Vendor: Professional Plastics

https://www.professionalplastics.com

Fullerton, CA (Corporate HQ)
 

Professional Plastics, Inc.
1810 E. Valencia Dr.
Fullerton, CA 92831
 

Toll Free: 800-878-0755

Local: 714-446-6500
Fax: 714-447-0114

sales@proplas.com

https://www.professionalplastics.com/Small-Boats-and-Watercraft

"Overview of Small Boats & Watercraft (3732-SB) — Recreational boating is a popular leisure activity in the U.S. More than 88 million U.S. adults participated in recreational boating in 2013, using a boat for (sports) activities such as fishing and water skiing and/or to travel. The U.S. recreational boating market had an estimated retail value of almost 37 billion U.S. dollars in 2013. Sales of new recreational boats amounted to just over six billion U.S. dollars. In total, 11.99 million recreational boating vessels were registered in the U.S. in 2013. These boats are classified into several categories: sailboats, personal watercrafts, sterndrive boats, inboard boats and outboard boats. Professional Plastics offers a full-range of products used on small boats and watercraft including King StarBoard® HDPE which is commonly used for Hatches, Doors, Grab Rails & Handles, Step and Dock Boxes, Rod & Cup Holders, Countertops (other than galley), Chairs, Tray Tables, Frames and Trim. We also offer a wide range of lightweight materials, and glazing materials used for windshields, windows, mirrors and other applications. Our tubing products are used for fluid lines, and we offer spiral-cut tubing which is used for electrical wire wrapping."

G-10 products, for example (illustrative, not exhaustive):

https://www.professionalplastics.com/G-10--FR4

"Overview of G-10/FR4 — G-10 (or G-10/FR4) is a composite material composed of woven fiberglass cloth with an epoxy resin binder that is flame resistant (self-extinguishing)."

https://www.professionalplastics.com/G10FR4SHEET

2024 Singapore Yachting Festival (April 25-28)

Image by confused_me from Pixabay

I have plans to be in Japan during the month of April 2024, helping facilitate a conference.

Afterward, I'm tentatively planning to fly to Singapore for their 2024 Yachting Festival. 

https://singaporeyachtingfestival.com/
https://singaporeyachtingfestival.com/schedule/

Venue:
ONE°15 MARINA SENTOSA COVE
11 COVE DRIVE, SENTOSA COVE, 098497 SINGAPORE

Note: The 2023 event reportedly had over 9,000 attendees.

Electrical generation from humidity

 Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-find-way-to-make-energy-from-air-using-nearly-any-material/ar-AA1bKlsG

"Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution."

"The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores. But there are many questions about how to scale the product."

 

Generic Air-Gen Effect in Nanoporous Materials for Sustainable Energy Harvesting from Air Humidity
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202300748

"Air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that, unlike solar and wind, is continuously available. However, previously described technologies for harvesting energy from air humidity are either not continuous or require unique material synthesis or processing, which has stymied scalability and broad deployment. Here, a generic effect for continuous energy harvesting from air humidity is reported, which can be applied to a broad range of inorganic, organic, and biological materials. The common feature of these materials is that they are engineered with appropriate nanopores to allow air water to pass through and undergo dynamic adsorption–desorption exchange at the porous interface, resulting in surface charging. The top exposed interface experiences this dynamic interaction more than the bottom sealed interface in a thin-film device structure, yielding a spontaneous and sustained charging gradient for continuous electric output. Analyses of material properties and electric outputs lead to a “leaky capacitor” model that can describe how electricity is harvested and predict current behaviors consistent with experiments. Predictions from the model guide the fabrication of devices made from heterogeneous junctions of different materials to further expand the device category. The work opens a wide door for the broad exploration of sustainable electricity from air."

News: New Ultralight Material Is Tougher than Steel and Kevlar

 New Ultralight Material Is Tougher than Steel and Kevlar

"A joint research project's findings have just been published in the journal Nature Materials from engineers from MIT, Caltech, and ETH Zurich that has yielded a "nano-architectured" material"

"The material is thinner than a strand of human hair and able to prevent high-speed particles from penetrating it."

"This could potentially mean that when produced on a larger scale, the new material should be able to provide a very tough, lightweight, alternative to more conventional impact-resistant materials (lie Kevlar or steel plate)." 

 

https://interestingengineering.com/science/newly-developed-molecular-nanofibers-are-stronger-than-steel

"A group of researchers from MIT developed a new class of small molecules that spontaneously assemble into nanoribbons stronger than steel."

"The MIT group's material is modeled after a cell membrane, the outer part of which is "hydrophilic," meaning it is stable in water. The inner part, meanwhile, is "hydrophobic," meaning it avoids water."

 

Self-assembly of aramid amphiphiles into ultra-stable nanoribbons and aligned nanoribbon threads 

Nature Nanotechnology volume 16, pages 447–454 (2021) 

Inspiring and Useful Sailing Quotes

A placeholder for me to organize inspiring and useful sailing quotes...

 

Cruising

 “Go small, go simple, go now.” 

~ Larry Pardey

 

“At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.”

~ Robin Lee Graham

 

Life

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”

~ Willa Cather

 

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

~ Vincent Van Gogh 

 

There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

"Those who see sailing as an escape from reality have got their understanding of both sailing and reality completely backwards."

~ Robert Pirsig (author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), in a 1977 Esquire magazine article. 

“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd U.S. President 

 

 “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

~ Mark Twain 

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.”

~ Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

 

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

~ William Arthur Ward

 

"One ship drives east and another west with the self-same winds that blow.'Tis the set of the sails and not the gales which decides the way to go. Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate as we wander along through life 'Tis the set of the soul that decides the goal and not the calm or strife." 

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Mottoes

"Non sibi sed patriae" (Not self but country)

~ unofficial motto of the U.S. Navy  

 

 
Navigation

 
‘If someone switches the satellites off, you had better know where you are – log your position at regular intervals.’
~ Sir Robin Knox-Johnston

 

Reefing

 If you have to ask "should we reef" - it is probably too late. 

“Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.”

 ~ Joseph Conrad 

 

Oceans

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

~ Jacques Yves Cousteau 

 

“If there’s a heaven for me, I’m sure it has a beach attached to it.” 

~ Jimmy Buffett

  

Seafaring

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea."

~  Sir Francis Bacon 

 

“A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind.”

~ Webb Chiles

 

“It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.”

~ Sir Francis Drake 

 

“A man is never lost at sea.” 

~ Ernest Hemingway

 

"There is something magical about the dance that occurs between the ocean and the sky - with the wind as your partner. Whether it is under a bright blazing sun, or a star-filled sky - the rhythm of the ocean, the surge of the vessel, the sound of the wind, and the splash of the waves. In all my wanderings and adventures, I have found no tonic stronger to restore my soul, replenish my spirit, and brighten my outlook on life."

~ Kelvin Meeks

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

~ Seneca 

“A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”

~ John A. Shedd

 

"Now…bring me that horizon.”

~ Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean

 

 “It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that’s what a ship needs but what a ship is…what the Black Pearl really is…is freedom.” 

~ Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean