Boats

Situational awareness and electronics overload

Submitted by Matthew on

It's hard not to be impressed by the latest round of navigation electronics. This is 2010, after all, an era in which the average desktop computer has the computing power to calculate the airflow around a Space Shuttle during re-entry, and we can't tell the difference between live and CGI actors on the cinema screen. I'm not convinced, though, that all this computing power is a good thing to be throwing at navigation systems- at least, not in the ways we see in some of the current crop of nav systems.

Security at sea: encrypted email

Submitted by Matthew on

Is there really such a thing as private communications anymore? By long-standing convention, radio traffic (except emergency and "all ships" calls) is supposed to be kept confidential, but these days, I wouldn't put too much faith in that. Public 802.11 wi-fi is also remarkably easy to hack, unless you're on one of the rare networks that use WPA2 encryption and rotate the access codes frequently.

What's it really made of?

Submitted by Matthew on

It's not always easy to figure out what a boat is made of. Aluminum is usually pretty obvious, as is traditional wood construction. But fibreglass is a different story- without cutting the hull open, there's no easy way to tell what's below that innermost layer of roving. Anyone who has read David Pascoe's article "Are they fiberglass boats anymore" is at least a little scared of the mysterious substances that take the place of proper hull structure in many production boats.

Engine access: Sterndrives

Submitted by Matthew on

Crawling around an engine bay, trying to reach some deeply buried component with three flex fittings on a socket wrench, is nobody's idea of a good time.

Thankfully, at least a handful of production boat builders have recognized this, and offer reasonably good access to the critical bits of the sterndrive system's prime mover.  Still, it seems there will always be a few that insist you hire a double-jointed 8-year-old with the mechanical skills of a Formula One pit crew just to change a spark plug.

Custom Design

Sometimes, you just can't find the boat you need. Perhaps you have an unusual combination of requirements. Perhaps you have your heart set on building your own, but none of the stock plans you can find are quite right for you. Perhaps you're looking to save money and/or get a better quality boat, compared to what you can find at brokerages.

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