Log of SV Wendaway

Original service tag on Canadian navy jet engine

Canwest Newspapers (Canadian) carried a story today about Halifax, Canada  resident John Wilson, who discovered a big of a historical treasure inside an old cargo container:  a jet engine that had come out of a Canadian Navy warship.

HALIFAX — John Wilson never dreamt there might be anything of value inside the old cargo container he picked up for $400 at a Nova Scotia junk yard in 1998.

So when he finally opened it a decade later, he was astonished to find a fully refurbished gas turbine engine, that once powered the naval destroyer HMCS Athabaskan.

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SolMate leaving Isla Isabel

Early December 31, we sailed out of Mazatlan harbour for the 18 hour crossing south to Isla Isabel, a bird sanctuary 20 miles off the Mexican mainland coast. Weather reports had predicted NW winds of 10 to 15 knots (a good sailing breeze) but hadn’t said anything about the 3 to 4 foot sea swells. I was anxious. If the wind picked up to 20 or more, these rolly but benign swells could turn into unfriendly, aggressive waves. Mark was trying to convince me (and himself!) that these are just the kind of conditions sailors want. Continue Reading »

Voller RV fuel cell

This is something that sounds great:  the Voller Emerald fuel cell. Here’s the bumf from the Voller website:

Emerald runs from LPG, propane or butane (bbq gas) and provides the functional equivalent of a 5kVA petrol or diesel generator. This product is aimed at the leisure, construction, telecoms and military industries. It is ideal for powering the 12V or 24V circuits on board boats and in Recreational Vehicles and caravans, by using the cooking gas already on board. The advantages of having a quiet generator producing power on board are invaluable. There are, of course, many other applications a product such as this can be used for. Continue Reading »

Flettner spray ship © J. MacNeill 2006

Like the old ghost ships of bygone days, British engineers and scientists are proposing a vast fleet of unmanned ships that might help reduce the impacts of man-made global warming.

They conjure up a haunting image of mechanical climate canaries.

According to the authors of the report, the ships will be powered by an early twentieth-century technology that uses tall, rotating cylinders instead of sails. When the wind blows across the rotors, the ship moves ahead and sucks water into turbines, which then spray seawater into the air. All this done silently as they cruise on courses set by scientists from far away Continue Reading »