One of the drawers in our kitchen
got jammed. It’s happened many
times before, when one of the knife
handles rises up from the cutlery
tray and jams against the framework
of the carcass. Sorting it out is a
simple matter of sliding a ruler into
the drawer, to press the upstart
back into its place. But this time,
that quick-fix didn’t work.
I poked a phone into the barely-
open drawer to snatch a photo of
whatever was going on inside, but
the situation looked absolutely
normal – or at least as normal as a
photograph of the inside of a closed
kitchen drawer ever can!
It was only when I dismantled
most of the unit that I discovered
the cause of the problem. It seems
that one of the kids – having failed
to open the drawer by the usual
gentle-pull-on-the-handle
technique – had resorted to brute
force. It’s a trick they’ve picked up
from my own mum, who sailed
through life leaving a trail of broken
tin openers, toasters and ironing
boards bobbing in her wake.
Anyway, this time, Child A had
tried so hard that the point of the
upstart knife had been driven right
through the cutlery tray and deep
into the back of the drawer.
In marine parlance, this would
only be what the MAIB might
describe as a ‘contributory factor’. Itmade matters worse, but it wasn’t
what had caused the problem in the
first place. The ‘primary cause’ was
a three-inch sliver of razor-sharp
stainless steel with a little handle on
one end, and something like a mini
corkscrew on the other.
It was a device for cutting carrots
into spirals. I’m told that it will work
on almost any firm fruit or
vegetable, which must make it
about a hundred times more useful.
But a hundred times zero is still
zero. The contraption is still utterly
useless. The only time it was ever
used for cutting anything into a
spiral was when one of the kids
wasted a carrot by proving that it
could, and the only noticeable
difference it has made to our lives is
when it successfully conspired with
a crop of non-functioning tin
openers and odd chopsticks to lift
the handle of a knife far enough to
jam the cutlery drawer shut.
So when, in the outer reaches of
the Boat Show, some silver-tongued
salesman tries to talk you into
buying a vegetable carving tool, a
left-handed screwdriver, a thing to
‘save you the trouble’ of tying knots,
or any other such useless gadget,
remember what happened inside
my cutlery drawer.
Junk in a kitchen drawer
is just annoying. On a boat, it’s
positively dangerous.TA K ING A
BEARING
MEL BARTLETT: Junk in charge
There are two types of radar
transmission, conventional pulse radar
and broadband radar. The former is the
traditional type that beams out an
electronic pulse at a staggering
162,000nm per second then ‘listens’ for
an echo and works out the distance and
likely size of the obstacle from the
timing and strength of the return.
The second type transmits a ‘CHIRP’
(Compressed High Intensity Radar
Pulse) that, instead of being a single
burst of energy, transmits signals over
a frequency range. The result is a far
more detailed and accurate depiction
of whatever it ‘sees’. It is particularly
useful at very short range where the
traditional type struggles to unscramble
the returning signal accurately, but it
lacks the sheer range of the former.
What Simrad has come up with on its
Halo radar is the first high-performance
solid state radar that incorporates
pulse compression technology designed
specifically for recreational boat owners.
Operating at a relatively low power 25W
(traditional radar is typically 6kW), it
produces detailed imagery down to
incredibly short ranges – down to 6m
with a 4ft open array scanner (often a
blind spot for traditional pulse radar).
Yet at the other end of the spectrum the
same scanner offers genuine 64nm
range. It also avoids the warm-up time
typically associated with pulse detection
radar – up and running from powered
off in about 20 seconds and instant
from standby mode.
To take full advantage of this, the
Simrad NSS Evo2 flatscreen display
can be split into dual ranges, allowing
both very close range detection and a
long-range overview simultaneously.
The increased definition and
advanced target separation allows a
few clever tricks to be offered. Up to tenseparate targets can be tracked
simultaneously (20 in dual range mode,
ten per screen) and there’s a bird flock
monitoring mode (very handy for
fishing). There’s even a rain tracking
mode so you can follow rain squalls in
your vicinity – I could have used that a
couple of times this year!
There’s also a ‘high speed’ mode
whereby you can kick the scanner
speed up to 48rpm for much faster
display updates, one of five modes to
choose from which cover most
situations, or you can programme your
own optimum set-up for fast retrieval.
I tried one on Lake Constance fitted
to a Galeon 325HTS. With no flock of
birds to track and fortunately no rain
squalls to avoid, at first it was hard to
see any great advantage over regular
radar while out on the lake. Where
the system came into its own was in
close quarters work – heading into the
River Rhein, the system gave a very
accurate account of the nearby land,
closely mirroring the chartplotter
display. The ability to pick up small
objects such as mooring buoys (and
even the boat’s wash at speed) was
also impressive. Under normal
conditions you probably wouldn’t see
much advantage, but at night or in thick
fog the extra short-range sensitivity
would be most welcome.
Contact http://www.simrad-yachting.comHalo – a fi rst for recreational boat ownersAll-seeing eye
Simrad promises the best of both radar worlds
You don’t want
things to spiral out
of control on a boat