Installing the Garmin GCV 10 SideVü and DownVü system

Installing the new Garmin GCV 10 (Garmin Clear View) SideVü and DownVü  system is a snap, and well suited for DIY installers. As with most Garmin gear everything you need is in the box down to the wire clips (lamentably never enough of them), fasteners and other minor bits and pieces. Without further adieu find your floppy hat, grab your tools, count your fingers, and head down to the boat. 

It's golden

Kate and I watched the new Fox show Touch the other day. It's about an autistic kid who can see patterns. He spends a lot of time writing stings of numbers in a book, and some of the numbers are darker. When the camera pans back you can see the darker numbers are describing a spiral. Wait a minute, I know these numbers, and then remembered a conversation from years ago I had with an architect friend Jack Whelan about the golden rectangle, and boat shapes. So after the show, I gave myself a refresher course in the golden ratio, and you're going to be the beneficiary of my relearned information. 

In a burst of enthusiasm I start to Google boat images that might fit well into a "Golden" based story, and I spotted the boat below. I looked at it for a moment, and suddenly realized I know this boat. This is Gizmo, Ben Ellison's boat, and he took the picture. To my eye it looked golden. How I did I know it's Gizmo? Who else do you know that has a boat with four radars. I did a quick cut, paste, and little geometry 101, and decided this is good choice for the story. I emailed Ben and asked, "Could I use his picture in the story?" He asked if Gizmo "was golden", I said "very",  Ben said, "cool", and here we are.

Fifty posts plus, "To infinity and beyond".

I passed fifty posts this week, and I want to say a couple words about this. On a rainy weekend last October, I was milling around on the internet looking at blogs, and pondering a particularly odious example of boat building, that had just been giving me fits all week. I thought to myself, I can write a blog, and I always have something to say, which my wife Kate will aver to. So I down loaded Google's Blogger, and spent the weekend getting this less than perfect piece of software to work, and published my first post.

I had no idea at the time how much I would enjoy it. Over the years, I have written thousands of pages of technical proposal materials, that would end up in the hands of various aerospace companies. A simple rule of thumb was one pound of proposal paper, per million dollars sold. Now sell a $20,000,000 system, and see how many banker boxes it takes to deliver 10 copies to the client. I was good at it, and fast, although keeping engineers engaged in the proposal writing process is a lot like herding cats. Writing for myself is a truly a pleasure, and better than a good bourbon, at least before five.

So I wanted to thank my wife Kate for her patience, even though she says at times I have turned her into an "Internet Widow", Ben Ellison for the the kind words and link, Dick Reston for his editorial insights, and his always erudite conversations with me, George Flavell, for finding all of those typos, and of course, all of the readers.

Although I don't mind the technical writing, It's the whimsical stories that are far more enjoyable. I hope that the occasional whimsy, doesn't detract from what can be the more important issues sometimes being discussed. So below are some of the stories I had the the most fun playing with.

Bob and Carol, and Ted and Alice buy a boat, a Goofus and Gallant story.

After I wrote that, so many people asked me, much to my surprise, who Goofus and Gallant were.

Goofus-and-Gallant explained

Although I didn't write this, I think it is a true nautical gem, and I thought it was perfect for Thanksgiving.

The yarn of the Nancy Belle

And....

RIP LORAN

One final personal note here. My dad is a civil engineer, and turned 83 a few weeks ago. His health is good, and he will always be smarter, and wiser than I. As a kid, the family always had some sort of boat under construction. This has included a Piver trimaran, various Bolger vessels, a John Marples 35" Searuner, a 40' cold molded catamaran, and many others. Although he can tell you where you are, within a couple of hundred feet with a sextant, and a current copy the Nautical Almanac, the Internet is not one of his fortes, and he has never read my blog. So with this post, Happy Birthday Dad, thanks for the education, and a copy of this, in book form is heading toward you.

Thanks everyone,  Bill Bishop