Enhanced loran

If you thought loran was being phased out — and you won’t be alone thinking that — well, loran isn't leaving. It now has what seems to be a permanent backup role to GPS. But it won’t be the loran-C that, since about 1980, fishermen have relied on to return to a fishing spot or string of gear. This is an enhanced version, thus called e-loran; it is supposed to provide greater coverage and have an accuracy of 8 to 65 feet, as opposed to 0.25 to 1 nautical mile for loran-C.

GPS is a marvelous navigation tool, but it has a couple of big problems. It is susceptible to jamming and interference, and it appears that al-qaeda and other militia groups in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan took advantage of this weakness. In some cases, convoys were getting lost in the desert because GPS satellite signals were being jammed. Since loran is a land-based communication system it is not as susceptible to interference as a satellite system.

e-loran is not a 2008 concept. The idea has been around for a number of years; from 1999 to 2006, improvements —$160 million worth — were made to loran-C stations to make them suitable for a future e-loran.

Those improvements include upgrading existing transmitting equipment; positioning techniques similar to GPS; new channels for better position and time accuracy, and installing all-in-view equipment. The last feature means that e-loran is no longer a “chain” system, with a master and two secondary stations. E-loran will use however many stations are in range to arrive at a navigation fix.

Nineteen of the 24 loran-C stations have been modernized to transmit e-loran signals.

An administrative change coming with e-loran is that until 2009 the Coast Guard will remain the agency in charge, after that the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate will take over.

Probably because of the uncertainty surrounding loran’s future, manufacturers of loran equipment stopped developing products. So, instead of a number of e-loran products to compare, there are only two e-loran receivers available in the United States. 

One is Si-Tex’s e-Loran Integrated GPS/Loran Receiver Sensor, and the other is the eLGPS1110 integrated GPS/loran sensor from CrossRate, a company in Standish, Maine.

Even Si-Tex discontinued its loran products some five years ago, but because its parent company Koden was working with the government on an e-loran project, Si-Tex had a pretty good idea loran won’t be abandoned, and thus came up with its new receiver.

Lastly, if you want to continue using your loran-C receiver to get a fix, you can. You just won’t be able to take advantage of e-loran's accuracy and coverage improvements.

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Small boat stability changes

Now the Coast Guard requires all boats with a registered length of 79 feet and over to have stability tests. But today’s 79 feet may soon turn out to be 50 feet. (Registered length is calculated by going down from the main deck at amidships 85 percent of the hull’s depth. Strike a waterline there and then take 96 percent of the distance between the stem and stern for the registered length.)

The Coast Guard is looking to add amendments to its commercial fishing regulations. Among those amendments are requirements for stability testing for boats 50 feet and over. Safety training, safety equipment and examinations could also be covered by separate amendments.

Public comment on the issues is being accepted until July 29, 2008.

This is not the first time the Coast Guard has tried to require stability regulations for boats under 79 feet. It was attempted in 1992 but the idea was shelved in November 1996. Then in 1999 a report again called for stability regulations for boats over 50 feet.

The current public comment for bringing stability coverage down to 50 feet is only on the merits of the idea: Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? And why.

After July the Coast Guard will come up with specific recommendations to be included in the stability requirement, and then there will be another public comment period.

Based on past recommendations, it seems sure that boats 50 feet and over would be required to have an initial stability test; stability training would be required for boat owners and captains (It’s possible this particular regulation would cover boats 30 feet and longer); stability booklets would be updated every five years, and the Coast Guard would need to be notified prior to major alterations on a boat.

The above rules would be for existing boats and, of course, new boats. A boat owner with an existing boat will have to spent some time in training and stability tests, but probably not a lot of money, unless a boat is having major changes done and a naval architect has to be hired to do stability calculations.

Building a new boat might or might not be more involved and costly. If only intact stability calculations are part of the new regulation then that shouldn’t be a major deal. In fact, most commercial fishing boat designs being built today with any history behind them probably wouldn’t need to be altered.

However, if damage stability requirements are part of the package, it could be a different story. Damage stability refers to the loss of stability once water gets in the boat. Now a boatbuilder probably needs to add watertight compartments and bulkheads where before there was only a frame, partial bulkheadn or nothing at all. Depending on the boat's design, this could mean the rearrangement of below deck spaces.

You can submit comments via e-mail at www.regulations.gov; by mail to Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of Transportation, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20590; Fax: 202-493-2251. In all cases, use the identifying number USCG-2003-16158.

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Rule Number One

Rule Number One on going to a commercial fishing trade show is that no matter how many you have attended in the past and how much you don’t expect to find anything really different from the previous show, there’s bound to be several products that make the trip worthwhile.

Two examples from Fish Expo Atlantic, held April 9 and April 10 in Providence, Rhode Island: one is an older product from a company familiar to fishermen; the other is a new product from an outfit not familiar to most fishermen.

If you are in a fishery where knowing when you are over hard bottom and when you are over soft bottom is important and you stopped by the Simrad Fisheries booth, you would have seen the ES-60 echo sounder. Now, this is not a new machine, but one that has been available for a few years. It’s a good echo sounder and has proven very good at picking up fish that are close to the bottom. But this year, when Simrad matched the echo sounder up with the Olex 3-D bottom-charting system, the company realized it had a use for the ES-60 that wasn’t part of the original design when the sounder was introduced.

The ES-60 and Olex combination enables a fisherman to map out hard and soft bottom on Olex color charts. That discovery seems to have given Simrad a market with West Coast Dungeness crab fishermen who are looking for soft bottom to set their pots on. Simrad is working to sell the machines to Alaska crabbers, as well as to other fishermen who need to know where one type of bottom ends and another starts.

The unfamiliar name at Fish Expo was Prime Technology, which has Surite Marine Systems. Representatives of the company were walking the aisles, talking to fishermen and people in booths, looking for feedback on their latest product, the ShIP Series Shore Power Inlet Protector for 110- and 220-volt AC systems.

Surite Marine has been serving the recreational marine industry for about four decades, but the company figured that this is a product that the owner of a commercial fishing boat that ties up to a dock and uses shoreside power can take advantage of, just as well as a recreational boat owner might.

Start with the fact that a large number of dockside fires are electrical in nature and one of the most common points for a fire to start is where the power cord from the shore connects to the boat.

The plug end of the cord gets wet, which leads to corrosion. The corrosion causes heat to build up at the connection and that often leads to a fire.

The ShIP Series Shore Power Inlet Protector measures the heat buildup where the power cord connects to the boat and once the heat level reaches a certain point, shuts off the shore power and sets off an audible alarm.

On an entirely different subject, check out this rescue story. It's by the Coast Guard female rescue swimmer who was part of the team that saved four crewmen when the 97-foot clam dredger Capt. Joe sank off New Jersey March 12.

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Wheelhouse confusion

The things a fisherman requires in the wheelhouse to find fish and navigate used to be a fairly small collection of instruments: compass, radio, fish finder (usually just one), RDF, radar and paper chart. But that was before the age of the computer, the electronic wheelhouse and information overload.

These days a wheelhouse often looks like a showroom for computer monitors. A recently launched inshore lobster boat had eleven monitors in the wheelhouse.

The skipper of a big dragger or scalloper, even a lobsterman, can be going between radar, compass, electronic charts, sounder, AIS and sonar. Add to that displays keeping track of mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems, even batteries. Then throw in video displays of spaces such as the lazarette, engine room, and deck.

Monitors can be mounted in front of the helm, overhead, to the left, to the right, just about anywhere. Where the fisherman can get in trouble is navigating home, especially if he has to cross shipping lanes and keep track of commercial and recreational boats, as well as the closing land. With all the information displayed on those screens, it’s easy to become distracted or confused. In fact, excluding being drunk, falling asleep or mechanical breakdowns, the cause of most collisions with another boat or land is, I suspect, inattention or confusion on the part of the person in the wheelhouse.

Simply put, multiple displays make it difficult to understand how a navigating situation is developing. A piece of wheelhouse equipment that reduces the confusion is AIS-enhanced radar, which minimizes the number of displays the boat operator has to deal with.

Three layers of information, AIS, ARPA and radar images can all be put on a single screen. Being able to compare AIS and ARPA on one display gives you instant validation or confusion. If the two images match up, then you know that it is highly likely that what is there on the screen is what is out there on the water.

If the images don’t match up, it tells you something is wrong and you need to pay more attention to the developing situation.

And now and then it’s a good idea to look out the window, just in case there is a rock or small sailboat in front of you.

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Boat shows and old designs

I have never been a fan of boat shows. At boat shows, all the boats are pretty much the same: fiberglass and built for creature comfort, kind of a small apartment on the water. The need to have enough standing headroom in case Yao Ming visits and a king-size bed in the owner’s stateroom for who knows what — all on a 40 footer — pretty much negates the flowing lines of a boat you’d feel comfortable and safe in once she left the dock.

There is one exception to this boat-show cynicism, the Maine Boatbuilder’s Show held every March for the past 20 years at Portland Yacht Services. To start off with this is held in a funky old brick building that at one time was a locomotive railroad foundry: wooden beams and floors, weird angles, definitely not your aseptic trade show space.

Inside are canoes and rowboats, sailboats and powerboats, wood boats and fiberglass boats, new boats and restored boats, boats with maybe a seven-figure price and a down-and-dirty unpainted skiff for $600.

Scattered among the boatbuilders downstairs and taking up all of the upstairs’ area are marine vendors peddling a myriad of things including paint, tools, dock building services, electronics, wood, steering systems, engines, sails, magazines, jet drives, and knot work such as bell lanyards and sea-chest beckets.

Some of the boats at this year's show had a definite commercial fishing lineage. Richard Pulsifer brought one of his 22-foot, strip-planked Hamptons, a boat that goes back to early 1900s lobster boats used in Maine’s Casco Bay. A few boatbuilders away from Pulsifer was Nichols Boat Builder, whose owner, Richard Nichols, a Phippsburg, Maine, lobsterman, builds an 18-foot West Point skiff. The strip-planked, outboard-powered boat is from a design by the late Alton Wallace.

In another part of the building was the 35-foot Lindsay D. Built by Beals Island, Maine’s Harold Gower in 1953, the boat was completely rebuilt by Pendleton Yacht Yard on Maine’s Islesboro Island. After 5,000 hours of ripping, tearing and rebuilding, the keel and the stem are the only things remaining of the original.

The Lindsay D was rebuilt as a pleasure boat — though you can’t tell it from the outside — while retaining the hauler and davit, so the owner can haul a few traps.

Standing in front of the boats, what struck me— considering the price of today’s fuel — is how little effort it takes to move these fine-lined hulls through the water. A 35 footer built in the 1950s had no problem with a 150-hp gasoline engine. The Lindsay D currently has a 220-hp MerCruiser and burns about 8 gallons an hour, cruising at 14 miles per hour. Pulsifer’s boats take a 29-hp engine and burns half a gallon or less an hour.

Most of today’s fiberglass lobster boats seem to have surrendered fuel efficiency for the ability to pack a lot of traps. But considering how the price of fuel and bait is crippling lobstermen, a look back at some older designs that cut easily through the water, that don’t require large engines that suck down a lot of fuel, might prove to make economic sense.

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Boatbuilding tools

Neither Robert Steward’s “Boatbuilding Manual” nor Howard Chapelle’s “Boatbuilding” had a single listing for it. Another book, Walt Simmons’ “Pigeons and Gudgeons; An illustrated compendium of 1500 terms and phrases, parts and pieces, tips, tools, and colloquialisms associated with the business of boatbuilding,” failed to mention it once. Any book with a title that long — 24-words — carries with it a kind of last-word authoritative aura, so you’d think it would be somewhere among the more than 1,000 terms, tips, etc.
Nope.

Checked out the Web site of the Landing School in Arundel, Maine, which bills itself as “The Professionals’ School for Boatbuilding, Design & Systems.” Nothing there.

Walk into a Maine boatshop that builds commercial fishing boats and there’s an assortment of power tools and hand tools for woodworking and fiberglassing, some metal fabricating equipment, thin wooden patterns hanging on a wall, a couple of half models and the obligatory calendar with subject matter that has nothing to do with boats.

The boatbuilder will take those tools — minus the calendar — and fashion a boat that's as well built and is more seakindly than any thing you’ll get for the same amount of money from so-called luxury-yacht builders in states further down the Atlantic coast.

When the boat goes in the water, the builder and owner will marvel at how nicely she trims out. And after fiddling with the wheel, she might turn a knot of two faster than was hoped for as she screams by the boatshop’s dock, the sea-trial gang holding on for dear life while grinning like fools. An old timer from Down East Maine might even give her the ultimate compliment: “She’s a proud sailor.”

Then the owner takes the boat and steams off to his part of the coast. A reporter calls and wants a photo of the boat. “Don’t have one.” A fisherman calls, says he’s thinking about having a boat build and wants a picture to see how she sails. Same answer. “Don’t have one.”

Meanwhile, there may or may not be another boat to build. And the boatbuilder can’t figure out why people aren’t coming in to sign a boatbuilding contract.

Though boatbuilders think they have a tool for any situation, the tool, the “it” missing from their toolbox is a camera. “Tried it once but the photos didn’t come out,” is one boatbuilder’s explanation.

Here are wizards at crafting a boat’s curves and compound curves, understanding the properties of synthetic building materials and resins, lining up an engine with a prop that’s 25 feet away, installing a complicated hydraulic system, but they can’t master the simplicities of a digital camera. (Or, for that matter, hire a photographer to take the photos.)

They can build a boat but can’t market their skills past simple word-of-mouth advertising and maybe an ad in a trade publication. That worked years ago, but today is a marginal promotion plan at best.

A fisherman from out of state raved about the boat that was built for him at a Maine boatshop. Her looks and construction equaled anything the high-end builders where he lived had built for him — and the bill was a lot easier on his wallet. But did the builder have any photos of the boat to send to newspapers and magazines, or show prospective boat owners? Did he have any way to promote his product? Nope.

Photos of boats being built and running across the bay, along with nice detail shots showing off how she was put together aren’t the whole answer to keeping prospective boat owners coming to your shop, but it’s part of it. Just ask some of the Maine’s builders of recreational boats, like French & Webb, Hodgdon Yachts, Rockport Marine, and Brooklin Boat Yard, who long ago added cameras to their tool boxes.

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EPA focuses on rebuilt engines

If you are thinking of rebuilding an engine, all at once or over a period of time, you’d better pay attention to a two-part program being finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency. It will eventually require that an air-emission reduction kit be part of any engine-rebuilding project. The ruling will probably go into effect the first half of this year and apply to engines 800 horsepower and above.

In case you are wondering why this ruling is necessary, various states have told the EPA that emissions from marine engines could affect their ability to maintain air-quality goals. As for the horsepower level, the EPA determined that engines of 800 horsepower and above are the major contributors of nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions.

How many commercial boat owners will this impact? That’s hard to say, but as part of their background work for the proposed ruling, the EPA surveyed 400 inland towboats and found that 72 percent had engines 800 horsepower or greater.

The first part of the proposed engine-rebuilding ruling will require boat owners and engine shops to use a certified emission reduction kit if it is available when an engine is rebuilt.

A multi-level standard will probably be implemented. The example EPA gives is 60, 40 and 20 percent “with a requirement that a rebuilder must use a certified kit meeting the most stringent of these standards if available.”

So if neither a 60-percent nor a 40-percent air-emission reduction kit is available, then you can use the 20-percent model. If that’s not available, then nothing is required.

The second part of the program starts up in several years, 2013 is a year that has been mentioned. The major difference between the two programs is that the second one doesn’t offer any slack to the boat owner that can’t find an emission reduction kit for his engine. When you rebuild an engine, you will be required to use a certified air emission reduction kit. If such a kit doesn’t exist, and you can’t come up with emission reduction technology that reduces emissions by 25 percent, then forget about rebuilding the engine. You will buy — there’s no choice — a new engine that meets EPA emission requirements.

Where will you get these kits? I don’t know how many, if any engine manufacturers offer them for marine engines, though Cat doesn’t.

The EPA found that on the towboats with engines rated at 800 horsepower and above, 60 percent were derived from locomotive engines. There are emission kits available for locomotive engines as result of an air emission program that’s part of the Clean Air Act. Thus the EPA figures that marine engines with a locomotive lineage could take advantage of emission reduction kits for locomotives.

The other option is to get together with friends of an entrepreneurial focus and be the first ones to come up with an emission reduction kit for engines like those in your boat. Thus the EPA won’t throw you in jail for ignoring the ruling, and you can sell the things to your friends and make tons of money. Or so the theory goes.

 

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California Rules

Fishermen have a lot of things to worry about: the price of fuel and bait, Coast Guard regulations, keeping the crew happy, the weather, to name a few. Add to the list diesel air-emission standards, specifically standards due to go into effect in California. For make no mistake about it, whether you fish out of San Pedro, California; Eastport, Maine, or Panama City, Florida, what happens in California will catch up with you.

The California Air Resources Board, or CARB as it is better known, is requiring boats with engines that don’t meet Tier 1 federal air emission standards to be replaced with engines that meet current federal emission standards, starting with engine models for 1975 and earlier. Boat owners with the older engines have to start replacing them by December 31, 2009.

Currently, the ruling applies only to tugboats, ferries and excursion boats operating in California waters, but an EPA document suggests requirements for fishing boats will phase in from 2011 to 2018.

One effect of the ruling is to limit an engine’s life. Some workboat companies buy an engine with the idea of it having a 20 to 25-year life cycle. But under the engine replacement schedule that time frame may be greatly reduced. A boat with a diesel having a 2006 model year will have to replace it by December 31, 2021, as long as it is used more than 300 hours a year. That’s a 15-year life cycle.

Just because your boat never wets its hull in California waters doesn’t mean you won’t be affected by that state’s ruling. CARB figures that 600 boats with 1,900 propulsion and auxiliary engines will be subject to the regulation. Granted, not all those engines will be hauled off their engine mounts at the same time, but even so, the demand for new diesels will make an already tight new-engine market even tighter.

The effect of the CARB program on the availability of engines, “could be huge,” said one engine manufacturer’s representative.

Then there’s the question of CARB’s ruling being copied in other places. Following CARB’s regulatory lead is nothing new. As an example, engine manufacturers would see what CARB was requiring for truck-engine emissions and figure that would be what the EPA would be requiring in two years time.

That’s just a warning. Not only has the EPA taken note of CARB’s action, Texas and groups on the East Coast have been inquiring of CARB about its new program.

So, keeping track of air-emission standards — both those in existence and those to come — and how they might affect your operation seems like a good idea. (One engine manufacture has a full-time employee whose only job is to keep track of CARB’s intentions.) It would be a shame to rebuild an engine only to learn that was money wasted because the rebuild won’t meet air-emission standards and has to be replaced.

It would be even more unpleasant if you own several boats whose engines — you suddenly discover — have to be replaced at roughly the same time and then you learn that the delivery time for the engines has gone from nine months to eighteen months. Plus your finances are stretched thin and even if you could find the engines, the slots at the shipyard are booked up.

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Engine woes

It’s an interesting and perhaps frustrating time for anyone wanting to buy a new diesel. If you think a new engine is in your future, you’d better get organized. That’s because the market remains tight for many engine models. The delivery time for an EMD could be a year. And though a few Cat distributors think new engines might be more available than in the past year, the wait for some Caterpillar 3500 series diesels pushes up against two years.

As of the end of January, if you wanted an MTU 8V 2000 in the 900-hp range six slots were available for 2008. That means six engines. A month ago, eight slots were open. So you best get on the phone if you want MTU to pour a block for you in Germany this year.

The availability of marine engines is tightest in the higher horsepower ranges and not so bad for smaller engines. In part, smaller engines aren’t as difficult to come by because many are based on blocks that go into trucks and the truck market is weak.

The culprits remain a high demand for power generation and off-road equipment in China and Asia. Plus, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf of Mexico, its waters flooded engine storage areas for boatyards, engine distributors and workboat companies. When the waters receded, no one wanted to put any of those engines in their boats. So tug and towboat companies that thought they were staying ahead of the engine game by stockpiling engines in anticipation of building new boats found themselves back in the “I want an engine” line.

Still, workboat companies not in Katrina’s path have also been buying engines with the idea of putting them in a boat at some future time. If you are not at the front of your neighborhood engine distributor’s new-engine line, you might contact a tug or towboat company and offer to buy one of their engines. (Make sure you get the marine gear, because some of those are also in tight supply.) If it’s a year or so before construction is due to start on the boat that engine was scheduled to go into, the workboat company has enough time to get another engine, and you have the iron you need for your new boat or repowering job.

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A fisherman's ice capades

It’s that time of year again, and I don’t mean time to admit that, like the years before, your New Year’s resolutions to go to the gym three times a week, cut back on the booze and carbs are someone else’s dreams — not yours.

Nope, I mean it’s icing-down time. Not the stuff that goes in your drink, but the type that builds up on a boat’s superstructure and robs it of stability. If the ice isn’t removed, the rollover can happen real quick.

That’s what happened the night of Jan. 26, 2007, to the 75-foot dragger Lady of Grace. The previous day, the boat had reported icing problems. The boat was found in 36 feet of water 11 miles from Nantucket with the life raft still attached. No EPIRB signal was received. Four men died. Seas were reported to be 8 to 10 feet and winds blowing 30 to 35 miles per hour. This happened fast.

The same night the Lady of Grace went down, a Maine fisherman in his 42-foot longliner, 130 miles east of Gloucester, reported his stay wires were 10 inches in diameter from ice buildup.

Are there things that can be done to reduce a boat’s chances of icing down? Well, nothing is for certain at sea. But there are some general guidelines offered by Jerry Dzugan, director of the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association, or AMSEA.

• Stay out of it. That means do some careful trip and weather planning.

• Maneuver the boat so you aren’t going into head sea. That just sends freezing spray over most of the boat. It builds up especially quickly in the bow area, pushing the bow lower into the water.

• Stay farther out to sea. Icing generally happens after leaving warmer offshore waters and heading into port, where cold air coming off the land causes a rapid temperature drop on the water. Not only is it colder nearer land but also winds are stronger, which is going to send more spray and water against and on a boat.

• Slow down. This should be obvious.

• Knock ice off with baseball bats or bars when it forms.

• Keep survival equipment ice-free. Many boats that capsize in icing conditions are later found with the life raft still strapped down, probably because it was covered with ice. Dzugan says car polish applied to a life-raft canister will slow down the ice buildup. He also says that crabbers in Alaska put polypropylene tarps over the fishing gear. Polypropylene is slick, and ice has a hard time sticking to it. Plus, any movement of the tarp cause by wind breaks up ice.

• Don’t go out in it.

Heed some of these rules, and with luck, you’ll be there for a new round of resolutions in 2009.

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