Boating Resources
provided by Steve D'Antonio Marine Consulting, Inc.
Below you will find excerpts from Steve D’ Antonio’s “Marine Systems Excellence” blog. With nearly 25 years of experience as a marine mechanic, electrician, consultant and boatyard manager, Steve ranks as one of the most knowledgeable boating experts in the country. His ability to explain highly technical information on a wide array of boating topics in a clear, easy to read and easy to use manner has made him one of the most widely read boating writers and lecturers today. Steve's commitment is to strive to improve the safety and reliability of boating products while increasing the confidence and enjoyment of boat owners. In short, Steve strives to help bring the fun back to searching for, building, maintaining, repairing and owning a boat. Links to Steve’s website can be found below.
Taiwan Logbook
by Steve D'Antonio
May 15, 2012
There's no question that a significant number of new and used recreational vessels plying the world’s waters today are manufactured outside of the U.S., many in Asia. That leads to a question I hear repeatedly from clients buying new and used boats or from participants in my workshops and lectures, "Steve, what do you think about the quality of boats manufactured in Asia?"
The answer, for me is clearly, "It varies", which isn't very helpful and can be said about boat builders in the US, Europe, Australia and South Africa. A more appropriate question might be, "Steve, what do you think about the quality of boats manufactured by XYZ Yachts”, and it doesn’t matter where they are geographically located.
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A Pilot's Perspective: Running in Reduced Visibility
by Bill Band
May 1, 2012
Being underway when you can’t see is one of the more stressful aspects of boating. You can be sure that professional mariners feel no differently when they find themselves in fog, rain or snow. It can be downright scary. Some of that anxiety can be ameliorated if you are educated in the proper use of radar, and have a voyage plan that directs your actions at such times. The simplest and safest approach is to sit at the dock until weather conditions improve. You may be a late arrival at your destination, but you will arrive intact.
With today's electronic chart capability making navigation so much easier, the likely inclination is to go. Electronic charts can be a siren's call to trouble or, if used properly, an asset in avoiding a collision with commercial traffic. If you have the sea room, giving shipping channels a wide berth is a good idea. On Chesapeake Bay, the ships like to run in the deep water on the eastern side of the Bay. This does not mean that all ships will be over there, but there will be less ship traffic elsewhere. On Chesapeake Bay, you are certain to find tugboat traffic west of the deep water.
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An Introduction to the World of Marine Inspections
by Katie D'Antonio
April 15, 2012
As we left Port Townsend and headed for Anacortes, my nerves began to stir. I felt the excitement of a new project but the nervousness of the unknown. Vessel inspections were something I had never thought I would be partaking in, even though my father made it his life’s work, and I had been around boats all my life (it is hard not to be while growing up near the Chesapeake Bay, where boating is a way of life). I had done a short stint in sailing lessons, gone out on the water with many friends, toured many marina docks (which I seemed to have a personal affinity for falling off), and I had attended a high school that had an entire curriculum based on the thesis statement, “great journeys begin at the river.” While these attributes made a good foundation to being a boat enthusiast, I had never really entered the world of boating, until now.
Up until my new job at my father’s company, I had been absent-minded toward boating; I never thought to pay attention to the details or the small things. The closest I had come to these small details, let alone an actual inspection, was watching countless slide shows of technical photos, calling out “bad” to the photos that seemed to be wrong, or saying “good” to the ones that looked right (even back then my father said I had a natural ability to identify technical right from technical wrong). With a range of thoughts and memories swirling around, punctuated by the beauty of the sights passing by during the drive to Anacortes, including and especially Deception Pass, with its rocky waters surrounded by verdant evergreens and thick foliage set against a backdrop of snow-covered mountain tops shooting up through the puffy white clouds, we finally arrived at the marina to get a quick look at the subject boat. I could not help but think, "She looks both ominous and beautiful."
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Seaworthy, Reliable, and Safe
by Steve D'Antonio
April 1, 2012
Seaworthy, reliable and safe; it’s an ethos I learned nearly three decades ago, while sailing aboard the research vessel Westward, on a fall passage between Woods Hole and the Windward Islands. She was a simple but stout ship, a 120 foot steel schooner built by the legendary firm Abeking and Rasmussen in Germany in 1961. Her engineering spaces had a rugged, commercial feel about them. All of her systems were fastidiously maintained; everything had a purpose and everything had its place. The result was few breakdowns and no systems-related emergencies during my time aboard. For seagoing vessels, my goal is to ensure that systems failures and especially systems-related emergencies are something with which you assist other vessels and crews.
In the ensuing years, I've honed and refined this concept into a mantra that I routinely recite in the boat build and during systems consulting, as well as the writing and lecture projects I undertake on a daily basis. There's more to it, however, than you might think. Taken piecemeal, their significance, while important, has an entirely different meaning than when taken as a whole. The definition of seaworthy is plain enough: worthy of the sea, fit for a voyage at sea, able to go to sea and, importantly, return to port. "Reliable" is also plain enough, and in this context it means that a system or component can be relied upon to perform as one would expect without premature failure (the definition of "premature" has a significance all its own). Vessels and their systems must, of course, be properly maintained in order to remain reliable.
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