Catana 431 and Fishing Report

There was a recent article on the Catana 431 in the Boat U,S. magazine. There was a few interesting points that were made. The 1st thing they mentioned is that the number and size of multihull’s on display increase with each passing boat show season and that the popularity is growing. Although this is not news to me it is good to hear it. Something of concern that was mentioned was that the wire sizes and systems may not be suited to U.S. hookups. This will be a concern whenever purchasing a boat manufactured outside of the US. They also mentioned that the Catana was considerably more expensive then similarly sized multihull’s which again is not surprising to me but I thought it should be mentioned.

I was recently informed of a local radio program on KFBK 1530AM that covers hunting, fishing and camping in Northern California. The best part about it, is that it is recorded so you can listen to it anytime you want. It lasts 3 hours and there are no commercials for the most part. I have found it to be informative so far and look forward to listening to it every Monday while working or Saturday if I plan to fish on Sunday. I am listening to last Saturdays show and they have talked about Stripers, Bass, Chad, Sturgeon and Salmon fishing. They have discussed the influx of seals, and mountain lions and recommended some equipment. They even give out advice on where to fish and how to fish it. If you fish in from the Bay area up to the Sacramento area this should be a good program for you.

I am going Striper fishing again this Friday while the fishing is still good. I have several spots that should hold fish so we should be able to find a school. Once we find them I want to try to catch one or more on a fly. My dad tied up a couple fly’s that rattle that I think would work well. I plan to do some free diving as well in Monterey on Saturday, so I hope to have some good pics and video for the blog soon. I am going to talk to the local dive shop to find out about regulations on Spear fishing. .It might be too early yet, but the Halibut move into the shallows soon so if all goes well we will have some halibut in the freezer soon. Speaking of Sport fishing regulations here is a great way to find the regulations for the California coastline. http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/fishing_map.asp

I am starting to wonder if I should maintain more then one blog so that I can keep things on topic. Although my ultimate goal is still to buy a Catamaran, readers might find my site more useful if it stayed on target. I could have another blog that covers my angling adventures. Any thoughts?

Video Editing and Underwater Photography

I have not been blogging as often. Work and family life is taking a lot of my free time. I try to provide something entertaining or educational in my posts. Things will start to get interesting soon. I will be at the Strictly Sail show this Friday. Soccer Saturday and Sunday so there goes the weekend. Camping will happen this month as well as La Paz next month. I need to sneak a fishing trip in somewhere in between as well.

Meanwhile I have been struggling with Video editing and streaming issues for the past week. What a mess. Avi, mpeg, mov, vob, etc etc. Can’t we all settle on just one format for crying out loud? I am not happy with the Microsoft WMM(Windows Movie Maker) and I am not a lone. For some reason it will not import my Sony DCR-SR100 mpg video’s. I have tried converting them to AVI’s and still no luck. I guess I will need to break down and buy some video editing software. I was able to use some old avi’s that came from my Cannon S50 and create a 3 minute avi with WMM. It turned out well and was easy to use.

Microsoft Windows Media Player is finicky as well when it comes to streaming videos. I have installed several codec packages, and still no luck. TVersity is working better although I have an issue with it loosing its connection. TVersity won’t handle mpegs, so unless you have video converters chances are half the stuff you want to stream through these programs won’t work. Hopefully they will improve on things soon.

Just received the latest issue of Multihulls World magazine and am reading it from front to back. I keep seeing information on multihull boat shows. I am going to have to travel far to see a good one. I will be lucky to see 3 multihulls at the upcoming show here in Oakland, Ca.

I plan to do a lot of exploring above water as well as underwater when I eventually go on a serious voyage. What I would like to find though is the best place to start weather I am fishing or diving. So I have often thought an underwater camera would be a good option. One that you could drop down. Often times you see things on the fish finder and you just don’t know what it is for sure. I could see myself getting a little more serious about underwater photo’s and video. But not too serious unless I can recoup my costs. A quick internet search and I found the Backscatter Underwater Video and Photo online store. $7,515 bucks for the FX1/Z1 Housing package. I might have to settle for the mini system at a mere $1899. wow. Save you pennies.

I keep thinking about all the things I want to do on my adventures. Everything cost money and is gear intensive and will add weight and take up space. I am going to need a bigger boat and a sponsor. Maybe there is a video crew that want to film a reality Catamaran Sailing show with me as the captain. Yeah right. :)

Directv, On Demand, Photo, Music, Video's Sling Box

Thought I would share the recent flood of techie stuff that I have learned lately. DirecTV customers listen up. So what does this have to do with Catamarans. The catamaran of my dreams will have all the conveniences of home. The information below could be used to improve life on your boat or your house. Check it out.

The HR10-250 is one of the 1^st HD DirecTV receivers that came out a couple years ago. It is similar to a TiVo box so you can record and pause live TV. It comes with an Off-Air receiver on it. Many of us are in the process or have already upgraded to the HR20 and HR21 DirecTV receivers. Don’t throw away your old HR10-250. Did you know the HR10-250 will function as a free off-air HDTV receiver and you don’t need to pay for DirecTV service to use it? It will still allow you to pause, rewind and FF live TV. You don’t need to have it activated as a receiver through DirecTV to use the Off Air receiver capabilities. I fumbled through the steps to get the unit working without instructions so it is not difficult. You will need to go through the setup and let the system know that you only have an Off-Air antenna. You will need to go through the step of identifying the off air channels in your area and then it should work. I apologize that I don’t have more detailed instructions. There are Help Forums out there like http://www.dbstalk.com/ that will more then likely have the instructions somewhere. You just have to search for them. If you don’t have any luck, send a comment to this post and I will see what I can find.

If you have gone through the recent upgrade to the DirecTV HR20 or HR21 you may already know this, but it is not widely known or advertised since I believe they are still in a beta phase. DirecTV now has On Demand. This is great when there is nothing on TV to watch. Go to On Demand and you can usually find something you want to watch. You will need an Ethernet connection to the Internet connected to your DirecTV receiver. Your best bet is a direct Cat 5 connection from your Internet router to the DirecTV receiver, but in my case I am using wireless. I purchased a Linksys WGA600N which isn't difficult to install. It is marketed towards networked gaming machines. It is a dual band Wireless-N adapter so it will work with the older wireless networks or the newer and faster network standards. It was easy to setup, however in my case I skipped over one step that I shouldn’t have skipped over. The step that advises you to update your wireless routers firmware. This turned out to be a requirement. Don’t skip this step. There is a ton of information here which should point you in the right direction regarding setup here.

Once you have On Demand working you can also share Photo’s, Music and Videos from your PC so you can watch them on your TV through your new DirecTV receiver. The music and photo’s are working great. You can have a slide show while listening to your mp3’s through your TV. It’s great for gatherings and parties. I have not been successful with Video yet which I presume is due to a wireless bandwidth shortage. I have an older Linksys that transmits at a maximum of 54mps and the receiver is not close to the wireless router. It will play for a few seconds and pause or cut out altogether. My plan is to upgrade to the new Linksys WRT600N Dual-Band wireless-N gigabit router. I hope this is the solution, otherwise I will have to try running cat 5 to the TV. Also keep in mind from what I have read and from my experience the Video’s must be mpeg 2’s.

Once the above is working, then the I plan to pick up the Sling Box. This looks cool. Since I work from home a lot and spend a lot of time in the office it would be nice to watch TV there. With the sling box, as long as you have an Internet connection I can watch TV. You could be on you boat connected via Wi-Fi and watch your TV at home. If you are in a Hotel, or Wi-Fi enabled coffee shop you can watch your TV. Pretty cool. The only issue is, whatever you are watching on you PC is what will be shown on you TV, so if you are at home and someone is watching the TV and you want to watch TV on the PC then you will have to fight over what you will be watching. This might not be the case if you have cable since I believe one of the unit’s has a cable tuner in it. This way the TV could be tuned to one show and the Sling Box is tuned to a different channel.

Photo's courtesy of http://www.aeroyacht.com/Yapluka/Sail/main.htm, www.linksys.com and http://www.sunreef-yachts.com/