A wry line that applies to this and numerous other cutting-edge installs is: "Many things work!" (Though maybe not everything just yet.) This is the 58-foot yacht I mentioned in February when I met the owner at the Miami Show as he planned a nearly complete electronics update. Obviously he decided on the Furuno TZtouch displays that debuted that very day. In fact, while the four TZT14's on this boat may be some of first installed anywhere and they're mixed with lots of non-Furuno gear to boot, they seemed to be working quite well. So nicely done, Furuno! But I emphasize "seemed" because it takes a while to wring out a system as complex as this, especially when so much is happening preparatory to delivery day. Heck, guys were varnishing below even as we blasted up the St. George river at nearly 36 knots to check that yet another prop change had fixed vibration issues. And though the techs are joining the owner for the two-day delivery home, it's still unlikely that they'll get all the way through the "issues list." That's life on the cutting edge. Nonetheless, I think the owner is going to be very pleased with how close the system comes to his vision, and how well it will customize and expand to his future wishes...
I've corresponded with Eric Steinberg for years -- and wrote about some of his offshore racing electronics ideas in 2010 -- but what a pleasure it was to meet him in San Diego. Aside from overseeing Farallon Electronics and IstarGPS, he is now Director of Electronics Systems for the Americas Cup Race Management and hence responsible for nav, comms, and race management tech on some 29 support vessels. Yet it was Eric who took the time to patiently explain the many-layered systems that I tried to write about in Yachting. He was especially proud of what they managed to squeeze into the "personal watercraft" (PWC) that some of the umpires use to chase the AC45 catamarans (pictured here)...
Here's one way to test a newly installed KEP Marine Glass Bridge Monitor, supposedly the first with dual touch technology (which happens to work well with Windows 7). The owner of this J160 racer/cruiser was purportedly very happy with it last season, but there was, in fact, a problem getting the touchscreen signals to consistently make the 25 foot trip from the helm to the nav station PC below. Adam White (left) -- former electronics guy and now service manager at Yankee Marina & Boatyard -- worked with KEP to solve the issue...
The first day of AC 45 racing in Naples yesterday made for must-see YouTube video, and must have been quite an initiation for the six new Mark/VIP boats. For instance, did the Volvo Penta IPS dynamic positioning I saw being tested in San Diego on hull #1 actually work in these very rough conditions? I'm also curious why there seem to be so few "VIP" spectators on board as the mark boats seem like a sensational spot to watch the racing. Yesterday I thought it might be for safety reasons, but today the conditions I saw on the live feed were much more mellow...
It's hard to beat this chap's description of what it must be like to arrive somewhere aboard the 390-foot motor yacht A:
You could hear the sound of penises shrinking from as far away as San Remo when "A" dropped anchor in the bay of Cannes recently. You could hear the sound of Billionaire's accountants calculating the cost of building a more spectacular boat about thirty seconds later.
Navico product manager Lucas Steward may look like he's having fun, but he really is putting a lot of Lowrance gear through its paces. Really. When I got chatting with him during an early morning Miami demo (more on that soon) and he mentioned that he does some testing aboard his Hobie Mirage Pro Angler, I pictured perhaps an Elite-5 DSI fishfinder/plotter mounted on its deck. But it turned out that Steward had a much grander vision for his 14-foot pedal boat...
Never mind the final Super Bowl score (and the unfortunate headlines), did you appreciate those slick digital field overlays like the yellow 1st & ten line? Frankly I'm still impressed with this technology even though it's not magic. HowStuffWorks explains pretty well the sensors, geometry, and video processing required to make that virtual line look like it's painted on the field. All it takes is precise knowledge of where the camera and line markers are in a 3D model of the stadium, plus the use of the turf color as a reverse mask so that the players -- who must never wear the same shade of green -- don't get overlaid. But once you understand that, the new LiveLine info inserted into America's Cup video seems practically impossible...
I spent some time recently looking through the wonderful photography AC34 is making available to the media (the public can browse large thumbnails). Most of the images were taken by the superb shooter Gilles Martin-Raget, and I thank him for taking some that illustrate my story obessions with the underlying technology and the support fleet. Like the one above which frames the intense racing with the AC45's space-age boomkin. As described in November that gray disk most aft is a NovAtel high-precision GPS which works along with inertial motion sensors and a high speed wireless data network so that the entire AC system knows exactly where this boat is...
Almost two months later and I'm still excited about what I saw of America's Cup 34 in San Diego. If I had a megayacht I might well dispatch it to Naples or Venice for the spring World Series events, and I'll certainly be tuning in to AC's YouTube channel. But I'm convinced that understanding the incredible technology behind the scenes helps you appreciate how pure the racing is, and I've got several more entries to write on the subject, as well as an April Yachting feature in the works. Today we're going to peek at what goes on aboard the AC 34 committee boat, a sturdy power cat named Regardless...
Given that the Golden Gate Yacht Club -- home club of Larry Ellison and his team BMW Oracle Racing -- couldn't confidently start on America's Cup 34 until they won the much-litigated AC33 in February, 2010, it's pretty amazing that they got the new World Series program up and on the water last August. Besides the raft of new behind-the-scenes technology discussed here recently, the organizers put together a large fleet of support vessels and a core shore infrastructure that could all travel around the world packed onto a cargo ship. And the AC34 folks do not seem keen to do anything halfway. For instance, click on the photo above and see how the ACRM (Race Management) containers were stacked and accessorized on the San Diego Navy Pier to make a two-story Base with decks and awnings (and even partial wheelchair access). Consider too the slippery camera-toting power catamaran Cambria...
