Many thanks to Armin Pauza for this very interesting article about the latest developments in lithium ion battery technology which will soon be available in Australia. For the technically challenged there is a summary at the end.

Overview of Existing Battery Technology

Up to the present time the boat owner has only had available one type of battery chemistry to serve a multitude of marine applications. This of course is the lead acid battery. As discussed in detail in a previous article on batteries, there are two main variations to the lead acid battery depending upon its specific application.
Broadly speaking the lead acid engine start or “cranking battery” is designed to provide a short, high power burst of electrical current to crank over either petrol or diesel engines while starting.

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An overnight drama in Queensland saw the crew of a 24m yacht rescued after the yacht sank. The Challenge of Outward Bound was south east of Townsville heading for Sydney when it reportedly hit a large log shortly after 2 am this morning.

With the vessel taking in water the 6 crew radioed for help. As the yacht sank they were forced to take to the liferaft. They were picked up by the volunteer rescue boat at 2.45 am and were later transferred to the Water Police boat. They are now safely back in Townsville.

Only a few hours earlier but on the other side of the world, the crew of the 29′ racing yacht Jezebel II were having a few dramas of their own. The seven experienced crew members were enjoying a Sunday afternoon sail on the new yacht at Queensferry in Scotland.

Around 3pm the boat ran aground on rocks reportedly due to equipment failure. They were so close to shore that the spinaker got wrapped around the roof of a house. At what point this happened it’s not clear. Six of the crew were able to get ashore whilst the owner stayed on board waiting for the lifeboat. The lifeboat arrived and towed the yacht off at which point it promptly sank. They were however on hand to rescue the owner.

There seems to have been a spate of fires on boats recently, at least in Queensland.
Late last year 4 boats caught on fire whilst in port. In each case they were moored away from other vessels and the crews escaped unharmed.

In November a 9m steel boat burned to the waterline after a suspected electrical fault started the fire. The owner was on board and attempted unsuccessfully to control the fire and eventually escaped in his dinghy. Continue reading →

This article in the New Zealand newspaper The Nelson Mail made me smile.

Englishman Tony Curphy and German Susanne Huber-Curphy met whilst they were both sailing singlehanded. They have completed one circumnavigation together but still in separate yachts. Susanne has just had to rescue Tony part way through their second circumnavigation. Read the full story here.

American stuntman Robert McDonald is due to set off from the Netherlands to London on a shake down cruise for his 50′ viking ship replica. McDonald then intends to recreate earlier viking voyages across the Atlantic to North America via Iceland and Greenland.

Unusually McDonald chose to build his boat out of 15,000,000 recycled ice-cream sticks with the help of his son and more than 5,000 school children. The ship took four years to build using the ice-cream sticks which were sent in by children from around the world.

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The following post is a book review by Pete Trickett.

“The Perfect Storm” gets mentioned on the back cover of Dallas Murphy’s 2004 book Rounding the Horn. The back cover is a testimonial to Murphy’s exquisite exposure of one of the planet’s most extreme regions and is written by Nicholas Crane the author of the well read Mercator. The sense of doom and disaster which floods through The Perfect Storm is repeated time and time again in this book which recounts the history of exploration and attempted settlement of the desolate Beagle Channel coast.

The stories of Cape Horn passagemaking that Dallas Murphy gives us in his book provide details that bombard the reader with all the dangers of decks awash and people lost at sea.

The story of Indians Jemmy Button, York Minster, Boat Memory and Fuegia Basket who in 1829 were shipped from their Tierra Del Fuego homeland to London by Captain Robert Fitzroy aboard the Beagle is legendary.

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Traditional Anchors

For hundreds of years ships used what is known as an Admiralty or Fisherman anchor. The holding power is relatively poor and the anchor rode can foul on the fluke protruding from the bed. These anchors are relatively large and unwieldy to stow when not in use.

Around the mid 19th century the stockless anchor was developed and is still the main type of anchor used by merchant ships today. This anchor still has quite a low holding power. It’s easy to stow in a hawse pipe.

These types of anchor are rarely used by smaller craft.

Modern Anchors

Modern anchors have been developed over the last 100 years . I have listed the main types and their characteristics. These are the types of anchor used on recreational boats.

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Many people will recall the tragic collision of the Sydney ferry Pam Burridge and the private boat Merinda just over a year ago in March 2007. The collision killed four of the twelve people on board the Merinda.

The collision took place under the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the dark. This is a very busy area close to Circular Quay where the harbour narrows considerably.

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It’s still common to see a barometer on many boats along with the ship’s clock although how many people rely on them these days is debatable.

Prior to readily available broadcast weather forecasts, the barometer was a valuable instrument for predicting weather on board ships.

The barometer was invented in Italy in the early 17th Century by Evangelista Torricelli.

The word barometer is a combination of the Greek word “baros” meaning weight and “metron” meaning measure.

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Last week the crew of a New Zealand yacht mutinied whilst on a coastal delivery from Auckland to Nelson. The yacht had sailed north from Auckland and had rounded Cape Reinga on the northern tip of New Zealand before heading south along the west coast of the North Island.

It seems that the relatively inexperienced crew set off the EPIRB against the owner/skippers wishes because they feared for their safety.

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