Pelaginox Information

This site is intended to be a marine technical and leisure resource for sailboat users and builders.

I have recently returned from several years of cruising, and am in the process of expanding the site with more marine tech data sheets, together with many technical articles written either for magazines or as the basis for future books. There are some general cruising and humour pieces as well. In total, there are more than a hundred articles – many more if they were all to be finished, edited, and exported to html – but they can't be listed here until they have been published, and then with the agreement of the publisher. Some of the articles are listed in the 'public' section of the site; the rest will gradually, with luck, be included after publication (or rejection).

In some cases these pieces are far too long or specialised to feature in a magazine; they are engineer's, boatbuilder's, and advanced DIY guides that cannot really appeal to a wider audience. For example, see the steel boatbuilding guide to ballasting, in the Tech section. This might feature as part of a book in the future - you never know - but one has to realise it's far too 'techie' for magazine use.

It has not possible in the past to locate a single online source for the many formulae and conversions used in the small-boat world, from hull calcs to HF Radio data to diesel consumption figures; and this site, with its Data Sheets – and now the marine computing section – intends to resolve that problem. More of this type of information will be added as and when possible; contributions will be gratefully accepted. I would be interested to know what sort of facts and figures people need – though perhaps only the trade are interested in this sort of thing.

Whenever I have needed a formula for something – how much PU 2-pack paint to buy for a boat's topsides, or which taper I'm looking at on a propshaft end, perhaps – it's always been a question of digging out the reference books, or the scruffy notebooks, or shouting across the yard to Fred; who'll probably give me the wrong answer anyway. This fixes it for me, and has of course been set up for my use in the first place. It should help you out too, with luck. There are now some useful file downloads as well – the sort of thing people are always asking for on the forums.

There is a huge volume of marine technical data contained in various papers here awaiting the light of day (from sledge-mounting a marine diesel, to modern HF wefax set-ups and troubleshooting, to modern shorthanded navigation, to marine PC use, to current shorthanded radar best practice).

While long-term cruising, two groups of people stood out because of their numbers compared to those encountered at home (among the usual groups of club and marina-based sailors that is): the musicians and laptop users aboard passagemaking boats. Probably, voyagers are only a tiny percentage of the total number of boat owners; but it's fascinating to see where their interests lie. Musicians, we try to cater for in the Shanty section; though it is always sad to see how many do not have the vaguest idea that sea shanties were a foundation of both working and social life afloat, and are of course still of interest to rag and stick sailors, even if not to stinkboat pilots.

PC users are easier to help: marine computing, and especially leisure boat application, is still in its infancy; it's just you, me, and the other 'early adopters' out there so far. Efficient PC use afloat sometimes contrasts with best practice ashore. More and more people find more and more uses for a laptop onboard every day: hooking them up to GPS for eNav, wefax, emails, WiFi LAN connection, recipe swaps on floppy discs – the list is endless. Help for PC owners afloat will be a main feature here.

I am a practising engineer and long-distance single handed sailor with a progressive outlook. The single most obvious aspect of establishment thinking in terms of the use of technology afloat, from my viewpoint, is that it is always ten years or so behind the times. You can see this clearly in the RYA syllabus, for instance, where optimum GPS use afloat is still ten years away. In 2016, I predict, chartplotters and laptops will feature...

This safe but restricted outlook tends to predominate in the UK, the most conservative place on earth. There is unlimited scope, therefore, for the presentation of modern solutions to old problems, and naturally a little gentle tickling of old-fashioned attitudes; but a progressive can hardly hope to be accepted into the mainstream here. Ho-hum, that's Britain.

Hope you find the info on the site useful. The site name, by the way, is a combination of pelagic – of, pertaining to, living in or on the ocean; and inox – stainless, on most of the European continent, from acier inoxydable (Fr). I like using stainless on my steel boat; it's satisfying to weld, and the results both last at sea and look good. It works.

Chris Price

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