Passagemaker had one of their Trawlerfest events near our home last week. My wife and I attended a few sessions. I focused on safety. The first presentation was by a doctor that is part of DAN boater network. This one was so-so. It wasn't tailored to cruisers, it was a wide ranging dive into things that happen all over the world, much of it having to do with diving. But as always, I walked away with a few nuggets. The second session was MUCH better. The first half was conducted by Thomas Bliss of www.northwestresponse.com. This was all about first aid. Super informative, and entertaining too ("there's only two kinds of people I'll give mouth-to-mouth to: my family, and people that owe me money!"). I have pages of notes and will definitely be taking several first aid classes in the very near future. I have been in quite a few "scrapes" in my life. Some truly bad car accidents, including this one that happened when I lived in Germany. Nine of us in the hospital. I pulled five people out of that car (it's the one that crashed into our car throwing both cars off a cliff). It was leaking gas the entire time. I have broken both wrist bones (radius/ulna) in my right arm and experienced severe shock. I did a lot of backpacking as a teenager. I had my own near drowning experience in a snow melt lake at 8,000+ feet. Me and a friend had to build a stretcher from a small tree we cut down with knives, and sweatshirts, and carry an injured companion for two entire days to help. Caught in a surprise massive snowstorm and had to walk out several miles in 6' of snow. So I have a lot of appreciation for making good decisions regarding safety, and being prepared. Recently in some of the boating forums, an article called "Drowning doesn't look like drowning" has gone viral. I was very pleased to find out the author, Mario Vittone, would be the other speaker at this session. He's a former USCG rescue swimmer (2,000+ helicopter hours). He has truly seen it all, and a lot of what he has seen is heartbreaking. After moving on from rescue swimming at age 45 he became a marine accident investigator. Mario feels that virtually every accident at sea can be traced back to decisions that were made or not made before the vessel left the dock. And he has example after example to back this up. His demonstration of his own usage of his life vest and the equipment he carries was a real eye opener. You have probably read my prior post about our swim ladder saga. I think until this session I felt that if I fell overboard with my inflatable PFD on I would survive. Mario's session and the links he provided us has me rethinking that. And especially about tender operations where the chance of going over is much more than on Mahalo. Mario has a way of rephrasing questions. For example, he asked "How many arrived here on a boat?" Many hands go up. "Where are you going when you leave?" "Seattle." "Anacortes." "Wrong," Mario replies, "you are leaving the safety of land and going into a liquid that has every capability of killing you very quickly." Now I realize Mario has seen the worst boating has to offer. Just living has a risk. Those of us that drove to his workshop undertook a statistical risk too. During a break one of the other attendees remarked to me "I feel like I can't leave the dock without a doctor, survival suits and a coast guard expert on board!" Safety wise, us boaters will be somewhere on a spectrum from "totally lame" on the left and "USCG rescue swimmer approved" on the right. We have to make our choices and compromises. Our choice is to be ready to respond to incidents on our boat. Practice! I could write for days about the knowledge Mario imparted, but fortunately there are a couple of websites with his work. The most important one is: www.soundingsonline.com/voices/lifelines-safety-and-rescue-at-sea. Excellent articles and videos there my Mario, including the one I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post. The one with the dry suits that have come from the kite-boarding world are worthy consideration for kayakers in cold water. Here are more videos from Mario on Vimeo: vimeo.com/mariovittone . The next important site is: www.coldwatersafety.org . If you are like me, despite boating and being around water for years or decades, you simply do not know nearly enough about cold water. I'm putting my money where my mouth is and just made a donation to this 501(3)c. Lastly here is Mario's site: mariovittone.com/ . At the present time he is not building up content there, more sharing on other sites. If you get a chance to attend one of Mario's sessions I believe you will gather some life saving information. Here's to boating as safely as we all can. At the end of the session Mario gave away some of the gear he demonstrated and I was fortunate enough to receive this lifting harness. Thanks Mario!
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If you have been around boats for a while, you know how important it is for there to be a way of locking refrigerator/freezer doors. Without it, the contents of your fridge at some point will inevitably wind up on the floor. Hampton uses full size home refrigerators, typically those designed to be "built-in" to the cabinetry. The hulls we have seen use a lock like above. It is spring loaded, and it works great. But it has to be actuated every time you want to open a door (or drawer if that is how your fridge is designed). A boat spends most of its time at anchor or at the dock, where a lock isn't required (let's hope). So Debbie had the bright idea of asking them to make a different style of lock to work with this idea. Our fridge has a door above, and two drawers below. Beautiful panels they made, aren't they? So these are the locks, in their locked position. And here they are in the open position. Just a quick flick will change from locked to unlocked or vice-versa. There is no spring. All these little things add up to more convenience and enjoyment of our time on the water.
If you are thinking these are pretty similar to the lock they designed for the swim ladder, you are right! Just a 90 degree turn. You know it is getting serious when you have to start acquiring cleaning products for your new baby. One of the best links in our Resources tab is www.trawlerforum.com. Recently there was a thread there about cleaning products. A guy mentioned he had just finished a bottle of very expensive boat wash (from one of the major national chains, let's just say), and wondered what everyone else is using. A couple of people mentioned Chemical Guys (www.chemicalguys.com). It appears they mostly service the professional car detailing world. But they have a marine line too, and all their marine products are eco friendly. On Amazon, their products have hundreds or thousands of very good reviews. They have instructional videos on their site for every product. The prices are very good, and as I was doing all this research the last week of April, they had a 25% off sale for the entire month! So I did a large order that should keep me going for quite a long time. That bottle (lower left) with the interesting top is called a "foam cannon." You put soap in the bottle, then hook this thing up to your pressure washer. It's adjustable for flow and pattern. Evidently it lays down a thick layer of foam which does a fantastic job cleaning. These run about $90.00 and the discount meant I basically got it for free. Happy foaming! Now I "think" I'll be doing a lot of my own boat washing. I want to take care of Mahalo, and it's good exercise to keep my bod going, and what the heck I'm retired, right?
But when I watched this guy at the factory I thought, "uhhhh, probably not." This guy can go on for hours like this. Luckily over the past 5 years with physical therapy and getting fit I have ended 30 years of daily back pain. That looks like a ticket back to Painville to me. I'll be hiring that one out. Mahalo is on board the ship bringing her to Seattle. Left Shanghai several days ago. But is stopping at various ports in the South China Sea. Currently in Busan, South Korea. Come on Captain, point that thing East and go!
The pilot house is heated with the diesel furnace, and a blower unit with five ducted outlets. Three of those ducts go to the front windows, as heaters/defrosters. When we got to the boat, we found that the factory had hooked up both of the remaining ducts to the grill you see on the right. I wasn't sure that the unit could force all the air it puts out through that grill, plus I'd rather have more places where warm air can come out. We talked through the possibilities and decided that it would be possible to duct across the back of those drawers and add a grill as you can see this tech getting ready to do. The interesting part is that shortly before this area was taped off, the techs were having a heated discussion, pardon the pun. The first decision was to put the grill (and box for the duct behind it) at the floor level. When the guy that built this cabinetry arrived to cut the hole, he flat out refused to cut it there. Because then it would be at a different height than the one on the right. The other techs remarked that the ducting would require a lot more work in order to accommodate his location. (I'm getting the translation from Chinese, right?) He continued to refuse and then the other techs realized they had lost and had to figure out how to do the ducting, which they did, and he proceeded to cut out the hole. At left you can see the completed new duct. The blower unit I mentioned is shown inside this cabinet on the right. The added a false floor there to protect the duct when someone has to climb in there to work on electronics. (It's much larger than it appears in this image.)
I'm so thankful the HYG techs care so much about the boats they build. |
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