September 28, 2005
Tampa Boat Show
The annual Tampa Boat Show is this weekend at the Tampa Convention Center downtown. As many of you know, Genmar will not be there displaying their Aquasport line as the brand was discontinued a few months ago. That's probably for the best as the direction Genmar was taking Aquasport was getting very far from from the brand's classic looks and functionality.
Posted by captain at 12:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 26, 2005
"The Patrick" - Self Leveling Radar Mount
Wandering around the Miami boat show, I wondered aloud to Wilson why the various marine radar manufacturers don't incorporate some sort of mechanism to adjust the angle of the mount that the radar sits on. A few minutes later we stumbled upon a small booth manned by the soft spoken Capt. Pat Caudle out of Post Isabel, Texas. It seems Capt. Pat wondered the same thing a year or so ago when he developed The Patrick Level, a remotely controlled self leveling radar mount.
The Patrick Level allows users to adjust the antenna angle regardless of the running angle of your boat by the simple use of an up/down switch. Since radar is by line of sight, this will maximize the aquisition of targets that radar is designed to detect. The device consists of a standard mount modified with a hinge, which is raised or lowered using a Lenco trim tab actuator. The Patrick Level gets my vote for innovation of the year!
Posted by captain at 09:57 AM | TrackBack
February 07, 2005
Fiberglass work is a joke compared to this!
Les Lathrop's story in Sunday's St. Petersburg Times of refurbishing a 1946 39' Abaco "Smack" sailboat makes the couple of days I've spent sanding down fairing putty seem like child's play. Les has been working on the boat for several years and has at least a couple of more to go. It's all wood, and the search for the best timbers has been painstaking. You've got to admire the passion of people like Les.