That’s the mighty 94’ Electra being shown at Lyman Morse’s grand open house last weekend. The boat is still being finished but she’s already shown high performance and is said to have “a fantastic, state-of-the-art electrical and electronics system.” I got a peek at the opening plus met the man responsible, Electra’s owner/engineer, and was just now invited to join a sea trial tomorrow. I don’t believe I could have said “yes” any faster!
But it will be a busy weekend as I’ll also be helping Lee Heidel switch Panbo over to a new server, new blogging software, and a new design. I think—sure hope—you’re going like it, but no doubt mistakes will be made. In fact, I have to go silent for a day or two, and there may be trouble carrying the last comments over. Please bear with us, and be sure to come back next week.
I’m working on a Voyaging profile of Milt Baker’s Bluewater helm, which makes it particularly propitious that he and Judy are this minute sheparding a fleet of nine Nordhavns convoying to Bermuda from Ft. Lauderdale. Three, including Bluewater, will continue on to the Med, hence the rally name Med Bound 2007. There are supposed to be daily updates accessible from this Web page, but the fleet’s Yahoo group seems more current right now. But I’m also getting Milt’s email noon reports, which yesterday included some rhapsodic words on AIS. Six of the nine boats have Class A transponders (Bluewater a Furuno FA150), which is making it easy for Milt to monitor the convoy, and passing ships to understand what’s going on. Milt, by the way, is using OCENS Mail with an Iridium phone to e-mail from offshore (but note that Globalstar announced today that it just got four replacement birds up, which should improve its service situation). Note too that while Milt generally uses high end gear—with backups for the backups!—he’s also the guy who questions the need for big radar scanners. Which brings me to the picture above. That’s Milt showing me how he deals with a drawback of using conventional, if inexpensive, monitors on a bridge. The 15” View-Sonic LCDs can’t dim down enough for night running, but Milt took care of that with some sticky back hook-and-loop and red gel. Now, what I just noticed in these photos, and can’t find on the Net (or ask Milt about right now), is that odd doodad next to the compass. I have a feeling that it’s some sort of nav aid reminder—and no doubt useful if Milt’s got one—but how exactly does a Marker Mate work?
Thanks to gCaptain for leading me to the Flickr pages of a Houston ship pilot who is also a fine photographer. Unfortunately he doesn’t aim his camera around the bridges much, excepting a few like this shot of a Turkish captain (is that a periscope in front of the helmsman?). But, wow, his marine sets are sure worth browsing (don’t miss his “Darwin Award”).
Sometimes I like to wander around the many sites of one Stephen K. Roberts, a gent who appears to be a true original. Robert’s latest ride is the Corsair 36 trimaran Nomadness, which must feel like a megayacht after the Microship. It was on his photo tour of Nomadness where I saw this shot of a RadioLabs 12db steerable WiFi antenna, called a Wi-Pod, which Roberts calls his “secret weapon”. His current project seems to be a “pedal/paddle/sail kayak” tender for the tri, a replacement for Bubba, and featuring something he calls Kayaktopus:
At first glance, this may sound just a bit excessive... after all, I'm the guy who built the BEHEMOTHbicycle, an existence proof of the Roberts Law of Applied Mobile Gizmology: "If you take an infinite number of very light things and put them together, they become infinitely heavy." I have occasionally been accused, with some justification, of over-engineering.
Tip of the hat to Mr. Roberts for exploring the geek frontier, with a sense of humor.
Having crossed paths with some circumnavigating Panbo readers in a foreign port, I had to get aboard, and what a pleasure it was to meet Iris Schepelmann and Graeme Arnall and tour their steel catamaran Pelagic. This is not your go-fast multihull, but rather one designed to survive a collision with a container (so far untested!), and to carry everything the couple need to live afloat. In the starboard bow, for instance, there’s a several-hundred-book library/office and in the port one a workshop, both behind crash bulkheads and collapsible steel water tanks. You can see the boat’s details on Iris and Graeme’s Web site, though it’s not up-to-date on their travels, which now include the Red Sea, the Med, an excursion up to Norway and Scotland, and now a leisurely downhill tour of the Caribbean chain.
Who isn’t fascinated by the Maltese Falcon, the 289’, $100,000,000 yacht that sails under a very unusual DynaRig, actually three rotating carbon fiber masts carrying fifteen automated square sails on carbon yards? I did get to see a phenomenal 18” model of the Falcon (built by Rob Eddy, another local gem), but I would so like to get a sail aboard this vessel, or least a glimpse at what the electronics its very techy owner Tom Perkins chose for her. I do know that Tacktick is quite proud that its Micronet wireless wind sensors were used to help test the rig during construction in Turkey. And today, which happens to be the Queen’s birthday, the company won the Queen’s Award in the Innovation category. A tip of the crown, then, to Tacktick. I’m pleased to report that I’m going to test a Micronet wind, depth, and speed system on my Rhodes 18 this summer, and that today is finally warm enough to think about boating.
PS: Speaking of Queens, check out this time-lapse video of the Queen Mary II visiting San Francisco. This site, BoatingSF, also has an interesting newsletter on AIS.
A wildly coincidental e-mail is going around. While John was using his Raymarine E-Series to track AIS traffic in the Channel yesterday, Mike Harker was grooving on what his E and autopilot could do as he power reached (9.6k) toward Colon, Panama. Last night he somehow blast emailed the photo along with some enthusiastic text, including a good explanation of those five lines around his boat plot:
1) the thin red line (left) is the course the boat is steering to keep the boat headed in the direction of #2. {aka Heading} 2) the thin black line (middle) is the direct course to the destination {the Colon waypoint}, or as sailors call it the “Rhumb Line”.
I’m off to Miami, and posting may be sporadic this week, but one of many sights I’m hoping to take in is this raw carbon Navman/Northstar equipped helm (bigger here ) on the wild wave piercing trimaran Earthrace. While tieing this thing up to a dock must be a challenge, the boat has already proven itself over many ocean miles, and will soon try to set an around-the-world record, burning biodiesel yet. The whole story is here. I’m getting a thing about power multihulls.
Well, now, couldn’t we have some fun on this handsome beast! Bon Pigall is a new 24 meter water jet powered aluminum research vessel that’s pretty fast and pretty nicely appointed (other photos show teak decks, for instance). She was built in Spain and much of the PR material sent to me is in that language—which I lack—but I do know that she has a dynamic positioning system and carries a serious looking “robot submarino”. Speaking of serious, how about that Simrad crammed helm above (bigger here ), which includes Olex 3D bathymetry? Then there’s the monitor crammed cabin beneath the bridge, which is the control center for the submarino. The electronics are the work of a Barcelona company called Medenisa, whose site doesn’t have Bon Pigall info yet, but does list some serious megayacht setups the firm has installed. Medenisa developed the DP system with WCM Controls, and says it a first for this size vessel.
A scupture of B&G, Leica, Furuno, and Team-Italia electronics on a sail-powered teak lawn? Hell, I’d be willing to shave my head too. (More fantastic pictures at Wally and Gilles Martin-Raget.)
(other photos show teak decks, for instance). She was built in Spain and much of the PR material sent to me is in that language—which I lack—but I do know that she has a dynamic positioning system and carries a serious looking “
