The 2021 launch meeting will take place on Saturday, April 24th, at 1pm in the pavilion.
It is especially important to attend if you will not be able to attend the launch of your own boat.
Mask and physical distancing regulations must be adhered to. Please follow public health guidelines and do not come to the club if you are feeling unwell or are experiencing any Covid symptoms.
For all questions or comment please contact Mike Forcier mike@greybrucelaw.ca
We use a program called MailPoet and its sending service to send mail to our members. Until recently all we had to do was add a new member and they were auto-magically subscribed. But it seems a recent change in MailPoet enforces “Sign-up confirmation” even though our members never sign-up.
This meant that several new members were in the unconfirmed state and weren’t yet receiving emails. I have now triggered (re)send confirmation email. Those new members will have received an email from the site and have to reply.
A reminder: All logged on members can view emails they may have missed by going to Members -> GYC Docs -> Archived Emails
With the 2021 season approaching it’s time for you to come out and help your club! There are many projects planned for this season.
Don’t think you have the skills? We have a variety of work to do, so talk to your board of directors and we’ll help match your abilities with a project.
Don’t think you have the time? Not all jobs happen on weekends! Many of us volunteer during the week or in the evenings, whenever we get a spare moment.
All members are encourage to volunteer, this includes associate members! Volunteering is a great way to get to meet your fellow club members, contribute to the GYC boating community, and get a sense of value from being a GYC member.
This club us run by us, for us, and the only way it can continue is if YOU come out to help.
There are two applications pending for full membership (to the “B” list) in the club. Further to Article 2.2d) and e) of the club By-laws, Rules and Regulations, notice of an application is to be made on this website and the Clubhouse Bulletin Board for a minimum of 30 days. Members may communicate to the membership committee (membership@georgianyachtclub.com) or the Board prior to the 3rd of May 2021 Board meeting any relevant information a Member may possess regarding the applicant.
Joe Howell. Joe and his wife Trisha hope to bring in their 24′ Doral to the club. Joe was sponsored by Travis Low and Paul Matthies.
Dean Russell. Dean and his wife Janeen hope to bring in their 25′ Key West to the club. Dean was sponsored by Travis Low and Chuck O’Reilly.
With the recent unauthorized visitors on our property and unfortunate damage and theft from a couple members’ boats I wanted to reach out to you all with an update.
Our website is built on the WordPress platform and a major new version of that software was installed today.
I backed up all of our code and data before the update and all looks good so far.
If you make a new post (remember, all members are authors and can do that) you will see that the editor is very different. But I’m finding it quite easy and intuitive. The classic editor is still there as a block you can drag into place.
There is one application pending for full membership (to the “B” list) in the club. Further to Article 2.2d) and e) of the club By-laws, Rules and Regulations, notice of an application is to be made on this website and the Clubhouse Bulletin Board for a minimum of 30 days. Members may communicate to the membership committee (membership@georgianyachtclub.com) or the Board prior to the 5th April 2021 Board meeting any relevant information a Member may possess regarding the applicant.
Richard Bonert, and his wife Ella hope to bring in their 45′ sailboat “QUIXOTIC” to the club.
For those who are interested, here is an update on my ongoing project.
It started last spring, when I thought I had blown up my Stowe Dataline Speed/Depth display. I have depth and speed sensors connected to a Stowe Dataline Databox. The Databox is wired to the display unit.
Since the hardware is old and no longer available, I thought I’d have to buy all new equipment. But then I read about a device that connects to any NMEA 0183 output and provides a boat wide WiFi signal. NMEA 0183 is the National Marine Electronics Association standard protocol. Then you can use one of many available smart phone apps to display the data. I bought a Wireless NMEA Server from Digital Yacht. But none of the apps I tried displayed my data. I contacted the developers of the apps and they explained that the data “sentence” must be followed by a checksum. Also, some of the Stowe sentences were non-standard.
So I wrote my own Android app, tailored to Stowe’s unique data. It includes shallow and deep warnings, race timers and displays water temperature, battery voltage, total log, trip distance in addition to speed and depth. This was Phase I.
I already had the Navionics app on a tablet and a subscription to the charts for our area. But I read on Digital Yacht’s web site about Navionics’ Sonarchart Live. They also tap into the WiFi signal from the Wireless Server and can display depth from my sensor and plot it and display over the chart. (If I had AIS, they would integrate this too.) Navionics connected to the server but silently refused to process depth. After many emails to their support line they finally told me that my DBK (depth below keel) was not acceptable. It had to be DBT (depth below transducer) or DPT (depth). And , of course, they required a checksum.
So I decided to implement a “man in the middle” solution. I use a small, cheap ($20) microprocessor to take the output from my Databox, transpose the DBK into DBT, strip out some non-standard fields and compute and append a checksum.
Navionics on my phone or tablet now display depth from my sensor. And, as I move around, they plot it.
From their marketing… Watch new 1 ft/0.5 m personal HD bathymetry maps develop in real time as your boat moves along the water! It appears as an additional layer over your map, while it also gets stored on your device for future use.
So, that is Phase II.
I can make the source code for both the Android app and the microprocessor code available if any one is interested.
The Android app is written in Java. I designed it so that the Stowe specific NMEA parser can be swapped for another. It currently only connects with UDP, but I’m sure it can be modified to use TCP. Of course, it’s “broken” now, because it’s expecting the original, non-standard Stowe sentences and those coming from the server are fixed to be standard.
The “Man in the Middle” runs on an Arduino Mega2560, but smaller ones would work too. The code is C++, and again, the logic that transposes Stowe sentences to standard compliant sentences is isolated for easy swapping out. I read at 4800 BAUD and write at 38400 BAUD.
I don’t know yet how I’m going to package the micro for the marine environment.
P.S. The display wasn’t blown up. The gel battery was dying. The Databox powered the display’s LCD but didn’t send any data. I didn’t find out until I had everything set up on the bench, but with a lawn mower battery!
A quick reminder that 2021 fees are now due and a 10% penalty will be charged on all overdue accounts. There are about 45 members still outstanding. If you visit the GYC web site and log into your account you can view your account history.
If you have any questions or concerns around invoicing or payment, please feel free to contact myself. My email is treasurer@georgianyachtclub.com and phone number is 519-881-6638.
The clubhouse will be closed as of Monday November 23rd, with the exception of upstairs washrooms which will be accessible until the end of December. Please be advised the washrooms are not being professionally cleaned during this time. Use hand sanitizer and wipe down any surfaces you touch to protect yourself and fellow club members. Please follow public health guidelines and stay home if you are unwell.
