December 2009
Help Wanted: Boatbuilder
Submitted by cac on Thu, 2009-12-31 22:50My Aunt sent me this article by Lawrence Downes... some of it might hit just a little close to home some days :-)
Somewhere out there is a man who can help me build a model boat for my little nephew. This man is between 82 and 84 years old, which means he was a 10-, 11- or 12-year-old boy in 1937, when the book I took the plans from was published. Read the rest... read more »
Similitude of ship models
Submitted by cac on Wed, 2009-12-30 23:39Lots of boat builders and designers will use models in a variety of ways. Interior layout is probably the most common, or even just getting an idea of the shape and look of a craft before building in full scale.
Often somebody will decide to build a model and see how it performs. Be careful here. There are lots of issues when scaling something down and then expecting it to perform in a non-scaled physical world. The dynamics of water don't change just because the hull got smaller. The strength of materials is not linear, nor is the weight. read more »
The Diary of a Nature Lover
Submitted by cac on Wed, 2009-12-30 23:32A freelance Naval Architect, Charles Roring has an interesting site with quite a few articles on various marine subjects. Topics include: Naval Architecture Books, Hydrostatics and Stability, Ship Design, Propeller and Propulsion, Marine Environment and Coral Reef and others.
Some good information here.
Furuno FI-50 Multi XL, a NMEA embarassment?
Furuno FI-50 Multi XL, a NMEA embarrassment?
gTrax & Ship Tracker, telling it like it is
When I recently looked into the dismal-looking future of eLoran in the U.S., and read some of your comments to that entry, I felt obliged to write Secretary Napolitano asking her not to kill the Loran system. My most unusual, and hopefully persuasive, argument was that she would be serving her boss -- President Obama -- best by reversing a poor decision that he's endorsed, even crowed about. Telling it like it is read more »
Terrorism and Security - just buy a boat
Submitted by cac on Tue, 2009-12-29 16:15OK, just to get on my soapbox briefly... all the heightened tensions and wasted effort on airplane security leads me back to my ongoing hobby... just take a boat.
Air travel is reaching the point of diminishing returns for me. I'm more concerned about the "security" people and their arbitrary restrictions than I am the threats from external sources.
I hope that I'll soon be able to do more of my travel via boat (personal or otherwise) where maybe more level heads will prevail. read more »
Vote for the US Coast Guard Video of the Year
Submitted by cac on Tue, 2009-12-29 11:35The U.S. Coast Guard has a collection of various rescue videos and the like that they are running a contest to vote for the best video of the year. Vote before Jan. 8th. The winning units will receive a video camera prize.
More info at the U.S. Coast Guard Compass site.
Some impressive footage of our Coast Guard in action.
SmartCraft NMEA 2000 gateway, looking good
Never mind that Mercury promised a NMEA 2000 gateway to its SmartCraft engine monitoring system back in 2001, the one it's poised to actually ship in 2010 looks quite powerful and useful. If you check out the Gateway PDF above linked to this MercMonitor gauge page, you'll see that read more »
