Category Archives: Pics

R.I.P. “la Machina” 1969 – 2011

Posted on Tuesday May 10th, 2011 by dafdaf

In just about three weeks time we would have sold our beloved oldtimer – ‘la Machina’. But somehow I had this feeling that our 42 year old car would not go that easy. Well, yesterday when we drove back from our final visit in Austria, about half way it happened. We were just overtaking a big truck when the driver of the same made an emergency maneuver – switched lines and jumped on the brakes. So we landed in between the truck and the crash barrier. Where the left front tire was torn and the right side of the car was battered by the bumper of the truck that screeched along our car.

We found ourselves with crying kids and a wrecked car in the middle of nowhere… But the kids soon calmed themselves and the police and the tow truck soon arrived. The situation was resolved as this: In front of the truck was another truck and in front of that was an Audi Q7 that was somehow pissed off by that truck driver so he cut in front of it and slowed him down. The truck behind the Q7 was only going about 40km/h (!!) while the second truck (the one in front of us) arrived with 85km/h and had to switch lanes and jump on the brakes and that was when we got crushed…

But in the end nobody was hurt – the car is still somewhere in south Germany and we arrived in Berlin at about four in the morning – driving a new Mini Cooper. The driver of the Audi Q7 actually escaped – but the police is searching for him.

Bye, bye Machina – we had a lot of fun together. Have a good time in car-heaven – you’ve deserved it !!

Posted in LosLocos, Pics, Retro, Travel | 3 Comments

New gadget: LunaWLANnet

Posted on Thursday May 5th, 2011 by dafdaf

Today the newest gadget arrived: The famous LunaWLANnet. So what’s that ? It a gigantic WLAN antenna to be mounted on the top of the mast. It will give us access to the internet whenever there is a marina or hotel with wlan nearby. I just ordered it a few days ago and was amazed when today it arrived in a huge box… The thing is 1.2m long !!
So I unpacked the gigantic antenna and put it out in the garden. Connected the 20m network cable and went inside to connect the power adapter and connect the LAN cable to the computer. The cable that goes to the antenna also delivers the power for the antenna using PoE. So there’s no need for another power cable to put into the mast. VERY convenient !
After all was setup, I open the webbrowser and go to the website of the LunaWLANnet to select the WiFi network of my choice. Done. After three minutes I was online. And most of those three minutes I spent searching for my own network – the list of available access points is amazing in our neighborhood.

Here’s a pic of our new gadget. Our old-school telephone is just for size comparision. Go to lunatronic to get your own antenna.

Posted in Hardware, Links, Net, Pics, Rancho Relaxo | Comments Off

Construction works…

Posted on Tuesday May 3rd, 2011 by dafdaf

My second day after work means my second day doing renovations on the Rancho Relaxo. The whole ship is a huuuuuuge mess !!

But in the end it’s going somewhere. With professional help the engine room was completely re-wired and is starting to look really good ! I was cutting and pulling out old cables and so I managed to remove about 20kg of unused copper all over the ship. Today I started re-wiring the navigational gear and radios, tomorrow I’ll try to connect the new chart plotter and get it to talk to the radome antenna. If there’s enough time, I’ll also start wiring the shortwave-equipment. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in Pics, Projects, Rancho Relaxo | 1 Comment

1st of May: My first day without work

Posted on Sunday May 1st, 2011 by dafdaf

Huh ? What’s that nice and cosy feeling ? Ah it’s the worker’s day ! And I for one will NOT drive to the office tomorrow – and that’s a first after 22 years !! But instead of starting my day with a long and nice breakfast, I’ll drive to our ship and start doing the new cabeling. Ayayay ! Well but still better than doing taxes.  – Which I also still haven’t finished. :-/ But there’s still four weeks left – so what’s the rush ?

And of course a few pics from my last day in the office. – The bounty invasion on my desk and lots of beer in the backyard. That was followed by even more beer in the Prater Garten and finished off with a few SG&Ts in the Klub der Republik. Mmmmh. What a beautiful last day at work…

Posted in Berlin, Freedom, Pics, Work | 4 Comments

The search for an ideal party location

Posted on Monday April 25th, 2011 by dafdaf

Just 32 more days and still no idea, where and how we’ll say goodbye to our friends. But we’ll just use this easter monday to inspect some of the old wastelands along the river Spree. These locations have had us a lot of times – a few years back. Nowadays Kiki Blofeld, Bar25, etc. are mostly gone. Here they’re trying to build ‘lofts‘ and ‘premium class city appartments‘ for all those media companies that still thrive in Berlin Mitte.

So we mostly end up in front of barricades and wire fences but – hey ! There is one place still going: The Yaam ! And this locations seems nearly too perfect: wonderful relaxed atmosphere, african Music, playground for the kids, cocktails and drinks for the grown-ups, sandy ‘beach’ – and it’s located at the waterfront ! We ask one of the people working here and he sees no problem with our plans. Just sent an email to the one managing all the events and now we’re waiting and hoping. But the date is still set: 28th of May 2011. Mark it red in your calendar !

Posted in Berlin, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo | Comments Off

Viola writes ‘Viola’

Posted on Tuesday April 19th, 2011 by dafdaf

Yesterday our little princess wrote her name – all by herself – for the first time !! And this only two days before her third birthday which will be on the 21st. That definately deserves a little attention and it’s own blog post.

Here is a pic of her work:

And although I know there are too many blogs out there only posting pics of the cute kids, but I can’t resist and have to show you two more beautiful photos of our little angel.

Posted in Kids, LosLocos, Pics | 1 Comment

Our new board PC

Posted on Saturday April 16th, 2011 by dafdaf

One of the better parts in preparing for a long journey is that you get to buy all kinds of new gadgets. Some are more boatish gadgets (chartplotter, GPS, radios) and others seem more common.

Our new gadget is a tiny little PC from Asus. The Asus EEE PC 1015PEM. And of course the first thing to do is to get rid of all that stupid ‘Intel Inside’ and ‘designed for M$ blah’ stickers. – I don’t get it why PC manufacturers still put them. But hey. Then I boot it up once to verify that everything works (yes it does, I hear some Windows start sound and can see the loging screen). That means: now it’s time to disassemble and upgrade that thing. Of course I ordered a memory upgrade and also a SSD-harddisk to replace the oldschool 250GB disk that’s inside. And the best part: when replacing the harddisk, I also get rid of Win7 automatically. Hehehe.

Here some pics I took from the upgrade procedure. I would not like to do that too often since most of the casing is held in place by little plastic clips – and they don’t seem to be too stable. Well somewhere there has to be a difference between a €300 laptop and the €1300 MacBook with metal casing… Today in the evening, I’ll install Ubuntu Linux and all the programs we’ll use later on (OpenCPN, Sailmail, zyGrib, fldigi, Faxviewer, etc.).  Enjoy your weekend !

Posted in Hardware, Linux, Pics | Comments Off

The Windvinder

Posted on Tuesday April 5th, 2011 by dafdaf

Sometimes you have to do discoveries twice, I guess.

A couple of weeks ago, Micha mentioned a quite crazy project called ‘Windvinder’ on the Ironlady blog. I scanned the page, confirmed the crazyness and forgot about it. Well, yesterday while browsing the TO-Forums, I ran across a witty posting and somehow the user ‘Wipke’ sounded familiar. That’s how I ran into that website the second time. And this time, I stayed and klicked pretty much through all the content there is.

This is really one amazing project. And the website, the style, the pics are first grade. – As is the Windvinder itself. What an unbelievable beautiful vessel ! I hope the followup expedition to catch the Windvinder will be a success. It’s gonna be a good journey anyways (-> Crew wanted !).

Posted in Found, Links, Pics, Sailing | Comments Off

Back in her element again

Posted on Friday April 1st, 2011 by dafdaf

After an unusually cold Winter on the outside and having survived the catastrophic fire in the shipyard, today the Rancho Relaxo of the Seas got back into her element ! Yay !!

The process was quite unspectacular despite bringing the crane to its limits – our ship is actually a little too heavy for that 10t crane but it got into the water without problems. Also we replaced the old rusty anchor chain with a new, whopping 70 meters of 10mm chain. That thing actually weights 170 kilos ! On one pic you can see the nice antifoulding job we did, together with the new sacrificial anodes and the shiny prop. (After brushing it for approx. 1 hour.)

A (quite boring) video of the craning will follow…

Posted in Berlin, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing | Comments Off

Our new internet connection…

Posted on Monday March 21st, 2011 by dafdaf

…just arrived at home. Thanks to Gerd, who was really helpful to get us the equipment needed, we’re now proud owners of a ICOM IC-718 short wave tranceiver ! This piece of high-tech gear will enable us to stay in contact with our friends and family – even when in the middle of the ocean. IF I’ll manage to stem the amateur radio exam, we’ll be able to send and recieve emails using Pactor and Winlink, get weather information and of course stay in touch with other sailors.

And – again – thanks to Gerd, also our kids had their moment, when they discovered about two square meters of bubble-foil to jump around on. I should have done a video of that. – Priceless !!

Posted in Amateur Radio, Pics, Sailing | 1 Comment

Back together again !

Posted on Saturday February 26th, 2011 by dafdaf

After five weeks alone in Berlin, yesterday night my family arrived from Argentina. Yay-woo !!!

Posted in Argentina, Berlin, LosLocos, Pics | 1 Comment

First short-wave experiments

Posted on Monday February 21st, 2011 by dafdaf

On saturday I did a few first steps in short wave technology. One of the basics is to be able to receive a wather fax. This is hardly anything new. People have been doing that since the eighties. The thing is: I don’t have a shortware tranceiver and I don’t have a Windows(TM) PC.

So I coupled my trusty handheld SW radio with my MacBook using a 3.5mm ‘headphone’ cable. The software I was using/testing was: CocoaModem 2.0, Fldigi 3.2 and MultiMode Cocoa. After fiddling around with the receiver (using mode: USB) I finally received a faint signal. But that was enough to pull that first weather fax from Northwood, UK !

It’s actually quite amazing that one can receive quite precious data using only standard components and free software – without internet, telephone, WiFi… Well. It was only a test for getting used with the software. The final setup will hopefully consist of a proper tranceiver and a dedicated small Netbook or Laptop with all software installed and configured. Unfortunately the ONLY piece of software that doesn’t exist on Linux or Mac is the SailMail program for sending/receiving emails via SSB. But maybe I can find a solution for that, too.

Posted in Amateur Radio, Apple, Hardware, Links, Net, Pics, Sailing | Comments Off

We build an arcade joystick (pt. 1)

Posted on Thursday February 17th, 2011 by dafdaf

One of the little side projects Andy and me did when in Argentina was to build an arcade-style joystick as a christmas present for Gioco.

All the necessary ‘high tec’ parts I brought with me from Berlin (I bought them at the arcade shop). Those included: buttons, controller and the joysticks themselves. The idea was to build a wooden case, paint it and put the parts. The interesting thing about this was that there were no tools available except for a drilling machine. So we went to the diy-shop and got a saw, some screws and three pieces of wood.

All the wood parts were cut by hand, the wires for cabling came from old computer power supplies. That’s a really interesting way to do this thing. I didn’t have a chance to finish it but Andy should be painting the case this weekend and then it’ll be done. I’m gonna put pictures, I promise.

Posted in Argentina, Hardware, Mame, Pics, Projects | Comments Off

In the news…

Posted on Sunday January 30th, 2011 by dafdaf

The weekend edition of the german newspapers ‘Die Welt‘ and ‘Berliner Morgenpost‘ both featured (a quite similar) article about the LosLocos and the planned journey that should start this summer.

A really nice article – unfortunately only in German. But here it is anyway:

Artikel der Berliner Morgenpost als PDF

Posted in Berlin, News, Pics, Press, Rancho Relaxo | 1 Comment

Back from Argentina

Posted on Saturday January 29th, 2011 by dafdaf

One busy week ago, I came back from my last holiday. Three weeks in Argentina, while Gui, Bruno and Viola will stay there until the end of February. The last winter, the last holiday, the last stupid security check at airports…

Well, we had the most wonderful time in Argentina. Nice meat, saucages, cheese from the Barrilla, many hours in the pool, lots of nature and silence. Beautiful nights with a sky full of starts. During the day Campari Soda, building an Arcade Joystick for Gioco, Building little ships out of bamboo, etc.

Now that I’m back in Berlin and alone (until now), I’ll fokus on getting back into the Amateur Radio materials, reading some more books and updating this website. Some pics – the rest will be in the Gallery soon:

Posted in Argentina, Coquito, LosLocos, Pics, Travel | Comments Off

Relaxo: Rancho R. is fine !

Posted on Saturday January 15th, 2011 by dafdaf

Our good friend Michael had time to travel out of Berlin to the Marina Lanke to look for our ship. And there she is, the Rancho Relaxo. Just a couple of meters away from the burned-out buildings, but without a scratch.

And thanks to the fortunate wind, there doesn’t even seem to be any dirt from the fire on the ship. I guess, this time we’ve been really lucky !

Posted in Berlin, Pics, Rancho Relaxo | Comments Off

Rancho Relaxo on fire ?!?

Posted on Tuesday January 11th, 2011 by dafdaf

Just received horrible news via Email: It seems that there was a catastrophic fire in the shipyard where the Rancho Relaxo currently resides. I do not have much information but it seems that one of the main halls has burned down and so have the ships being inside.

Here are some pics, I found on the internets Pics are made by Andreas Meyer, (C) Berliner Tagesspiegel:

Pics deleted on Request of Mr. Meyer.

The Berliner Morgenpost also has a short Video of the fire:

Update: And a couple of more pictures, found on the webpage of the RBB. As one can see the ship in font of ours as well as the big crane at the waterside, I guess, the Rancho Relaxo is safe. Uff !

Posted in Berlin, News, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing, Video | 1 Comment

Viola’s drawing

Posted on Saturday December 18th, 2010 by dafdaf

Just wanted to post a cute pic of Viola, presenting one of her gorgeous works. ;-)

Posted in Berlin, LosLocos, Pics | Comments Off

Finally some new pictures

Posted on Monday November 15th, 2010 by dafdaf

Now that our homepage on the new server is taking on it’s final form, I’m starting to upload pictures of this summer. The link to the gallery is above, but you have to register an account to access them. Sorry for that inconvenience – but I don’t want Google & Co. to store all our pics on their servers… That’s for a little feeling of privacy on the net. Hehehe.

Posted in LosLocos, Net, Pics | Comments Off

On to the Wannsee

Posted on Saturday November 13th, 2010 by dafdaf

On Saturday we finally said ciao to our friendly neighbours at the local sailing club of the Wannseeaten 1911 and went for a two hour trip through Spandau to the Wannsee in the south west of Berlin. Here our Rancho Relaxo of the Seas will stay on land during the winter.

The trip was short and without any events – it’s actually just around 3-4 miles, with one lock underway. The best part was after arrival at the Marina Lanke, sitting in the cockpit with candle light and Rum while listening to Robert’s crazy stories about trips with his Alpha or tall ships going through the North Sea and the Atlantic. Whew !! I wish, we could have sit there the whole night. But in the end it was getting a little chilly…

WolfgangRobert

Ah ! – And to settle a bet: Kevin Costner’s ship in Waterworld was a Trimaran. Sorry, Wolfgang. ;-)

Trimaran from Waterworld

Posted in Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing, Travel | 2 Comments