If you can imagine it, it's already happening

How quickly is technology advancing? The answer is exponentially. I used Gorp as an example paddling across a river on a floating log around 10,000BC. The bolt of mental lightning had struck. Gorp no float. Log float. Gorp sit on log and float. It would be another couple thousand years, and many toes lost to piranha before the log was hollowed out by Urp to make a canoe. The reality is an early man was probably using crude boats made from reeds and bamboo much earlier than this, they just didn't survive through the ages to prove it.

The point of the diagram is to show the relative rate of technological change. In my graph, it took Gorp about 5000 years to evolve from paddling to figuring out you could use the wind and save the calories. Looking back from today's perspective it seems it should have been obvious, but it was a long hard slog to get there. Gorp only had stone tools and they weren't exactly precision devices. The weaving of fabrics is still over 5000 years away in Gorp's far future when the first sailboats will finally appear. Crikey, we didn't have the practical tools to make boats out of wood planks until the Bronze age when the rocket scientists of the day started producing tools out of metal. This was 7000 years later in Gorp's future to come. Things started to move much faster when we learned to write things down saving the information we have learned. The printing press sped things up too.

Magnifico Yachts sealant application memo

17 Feb 11
Magnifico Yachts inter-company memo
From: J. P. Grunion  - President
To: All employees
Subject: Poor sealant application

It has been pointed out to me by marketing staff, that employees are not doing an adequate job of sealing conduit pull locations, and we must improve this vital function. Because of this, we have retained the renown installer Steve Stickus who is a past winner of the prestigious S.M.I.T.E awards to provide special training classes for all employees on adhesive sealant application techniques.

To achieve this end we have also purchased new, state of the art high pressure sealing systems with 1000 psi compressors, and high flow volume application guns to insure that all employees have the right equipment to perform this critical task.

Our goal is to provide the worlds finest yachts, and if each end of conduit wire pulls need to be very well sealed, then we should do our very best to insure this happens. We certainly wouldn't want anything to get into these pulls after we ship the yacht. 

Corporate training staff will send each department a schedule for the employee sealant training next week. These will be four hour courses, and a certificate for completion will be awarded to each employee. The Sales and Marketing departments are excused from taking this training due to the corporate planning meeting scheduled in Las Vegas next week.

 Thank you for your cooperation in this important endeavor. J.P. Grunion, President - Magnifico Yachts  

It just beats the crap out of me why they would do this. This was part of the pull from the hardtop to the console. The one place where water could get in was not sealed at all. The place that water could not get in at all was sealed to the max. It took about a half an hour of hacking and slashing to get this rubbery goo out of the pull ends. The cables I had to pull were radar power, radar data, N2K, VHF antenna, and XM audio, and you know they would have all fit through that small 1/2" piece of split loom, right?

A little to close for comfort, ahhh, my retinas, and my pacemaker has stopped worki....

I am uncomfortable with the Garmin radar installation below because of the nearly eye level installation, and the about 6 foot proximity to someone sitting at the helm. If the unit had been mounted lower, I most likely wouldn't have looked at it twice. This photo took me off on some research to verify to myself that this radar installation was either safe, or unsafe.

The first thing I looked at was what the manufacturers said about the dangers involved in being to close to the beam of a marine radar. Most of them say about the same thing. For example, Furuno's radar manuals say, "The radar antenna emits electromagnetic radio frequency (RF) energy which can be harmful, particularly to your eyes. Never look directly into the antenna aperture from a close distance while the radar is in operation, or expose yourself to the transmitting antenna at a close distance." It sounds a little ominous doesn't it? It could be really dangerous, or the legal departments of these companies are "showing an abundance of caution", or maybe it's a bit of both. 

On the other hand, there is a fair amount of information that says the radiation levels of a rotating pleasure boat marine radar are actually very low, and hence the hazard level is also very low. I parsed my words a bit here, because high powered, non-pleasure boat radars can be dangerous, and the rotation of the array means the radiation exposure is limited to the time the array is facing you.

So after several hours of reading on the subject, this is what I think. It would not be good for you to get as close as possible, at eye level, to an operating radar array, and stare at it for an extended period of time. I also think, that marine radars, that are installed according to the manufacturers installation instructions, will not adversely affect personnel on a boat. Everything in-between these two extremes is somewhat subjective. Will the installation above smite the owner's pacemaker, or blind him? Most likely not. Would I want to sit at the upper helm while the radar was running? Nope, not if I could avoid it.

Murphy's Laws say that if a piece of toast falls off the table, it will land buttered side down. The odds of winning the Florida lottery are about 23,000,000 to 1. I wonder what the odds would be that a radar could malfunction, and have the array stop while pointing at the owner, and still be transmitting? This would be a long shot, is it possible?

Ben Ellison's Panbo link below has an excellent discussion on this subject, by many more knowledgeable than I, and is a good place to start learning more about this subject. 

Panbo discussion about radar safety

Its moving day, no it's not, we are just marking time.

The rusty meat cleaver repeatedly strikes the bundle of wires until they are completely severed. The tangled mess is then shoved into some fiberglass crevasse. Job done thinks the wire butcher, now what needs my finesse?

When boats ship by truck, they have to be lower than 13' 6" on the trailer to meet most height restrictions. So in this case, a Viking 53" Sport Cruiser was shipping out of Sarasota. Everything had to be removed off of the hardtop, packed, and stowed somewhere on the vessel. On this boat, as you can see below, Jeremy has already removed the Furuno radar, and is starting to pull the bolts for the stainless steel structure. I'm down below, getting ready to catch the stainless steel tower as it tips back, taking some pictures, talking on the phone, and doing other less than important things. There is also a Stratus TV antenna (serving no purpose in life now), Furuno GPS receiver, a pair of electric horns, a Digital Antenna VHF, and a Digital Antenna FM antenna. This is a pretty basic set of gear on this boat. You can also encounter satellite domes of various types and functions, and many other types of antennas, and flag poles. 

So here is what important to me, having been on the receiving end of many boats that have been shipped, is how much care did the other guy put into the disassembly? Did he leave me notes behind, saying where things were stowed? Was care taken in labeling the wiring, so I don't have to guess what was connected to what? Or did he just have his pet beaver chew the wires apart, and shove them unlabeled into the hole. In the case of this boat, there are two four foot antennas, that appear to be identical. One is the VHF antenna, and the other is an FM antenna, although from their appearance, you can't tell the difference. What ever nomenclature was originally on these antennas, is long gone. So out comes the labels, and in a minute or two, the problem is solved for the next guy. In the picture below, everything has been removed, a clear piece of plastic was used to close the radar mount hole, and the other penetrations have been sealed. 

I carry this little Brother label maker with me in the truck. It is inexpensive, doesn't take up much room, and is indispensable. Like printer companies who almost give the hardware away, just so they can sell you the ink, the label maker companies, are really in the business of selling you the labels. Regardless of this, a label costs pennies to make, and can save hours of effort when you are reassembling a tangled wad of wiring. I also use this little machine to label anything on a boat, that I have struggled to identify, so the next time I visit, I won't have to do it again. I love adding something new to a boat years later, and finding that pull string, or label I left in place is still there. I think to myself, "What a good boy I was", at least on that day.  

So our job was done for the day. While we were removing the electronics, some colleagues of mine, using wrenches, and socket sets that take two hands to carry, were pulling the props, and stowing them in the engine compartment. The truck pulls up the next day, but there is a problem, the boat is still to high. A new trailer is needed, and the shafts, rudders, and struts have to be removed. Seven hours later, minus lots of difficult to remove running gear, the boat is set on the new trailer, and the tape measure still says it is too high. Gods from afar consult, and command the boat is to be reassembled, and a captain will transport it to its destination. My phone rings, and would we please reassemble the electronics. It took a little over 5 five hours to remove the stuff, and stow it. It took three and a half hours to reassemble, and test the gear. Good thing we labeled all of that colorful spaghetti! I'm not surprised, it's a boat 

Stochastic analysis of navigation systems single point failures, you just can't easily always find out what is broken.

The headline is meant to say, that even if you're smart, sometimes you just don't always have good tools to definitively say, this is what's wrong. As a case in point, I often get cases of "no depth is showing on my what ever device".  So this is where playing the odds comes in. If you call the sounder tech support group, they always tell me two things. The first is try another transducer, to which I say " I don't have one of every transducer laying around, so what's plan B. The tech says, "well I don't know, because it is usually the transducer, and not our equipment". I say thanks, and hang up. What I don't do is call Airmar to see what they think, because it is a very rare occasion the transducer is bad. So the solution to the problem is to rip the sounder/module out and ship it in for repair. Lo and behold, ten days later the unit is back, I plug it in, the system works, and it's another Christmas miracle. The real problem is that without some expensive, and exotic equipment, or a box full of transducers, there is no real way to tell which is DOA. You use your instinct, and experience to find the least costly solution for the client.

Sometimes, but not often, the wrathful odds gods do not favor you. That's me below, starting off on what turned out to be about three hours in the dreaded bosun's chair. I wish there was a more comfortable admirals chair. This starts with a radar which had worked for five and a half years, suddenly ceasing to work (scanner not responding). This message tells me we have a failure to communicate going on. Now who is not talking to whom? Is the radar not talking? Is the display not listening, or is the cable bad? My sense of the odds here are that the radar dome is the most likely suspect (it lives outside), followed by the display, and then the cable. 

So up the mast I go assisted by the owner, his broker, and some other local club members helping, and watching the show. I pop the dome cover, and it is clean as whistle inside. I check the power, and it is good. I pull the data connector and it is also fine. My assistant was off on another job, so I didn't have the capability to wring out the cable on the spot with the available crew. Besides the cable had been fine for five and a half years, and there was no evidence of damage, or splices in the cable. So I decide to pull the dome, and ship it for repair. 

The radar is a big package, and I ship it ground to save some bucks. A few days later, the boat sells, and now everybody wants it done yesterday. I instruct the vendor that we will pay a $50.00 expediting fee, and in a couple of days I get a call from the tech saying there is no problem with the dome.  Shoot, so I toss the dice and send the display in to be checked out with the dome. The tech calls back, and tells me "so sad, too bad" they're both good. So like Sherlock Holmes says" When everything else has been eliminated, what's left, however unlikely, is what it must be". 

Before I'm chided for not checking the cable, I want to point out, in my opinion, that it takes three people at the minimum to go up the mast. My butt in the chair is one, somebody manages the winch, and a third to handle the safety line. It's cheaper to send the module off, and have it checked. If the module was bad, job done, if not, it's the cable. So on a dreary Sunday morning, a crew of four assembles. I go up the mast, and attach the pull line, and the cable comes out, and a new cable is pulled in. The dome goes back on, the display is re-installed, and it all works. While we are there, a spreader bulb is replaced, and I get a good view of the marina from the top of the mast while I straighten out a windex.

Well, as you have now surmised, it was the cable. In the picture below you can see a series of cuts, caused by the conduit pipe at the bottom of the mast. Who ever installed it, got a little rough on the haul up. Given the depth of the cuts, and the amount of exposed copper, I'm amazed it worked at all, much less for over five years. Most of the time, I can tell you exactly what's wrong, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice."Are you feeling lucky today?"