The mother hen of sailing blogs, Proper Course, is running an interesting project. Tillerman is inviting other bloggers to post entries about their worst sailing mistake, which he's link to, creating a sort of master list of disasters. Well, yours truly firmly believes in the value of learning from the mistakes of others, and has made so many his own self that he's hard put to pick a "worst." Maybe this one; even though it took place a very long time ago, I remember one moment in the following true tale as though it were yesterday--shiver me timbers--and am fairly certain that I've been a better navigator ever since:
It’s amusing how my little neighborhood on the back side of Camden—once the home of those who manned mills powered by the Megunticook River, and hence called Millville—is now home to some weirdly modern worker bees. While I’m plugging away at Panbo World Headquarters, a good neighbor, Peter Lindquist, is around the corner scanning and cataloging an enormous collection of marine photographs taken by a character named Red Boutilier back in the 60’s and 70’s (when the mills were winding down). The collection belongs to the Penobscot Marine Museum, where it will be part of this summer’s feature exhibit: “Through the Photographer's Lens: Penobscot Bay and Beyond.” This particular shot shows a man aboard the sardine carrier Delca making a call on what I think is an early VHF (?). A typed note in the negative box states that the 78’ Delca was built in 1936 as a minesweeper, then rigged over when the Port Clyde Packing Company bought her after WWII. Then she “worked steady until she sunk on Sept. 7, 1989, 1 mile northeast of Old Cilley Ledge Bell. She was loaded with 1,418 bushels of herring when she went down {due to losing a plank}. Capt. Peter Grew {perhaps above} and mate Dennis Tupper were rescued by the crew of the F/V Diane and James.”
Monday I had the great pleasure of touring the New England Wireless and Steam Museum with two of its founders, Nancy and Bob Merriam. I got there by tagging along with Jim Fullilove, editor of NMEA’s Marine Electronics Journal, and he was there to work on a story for the organization’s upcoming 50th anniversary. You see, Nancy and Bob were two of the dealer/installers who formed NMEA way back when. Hence the table full of early RDFs, AM radios, fathometers, and radars they’d pulled up from the Museum’s basement. The Merriams are a deep well of knowledge about that gear, and the early NMEA, but their real passion is the very dawn of marine electronics a century ago, and the museum reflects that. Below, for instance, is the very first wireless communications station—building and all, and in operational condition. Check the giant Morse key, capable of handling 20kw without a relay. What you can’t see in this photo is the intense blue sparks generated by the Massie spark transmitter upper left. The museum—which has all sorts of other early wireless artifacts, not to mention a major collection of working steam engines— is only open by appointment and best visited during the warmer months, but very much worth doing. Meanwhile this novice “sparkie” is very much sparkless, down with the flu while visiting New York City, and regular posts may not resume until next week.
I think of this painting—one of an ancient series hanging in the Venice, Italy, Maritime Museum (and bigger here)—as a how-to for sailors caught out in a storm: Put out all your anchors, jettison heavy objects (like cannons), pray to your personal savior, and hope for the best! Here in Maine we’re trying not to get upset about the freakish fact that the ground hasn’t frozen yet (and I’m thankful that we live some 180’ above sea level). But I trust that whatever happens is all in God’s plan, and I wish you all a very fine Christmas, or Chrismakka as we call it in our home, or however you honor this grand turning of the seasons.
On a day when it’s hard to avoid heavy memories of 9/11/2001, it’s a bit of relief to go back much further. I remember these bullet proof Sailor receiver/RDF sets from some of the higher end sailboats I delivered in the 80’s. This particular unit belongs to panbote Gary Wood who was kind enough to answer my call for old electronics and to haul this knobby beauty out of his garage and photograph it, bigger here, with Puget Sound in the background. He’s had it for awhile, having:
“…bought it new for installation on our Wauquiez Hood 38, delivered in France in 1981. At that time, RDF was state of the art technology. Sat Nav hadn’t arrived, and Loran-C did not yet work in the English Channel and North Sea. I used it to find Heligoland in the middle of the night, an island in the North Sea about 40 miles from Cuxhaven, Germany. Other than that, it was great for listening to the BBC and to hear, but not talk to, SSB communications. We were in the Mediterranean a year later, and bought a Si-Tex Loran C. It was the size of a large loaf of bread, and it cost $1,500. But we knew where we were all the time! GPS has certainly changed all of this.”
Gary also reminded me that the 80’s ads for this radio featured an elephant standing on it. Rugged! The Sailor brand is still around, incidentally, but now, as part of Thrane & Thrane, the gear is pretty much solely focused on commercial ships.
PS. The comments reveal that some Panbo young’uns are baffled by the gray gadget at left in the picture (top down view below). Pardon me for not explaining better! Kids, it’s a hand bearing magnetic compass—hence the dampening fluid (which it needs desperately) requirements—with the Sailor’s directional antenna and remote controls attached. The odd doodad at the top is a mirrored magnifying prism so you could read the compass card as you swung the whole device at arm’s length, seeking the maximum signal from a radio beacon (probably through earphones). Or you could just use it like a regular, if bulky, hand bearing compass without RDF turned on.
I’m thinking of writing my year-end Power & Motoryacht column about the state of marine electronics when the magazine first published in 1985. That also seems to be the birth year of the chart plotter. I think it will be fun to look at the generally boxy and complicated—not to mention low performance and high priced—machines we struggled with back then. I hope anyone with pictures, manuals, or just memories will share them with me, particularly the electronics companies that were in business back then and have piles of gear like the above (bigger here) gathering dust somewhere (hello Raymarine/Raytheon/AutoHelm/Apelco etc.).
I have a copy of that first February 1985 PMY, and am especially interested in the stories behind those first electronics advertisements: the Raytheon 1200 Pathfinder radar, Trimble 200 Loran, Tracor Global Navigation System (“worldwide navigation for under $7,500”!), Alden Weather Fax, ITT Jabsco night vision, Standard Horizon VHFs, Cybernet marine stereo, Cetec Benmar autopilots, Sea-Tex everything (“radars, chart recorders, Loran C receivers, autopilots, track plotters, color sounders, ADF’s, the works.”), and, finally, RDI radar watch, sat nav, and sat com…yes, they claimed “Telephone, Telex, Computer Data, and Slow Scan TV” (whatever that is). Did this stuff work and what happened to the companies involved? Were you using marine electronics in 1985?
Would you be surprised to learn that Audacity's electronics are minimal? Actually just a venerable Garmin 48 at the chart table and this fabulous Aqua Meter Super Cheater Tournament depth flasher in the aft companionway (bigger here). I had a flasher like this in the 70’s and they work darn well. Like an analog watch, it only takes a few brain cycles to keep track of depth on that big round dial (15 feet in this case). Plus it’s simple as pie; left button switches between the two ranges, right button controls gain and on/off. But it’s hard to see fish on these things and darn funny to think of one as a fisherman’s “Tournament Super Cheater”, but then again the similar Lowrance’s famous Fish-Lo-K-Tor was a million seller. Actually, there’s at least one company, Vexilar, still making flashers, though they look a little more sophisticated than this.
It's going to be short today, as these pictures speak for themselves. They probably date from the early 60's, though even Lowrance (who provided them) doesn't seem sure. But that's about when the company's portable flasher--wonderfully named the Fish-Lo-K-Tor, and also known as the Little Green Box--really took off. According to Lowrance history, it eventually sold a million units! None of us, manufacturers included, pay much attention to the old stuff as technology hurtles forward, but I'm starting to get nostalgic about gear like this. I wonder if there are collectors?
PS It's amazing how interest in the Fish-Lo-K-Tor never seems to die. I'm happy to say that Lowrance sent over the original manual at the request of a commenter below, and download the 2.7mb PDF here. It's a great read even if you're just interested in the history of marine electronics and/or the basic issues of fishfinding.
C-Map owns this ‘historic’ machine, which is supposedly the first chart plotter (bigger here) ever sold in the U.S. That was around 1985, when Navionics founders Giuseppe Carnevali and Fosco Bianchetti developed the first crude vector charts and this Datamarine-labeled plotter to show them. (Bianchetti soon went off to found C-Map). Wasn’t it about 5 years later that the first PC charting program came out? At any rate, we’ve come a hell of long ways in 20 years, and Carnevali and Bianchetti—who still run their companies—deserve some of the credit.
Now, would anyone care to predict what marine electronics will look like in another 20 years? 10? 5? With that, I wish you all a wonderful new year.
I was just looking for compass stuff in some nautical clip art I have (we used it a lot when I edited Reed’s). I came across this image and must say I don’t know for sure what this fellow is up to. I see what seem to be a telescope on what may be a pelorus, an earphone, a microphone, a booklet, and maybe a control box with cables or tubing headed off somewhere. What is this gent doing?
