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.

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.

Film at 11:00

Borrowing Mr. Well's time machine, I roar on back to the year 2003. These were heady times. The Installer put in all of the gear you see below into a new Pursuit. It included the new Raymarine HDFI sounder module which won the "Best in Show" NMEA award that year. The RL80  state of the art chart plotter and radar, and a shiny new autopilot. It has all been working very well ever since for lo all of these years, which I think is an excellent testimonial for any piece of marine gear that lives in a salt water environment. The boat is used all of the time, and the original motors were worn out. They have been recently replaced with new twin Yamaha 225hp 4 stroke engines which have a Command Link interface making NMEA 2000 data collection possible.

So as good as the gear has been, it's time for new toys, and on the list is a broadband chirping sounder system. At this point in time, there are only two available options, and the owner already has some Garmin gear, and is familiar with it. So out goes the old, and in with the new consisting of a Garmin 7215 touch screen based system with a GMR 24 radar, the new GSD 26 sounder module, and an Airmar M265LH broadband transducer. Since this is a story too big to be told at one time on the small screen, I'm going to bust it into four parts over the next week or so.

Oh no, oh no, it's off to work I go!

Welcome to my Friday, a day of work, walking, and hundreds of pounds of AGM batteries that need to be delivered to a boat waiting at the gas dock at the Marina Jack marina. This is one of the best marina's in Florida. It has a super staff, great amenities, and best of all it is right on top of downtown Sarasota. This allows visiting boaters to walk to dozens of restaurants and bars, get groceries at Whole Foods, and visit art galleries and specialty shops.


To provide some orientation to this place for visitors, I crafted a little map to show you the layout. The Marina Jack marina is part of the Island Park complex which sprawls along the Sarasota downtown bay front. There are walkers, walkers with dogs, bike riders, tourists galore, two restaurants, public art sculpture exhibitions, and people of the future riding Segways. Needless to say, there is a lot of parking, but for the Installer with a bunch of very heavy batteries, during tourist season, with a local boat show going on, getting close to the docks is a substantial chore.

The Boating School

The Boating School is pleased to introduce our new elective summer course schedule, and is now accepting registrations. These courses have been selected with the needs of modern boater in mind. The Boating School is dedicated to providing only the finest in boating educational instruction available anywhere.

Low cost charts, and how to get them. 

Learn how to save money by downloading nautical charts from the internet. There is a wealth of chart material available at no cost for the savvy boater that knows where to look. There are many options including seafood restaurant place mats, Google earth photographs, and on the water hotel brochures. In addition to the internet there is also used book stores, and buying old charts on Ebay or Craigslist. Our instructors will teach you how to find, and separate the ones that are probably okay, from the ones that might not be. Save big money, and enroll now.

This is a 4 credit course. Classes meet Monday mornings for six weeks. Successful completion allows enrollment in our fall semester course, "Hacking navigation chart chips for fun and profit".

Houston, we have a problem

"Okay Houston, we've had a problem here." "This is Houston, say again Albin 13." "We have had a navigation instrumentation power failure." "Copy that Albin 13, let me talk to the engineers about a work around. Stand by please." "Albin 13, the engineers want to know if you have any wire and connectors?" "Roger, Houston, there is old wire I found in the garage, some split bolt grounding connectors, and wire nuts" "We copy Albin 13, the engineers want to know what is the size of wires, and do you have any electrical tape?" " Houston, we have a piece of old black wire that is about pencil sized, and some smaller red wire. There is also a package of multicolored electrical tape that came from Harbor Freight." "Roger that Albin 13, stand by for instructions." 

Florida jetsam, and other beach detritus

It was a good year for Florida beachcombers, and for the sharp eyed, there have been many treasures washed up on our shores. I don't know why we end up with so many interesting things washed up here, but I have some theories. My primary one is that Florida just has some sort of weird magnetism that attracts the odd, weird, and addled. My other theory is that Florida with its 1350 miles of coast line provides ample opportunity for things to be washed up. With all of these treasure just waiting to be found, it's no wonder it seems that everyone in Florida has a sort of stooped over look.

The boat that George bought

This is the boat George bought.

This is the pump
That lay in the boat George bought

Weighty Issue

The US Coast Guard has suddenly realized that the average weight of an american boater is now no longer 160 pounds, and has revised its "Passenger Weight and Inspected Vessel Stability Requirements" document effective December 1st 2011. This weighty tome has not been revisited since 1960 when the average american did weigh a mere and svelte 160 lbs, instead of the now current estimate of 191 pounds. Actually the Coast Guard is being sensitive about this issue, and is using 185 pounds for the calculations, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. This will now result in about a 15% reduction in the passengers allowed on board, or the vessel owner can opt to file pounds of paper to re-certify the vessel's stability. At this time, only commercial vessels that are required to have "Certificates of Inspection", and compliance with Title 46 of the CFR's have to comply. If your recreational boat is rated at 8 passengers, have at it, the more the merrier I say.

Elementary

"Watson come if convenient, if inconvenient come anyway. Foul things are afoot on Lord Miller's yacht. Meet me at the quay. I shall be making observations at the scene of the crime.", said Sherlock Holmes on the phone.

Installing the Garmin GSD 24 sounder module

This is the first opportunity I have had to see or install the shiny new GSD 24 Garmin sounder module. This model is replacing the venerable GSD 22 which has been around for a few years now. Before you buy the GSD 24 check first for compatibility if you are planning on using your boat's existing transducer.


Lets start off with what you get in the box. The first thing I noticed is the new GSD 24 is larger, and notably heavier than its predecessor. You get almost everything you need to install the unit, including update software which most will need, a marine network cable, and what I will just call the "Magic Box."

The big hurry

I'm sitting quietly on my client's boat reading some documents that will hopefully clarify why his MacBook Air doesn't see the USB GPS, and abstractly following what will be the very imminent departure of the boat next door. I can hear garbled snatches of the crew's conversation over the low rumbling of the diesels.

Catch 22

Yossarian: Is Orr crazy?

Doc: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all his close calls he's had.

Yossarian: Why can't you ground him?

Doc: I can, but he has to ask me.

Yossarian: That's all he's gottta do to be grounded?

Doc: That's all.

Yossarian: Then you can ground him?

Doc: No. Then I cannot ground him.

Yossarian: Aha!

Doc: There's a catch.

Yossarian: A catch?

Doc: Sure. Catch 22. Anyone who want's to get out of combat isn't really crazy. so I can't ground him.

Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I've got it straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.

Doc: You got it, that's Catch 22.

Yossarian: That's some catch, that Catch 22.

Doc: It's the best there is.

What's wrong with this picture?

It's not often I have allowed my visage to appear here. In fact it's only the second time. I'm not shy and retiring by any means, but nowadays when I stare in the mirror, I'm thinking "Well blow me down", I'm looking more, and more like Popeye every day. I'm also reminded of that Saturday Night Live skit, "Whose More Grizzled? I really liked, maybe a little too much, the show's grand prize of "Salted meats, and a bottle of Rebel Yell whiskey". How's that for being "more" grizzled. Getting old isn't for sissies you know. My client Jim Hoyt, thought the picture would be worthy, and he took it. Although it certainly doesn't enhance my sense of inherent infallibility, but at the time it was funny. So take a look at the two shiny new Garmin units, and tell me what's wrong with the picture.

It's the most wonderful, and dangerous time of the year

"The TV won't turn on", she said, "Could you please see what's going on." "Funny I thought, it worked last week." I know this because I had just installed a KVH satellite TV system on the boat, and had checked everything out. I said, "I'll stop by and look at it." 

Alien nuts

The comet had been captured eons ago by the the sun's gravity, and has been orbiting the sun ever since. On one orbit it passed near the earth, and a few spores locked in the ice of the comet's tail are captured by earths gravity and start to orbit the new planet. Millions of years pass as the spores are ever pulled deeper into the earth's gravity well, and eventually they start on a slow but steady decent to the surface. The spores alight in a field of exposed raw iron ore in what will eventually be northern Minnesota, and following their programming they move into the crystalline matrix of the iron, and start to multiply. They are alien evil incarnate, with endless patience. Eventually the planet's biped inhabitants take their giant earth movers and excavate the iron ore. Powerful  machines crush the ore into powder, magnets separate the iron and roll it into small balls. The balls are sent to a foundry, and are melted into billets, with one of them still carrying the inorganic alien spores. The billet is sold to a manufacturer who makes stainless steel nuts. The spores are now embedded in thousand of stainless steel nuts, and their long wait is almost over. Destruction of all life on planet earth is their goal, and it is now within their reach.

The Installer's inside voice

Happy Tryptophan day. This is a decidedly odd piece of fancy, even by my standards. Boat safely this holiday if your boat isn't in it's winter wrapper yet. 

A tale of two trim tabs

It's right, it's wrong, or it's gray. In this case it was wrong, and it was grayish on the wrong side of the fence, which meant it worked only for a while. Installing trim tabs are not difficult because things can only go where they go, in theory. This boat has a pocket built into the hull that the trim tab retracts into. If I was installing it, I would have attached the tab to the boat, and then bolt the fully retracted ram to the tab. You lift the whole assembly up, and use a pencil, or marking device of your choice to mark the three ram screw holes. Drill the holes, and then use the template to mark and drill the hole for the hydraulic tube. This is not hard to do at all, I've done it many time with notable success. So looking at the picture below it worked perfectly, no matter how the plant worker went about it. But something went awry at the factory when the other trim tab was installed.

Failure to communicate

The urgency was palpable in the service writers voice on the phone. "Could you please go and fix this guy's problem". "What's wrong." I said. "Well he needs a software upgrade on his C-120, he has a cut radar cable, and the boat has to leave tomorrow." "Alright" I said looking at my watch, I will see what I can do". It's nearly 3:00 on Friday afternoon. I pack up my stuff and head to the marina. The boat is a larger walk a round, and the owner meets me with the cut cable in his hand. "What's up with this?" I think. I start to look around, and I climb up onto the deck and survey the hardtop. I'm no rocket scientist, but my keen eyes observe that the radar isn't there, and I start to have the dawning epiphany there is more to this than I was told.

Chalk it up to.... well chalk I guess

The two greyhounds girls are heaved into the back of the land trawler, (spelled Kate's Tracker) and off we go to meet some friends at the Sarasota Chalk Festival. We were lucky that a client had an office near the festival we could park at, and this was a good thing because about 200,000 people attended the seven day event. It proves that if something is fun to do, and it's free, people will come in droves, and they did. We all find each other, and I ask if anyone sees a boat related picture, call me and tell me where it is. Because of the crowds, and the size of the event it was difficult to see all of it in one day. There were more 250 artists participating in the event, and they used a lot of pavement. 

I won't say the 3D pavement art art was the highlight of the festival, but it was certainly the big attention getter. It was stunning to see the drawings literally exploding out of, or into the pavement. The 3D street painting technique is a form of anamorphosis, or "Slant Art" developed by artist/architect Kurt Wenner. The Terracotta Legoman painting above is nearly completed, and it took four artists headed by Peter Westerink 5 1/2 days to complete. One of the most interesting things about this form of street art is that it can only be properly seen from one specific vantage point. By clicking here you can see a series of photographs showing the construction of the Legoman piece, and note how unrecognizable the image is if you look at it from the other side. There is a lot of cool mathematical plane projection going on here. 

KVH M1 101

Marinas and yacht clubs are slowly learning that providing some sort of dockside cable television service to their customers is getting increasingly more difficult, and complex. The switch to digital cable systems more than ever before, now requires a digital receiver box to be installed in a home, or boat for each television. But short of tornadoes, landslides, or sink holes in Florida, your house doesn't typically travel, your boat does. The equipment cable providers give you is based on a home installation scenario. You know the type, you can get behind your TV and plug and play all of the cables, in air conditioning, without sweating or bleeding. On a boat this is much different.

A local yacht club is discovering how painful this is becoming. Their Comcast system now requires digital tuner boxes for each television to receive the channels. That's not quite the truth, the first 24 channels of very basic cable is still available for now, but for most cable TV suppliers a box of some sort is required. So here is the catch, if you install your local vendors box in your boat, and you travel to another marina with another cable TV vendor, your box won't work with their system. This problem is going to get worse, and never better. I do have a suggestion for marinas. With a good quality digital on air antenna, and an amplifier system you could provide in most urban areas 20, to 30 or more digital high quality free local channels to your boaters. The capital cost is low, and you can get rid of those costly cable TV bills.

A good option for boaters that cruise, and who want broad channel options is a satellite marine TV system such as the KVH M1 seen below.

Look back up at me in an old spicy way

Hello boaters, look down at your panel, and then back up to mine, now back to your panel, now back to mine. Sadly your panel isn't mine, but if you used acrylics, instead of those other poor choices, your panels could look like mine.