Gizmodo Australia » sailing

Butterfingered Sea Captains Need These Floating Boat Tools

Jack Loftus — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Yar! Where be my pliers and braided cable cutters? Avast! There they be, bobbin’ in the surf, next to me floatin’ massage chair!

And scene.

Anyway, these brightly-coloured tools float and accomplish several boat-related tasks—perfect for Summermodo adventures you might have planned!

Knock them overboard and they’re easily seen and retrieved. Pretty straightforward. The handles help the tools float because they’re made of comforting foam. Bonus: The rust-resistant metal is tungsten-carbide, perfect for fighting off the corrosive effects of that salty sea air. Yar. [Amazon via Boing Boing]

The Deep Flight Super Falcon Sub Is A Private Airplane For The Sea

Brian Lam — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:30:00 +0000

I’d never been envious of Tom Perkins’ giant sailboat, the Maltese Falcon, until it received a deployable submarine in its belly. The sub, called the Deep Flight Super Falcon, is a 6.5m electric vehicle, bringing aerodynamic principles to the sea.

John Markoff got a ride recently, and reported the craft as being interesting, even in the plankton fog of Monterey Bay, CA.

Each time the 21-foot long electric-powered submarine plunged, my loosely buckled five-point harness left me sliding out of my seat. Each time we started to ascend, I was pushed back into the seat by the acceleration…Unlike a conventional submarine, which uses ballast to plunge into the ocean depths, the Super Falcon “flies” through water. It is slightly buoyant, and it is the speed of its propeller that pushes it downward in the mirror image of the aerodynamic lift of a conventional winged aircraft.It can operate at depths up to 400 feet, has a top speed of six knots and can fly for five hours on a single battery charge.

Deep Flight is helmed by Graham Hawkes, a pioneer in deep sea exploration vehicles. Among other craft, Hawkes built the Deep Rover sub which was used to film Aliens of the Deep by James Cameron in 3D IMAX, the Mantis, which was filmed in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only and the Deep Flight Challenger, a winged sub built capable of reaching 37,000 feet of depth meant for Steve Fossett to break the deep diving record in.

If you’re interested, John Markoff’s article has a video embedded in it of the dive and a tale of the first ocean dive in the Falcon with Perkins, where they chased Hammerheads. Below, I’ve included a video of the Maltese Falcon coming under the Golden Gate Bridge, as well as a video of him testing his prototype Super Falcon.

[Deep Flight, NYTimes, photo by Leslie Terzian Markoff and Yachtpals]

Pegasus Open 50 Raceboat Log: The Finish And A New Record

Brian Lam — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:55:56 +0000

The Finish: The Pegasus Open 50 sailboat just set the Transpac record of 7 days, 19 hours, 38 minutes and 35 seconds for a double handed monohull ship. Previous Record: 10 days, 4 hours and 4 minutes.

Over the Last Night:

Philippe Kahn founded Borland, invented the Camphone, and decodes human motion. He’s also a fellow outdoorsman, splitting time skiing Tahoe and sailing in Santa Cruz. He’ll share his Transpac 2009 sailing race with us live from the Pegasus Open 50. He and Richard Clarke set the race record for a double handed team in 2008 with a time of 7 days, 15 hours, 17 minutes and 50 seconds, besting all boats in overall time for that year.
[Previous Pegasus Sailing posts on Gizmodo, Pegasus]

Pegasus Open 50 Raceboat Log: Day 6, Power Is Back

Brian Lam — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:35:26 +0000

July 12, 5:15 AM PST Sailing along fast. Found faulty regulator and alternator. Good start.

July 12, 6:17 AM PST
Update: We expect/hope to be fully recovered by Noon. Then we’ll jibe for a lay-line to the tip of Molokai and have our final jibe there. Trying to minimize jibes. Big relief.

July 12, 7:15 AM PST
Engine fix and Katayama-San’ lucky sextant returns

July 12, 8:00 AM PST,
MotionX-GPS guiding Pegasus from L.A. to Honolulu

July 12, 8:45 AM PST
Sunrise and Breakfast Burritos

July 12, 10:30 AM PST
Good Morning, Crusty Takes Over for the Day

July 12, 1:00 PM PST
ETA: From what we can tell, with our electrical back, around 9 am PST ( 6 am HST) is a good guess for our finish, just inside 8 days, something like 7 day, 20 hours and something. Sunrise in the Molokai channel.

There is still a lot of sailing to be done. That’s a reasonable guess.

July 12, 5:30 PM PST
Sunshades and generator back running, calling the layline to Kalapapa.

July 12, 7:00 PM PST
Molokai channel

Pegasus Open 50 Log: Rainbows…and We’ve Lost Power

Brian Lam — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:00:47 +0000

July 11, 9:20 PM PST Lost all ways to recharge batteries, down to emergency battery. Just like an aeroplane.

July 11, 9:42 PM PST

July 11, 10:15 PM PST

Just enough power to send emails. We have not regained anything yet. Lost some more. Dark and squalls with no electrical – Bad. Safe but bad.

July 11, 10:28 PM PST
All down – Down to flashlighs, mechanical compass and add-on batteries for iPhone GPS [They've got MotionX GPS apps] and hand held iridium. Trying to fix.

[So they're looking at finishing the race and getting through the nights with no gps and no autopilot. Just celestial navigation using the sextant (which the navy no longer even teaches sailors in annapolis). Philippe is a bit of a math genius, so using a flashlight and the sextant and some paper, he can get it done. And they've got spare charge packs for the iPhone (and its GPS) and the flashlights. But that's about it.-BL]
From earlier in the day, at 5pm PST, a post about navigating with and without electronics:

Pegasus Open 50 Log: Day 6/7, The Wind Is Picking Up

Brian Lam — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:10:35 +0000

The wind is picking up, and at the same time, the boat has to Jibe to port to adjust its path towards Hawaii.

Pegasus Open 50 Raceboat Log: Day 5/6 And The Moon

Brian Lam — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:19:55 +0000

July 9, 5:30 PM PST Today we are living within the realm of Squalls. Squalls in the the Northeast sub-tropical Pacific are different. They are small, concentrated and powerful. The rain lasts ~20 minutes under them if you’re stationary. We’re not.

I love squalls in Honolulu: refreshing, cleansing and replenishing for island precious water.

On Pegasus 50, we move fast at more than half of the squall’s speed. My personal interpretation of North East Pacific Squalls is that they are caused by evaporation with subsequent cooling of the rising air and travel with the tradewinds. During their build-up phase, they mostly “suck” air into them as they are highly active building convective systems. The upper limit comes when the ultra moist air reaches adiabatic balance. Therefore, if you are in front of such a building squall, you loose a lot of wind velocity and get a nasty right shift, but if you have one behind you, she “sucks air” that heads you if you are on starboard jibe with a great boost in velocity. The longer you ride that squall the better. Mark caught a short video of one that he was riding to a max speed of 28 knots of wind and 22 knots of boat speed this afternoon . Check it out, passing right behind Pegasus 50. Mark is steering and filming.

Course 270° T, Speed 14 Knots, Lat 25° 54′ N, Lon 139° 36′ W

July 9, 7:00 PM PST
Tradewind sailing with building squalls, pointing right to Diamond Head

Course 270° T, Speed 14 Knots, Lat 25° 52′ N, Lon 139° 40′ W

July 10, 2:30 AM PST
Insomniac sailor with a Transpac purpose!

Pegasus Open 50 Log: Finally, Through The Fog, A Sunset

Brian Lam — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:18:45 +0000

July 8, 9:00 PM PST This is what a sunset looks like in the middle of the ocean, from a sailboat racing from California to Hawaii.

Course 265° T, Speed 13.5 Knots, Lat 26° 03′ N, Lon 135° 00′ W

July 9, 2:15 AM PST
Windy tonight. On edge and don’t trust the pilot on 20+ and big waves. No horizon. Been steering for 3 hours. Crusty is sound asleep. I can’t believe that he trusts me!

July 9, 7:00 AM PST
Trade Winds Sailing at its Best!

Pegasus Open 50 Raceboat Tour, Part 6: How Fast?

Brian Lam — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:00:08 +0000

A short break in the shakey cam tour of the boat’s tech; here’s a clip of the Pegasus Open 50 Sailboat going 16 knots and throwing up the spinnaker (a large, kite like front sail) outside of Santa Cruz, CA, on a pre race trial run.

It looks slightly faster than the race videos posted the other day, but its hard to tell visually, since they could be going against or with the current and wind.

Pegasus Open 50 Tour, Part 6: The Kitchen Sink

Brian Lam — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:59:51 +0000

All food on the sailboat is heated on a pivoting stove that self rights to true down, no matter how much it’s rocking. It’s also the sink, which spits fresh or salt water. All food is vacuum bag sealed.