Big Changes Ahead

[grendel]

27 minutes ago, Snowy said:

I’ve been checking this forum more today than I ever have hoping to see “the tour of independence”  video blog 

its there over on facebook Siddy, I presume awaiting upload to youtube for here.

[Snowy]

13 minutes ago, grendel said:

its there over on facebook Siddy, I presume awaiting upload to youtube for here.

I’m not on Facebook 

[JennyMorgan]

29 minutes ago, CambridgeCabby said:

Don’t forget to proudly wear one of these when cruising the Broads Robin

There's one going free up Blakeney way!

[SteveO]

Now that's what I call a fender.

 

[LondonRascal]

Calm down calm down (think scouse accent) I am back..

So to re-cap I have done some video, but as you will appreciate I only had a short time down in Plymouth and of this not that much time to do too much filming and begin sorting through the boat. I find myself feeling I have accomplished something just when I find what the 4 'light switches' do in the heads - two lights, an extractor fan and towel rail to be precise.

Masses of cleaning has been done - you have no idea how much Pledge is needed when you are dealing with the amount of woodwork onboard one of these boats, but I thought rather than bore you with that, I would give you all here an exclusive video -unlike the one shared to the NBN Facebook Group (if you;re not a member there you really should be) this follows the period of time in the hotel the night before I took formal ownership, the minutes after everyone had left ans she was mine to the initial tour before I knew what was what..So this is a bit deeper and more from the heart so to speak. More to follow especially when I next visit her.

 

[coolcat]

Great video Robin,

It's going to be a wonderful adventure for you I'm sure of that

[BrundallNavy]

I think I would be tempted to have stayed in Plymouth, you will be discovering something new for many weeks to come.

Doug.

[JennyMorgan]

Agree with Doug, at least in staying South for the winter. A few practice runs to Portsmouth, Chichester or Cowes then come the spring head off to the Channel Islands thence across to Belgium, along the coast to Imuiden then a quick passage to Lowestoft & Oulton Broad. Easy stages, great adventure. 

 

[Jonathan]

Surely the tender has to be renamed "May 4th", being the Independence day-boat!

 

[Snowy]

That’s weird, at 12.30 on that day I thought of you Robin and your adventure, wondering how it was all going the very time you was aboard and making this video !

Suggestions for tender names, the obvious being “day”

How about  “Shelia” that way she’s with you if she likes it or not 

or if your a fan of Donna Summer ‘State of” after her 1982 hit song

putting my hand up as crew, I don’t know much other than can handle the sea after being a deep sea fisherman many moons ago 

Good luck in this fantastic adventure, roll on the next video instalment 

[Arthur]

If the boat is  making a statement by the name "INDEPENDENCE"

Maybe the tender should be called "BREXIT"

[Maxwellian]

I think you should call it Blue Fender. :)

sorry

[Arthur]

Of course you could always personalise the tender and call it  "THE RASCAL"

[leander]

Good Luck Robin . Stay positive and it will be a great adventure.

 

[ScrumpyCheddar]

Well as the Tender is sat on the top of the boat.... There’s only one name for it..

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, ScrumpyCheddar said:

Well as the Tender is sat on the top of the boat.... There’s only one name for it..

That's brilliant well remembered 

[LondonRascal]

Hmm not even been officially launched and the tender names are coming in lol What have I begun here, mind you I like the maturity of the crowd here, no Boaty McBoaters here...

[Hylander]

Will you have a launching ceremony (as new to yourself)  with a bottle of Champers for the boat and a crate of Champers for the visitors?    The Bishop of Norwich blessed our boat for us in that he sent a rather nice card with a blessing attached.    I did ask him if he would.     What a fantastic boat.    Well done ,  life is for living and no regrets about anything please.        

 

 

[JamesLV]

9 hours ago, LondonRascal said:

Hmm not even been officially launched and the tender names are coming in lol What have I begun here, mind you I like the maturity of the crowd here, no Boaty McBoaters here...

When ringing up to pay the balance on Omega last year, Barnes asked Ems the name of the boat we’d booked, having paid little to no attention to such things she replied ‘I don’t know, Boaty McBoatface?’ Which wasn’t met with that much enthusiasm, I suspect the staff may have had the same answer on more than one occasion...

[grendel]

how about 'Tender behind' as the name

[MauriceMynah]

Dependant ?

[Springsong]

Dependence  possibly ?

John you just beat me to it.

[Vaughan]

Thank you very much for sharing that very personal video with us Robin and I wish you all the very best.

Just a thought - if you are changing the radar, have a look at going "north up" rather than "ship's head up". It is easier to use as the orientation is always the same as looking at the chart. It also avoids the blurring of the screen every time your boat changes course. In rough weather it can be impossible to take a bearing from the shore for this reason, but a north up screen is always steady. only your own course line changes.

Lots of ships use this but then they have a gyro compass. I image though, that modern GPS technology can now provide north up radar for pleasure boats. I have used both, and would always prefer north up.

[NonTecky]

Wow! Just Wow! All the best to you Robin! 

[LondonRascal]

The Radar question - I had previously written about this but having found such others may find this interesting reading here, for a great deal has changed in the last few years as far as Radar goes.

Some may see me as a being foolish for I have not spoken of paper charts – that is not to say I don’t plan on obtaining such to cover the usual cruising area, but we are reaching the point where paper charts are just not going to be needed.  Indeed over in America, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the federal agency charged with surveying the nation's navigable waters) ceased printing paper charts after from mid-April 2013. That is a big move to have taken place, and while third parties will take up the slack, the information will be presented to them in digital from NOAA.  It would be like Ordnance Survey stopping paper maps, but letting a third party company print them based on digital data provided. 

The real issue is that not everyone (in fact relatively few) will have electronic navigation equipment up that is up to date and able to take over where the dividers and paper left off. It has been a case of electronics complimenting centuries old skills but for how long this may go on I know not and indeed there are increasingly strong (and respected) voices in the sailing community saying they no longer have paper on their vessels. 

But it is not just about navigation, so I will be focusing here on Radar and how if you can it really is a case of bigger is better and open array being far superior to dome based antenna’s .

To me it is about redundancy, redundancy redundancy. This includes not having the main power supplying the navigation gear from the house bank of batteries and why I plan on having a separate (though by same manufacture) multifunction display just in case. Combine that, with the iPad, Phone and stand alone hand held GPS, short of the US turning off GPS I should have a way to know where I am, where I am going and where I have been to.

With Pulse Compression 'solid state' Radar, things really have moved on considerable in the last few years. Not only do these new units emit far less 'dangerous' RF but they consume a great deal less power and are up and running in a few seconds with no warm up time required. These are good things.

But for me, what really has been a game changer is the way that hardware and software have become far more advanced to deal with clutter, aid target definition and separation. It is now possible to have something like a mooring ball show up clearly from half a mile out to 20ft to the boat where more traditional radars with a Magnetron would struggle to see something so low to the water and of a spherical shape. Indeed, I have seen an RYA power boat course video shot on the Solent in a RIB . One of the Fort's in this area is clearly visible in the distance to the naked eye, but is resolutely not showing up on the old school Radar fitted to the RIB, being low down and not returning off the towers smoother rounded edges. North Sturbridge buoy however was showing with its Radar reflector doing its thing and was visible to the east.

It is cases like this which made me see how more modern Radar and the clarity it can provide could be the difference to whacking into to something or not.

Bigger antenna's are better too so it is no good going for a dome type if your boat can accommodate an open array type - and a larger the open array the better. That is because of Horizontal Beam Width. With a 6 foot open array antenna, you can focus your beam width to about 1 degree, but a smaller dome style antenna just physically cannot produce such a focused beam so you're at best (with an 18" a dome antenna) going to get a 5 degree beam width.

Now since the main benefit of Radar is to see what we cannot, target separation and a narrow degree of beam width makes all the difference. If you were headed for a Harbour entrance or maybe following a narrow channel looking for returns off of two fixed objects at night or in misty conditions to pass between, then a smaller dome based Radar will rotate, 'see' the channel marker to port and to starboard but because of the wide beam width of 5 degrees, the two returns would be seen in the same pulse - so on the display you would only see one return (or object).

With a larger open array, because of its 1 degree narrow beam width, it would see the first marker to port, rotate a little more and see the second marker to starboard and to you looking on the display you'd see the two separate returns. Just the same can be said for a boat headed toward you and one away from you at the same time (perhaps leaving and entering a harbour that is not very wide like you might find at Portsmouth) the larger open array would see the two separate returns (or boats) whereas the a smaller dome based Radar would just show you one return and may lull you into thinking there was only one boat, furthermore with older radars you could not use the Doppler effect to see which return was moving away from you and thus which was moving towards you. Simrad call their system 'Velocity Track' which will determine if a target is closing on you, diverging or stationary relative to your position all in real time.

Now sure, all you really want to know is if something is there, after all that is better than nothing at all right? But if you can upgrade to have more 'resolution' of what is going on then that is all for the better.

Newer models can sample more data in real time, can process and de-clutter and offer more modes and run them at the same time - 20ft to 5 miles out for example on two screens. Mind you claims of Radar range is like the old school 'mega pixel' wars. You might have a claim of 'up to 72 nautical mile range' really? Radar has an horizon too (it varies on how high it is from sea level) but you can work out what yours might be by measuring the height your Radar is from the water surface then take the square root of that number and times it by 1.22. You then have your maximum range. Let's say you had a small boat with a Radar 9 foot above the water, well the square root of 9 is 3, so 3x1.22=3.66 - so in that boat your max Radar range is only 3.6 nautical miles. But you also need to consider the height of the target too, so in my example let jus presume the target is also 9ft tall then you can add another 3.6 nautical miles and thus..you actual maximum range to an object of the same or greater height is 7 nautical miles. Your Radar may have a sticker that says different but it is mainly marketing nonsense to the average boater.

In conclusion, my wish for updating the navigation and safety equipment is for that - safety but also because why not? I mean if you update your TV to keep up with pace to 4K resolution, and you get the latest generation of phone and tablet every couple of years, why I wonder, do so many just accept that the equipment on a boat might be 15 odd years old and that be ok when it is pretty critical stuff and if nothing more makes boating that bit more easy. For me, I like new tech - I might have the roughest looking fenders, canopy and mooring lines going but I'll have the swish flush mount screens.

On a serious note take a look at this training video from Compass Sea School.

I have set the video to begin at the crucial point. You will see she is talking the large ship heading off their port bow, and what a good target this is. The equipment she has can also pick up AIS and details are provided of this too.

But pause the video: You see the large ship showing on the chart as an AIS target (overlayed), you see the target showing on the Radar overlay too - but you do not see a sailing Yacht at any time which you will soon find out has been traveling to the boats port side all along.

She raises the camera to show us the large ship out of the window and then talks about Radar shadow - this is correct. The ship will shadow the Yacht, but the point is that prior to the ship being in a position to shadow the yacht, we never knew on Radar alone that the Yacht was there at all! She then talks about how 'we will only see one target until the Yacht pops out' but as the boat passes the stern of the larger ship, we see the Yacht once more then the camera shows the Radar screen once more but still it only shows one target despite the Yacht now being in open water once again and free of Radar shadowing.

This shows how poor the old school analogue radar can be, especially on a small boat with a small dome antenna.Now imagine if this was in poor weather where you need your Radar most. This alone demonstrates to me the importance if nothing else of updating to newer digital based Radar with a far superior target definition and separation to give you the best fighting chance of seeing what is there before it may be too late.

I will be installing a 4ft Open Array from Simrad using their Halo Radar, here is an example of what it is able to do: