This article is part of a series dealing with building best-in-class lithium battery systems from bare cells, primarily for marine use, but a lot of this material finds relevance for low-voltage off-grid systems as well. The development and mass-manufacturing in recent years of large-size lithium-ion battery cells for electric vehicles and grid-tied electricity storage has made […]
This article is a follow-up from Heavy Weather Dynamics: Yachts in Following Seas published some months ago. It has since become one the most read items on this site. While the original article applied to most sea-going monohulls, the following discusses more specifically fast modern hulls, or yachts in very fast following seas, such as can […]
With tropical cruising becoming increasingly popular and accessible in the last 2-3 decades, trends have developed in outfitting yachts for ocean cruising. Some of these trends that originated from sailing in moderate settled weather areas have resulted in significantly increased risks when a vessel is caught in severe conditions. Many of today’s cruising yachts, whether […]
AIS, for Automated Identification System, is probably the most remarkable safety improvement in decades for small craft offshore. The little project presented here involved designing and building a simple, very low power alarm system to keep an AIS watch at sea. Collision Avoidance at Sea Avoiding undesirable encounters with ships in mid-ocean has always been a […]
This article deals with some of the physics involved when a yacht is running before the sea, especially in heavy weather when waves are long and their front faces become steep. Yachts running in heavy weather and following seas face challenges that are very dependent on the characteristics of the design; the ability of the crew […]
One of the largest technological differences between fitting out the sloop Yarra in the early 1990s and launching the Nordkyn design in 2010 was the transition from halogen to LED lighting. The performance and quality of LED lights was evolving so rapidly that I literally deferred purchasing light fittings until the last moment.The following sums […]
There are lots of LED light fittings out on the market within a very broad price range. One can readily distinguish two classes of LED lights: Current regulated: those light fittings usually accept a wide range of supply voltages. Unregulated: the light must be operated close to a nominal voltage only. In order to operate […]
Significant damage sustained by sea-going vessels mostly originates from wave action. In this context, discussing the characteristics and behaviour of waves is valuable. Wave theory is quite extensive and complex, but only a very small amount of knowledge about waves is essential to small-craft sailors to anticipate the risks that can arise from waves. Waves […]
The Presto design was a sailing yacht developed by “Commodore” Ralph M. Munroe in the 1880s in New York [1] as a radical evolution of the flat-bottomed sharpie. The boats sailed up and down the Atlantic coast some distance offshore and were confronted by the frontal weather systems and the influence of the Gulf Stream […]
Over the years, I have come across many private boatbuilders and projects. People broadly subdivide into two categories: builders and sailors. Sailors are those who have sailed quite extensively before and build a boat as a mean to go back to sea again. Those achieve very high rates of completion and usually keep to acceptable timeframes; […]