North Star II

P1010191
Originally uploaded by stuffin.bocks

World's least seaworthy kayak. This is what I traded my old engine for.

Hmm....

Johny's bottom scrubber

P1010188
Originally uploaded by stuffin.bocks

Its a broom and a long piece of PVC pipe. The fender keeps it pushed up against the hull. Works very nicely.

Chartplotting on a budget

The GPS unit and OpenCPN

I've just bought a "GlobalSat BU-353 WaterProof USB GPS Receiver (SiRF Star III)" for $36.95 from Amazon. Its smaller than it looks online, comes with an optional suction cup and also has a magnetic base that will hold it onto things as small as a screw. I couldn't get reception in my office (there's a floor above mine) but worked great in my home.

I've installed OpenCPN from:
http://bigdumboat.com/cpnindex.html
http://opencpn.sourceforge.net/
which is a free open source chart plotter and will load raster charts from:
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/index.htm
and vector charts from:
http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/enc/index.htm
I downloaded the entire set of NOAA vector charts in about an hour and they take up about 1Gb when uncompressed.

I had to tell OpenCPN which COM port the GPS was on, tell it the directory where the charts I downloaded where and then wait a couple of minutes while it digested them.

All in all, pretty painless.

Its got some nice features:

• displays plots of tidal information for all NOAA substations for any time
• can read from NEMA AIS receivers and allows you to setup collision alarms.
• can add waypoints to the chart and transmit directions to a NEMA autopilot
• easy switching between different charts at different scales.
• night mode color scheme
• free
• cross platform. Runs the same in Linux, WindowsXP, Vista and OSX.

Some things that it doesn't support which would be nice:

• I don't see a way to save the waypoints, record tracks or any other information
• MOB mode
• anchor alarm
• AIS via internet
• satellite imagery overlays
• support for GRIB overlays
• anti-aliased scaling of the raster charts. They look very bad when zoomed out.
• its supposed to also have support for currents, although the display
• for that is a little screwed up in the current release.
• radar overlays

Still, it is free, which is cheaper than a kick in the teeth. OpenCPN seems to be the only open source chart plotter available -- I expect (hope) it will only be a matter of time before much of this gets implemented. As it is already, it seems pretty capable.

Couple this with a $300 netbook and your boat's got a battle computer.

Update: NOAA's got a new site for downloading charts -- http://www.charts.noaa.gov
Its pretty slick and lets you download packs of charts by state.

New engine woes?

We've been having some problems starting the new engine. There have been a couple of times when we needed to run the lift pump to clear air in the fuel lines to get it started. Today the engine cut out and later refused restart. I recently installed a charging relay for the batteries and thought the batteries could be to blame. The starter was turned over. Volts at the engine read 12.6 which is normal.

Finally, Wendy suggested that the tank might be empty. We added a gallon from the reserve tank and she fired straight up. Doh!

Can't be sure whether the tank was empty -- the fuel gauge read 3/4 full. However, it has read the same since it was installed. Will know for sure when we fuel up next week.

Day out on the Gold Star

A solid day out with the Cullen family on the Gold Star.

A mindblowing labor of love. The boat's got a lots of history and the owners many stories. More picture here and history here.

Support Bismarck Dinius

You may have heard the story of the Clear Lake accident. If not here's a quick review:

On April 29, 2006, Chief Deputy Russ Perdock of the Lake County Sheriff's Department slammed his Baja 24 powerboat into Beats Working II, an ODay 27 sailboat. Lynn Thornton, finance of the boat's skipper, Mark Weber, was killed in the accident.

From the carnage, it is estimated by ex-Lake County police officers that that the Chief Deputy's boat was traveling in excess of 45 knots. The time of accident was around 9:30, long after dark, when speeds closer to 5 knots are more prudent on crowded lakes. Simple common sense would seem to point to Perdock as the cause of this accident, yet Lake County charged Bismarck Dinius the vehicular manslaughter of Lynn Thornton. Dinius happened to be holding the tiller of the boat while skipper Mark Webber was below. The reasons for this are:

• Dinius's blood alcohol was .12, which is above the new legal limit of .08;
• Dinius was held responsible for the boat because he was at the helm;
• Perdock claims that the ODay's running lights were not on and were found to be switch off by investigators.
• According to California law if you are steering a vehicle, you are responsible for it

I have many issues with this case which makes my cry foul:

• A sailboat, whether operated by drunks or not, has no ability to avoid a boat traveling at, conservatively, 8 times its speed.
  
  
• The rules of the road require vessels to proceed at a speed that is safe for the conditions. If a powerboat is going so fast as to be unable to avoid a slow moving sailboat, then the powerboat's skipper is negligent.
  
  
• Even when on, boat lights are extremely hard to see in built-up areas. Prudence requires a slow speed. I, myself, have had close calls with unlit buoys, anchored barges and even container ships, despite my best efforts to keep a good lookout. Even if the lights of the ODay were off, Perdock should have been going slow enough to avoid a collision with an unlit obstacle.
  
  
• The rules of the road require power driven vessels to give way to sailboats.
  
  
• Sailboats aren't cars. A boat's skipper is responsible for the operations of a boat and any accidents on-board, not the helmsman. The practicalities of passage making (it takes several people to crew a boat, people must eat, sleep, or go down below to take a whizz) mean the a skipper must delegate duties to other people and, as a result, its generally unreasonable for them to refuse. Its the skipper's responsibility to ensure that crew are competent in these duties. If the crew is drunk, it is the skipper's negligence if accidents happen as a result.
  
  


• Statements offered by many eye-witnesses reporting:
  
  • that the Webber's running lights we're on,
  • that Perdock was traveling at high speed
  were refused by the Lake County D.A. and Sheriff's Department because, according to them, (despite the obvious carnage to Webber's boat), there's no way to prove what speed Perdock was traveling.
  
  
• Blood tests showed that Perdock hadn't been drinking, but according to the paperwork, his blood wasn't taken for more than 24 hours after the accident. Apparently, Perdock was driven around town for several hours after the accident by a fellow officer.

My heart goes out to Bismarck Dinius. He is clearly is not at fault. He's lost is his friend, his job and is facing financial ruin as he struggles to fund his legal defense. More worryingly, its clear to me if Russ Perdock were not a member of the Sheriff's department, he would be the one facing manslaughter charges now.

For more details, follow the links from here.

For more details on how you can support Bismarck Dinius, see here.

Prop(er) service.

Shane with my nicely lubed prop. The blade and the stock are numbered. The guys at BMC reassembled it incorrectly meaning that it was probably out of balance.

BMC also screwed up the transmission coupling to my shaft. The new coupling they installed when the fitted my dripless stuffing box didn't have set screws that correctly fit into the shaft. Because the only connection was the compression of the coupling's collar around the shaft, the shaft could in theory have slid right out of the back of the boat. Stupid and dangerous. The practical result was a lot of wiggle and wear between the shaft and the coupling and a ruined shaft. While my engine was pulled I had a new one installed. The picture above is the new shaft with my old propeller.

Here's also a picture of the zinc - its pretty much toast after 12 months in the water. Probably a sign that I should leave my shorepower unplugged and check over my electrical system.