Boom, Winch, Knuckle, Swing, Extend...
The Ups and Downs of Four and Five Function Marine Cranes
by
Bob Bernstein
(previously published in National Fisherman magazine)

A hundred and fifty years ago there wasn’t much choice when it came to hoisting something aboard. You had a yard arm and a system of ropes and pulleys and not much else. Fishermen would saddle themselves to a length of cordage and heave-ho in unison, maybe to the tune of a 19th century Scandinavian hauling song like, “Halarvisa”:

[chorus]
Karre, varre, vitt bom bom!
Nicke, dicke, dickum, plutt!

Fortunately, the typical hand-over-hand team work of the past has been replaced by solo crane operators manipulating joy sticks in heated or air-conditioned control cabs. And hauling “sing-outs” like the one above have given way to headphones and digital audio CDs.

Well, maybe not all hoisting or lifting operations are that luxurious, but there’s no debating the fact that today’s deck cranes have made life on fish boats a whole lot easier and safer.

Choosing a Crane

Lance Washburn, Sales Manager for Hydra-Pro, Inc., a crane manufacturing, design, and sales company based in Seattle, Washington, with fixed boom crane capacities up to 2000 ton-meters and telescoping and knuckle boom crane capacities up to 300,000 foot-pounds, describes the different types of marine cranes as follows:

(1) The Fixed Boom Crane is the simplest. It’s a three function crane that can boom (luff), swing (slue), and winch (hoist).

(2) The Telescopic or Extension Boom Crane is a four function crane that can boom, swing, winch, and extend.

(3) The Knuckle Boom Crane, or Articulated Crane, is another four function crane that can boom, swing, winch, and, as the name implies,“knuckle.”

(4) The Knuckle-Extension Crane is a five function crane that can boom, knuckle, winch, swing, and extend.

A further bit of clarification comes from William Morgan, Owner of The Morgan Company in Fortuna, California, fabricators and distributors of marine cranes up to and including offshore cranes with capacities of 1,000,000 foot-pounds and telescopic and knuckle boom cranes up to 300,000 foot-pounds. According to Morgan, the true articulated crane folds into a figure four. “Many knuckle or articulated cranes may not fold completely into a figure four and not be true articulated cranes,” he says.

Whether you choose, fixed, telescoping, or articulated depends a lot on the application and the fishery, but also on personal preference and how much versatility you need. For example, while you’re likely to find knuckle cranes on the majority of Alaskan crab boats and extension cranes on most factory trawlers, Washburn insists,“There’s no hard and fast rule.” Trawlers will use knuckle cranes, and some crabbers will opt for extension cranes.

“Crabbers prefer the knuckle or knuckle-extension crane,” says Washburn, “for the simple reason that it gives them more control of the pot. “The knuckle crane,” he explains, “allows the operator to keep the tip of the crane closer to the load, which makes it safer on a crab boat. On a crab boat you [also] have a pot guard or a crab cage at the tip of the boom. It’s a kind of a tripod arrangement with a rubber tire that allows you to compress the tire with the pot right at the sheave head.”

Knuckle or articulated cranes have a several other advantages. True articulated cranes can fold up and stow in less deck space, and, in general, knuckle cranes are faster to operate. As William Morgan explains: “A telescoping crane is usually operating in one plane, one function at a time. They’re very slow because the operator winches, then booms, then swings. Articulated cranes are much faster. They can move in three planes at once, like an extension of your arm.”

Morgan also points out that the articulated crane is the highest capacity crane for its size, weight, and cost. “A telescoping crane runs at lower pressure, so it has larger cylinders,” he says. “The knuckle crane has higher pressures and smaller cylinders, and it’s made of higher strength steel. Overall it’s a lighter crane and it lifts more.”

The fact that Morgan says the articulated crane is less expensive will probably come as a surprise to many people shopping for their first crane. “You take the same capacity crane -- telescoping versus articulated -- and your talking up to twenty five percent less money for the articulating crane,” says Morgan.

The reason for this, as he explains, is that manufactures build more articulated cranes than telescoping cranes. In addition, the majority of telescoping cranes use a ball bearing for rotation. “Our articulated cranes,” says Morgan, “use a rack and pinion system for rotation. The rack and pinion, which actually has higher torque, costs less.”

Rack and pinion systems are also used to extend the booms in some telescoping cranes. “The only cylinders we have [in our cranes] are the lift cylinders,” says Mike Atkins, Sales Manager for The Techcrane Global Corporation in Covington, LA, manufacturers representatives for EBI fixed boom and telescoping cranes. “We use lift cylinders,” he explains, “but instead of an internal extension cylinder -- the part that extends the boom in and out on most all other cranes -- ours have a rack and pinion system. This eliminates any reason to get inside the boom for maintenance or repair, for example, if you had a broken seal. With our system you never have to get internal to repair a leak.”

Meanwhile, regardless of each crane companies proprietary engineering (and there are many more crane manufacturers and distributors than those contacted for this article), there’s no question that of the 4 generic types of cranes available, the knuckle or articulated is the most complicated. It’s structurally more complex and also more complex to operate. “You need an operator who can think [faster] because the crane is operating in three planes,” says Morgan.

What this means is that not every owner or captain wants the additional complexity of an articulated crane. For example, a factory trawler, where deck space may not be at a premium, may only need a crane to launch and recover a tender in and out of a fixed cradle. Or maybe the crane is needed to move nets on and off the boat two or three times a year. In cases like these, the relative simplicity and ease of operation of a fixed boom or telescoping crane might be more appealing.

Running the Numbers

Once you’ve picked a type of crane, the next step is to spec it out. In this regard, the most important variable is what Washburn refers to as the “Defining Moment.”

“The first thing you have to do is figure out how much you want to lift and at what radius,” says Washburn. “Those are the determining factors -- lift and radius.”

The particular ‘moment’ Washburn is talking about is a quantity defined as the cross product of linear force and the distance from the point of rotation at which that force is applied, otherwise known as torque. Torque, or the moment of force, is usually defined in foot-pounds or tons-meters.

For example, say you want to lift 3000 pounds at 50’ and 20,000 pounds at 20’.
You multiply 50’ x 3000 lbs., and 20’ x 20,000 lbs., and you come up with moments of 150,000 foot-pounds and 400,000 foot-pounds respectively. Clearly, the defining moment is the one for which the product is 400,000 foot-pounds. That’s the one the crane has to be designed and built for.

“The defining moment determines the bearing and the pedestal,” says Washburn.”[Here at Hydra-Pro] we deal in Single Row Ball Cranes. This [design consists] of a single row of balls that ride in a race mounted in between the pedestal and the turret.”

The turret and pedestal are where most of the stress and fatigue will manifest (see illustration). In fact. according to a recent Crane Safety Workshop conducted by the Offshore Technology Research Center and the Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the majority of marine crane failure incidents are pedestal related. This is why the design and construction of the pedestal and turret of a marine crane are so important.

On land, the lift is static, but at sea, where the vessel is moving side to side and fore and aft, the lift is dynamic. For example, an empty crab pot weighs about 700 pounds. Loaded with product it might weigh as much as 1300 pounds. With the vessel rolling and pitching, that weight can increase thirty to thirty five percent, adding another 450 pounds to the pot. However, as Washburn points out, the dynamic doesn’t only affect the load: “The dynamic acts on the entire crane. You’ve got the weight of everything to consider, crane structure as well.”

According to Washburn, normal accelerations will be at a dynamic of less than 1.33, i.e. 33% over static load. (1.0 is considered zero dynamic.) Hydra Pro cranes, and cranes from other established marine crane companies, are designed with a minimum of 1.33 dynamic.“Cranes built with 1.33 to 2.0 dynamics are relatively common,” says Washburn. Although, he adds, Hydra Pro, as well as other companies, often supply cranes that meet or exceed specifications set forth by national and foreign regulatory agencies.

For example, Morgan cranes are constructed by PM of Italy to meet DIN Standard 15081H1B2. “It’s a German engineering standard,” says Morgan. “It specifies a dynamic of over 3.0, and [includes standards for] how long a crane should last and how it should be built.”

API (American Petroleum Institute), U.S.C.G., U.S. Navy, ABS (American Bureau of Shipping), Lloyds, Rina, Det Norske Veritas, and OSHA, are some of the other entities that establish (or share) standards for marine cranes. For example, you may note that your crane meets API-2C specifications, which states, among other things, that the static load is 1.5 times the dynamic load.

Of course, you can get whatever you want. If you want to lift a dynamic load of 6000 pounds, and you want a 3.5 dynamic, you’re going to get a crane that can lift a static load of 21,000 pounds. “We had a customer who requested a 3.5 dynamic,” says Washburn. “He had an offshore application, and he had damaged three cranes in previous situations. These [the old cranes] had been cranes designed and built for shore applications.”

Knowing how and when to conduct a given lift is where the load chart comes into play. In fact, in order to be compliant with regulatory agency standards, every crane on every vessel should have load/radius charts for static and dynamic lifting posted in plain sight of the operator.

For instance, the EBI TC10-24-40 telescoping boom is 24’ in retracted mode and 40’ in extended mode. A quick glance at the load chart shows it has a static lift capacity at 20’ of 9750 pounds and a dynamic load capacity at 20’ of 7200 pounds. The static load is 1.5 times the dynamic load.

Does this mean an operator has carte blanche to lift 7200 pounds in extended mode in any sea state? Not according to Atkins.

“To be honest,” says Atkins, “you can’t just make a statement that this thing can lift 7200 pounds in any sea state. There are a lot of factors involved, and a lot of it has to do with the stability of the vessel. You should check with a naval architect.”

Small Boat Furnaces

BESTING THE BLACK BOOGER BURNER
BY
BOB BERNSTEIN
(previously published in National Fisherman magazine)


Coming off a cold deck into the luxurious warmth
of a heated cabin makes a tired body feel good.
Problem is, on small boats, you’re either huddled
around a stove that somebody’s drying their socks
on, or revving an expensive engine for no reason
other than to feed more coolant to a bus heater.

That’s a good case scenario. A bad case scenario
is that you’re picking black snot out of your
nose every morning because the old “black booger”
burner puts out more carbon than a steam
locomotive. Or you’re sleeping with your arms
around a fire extinguisher because, when the wind
blows, the burner sounds like an M-80 going off
in a 55 gallon drum. Or maybe you’re dumb enough
to be working with a flue-less heater designed
solely for outdoor use, in which case you’re
dealing with all of the above, plus you’re
drenched in condensation. (Kerosene exhausts a
pound of water for every pound of fuel burned,
and propane is worse.)

“You kind of put the threat of being soaked,
blown up, or asphyxiated out of your mind,” says
John Earl, of Spruce Head, Maine. “Sure, you can
die, but at least you’re warm.”

Earl, who has lobstered, scalloped, and ground
fished, most of his life (he’s currently running
tugs for a marine construction company) is half
joking. In truth, he has nothing but respect for
the dangers inherent in an improper or poorly
installed heater. He knows all to well what some
people, myself included, will do on a small boat
to get warm.

Indeed, short of setting it aflame, there isn’t
much I haven’t tried to do to heat a boat, which
is why, after all these years, I’ve finally
bitten the bullet and purchased a marine furnace.

BURNER POT, ENGINE DRIVEN HEATER, OR FURNACE?

The burner pot stove (Dickenson, Force 10,
Refleks, Sigmar, Taylors) has served the industry
well. The stoves are easy to install, economical,
need no electricity, and can supply plenty of
heat if appropriately sized for a given space.
Some of them can even be turned into central
heating units and engine preheaters by adding
water jackets, fans, circulating pumps, heat
exchangers and radiators. Unfortunately, these
add on systems are just that, add ons, more of an
afterthought than a primary design function. In
other words, it’s a stove first (the beauty of
the thing is its simplicity), and a furnace or
boiler second.

Burner pot stoves have a reputation among
fishermen as being kind of finicky, hence the
nickname, the ‘Black Booger Burner.’ Draft
problems set the flame to burn unevenly, too low,
or too high, and this causes incomplete
combustion of fuel, which leads to ‘puffing’
and/or smoking. This also happens when the stove
is installed wrong or skewed too far one way or
the other. The reason for this is that it’s a
gravity fed, non-pressurized system, with a very
simple metering valve. In order for the unit to
run properly, the valve and the burner have to be
fairly level with each other. A bad installation,
and/or too much pitching or rolling, will either
flood the burner or starve it of fuel.

Albert Bunker, a lobsterman who fishes out of
Matinicus Island, Maine, and who has seen some
pretty rough weather running pilots to and from
ships in Penobscot Bay, hasn’t really had this
problem. “I’ve got one of those small Refleks
stoves,” he says. “I turn it on and it goes a
month.” Although, he cautions: “You can’t run it
low or it carbons up. I run mine at [a setting
of] two and a half or three.”

Bunker adds that he’s never really had problems,
except when coming up alongside a big ship, at
which time he might get a puff of wind down the
stack. Otherwise, he says, the seas and the wind
haven’t made much difference.

Still, burner-pot heaters have their
disadvantages. Although some advertise electronic
control (e.g. the Taylors 089, inland waters
version), most have no sensors or thermostatic
capability, which makes the heat they provide an
all or nothing proposition. In addition, the
stoves take up cabin space, and without the add
ons, there’s a limit the number of areas you can
heat at the same time, e.g. do you heat the
engine room or the wheelhouse?

On their good side: They look good. They’re
quiet. They’re cheap to operate. They heat
without electricity. And, most important, you can
cook on them, which means never again having to
clean Dinty Moore stew off the engine’s valve
covers.

Meanwhile, automotive heaters, with a heat source
supplied by hot coolant from the engine, have
their own set of pros and cons. On the upside,
they use waste heat from the engine, so there’s
no lighting them, no flame to worry about, and no
beating them in terms of dollars and cents. As an
addition to the burner pot in the fo’c’sle,
they’re a good compliment.

On the downside, the heater off the engine won’t
preheat the boat, as it obviously doesn’t work
when the engine is off. It also adds a risk
factor to the engine’s cooling system: an air
lock in the circuit, or worse, a blown heater
hose, can have costly consequences.

Last on the list are the hot air furnaces and the
coolant heaters, a.k.a.‘hydronic’ heaters. Espar,
Hurricane, and Webasto make both. Toyoset and
Wallas make only the former.

These furnaces are true central heating units for
small boats. They can be plumbed or ducted to
various parts of the vessel and set to feed off
the main fuel tank. (Burner pots are best served
by a separate fuel tank).

“With coolant heaters, you can actually zone the
system,” says Rich Jamieson, Managing Director
for Great Lakes Marine Specialties, in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, marine dealers for
Webasto Thermosystems. “We’ve been selling them
since ‘95 or ‘96. Initially, they were used to
heat tanks.”

Coolant heaters can be connected to radiators,
heat exchangers, blower fans, and be used to
preheat the engine. On the plus side, they’re
compact, made to operate in various sea states,
and can put out a lot of heat to different areas
of the boat. On the downside, they’re noisier
than a burner pot, more expensive to buy, need
electricity in order to work, and are a lot
harder to install.

INSTALLING A COOLANT HEATER

Given the above, and the fact that I didn’t want
to spend too much money, I decided to look for a
used marine furnace for my boat, a fifty foot
Chesapeake deadrise style vessel presently rigged
as a party boat but which has seen service over
the years as an urchin tender, tub trawler, and
gillnetter. As luck would have it, I found a 20
year old Webasto Thermosystems 40,000 BTU coolant
heater through a local shop & swap paper called,
Uncle Henry’s.

After looking over the unit, and contacting the
dealer, it became clear that every other
installation decision (expansion tank, water
pump, radiators, blowers, engine heater) had to
wait until I figured out where to mount the
thing. Ideally, the best place to put a furnace
is in the engine room. On most boats, this places
the heater in a somewhat sound insulated spot,
covers it with the engine’s fire suppression
system, and also allows for a fairly short
exhaust route to the transom, which, it turns
out, is the manufacturer’s preferred location for
the exhaust outlet. The reasons for this, and
additional mounting considerations are as follows:

(1) One of the biggest concerns in any stove or
furnace installation is making sure carbon
monoxide (CO) emissions don’t pose a threat to
the crew. Venting the furnace out the stern,
particularly if the engine’s main exhaust outlet
is also there, makes the best sense. At least
you’re keeping the vessel’s noxious gases
centrally located and trailing away from the
boat. (NIOSH estimates that CO concentrations at
the stern of a boat with a wet exhaust can be as
high as 27,000 parts per million. At 12,800 ppm,
without a break for fresh air, death can occur in
less than 3 minutes.)

(2) You want to keep water from entering the
exhaust, and, unless you’re regularly backing
hard into a sea, an outlet high in the transom
poses little chance for this to happen.

(3) The shorter the exhaust run, the less back
pressure, the better the furnace will run. In
fact, Webasto furnace specifications call for an
exhaust run of less than 10’, with the total
number of bends in the pipe not to exceed 270
degrees.

(4) Exhaust outlets mounted in the side of a hull
can present problems when rafting to other boats
or tying up to a dock or pier. You may not set a
pier or another boat on fire, but you’ll
definitely turn the fiberglass on another boat a
darker shade of brown. That said, venting out the
side is still a viable (and sometimes the only)
alternative, particularly for larger, higher
sided boats.

(5) The exhaust outlet must terminate in a zero
pressure area. Plumbing it into another stack or
exhaust is not recommended.

(6) It is advisable to include a water trap
and/or goose neck into the exhaust system if it
exits through the hull.

(7) In positioning the furnace, bear in mind the
expansion tank must be higher than the furnace,
while the coolant circulation pump must be lower.

Unfortunately, these requirements and guidelines
presented a slight problem on my boat. For one
thing, my engine sits under an engine box, and
the main deck is quite low. This makes it tight
for the furnace and for the exhaust run.
Compounding this is the fact that the bulwarks
are 37” to 40” high, with only a few inches
between the outer hull and the sealing, so going
through the stern or the side of the boat was out
of the question -- unless I wrapped the full
length of exhaust pipe in glass fiber insulation
and boxed it in. Last but not least is the fact
that although there is more room forward under
deck, placing the boiler there meant installing
more than 10’ of pipe to vent the exhaust through
the cabin roof. It also meant adding a second
fire suppression system in order to be U.S.C.G.
compliant.

My choice ended up being the engine room. There
will be a total of 180 degrees of bends in the
exhaust pipe and a 10’ stack through the roof.
Below deck the exhaust pipe will have to be
wrapped in insulation, but the run through the
main cabin will be covered by a heat shield,
making some positive use of the waste heat.
(Exhaust temperatures out of the Webasto furnace
can reach 800 degrees F.)

The distributor advised against using a T-fitting
off the main engine fuel feed, so I’ve opted for
a single fitting supply and return siphon tube
sold by the company. I’ll tap it into the main
tank opposite to where the engine feed is
located.“Tying into the main engine fuel line
will just cause problems,” says Jamieson. “You’re
much better off with a separate feed.”

Putting the rest of it together -- pump, hose,
tubing, expansion tank, radiators, etc. -- is not
much different than it would be for a domestic
installation, although being on a shoestring
budget, and planning to use the local junkyards
for parts, adds a bit of a wrinkle. Not that it
seems to worry Jamieson. According to him, as
long as I don’t allow air into the system, which
stalls the pump, or exceed the performance limits
of the furnace, I should be fine. That’s good
news, because I found a Toyota radiator in a
junker that’ll double as an expansion tank and
blower.

Autopilots

This article, which appeared in National Fisherman magazine, might be a little dated. However, it still contains some useful information.



RUNNING STRAIGHT AND TRUE

BY BOB BERNSTEIN



An autopilot won’t help you catch fish. It won’t help you
navigate from Point A to Point B. It won’t tell you where you
are. It won’t help you avoid underwater hazards or collisions
at sea. It’s even dumber than a rock when it comes to the Rules
of the Road. And yet...everyone wants one.

Well, maybe not everyone.

Luther Blount, founder of Blount Marine in Warren, R.I., one of
the country’s most innovative shipbuilders, won’t install an
autopilot on any of his cruise boats. The reason? One time when
he was at sea on a swordfish boat running on autopilot, he
almost collided with a Russian trawler. And his son had a
similar mishap when the fishing boat he was on ran aground.
Nothing serious happened in either case, but both incidents
left their mark on Blount.

“I admit all the guys want it,”says Blount. “Because it’s like
having another crewman. But I want the guy at the wheel. Even
though a lot of people say I’m too conservative, I can go to
sleep better knowing that someone’s at the wheel.”

Does this mean Blount would never run or own a boat with an
autopilot? Not exactly. “If I was building a little yacht of my
own, I’d put one one,” he says.


RUNNING BLIND


“Any fisherman who says he hasn’t fallen asleep in the
wheelhouse with the ship on autopilot is lying,” says a former
Alaska chief engineer and captain who, for obvious reasons,
prefers to remain anonymous.

Running blind...this is the problem for fishermen and mariners
in general. Does the boat you see on radar have a man at the
helm, or is it steaming along on autopilot with no one on
watch? Picture it: You’re making a tow or setting gear at night
and you see another boat headed in your direction. You want to
arrange passing signals, or just find out what the other guy’s
doing, so you try and hail him on VHF channel 16. No response.
The boat gets closer and closer. You try other channels with no
effect. Finally, you hit the horn. But on the other boat, the
deck crew is busy changing nets on the net reel, the winches
are wailing like banshees, the captain is in the galley, and
the helmsman is fast asleep.

Jeff Ciampa, Fishing Vessel Safety Specialist at the Marine
Safety Office in Portland, Maine knows the situation as well as
anyone. “When we hear of a report of a grounding of an offshore
fishing vessel,” he says, “and the vessel is westbound,
returning to port, we try not to approach the incident with
technical bias. But, generally, we find the problem to be a
sleeping helmsman on a boat with throttle and autopilot
engaged.”

Ciampa says that fishing boats are more susceptible than other
vessels to groundings and collisions due to the fact that
they’re sailing with minimal crews and deep fatigue issues.
“For boats and crews fishing beyond 48 hours, fatigue is a real
problem,” he says.

There are dozens of examples. During the last weekend in July,
a New England fishing vessel ran aground after the man on watch
went below to wake up his replacement. The replacement sat up
in his bunk, said he was OK, then fell back in his bed and went
to sleep. The boat steamed for miles until it hit a shoal. Even
worse was the fatal case of the Heather Lynn II. The 43’
gillnetter accidentally transited between a tug and barge. The
tow wire stalled the engine, and the barge overran the vessel
and capsized it.

Manufacturers are very well aware of fatigue and ‘green crew’
problems, because owners and captains continually bring it to
their attention. “I’ve got an inexperienced crew, and I need to
be able to get some sleep when I’m out there,” they say.

According to Trevor Machen, a Salesman at Harris Electric, one
answer is the Helm Alert, a watch alarm with a buzzer that
signals the helmsman to hit a button every so many minutes. If
the helmsman neglects the button, the Helm Alert disables the
autopilot and continues to sound its buzzer. It’s not a
foolproof solution to the manning problem, but it’s better than
nothing. Coupled with a radar alarm, it can give a nervous
captain a couple of hours of peaceful sleep.

Meanwhile, as manufacturers are quick to point out, it’s not
the machines that cause these problems, it’s the people who run
them. In fact, a recent U.S. Coast Guard report bears this out.
It found that as much as 80% of marine casualties are due to
human error.


HOLDING HER STEADY


There are a lot of reasons why an autopilot will have a hard
time steering a boat, some have to do with the boat itself, and
some have to do with the autopilot, either an application
problem or a malfunction.

“From my point,” says Al Vorhis, General Manager of Lew Grant
and Associates, in Rockland, Maine, “an autopilot is one of my
least favorite things to sell and spec out, but its a real
accomplishment when you get one that works well.”

According to Vorhis, people come into the shop in all the time
with complaints that their autopilot is hunting. “The biggest
thing this far north,” he says, “is to determine what you have
driving your autopilot...what kind of a device you choose,
fluxgate, magnetic compass, gyro. With the magnetic deviation
here being so severe in the northern latitudes, you really need
to pay very close attention to that. That’s the most critical
part of an autopilot. Because if you spec em out properly, and
you have the right mechanics for the size boat [machinery that
will turn the rudder and boat fast enough], then it’s a matter
of having the right data.”

Determining specifications for an autopilot is a complicated
and involved process. You have to have a great deal of
information, including details about rudder size, shape, taper,
etc. And, as Vorhis explains, the drive devices and the sensors
have to be compatible and tuned. For example, it’s important
that the components speak the same language. The heading sensor
can’t be sending data in 1 degree increments if the control
unit is only capable of understanding 2 degree increments.

As far as the heading sensor is concerned: Provided it’s
compatible, everyone agrees that the gyro is the way to go, but
these are extremely expensive, $10,000 to $15,000 and up. After
this, there’s some difference of opinion. Vorhis is especially
fond of Robertson’s Rate Compensating Compass. Machen
recommends an electronic pickup and the largest and best
magnetic compass you can get, usually with a 6” diameter card.

“We’ve used electronic compasses, compasses with electronic
pickup, fluxgates, gyros, and solid state gyros,” says Hamm.
“The solid State gyros don’t know where true north is, but they
do steer the boat very well. Fluxgates can have problems in
steel boats. If money is no object, we’d go with a full blown
gyro. If money is an issue, we’d go with a fluxgate, then if it
had problems, we’d recommend a solid state gyro.”

Meanwhile, a lot of fishermen blame their autopilot for a
problem that’s really not its fault. The truth is that even the
best autopilot will have a hard time steering a boat that’s
inherently hard to steer. In fact, with more and more of
today’s vessels being built to accommodate huge fish holds and
engines, autopilots have their jobs cut out for them. Wil Hamm,
Chief Engineer & Owner of W-H Autopilots in Seattle explains:

“You design a pilot for a 747, they all work the same. But
boats are all different. Some boats steer very well, and some
boats steer very badly. These days, designers are more
concerned with how fast it goes, how much weight it carries,
but not so much with how it steers. For example, take a Bristol
Bay boat, they’re almost boxes now.”

Hamm——whose company has more than a thousand units in operation
in Alaska——adds that there are a lot of factors that contribute
to bad steering, including something called dead water, a
consequence of a vessel’s design. “This happens when a rudder
isn’t designed well,” he says. “But if you have dead water
around the rudder, you can put wedges back there to correct the
problem.”

It’s no surprise then that a captain can learn how to steer a
difficult boat better than any autopilot, because he’s looking
at waves, feeling the motion of the boat, anticipating the
vessel’s pitch and roll and compensating accordingly. “An
autopilot can’t really do that,” says Hamm.

Another problem is vessel trim. An autopilot may hold the
boat’s course perfectly when the vessel’s full of fuel and ice,
but when both are half gone and not replaced with fish, the
boat might be bow heavy and plow or list to one side or the
other. These changes make it harder for an autopilot to
compensate. According to Hamm, a lot of captains will try to
correct the problem with the controls on the autopilot when
they should be adjusting the vessel’s trim instead.


INTO THE 21st CENTURY


Autopilots are more sophisticated than ever thanks to advances
in sensing equipment, computer software, and the interfacing of
plotters and GPS receivers. Today, you can set your autopilot
directly from the plotter, run your boat along a predescribed
route, and have the autopilot make course changes at each and
every waypoint. Pretty amazing stuff when you think about it.

But this is just the beginning. In the next twenty years,
autopilots coupled to thermal imaging radar, high speed
computer plotters, sonars, and satellite transmitter/receivers
will make it possible for you to automate every step of your
trip, maybe even including docking an undocking. Would you want
to some day be able to fish from the couch in your living room
using a desktop computer and a couple of joysticks? Probably
not, especially when you consider the safety issues discussed
above.

On the other hand, with or without worrying about safety, you
might not have 100% confidence in the computer that runs the
whole show. Face it: There’s always the occasional glitch that
surfaces when you cross paths with a computer. And since
autopilots (and other marine electronics) are relying more and
more on central processing units (CPUs), the ‘glitch event’ is
something you just have to be ready for, and, in some cases,
learn to live with.

For example, Vorhis has a customer who kept having problems
with an autopilot wanting to start from the first waypoint of
the route. If you went past the first waypoint and engaged the
autopilot, the boat would turn around and hunt for that
waypoint. “It was doing what it was told to do,” says Vorhis.
“It was frustrating for the owner, but he finally figured out
what was happening, and he’s comfortable with it now.”

This, of course, isn’t to say that the new autopilots are
unreliable. On the contrary, they’re more accurate and
dependable than ever before, particularly in terms of sensors.
“Look at the older photoelectric sensors,” says Harris
Electric’s Machen. “They had a much higher failure rate than
the sensors we have today.”

With autopilots, the basic components——heading sensor, control
unit,, and drive device——still do the same job they did twenty
years ago, but their internal mechanisms and interfaces are
much improved. Good thing, too, because the job they’re being
asked to do is getting harder and harder all the time.

Impacts of Solar Disturbances on Radio and other Communications

Limb Flare Photo Courtesy of NASA

ATMO

by

Bob Bernstein

(originally published in National Fisherman Magazine)


Most of today's boats have integrated navigation devices that rely heavily, if not exclusively, on the Global Positioning System. Radio signals from the network of GPS satellites serve as the electronic foundation for plotters, sounders, sonars, and radars. Without the signal, the GPS receiver wouldn't be able to continually cross-fix a vessel's position, and integrated peripheral equipment would end-up displaying a "data unavailable" error. No signal, no cross fix, no vessel tracking.

Differential GPS is clearly an improvement over SATNAV and LORAN in terms of reliability, coverage, and accuracy. But is it infallible?

According to scientists at NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), and its sister organization, the National Space Environmental Center (NSEC), both located in Boulder, CO, the answer is: Not really. Like all other transmission sources, both land-based and space-based, GPS can be knocked-out by extra-terrestrial disturbances.


MINDING THE STORE


The NGDC and the NSEC are two of our government's most active and and least known scientific organizations. They don't have the "sexy" rockets and space shuttles of NASA or the large ships of NOAA's National Ocean Survey, but their job is equally important. Basically, the two centers manage environmental data in the fields of marine geology and geophysics, paleoclimatology, solid earth geophysics, glaceology, and solar-terrestrial physics. In fact, it's the latter that relates to solar activity--and it's solar activity, particularly in the form of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, that can and do affect the functioning of GPS and other marine navigation and communication transmission sources.

Helen Coffey, Head of the Solar-Upper Atmosphere Data Group at the NDGC points out just how powerful and interactive these solar eruptions are.

"On March 13, 1989," she explains, "there was a magnetic storm caused by a big solar event. When it was over, about six million people were out of power for about nine hours."

Some of these people, of course, were fishermen at sea. Although they didn't experience onboard equipment malfunctions, they were affected by the interruption of shore-base marine services, e.g. Loran, cell phone, and marine radiotelephone. "We didn't have GPS or DGPS back then," says Quarter Master 2 Bill Schmidt of the 1st District U.S.C.G. ATON (Aids to Navigation) Office in Boston. But, he adds, if we had, they would have been just as susceptible to the blackout as the Loran-C stations.

It's hard to believe a storm originating 100 million miles away can have such disastrous effects, but this is exactly the case. Solar eruptions send out massive amounts of high energy particles and radiation in the form of a "wind." The solar wind, as its called, is always pulsing continually outward from the sun in varying degrees. On Earth, it causes the aurora borealis; it also alters the growth of plants and trees, as evidenced by the study of tree rings. But during high periods of solar activity, when a solar event significantly increases the solar wind's intensity, a lot more is at stake than a pretty light show in the northern sky and some variations in the growth of plants.

"When it [the March 1989 eruption] hit the environment," says Coffey, "it caused the [Earth's] magnetic field to compress. The field got 'pushed in,' and it induced a current in the ground. The current overloaded the circuits. There was a transformer in the U.S. that actually melted. This thing was as big as a house."


SATELLITE DAMAGE


Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (bubbles of electrified gas referred to in the trade as CMEs) are related to increases in the numbers of sunspots, and sunspots are cyclic in nature. The cycle--from the end of one period to the start of the next, or from one peak to the next peak--is 11 years. The last peek started in August of '99 and ran into the latter half of the year 2000.

As illustrated by Coffey's example above, this could cause potential problems for a lot of people, which is why scientists at the NGDC and NSEC in Boulder keep a 24 hour watch on the sun, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Their monitoring satellites, A.C.E. and its predecessor, W.I.N.D., give them, and subsequently their customers, about a one hour head start on a major solar event. "We're in communication with a lot of people about solar and magnetic activity," says Joe Kunches, head of the NSEC Forecast Office. "For example, because they're constantly monitoring the integrity of their navigation systems, the U.S.C.G. in Kodiak, Alaska is at the top of our list."

So too is the U.S.C.G. Navigation Center in Alexandria, VA. According to Schmidt, when warnings are issued from Denver, the U.S.C.G. responds as soon as possible by putting out notices to mariners in the form of "pan-pan" broadcasts over the VHF, SSB frequencies, and NAVTEX. "DGPS warnings are issued directly from Virginia," he says. "And for now, we're directed by NavCen to do the Loran-C warnings."

Meanwhile, in the case of a really big eruption, there isn't that much anybody can do. On land, equipment can be shut down or brought to a level of reduced function or operation. In space, it's not that simple. "Circuitry and microchips are at risk," says Ray Conkright, head of the Ionosphere and Space Weather group at the NGDC. "If the discharge is high enough, they could be affected."

However, although nobody knows for certain--because GPS satellites didn't exist during the last peak period, and because nobody can say for sure how bad an event we're going to get next year--Conkright and Kunches both believe the GPS birds are sufficiently 'hardened' to withstand the discharge from almost any solar eruption. And yet, while chances are good they won't get fried, they might suffer longevity problems. "Solar cells are always deteriorating," says Conkright. "During a solar event, they might take an extra dose, which could further reduce their life span."

EFFECTS ON RADIO TRANSMISSIONS


All of our navigation and communication signals are transmitted as radio waves, and radio waves are dependent in one way or another on the status of the ionosphere, the layer of ionized gas at the very upper end of our atmosphere. Low frequency single sideband and Loran signals bounce off the ionosphere to get to where they're going, and higher frequency GPS, Broadcast, and SATCOM signals shoot through it. This means that changes in the ionosphere can interfere with some of our transmissions.

Think of the ionosphere as an ocean and the discharge of a solar event as a wind, which we've already said it is. The wind hits the ionosphere and creates turbulence. For example: If we're on a real ocean. and it's rough, and we're trying to pick out a radar target from a small boat, the waves would cause interference and false echoes.

In a simplified way, this is what happens when the discharge from a solar event hits the ionosphere. The high energy particles of the solar wind create turbulence that interferes with the echoes and transmissions of radio waves. Fortunately, not all frequencies or all areas are affected equally. During a solar event, higher frequency transmissions like GPS are less susceptible than lower frequency transmissions (Loran, Single Sideband), and the equatorial region is less susceptible than the higher latitudes.

Even more problematic is what happens to the Earth's magnetic field during a solar event. "All of the U.S. Geodesic survey people shut down operations during periods of high magnetic activity," says Conkright.

What this means is that vessels can lose navigation and communication electronics for as long as it takes for the ionosphere and the magnetic field to calm down. How long can can it take to calm down? "A solar event in the northern latitudes can create a disturbance that lasts for two or three days," says Kunches. "HF communications can be blacked out for days. GPS would be hampered for days. Magnetic compasses would be off for days."

It's not a great scenario if you happen to be tracking your vessel's progress during an important tow in the Bering Sea or trying to find the shortest route home. For this reason, it makes sense to keep in mind that the six most reliable navigation tools during ionospheric disruptions and magnetic storms:

1. The gyrocompass, which uses the spin of the Earth and not the magnetic field to find true north, but is expensive and not for everybody.
2. The sextant, which is inexpensive and easily available, but more difficult to use, and. . . .
3. The chart work kit (dividers, parallel rules, and clock), with which every mariner should have complete familiarity.

-seabgb

Copyright Bob Bernstein (seabgb) 2005-2006 © All Rights Reserved

Small Boat, Big Sound

(originally published in National Fisherman Magazine. This is the unadulterated version. NatFish is notorious for screwing with a writer's material. Some of you audiophiles may not agree with my assessment. By all means, let me know.)

Small Boat, Big Sound
by Bob G. Bernstein

It’s not every fisherman who wants to listen to music while hauling gear. It can be distracting to some and downright unsafe for others. And no matter how good the music is, there will always be those who prefer the droning sounds of the engine and sea to anything broadcast over the radio or recorded on a CD. (Personally, I’d rather hear the cries of herring gulls mating than be subjected to another Celine Dion song.)

But let’s say you’re not one of those fishermen who like their daily grind au naturel. Instead, you’re the type of person who eats, drinks, and sleeps with music. Maybe you still have a ticket stub from a Grateful Dead concert in your wallet, or own a 1400 CD collection, or wake up every morning to Eddie Van Halen’s version of “Pretty Woman.” If this even remotely describes your level of interest in music, then by all means this article is for you.

MATCHING OHMS AND WATTS

It’s a lot like coming up with a boat’s propulsion system. You don’t want to move a big boat with a small propeller or a small boat with a big propeller. Nor would you buy just any engine and gear combination to turn any wheel. For example, you don’t turn a 20” diameter propeller with an 8-92 Detroit Diesel, or try to muscle a 60” propeller with a 4 cylinder Westerbeke. Either way you’re likely to burn up the motor faster than you can say, “Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

The same thing’s true for a stereo system. After all, a speaker, or driver, is a little like a propeller. Both are output devices. In addition, just like an engine-propeller match, stereo components have to be balanced in terms of their power and impedance, the latter being a combination of electrical resistance and inductive reactance.

“Compatibility is important,” says John Keyser, a salesman for Harbor Audio in Camden, Maine. “If you run an improper speaker load, you can damage your amplifier.”

For example, connect a pair of 2 Ohm 50 Watt speakers to a 50 Watt amplifier that is rated for a pair of 8 Ohm speakers (an Ohm is a measure of impedance), and the amplifier will heat up and possibly even fry itself. It won’t be very good for the speakers either, which can be permanently damaged by destructive “clipping,” a form of distortion caused when the amplifier is overloaded or short on input voltage, a concern in many DC applications.

There’s simply no arguing the fact that it’s easier and often safer to buy a known system and have it installed by a knowledgeable technician.

“We just mounted a very nice system into a local lobster boat,” says Karl Hupper, of Lew Grant and Associates, in Rockland, Maine. “It has a Jensen Maritime CD player, an Audiovox XM Satellite Receiver, and two pairs of Bose 151 speakers, one pair in the wheelhouse and one pair on deck.”

According to Hupper, the owner is completely satisfied with the result, which goes to prove that a professional can really take the worry out of the whole power/impedance disinformation issue.

For instance, a manufacturer might list a speaker with the following specification: 100 Watts RMS @ 4 Ohms. In this instance, RMS stands for Root Mean Square, and, continuing with the marine propulsion analogy, it’s a speaker’s cruising speed. What this means is that the speaker can be safely connected to a 100 Watt RMS per channel @ 4 Ohms amplifier.

However, another manufacturer may use a different rating for the speaker, as in: 100 Watts Maximum @ 4 Ohms. This is a power rating that basically states the speaker can handle a short duration, high-intensity burst of music of 100 Watts. To get a safe approximate RMS or continuous duty rating for this speaker, and it’s just a general guideline, you divide by two, which gives you 50 Watts RMS. Hooking up a pair of these speakers to the same amplifier above will give you substandard performance and probably cause premature death for both the speakers and the amplifier. What you need for this 100 Watt Max pair is a 50 Watt RMS per channel @ 4 Ohm amplifier.

Incidentally, there are other ways manufacturers play with power ratings. For example, you might find a power amplifier that advertises 500 Watts. When you look closer, it turns out to be a four channel stereo, and the rating listed is a maximum power rating. Divide the 500 Watts by 2 and you get 250 Watts RMS, then divide by 4 and you come up with 62.5 Watts RMS per channel.

Manufacturers also use Peak Power, Full Power, Maximum Output, Instantaneous Peak Power, and Peak Music Power Output, for rating their equipment. These, as well as Maximum Power, are pretty much the same. The only rating that really matters is the RMS rating.

Lastly, many audiophiles will tell you it’s all right and even desirable to have a power amplifier that is ten to twenty percent over the RMS rated power of your speakers. This 10 to 20 percent guideline means that a 100 Watt RMS woofer can be safely plugged into a 120 Watt RMS per channel amplifier, provided of course that the impedance ratings are matched. Another thing to bear in mind is that most stereos perform best at a volume setting of 1/2 or less, with the gain on the power amplifier, if one has been added, set at less than 60%.

HOW MUCH ROCK AND ROLL?

Now that it’s agreed everything has to be matched and balanced with respect to power and impedance, it’s time to look at some speakers.

“We always start with the speakers,” says Scott Morris, Coordinator for Ocean Alexander Marine Service, in Seattle, Washington. “Will they be flush mount or box type? How well will they fit the area? Where will the wiring go? Does the customer want to drown out the sound of the engine, or is this just music for dockside?”

Another question you might ask yourself is: How discerning or sensitive are your ears?

“I installed a system for a concert violinist that cost thousands of dollars,” says Morris. “I’ve also installed off-the-rack car stereo systems for a few hundred. If you don’t have the range of hearing, you can’t tell the difference between the two.”

You might also want to keep in mind:

(1) Deep bass sounds are of the long wavelength variety. They require the most power to reproduce because they need a comparatively big driver (woofer) with a long stroke.

(2) Not all music is heavy on bass. If your interest is more in the big band or folk area, you may not need power hungry woofers to get the sound you want. Small two-way or three-way speakers, or a pair of mid-range drivers may suffice.

(3) A general rule of thumb is that to double the sound of what you’re currently listening to, you have to multiply the number of Watts by ten. In other words, if you’re currently listening to a 10 Watt RMS per channel marine stereo matched to a pair of 10 Watt RMS marine speakers, and you want to double the loudness, you’ll need a 100 Watt RMS per channel system.

For a small boat, however, a 100 Watt RMS per channel stereo is getting up there in power. Here’s why:

To find out the power drain on the boat’s electrical charging system, double the total RMS value to take into account peak power bursts, then divide by the voltage put out by the alternator to get the current draw. In this case, 400 Watts total peak power divided by 13.8 Volts -- a good average charge from most factory installed marine alternators -- results in a current draw of 28.9 Amps. With a standard 45 Amp alternator, and the electrical needs of sounder, radar, GPS, plotter, bilge pumps, etc. to factor in, doubling your loudness may mean having to buy a new higher capacity alternator, although there are other alternatives. For example, you could install an audio capacitor (basically an energy reservoir) between the battery and the power amplifier. If it were me, however, I’d spend the money on a bigger alternator.

Having decided on the amount of power you need, it’s time to figure out what type of speaker. You can go with boxed or enclosed speakers, or go with component speakers, whereby you buy your woofers, midrange drivers, and tweeters individually and mount them yourself. This latter method provides the best possible sound reproduction for a given application but is also considerably more complicated, particularly when it comes to the woofers.

WOOFERS, MIDRANGE DRIVERS, TWEETERS, AND WHIZZERS

Unlike tweeters and small midrange drivers, which can be mounted in a cabinet or against a bulkhead without concern for altering their performance (we’re not talking placement with respect to each other or the listener here, just the actual mounting), woofers have special mounting needs. As the woofer generates sound, it pushes air out its front and back -- and herein lies one of its problems for small work boat installations.

The sound coming out the back of a woofer is 180 degrees out of phase with the sound coming out the front of the woofer. Consequently, if the woofer is mounted incorrectly, the sounds from the back and the front will interfere with each other and possibly cancel each other out. At the very least, improper installation will cause you to lose much of your low frequency performance. To solve this problem on a small work boat, where cabinet space and bulkhead depth is either non existent or at a premium, you’ll need to build a custom speaker box for the woofer, and that brings up an interesting conundrum. Why not just buy a good marine boxed speaker of the two-way or three-way variety?

“In most of the boats we’re doing now,” says Morris, “ we’re using two-way and sometimes three-way speakers.”

A two-way speaker is one that has a separate tweeter and woofer mounted in the same box, sometimes one over the other to save space. In fact, your typical two-way car speaker has a tweeter mounted either on a post (center mount) or bridge (perimeter mount) directly over the woofer. There’s also the dual-cone design, a speaker that consists of two cones, a main cone for lower frequency sound, and a “whizzer’ cone for the high frequency sound.

A three-way speaker and a four-way speaker round out the category. The former is a two-way speaker with the addition of a midrange driver, the latter a three-way speaker with the addition of an even smaller tweeter. On a boat, however, the“super tweeter,” as it’s sometimes called, will do little more than annoy the dog, if he can even hear it.

All outdoor and/or marine speakers are made to withstand the elements. Cones are typically constructed of Polypropylene, while the tweeters are made of Mylar or a corrosion resistant metal, e.g. titanium. Wire and wire connections are coated for water and corrosion resistance, and enclosures or boxes are stainless, marine grade aluminum, or UV stabilized plastic. That’s if you buy an off-the-shelf marine speaker.

If you buy component drivers on your own, you can build the boxes and even hard wire everything just the way you want it. Be sure you’ve done your research, though. There’s a lot more to it than what’s been discussed here. You’ve still got to consider output from the head unit to the amplifier, impedance matching if you want multiple volume controls at multiple locations, antennas, speaker placement, and much more.

“Entertainment systems are very much an individual thing,” says Morris. “There’s no perfect system. What’s important is finding one that meets your needs and sound good to you.”

-seabgb

Copyright © Bob G. Bernstein (seabgb) All Rights Reserved

The Electronic Logbook

THE FUTURE OF TRIP REPORTING AND VESSEL MONITORING

By

Bob Bernstein

(Slightly dated in terms of prices. Originally published in National Fisherman Magazine)



We’ve certainly come a long way from the seafaring life described by Poet Laureate John Masefield. In his famous soliloquy Sea Fever, he speaks of the mariner’s "vagrant gypsy life" and the sole need for "a tall ship and a star to steer her by…." Had Masefield lived another thirty or so years (he died in 1967), he might have mentioned the need for NMFS’s mandatory Daily Fishing Log, affectionately known as the DFL.

The poem’s closing line, "And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trip is over" might be more appropriate in today’s world as: "I want to sleep but instead I’m hunched over the DFL filling out my damn trip report."

Granted, it’s not great poetry, but neither is the business end of commercial fishing, part of which deals with government oversight, data collection, and paperwork. In fact, this aspect of the fish business -- the exchange of data -- has NMFS and private enterprise riding the same lane of the information highway.

The idea is to create better and easier methods of information exchange. To this end, NOAA Fisheries has established a program to study the issue on a national level. In the Northeast, the project is called, the Cooperative Research Partners Initiative, or CRPI for short. While not specifically designed as a step toward supplanting the DFL, or creating or adopting standards for electronic logbooks (ELBs), the perception is that this is where the project’s going.

When asked if that was what the CRPI was up to, i.e. designing an ELB, Earl Meredith, Director of NMFS Cooperative Research Programs, said that although the program may lend itself to the development of an ELB, this isn’t the focus of the project.

"What we’re doing," says Meredith, "is getting fishermen who are volunteers to help us identify technology that can be installed on fishing vessels, [technology] that will allow electronic reporting of higher resolution and more detailed fishing activities."

As he describes it, the CRPI’s goal is to design and field test electronic reporting hardware and software for collecting, recording, and transferring accurate and timely fishery-based data. At present, trip reports (mandatory for ground fish and certain other species, e.g. urchins on the West Coast) are handwritten and mailed into NMFS. With the current system, it typically takes eight to ten weeks for the data to get analyzed.

"This [the CRPI] allows us to get a small subset of the industry to work with us to give us tow by tow catch information." Says Meredith. "The information is transmitted to us so we can get to use it right away. We can look at catch rates. And we can communicate using email, like [through] a Boatracs."

For example, if NMFS knew there was a boat out on Georges catching large cod, Meredith says scientists could use a communications system like Boatracs to email the captain and request a tote of fish to be saved for biological samples. "It’s a way for us to communicate with fisherman on a timely basis," he adds, "a way of increasing the communication between fisherman and scientists."

Meredith mentions Boatracs -- and not one of the other wireless marine communications manufacturers -- for the simple reason that at the present time the Boatracs system is the only one that offers (as an option) a fisheries-oriented vessel management system certified by NMFS. By law, certain fish boats, e.g. scallopers in the Northeast, are required to carry vessel monitoring systems that transmit position and days at sea data to NMFS. (There are also boats that carry this equipment on a voluntary basis, which, according to Boatracs, is a way for participating vessels to get extra days at sea.)

For the CRPI study group, the focus is to find a device or system that will simplify the catch information gathering process. At the same time, there’s interest in identifying and developing other VMS systems and value-added features. "One of the things that came up [in our meetings], says Meredith, "is that fishermen are unhappy with just one VMS option."

With regard to the options and features part of it, the CRPI study group hopes to research and develop sensors – e.g. salinity, temperature, depth, etc. -- that can be placed on the trawl gear. They’re also planning to have secure WEB sites that fishermen can access themselves. With secure access to digitized and better data, and the ability to view it in various formats, captains and/or owners of ground fish boats can start to use the information they provide NMFS as a means to increase their own productivity. In other words, the one-way street becomes more of a two-way street, which is where the real potential for additional DFL, ELB, and VMS user-enhancements lies.

Meanwhile, Meredith points out that NMFS is doing all it can to provide fishermen with a device they’ll be happy with, one that will not only balance the intrusiveness and extra work of collecting and transmitting data with a potential benefit, but will also be easy to use.

"We’re going on boats and watching the fishing operation to find out where and when fisherman can enter data into an electronic device," says Meredith. "We’re doing time-motion studies. For us, it makes sense to have the fishermen integrally involved in the development process."

Currently, NMFS has contracted with three individual entities to test and/or develop a number of different hardware/software devices. One is Thistle Marine, of Lamoine, Maine. The second is the University of New Hampshire, where they’re working on improvements to a PC-based logbook. And the third is P-sea Software, of Morro Bay, California, manufacturers of P-sea Windplot navigation software.

The three hardware/software products have been chosen with three kinds of wheelhouses in mind: the wet, open boat helm; the closed, but small vessel wheelhouse; and the large, dry wheelhouse.

At present, three distinct fleets comprising different vessel sizes and types are participating in this pilot project. The first fleet is large Southern New England trawlers from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Narragansett, Rhode Island. The second fleet is the small hook vessels based out of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And the third fleet is the medium-sized trawlers and gill-netters from Cape Ann, Massachusetts, to Mid-Coast Maine.

DEDICATED VS PC-BASED ELBs

Although very different in appearance and ergonomics, ELBs share the same input and output needs, which is to say they all interface with a GPS receiver and store and transmit fisheries data.

For example, on one side of the fence, you have a dedicated, stand-alone ELB like Thistle Marine’s HMS-110 (See Sidebar), which is a box-type device that has a minimal keypad, is weatherproof or waterproof, and can be operated by a man with a gloved hand. This device is less expensive than a PC-based unit, and is relatively easy to use by comparison. On the negative side, it has less in the way of user defined capability, and it can only do the one job it was built to do.

On the other hand, you have the PC-based ELBs, e.g. the UNH Logbook, the P-Sea Windplot Logbook, and the OceanLogic Logbook (See Sidebar). These are software packages loaded onto a standard PC (Laptop, desktop, or Tablet PC). You buy a license to use the software, then you load it on a computer, which can cost anywhere from $500 to many thousands of dollars; it all depends on whether you want something basic or you want something hardened and weatherproof. Just by itself, a large, high definition monitor can set you back $10,000.

PC-based ELBs offer the same advantages over dedicated ELBs that PC-based plotters offer over their dedicated plotter cousins, namely, they can be used for many different types of operations other than that designated by the software you’re using. They also have the capability to generate reports and visualizations (plots, graphs, spreadsheets, etc.) from within.

Dedicated or PC-based? Maybe it’s something to start thinking about. The way things are going, ELBs are here to stay. Will they be mandatory for everyone in the future? Robert Mikol, Product Manager for OceanLogic, in Juneau, Alaska, thinks so. According to him, they’ll be mandatory for the majority of the nation’s fisheries in three to ten years.



SIDEBAR 1

DEDICATED ELBs

The HMS-110 made by Thistle Marine is a waterproof unit that can be used by a man wearing gloves. The device accepts input information on the boat and later sends or uploads the data to a secure WEB site. You can do this either by connecting to a wireless modem (satellite or other type) on the boat, or you can bring the device ashore and connect it to a phone line at home.

The unit works by compiling data which is then encrypted and uploaded via a toll free number to the company’s computer for processing into various formats or applications. The fisherman who collected the data and/or NMFS can then access the site for reports and/or log information. At present, there is no capability to generate DFL paper reports for NMFS.

The HMS Series of logbooks, which Thistle Marine has been marketing for the lobster, crab, and urchin fisheries for four years, works like all ELBs in that it is designed to indicate the start and stop of a fishing activity.

"For example," explains Rich Arnold, President of Thistle Marine, "when the trawl gear gets to the bottom, you push a button that indicates that the gear has started to fish, then when you haul back, you push a button and you know when you’ve stopped. This way the catch is associated with that track or tow. For urchin divers, you’re just cataloguing the duration of the dive."

Arnold says hitting the start and stop establishes the duration of the dive or the track of the tow. "You can do this as many times as you want without entering the catch," he adds. "Later you can go back and punch in the catch data. You can do this by species and by weight. You indicate species in pounds, kilos or tons. And then you enter the disposition."

According to Arnold, there are 4 dispositions. Was it kept or discarded? If it was kept, was it target species or non target? And if you discarded it, was it a regulatory or a market discard?

The Thistle Marine HMS series of ELBs have the same if not similar advantages that all stand alone, dedicated devices have over PC-based products: They’re more compact, most always less expensive, easier to use, and are waterproofed. The main disadvantage is that the user is limited to the specific functions for which the unit was designed. In other words, the device has one use and one use only, in this case, a data collection and transmission device, not a word processor or plotter.

SIDEBAR 2

OCEANLOGIC

At present, the only NMFS-approved ELB in widespread use is the OceanLogic system. "We have the only federally approved electronic logbook in the nation," says Robert Mikol (pronounced Michael), Product Manager for OceanLogic of Juneau, Alaska. "We have 55 trawlers using them now, and we’re currently beta testing [versions] for the troll and longline fisheries."

The OceanLogic system -- a PC-based software package consisting of five individual programs that can be purchased separately or in groups -- can print out DFLs, which are later signed and mailed to NMFS; it also generates various trip reports and can output data to NMFS.

These are software packages only. You have to buy a license to use the software, and a PC, the latter of which can run anywhere from $500 to $10,000 and more, depending on the size and type of the monitor, and whether you want a custom machine that’s waterproof and hardened or one from Walmart.

Data collected by the OceanLogic ELB can be viewed in various formats from inside the program. The data can also be exported to other desktop applications, e.g. text editors, word processors, spreadsheets, graphics, or a GIS (geographical information system). Moreover, data doesn’t have to leave the unit in order to be accessed.

"The system consists of several products," says Mikol. "Many are incorporated into the ELB and many work well as stand alones, so you don’t have to buy the whole system."

As Mikol explains it, there are five programs that can be purchased together or individually:

1. The ELB, which contains the software for managing catch data.
2. The VVS – Vessel Verification System, which was specifically designed to be a backup for the current VMS system, and which, according to Mikol, has the capability to collect evidentiary quality data to NMFS standards.
3. The Catch Plotter, which is the visualization tool that allows you to plot data on a chart.
4. The Quota Manager, designed for the quota fisheries. It inputs observer data automatically. (Observers on vessels use a program called ‘At Sea,’ which exports data on a daily basis to NMFS. The Quota Manager from OceanLogic can import this data.)
5. The Economic Extension, a finance management tool that allows fishermen to keep track of expenses.

The OceanLogic ELBs (just under $1,000 for the whole package) have been in use in the Pacific Northwest for about five years and have been strongly supported by NMFS. For example, according to Mikol, NMFS recently renewed forty maintenance contracts for the Pacific Northwest trawl fleet.

Copyright © Bob G. Bernstein (seabgb) All Rights Reserved!

Oil Filtration in a Marine Engine

THE CLEAN MACHINE

BY

BOB BERNSTEIN

(published in National Fisherman Magazine)

The number one cause of failure for every living and non-living thing on the face of the Earth is contamination. Whether it’s dust on a plant leaf, plaque in your arteries, or wear metal and sludge in your engine oil, the overall effect is the same: Dirt interferes with a machine’s (or living thing’s) normal function. Uncorrected, over time, the result is always fatal.

In terms of a diesel engine, the death rattle goes something like this: First you get blow-by (past rings and valve guides) of unburned diesel fuel, particles in the intake air, and various combustion products. These add to wear metals and manufacturing and assembly waste in the lubricating oil, eventually reaching a point where they scuff cylinders. When the cylinder bore (or liner) gets damaged, you get more blow-by and more contamination, i.e. from dust, fuel, carbon (soot), water, sulfur, etc., each of which has its own particularly detrimental effect on the lubricant and the engine. For example, take sulfur, which, when combined with water, forms sulfuric acid.

"Acids [sulfuric acid is not the only one present] are really hard on bearings," says Jason Loring, head mechanic at Journey’s End Marina, in Rockland, Maine, "They corrode the linings."

With corroded bearing linings, you get degraded engine tolerances, which makes the motor run ‘looser.’ A loose motor leads to more metal to metal contact, which causes the accumulation of more wear metals. The wear metals further abrade cylinders, invite more blow-by, and cause the formation of more acids. This process further degrades engine tolerances, creating a spiraling cycle of destruction.

Unfortunately, no matter how new the engine and/or tight the seals, you’re always going to get a certain amount of blow-by. The cylinder liners can be smoother than a smelt’s belly, and the rings and valve assemblies in perfect condition, and still you’ll get fuel and combustion products sneaking into the lubricant. This is the main reason petroleum companies use oil additives

It’s the additive package, not the base oil, that inhibits rust and oxidation, controls foaming, neutralizes the acids, and keeps sludge from forming.

Without additives, abrasives (e.g. wear metals and other particulate matter like soot) start to adhere to one another to form sludge. These tiny razor-like shards clump up into different size particles. The smaller clumps drop out of suspension and abrade cylinder liners. The larger ones drop out of solution and form sludge that clogs filters and journals and reduces oil flow.

"It’s not the base oil that goes bad," says Loring, "It’s that the additives either get neutralized or they leach out with the contaminants. That’s when you really start to get engine wear."

PROTECTING THE LUBRICATING OIL

If you could keep the additive package functioning at 100%, and at the same time keep the lube from being diluted by diesel fuel and water, you’d never need to change your oil. Acids would be neutralized, the viscosity would remain constant, and soot and wear metals would be held in suspension indefinitely, or, at least for larger particles, long enough to be filtered out of the lubricant.

In fact, that’s the key to longer lubricant life: Filtration. But there’s kind of a catch-22 aspect to it. For example, you want to filter out 100% of the contaminants, but not reduce oil flow or remove the additives.

The dilution problem poses a similar quandary. Diesel fuel -- which lowers the lubricant’s viscosity -- can be evaporated by applying heat to the lubricant, but if one of the motor oil’s jobs is to remove heat in the engine caused by friction, why add more heat? Secondly, contaminated lube oil oxidizes at higher temperatures; so again, why risk oxidation by adding more heat?

This difficulty in getting diesel fuel out of lube oil is one reason why the U.S. Navy’s Engineman’s Basic Training Manual recommends a complete oil change whenever the fuel in the lubricant reaches a mass fraction of 5%. (Mass fraction is a calculation based on mass instead of volume.)

But does this mean you have to do an oil change every 100 to 200 hours in every marine engine? Absolutely not. With proper filtration, and a proactive program of oil testing, you can go much, much longer.

For example, according to Harry Stevens, who serves as Mate, Engineer, and Relief Captain on the Maine Maritime Academy’s training vessel, Pentagoet, a bypass filtration system onboard the boat has saved the Academy thousands of dollars and four oil changes a year.

"We have a pair of 16 cylinder Detroits for mains," he says, "and a pair of 3-71 Detroit gensets. We used to do fluid and filter changes five times a year, at a cost of $1,200 each. Now [with the installation of fine particle by-pass filtration and routine oil sampling], we change filters and top off every 200 hours, and do just one complete fluid change a year."

SIZE MATTERS

Filtration and lube oil maintenance (protecting the additive package) is especially meaningful for today’s new breed of engines. Why? Because stringent emission standards have forced engine manufacturers to recycle more of the engine’s exhaust and crankcase vapor, and this, in turn, has increased the potential for blow-by contamination.

But anybody who has looked at buying a new small to medium diesel engine knows that the vast majority come standard with a full flow paper spin-on or canister oil filter of the type that typically removes 25 to 40 micron size and larger particles. (Size of the particle depends on the type or brand of filter.) By contrast, a ‘fine particle’ bypass filter or centrifuge filtration system will remove particles down to one micron and less.

(One micron is one millionth of a meter, or thirty-nine millionths of an inch. An ordinary grain of table salt is about 100 microns. This means 25 microns is about ¼ the size of a grain of salt.)

Why talk about size? Because a study conducted by the Detroit Diesel Corporation and AC Spark Plugs, published by the Society of Automotive Engineers, proves that engine wear can be significantly reduced by removing 2 to 22 micron size particles from the lubricating oil.

The study, published in 1988 as SAE Paper #881825, showed that because most clearances during normal engine operations are between 2 and 22 microns, 2 micron particles would slip through clearances without doing any damage, while the 2 to 22 micron particles would damage components.

For the test, they used diesel and gasoline engines with 40, 8, and 7 micron filters, and 40, 30, and 15 micron filters, respectively. After each test, the engine components were checked for wear. The test period was eight hours, and during that time, contamination of the oil was accelerated by adding 50 grams of AC Fine Test Dust, in slurry form, to the crankcase every hour.

Results showed that gasoline engine wear was reduced 50% by going to a 30 micron filter, and 70% by going to a 15 micron filter. Similar conclusions were reached for the diesel.

This study begs the question: If fine particle filtration cuts engine wear that much, why don’t all engine manufacturers put fine particle filtration systems on their products from the start?

It’s a fair question, and many in the after-market industry will claim the reason has something to do with "Planned Product Replacement."

To be fair to the manufacturers, they’ll argue the more complicated the filtration system, the greater the possibility negligence (in terms of maintenance) will lead to restricted oil flow and reduced oil pressure, a surefire prelude to trouble. They’ll also say that it’s enough to offer them fine particle filtration as an option, and that many customers just don’t want them.

It is, in fact a dirty business. If you think cleaning a full-flow oil filter is a pain, try cleaning a bypass filter, or worse, a centrifuge.

"The centrifuge is the nastiest in the world to clean," says Art Stanley, President of Art’s Marine, in Owls Head, Maine. "I learned the hard way not to let guys dump their centrifuge bowl in my clean tank. The waste killed the cleaning solvent."

Stanley, who’s a dealer for John Deere, Cummins, Izusu, and Sisu diesels, says the centrifuge comes standard on the larger Scania diesels and works really well. "The Scania comes with a small oil filter, plus they have a [bypass] centrifuge. The centrifuge takes a small amount of oil all the time. And the oil filter just filters the oil going to the turbo."

As far as other engine filtration systems are concerned, Stanley says the Cummins 8.3 Liter engine has a single filter that has a full flow component on the top and a bypass component on the bottom that takes out particles as small as one micron.

Loring, of Journey’s End Marina, says Volvo’s larger engines, 375 hp and up, come standard with a full flow filter and a bypass filter, while Caterpillar offers a centrifuge system as an option on its larger engines. But, he adds: "You can install a bypass or centrifuge filtration system on any engine."

To be sure, there are many after-market manufacturers of oil filtration systems and purifiers. Bypass filters -- which work in conjunction with a full flow filter and take only a small portion of the total flow of oil (so as not to interfere with oil flow) -- come as fine particle paper, gauze, or wood fiber filters, or as centrifuges, or as combinations of the two. They’re even available as composites. In other words, you can buy a device that combines a fine particle filter, a centrifuge, an evaporator, and a time release additive packet, all in one unit.

There are also magnetic collars for filters and magnetic oil pan drain plugs you can buy to help keep metal particles from re-entering the lube oil. Do these actually work? According to some unbiased testimonials on the internet, they do indeed attract metal flakes.

Finally, a company in Warwick, England called, Fluid Conditioning Systems, claims to have developed a full flow fine particle filter that can remove one micron and less contamination without risking a loss of oil pressure or flow. Called the Magnom, and currently undergoing field tests, the device uses a sandwich of annular and permanent magnets to draw out both ferrous and non-ferrous particles. Other advantages include true three-dimensional storage of contaminants and a longer operational life than a fine particle fiber filter.

Chief Executive Tom Hulme says this also means that for the first time fine filtration can be employed before the pump in the oil supply line, adding a level of protection previously unavailable.

"The system is capable of magnetically extracting sand, silicon, paint and even human hairs, as well as ferrous material from the lubricant," he says.

Although not yet mass marketed, this device -- and other technologies that are sure to follow – promise to move the industry toward filtration systems that not only increase longevity of machinery, but reduce maintenance loads as well.

In the final analysis, isn’t that what we all want? An engine that lives longer but requires less maintenance?

Copyright © Bob G. Bernstein (seabgb) All Rights Reserved!

Published Articles by Bob Bernstein

Please contact me for reprints or more info on any of the following subjects. -bgb

Bearings
Walter Lubricated Bearings, a.k.a Cutlass Bearings
Refrigeration
Night Vision Systems
Binoculars
Safety Eqipment
Electronic Charts
Lobster Boats
Anchors
Anchoring
Safety Equipment
Life Jackets
Marine Engines for the Race Boat
High Performance Diesels
Electronic Logbooks
Filtration Systems
Oil Analysis
Marine Diesel Technology
Diesel Improvements
Block and Tackle
Outboards
Marine Heaters
Furnaces
Communications Systems
Satellite Communications
SSB Communications
Marine Stereos
Pumps
VHF Communications
Plotters
Depth Sounders
Radar
Draggers
Lobsterboats
Conversions
New Products
Boat Reviews
Boat Tests
Burner Pot Heaters
National Fisherman Columns - On the Ways
Offshore Columns - Hands On (36)
Offshore Columns - Postmark (12)
A Day on a Shrimp Boat
A Day on a Harpoon Boat
Giant Bluefin Tuna
Skiff Trawling
Batteries
Hydraulics
Wire Rope
Shackles
Winches
Cranes
Electrical Wire
Hydraulic Hose
Washdown Pumps
Boat Building Material
Entertainment Systems for Boats
Web and Internet Service Aboard
Generators
Wheelhouse Designs
Multi-hulls vs Mono-hulls
Parachute Anchors
Power Blocks
Swimming with Whales
Diving with Sharks
Chartering
Setting up a Charter Boat and Business
Bluefishing the Gulf of Maine
Deliveries
Heavy Weather Powerboating
Storm Preparedness
Man Overboard
Book Reviews
Movies About the Sea and the Ships that Sail Them
Product Reviews
Sea Urchins
Scallop Diving