Too much tech, but not enough lifetime.

I'm the oldest of three male urchins. Because I was the oldest, I got the more important jobs in the household. At about 12 years of age, I was promoted, and the next oldest sibling got my old job of taking the pipe wench outside, and using it to turn the antenna pole until the Chief, (spelled Dad) yelled that's good, no no back a bit, stop." It was 1964. There were three TV stations that operated until about midnight, and we watched it on a black and white TV. This was good because I had now graduated to the job of TV repairman PFC Bishop.

This job consisted of quietly watching the activities when the TV was not feeling well. The scenario was always the same. The TV lived in a custom built niche, and much like the Virgin Mary, the set was metaphorically worshiped nightly. When the TV broke, the Chief would extract it, and set it on the dining room table. Screws were removed, the back came off, and the plug was detached from the back, and plugged back into the set. The lights would be turned down, and the set was turned on. All available eyes would look at the tubes to see who would be the first to spot the tube that was not glowing. "Aha", would declare the Chief, that's the problem. The set would be unplugged, the tube extracted and put into my hands.

The Fusion 40 catamaran kit

I'm still kicking myself. I saw this starting last week. It looked like someone was building two 40' war canoes, or the ilk on a couple of jigs. I almost stopped to see what was going on, but a look at my watch made me give up the idea. Late as usual, am I. A visit to the yard on Thursday startled me. Where there was two canoe looking structures, there is now about one third of a boat sitting there.  

The SRQ boat show

Every boat show has a character that reflects the community that it's being held in. Miami's show is large, and brash, with tons of phallic boats and bikinis. The Wooden Boat Show at Mystic Seaport offer the prestigious Concours d'Elegance awards, and bone button blue blazers abound. In Sarasota, a city renowned for the arts, the boat show ambiance can best be described with the words "Haute Couture."

The up skirt danger

The statue "Unconditional Surrender" on the Sarasota bay front has been mired in controversy since it's erection in Sarasota in 2005 as part of a public art program. Scuffles over copyright issues, and as always with public art here the question "Is it really art?", roils through the community. I personally don't think it is any more art, than an injection molded 6" Stature of Liberty" is art, but that's me. I think for many it provides a whiff of nostalgia of times, that in their minds were good, and anyone could grab a stranger on the street and give them a sloppy wet kiss. Do this today, and you will end up in the hoosegow, and get your picture in the paper.

Minor labor

I had heard about this legal loophole in child labor laws some time ago. One day a year you can take children to work, and get some useful effort out of them. I was excited about the concept of having free labor, so when the "Take our daughters and sons to work" day came around, I wanted in on having a free worker for the day. Since Dylan Wood's parents weren't able to do this, I offered Dylan a chance to escape the educational gulag for the day, and he accepted.

EdgeWater 318CC innards perfection

I have been looking for a very long time for a boat that has all of the design features that I feel are lacking in so many other boats from my perspective. WTF maintenance, and installation moments are common in the production boat world, so it's truely refreshing I finally found one that is WTF moment free, the 2012 EdgeWater 318CC. I'm not reviewing the number of rod holders it has, whether it has a barbecue grill, how fast it can go, or how colorful the Naugahydes are. Instead I'm reviewing, as they say on Iron Chef, the bitter innards of the boat, and in this case they are very tasty.

Engine NMEA 2000 crap

"Really, that's all I need, just the gateway kit, how much is it? Ouch $250 bucks? Well it is what it is, I guess, and the owner wants to see his engine instruments on his chart plotter." Fast forwarding a week UPS delivers me a box, and I go to the boat. Avidly ripping open the box, I behold the kit before me. There it is in all its glory, a small black box with an LED, and two cables coming out of it. Yep, one of them has a standard NMEA connector, and the other one has a what? It's a nine pin female connector, where the heck does this thing plug into? Wait a minute, it's a kit remember, and in the bottom of the box is another cable, with a nine pin male connector. I plug it in, and then look closely at the other end. Hmmm, it's a male 4 pin connector. Whats this plug into? I can see the entire engine harness, the engine gauges, the control computer, and the device bus, and nowhere is there someplace this four pin connector can go. Rats!

The imposter

"Hey, get that light out of my face." "Shut up and stay in that chair, or we'll cuff you to it. We have gotten complaints that you are impersonating mineral spirits." Can't you read detective? I am mineral spirits, look at my label." "I see your label buddy, but you could have printed that up with any computer. I know for a fact that real mineral spirits are clear. What's up with your milky color, and why do you have to be shaken before use?" "Hey do I look like some sort of a rocket scientist? I don't know, that's the way I was made. I'm special, greener, and better for the environment." "Whatcha mean you're green, does that mean you could be drunk, or poured into the bay?" "Whoa there, you can't drink me, or pour me into the bay. I can kill fish you know." "'Yeah? So what make you green then?" "Well for starters there are actually less solvents in me, maybe as low as 15% by volume and there might be as much as 40%, they don't tell me exactly how much. That makes me safer, and I want my lawyer, now! I ain't saying anything else copper." 

Gender bending, male or female?

Lying deep within a mountain in the New Mexico desert is the clandestine headquarters of BIOS, the Bureau of Inanimate Object Sexing. Behind massive steel doors designed to protect good citizens from even accidentally overhearing conversations that are not suitable for pregnant women, children, and many others whose constitutions are of a frail and sensitive nature. Within these rooms, words like coupling, shrouds, hermaphrodite, bisexual, and androgyny are casually bandied around with impunity. Sexing inanimate objects is an important, but difficult and extremely taxing job. Because of the constant sexual pressure BIOS staff must always be carefully monitored by psychologists, and hand washing stations are always located close at hand for the safety of all.

Andren waypoint format conversion magic

It's time for the"Dark Arts." On goes the robe and conical hat with the stars and moons. A quick check tells me the goat is prepared, and out of assorted secret chests various magical implements are extracted.

Today we are casting a difficult, and dangerous spell to exorcise the waypoints out of an ancient Garmin 215 chartplotter, and whisk them into a newly installed Garmin 7215. For those who are afraid of such unnatural, and "olde magicks", you should stop reading now, lest your soul inadvertently gets sucked into the black technical vortex to suffer for all time. For all else, have your garlic and amulet close at hand while you read.
   

Congressional hearing

For the record, I'm Congressman Weal, and today's investigative subcommittee hearing is regarding the high cost of marine electronics repairs. There has been an overwhelming number of letters from my constituents complaining about the gross, and flagrant billing costs by marine professionals, and our job is to get down to the nitty gritty of this onerous situation.

I have before me a letter from a Mr. Berlusconi describing exactly this problem, and offering the entire committee the opportunity to spend a week on his boat doing the peoples hard work of reviewing his extensive maintenance records, We took him up on his offer, and frankly we were aghast at the costs the poor man was billed.

I want to assure all Americans that not a single dime of taxpayer's money was spent during this important, and difficult investigative trip. I think it may be time to consider some greater regulation of this obviously out of control industry. We have testifying before us Mr. Installer, a purported expert in the repair of marine electronics. It is unfortunate that we had to subpoena Mr. Installer to appear today, but we felt that his claims about not being able to afford to fly here were spurious to say the least. I would like to turn the first five minute questioning period over to my esteemed, but somewhat misguided colleague Congressman Fester.

Thank you my good, but ideologically deluded friend for the introduction. Just for the record, I don't think that there is any role for gummit regulation in this matter at all, especially for people that own boats, or anyone else period.

I was only on one once, and that was during our investigative trip. If you want to own a floating hotel, that is your business, not the gummit's. Mr. Installer, just to get a feel for the important things here, are you an American, and did you bring your birth certificate with you to prove it? I'm concerned that these claims of over billing might actually be caused by illegal aliens.

Selecting the right chrip transducer for the GSD 26

For fishermen, the use of fish finders have always required a little black magic to get the most out of them. Tweaking settings to find thermoclines, and playing with knobs with names like gain or TVG. Trying to decide if the big target on the display is really a school of bait fish, or a Warsaw grouper.

As good as sounder systems have become through the years, the approach of doing a single frequency ping (tone burst) has been, and always will be limited by basic physics, and the industry has basically taken the technology about as far as it can go. Now with "Chirping" sounder systems, the game has changed. In 800' of water, you can now tell if that target is a single fish, or a school of bait. At 2000', or possibly more with the right transducer you can still see larger fish targets, and bottom can be found at depths of up to 11,000'.

Talk about fish finding now includes jargon like "number of elements", "Q" values, figures of merit, and DSP processors. Now with about two dozen chirping transducer options, what's best for your boat? This is what we're going to explore, and along the way give you some of the tools to help you make the right decision.

Degrees, minutes.... Hours? Weeks? Months?

What's up Dick? You can't enter the waypoint position? Okay, I understand it's in a degrees minutes, and seconds format, and you changed your system format to input it I assume? Good. You say it won't accept the seconds, that's odd, what did you do then? You inputted it again, and just dropped the seconds, and that didn't work well either? Then you changed the latitude from 23 minutes to 24 minutes, and it was near the mouth of the channel? What was next? You just gave up? There was no place called Little Palm Island on your charts, and you even called and asked the dock master to verify that the website lat/long numbers on the website were the correct ones? Tell you what Dick, send me the link for the marina where you got the numbers, and I will take a look. A little while later I do take a look, at the link, and I immediately see what's going on. Boy are the directions screwed up. This marina would be lucky if anyone could find them based on their published directions.

Springeth forward

It's MRI's biannual PSA reminder about that daylight savings time clock thing that has been going on, and off in the US since 1918. DST has not been always very consistently applied in the US due to state, and federal legislators mucking around with the issue. In the early sixties a 35 mile ride on Route 2 between Moundsvile WV, and Stuebenville OH required 7 time changes. In 1966 the Uniform Time Act was enacted, and  Daylight Savings Time became generally standard, but states could still opt out of the program, but at least the entire state would have to opt out, sort of. Arizona, with the exception of the Navajo reservation, and Hawaii do not use DST. Why? I don't have a clue, maybe they they just have a lot of extra photons to waste.

So in sum, the GMT offset for Eastern Standard time is now -4,00 hours. so check, and if needed change your chartplotter's offset from the -5.00 hours on Saturday to -4.00 hours on Sunday if you're in the eastern time zone. Add one hour for each time zone going west. If your chartplotter's clock is off, it shifts the tide calculations, and in some cases the estimated time of arrival. Ahem, for those of you who may be clock challenged, this means you move the little clock hand forward one hour. Leave the big hand alone. Or is it you move the big hand all the way around once, and the little hand will follow. Heck, I'm not sure, my VCR has been blinking at me for two decades.

   

I'm mad. I'm mad. I'm really really mad.

Every time I see a boat

It's always just the same

With the fighting und the biting

Then there's wiring und there's bleeding

Und there's scratching on the head

When I get to where we're going

I'm just ready for my bed
I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm really really mad.

Battery trial

Opening argument, the defense:  "Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My client, Mr. Battery who you see slumped in the wheelchair before you, has been accused of attempted murder in the first degree. I'm going to prove to all of you beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mr. Battery is indeed innocent. His disfigurement, and subsequent leakage of poisonous gas was in reality caused by his owners neglect, faulty equipment, and poor installation. Look at my poor client in his charred and bloated condition, and ask yourself, could the loyal Mr. Battery truly have deliberately tried to kill the owners he loved? I know you will all make the right decision. Thank you for your attention."

Opening argument, the prosecution: "Good morning members of the jury. My esteemed colleague would have you believe that Mr. Battery who you see before you is just an innocent victim of circumstances, and abuse by its owner. But in fact we will prove to you that he is really a cold blooded killer, filled with dangerous chemicals, gases, and murderous intent. I feel pity for his condition, but we will show that his damage was self inflicted, in an attempt to viciously kill its owners in a fit of rage. Thank you members of the jury."

The boat show underbelly

Who doesn't like going to a boat show, especially now that this almost extinct event is now making a big come back. I love the nostalgic odor of plastics and styrene out gassing in a large confined hall, the $12.00 boiled hot dog and beer, the hundreds of desperate salesmen clutching their binders searching for the elusive Mr. Big who may actually buy a boat, and the carnival feel. I always carry one of those small checkbooks sticking out of my shirt pocket to activate salesman's drool and sweat glands.  But to be honest, I rarely look at the boats. I know that after a boat is delivered to it's owner, and actually dropped into the water, it will be just a matter of days before I'm called to fix it. I can then examine it up close and personally with lots of tools while muttering pejorative verbiage under my breath.

Killer drain

"It seemed to be such a nice drain", commented one neighbor. "The drain  kept to himself, it's always the quiet ones that seem to do these sort of things." warned another as the swat team surrounded the boat. "A plastic drain would have been a better neighbor," blurted the women across the street" "they drive down the property values, but at least you can tell if they are up to something."

Installing the Garmin GSD 26

It's large, heavy, and packed with high resolution analog to digital converters, and a dual core digital signal processor (DSP) system. Although installation is fairly straight forward, there are some nuances you need to deal with when wiring the broadband transducer into the box, as I have learned.

I'm Chuffed!!!

Chuffed is an understatement. The Marine Installers Rant took third place in the original online content category in Boating Writers International annual writing contest. It was an honor to be included in the same august company in which Ben Ellison of Panbo fame won first place, and Stuart Streuli of  http://www.sailingworld.com was second.  

If this was an Oscar award, my speech would have gone something like this.... 

I want to thank my wife Kate for her endless patience with this writing activity. I know for a fact that this is always the right thing to say, and start with. Ben Ellison for his advice and shout outs, and my friend Dick Reston for his ever "on the money" sage writing advice. "Bill", said Dick with a stammer. He was nervous; his voice quavered. "Remember the rules about the need for vivid declarative verbs: the fewer the adjective and adverbs the better." Many thanks to all who read, and judged.

The original online content category is the only one you have to write a 300 word essay for. In a Bill sort of way, here is my essay. I'm also pleased to be sporting the very fashionable, and coveted Panbo "So many gizmos, so little time!" logo chapeau gifted to me by Ben. "And Dick, it's widow free", said Bill enthusiastically.

Testing the Pearce Simpson Gladding Islander RDF

The top secret Parmain laboratories don't often do product reviews, but when the opportunity presented itself to evaluate the Pearce Simpson Gladding Islander position calculating  system, we just couldn't resist. We have to hand it to their clever designers, and marketing staff for creating this unique combination of a navigation system coupled with a shipboard audio entertainment system, all in one elegant compact package.

Our technician's (Peter Scharff shown above) ran this versatile system through its paces in both our laboratory, and aboard one of our test vessels in real world conditions. We evaluated it's position calculating capabilities, ease of use, and durability.

Friday in Hades

I'm wet, choking, and can't breathe. Coughing, I jolt up to a sitting position, and a coin falls out of my mouth. I suck in fetid air and look around. I have been laying in a foul marsh next to a river. Bones stick out of the mud, and the river's surface is writhing with the dead. I struggle to my feet, and I can just barely stand. My tool bag feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, and I discover the strap has grown into my shoulder. Looking up I see Charon poling his boat towards me, and then I remembered. It was that damned speaker.

Arts and crafts. Making a console overlay template

Attention class, everyone get into your seats, and get your supplies ready. We need our template paper, scissors, a straight edge, tape, and our scriber. And Johnny, quit sniffing that styrene, and stop running around with those sharp scissors, you're going to hurt someone. The materials are simple, and the only thing in question is what to use to do the scribing, and we will get to that in a moment.