September 29, 2009.

Just a quick couple of pictures of one of the boats I’ve been working on. A couple just bought this 50 foot steel trawler and wanted a few amenities added before they head south.

The view from the pilot house is fairly limited during docking. So the new owners opted to have a close circuit camera system installed. One camera each on the port and starboard sides, a camera on the transom and while we’re at it, why not one in the engine room to keep an eye on the squirrels.

My pictures don’t do the system justice. I can’t capture the clarity of the video. The cameras also have night vision capability.
The engine room has a watertight door and is pitch black inside while underway yet the camera gives you a perfect picture of what’s going on. The best part is that with just a simple video card installed it all shows up on their Furuno chartplotter.

The trawler is a single screw boat so maneuvering might become an issue. So let’s add a stern thruster. Only a few of these boats have been built and none of them have stern thrusters so this one will be the first. The stern rides fairly high in the water so getting the thruster far enough below the water was an issue.


We mocked up a proposed stern thruster out of cardboard and invited the boats designer down to give his blessing. He looked it up, down and over and gave his whole hearted blessing. I think the word “ingenious” was thrown about. Alright, maybe it wasn't actually "ingenious" it might have been more like "I guess that'll do" whatever. So we called in a welder and had him replace our cardboard mock up with a nice steel one. Now that the thruster body is done I can assemble and install the guts of the beautiful new stern thruster.