols such as ARINC 429 exist and are applied. Control cables or push rod systems actuate flight controls. After staring at aircraft autopilots, servo systems, glass cockpit MFD's, and comm systems my head was spinning. Too much technology, "pull up, pull up." It's very much a different world.

It was a fun and illuminating afternoon at Planemakers, and many thanks Chris for your time. His boat by the way is a Celebrity Sloop he has meticulously rebuilt from the skin inward.

Here is the link to Planemakers website.

The photo of the Seawind 3000 floating on Lake Winnebago taken by Michael Volk is courtesy of Seaplanes.org

The photo his Celebrity Sloop courtesy of Chris Doughtrey.

Slippery slope

2013-04-06T15:46:00.001-04:00

"Okay Bob, give me about 15 minutes, and I will have the transducer installed. I will leave the wire tied up in the transom to the motor harness in a plastic bag. When you get the boat back to your house I will stop by and pull the transducer wire forward, and install the rest of the gear." "Thanks Bill, but I have been thinking. Since you're already here, could you get the GPS installed? I have been out of boating for a while, and I don't think I could find my way home without it." I look at my watch. This was supposed to be a quick give and go on a busy full schedule day.

That's when I heard the loud pop of a small vortex to the ether opening, and felt the first tug on my soul. I look at Bob, and I know he is right, so I say "Okay Bob, if the yard will give you the time I'll stick the gear in. Then I gotta go."

Two hours later, the job is done. A combo chart plotter and sounder is up and running. "Let's get the boat splashed Bob, and I'll give you a quick overview." Thirty minutes later I stare at my watch, and say, "You're good to go Bob." Bob sits quietly for a moment, and then says, "Would you mind if we took a short practice trip in the intercoastal? I'm really not very clear on some of this stuff. I haven't boated for several years. It would make me feel a little better about this."

Damn, the vortex just got a little larger, and my soul is now slowly seeping into the ether. "Gee Bob, I don't know if I have the time." Bob stares at me like a lost puppy. I make a couple of quick calls to stave off anxious clients, and tell Bob, "Lets go."

It's a nice but windy day. Down the canal we go, and Bob is already in a dither. "The exit markers are private aids Bob, and they aren't on the chart. Just look, and you can see them right in front of you." "What side of the red markers am I supposed to be on Bill?" "Bob, remember red right return? Since we are exiting the channel you want the red markers on the left side." "Thanks Bill."

We enter the intercoastal and Bob tries to pass a red marker on the left side. Whoa Bob, what are you doing?" "Well you told me to keep the red markers on the left." That was in the canal Bob. In the intercoastal going north they are on your right side." "Well that seems confusing, but okay Bill. Where is the next marker?" "You have to look at the chart Bob. It's the flashing green up ahead. Do you see it?" Bob squints through the windshield, and finally sees it. This goes on for about 45 minutes before we get back to the dock. I get off the boat and head back to the truck. I can see Bob just sitting in his new boat looking concerned. I walk back to the dock, and ask Bob, "Is there a problem?" "Bill, my dock is about 25 miles away and I have to go into Tampa bay to get to it. I don't think I can do this without your help. Would you please go with me?"

The vortex is now huge. and I'm being pulled in. My soul will be doomed to forever exist in some gray netherworld. "Let's go Bob, keep the red markers on your right. Bob you have to either speed up, or slow down. You can't see anything when the bow is 30 degrees up. Where are you going Bob? You are way out of the channel. The water is thin here. Slow down Bob, that's a huge wake. Why are you passing that boat on the right? No Bob, that sail boat absolutely has right-away. Bob turn hard to the right now!"

Two long hours later we arrive, but it was to late for me, and I was finally sucked into the vortex. Hmm, it's gray here alright, but it's so nice and quiet. In fact it's better here then there. I think I will just take a quiet nap for a while. Later I will try to find a way out before happy hour starts. I will go back and do some additional training with Bob, but I'm leaving when I hear that first small vortex pop into existence.

The Spiral Math gif was created by Wikipedia user Nevit.

Playing with PuTTY and NMEA

2013-03-31T10:20:00.000-04:00

"Welcome to "This is your life,", and please give a warm welcome to our surprise guest NMEA 1.5."

"Well NMEA 1.5, how are you feeling?" "Well I'm doing okay, I guess. I don't do much work anymore, and nobody calls me to do anything new. I mostly hang around in my ninth floor walk up apartment with my five cats and watch reruns on TV. I was important once you know, but today, not so much."

"Do you recognize this voice NMEA 1.5? "Hello NMEA 1.5. You used to help me by sending important navigation information." "Why, is that my old friend LORAN?" "Yes it's me NMEA 1.5, it's great to see you. I'm retired now and live in a mobile home park in Florida. We had great times together though. Without you I could have never talked to autopilots. We made life better for boaters."

"Do you know this voice NMEA 1.5?" "Hi grandpa." "Is that my grandson NMEA 4.10? Why you little uncaring urchin. You can't take a few minutes anymore to with visit your old grandfather? You're always hanging out with that 38,400 baud AIS fast crowd, and using all of them fancy new sentences. You pissant whippersnappers all need a real good strapping. Why I outta take my belt off right now, and give you that thrashing you deserve. I'll teach you some respect for your elders." "Ahem, we will be right back to "This is your life" after a few words from our sponsors."

It's been a bit of a struggle. I have an older Simrad autopilot and IS15 expander box, a vintage Garmin 17x GPS, and a new HP laptop with Nobletec's Odyssey Time Zero navigation software speaking NMEA 4.x. The expander box speaks NMEA 1.5, the autopilot speaks NMEA 2.3, the Garmin is an open ended NMEA port speaking some version of NMEA 3.x. Add to this a serial to USB converter and you can't get there from here. When I use the term "open ended" I'm describing NMEA wiring that uses the device's ground for data communications, instead of the NMEA + (A) and - (B) wires now mostly seen. there are also some slight electrical differences between NMEA 1.5, and the later revisions.

What I tried to do first was to try to get the laptop to swallow data from two talkers at once. you never know, I have had this work, a few times. In this case it didn't, and I wasn't surprised. The Nobletec software would take the GPS data, or sort of take the data from the expander box, but not both. Regardless the NMEA 1.5 data from the expander box always ended up garbled.

The Nobletec software has a port monitor that will show you what the system thinks it's receiving. The data was a mess. Sentences that were too long, sometimes no line feeds or carriage returns, or just babble. About 75% of the data made it through intact, but the bad data played havoc with the Nobletec system when you tried to get the data to display.

Why? I don't know for sure, but I think a combination of the serial/USB conversion, and the old NMEA 1.5's open ended data transmission just didn't play well together. There is another path. I abandoned the expander box, and ran new wiring back to the auto pilot. The NMEA version is newer, and it's not open ended.

In days of yore Windows software through XP all included HyperTerminal which I used to log serial data. This is no longer the case, and it now costs $60.00. Ouch, so I now use PuTTY. It's free, and simple to use. I like free, and simple.

So this time, I wanted to see what the data looked like, before I fed it to the Nobletec system using PuTTY. Open the program, select the port you are using and the baud rate, and the electron gods liked the autopilot's NMEA 2.3 a lot better.

PuTTY is easy to use. Select the port, and the baud rate. If the data stream looks okay, log the data, and take it back to the lab for analysis. If it's badly garbled, then you likely have the wrong baud rate. In the marine world there are only typically three options. 4800, 9600, and 38,400.

The data log from the auto pilot looks good, so far. There is a second set of integration problems however. There may be a future AIS receiver that will output at 38,400 baud, there is the Garmin GPS, and the auto pilot data, and we want to output position data to the VHF, and possibly have it talk back to us.

There is also the problem of the missing heading data from the autopilot that has to be dealt with. It's not in the data stream from the pilot, even though the compass is connected to it. So to solve most of these problems we are going to use an Actisense NDC4-USB multiplexer. That adventure has started, and not without some minor hitches I'll talk about mid week, and I promise I'll be a lot less geeky.

Link love? Do I look like a cheap date?

2013-03-26T11:08:00.000-04:00

Every few years for some unknown nostalgic reason I think I like spam, and I buy some. It gets cooked with Don Ho singing Tiny Bubbles with his ukulele in the background. But like that extruded McRib thing that appears every now and then. I'm always disappointed. I too can get sucked into that "An ounce of image exceeds a pound of performance thing." But for sure I don't like the taste of comment spam.

In the beginning I just put up with it. My email tells me I have a comment. I look at it, and if it's comment spam I just dump it, until one day I saw this on the Rant.

Thesis Writing Great blog very nice information i really like your post. Your article its so amazing. After reading your blog i am very helpful & i really thanks full your. Keep blogging.

The link in red, now disabled here takes you to a company that sells essays. Now that's quite an ad for writing services they left on my site. Was English the third, or forth language of the writer? In a fit of pique, and bemusement I left it there and followed up with some snide remarks. In later times, I have changed my mind, and the Rant is now providing a public service.

How most of this works is someone, somewhere in the world signs up for a free Google account to make some sort of income leaving comment spam. Local website companies sell the "I can make your website appear at the top of Google's search results, for only this amount of money. Trust us, we know how Google works, we are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts." They go overseas and contract with these people to leave comment spam links on websites.

In the old buggy whip days of the internet, the more links on your site had, the better your search result ranking were but no more, sort of. Website links still play a role in rankings, but not all links are created equal. In sum dumping links to your website onto lots of other peoples websites doesn't really raise a website page rank. In the case of comment spam links, it doesn't work at all on most websites.

My little public service started with a comment spam posting for a maritime attorney. This was a big law firm. I looked at their site, and it was one on the worst websites I had ever seen, and certainly lacked the gravitas I would expect from a successful law firm. As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a badly written fake blog on it, that was obviously not written by an attorney, followed by made up comments glorifying the posts using their less than erudite writing skills. Ay caramba! This firm can't know their site looks like this can they? And they didn't. An outside contractor was doing it for them. They got my first email. This is an example of a more current one to give you a feel for them.

Why are you paying a company to spam my website?

Most likely you don't know this is happening, and why you are receiving this. You are paying someone to comment spam my website. This is a complete waste of your money, and my time to remove it.

Here is your spam comment on my site:

Harry Roads has left a new comment on your post.

We have one on our cabin; we decide on it because it’s suitable as a cooling system due to its portability and efficiency. Moreover, it is cheap and needs no hassle for installation. It’s perfectly convenient and perfect for a cool getaway.

Harry Roads (This is the link back to their website disguised as a name)

On my site Google, and most others automatically add this statement in the sites HTML code to comments left behind. Here is yours from my website:

href="http://Bobsheatingandcooling.com"; rel="nofollow">Harry Roads</a>

The "rel="nofollow" part of this tells Google's web crawlers not to index your link. So placing it there does not improve your web (SEO) ranking at al, so why are you paying for it?.

And while I'm the subject have you actually read your fake blog? Seriously? Really? Try the your Tankless Hot water Heater blog entry on the first page. "Tankles how water heater break down easy or are un reliably. You should be embarrassed. This crap hurts you more than it helps you. Lose this blog ASAP, and your web support company at the same time. Real professionals know this stuff doesn't work. I've been thinking about doing a story about comment spam, you don't want to be the example. This public service has been provided by The Marine Installers Rant. Questions? Call me 555-555-5555

I know these aren't pretty emails. They are meant to be a wake up call, and have the owners really look closely at their websites. I only send them if I think the site owner isn't aware of what's happening, and I have been on the money every time. Links to buy gold dust from India and the ilk just go bye bye. I have been have been told over a dozen SEO/website service companies have been fired for doing it. It took the attorney only two hours to fire their website firm, and hire a new one. They have a very nice site now.

Real professionals can improve a sites page ranking, but like all things in life it takes work. Nothing beats good content that is regularly updated, and good reciprocal links. Yeah, I know I've been a bit off topic lately, but lots of things are in the hopper being finished. Fusion kit update, flying boats, playing with PuTTy, Actisense savior, I think, and more.

How it's made

2013-03-24T11:11:00.002-04:00

Today on "How It's Made", bronzing chart plotters, macrame hanging basket holders, tie dyed T shirts, and a Rant.

Lets start with the choice of Wordpress or Blogger? To be honest, I was clueless at the time, and took the option of using Blogger's no cost, over Word Press's small cost. The whole decision to do this at all was intellectual masturbation at its best.

Milling around online and looking at blogs, all I could think was "look at all these billions of megabytes of crap." In many ways it isn't. Families use it as an online equivalent of the Xmas letter. People on trips chronicle their ventures. Teenagers write about their angst, and almost all of it is of little interest to me. I was sorry to hear Aunt Em broke her hip, but Dorothy's blog tells me she would get better if she quit stealing the morphine.

So off on the Rant I went knowing at the time I could do better. I knew could touch the obviously masochistic souls of boaters, and they would flock to my erudite verbiage. I had no idea at the time how difficult and time consuming, albeit enjoyable the reality is.

The blog has rules. Don't hurt people, or products, although I can poke around the edges of this a bit. Don't do product reviews unless it is something unusual that just tickles me. There are plenty of other good writers who specialize in this. I also try to take teaching moments and make them more interesting to read. In other words don't be pedantic if you can help it. I maybe didn't quite hit that mark in this story

So let's assemble a blog entry. I took pictures of some piles of old marine engines, and other other junk. Okay I can do something with this. Maybe a story about a cult that just worships old marine junk. Maybe a real "Cargo Cult" tie in. Hmm, I better look that up first to see what it's really all about. Or I could do a piece on proper, and environmentally safe disposal of old marine stuff. Nah, who would want to read about that. Boaters in blue blazers frenetically dancing around a fire with flame hardened wood spears worshiping a Yamaha lower unit, now that's a feast for my mental eyes.

The first step is to upload photos out of the camera, and dump it into Google's Picasa photo editor. There basic cropping and enhancements are done.

What I end up with is the cropped version. I shoot at 16 megapixels, and the cropped shot is still larger than I want to upload to the blog, so off it goes to Paint.net. Paint.net is a quick and easy way to shrink the photos. Open the photo, do a "save as", and it gives you the option of setting the final file size. If I want to add basic text and arrows it gets done there.

In this case I wanted to do something a little fancier. I wanted rotated text on the picture. To do this, the picture gets opened in Open Office's drawing program. The text work gets done, the picture is exported as a jpeg, and it's reopened in either Paint or Picasa. The image is recropped to get rid of the page around it, and then it gets uploaded into the blog editor. Whew. A simple effort like this is a half an hour by the time you're through with it. As a final note about photos, they are either mine, clearly public domain, or are used with permission and attribution.

If I want to get real fancy I use Gimp. This is an open source Photoshop-esque program. I typically use it to cut objects from one photo, and move it onto another. Gimp is bloody complicated and you need to take the time to learn how to use its zillion capabilities. I also use Microsoft's ICE for panorama photo stitching. I like all of these programs because they're free. This means the Rant's production budget can afford them.

I start by loading all of the photos, and then write the body of the story. In my muddled mind, I have already decide what I'm going to say sort of, and the order in which it's going to be told, maybe.

There are two editors, In the picture on top you see the composing editor, and below it is the HTML version. The composing editor is translating my efforts into the sometimes inscrutable Hyper Text Markup Language. This is what your web browser receives.

The catch is that often this translation is not perfect, and some things can't be done like paragraph indents. I mean I can, but it is so tedious it's not worth the effort. The translation often has spaces ( ) the editor thinks I need for that extra special paragraph justification. They can do odd spacing things, and I have to manually edit them out of the HTML.

Cutting and pasting text can cause problems, and importing any text off the web carries all of its attributes. Oops it green, and 72 point text. Extra carriage returns also seem to regularly sneak in. Trying to use a word with a diacritic mark like the acute one in the word passé requires me to find it on line, past it into the editor, and then manually reformat it.

Now on to orphans and widows. My newspaper editor friend Dick Reston suggested the change from just using all large pictures, to mixing the sizes up. This vastly improved the appearance of the stories.

I have some control over picture sizes by the way I crop them, but Blogger's editor only allows the choice of four sizes once imported. Small, medium, large, and extra large. Medium and extra large are generally not good sizes for my template, so large and small are used.

This suggestion also came with the warning that's it not good to have orphans and widows hanging around the blog. They make readers uncomfortable, and drive down the blog's property values. So I have to manually round them up, and put them on a bus to somewhere else. I do this by shortening the text to fit, or extending it to completely enclose the photo.

The story is nearly done now, just a few more steps to go. the first is to do a "Control G" and search for double spaces, to to, the the, of of, et al, and what I call Karl's your you're's.

Now Kate reads it, and her decision is final. Her third eye often sees things I don't, and In the case of the original FEMA story version she just said "Don't you dare." The vastly different second version was a lot better. I'm not going to be chased out of town now by contractors with flaming torches and pitchforks.

In the end this took about six hours to write. About one third photos, one third writing, and about one third editing and formatting. All and all It's slowly been getting better. I'm very grateful for the constructive criticism that I have been the beneficiary of from both Ben Ellison, and Dick Reston. Both are truly skilled in their arts. Now you know how its made. Next week on "How It's Made", bilge oil diapers, wood emergency hole plugs, and sandals made from old tires.

There is always one mmre typo left. Many thanks for reading.

VHF marine radio operators are standing by

2013-03-20T09:18:00.000-04:00

Who would of thought just a few short years ago that your mobile phone could replace all of that expensive complicated, and bulky electronic equipment on your boat. It has a GPS, lots of marine charting apps are available, radar weather, and even a fish finder app. If you get into trouble you can also call for help, or can you?

Posted on the Flager Live website was the story I took this excerpt from.

"The drifting boat and passengers were located by Air One on the Intracoastal Waterway near the Whitney Lab in Marineland around 1:15 a.m. The Palm Coast boat owner, Danilo Gomez, 43, explained that he, three family members and the teenager were heading home from St. Augustine when they experienced engine problems. He said the cell phone they had did not work and he was unable to call for assistance."

I don't know exactly why the cell phone on the boat didn't work. It might have been broken, had a dead battery, or maybe they were just too far from a cell tower. But I think we can comfortably infer they didn't have a VHF radio. Otherwise why would they have been way over due, and drifting around in the ICW in the middle of the night?

In the boating world, it's a big mistake to think your cell phone substitutes for a marine VHF radio. A really big mistake! I will grant you that access to cell service has dramatically improved through the years. And under perfect circumstance you can talk to a cell site up to fifty miles away. But here is the catch.

These boaters were lucky. They just spent most of the night drifting around in the intercoastal waterway before they were found. But what if someone had been hurt, or the boat was sinking?

So let's contrast these two devices. The average cell phone is one watt. The VHF radio transmits at twenty five watts. Cell phones don't like rain, VHF's are fine with it. Emergency 911 operators don't often deal with marine emergencies, the USCG does.

Cellular companies aren't trying to provide boaters with off shore service. Coverage in many areas just makes it to the shoreline, if that far. The USCG does, and excels at it. On the map above (click to get the high rez version) you can see the off shore coverage is extensive. At the bottom of the map is a note that says coverage area is based on receiving a one second, one watt, transmission from an antenna 6 feet off the water. I'm impressed.

Now for the economics of owning a VHF radio versus a cell phone. The best price I found for a Apple iPhone 5 was $649. The Standard Horizon Eclipse shown above, with antenna, mount and connector is under $200. Monthly service plan for the iPhone starts at $45. There is no service plan for the VHF radio, 24/7 service is free. And if you order one now, we will throw in at no extra charge NOAA weather forecasts, and a DSC emergency contact feature that tells the USCG exactly where you are, who you are, and what kind of a boat you have. Operators are standing by, call now. Don't let Darwin prematurely cull you from the boating herd. There isn't a single good excuse I can think of not to have a VHF radio on board.

Don't forget to bring your smart phone with you also, you will need it to Bluetooth stream tunes to your stereo, or play Angry Birds while waiting for help to arrive from your VHF Mayday call.

I borrowed the iPhone picture from the website GPS Nautical Charts. Their mapping apps cover much more geography than most.

The disclaimer, it's not our fault.

2013-03-19T15:32:00.002-04:00

Warning!!! By pressing the enter key on this chart plotter you are acknowledging that this is merely an aid to navigation, and anything that happens to you by using this or our vendors product is absolutely all your fault. You are also agreeing to hold us harmless even if there errors and omissions in our product, if you hit something, get lost, or we just told to use obsolete information.

You know you just can't make this stuff up. This is taken from a new Navionic's chart showing the Stump Pass area on the west coast of Florida, along with some chart notes about the pass. I took the liberty of underlining the less than constructive advice the cartographers have offered the user. I suspect they will correct this quicker then sending an email to their website.

Remember, it is just an aid to navigation.

And a tip of the hat to Steve Stevens for spotting it.

The FEMA project

2013-03-16T09:46:00.000-04:00

Thanks for coming everyone. Our beloved president of Magnifico Yachts, Mr Grunion has asked me to do an update for the engineering team on our two FEMA programs. Our first program is to find out if our yachts can be built to meet FEMA hurricane standards. This has turned out to be little more difficult than we thought due to the impact testing requirements.

We did get a good deal on the air cannon we bought in a government surplus auction, and finally got it installed in the old mold shop out back. That's the good news. The bad news is that it took a little time to learn how to use it.

Staff went out to marine salvage companies, and collected a broad range of stuff that might blow around in a marina during a hurricane. We got lots things like radios, anchors, flag poles, daiquiri blenders, and that sort of boaty stuff. For the first test, we set up one of our hulls about 100' in front of the cannon, and loaded it with an old LORAN unit. We got a bunch of them on the cheap.

Oh boy! We all were extremely surprised when it blew a two foot hole in one side of the hull, and came screaming out the other side still moving at high velocity. It was like a 50 caliber bullet passing through a stick of warm butter.

Unfortunately as some of you might recollect, it continued on and punched a large hole in the gas tank of a car in the parking lot. The national news coverage was due to the substantial conflagration that resulted, and marketing is still really angry with us.

Construction is now completed on the belatedly discovered need for a very large 1" plate steel and concrete backstop to prevent errant marine gear from getting away from us again.

We have done a series of tests firings to verify its capabilities. Our favorites are watching chartplotters vaporize, and mushroom anchors end up looking like metal pancakes. Because of complaints from accounting about budget overruns we are now just using 6' x 6' pieces from our hulls.

The team is admittedly somewhat frustrated about our attempts to meet FEMA's requirements with our current designs. We have found that even blasting an infant's life preserver at our hulls caused severe cracking.

There are also some issues with our hurricane shutter designs. Marketing says they are all ugly, but you should see what high impact porthole, and hatch costs do to the boat's sales price. We've been happy all of these years with the fact that our portholes, and hatches just manage to keep most of the water out of the boat.

Additionally there is resistance from accounting about the increased costs needed to make the hull solid and durable. This coupled with marketing's concerns that if the boat is too well built it will last longer, and slow down new boat sales. These may put this program in jeopardy. We are however hopeful that a DARPA grant may yet still come to the rescue. We were pleased that the You Tube video we shot of an anchor chain shredding the hull has had over 2,000,000 views, and the ad revenue has been set aside for the Vegas sales meeting.

Regarding our second program, we are very excited with results so far in convincing FEMA to use our boats instead of trailers in disaster scenarios. We have pointed out to FEMA that hurricanes seem to mostly to hit coastal areas making our boats ideal for housing.

It turns out our Magnifico 32 family cruiser has many similarities to a FEMA trailer. It has a tiny bath room, and kitchen, propane stove, microwave, air conditioning, running water, furniture that is attached to the floor, it out gasses all sorts of chemicals, and has hardly any storage space at all. Like a FEMA trailer our boats are poorly insulated, require a lot of maintenance, sways in the wind, and after a couple years of use, they both aren't worth very much.

But what really excited FEMA, was getting rid of the very high costs of sewage disposal. All our boats can directly dump sewage overboard, saving all of that costly honey truck expense.

A few of FEMA's green hemp wearing tofu eating staffers objected. But when we reminded senior staff that billions of fish crap in the water every day without any problems with water quality the idea was endorsed. We understand the objecting staff members were transferred to a refugee camp in Rwanda. We will also save some money by removing those expensive Y valves and sump pump boxes.

FEMA was also impressed with our insights into possibly re-branding them into a more upscale disaster response agency. In a survey conducted by our marketing group, when asked the question, "Would you rather live in a FEMA trailer, or on a yacht?" the response was overwhelmingly the yacht. I mean who would want to live in a FEMA trailer?

I just have a couple of notes to close with. We will be firing the air cannon at lunch tomorrow, so if you want to see something smashed, bring it in. And no more cats this time, they smell awful a day or two later, and the neighbors were complaining. Senior staff are reminded to remember that Mr. Grunion is hosting the big FEMA conference in Vegas next week, and everyone is to be on their best behavior during the cruise on the new Magnifico 80 motor yacht. It stays in Vegas, and the wives aren't invited.

The photo of the FEMA trailer was taken by Wikipedia user Infrogmation

Splitting the transducer

2013-03-09T15:44:00.000-05:00

The Parmain top secret laboratories have been bombarding a transducer with protons trying to get it to split. The DARPA program funding was pulled when the janitor said, "Just add a wire pigtail to the transducer, it's simple." Drat, time to write another grant request to DARPA. Maybe this time we could design a talking GPS for a boat. It should be simple enough for the average boater to use. To guide you to your destination it could say "Colder" or "Warmer." If you lurch to a stop it will say "Freezing."

Of all of the electrical things that exist on a boat, your transducer is the most reliable. It's always immersed in a salty chemical soup, gets dragged through the water often at very high speeds, and yet it keeps on working year after year. When I get a call dealing with a "no depth reading" problem, the first thing I suspect is the depth finder itself. Second could be the transducer face is covered with marine life having a rave party, and or has gotten knocked up. Third is damaged wiring. Fourth, and only very rarely the transducer has failed. There is an exception here. If it is a Garmin system, it may be suffering from thermistor-itis.

Today's project started out with what appeared to be a bad split transducer that was feeding a single Garmin GPS 188C that was being used at two stations.

When I arrived on the scene, the 188C knows where it is, but displays a "Sonar Disconnected" message. Now it's time for "Tales from the thermistor."

This a fancy word for a thermometer. As the water temperature changes, the resistance in the circuit changes, and correlates to a temperature. You'll find these devices everywhere. In your oven, engine water temperature senders, hot water heaters, and inside transducers to name a few.

But as reliable as this device is, for reasons that aren't clear to me, it's not quite as reliable as the transducer's piezoceramic element that does the sonar pinging, and listens to the returning echo.

Back in days of yore, sounder module builders had from zero, to varying simple schemes to tell if, and maybe what kind of transducer was plugged into the module. In 2007 Airmar started to include an orange XID (transducer ID) wire. This allowed the transducer to tell the sounder who, and what it is.

Since our Garmin 188c predates this technology, what Garmin did to check if a transducer was plugged in was to check for a temperature reading from the thermistor. Got temp? Turn on sounder. No temp? Don't turn it on.

Oh yeah, back to the sonar disconnected message. This is where I'm ready to regale and awe the customer with my extensive skill set, thus validating the miserly wages I will ask to be paid.

Out comes a utility knife and I carefully slit the plastic cover away from the transducer cable. This transducer was made by Garmin. Note the green and red wires, they are not Airmar colors. With a flourish I cut and connect the green and white wires on the connector side together. It gets plugged in and the sonar disconnect message has gone away. Hah, see what my knowledge has wrought! Oops, the box now believes the transducer is there, but the old transducer isn't pinging. A new transducer was installed when the vessel was recently hauled, and I plug it in. It works fine. Okay this works about 99% of the time, but not this time.

If you see different colors, ie brown and blue when you slit the cable, this means the transducer was made by Airmar, and you will do the same thing only the colors will be brown and white. Remember this is on the connector side.

Part two of the problem is the old transducer had been split, and the cable was feeding two locations. This connection couldn't be accessed. This was a house boat, and a lot of wiring can only be accessed from underneath when the vessel is on land. Don't ask, it's a house boat thing. My best guess is the connection point became corroded, and Mr. Electricity encountered a road block.

More problems still exist. The new owner had purchased a new Garmin 441s and wanted it installed at the upper helm. That was a good decision because the 188c's connector had a severe case of green jaundice, and wouldn't be usable. But we also had to identify the transducer cable coming down to the lower helm. Normally you would pull it on one end, and someone at the bottom would yell, "I got it." Not so easy here, we have a bad case of convoluted pull syndrome.

The pull is buried in fiberglass insulation in the boats attic. Outlets had to be pulled from the wall, and wads of fiberglass insulation up top were jerked out to do this. I used over sized hemostats to extract what I thought was the wire, at the sort of half way point, and someone else bellowed, "that's the one," when I pulled on it hard. This is repeated at the lower helm to find the buried wire.

We're on the downhill slide now. The transducer wire is cut, and spliced wire for wire to the two connector end pigtail cables. The new cable for the 441s is connected, and we have joy at both helms.

Sharing a transducer between two stations is possible. But like all things in life, there are rules here that go beyond being reminded to flush. So I'm going to provide some generic bullet points about our discussion.

1. Never plug a transducer into a device that is powered up. Bad things can happen that will effect your wallet.

2. Devices that are sharing a transducer, can't be on at the same time. Turn one on, only if the other one is off.

3. Do a good a good job with the splice, and if it lives in a bad place heat shrink the connections. For small wires the photo shows a good way to do the splice.

4. Don't call tech support for help with this discussion. They will all say "don't cut cables, your warranty will be in jeopardy, and we are holding your first born hostage to stop you." Just kidding they will be nice, but they will not think it is a good idea, and I don't want to be yelled at by them.

Stereo land antics

2013-03-04T13:13:00.001-05:00

Meet Seth Lopod. He is currently on his vacation, but he is employed full time by boat builders. Seth is specialist in the installation of boat gear in places that are just impossible to get to. With eight long flexible tentacles he can squeeze in to the most cramped locations. He saves boat builders a lot of money in both design costs, and access plates.

My theory is that boat builders are all secretly worshipers of the Hindu god Vishvakarma, the primary deity of all craftsman, engineers, and architects.

They celebrate Vishvakarma by festooning the boats they build with colorful pleathers, fabrics, burl wood looking plastics, and that monkey fur stuff. By doing this they believe that everything they install on their boats will last forever. This makes it okay to employ Seth to install things where you can't ever get at them, for all eternity.

I have had several adventures in stereo land lately. It begs the question, why people just won't put their Ipod into a pocket, and plug in their ears? Why you need an amp, sub woofer, and twelve speakers all in a space the size of a guest bathroom is beyond me.

Even if it was Orff's Carmina Burana, I wouldn't need all that audible horse power, and for songs whose lyrics seem to only consist of "Put a ring on it," it seems to be a waste of dinero, and or diminished intellectual capacity.

But back to stereo land, and Seth. The stereo is mounted inside the center console of a smaller boat. That was a good decision. It keeps the majority of nature's elements away from it. To make easy use of the system, a remote control was installed in the dash by Seth at the factory. How do I know? Easy, for love or money I can't get to the back of the remote to remove it.

You can't get to it from inside the console, so trying to get through from the front seemed viable. A crazed tie wrapper had just been released from his halfway house and had been put hard at work. Two inches was as far as I could pull it out.

Since the remote was going to end up at a farm that was so far away you couldn't ever go and visit it, I tried to pry it out of the console. My hopes that it was a cheesy device, and would fall apart at my merest prodding with a large screwdriver were promptly dashed.

I'm more than a little aggrieved now. In a fit of peak I grab my slicer of thumbs, and a pair of side cutters and gnaw the edges into oblivion. If have done this right, I can smite the offending device and send it into the depths.

After two mighty blows with the palm of my hand, and one bandage, the apparently nuclear hardened remote has been consigned to the console interior. What's left is a fiberglass sinkhole. Some hacking and slashing allows the remnants to be removed from the inside of the console, along with some of the excess wiring. The crazed tie wrapper had been at work here also.

As remote cutouts go, this is a large one. Nothing I can procure will fill this yawning maw. A square cover plate has been ordered to fill the hole. A new now square remote will be mounted in it along with an Ipod jack. Since the new plate is screwed to the console someone else won't have this struggle.

All of this is enough to turn me into a psychopath, if I haven't become one already. I signed this nasty piece of work inside the console after taking off the bandage.

Statistics to avoid

2013-03-02T08:18:00.000-05:00

The annual USCG Recreational Boating Statistics is somewhat dry reading to say the least. It's a graphs, tables, and runes filled dusty tome. So in the public's interest, the Parmain Top Secret Laboratory's super computer has been burning its vacuum tubes all week crunching it's 79 pages of data. This has all been carefully analysed, and summarized into a "How best to improve your chances of dying" in a boating related accident.

So if you desire to undertake the odious quest to become an official USCG approved statistic, you need to achieve this less than zen like state.

It requires you to be an inexperienced, and inattentive male boater who is 36 to 55 years old who fails to keep proper look out. You haven't taken a single boating safety course of any kind. You need to drink lots of alcohol while cruising at high speeds with no life preservers available.

Your poorly maintained boat is fiberglass and built prior to 1998. It's 16' to 26' in length and 76 and 150 horse power is the optimum. This boat should be used on a lake, pond, near a dam, or in a gravel pit in Florida.

You must boat only on good visibility days in calm waters whose temperatures range from 70 to 79 degrees. All boating should be done in July during the hours of 2:21 pm to 4:30 pm on a Sunday.

If you manage to do all of this on a regular basis it won't take very long before you have a collision, and drown. The perfect statistical storm is waiting. It's just that simple.

These are by category the conditions in which the maximum number of boating fatalities occur. It's not the stormy day with high seas, and poor visibility when you're really paying close attention. It's that nice day in July when everybody is having a good time, and often too much of a good time.

If you want to be statistically the safest, be a sober US Power Squadron trained boater wearing a life jacket while using an air boat over 65' in length with less than 10 horsepower, between 4:31 am and 6:30 am on a December Tuesday in New Mexico while trolling or idling. The numbers can be funny things at times.

Data was from the USCG 2011 Recreational Boating Statistics.

Many thanks to the McKeehan family blog for the use of their photo. You can read about their boating adventure here. The key words in the story were they had all the right safety gear, and all of the kids had life jackets on. They were not statistics because they were prepared.

The Searay 370 Venture. What you don't see is good.

2013-02-25T14:26:00.001-05:00

This is one the winners of the National Marine Manufacturers Association 2013 Innovation Awards, and deservedly so. I wasn't one of the judges, but I think I would have come to the same conclusion as did the BWI judges, but maybe for decidedly different reasons.

The Searay 370 Venture by design looks like a traditional express cruiser, but forward of the swim platform, and under the two aft facing padded seats are 300 hp Verado outboards.

Most of the reviews and articles about the boat extol the virtues of space gained by not having an engine room. This allows for a much larger cockpit, and a more spacious aft cabin.

In earlier versions of this genre of boat the aft cabin was a Hobbit's paradise with no standing room, and the master suite was always a forward V-berth. So eliminating the majority of the engine room allowed the Searay designers to create a very attractive floor plan, and in my opinion the best in its class.

The 370 Venture doesn't pretend to sleep a family of twelve. It sleeps a couple comfortably aft, and two additional guests can sleep in the dinette. The spacious and well lit dining area replaces what would have been the master V-berth in earlier versions.

But I believe what you don't see, creates tremendous value to the vessels owner, and is what makes it worthy of the NMMA Innovation award.

What you no longer see are two huge marine engines jammed into an almost inaccessible compartment. You also don't see two I/O drives, or drive shafts, and their stuffing boxes, transmissions, rudder tables, rudder stuffing boxes, struts, cooling water intake strainers with valves, halon system, propellers, exhaust piping and mufflers, and lots of green bonding wiring trying to keep everything at the same electrical potential to stop corrosion.

All of this now resides in two compact outboard engine systems mounted aft. What you now do see is a small bilge compartment with the VacuFlush system, generator, batteries, and some pumps. As if that wasn't enough, the motors tip up removing the lower units from the water further reducing corrosion potential.

But I think there are even more subtle reasons this is a good idea. As someone who has spent a lot of time working in the dark cramped dirty engine room pit of installer despair trying to fit in a rudder reference, transducer or the ilk, the true cost of maintainability is a factor few boat designers consider.

The typical engine room is built in stages. With the deck off, the factory minions start installing all of the gear. The Bennett trim tab pump is bolted on the transom. The battery charger is screwed onto the bulk head. The VacuFlush system, hot water tank, batteries, AC systems, rudder table are attached, generator is dropped in and then the engine crew places the two huge engines and exhaust system. After inspection, the deck goes on. From that point forward all maintenance has to be done by a skinny professional spelunker, and his crew of spider monkeys.

I have seen many engine rooms so congested that most owners physically can't really inspect, or do any day to day maintenance in them. Batteries are hard to get to so the water levels don't get checked as often as they should. Accessing the AC strainer outboard of the engine stringer and under the V-Drive requires climbing aft over the manifolds and exhausts, and then slithering forward in between the engines to get at it.

The point is that if you can't easily get to it, you often don't to the boats detriment. So if it's hard for the owner to get at things, it's also hard for the installers and mechanics increasing labor and repair costs.

It doesn't have to be this way as you can see with the engine room below, but all to often this is the exception, not the rule.

Now for the argument inboard vs outboard? The Mercury Verado outboard costs around $20,000. It appears at first blush to be much more expensive than the equivalent horse power Mercruiser engine that sells for around $12,000. But when you add the costs of the items "you don't see" above, and the labor to install the gear the numbers get much closer together.

The Searay design team I think made a superior, and clever decision in using the Verado. Fewer holes in the boat, much easier to maintain, less components exposed to salt water corrosion, and did I mention it's quiet? Very very quiet. Excellent job Searay, I won't miss single of those things "you don't see on this boat."

The bottom line is outboard, I/O, and inboard units are all good solutions, if they are accessible, and that's often the rub. The time and effort required to access and do repairs is really a notable long term cost factor.

I'm tired of hose clamp cuts and ripped clothes. The spider monkeys are also eating me out of house and home, and riding the greyhounds.

Thanks to Marine Max Sarasota for letting me take pictures of the boat.
The first photo is from the Searay image library, the balance were taken by the Installer.

The Bounty Hearings

2013-02-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

The tall ship Bounty's sinking was a tragic event around which many questions swirled. Why did the captain take the Bounty into the path of Hurricane Sandy? What was the condition of the vessel? What did the USCG inquiry find out? I have been following Mario Vittone's insightful coverage of the Bounty hearings on gCaptain. This is the link to the gCaptain page covering the hearings. Start at "Rotten Frames." This is a very good, and sobering read. This is the link to Mario's website.

Miami boat show 2013 roundup

2013-02-19T08:32:00.000-05:00

The numbers aren't in yet for the Miami boat show, but by looking at the crowds on Friday, and the struggle it took to park, I think it is going to be a well attended show. My day was marred by rain especially in the afternoon which stopped me from visiting the "In the Water" venues. As I expected, new marine electronic product introductions have taken a big leap. My favorite was the new Raymarine Dragonfly sonar, a take on the Navico "Structure Scan", but using CHIRP technology with the brand name DownVision. With a price of about $700 I was extremely impressed.

This just fortifies my sense that we have just barely scratched the surface of sonar CHIRP technology. Just imagine this technology looking forward for obstacles, and being able to show you a safe path through shallow waters, or warning "Danger your boat can't go there!" Just musing out loud.

The demo units were using real sonar data, and the high resolution bottom and fish images were spectacular, and of almost photographic quality.

These units use a Raymarine in house developed transducer. I suspect that over time will Raymarine will amp up the wattage, for use in larger future units. The Dragonfly can do DownVision imaging down to around 250 ft, and regular 50/200 CHIRP fish finding down to 600', all at speeds up to 20kts. I'm thinking about going treasure hunting with this system.

This was also my first look hands on look at the Garmin Quatrix watch. It streams N2K data, runs your auto pilot, gives you the tides, is a MOB device, and it also tells the time. Look out Dick Tracy, your watch is now passé. Check in with Ben Ellison at Panbo site for a lot more details on all of these new products and more.

As I mentioned the rain, at least for me mucked up my Friday. I had been invited to go for a ride on the Velodyne Marine experimental vessel the Martini 1.5, but the steady down pour quashed my hopes. I'm intrigued with the active suspension system technology that keeps the deck stable regardless of the sea conditions. No pitch or roll on this deck. Drat it, I really wanted to go for a ride, and explore this unique technology. I will try to find another opportunity soon.

I have been watching the rapid morphing of the kayak into fishing machines. Rod holders, bait wells, mirage pedal drives, electric drives, and now even outboard motors are possible.

The same can be said for the paddle boards. Here is a version on steroids, the outboard powered Xfish. Described as a micro skiff, it can be loaded with fishing options including hip driven hands free steering.

What I like best about boat shows is visiting their tenderloin. I could tell there is a huge public interest in paddle boards by the large crowds at the Tower paddle board booth. It was good to see so many older men really excited about getting out on the water with a paddle board.

German glue? I know the Germans make great automobiles, and beer, but glue? I must have missed something. Is this a national thing? Does every country have a national glue? What's our national glue, the slow drying Elmer's white gooey stuff? I also couldn't figure out what these two guys where doing, and frankly I was afraid to ask. You don't have to know everything.

Don't let the Grabit sign fool you, This booth was the 7-11 of the boat show selling everything. Shammys, cozies, sea sickness meds, glues, and even wire strippers. He was endlessly screwing in screws and removing them. I thought of Jack Nicholson in the movie typing over and over "All work, and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

And lastly from the "things I didn't know I needed department" is the "Utimate Electric Fish Scaler", or more appropriately a fish de-scaler. It claims to remove the scales from a fish in 8 seconds. It seemed to be a well though out, and made gadget. I'm old fashioned though so I'm staying with the hot wax and cloth strips to remove the scales.

There were a lot of boats there too, all out gassing styrene and pleather fumes. I can also report most of them were some sort of a shade of white. I will be seeing the corroding cramped unfinished interiors of them as soon as they hit the water.

Hushpuppy exposé

2013-02-16T19:41:00.001-05:00

In 1957 a wooden ketch was being battered in a gale and started taking on water from a split hull seam. It quickly came about and ran hard due east towards the Florida coastline. The eastward turn was fortuitous, and the vessel started to run a bit ahead of the storm. A pass was seen, and used, although at that point with several feet of water sloshing in the cabin, a beach would have been acceptable.

The pass was Egmont Key, and the vessel hooked to the south seeking the lee side of Anna Maria Island. The boat was bailed down as much as practical, and the family fled to shore. The storm followed them into the coast, roiled over night, broke the anchor chain and drove the ketch onto a sandbar.

In the morning a tug attempts to pull the boat off the bar, but to no avail, A plan is hatched to remove one of the running backstays and use the tug to heel over the full keeled vessel. It starts to shift, and then with a horrific crack, the main mast splintered, and crashed into the water. In 1957 dollars $9000 dollars of rigging was now floating in the water.

Like the pioneers who built the sod hut where the wagon wheel broke, the demasted vessel became the first Florida home for the small family. After hull repairs, the boat lived at small inexpensive docks on the local barrier islands. A very rare treat in those days was to go out to eat. What was close, and inexpensive, were the local mom and pop seafood restaurants. The hushpuppies were always my favorite menu choice. Remember this is 1957, and from my five year old perspective, all seafood was fried, and vegetables come out of cans.

I'm not a gourmand, but I do have an affinity for good food, or I as I like to say it, I've finally reached that station in life where I can afford the high end $5.00 a pound hot dogs. But when it comes to hushpuppies, I'm am very particular. There are only two types of hushpuppies, real ones which are now a very endangered species, or the frozen machine extruded ball like versions now so sadly ubiquitous to most seafood restaurants.

Pictured above are real hushpuppies. Their distinctive shape comes from batter being rolled off of a large spoon into the oil giving them an irregular shape. I know to most the're not recognizable, and many are going to say, "This guy is some sort of an elitist, where I live hushpuppies are roundish, and I like them. The're gooey inside and seem to have some wet like onion sort of bits in them."

Now lets take a look under the hood at a real hushpuppy. When you break it open, it's actually fully cooked inside, and fluffy like the inside of a piece of corn bread. It's also speckled with small bits of chef added mojo.

Behold the machine extruded hushpuppies. They're about the same everywhere. In reality the ingredients are nearly identical to real hushpuppies, but they have to be smaller to actually cook the oft frozen interior. Since the mojo added to the batter has been frozen, things like onion tend to be mushy. Try freezing an onion, thawing it, slice it, and put it on a salad. It's not good eats.

When you break open the machine extruded cooked product, you can see the interior is a bit mushy inside, and I'm being kind. If you blow up the picture you can see the less than tasty ring of grease just under the crusty layer.

Here is another example. Eight little balls lost in a big basket. The order came out lukewarm in just a couple of minutes. No doubt a really big batch had been fried up and then left to languish under a heat lamp.

The good news is that it was cooked all the way through. The bad news was no mojo, and it was johnny cake sweet. By no mojo, I mean no onion, pepper, garlic, jalapeno, chilies, celery, chives, scallions, corn, hot sauce or the millions of other things you could add to them. These were just tepid balls of cornmeal and flour fried up, rattling around in a large basket.

Without regard to my personal health, and as a public service for all I have randomly visited about seven or eight of our local seafood establishments. I ordered hushpuppies, and a beer for lunch. The Beer? Yep Yuengling, you can't properly divine the exquisite taste and textures of this fried food by washing it down with a glass of skim milk.

Only one in the lot actually made their own hushpuppies, and unfortunately all the rest served me various versions of the frozen oil bathed balls. This is amazing, the recipe is stupid simple, and I don't mind if you use a dry mix to make the batter, as long as you add good mojo. So when you go to a seafood restaurant and want to order hushpuppies, ask to see some first. If they look like jawbreakers, large marbles, wonky ball bearings, cojones, or tiny billiard balls, do yourself a favor, and just say, "Sorry, what a shame, I wanted real hushpuppies, not your deep fried extruded balls, even if you say they are tasty."

For the record, not a single sole said a word to me as I sat there taking pictures, and eviscerating their food. Walt's Seafood restaurant in Sarasota is the only is the only one I have found to date that makes real hushpuppies. I'm not mentioning the ones who serve the ersatz ones. There must be some more, and when I find them I will add them to this now very short list. You're not a real seafood restaurant, if you don't serve real hushpuppies.

Pulitzer Prize rejection

2013-02-06T14:02:00.001-05:00

From: Pulitzer Prize Journalism Jury

Subject: Your Pulitzer Prize journalism entries

Dear Mr Bishop,

Only very grudgingly have we accepted your journalism entry, primarily because you paid the entry fees. We want you to know that despite your fervent assertion you have the word "Newsy" in The Marine Installers Rant's nameplate, it does not automatically qualify your publication for inclusion in the journalism category.

That being said, we have several other issues with your submitted boating related "exposés." One of the tenets of good journalism is to be concise. We can only advise you that your writing style can only be described as very windy at the minimum. We couldn't come up with printable adjectives for the maximum.

We also noted the use of many obviously made up medical syndromes such WBS (wet butt syndrome), CS (cyclops syndrome), RPS (random placement syndrome), and many others.

One of our jurors was in particular upset with your terminology "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot." Dressing this euphemistic pig up does not make it any less pejorative, and the use of nater nater is never becoming to a professional journalist.

Mr. Bishop, the list is long and includes your use of fictional personages, made up quotes, delusive leads, and poor news story construction. We suggest that if you want to continue in your tenuous journalism career that you might try submitting your material to the Weekly World News. Since Edwin Newman has left, and Bat Boy is going to retire, there may be an opportunity there for you. You might also try the Huffington Post, we understand they pay the same.

With regards,

Pulitzer Prize Journalism Jury