Sailing/Sculling Dismal Swamp ICW

[Geekatlrg]

Originally Posted by carlosproa

That is a messy boat!

i was just thinking i bet it smells unpleasant

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by Geekatlrg

i was just thinking i bet it smells unpleasant

When water gets that color it not only smells there are microbes living in it, probably dead microbes as well. Scary to think what the bilge looks like. I have seen/been told about FWC/USCG boarding boats for a safety inspection; but it always seems to happen to boats like this or the shiny new ones acting like fools usually with alcohol or drugs involved.

BKH (and some other places) has the Power Squadron offer free inspections and if you pass you get a sticker that you can put next to your registration. First year I was there I got one expecting the FWC would board me since my boat had just arrived in the harbor. Instead they inspected one of the boats a few balls away from me that had no main sail and a broken main halyard that slapped all night.

I have to say I would not be happy if that boat pulled up to the ball next to me or anchored close to me.

[thomm225]

I think what is so unique about Sean and his boat is that at first look you wouldn't think it would be used to sail across a small bay much less nearly around the world

an article about Sean and his boat in the Indian Ocean:

https://svcrystalblues.blogspot.com/...ne-around.html

Second point is he didn't just sit all day steering the boat while sailing these long distances but used the time on his projects like his PyPilot and OpenCPN (and keeping the boat in one piece)

Third thing is how high tech his boat is as far as how he had the autopilot programmed to OpenCPN etc

He also has 600 watts of solar for power and no engine. I'm not sure which type of controller he uses

He replaced his rigging with Dyneema and has what appears to be a double backstay

And he did this all himself with very little money. I believe he paid $1,000 for the boat

Then on Emily's boat he heated and bent bronze for new chain plates. It appears he did this at the dock.

I'm just not seeing your average sailor on his new boat able to match this.
__________________________________________________ ______
I think this post by jmh2002 describes him best:

Sean is clearly one of these extreme genius types, and that assumption is actually reinforced by the mess... it's simply not relevant to him, he has much greater priorities (in his mind).

So all due respect for his talents, and his achievements on the positive side.
And maybe just try to close eyes on the less positive points.

The line between genius and madness is often quite fine.

And that should be considered when trying to understand such people.

They don't fit into the normal 'box'. And we shouldn't try to put them in one.

[thomm225]

And don't forget his rain catchment system for water onboard.

I believe he has a charcoal filter of some sort.

He/they installed a different system on Emily's "new" boat with filter. See on her blog

[Woodland Hills]

Originally Posted by thomm225

It's the dirt! Ha, that's great! Maybe the engineers you spoke of should get jobs as janitors.

Real engineers don't see dirt because the good ones are so laser focused on the job

Sometimes I have to ask a couple of my guys.....when are you going to change the oil in that Tee shirt you're wearing? At first they were embarrassed a little but then they knew I was sort of kidding so later they would respond with …...I change it every 3000 miles whether it needs it or not!

This guy is a straight up natural engineer! (he also heated and bent the stern bronze chain plates for Emily's boat. See on her site)

As my son says, college can only make you better at what you are already good at! Sounds like your engineer guys were trained not naturals

When I was a kid I was left alone a lot and didn't talk too much until I was maybe 4 years old. So my communication skills were terrible.

When I decided to take algebra in HS, I was pretty much guaranteed to fail by my friends because I was being judged by my communication skills.

I got A's in Algebra...….and a C in geometry because I skipped school like 60 days that year

Then I basically minored in math before switching to History from Computer Science in college. (GI Bill not parent paid) I'm a logic guy not a repair man but I can do the repairs

My favorite class in college was logic in the philosophy department. I had been trained with Boolean logic, then the gates in electronics like and gate, or gate, nor gate and whatever etc. It was so refreshing to try to do the same thing with the English language

The class was loaded with wannabe lawyers. It was easy for me whereas trying to write a decent paper on the Russian Revolution was extremely difficult. As was explaining how the Russians moved most all their factories East behind the Ural's just before Hitler and the Germans invaded

Then there was Stalingrad...….which would have made a nice paper if I could write

I still think the guy doesn't get enough credit for his sailing or his developments/products that he's made so I'll post this again. (but Emily recognized it. I think now if she can adjust to life with another onboard …..a male at that, things might turn out well)

Try building the things he has on that boat with almost no money, little heat, little food, no motor and crossing oceans, etc

At the same time, I doubt he can do what my son can. See video of him practicing to play later on Bourbon Street New Orleans. He changed things around a bit on the Boss' I'm on Fire song (Pensacola Bay Chart in the background) That apt has a 14' ceiling.....floor to ceiling windows

https://towndock.net/shippingnews/se...-and-alexandra

You are displaying your ignorance of engineering and aviation. Google FOD: Foreign Object Debris.

We as Flight Test technicians were constantly exhorted to clean, clean and clean again. No working all day and cleaning up at the shifts end. “Clean as you go”: stop every time it got messy and turn on the vacuum and clean your area. Keep a tool inventory sheet and check off every single item brought on the aircraft and verify that you took it off. Have your rolling toolbox shadow boarded with foam cutouts for every tool so that at the end of your shift an inspector can verify that nothing was left on the aircraft when he checks your inventory sheet.

At Edwards AFB every week the entire staff, military and civilian, lined up on the gigantic concrete ramp in front of the hangars five feet apart and walked the entire expanse picking up tiny stones, paper, hardware, etc. every vehicle on the ramp had a full width magnet hanging behind it to pickup any ferrous debris.

The fact you equate slovenliness with good engineering practices show you are simply not a reliable source on this subject. The person in question may have amazing coding skills and a “git’er done” attitude, but at the end of the day he’s just a bodger, slapping together what he can to meet an immediate need. Nothing wrong with that, it’s how the third world runs to this day. But it ain’t engineering, maybe blacksmithing....?

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

You are displaying your ignorance of engineering and aviation. Google FOD: Foreign Object Debris.

We as Flight Test technicians were constantly exhorted to clean, clean and clean again. No working all day and cleaning up at the shifts end. “Clean as you go”: stop every time it got messy and turn on the vacuum and clean your area. Keep a tool inventory sheet and check off every single item brought on the aircraft and verify that you took it off. Have your rolling toolbox shadow boarded with foam cutouts for every tool so that at the end of your shift an inspector can verify that nothing was left on the aircraft when he checks your inventory sheet.

At Edwards AFB every week the entire staff, military and civilian, lined up on the gigantic concrete ramp in front of the hangars five feet apart and walked the entire expanse picking up tiny stones, paper, hardware, etc. every vehicle on the ramp had a full width magnet hanging behind it to pickup any ferrous debris.

The fact you equate slovenliness with good engineering practices show you are simply not a reliable source on this subject. The person in question may have amazing coding skills and a “git’er done” attitude, but at the end of the day he’s just a bodger, slapping together what he can to meet an immediate need. Nothing wrong with that, it’s how the third world runs to this day. But it ain’t engineering, maybe blacksmithing....?

Looks like you are missing the point.

Plus he didn't just slap together something to meet an immediate need he engineered the Raspberry Pi to do all sorts of interesting things including being part of his autopilot system the pypilot.

This guy is so much more talented than your average tech it's pathetic

And oh btw, I am a tech both for aviation and ground. (tech manager now)

Also, I don't need to goggle FOD. They still do the FOD walks and some of our "flight" trainers were used as FOD trainers only in the 1980' and 90's and probably still. They (the techs) didn't know enough yet to troubleshoot the hydraulics

I didn't really enjoy the "aviation" thing though because the radars I used to maintain were very close to the runways. I learned to hate that loud ass A6 as well as the Harrier. The Harrier pilots seemed to enjoy simply hovering near the radars I had to Maintain and keep balanced for proper glideslope etc. Our PAR Radars were maybe 40-50 yards or so offset from the runway

Do you have any idea how much dirt and debris a harrier jump jet can kick up in 5 minutes of hovering?

Plus we had to sleep in tents at times maybe within 200 yards of the runways and when Ops start at 0500 it isn't fun trying to sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIB8NEEt2hk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZN4bI9ympA

[DawnTreader]

Sean's sailing inspires the imagination. I would love to ditch our outboard for a sculling oar, but I don't think we are quite there yet. Perhaps once we make it out of the Falklands, through Chile and back into the lower latitude tradewinds, we'll give it a try. Maybe we'll step down from a 6hp to a 3.5hp first. Either way, I have great respect for how he's gone about his voyages and how he puts into practice an ideal many have, but few would have the courage to follow. I would be very pleased to see him scull into the same anchorage as Dawn Treader.

[Woodland Hills]

I’m sure he has mad coding skills, but his boat is an eyesore and everything he does that isn’t computer related is a bodge slapped together with string and baling wire. You can hail this as “engineering” and praise him all day long, but nothing he does is unique or special: it’s done every day in most poor third world countries. It’s called survival and is a necessity not a choice like he has made. When he gets tired of pretending, he can use those computer skills to get a well paying job and move on. Something that the rest of the world cannot do: he is just a well educated first world dilettante playing at being poor.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

I’m sure he has mad coding skills, but his boat is an eyesore and everything he does that isn’t computer related is a bodge slapped together with string and baling wire. You can hail this as “engineering” and praise him all day long, but nothing he does is unique or special: it’s done every day in most poor third world countries. It’s called survival and is a necessity not a choice like he has made. When he gets tired of pretending, he can use those computer skills to get a well paying job and move on. Something that the rest of the world cannot do: he is just a well educated first world dilettante playing at being poor.

You still are not quite getting it.

Most times you have teams of our software and hardware techs to maintain the systems. This guy does both himself

He also "refit" and sailed his boat most of the way around the world and made/invented unique ways to survive along the way

And since he hasn't taken a regular job which might make him one dimensional, he can further develop his talents.

Also maybe he has seen the little cubby holes where many software techs are placed to work all day and it scared him. He may just be too use to being outside under the sky! (and on the open ocean when he chooses)

The rest of us have become acclimated to a certain degree I guess. Window in my office would be nice though

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

You are displaying your ignorance of engineering and aviation. Google FOD: Foreign Object Debris.


SNIP

Agree with everything you snipped out.

Thing is I am not convinced this guy is that great at writing code. I spent maybe ten years writing code and thought I was fairly good at it. At least three jobs I got promoted out of the replacement fell flat on his/her face. Thing is with every promotion I was doing less coding and more other stuff. I have noticed if someone is good at something they often enjoy it; on the other hand almost everyone enjoys making more money. Especially if you are making more money while working less time. What I did not like about coding was the large amount of what I will call drone work; late hours drinking too much Jolt (coffee is for sissies) making tiny corrections.

I keep hearing how he spent long hours on passages working on code and remember one CPA I was coding for as a grad student who said she would have loved to be able to lock programmers in a room and not let them out till they finished their assignment. Sounds like being trapped on a slow boat in the middle of the ocean days, or weeks, or months from port with nothing to do but code.

Looking at pix of his boat I have to wonder how customs treated him. I know when ever I go to customs I have at least washed down the decks and scrubbed them with a brush. Then I try and take some type of shower, even if it is a hobo shower, and put on what I call my customs clothes, long pants, nice deck shoes, and a shirt I keep hanging with as few wrinkles as possible. Easy to find plenty of folks who do the same thing, dress up for customs to make the best possible impression.

While I have an aversion to telling folks how they should live their lives I do think it is important to realize there are some things that make life easier. I still remember the Bob Dylan quotation 'you have to know all the rules before you break them'.

[Jim Cate]

Looking at pix of his boat I have to wonder how customs treated him.

Well, IIRC the customs folks in NZ refused to clear him out a few years back, saying the boat was not seaworthy. He complained bitterly about this treatment here on CF, calling them and the rest of NZ a lot of harsh names.

We were always treated with friendly respect there...

Jim

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by tomfl

Agree with everything you snipped out.

Thing is I am not convinced this guy is that great at writing code. I spent maybe ten years writing code and thought I was fairly good at it. At least three jobs I got promoted out of the replacement fell flat on his/her face. Thing is with every promotion I was doing less coding and more other stuff. I have noticed if someone is good at something they often enjoy it; on the other hand almost everyone enjoys making more money. Especially if you are making more money while working less time. What I did not like about coding was the large amount of what I will call drone work; late hours drinking too much Jolt (coffee is for sissies) making tiny corrections.

I keep hearing how he spent long hours on passages working on code and remember one CPA I was coding for as a grad student who said she would have loved to be able to lock programmers in a room and not let them out till they finished their assignment. Sounds like being trapped on a slow boat in the middle of the ocean days, or weeks, or months from port with nothing to do but code.

Looking at pix of his boat I have to wonder how customs treated him. I know when ever I go to customs I have at least washed down the decks and scrubbed them with a brush. Then I try and take some type of shower, even if it is a hobo shower, and put on what I call my customs clothes, long pants, nice deck shoes, and a shirt I keep hanging with as few wrinkles as possible. Easy to find plenty of folks who do the same thing, dress up for customs to make the best possible impression.

While I have an aversion to telling folks how they should live their lives I do think it is important to realize there are some things that make life easier. I still remember the Bob Dylan quotation 'you have to know all the rules before you break them'.

Many of us when working on various projects just learn what we need to know to complete the project.

Looks like he knows enough to be a major contributor to the OpenCPN Nav System and to build an autopilot and make it communicate with various systems

As far as spending hours writing code on passages, I assumed he may have been doing a bit of that since just sailing the boat can get quite slow at times

As far as tech skills and cleanliness go...…... when a system is down and some guy walks in after others have spent say 48 hours trying to get it up and he fixes it in a couple hours, it doesn't really matter how clean his residence is!

It's all about results...…..

We had an 80s vintage mainframe system go down in the 1990's a day after it was put on our contract. I didn't even have the tech manuals for it yet. It used the GCOS operating system. It was command prompt/command line

I got with one of the operators and learned enough to be dangerous and was able to get the thing running

After running all the diag's from 8" floppy disks the problem ended up being someone had swapped the disk packs. We didn't have the unit needed to align the disk drives.

Yes, the disk drives were out of alignment! (you aligned them with an O'Scope) We had two systems each with two 300 meg drives and one 80 meg drive the size of a small washing machine.....

As I remember, I had gotten hammered drunk the night before and probably looked like hell, but the folks didn't seem to mind after I fixed their system. It went down at 4pm and we got it up at maybe 8:30. I say we as I kept the operator guy there to help with that foreign operating system

[Woodland Hills]

Except that the entire second half of this discussion is about how sloppy looking his boat is and how he seems to be unable to cleanup anything. Not about whether he can write code. We all are bringing up what a jury rigged POS his boat is, how filthy his decks are and even how New Zealand thought his boat was unseaworthy and all you can do is go on about how good he is at coding. That and tell self-congratulatory war stories about 30 years ago: what does that have to do with this guy being a slob?
As I said before: his bodges and jury rigged work arounds are nothing that isn’t done every day in the Philippines, Africa, Central America, etc. So what is the big deal about this particular guy?

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Woodland Hills

Except that the entire second half of this discussion is about how sloppy looking his boat is and how he seems to be unable to cleanup anything. Not about whether he can write code. We all are bringing up what a jury rigged POS his boat is, how filthy his decks are and even how New Zealand thought his boat was unseaworthy and all you can do is go on about how good he is at coding. That and tell self-congratulatory war stories about 30 years ago: what does that have to do with this guy being a slob?
As I said before: his bodges and jury rigged work arounds are nothing that isn’t done every day in the Philippines, Africa, Central America, etc. So what is the big deal about this particular guy?

Ah...…., he's not on that boat anymore. See post #1. (I don't think Emily would put up with it)

He designed his own autopilot and powered it with an old windshield wiper motor. I think that's pretty cool and smart (and has sailed his $1,000 Bristol 27 most of the way around the world. I have a Bristol 27 I paid $2,000 for in 2011 so I've sort of been following)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbezaHPm_MU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQuBwLSMSxI

As far as me and my self-congratulatory war stories, I tend to do that when I get excited about something I'm reminded of from my past. It's quite fun!

Btw, the fix on the system I spoke of above was to return the disk packs to their original misaligned drives!

[captlloyd]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Well, IIRC the customs folks in NZ refused to clear him out a few years back, saying the boat was not seaworthy. He complained bitterly about this treatment here on CF, calling them and the rest of NZ a lot of harsh names.

We were always treated with friendly respect there...

Jim

Thanks for bringing that up Jim. I am not understanding this concept of somehow being a genius and that gets you off the hook for keeping a clean and orderly boat ? To me if you are bored because you are just slowly sailing along that would present the best time in the world to clean things up. And yes it would present a safety issue, how do you find anything in an emergency. There are all kinds of negative aspects in living like this as your post points out. I also wonder how this sort of lifestyle will effect him mentally in the long run.