40 Days and Counting

In all the years I've spent in Alaska I have never driven the Al-Can Highway.  This year it's time for a change.  No getting on an airplane in Bellingham and getting off in Anchorage.  No driving a boat up the "Inside Passage", although, it's a beautiful trip (except for the Gulf of Alaska part).  I'm going to drive a car all the way from Bellingham Washington to Homer Alaska, take pictures, meet people, then take the ferry to Kodiak.  Should be a fun experience.  The only uncertain part, at this time, is where am I going to spend the nights?  Camping out for the duration of the trip doesn't appeal to me.  Especially since I'm starting out the last week of February.  A little research on hotels and cafes should come in handy. LOL, I'm too old to sleep on the ground any more.  It's just not as soft as it used to be. More later.

Holy Cow! Somebody read my Nobeltec blog!

Of all the unexpected things, comments on my last blog entry.  I guess putting your thoughts online is a bit like having sex in a public place.  Sooner or later, someone is going to see you and say something.
Anonymous's comment made me go back and reread my last entry to make sure I was being accurate. Yep, it pretty much correctly describes the red night light function in vns 9.3, when your using vector charts.
I haven't called Joel Haney yet, (head of Nobeltec's quality assurance) but I did go buy the Nobeltec upgrade to version 10.7 ($350.00).  Once installed, all the vector charts I had purchased and updated no longer worked (why?).  I had to buy the Max-Pro charts unless I was willing to accept the inferior Raster charts which came with the upgrade, which I don't care about since I already own them all anyway.  (This is where the "cynical" part from my tag-line comes in) Why did I have to move from one chart company to another?  Who owns the first chart company and who owns Max-Pro?  Wait a minute, I think Boeing/Jeppesen owns Max-Pro, I mean C-Map.  I had previously paid for vector charts which were supposed to work with any and all versions of Nobeltec, so, no joy here.
And the most significant observation and /or question is: Why are we having to pay for an "upgrade" to fix an existing programing error/incompatibility in the nav system? So far I haven't seen anything significantly new in the 10.7 release to warrant the $350 dollars.
Here is an analogy which pretty much explains my annoyance with Nobeltec...  When Microsoft releases a new operating system they know there will be problems and issues.  When they learn about these issues they find the solution and send the fixes out for downloading but, they don't charge you to fix their programing mistakes.
I'm staying with Nobeltec for now, because of the significant investment in time and money over the years.  But I'm not happy about being used in this fashion.
Good value for the money you spend.  That's what its all about and I don't see much value for the money spent this time.

D@#n Nobeltec !!

Nobeltec navigational software:  I have been a faithful purchaser, regular updater, and user of this program since it first came out.  Oh, the money I've spent on almost every bell and whistle they have offered.  Then a few years ago the honeymoon ended.  I noticed when I went from twilight to evening mode, the red color they used wasn't very good.  It was too bright and not very scalable, so you couldn't really see outside effectively. It simply doesn't allow you to see anything outside the bridge windows unless you turn down the brightness of the monitor.  Then you can't view the nav program.  A true no win scenario.  Somewhere along this time-line Nobeltec came out with a new chart group called Vector charts.  Infinitely scalable with no pixilation.  There was one drawback I discovered after the fact.  You could not turn on the night view mode of the nav program, because it didn't support vector charts.  Vector charts only worked in day and twilight modes!  I travel around the clock and I travel from Washington State to the Bering Sea. So spending all this money for charts that are only good half the time was a real ripoff.  Last year Nobeltec came out with version 10 and everyone told us not to buy it as it was real "buggy".  Then I find out Nobeltec had been sold to The biggest Navigational software company in Europe, "MaxSea".  Rumors were rampant that Nobeltec wouldn't be around much longer.  I figured, this explains all the crumby updates and I'm wondering, what is going to happen? I call the new owners to get an answer.  Is the company going to close down and am I going to lose the thousands of dollars I've spent?  The new owners would not give me a satisfactory answer. They claimed, they didn't know what was going to happen.  Are you kidding me?  Time to start shopping for a new brand of nav software. Oh pooh!  There are many brands to choose from.  I have finally whittled it down to 2 of them.  Olex and ECC Globe.  Both of them start at about 5 or 6 thousand dollars for their "basic package" and top out at around 15 to 20 thousand for all the bells and whistles.  Whew, this just keeps getting better and better.  Now what do I do?  More to follow!

Better late than Never ?

The summer is over and I haven't done much of anything this year. Oh, I went cod jigging for a little while and enjoyed it, however, I wasn't able to really work. It is amazing what a simple act, like a tree falling over can do to your life. I guess I have to tell the whole story, so that it makes sense.  I was driving home one evening during a local windstorm, which we have all the time, when a big old dead tree fell on the truck I was driving. I went from about 35 mph to 0 mph, was thrown clear up completely off the road and dumped in a ditch.  I woke up laying on a stretcher with a young paramedic telling me I was the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. A trip to the emergency room, cat scans, MRI's,and a bunch of X rays.  They said they couldn't see any thing, so I was sent home to recover. Little by little, my back started to feel different.  I'd go numb in the left foot, then it would feel like someone had stuck a needle all the way down the leg.  Then my back started to hurt all the time.
Off to see a specialist, who had an MRI with dye done and showed me the results.  See right here Mr. Mann, your disc is torn and leaking.  I don't know how they didn't see this in the emergency room.  You have very few options at this point. You can do nothing and hope it heals on its own or you can operate and cut off the torn tissue and seal the disc.  Well, they ended up having to do that operation twice in two years.  I never did recover to the point where I felt I could really do my job, so I let the little maintenance things wait. Sanding , painting, that kind of stuff.  The engineering maintenance had to be done, but it took a long time with long breaks in between projects to let the back settle down. Well now we're at the end of the narrative.  I have just had spinal fusion, because there was no disc left between the vertebrae.  At this point the prognosis looks hopeful. If everything heals as it should and I'm able to rehab once the bone has set up.  I might just be able to fish again next year.  Any way, that's why I haven't been very good at keeping up with events.  I'll try to do better as time progresses.  Man, I am so lucky. That stupid tree would have killed me, had I been going 1/2 a mile an hour slower!

Man, it's cold outside!

I'm stuck in Anchorage, because the weather is just absolutely crappy in Kodiak.  No planes have been allowed in today.  Not even one.  It's not too bad here in Anchorage.  I'm trying to use my phone for this blog update, but so far I can't get it to work.  I have taken a few pictures, but of course I didn't bring my usb to phone connector with me, so I can't upload them to the blog.  I should be in Kodiak in the morning 3/9/2010 @ about 7:30 am if I'm lucky.  My good friend Thor Olsen is going to pick me up, so I'd better take him out for breakfast and catch up.  Here we go with another season and I'm not sure I'm up for this.

The little skiff that could and the brain dead bum who owns it.

Many years ago (1988), when I bought the Alchemist, I also bought a, new to me, power skiff. The size of the new skiff was about right for a 49 ft Delta, 16 ft long x 8 ft wide. The horsepower, alas, was woefully lacking. I limped along with the lack of towing power for a long time, well, until the engine blew up because of water in the fuel. It turns out I bought water for fuel one night at the tender. The young tender Captain turned the wrong valve. It seems he was more interested in boinking his girlfriend than he was in taking care of his fishing boats. Anyway, I got a new engine out of the deal, with a lot more horsepower. I then learned I needed to change the reduction gearing and the size of the propeller so that I could utilize the new horsepower. To do that I had to take the new engine out, cut the propeller shaft housing out, realign the shaft to allow for the bigger prop, glass a new shaft housing in, and rebuild the undercarriage to provide clearance for the bigger prop. When I finished all the upgrades, I was appalled at the amount of money I used to "fix" the skiff after the engine upgrade.
Wow! I couldn't believe how much towing power I now had. It was impressive to say the least. Screw how much money I had to spend, this was awesome! But I now had to be careful. If I towed too hard the stern sat down so far it didn't leave a lot of free-board. Rats, it's always something. Well, that's not as safe as I would have it, so this winter I raised the bulwarks of the skiff about a foot. Just like before, I now have a whole slew of modifications, expensive ones I might add, needed to bring the skiff up to speed with the new bulwarks. Sometimes I wish I could just leave things alone!

Bottom Trawling is a "dirty" fishery.

This actually happened last summer in Kodiak. A local dragger picked up about 40,000 lbs. of Tanner Crab in one tow off of Kodiak Island while he was dragging for "Flats". As much as the dragging industry would have us believe this is an isolated incident, it is not. Unfortunately it happens far too often. As much as I hate to say it, I think it is way past time we instituted full time observer coverage on all draggers operating in Alaska's waters. It is my understanding British Columbia has 100% observer coverage and this type of wanton waste very rarely occurs.