Captain’s log
Dateline: 26.08.2022

Fiber optic lights

Reached out to Lopolight regarding possibility of using fiber optics instead of copper. The main advantages should be weight reduction as well as ease of maintenance, especially of the masthead light. Less copper to carry lightning strikes down to my sailboat’s electronics, too.

They said they can’t help me with that project, that’s just not something they do. But was happy to learn that they’re all sailors and the name "Lo po" comes from “low power” — they specialize in lightweight and low-power lights for vessels. They did refer me to RSL Fiber Systems though, which seem to be specializing in proividing fiber optics-based lights for marine vessels, specifically US NAVY’s Zumwalt ships. Hooyah!

RSL have informed me that their illuminator (light source) costs $50K and weighs whopping 75 lbs — a bit of an overkill for any sailboat. But they’re working on a sub-$1000 model that’s about 6–9 months away, and if it’s small and light enough and doesn’t consume a whole lot of energy, could be what I’m looking for. Using the same light source for my spreader lights and underwater lights could make a significant difference in the amount of copper my boat will carry, as well as make thru-hulls for underwater lights much smaller.

This article states that,

Fiber cables are much thinner and lighter than copper wires. A fiber cable can weigh about four pounds per 1000 feet, compared to copper wires, which can weigh 39 pounds per 1000 ft. The lightweight fiber optics then require less space for functionality.

No idea if it’s accounting for two wires or just one, but pretty neat either way, 10 or 20 times lighter. I think it’s for two copper wires vs. one fiber cable, since it mentions “fiber cable” and “copper wires”. But ten times lighter, wow.

Fenders with titanium rings

I’m trying to have as little stainless steel on my boat as possible. Cleaning it is little to no fun, and even 316 tends to be generally weaker than grade 5 or even grade 2 titanium.

Called AERE Docking Solutions yesterday, they got back to me today confirming that rings on their fenders are stainless steel. It might be possible to either do a custom order for fenders with titanium rings, or buy the usual ones they sell, cut those rings off, and then replace with carabines of sorts from Allied Titanium. Getting something custom signed with "Curious Cat" might be better though, no way to steal those rings if they’re not detachable, and if the fenders are personalized, nobody will try to steal those as well (I think).

Captain’s log
Dateline: 03.09.2022

QR code

One of the ideas I’ve had since early on when I bought this catamaran is to have two QR codes slapped on the sides of Curious Cat instead of writing her name there. This way I could avoid a lot of questions about the vessel from seemingly friendly randos, so people could just find all the answers for themselves by pointing their favorite portable surveillance device at it.

Now I need to find a company that prints marine-grade vinyl stickers out of SVGs, but first need to generate that baby. Doing so locally could be done, but why torture your OS when you can just go online and generate one? qrd°by was one of the top search results, so I went with that service. The contents of my QR code is https://svcuriouscat.com. The error correction level I went with is M (up to 15% of the code can be damaged or covered with dirt). Q and H promise up to 25% and 30% respectively, but they seem to generate way smaller modules that may be harder to read from a far, and L is only 7% with the same exact module size as M... so M it is.

Of course when I saved that SVG to disk and opened in Inkscape, each module (black square) was a separate path, hence you could see teeny-tiny gaps between them — not Feng Shui. Since my boat is going to be even more white in color than she is currently, I removed the background level completely, and then selected all those black paths that represent the QR code, and then did Path → Union. Now the gaps are gone, and this QR code should look perfect when printed on vinyl and applied to the hull. Leveling shouldn’t be too hard as I have a rub rail there, and besides could also just measure distance from the waterline by hanging something off my lifeline — there are ways of not messing it up.