Bob Smith, of Ford Lehman fame, does a 2-day training
at some of the Trawler Fests. According to
www.trawlerfest.com, he will be in Stuart Florida the
3rd week of January. The format is limited to 15
students, and along with a full engine, Bob also
brings lots of broken parts to examine. In addition to
regular maintenance items, students adjust valvles,
remove and test injectors, remove/replace/time the
injection pump, bleed the fuel, and a whole raft of
other topics. Bob is active in the Marine Traders
Owner Association and frequently offers liberal advice
at MTOA events.

Some engine manufacturers do hold customer training
seminars. Some are better than others - some are
glorified sales events, others have a format where a
large audience remains mostly seated and watches a
mechanic work. Several posts placed a high value on
going to the engine manufacturers for training,
presumably to learn "your" engine. Honestly, I am not
so sure - I'd prefer good, hand-on training on a
Brand-X diesel than so-so training on my engine.

Alaska Diesel (Lugger/Northern Lights - Seattle area)
has occassionally offered training, often through a
boat manufacturer. Bob Senter has been training
professional mechanics and boat owners for over 20
years. He knows his stuff, but most importantly, knows
how to teach it. This would be a great option for
groups of owners of Krogens, Nordhavns, or other
production boats. Perhaps six or seven owners could
all chip-in and bring someone like Bob Senter to them
for a weekend.

Finally, a word about hiring a local mechanic. Yes,
the upside is you learn on your own engine. But unless
your mechanic has a lot of teaching experience, the
experience may be a little hollow. And its not cheap -
a decent mechanic in most urban areas charges $50-$80
per hour, with mechanics from engine manufacturers
topping $125/hour. A mechanic will expect that rate,
and remember - in a way, he's training his
replacement. Contrast that to Bob Smith's Trawler Fest
class which is around $350 for 2-days, lunch included.

I was surprised the list did not surface other,
specific options. I'd be very interested in first-hand
experience with training - please contact me off-list
with experiences.

Peter
www.SeaSkills.com

I like to plug the Seattle Maritime Academy when I can.  Look at:
http://seattlecentral.org/maritime/conted.php

Kim and I have had several good experiences there and will probably enroll
in an STCW training program in the next year.

Safe Studying.

Eric Thoman
Abyssinia

Twills,
All the talk about "diesel schools" is nice but the percentage to attend is minuscule
and you should really know some basics before attending. Call it prerequisites, but  Nigel Calder's book BOATOWNER'S MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL MANUAL is mandatory if you own a large boat.
In my seminars  I mention that if you have only two books on boats,  one  is Nigel's and the other is CHAPMAN'S

I used Nigel's today.

CCC
M/V CC RIDER
Charles C. Jr. and Pat Culotta
Patterson, La
http://www.geocities.com/charlesculotta/

I am and archaeologist working in Peru.  While I have been "lurking" on this site for some time now, I need some advice and I can't think of a better group for advice.

Here's my problem:  We have a field headquarters right on the beach on the Pacific shore of Peru.  To process and analyze all the information we get from our excavations, we have a bunch of computers.  Unfortunately, the humidity and salt air is deadly on the computers and they don't last more than a year at best.

Since the people on this list are out on boats all the time with on-board computers, I figured that you would know if there are good waterproof/salt proof laptop computers out there and which models might be better than others.

Any help?

Jonathan Haas

p.s. I'm a dreaming wannabe trawler owner at this point, but living on the beach in South America is a pretty good start.
Got holiday prints? See all the ways to get quality prints in your hands ASAP.

(SNIP) I am and archaeologist working in Peru.  While I have been "lurking"
on this site for some time now, I need some advice

There are two ways to go at the problem, either buy a "hardened" machine
(i.e. SONY) for $3K or simply plan on letting commodity units die gracefully
and buy 7 or 8 cheap machines for the same money. I'd opt for the latter
because it will also give you the discipline to refine your "backup"
process.

I've had a Toshiba Tecra 8100 and many ThinkPads over the years and I
usually keep my machines 4-5 years without problems on the trawler, but I
don't think it's as hostile an environment as a Peruvian beach.  The Toshiba
lasted 4 years before it went Tango Uniform, and the old ThinkPads are
bulletproof and still ticking.  I hope the Chinese can maintain IBM's
manufacturing standards.

As an experiment, I left an old 17" monitor bolted down on the bridge
without corrosion blocker and it lasted a year.

                                      Regards....

Phil Rosch
Old Harbor Consulting
M/V "Curmudgeon" MT44 TC
Currently lying Bond Creek, NC

Jonathan -

I'm a wannabe cruiser too.  Still saving my pennies before we plan to
leave in about 2 years.

I work for a government contractor and we build computers and software
for the US Marine Corps.  Marines can be one of the toughest bunch on
computers, therefore, we have to deal with very harsh environments.
The old saying goes...if you give a Marine two ball bearings and come
back in 5 minutes, one will be broken.

We have started using a tablet computer built by DRS Technologies
(http://www.drs.com)(formerly Walkabout Computers
(http://www.walkabout-comp.com)).  The MRT is a militarized computer,
while the XRT is the commercial unit.  These computers are very tough.
We even threw one in a swimming pool and let it run underwater at about
15ft depth for 30 minutes before retrieving it and it still worked just
fine.  BTW, the Panasonic folks, got really scared when we told them
that and made us promise not to do that to their Toughbook computer.

If you are not interested in a tablet computer, then I would recommend
that you look for computers that are built and tested to the
MIL-STD-810 standard.  This standard documents all of the environmental
testing required for militarized hardware.  Probably overkill as you
probably don't care some things (like survivability after a nuclear
blast), but you'll know it was very well tested.

Feel free to contact me if you want any further info...

Greg...
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com

If they can survive EMP, does that mean they can survive lightning?

Ron Rogers

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Bradley" g_bradley@yahoo.com
|
| If you are not interested in a tablet computer, then I would recommend
| that you look for computers that are built and tested to the
| MIL-STD-810 standard.  This standard documents all of the environmental
| testing required for militarized hardware.  Probably overkill as you
| probably don't care some things (like survivability after a nuclear
| blast), but you'll know it was very well tested.

(SNIP) If you are not interested in a tablet computer, then I would
recommend
that you look for computers that are built and tested to the
MIL-STD-810 standard.  This standard documents all of the environmental
testing required for militarized hardware.

Greg, what to those babies cost compared to the average $400 DELL?

                                      Regards....

Phil Rosch
Old Harbor Consulting
M/V "Curmudgeon" MT44 TC
Currently lying Bond Creek, NC