Friend Steve Vogel retired from CSR Marine last Tuesday.  I realized its end of an era. I first met Steve when we both were livaboards at Kelly’s Landing some 33 years ago. Our two boats couldn’t have been more different.  He had a very traditional single hull wooden cruiser.   I had the lightweight trimaran.  He was often game (or crazy enough) to do races with me on my old tri Smoholla the Shaman. More than once he found himself crewing with me at Point No Point, after midnight, with a gale shrieking, as the boat is fully out of the water slugging to windward.
Or the day he ran me up my mast in a late December evening snowstorm, went back to his warm boat, and forgot about me. NPR was riveting. the mast was covered with ice and it was getting darker. I really had no options. I tried yelling. The snowfall got so heavy, all sound was absorbed. He remembered an hour later. He still laughs about that.
He will be cycling in France. Have good one Steve.

I had a great lunch yesterday with Scott MacIndoe of Fiberlay (and 5 other composites companies) yesterday. While he appears to be a regular businessman, I discovered that he really is a crazed inventor/chemist. The best kind.

His mind is seething with new inventions. Ones I could use include a new polyurethane fire proof coating and 2 part vinylester, of two equal parts. There must have been a dozen more that I have to remember.

Then there is the tunnel boring machine that also makes its own composite tunnel behind itself…

Still going through all the emails and orders from when I was gone. a little behind, but they will all go out this week.

Northwest fixture Fisheries Supply is no longer carrying knitted glass fabrics at its store, nor online.   http://www.fisheriessupply.com/
They tell me to go to Fiberlay, “Since that’s where we got it anyway.” www.fiberlay.com

Basic Composite & Mold Making Training Classes!

Saturday, May 4, 2013
9am – 3pm

Fiberlay – Seattle
24 South Idaho Street, Seattle, WA 98134

Please see the attached PDF for more information:
http://www.fiberlay.com/emailblast/TrainingClasses-5-4-13.pdf

Fiberlay, Inc.
24 S Idaho. St, Seattle, WA 98134
1-800-942-0660
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OK I will admit it. I was apparently the only person out there who had no idea that AIS (vessel tracking)  is available to everybody. And will come up on my Droid. How cool is that?
http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

In St. Maarten is saw one of my charter cats that I had forgotten about, go by. It was the old Mambo Cat under a new name.  I also made a new boat friend.  Surprise on St. Maarten. The beachfront tourist help guy, sporting long dreads, builds epoxy/carbon radio controlled power cats. Electric powered with LI batteries. Vacuum bagged. He had video of 125 mph. New boat friend.  I will get video.

I got back last night. I got a lot done during the time. The new Composite Multihull Construction Manual is done, less the Table of Contents. Pagemaker did a pretty good job of it last year on the CM Manual, but was usless for this book. I will have to do it the old fashioned way.

The CM Construction Manual is also updated and the pagination and other bits fixed, or so I think.

Getting them out is the trick.  With all the color pictures and hyperlinks, they are really best as PDFs instead of print.  But each book is about 180 mg at standard resolution.   A lower res lite version will be about 25 mg.  The best way might be for Matthew to put them up at a downloading website.  Already-builders could get the new books at a low cost.  Not-yet-builders would pay somewhat more, but that could be refunded from any future plans order.  I’m guessing there would be a passcode of some kind.

I also have the composite bridgedeck 45 cat materials spreadsheet updated with the help of Frank Fladerer.

And the plans set for the updated Trikala 19 is done except for labels on the pages.  I get a lot done when I’m not doing plans support.