IBEX, Weather, Holidays

Well, we had a couple factors cut into Westsail build time this month. Mostly not so bad. IBEX As mentioned in the previous posts, we attended this year's IBEX in Miami Beach. There is LOTS of cool stuff coming to the marine market in the next couple years. Particularly in the NMEA2000 and distributed power systems area. AirPax ED&D had a pretty good live demo display. Look for cool stuff from Paneltronics, Carling/Moritz and Maretron. We didn't see much on the Diesel-Electric front. Though Ossa-Powerlight was there with some of their electric motors on display. They held a seminar describing (pushing) their products which I attended. Their approach is a FULLY INTEGRATED electrical system that serves other devices, not just the propulsion motor. The idea is that you would have instant-on power with their super quiet generator whenever the windlass, bow thruster, propulsion motor or inverted AC loads. No need to fuss and watch battery charge levels or decide when to turn on the generator. It is all done automatically. While I like the idea, I dont think this would suit a cruising boat as things are TOO INTEGRATED. I would hate to have all devices fail because one critical component in the system goes down. Thanksgiving We had relatives come visit for thanksgiving. The week before we were getting the house ready for new carpet. Weather Well, many western Washington cities broke their record for total rainfall in November. A number of rivers broke their banks a couple weeks into November. On top of that, we got 4-6 inches of snow a couple days after thanksgiving. It stayed around the rest of the week. It was too cold to do anything with resin. Even in the garage with a small heater. But we did get a few things done on the boat....