Installing the Raymarine Dragonfly

This was my first opportunity to install the Dragonfly. So many toys, and so little time. I've splayed the box's contents out for you. You get everything you need to install the unit in the carton including the screws. You will just need your tools, 3M 5200 or equal, and maybe a clam shell or two. The mount for the Dragonfly has a very cool feature I'll show you at the end of the story.

Active Captains

This could be a postcard photo of happy cruisers on any boat anywhere. Appearances can be deceptive. The boat is named aCappella, and the couple are Jeff and Karen Siegel. They are the entire cast and crew of ActiveCaptain accompanied by Dylan (left), and the young and infinitely curious Dee Dee. "Say that camera strap tastes good, can I have it? Do you want to see my ball?  Your glasses taste great. I wish I had thumbs like you."

The Muskie effect

Once upon a time I spent about about nine months in Barnes Wisconsin. I'll just call it a sabbatical. My time was spent wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up. To date this question has never clearly been answered.

Barnes is the home of the Eau Claire lakes, and the head waters of the river of the same name. A pretty place to live, but also a very small town. There were about 600 residents give or take that lived there full time spread across 117 square miles. In the summer the little town would swell to many thousands as cabins around the lakes were thawed and opened for the season by multitudes from urban environs. Now for the Muskie Effect.

For inexplicable reasons the Muskie just appeared out of nowhere. It was a large Muskie, very large. If it had been caught by a regular lake fisherman it would have been stuffed and proudly displayed in his man cave. He would have extolled in a heartbeat his heroic exploits involved in landing the huge leviathan. For decades to come in hushed almost mythical tones the tale would be told. You haven't heard the saga of Herb, and the giant Muskie? Sit on down, crack a beer and I'll tell you the story.

Rules 5 and 7

The photo was taken quickly before the vessel was going to disappear behind some mangroves, and is not as crisp as I would like it to have been. The reason I took it was the Sarasota County Sheriff department boat's Garmin radar was not turned on, and I expect local law enforcement operated vessels to maintain a higher standard for the boating public's edification. Granted it was a nice day, and the boat was idling down the intercoastal, but it was also a busy day on the water. Lets review quickly the two rules. The first is.......

Rule 5 - Lookout

Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.

In this case I'm pretty sure the officer was paying attention. But the next rule is.......

Rule 7 - Risk of Collision

Every vessel shall use all available means appropriate to the prevailing circumstances and conditions to determine if risk of collision exists. If there is any doubt such risk shall be deemed to exist.

Proper use shall be made of radar equipment if fitted and operational, including long-range scanning to obtain early warning of risk of collision and radar plotting or equivalent systematic observation of detected objects.

NTSB Report - Sinking of the Tall Ship Bounty

The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has just released their Marine Accident Brief on the sinking of the Bounty. It's a sobering and very black and white read of the events and causes leading up to the sinking. Here is the link to the report.

I'm not the judge or the jury, that was Mother Nature's role. Had I been the captain I would have found safe harbor early, and put the crew on shore to keep them from harm. Taking any vessel to sea with a largely inexperienced crew in the neighborhood of a major hurricane like Sandy was folly to the greatest degree.

Technology adoption, sinking or swimming?

Mr. Meriweather, did you wind the clock? I'm going to use the sextant to take a fix. Aye captain, that I did, but why don't you just take a glance at the GPS. Aargh Mr. Meriweather, I don't trust that new fangled thing. If the sextant was good enough for me father, and grandsire, it be good enough for me. Besides I don't read so good, and them instruction tomes are weighty.

When I talk about technology it's never from the viewpoint that technology is bad thing, because it isn't. What often happens is it gets misapplied. It can be badly designed, poorly implemented, too difficult or complex to support or have too many critical failure points. Poor contemplation of the inevitable failures can leave you crippled in the water, or on a rock. 

I read Charles Doane's blog yesterday about what had to have been a fun Navico press junket. It was held at Hawks Cay Resort in the Florida Keys and was attended by a large number of boating writer luminaries including Panbo's Ben Ellison. You can read Ben's take on the event here. In Charles's story though there was a paragraph that stuck with me.

"Navico's CEO, Leif Ottosson, has set a blistering pace re product development, and the company as a whole is now geared up to introduce at least one new product to the market every 20 days. In the not-so-distant future they are confident they can ramp this up to one new product every 15 days. In any other industry this would seem like gratuitous flack-speak, and you'd expect the "new" products to be only slight variations of older ones, but in electronics generally the market really does evolve that quickly. It seems that Navico's real goal is to haul the once somnolent realm of recreational marine electronics that much closer to the larger industry's bleeding edge."

The first was the concept that Navico is planning to bring a new product to market every 20 days. This speaks volumes about the both the possibilities, and the industry's requirement to innovate or perish. The second was his surmise that Navico may be hauling the marine electronics industry into the future, whether they like it or not. I think Charles's thoughts about this were remarkably prescient. I would just add that some of the others are now moving in this direction albeit it at varying rates. Things are a changing, and I think the pace will quickly startle all of us. The sleeping marine electronics bear is slowly waking up.

Distributor demolition

When the detonation happened I was stunned. OMG, WTF, it sounded like someone had fired off a 12 gauge shotgun in the front seat of my truck. I could see a cloud of black smoke billowing up on the right side of my truck. The greyhounds had fled with clots of dirt flinging up behind them. Kate comes tearing out of the house, and the neighbors were fretfully peering out at the scene. Who'da thunk this could happen. I just sat there for a few seconds letting the ringing in my ears stop. This was the mother of all engine backfires.

Five years in the life

I'm a left brain type, and maybe too much of one. This is good news, and maybe some less than great news. I have a tendency to analyze almost everything. Not at an OCD level, but maybe on that side of the fence. I couldn't even use the "Left Brain" term without reading about Sperry's work on the subject. By the way, my very usage of the term is promulgating the hemispheric dominance myth, but you get my point.

The rational side of my personality makes me question things, and is one of many reasons I infuriate so many people when politics are being discussed. I know things, because I carefully research them. My brain is full of errata like liberals do drink more than conservatives, and Democrats don't historically tax and spend anymore than Republicans do. They're both guilty. I'm stopping here before someone develops a dire case of apoplexy. 

Will disassemble for food

All my life I have disassembled things. There are three scenarios that can happen when you crack things open. The first is you can take something apart knowing well in advance you won't be able to put it back together correctly again ever. This gives you some freedom to really explore, even if you need a hammer. The second is opening something up and you can put it back together again, ahem correctly.

The third is when you believe you should have been able to reassemble the whatever, and then something unexpected happens. This could be a critical spring loaded part that rapidly travels away from you at the speed of light never to be seen again, or some delicate thingamabob you inadvertently broke while trying to remove it.