Thursday, October 18, 2007

The S/V Sean Seamour III - The Green Boat


Well my good friend Jean Pierre deLutz the Master of the S/V Sean Seamour II, which ran into trouble and sank during Subtropical Storm Andrea has built another sailer. Can't seem to keep a good sail boat captain down for long.

We are still investigating the EPIRB malfunction.

By the way Jean, where did you put the "pitch pole roll-bar?" :-)

As Jean writes;

The Green Boat adventure

"After the loss of our Sean Seamour II between Cape Hatteras and Bermuda on May 7th 2007 see (Final Log), I was in quandary to define what Sean Seamour III should be.

My wife Mayke had long insisted that we should have a silent boat (no diesel engine to smell or hear) and a catamaran for it offers a stable platform. I had long insisted that we would never have a boat that could not right itself from a 180°. After May 7th, a Catamaran was longer a debate, but silent clean propulsion remained both her desire and my curiosity.

Living on the Mediterranean where wind is either overly abundant or non existent (sailing to Corsica is often motoring there), we opted for a Nauticat 33 motorsailor. A stable platform with a deep keel, decent sailing performance with its extended ketch rig, foremost, a great platform to experiment its transformation into a diesel-electric hybrid as a first step before, we hope a fuel cell electric drive. Through this blog we would like to share our ideas, trials and tribulations, as well as create an interactive repository of knowledge and references on the state of the art and where it may be going. Please don't hesitate to share and contribute, we are all breaking ground.

In the months ahead we will be looking at all the facets of going green. This means breaking down the technology blocks constitutive of a green system, looking at who and what is present and or emerging. We will study the performance and suitability for our project. We are also keeping a sharp eye on new technologies in related areas in an effort to see when and if technology migration, or perhaps we should use the term crossover, may come to benefit green boat adventures where ever they may be.

We hope players from all horizons will come and join our adventure, manufacturers and inventors, system integrators and installers, yards, craftsmen and mariners like us."

Note

We have been advise that the USCG Rescue crew will be decorated for this rescue shortly. The USCG story is posted here, Summary of Action for CG6014 for the S/V SEAN SEAMOUR II- REDUX - Plus, just an amazing rescue story.

I think we can all say congratulations to USCG LCDR Nevada Smith and his crew for a job very well done.

Weather Story UPDATE

A line of sereve thunderstorms crossed southern Illinois around 3 AM. The line delivered winds recorded up to 65 to 70 MPHs and up to 3 inches of rain. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center reports about a dozen twisters had been reported by late Wednesday evening among the more than 138 reports of severe weather. Missouri State Highway Patrol reports two people are dead after a tornado tore apart a mobile home in rural Monroe County.

The threat of tornado's and even micro-bursts extends into today, Thursday, October 18, 2007.

In other Weather News from
Arthur Rabjohn;
:
GREECE: Wet weather warning sent
Authorities from around the country have been placed on alert for possible floods, particularly in the parts of southern and central Greece hit by devastating fires over the summer, with wet weather expected to start as of Friday. The National Meteorological Service (EMY) informed fire authorities and the Secretariat for Civil Protection about the deteriorating weather conditions. “From Friday afternoon until the middle of next week, we are expecting heavy rainfall across all of Greece,” said the head of EMY, Dimitris Ziakopoulos. Despite the low rainfall in the first half of October, firefighters were called to handle 42 calls of flooding across Greece, mainly in the Attica area. Fire authorities said all regional heads have been called to map out local possible danger points for flash floods in their district and to set up teams that will be on 24-hour standby.

INDONESIA: Fears of an imminent eruption prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents near Indonesia's Mount Kelud on Wednesday, but many flouted the order stayed at their homes around the Javanese volcano. The alert on the volcano, one of Indonesia's deadliest and located 90 km southwest of its second-largest city, Surabaya, was raised to maximum late on Tuesday, meaning it could erupt within 24 hours. Source: Reuters AlertNet

BANGLADESH: A powerful storm swept through southern Bangladesh killing at least 18 people in mudslides and house collapses and injuring 100, officials said on Tuesday. At least 20 fishing boats sank in the Bay of Bengal and at least 50 of their crew were still missing, fishing community leaders said. Source: Alertnet

RUSSIA: Volcano Bezymianny in Russia is erupting with SWVRC alert level 2. The GDACS alert level is Green.

SOUTH PACIFIC: A magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit deep under the South Pacific seabed between Fiji and New Zealand Wednesday. There were no reports of injury or damage.

USA: A magnitude 4.2 earthquake hit California's San Bernardino County early Tuesday, sending shudders across the region, authorities said.


RS

Robin Storm previous s/v Sean Seamour II posts:

Summary of Action for CG6014 for the S/V SEAN SEAMOUR II- REDUX - Plus
WebExclusive EPIRBs and the s/v Sean Seamour II - Part III

WebExclusive EPIRBs and the s/v Sean Seamour II - Part II
EPIRBs and the s/v Sean Seamour II
NHC Report on Subtropical Storm Andrea
Cheating Death On The High Seas
The s/v Sean Seamour II & The Hatteras Trench
High Sea's Update On Sean Seamour II
The Story of the Sailing Vessel Sean Seamour II

gCaptain previous s/v Sean Seamour II posts:
gCaptain Exclusive - Sailing in Severe Weather
Lessons Learned

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