Category: Zany

I’m not sure why I get such a kick out of fractured marketing talk, but I do.  And I want to honor the entrepreneur who’s been trying hard to advertise the Mumbai Yacht Club via Panbo comments (even if I haven’t let them go up).  To “The Ownership Economic entails endless technical tensions of Man-management-n- Maintenance, Berthing, etc…” could we not add interfacing NMEA 2000 and 0183, making marine WiFi work, etc., etc.?  And if I ever get back to the southwest coast of India, which I’d truly love to do, I might actually try to rent one of the “club’s” yachts…

Here’s hoping that American panbots had a wonderful holiday weekend, and that northern hemisphere readers everywhere are enjoying the boating season.  I’m pleased to report that blue skies are finally breaking out here in Maine.  Friday night’s harbor fireworks were pretty sad — even those of us out in boats could only see vague glows in the fog — but there were times on the 4th that flags dried out enough to flutter.  And isn’t Gizmo looking good?  I still haven’t gotten around to changing the name lettering yet, but as an electronics test bed — and a cruising celebration of independence — she’s really coming along…

It was a bit anticlimatic, but I’m told that on Friday the funds moved, bills of sale were signed, and — good golly, miss molly — the Duffy Atlantic 37 formerly known as Rain...

Well, ain’t that a bitch!  Thanks to the vigilance of Steve Roberts I now know that an online “store” called Discount Marine Electronics is posting Panbo entries as though “it” created them. Actually all they’re doing is putting up the same first picture and paragraph anyone can get via XML feed or email (see Subscribe button top right). But Discount Marine Electronics is cutting out the “read more” link, so readers really don’t get the whole jist of the entry but may be fooled into thinking that the diligent staff of Discount Marine Electronics is testing gear and writing about it on a regular basis.
   Here’s the irony: I’ve spent the last two days surveying and test running the still maybe future Gizmo, and am so besotted that I don’t care if these rip off artists suffer consequences immediately, or just rot in hell at a later date.  But I will be pleased if Discount Marine Electronics has automated the posting of my posts, and hence we might see this post go up on their site.  If so, grab that screen!  And don’t forget to buy all your marine electronics at Discount Marine Electronics.

So it turns out that within my big old head still lurks the boat lust of a younger man, even when confronted with tangles of wires and other system complexities. No problem, I thought to myself, I can deal with this stuff!  But was that the irrational voice of a love stricken boy speaking?  I’ve been missing from Panbo for a couple of days because en route to NYC yesterday I checked out a boat I’d been admiring online…and fell much deeper under her spell. Today I’ve been consulting trusted advisors who know more about this sort of boat, and the used boat buying process, than I do. And I’d like to know what Panbots think…

The screen shot above could be from a “game” called Ship Simulator 2008, which in itself is pretty neat.  (First I tried the demo, and then 17 Euros and a 705mb download later, I owned the darn thing ;-).  But, in fact, the screen came from Raymarine Marketing Manager Jim McGowan who is using a beta copy of Ship Sim Pro 2.0, which among many other enhancements supports up to 8 serial ports that can send 23 NMEA 0183 output sentences and understand 9 input sentences…

That graph represents the teensy weensy difference over recent years between “real” solar system time and the time we oh-so-carefully keep with atomic clocks. As of this morning, real time—i.e. the mean sun dead south or north at noon (at the exact mid longitude of a time zone)—was 6/10ths of a second behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC or Zulu). You see, relative to the atomic clocks, the earth…

As gray it is, but with pinpoints of light shining through, this image (bigger here) says Christmas season 2008 for me…