The Marine Electronics Hub
“Pretty cool…ESPN says one of the greatest upsets in sports history!” my brother-in-law emailed me last night, and he’s a guy who knows who pitched World Series games decades ago, and how well, but bupkis about the America’s Cup. Yes indeed, AC34 was incredibly unpredictable, and exciting, but I’ll argue that the winners all along were the teams who made the race management, umpiring, and broadcasting so innovative and so effective…
Best ticket ever? I’m so excited about getting slightly behind the Americas Cup 34 scene — and out on San Francisco Bay for races 6 and 7! — that I’m dreaming up things might go wrong. Could there be too much wind to race? In race 4 both boats averaged 31 knots — with bursts to 45 — in winds that averaged 19 with peak gusts at 23. Obviously things can really wrong when a catamaran is going that fast while delicately balanced on relatively tiny lifting foils. Or might Oracle Team USA find some way to delay further as crew and/or boat changes are hotly rumored?…
I was blown away, partially due to the timing. Just after writing about how apps can make fascinating historical cartogrphy easily accessible, I learned about a fascinating advance in 21st century mapping. I’d guess that most every Panbo reader has marveled at the seamless panoramic photography found in Google Street Maps; well, now it’s possible to use very similar technology to tour inside a ship, and the vessel Google chose for the first demonstration is a corker…
A handsome addittion to Camden Harbor recently has been the latest launch of the power catamaran design that was almost Gizmo, and darned if it doesn’t have a certain gizmological flare. Check the high-low combination of solid state and magnetron radars, for instance. In fact, the gadget-loving owner, Brian Strong, is a regular Panbo reader and he wrote up an interesting explanation of his electronics choices…
Yes, it sure looks like overkill — and this shot doesn’t even include the iPad that’s often mounted here at Gizmo’s lower helm — but I’ve definitely found ways to put all these screens to work. In this particular scene the boat is crawling out of a very shallow back creek (actually called Back Creek) where we’d hidden from the worst of a cold gusty low that had me wondering if spring would ever materialize. It was still gusting in the high 20’s and that’s only 2.8 feet under the StructureScan transducer that’s fastened to the keel forward. If you look closely you’ll see many chart types, including the C-Map Max format now well supported by Coastal Explorer. The day before I’d gotten a serious reminder about the value of multi charting…
What the heck? This morning In Myrtle Beach it was the same frosty 36 degrees as it was in Camden, Maine. I’ve got lots more install work I can do before heading north, but it’s fun to check out the odd lot of early ICW cruisers who turn into Osprey Marina’s narrow entrance channel. Particularly curious was this venerable Cape Dory 25 that came in looking like it had been knocking around at sea. In fact it had just come non-stop and single-handed from St. Augustine, Florida, and had gotten there mostly offshore from Cape May, New Jersey, just last month. Yes, in February, and the owner’s previous sailing experience was aboard a Sunfish on a lake. I had to know more!
I’ve heard it said that if you heeded all the manufacturer advice about antenna placement, you’d need a boat 100-feet long with four or five masts. I’ve been meaning to ask Panbo readers about how to best use Gizmo’s single (though beefy) antenna mast, but instead I went and rejiggered everything last week and your advice will have to wait for the next revision. What mainly drove the change is the long term loan of a FLIR M-Series camera system, which certainly deserves the premier masthead position…
A visit to the America’s Cup World Series in Newport, RI in June 2012 provided an opportunity to tour the engineering spaces and helm of this second-generation mark/VIP boat as a follow-up to Ben’s visit to hull number one. Before the engineering tour I spent the day on the race course in the vessel’s predecessor, observing the racing and learning what drove the design improvements to this latest generation.
In retrospect, it’s almost funny that the very first picture of Gizmo I published on Panbo (repeated above) highlighted that mess of wiring tucked under the circuit breaker panel. In the four years since, I’ve at least figured out, and in many cases changed or removed, nearly every electrical component on the boat. Just before I went to the Miami show it seemed like the time had come to attack what lay behind that nice little access door, but things did not go well…
I did get to tour a couple of yachts during my Trawler Fest engagement and the one that got my attention was the Garcia GT54 hull #1, which was built in France and motored to the U.S. on her own bottom…during hurricane season! “Le Trawler” is both stylish and practical in numerous ways, and it’s also a good example of a full-on Furuno NavNet 3D system…
