New Orleans seafood gumbo

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We prepared New Orleans seafood gumbo for our Brazilian friends Marcello and Moira from SARAVA, Isabelle and Bob from BICHO and Paula from PAJE’. We were all missing Mario from PAJE’.

RECIPE FOR NEW ORLEANS SEAFOOD GUMBO — Dorothy Darden, s/v ADAGIO Serves 6 people

Ingredients:

20 ounces Okra — frozen or fresh, sliced thin. (We prefer fresh)

5 medium brown onions, diced

Canola oil

1 Ham hock, medium to large

Bay leaf

3 cloves fresh Garlic, peeled and smashed

4-6 whole Cloves

4 T Crab boil in cloth bag

Creole seasoning

Tabasco sauce

Salt

Ground black Pepper

1 small can tomato sauce or 1/2 can tomato paste

2 pounds frozen raw peeled Shrimp/Prawns

1/2 pound fresh or frozen Scallops (optional)

1/2 pound fresh picked Crab meat (If you can get it, otherwise it is optional)

Boiled white rice (We like Basmati rice with this)

Instructions:

Day 1 – Cut Okra into very small slices. Saute’ the okra and diced onions in a few tablespoons of Canola Oil in a large Teflon frying pan or Wok. Cook at very low heat, stirring frequently to prevent sticking until very brown, and well-cooked. This takes about 5 or 6 hours. Cool, then put the Okra and onions through a sieve or into a Blender or Food processor to puree’. Put into the refrigerator.

Day 2 – Put 8 cups of water into a large pot. Add to pot: Ham hock, garlic cloves, whole cloves and bay leaf . Simmer for about 6 to 8 hours on very low heat. Cool, then pour everything else into a colander, letting the broth strain into a large bowl. Take the meat off of the bone and discard everything else. Cut the meat into small pieces, and set aside 1 cup for the Gumbo. Put the broth and meat into the refrigerator over night. In the morning scrape the fat off of the top of the broth and discard the fat.

Day 3 – Put the ham broth and the okra/onion mixture into a large pot and simmer for 6 to 8 hours, on low heat, stirring frequently to keep from sticking and adding small amounts of water from time to time to keep the mixture from becoming too thick. At this point you have made the Gumbo Base. You can proceed to the Final Preparations step below, or you can store the Gumbo Base in the refrigerator for a few days, or in the freezer for a few weeks or months.

Final Preparations – Add to the Gumbo Base: tomato sauce or paste, the small pieces of cooked ham meat, 4 T crab boil secured in a gauze or fabric pouch so that only the flavors get into the broth. Be sure you don’t let the bits of crab boil get into the mixture. Simmer. Add salt and black pepper to taste. Season with a few sprinkles of creole seasoning and a few drops of Tabasco sauce, until it tastes the way you like it. About 15 minutes before serving, add prawns and scallops and cook until just done. Serve in flat bowls over freshly boiled Basmati rice, and sprinkled with fresh crab meat. Enjoy with a large green tossed salad.

Hall Spars standing rigging replacement

We’re anchored just inside the entrance of the river to Whangarei, having just finished replacing our Dyform standing rigging with truly excellent service from Hall Spars at our berth in Gulf Harbour Marina. Hall Spars also cracked-tested our eight Nitronic rod diamond stays, declaring all good to go. Garry Hassall’s Matrix Mast built Adagio’s rig and forebeam assembly in 1999 to a very high (mega-yacht) standard. Over the ten years since our 2000 launch, and more than 70,000 cruising miles, we are happy to have had no worries or problems with our Matrix Mast rig. So for us, it is clear why Hall Spars would be interested in acquiring Matrix Mast.

We had a close look at the new Hall Spars carbon boom furler under construction in the factory. The design looks to be a class leader: strong, simple and light. The elegant engineering was developed by Matrix Mast — my pure speculation is that this product probably contributed to the interest of Hall Spars in the acquisition — as an indicator of future innovations that will likely emerge from the New Zealand rig factory.

So if you are pausing in New Zealand on your way West, check out Hall Spars for rig redo or replacement.

Is the Panda genset nightmare concluding?

Yesterday we completed a successful 3 hour 70% to 90% load test of the rebuilt Panda genset. We’ve invested well over 100 hours of our own labor to the project, plus what will probably add up to nearly NZ$10,000 in vendor invoices.

Possibly the Panda nightmare will be over soon. The Kubota 3-cylinder 18HP diesel engine continues to wobble speedwise at light loads, but smoothes out once the load increases above 50%. We have new rings and valve seats to wear in, but it isn’t clear why that would have anything to do with varying engine speed (this RPM warbling happens with Panda voltage control system (VCS) disconnected).

Yesterday I stripped all the sagging, disintegrating sound foam from the Panda sound shells. 90% of the foam just fell away as the contact cement had no hold on the foam. 100% of the lead sheet lining the capsule fell off — there was zero effective adhesion of the contact cement. Now we need to decide whether we will attempt to bond the lead sheet correctly. We paid a large premium for the “4D” sound capsule so we are reluctant to just throw all of it overboard. It was very quiet, even while it was falling apart. We have the Panda sound capsule mounted inside of a dedicated machinery room that is also heavily sound insulated, so it is hard to know whether the increase in radiated sound would make any real difference to us. But if we bond the new sound foam directly to the FRP capsule shells (and don’t like the higher noise levels) then it will be a very big job to start over restoring the lead sheet.

Panda 10kw generator failure

The following is a softened summary of the bad Panda genset news. The good news is that the customer service and support of our supplier in New Zealand has been absolutely first-rate — that is Enertec Power Solutions. Enertec also supplied all of our Mastervolt chargers, DC-DC converters and 230V inverter. Because we have had problems every year over the past ten years with our Panda 10kW genset, we have emailed or phoned dozens of inquiries to Enertec, who have always supplied prompt, expert, relevant support and guidance — especially from Colin Pawson and Maladen Bartolec. From them we have compiled a trouble-shooting guide that usually helps us fix the Panda beast ourselves — in remote locations of course.

That was the good news. For two months we’ve been immersed in dealing with the catastrophic failure of our Fischer Panda generator. There is a serious design fault in our Panda, which appears to be present in both the smaller and larger Panda models owned by other yachts we know.

In particular, our asynchronous alternator housing has the windings harness exiting very near the bottom of the casing. To my astonishment there are no water tight seals, not even a basic $2 gland – just a roughly 50mm hole in the aluminium casting. Therefore, any significant seawater leak in the genset plumbing can fill the sound shield to a level where the seawater enters the alternator casing and infiltrates the windings. In our case in less than 5 minutes that seawater flood fatally damaged the alternator winding insulation.

Our flooding and alternator damage was caused by the complete failure of the Panda-supplied GEM hose clamp securing the heat exchanger seawater-out hose barb. The GEM hose clamp sheared across it’s width. Worse, none of the Panda hose barbs were double-clamped as they should be. Most of the Panda-designed hose barbs are so short that it is nearly impossible to double clamp safely.

Given the very real probability of seawater faults it is very clear that the alternator must be protected from seawater damage. Similarly, there is a serious fire risk for any seawater leak which results in spray falling on any unprotected wiring or terminations. So not only the alternator requires at least IP-66 protection, so does all of the wiring vulnerable to seawater faults. And obviously, all of the seawater hose connections require double hose clamps of highest quality. We have replaced all the Panda hose clamps with double ABA all 316 clamps. Similarly the exhaust hose barbs are secured with Mikalor all 316 stainless T-bolt exhaust hose clamps.

Though the catastrophic failure is entirely the fault of Fischer Panda, they take no responsibility, and want NZ$ 7,000 just to deliver a replacement alternator assembly (no labour, just the destroyed part — so realistically to fix Fischer Panda’s gross design problem would have cost us a minimum of NZ$10,000 using Panda parts). Our only other official Panda option is to buy a new genset for NZ$ 23,000 + deinstallation and reinstallation costs. So we had no practical alternative other than to send the alternator off for rewinding, and the Kubota three cylinder diesel off for new rings, valve lapping and other upgrades that we hope will help the diesel perform through the 7,000 hour mark.

This is not intended to be a thorough review of the Fischer Panda marine generator. That would require many more pages and more time than I have. If you are buying a generator (or a boat with a generator) you do not want a Fischer Panda UNLESS you absolutely must have a physically small, lightweight generator. If you have the space for a larger generator and can afford, per kW, close to double the weight of the Panda, you will be far happier with a reliable, old-fashioned generator such as the 1500 RPM Northern Lights. It is a heavy monster, but very simple and far less likely to fail.

3M Safety-Walk Tread: excellence in customer service

On 16 February we emailed 3M New Zealand with our problem report of the adhesion problem we experienced with the new clear non-skid. Two days later we heard back from Auckland-based Carolyn Parris, Senior Technical Specialist. Carolyn took on our problem as her own, following it through the 3M customer service channels through successful resolution. It became clear that the adhesive failure was due to a rare defective batch (that’s not proven but we think is the most likely explanation).

After consulting with 3M engineering, Carolyn recommended replacement of the clear product with the black version 3M Safety-Walk Tread (just to be sure we had all weapons deployed in the battle against UV damage). Carolyn then arranged for Brent Dobbe at Anti-Slip Solutions NZ to drive 2.5 hours north of Auckland to ADAGIO where we were berthed in the Whangarei Town Basin Marina. Brent did a first-rate and very-long full day of removal and reinstallation. The new black 3M Safety-Walk Tread looks very smart on the eight reworked hatches.

Our bottom line on this experience: ADAGIO continues to be a happy and loyal 3M customer. That is why excellence in customer service is so important – a principle adopted at 3M long ago.

So we just purchased another 60-ft roll of the 3M non-skid to redo our remaining eight hatches that are still protected by ten-year old 3M Safety Walk Tread (but getting a little tatty cosmetically).

Exploring the Parihaka Scenic Reserve

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Only a ten minute walk from where ADAGIO is berthed at the Wangarei Town Basin, is the beginning of a beautiful trail through a native forest and along a lovely river. The land was donated to the city of Whangarei, and has been well cared for. Exotic weeds have been eradicated and the foot paths have been well groomed. Steps help the hikers make their way up the steep areas, and signs clearly indicate directions to destinations, such as to the top of Mt. Parihaka. Waterfalls dot the landscape, as well as swimming holes for the kiddies.

Our friends Shaughan and Brenda drove us to see many of the remoter regions of the park, and to the top of Mt. Parihaka. We enjoyed the long walk down the side of the mountain to the river. Magnificent Kauri trees grow in the ravines. We saw a pair of native wood pigeons swooping through the forest, and lots of dancing and singing fantail birds.

Our Month at the Whangarei Town Basin

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What a wonderful surprise it was that berthing in the Whangarei Town Basin is very enjoyable. We motored the 12 nautical miles from the sea up the river, to a berth at the visitor’s dock. Fortunately, the marina staff allowed us to occupy the forward half of the dock, where we found ourselves in the center of activities. Young families with well-mannered and energetic children lived in boats on the pontoons and on the pile moorings. Many had put their children into the local schools.

We met many cruisers who brought their boats into the marina for provisioning, repairs, R&R, and just plain hanging out. Our OCC burgie attracted numerous other OCC members, and we spent many hours at the local coffee house enjoying each other’s stories. We watched the cormorants and terns from our cockpit. As usual, we enjoyed the best sunsets, as we had nothing to obstruct our view.

Steve was able to walk to the marine suppliers for parts and information. We both took advantage of the excellent medical services to catch up with our routine medical tests and checkups. Dorothy found four grocery stores within walking distance, and the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market was superb.

We ran into our old friends, Brenda and Shaughan from Russell, and they drove us sightseeing around town one Sunday afternoon. The walking trails are wonderful, so there is no reason for us to not get our regular exercise.

Why do we make home videos?

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. And what I’ve learned from my video-transfer project is this: You can’t examine your life if you can’t remember it.

We’ve been through multiple generations of sunset movie tech — from 16mm film to 8mm video to Hi-8 to MiniDV. Each transition orphans the earlier content — absent a lot of work and money to convert formats. Now MiniDV is dead, so our library (in storage, no room on the boat) of LOTS of content will be orphaned just like our library of Hi-8.

David Pogue has been struggling with this latest sunset problem — and along the way he discovered why the Pogue family takes the videos in the first place. Enjoy…

Photoshop and Photography: When Is It Real?

David Pogue does a nice job examining the question

… where would you draw the line and say “That’s not photography anymore?”

I think you will find the answer isn’t as obvious as you might think. Bottom line is that I think David is correct in his view that where the line is depends on the application and context. E.g., compositing is OK for advertising, but definitely not OK for new photography. A photography competition is another set of values — where I would say absolutely no compositing, unless it is a special category for such digital products.

I think you will find the way David lays out a progression from “raw image” to “3D modeling” a useful prod to your own thinking.

New Zealand Tsunami alert (Chile earthquake this time)

Click the thumbnail at left for the predicted arrival times for tsunami waves following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. The computer model is from the NOAA West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center.
ADAGIO is awaiting the arrival of the first signs of the tsunamic in Whangarei, NZ. We are 12 miles up the narrow, winding river, so we expect the tsunami to be attenuated here.
Latest bulletin:

Wellington – A tsunami wave of 1.5 metres hit New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, 700 kilometres south-east of the mainland, on Sunday morning as the country went on a full-scale alert following the Chile earthquake. The National Crisis Management Centre said the tsunami, moving across the Pacific at 800 kilometres an hour, could produce even higher wave heights by the time it reached New Zealand’s main islands, where people in all coastal areas were warned to stay off beaches and keep out of rivers and estuaries.Civil Defence Minister John Carter said “surges of huge volumes of water” were predicted around the coast and urged people to keep listening to radio reports and obey police orders.Tsunami waves built up as they hit the Chatham Islands, rising from 20 to 50 centimetres and a third at 1.5-metres.Officials said waves of 20 centimetres had been recorded on tsunami gauges at East Cape, Gisborne, Napier and Castlepoint on the east coast of the North Island, and bigger surges were likely to follow over a period of several hours.Radio New Zealand reported unusual sea activity around the country with waters slowly receding large distances before rushing back to the beach.

We are monitoring the NZ government Tsunami Gauge Network graphs, which are updated every 5 minutes. At 2150 UTC we see indications of the tsunami arrival at the Chatham Islands about 2 hours before the first wave arrived at North Cape. So we should be able to see any serious waves at the Chathams with a couple of hours advance warning.

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The latest bulletin from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reads:

BULLETIN
TSUNAMI MESSAGE NUMBER  18
NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI
1133 AM HST SAT FEB 27 2010
TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII

SUBJECT - TSUNAMI WARNING SUPPLEMENT

A TSUNAMI WARNING CONTINUES IN EFFECT FOR THE STATE OF HAWAII.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

ORIGIN TIME - 0834 PM HST 26 FEB 2010
COORDINATES - 36.1 SOUTH   72.6 WEST
LOCATION    - NEAR COAST OF CENTRAL CHILE
MAGNITUDE   - 8.8  MOMENT

EVALUATION

A TSUNAMI HAS BEEN GENERATED THAT COULD CAUSE DAMAGE ALONG
COASTLINES OF ALL ISLANDS IN THE STATE OF HAWAII. URGENT ACTION
SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PROTECT LIVES AND PROPERTY.

THE TSUNAMI HAS REACHED HAWAII AND IS JUST BEGINNING TO REGISTER
ON BIG ISLAND GAUGES.  LATER BULLETINS WILL REPORT DETAILS OF THE
HAWAII OBSERVATIONS

The following NOAA computer model is interesting — but I don’t know how to interpret the intensity scale.

This NOAA computer model shows the estimated energy propagation from the Chile earthquake.