Sunday, November 23, 2014

Strangers at sea

Without ever having sailed together before, Ryan Breymaier and Pepe Ribes crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a 60-foot monohull, one of five boats in the June 2014, IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona race. 

From NYTimes

Video of the New York-Barcelona IMOCA Ocean Masters race from reporter, Chris Museler, who was 'embedded' aboard Hugo Boss with American sailor Ryan Breymaier and solo sailor Pepe Ribes - who both teamed up for the double-handed race : really caught the feeling of the race and what it takes.
The Ocean Masters founder, Sir Keith Mills, authorized a reporter to chronicle the race from aboard the boats.Only three of the five participating boats agreed to offer a spot. 

Ryan Breymaier is hardly known outside the national sailing community.
In the port cities Barcelona and Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, he is recognized as a skipper of some of the most challenging racing sailboats in the world.


Breymaier’s training and ambitions are aimed at the Vendée Globe, a solo, nonstop, round-the-world race held every four years.
He is the first American in a generation to be considered a threat to the French stranglehold on that race and on the Barcelona World Race, the nonstop double-handed race on the same track.
Pepe Ribes of Spain, a decorated America’s Cup and ocean-racing sailor, shares Breymaier’s ambitions.

In June, Breymaier and Ribes took major steps toward fulfilling their solo sailing hopes by winning the International Monohull Open Class Association Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race.

An unlikely match, the two were thrown together on a boat that was purchased only months before. On the delivery to New York from Europe, the mast broke; the two sailors wound up waiting until the start of the race to work together as a double-handed team.

They proceeded to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a 60-foot monohull, one of five boats in the competition.
“We wound up racing hundreds of 15-minute races all the way across, with each one putting more pressure on us,” Ribes said.
Conditions in the New York to Barcelona Race included drifting, 40-knot winds and breaking waves. Only three of the five starters finished the race.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Planet Earth & Solar time-lapse


A timelapse of Earth in 4K resolution, as imaged by the geostationary Elektro-L weather satellite, from May 15th to May 19th, 2011.
Elektro-L is located ~40,000 km above the Indian ocean, and it orbits at a speed that causes it to remain over the same spot as the Earth rotates.

The satellite creates a 121 megapixel image (11136x11136 pixels) every 30 minutes with visible and infrared light wavelengths.
The images were edited to adjust levels and change the infrared channel from orange to green to show vegetation more naturally.
The images were resized by 50%, misalignments between frames were manually corrected, and image artifacts that occurred when the camera was facing towards the sun were partially corrected. The images were interpolated by a factor of 20 to create a smooth animation.

Our home planet on the day of the Autumnal Equinox.

To answer frequently asked questions; why are city lights, the Sun, and other stars not visible?
City lights are not visible because they are thousands of times less bright than the reflection of sunlight off the Earth.
If the camera was sensitive enough to detect city lights, the Earth would be overexposed.
The Sun is not visible due to mechanisms used to protect the camera CCD from direct exposure to sunlight.
A circular mask on the CCD ensures that only the Earth is visible.
This mask can be seen as pixelation on Earth's horizon.
The mask also excludes stars from view, although they would not be bright enough to be visible to this camera.



The surface of the sun from October 14th to 30th, 2014, showing sunspot AR 2192, the largest sunspot of the last two solar cycles (22 years).
During this time sunspot AR 2191 produced six X-class and four M-class solar flares.
The animation shows the sun in the ultraviolet 304 ångström wavelength, and plays at a rate of 52.5 minutes per second.
It is composed of more than 17,000 images, 72 GB of data produced by the solar dynamics observatory (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/) + (http://www.helioviewer.org/).

The animation has been rotated 180 degrees so that south is "up".
The audio is the 'heartbeat' of the sun, processed from SOHO HMI data by Alexander G. Kosovichev. Image data courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

Image processing and animations by James Tyrwhitt-Drake. 
This animation has be rendered in 4K, and resized to the YoutTube maximum resolution of 3840×2160.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Brazil DHN update in the Marine GeoGarage

As our public viewer is not yet available
(currently under construction, upgrading to Google Maps API v3 as v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intended to our Phone/iPad universal mobile application users

(Marine Brazil on the App Store)
and also to our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers 

in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API.

 DHN coverage

1 charts has been updated and 6 charts have been added since the last update

DHN update September 26, 2014

  • 305  DA ILHA DO CAPIM À ILHA DA CONCEIÇÃO
  • 4361  DA BAÍA DO MARAPATÁ À ILHA DO JOROCAZINHO
  • 4362  DA ILHA DO JOROCAZINHO A MOCAJUBA
  • 4363  DE MOCAJUBA À ILHA ARARAIM
  • 4364  DA ILHA ARARAIM À ILHA DA RAINHA
  • 4365  DA ILHA DA RAINHA A MURU
  • 4366  DA ILHA TAUÁ A TUCURUÍ

Today 442 charts (506 including sub-charts) from DHN are displayed in the Marine GeoGarage
Don't forget to visit the NtM Notices to Mariners (Avisos aos Navegantes)

Living under sea: Japanese visionaries unveil underwater city plan

Illustration of the whole complex,
from the sphere just beneath water's surface to the research station beneath the seabed.
(Shimizu Corp.)

From Washington Post by Ishaan Tharoor

It's the next frontier: Not long after scientists landed a probe on a comet millions of miles away in deep space, a Japanese construction company has announced that it wants to go in the other direction.
Shimizu Corp. revealed blueprints for an astonishing undersea city: a vast research and residential station some 10 miles in length that begins just below the sea's surface and burrows beneath the ocean floor.

 A full model of “Ocean Spiral,” from the ocean’s surface to its floor

Dubbed the 'Ocean Spiral,' the project is projected to cost $26 billion and take five years to complete, although the research for the technology required is still in its infancy.
If ever completed, it would make real visions of a latter-day Atlantis in the deep.

It has the support of a myriad research firms and Japanese government agencies.
A research station at the bottom of the structure would would study ways to excavate energy from beneath the sea floor.
A 15-kilometer length spiral would coil up from there to a giant sphere some 1,500 feet in diameter that would have hotels, apartments and commercial areas, and could accommodate as many as 5,000 people.

 Interior of the residential sphere. (Shimizu Corp.)

"This is just a blueprint by our company, but we are aiming to develop the technology that would enable us to build an underwater living space," a Shimizu spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.
The ocean water temperature differentials between the various parts of the structure would help generate power.

 The "blue garden" sphere at the top of the Ocean Spiral. (Shimizu Corp.)

Japanese construction companies are known for their outlandish aspirations.
Obayashi Corp., a Shimizu rival, has already announced it plans to engineer a near 60,000-mile-long "elevator" into space, scheduled to be ready by 2050.

Shimizu has already unveiled plans for a floating metropolis (see below) and a solar ring around the moon.

 Green Float : a Floating City in the Sky

The Ocean Spiral blueprint comes at a time when an increasing number of governments, multinationals and international organizations are scratching their heads about how to cope with rising sea levels and the effects of climate change on those most vulnerable to it.
Christian Dimmer, an assistant professor of urban studies at Tokyo University, thinks such planning should not just be the preserve of powerful private corporations.
He tells the Guardian:
We had this in Japan in the 1980s, when the same corporations were proposing underground and ‘swimming’ cities and 1km-high towers as part of the rush to development during the height of the bubble economy. It’s good that many creative minds are picking their brains as to how to deal with climate change, rising sea levels and the creation of resilient societies – but I hope we don’t forget to think about more open and democratic urban futures in which citizens can take an active role in their creation, rather than being mere passengers in a corporation’s sealed vision of utopia.
Links :

Thursday, November 20, 2014

NZ Linz update in the Marine GeoGarage

Coverage NZ Linz Marine GeoGarage layer

As our public viewer is not yet available
(currently under construction, upgrading to Google Maps API v3 as v2 is officially no more supported),
this info is primarily intended to
our iPhone/iPad universal mobile application users
(Marine NZ on the App Store) 
and our B2B customers which use our nautical charts layers
in their own webmapping applications through our GeoGarage API.  



6 charts has been updated in the Marine GeoGarage
(Linz October update published November 14, 2014 (Updated to NTM Edition 22)

  • NZ522 Bream Tail to Kawau Island including Great Barrier Island
  • NZ5221 Cradock Channel and Mokohinau Islands
  • NZ5222 Great Barrier Island (Aotea Island)
  • NZ5223 Great Barrier Island (Northwestern Part)
  • NZ5322 Auckland Harbour East
  • NZ5323 Auckland Harbour West
Today NZ Linz charts (183 charts / 323 including sub-charts) are displayed in the Marine GeoGarage.

Note :  LINZ produces official nautical charts to aid safe navigation in New Zealand waters and certain areas of Antarctica and the South-West Pacific.


Using charts safely involves keeping them up-to-date using Notices to Mariners
Reporting a Hazard to Navigation - H Note :
Mariners are requested to advise the New Zealand Hydrographic Authority at LINZ of the discovery of new or suspected dangers to navigation, or shortcomings in charts or publications.