Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On 15 Nov 2006 07:35:44 -0800, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:


Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)

COOL!!!

Now that's a boat test. :)


I agree, but at the last minute we're now put off until Friday. Phone
call from Bellingham; "We've got sustained 40 knot winds, with gusts to
60. Smoke on the water. We want to reschedule......"

Best boat test I ever did was one or two Novembers ago. We took about a
42 Grand Banks trawler out on a day in which no sane person with a
choice would have left the dock. Wind was just howling out of the
south, so we motored out to Lake Washington and ran along the
*windward* side of one of the floating bridges. This was one of those
days when the waves strike the bridge so hard that slop goes over the
top of the bridge wall and onto the roadway.
After the waves hit the bridge, they double back against the oncoming
crests and it's phd time (piled higher and deeper). We were taking six
foot chop broad abeam, (you had to look up as well as out to see the
top of the waves). Water was flooding along the side decks, the wipers
were running full tilt in an attempt to keep the pilothouse windows
halfway clear, and there was no point even attempting to stand up
unless one could find something to hold onto. People driving across the
bridge must have though we were nuts to be out there, and maybe we
were. GB's aren't known to be "dry" boats, and this one certainly
wasn't. However, we ran through that mess at about 10 -12 knots,
certainly above displacement speed, and the boat performed
impressively. It was a heck of a ride. I think I wrote something along
the line of "most people won't get to experience a sea trial of this
nature, but anyone who did would be pretty confident in the choice of a
Grand Banks."

On 15 Nov 2006 09:31:45 -0800, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:

Water was flooding along the side decks, the wipers
were running full tilt in an attempt to keep the pilothouse windows
halfway clear, and there was no point even attempting to stand up
unless one could find something to hold onto.

One place where Grand Banks does a really good job is providing hand
holds in all the right places. As soon as you look at them you
realize that it was designed to actually go places and not be just a
dock condo.

Of course if you'd turned on the stabilizers you could have probably
played shuffle board on deck. :-)

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:53:17 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

Of course if you'd turned on the stabilizers you could have probably
played shuffle board on deck. :-)

How do those things work?

Very well thanks.

Ohhhhh, you wanted the details.

The brain of the system is a small hydraulically powered gyroscope.
When the boat starts to roll, the gyro actuates valves, sending
hydraulic fluid to control rams and fins on each side of the boat.
The fins are about the size and shape of a midsized sailboat rudder.
They are mounted on large stainless shafts which extend up through the
bottom of the boat into the engine room. The stabilizer system turns
the fins in the direction necessary to counteract the roll of the
boat.

It is very fast and impressive in action. The boat will start a small
roll and then it is like a hand reaches down from the sky and
straightens up the boat again. The hydraulic system is driven by a
pump on the port side engine and no electronics are involved in the
control system, just one switch to turn it in and off.

I view some sort of stabilization system as a necessity for going
offshore any distance in a non-planing boat. It would get real
tiresome without it.

These things are made in Connecticut by the way:

http://www.naiad.com/frame.asp

About $30K for a 40 to 50 ft boat.

"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)


I think the highest *tsunami* wave was 1.5 feet high. ;-)

" JimH" not telling you @ pffftt.com wrote in message
. ..

"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)


I think the highest *tsunami* wave was 1.5 feet high. ;-)


Caused damage in Crescent City, Ca. http://cbs5.com/
The Good Friday Alaska Earthquake destroyed something like the first 6
blocks of town with the Tsunami.

JimH wrote:

I think the highest *tsunami* wave was 1.5 feet high. ;-)

I live about 3/4 of the way up Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, so I'm a few
hundred feet or more above sea level. If I'm home when a tsunami hits
and it *still* gets me, most of civilization as we know it will be
wiped out by the same wave.

My boat is now "inside" the locks, under covered moorage, so to get my
boat the tsunami would need to come roaring down the Strait of Juan de
Fuca, avoid smacking into the western edge of Whidbey Island and
instead make a miraculous turn of about 45 degrees turn to the SE down
Admiralty Inlet, avoid slamming into Edmonds and turn south toward
Shilshole Bay. The tsunami then needs to roar down a 300-400 yard wide
entrance channel to the Chittenden Locks and still retain enough energy
to breach the dam or the lock walls themselves. Then I'm in trouble,
I'm moored very near the locks. :-)

No, I'm not that worried about a Tsunami.

Out in the open ocean, a lot of tsunami waves are barely identifiable.
The pulse is spread across enough space and depth that some of the
tsunami waves in mid ocean can be measured in inches. Of course when
all that energy, maybe enough to run a pulse through hundreds of feet
of water, reaches the shallows a lof ot that water piles up into
disastrous waves, and that's why all the damage occurs.

Very few inland waterways, such as Puget Sound, would be at the same
type of risk for tsunami damage as a coastal community or an island.

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:51:15 -0800, Chuck Gould wrote:


Very few inland waterways, such as Puget Sound, would be at the same
type of risk for tsunami damage as a coastal community or an island.

I wouldn't get too cocky.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...tml?source=rss

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
news

" JimH" not telling you @ pffftt.com wrote in message
. ..

"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)


I think the highest *tsunami* wave was 1.5 feet high. ;-)


Caused damage in Crescent City, Ca. http://cbs5.com/
The Good Friday Alaska Earthquake destroyed something like the first 6
blocks of town with the Tsunami.


I was referring to the waves from this event. I guess my response was not
quite clear regarding that specific event.

" JimH" not telling you @ pffftt.com wrote in message
. ..

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
news

" JimH" not telling you @ pffftt.com wrote in message
. ..

"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)


I think the highest *tsunami* wave was 1.5 feet high. ;-)


Caused damage in Crescent City, Ca. http://cbs5.com/
The Good Friday Alaska Earthquake destroyed something like the first 6
blocks of town with the Tsunami.


I was referring to the waves from this event. I guess my response was not
quite clear regarding that specific event.


I was too. At least the first part. Destroyed 2 docks and set loose some
boats. Heard on the radio tonight that Santa Cruz harbor had one sunk
sailboat and 6 other boats damaged, as well as some docks.