Boz

Steve - It's a long shot, but you might want to try Radio Shack or other electronics shop. Grommets like that are often used to protect wires entering enclosures, and they just might have something that's adaptable to what you need. If you've got one of the old ones, take it with you. If not, measure the diameter of the hole in the tubing (using a drill bit, perhaps) and compare to what they have in stock. Good luck!

You hit it right on the head, Wiley ~~ Man charged in fatal boat accident involving migrants off South Florida coast By Brian Haas and Patty Pensa South Florida Sun Sentinel 2:05 PM EDT, May 18, 2009 BOYNTON BEACH Federal authorities have charged a U.S. resident in connection with last week's smuggling attempt in which nine migrants were found dead after their boat overturned off the South Florida coast. The suspect, identified by federal prosecutors as Jimmy Metellus, 39, was to make an initial appearance in magistrate court in West Palm Beach this morning, but the hearing was postponed until Wednesday to bring in a Creole interpreter, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Documents charging Metellus say he is a Haitian citizen, but a lawful permanent resident of the United States. One of the survivors told federal investigators that his brother paid Metellus $4,000 for his trip from the Bahamas to the U.S. Metellus first denied smuggling the people, but later admitted he piloted the boat, according to court records. The 11 migrants who survived the capsizing of an overloaded boat were brought ashore and into custody Friday afternoon after two days on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. The survivors were transferred to U.S. Border Patrol and will be processed for "expedited removal," said Assistant Chief Victor Colon of the Miami Sector Border Patrol. The 11 migrants were part of an ill-fated voyage of possibly more than 30 people, mostly Haitians, who left Bimini together on Tuesday. Their boat capsized early Wednesday morning but the first survivors were not found until at least 11 hours later off Boynton Beach. The boat likely was part of a human smuggling operation, officials have said. In addition to those held on the 87-foot Coast Guard cutter, another five who needed medical attention were sent to local hospitals. Nine others, including a baby girl, died. Ermanie Lubin of North Miami thanked God on Friday afternoon after learning that her nephew Guepson Lubin, 28, had survived the journey. "This is a blessing, This is a blessing,'' said Lubin, filled with emotion. Lubin has a wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and a 4-year old son in Orlando. He lived for more than 10 years in Orlando and Miami, but was deported in 2007 after his political asylum was denied. Jim Lubin, a cousin, said after what Guepson has been through to get here he shouldn't be sent back. "It's not fair. This is supposed to be the country of the free." Around-the-clock search-and-rescue efforts stretched from midday Wednesday to Thursday night, though efforts were hampered by a swift-moving Gulf Stream. Coast Guard officials ended their search in Cape Canaveral. The Florida Immigration Advocacy Center wrote letters Thursday and Friday to the Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and to Immigration and Customs Enforcement asking the agencies to bring ashore the 11 migrants who survived. "Conditions on a Coast Guard cutter are clearly not conducive to conducting a criminal investigation," read the advocacy's Friday letter. "Victims of smuggling are traumatized and terrified. They don't know who to trust and may fear retribution from the smugglers." It was the right decision to bring them on land, said Cheryl Little, advocacy center executive director. She expects the migrants to be processed, then brought to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach. "The goal now is to find out exactly what happened and to bring the smugglers to justice," she said. At the same time, the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office completed autopsies of the nine and turned over those reports to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Tony Mead, medical examiner spokesman. The office is awaiting toxicology results, which could take up to 14 weeks, before determining causes of death. The Medical Examiner's Office declined to release the identities of those who died or a breakdown by age or gender. Only one of the dead had any identification, Mead said, and officials were working to find local relatives. "We'd like to get them identified as soon as possible," he said. Callers from Haiti have been asking about survivors, said Jean Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition in Miami. "We still have a lot of members looking for loved ones," he said. Gens Flermont doesn't know whether his son, Elson Flermont, survived the journey. His name was not on the initial list of survivors released Friday. "I've been crying all day,'' he said from activist Bob-Louis Jeune's office in Lake Worth. Flermont, of Lantana, said his son had been in the Bahamas visiting family. A friend called to tell him his son was on the boat. "People are calling from the Bahamas for information, but we don't know anything yet,'' Jeune said. Officials are being tight-lipped about details of the migrants who died because of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation, likely into human smuggling. Haitians spend $2,000-$4,000 per person to come to the United States from their homeland, which has been ravaged by severe weather and civil unrest. "Right now, we're in the early stages of a criminal investigation," said agency spokeswoman Nicole Navas. "To not hinder any future prosecution effort, we wouldn't comment. It's too premature." Fingerprints from the migrants were cross-checked with the FBI without match, officials said.

That's what I call one of those "What You Can Do With A Few Extra Dollars" boats. But I don't see any rod holders or outriggers.

He's not showing you the rest of that grill. He keeps it out by the inlet. No wonder he gets so much attention from those submarines and warships coming and going.

If you're referring to robaloboatowners.com, I just tried it and my anti-virus program popped up with this: The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.robaloboatowners.com/forum/ viewforum.php?f=11 The following error was encountered: The requested object is INFECTED with the following viruses: Trojan-Downloader.HTML.Agent.ok Please contact your service provider if you consider it incorrect.

GENEVA, Fla. -- A woman died in a boating accident on the waters of Mullet Lake Park on Saturday. Mullet Lake Park is in Seminole County near Geneva. Police said 45-year-old Teresa Fulton and another person were in an inner tube being pulled by a boat when boat went around a corner and the tube slammed into a tree. The other man on the boat suffered minor injuries. Police said Fulton's husband was driving the boat. She was taken to Mullet Lake Park after the accident and then to Central Florida Regional Hospital. Fulton, a mother of three from Chuluota, died at the hospital. Witnesses said they think the inner tube was cut by the propeller when it came loose. ~~~~ A later report says the boat was approaching a sharp curve on a narrow waterway and had to swerve to the left to avoid another boat coming the other way; this caused the tube to be "whipped" onto land, striking a tree.

Since no one apparently knew the answer to my earlier post, I PM'ed Andrea at AutoTether; her response is below. Ed, Thanks for the feedback, glad we are making a good impression here. WIley has a great site. To answer your question, there are 16 individual channels. The only time there is a chance for interference is within the first 2-3 minutes when the receiver is turned on, while it is searching for fobs in range and establishing the communication link. If someone on the same channel turns on their fob within range of your receiver within that 2-3 minutes there is a chance for interference. If someone does encounter interference it can easily be resolved by changing the channel. Our systems in the future will resolve this problem because we have rewritten the software program to accommodate thousands of frequencies. Hope this answers your question. Feel free to email me if I can help you anymore. Best, Andrea ~~~~~~~~~

Latest = 10 dead, 17 injured.

Boat carrying 28 people capsizes off Boynton Beach By Patty Pensa, Maria Herrera and Brian Haas South Florida Sun Sentinel 2:54 PM EDT, May 13, 2009 BOYNTON BEACH U.S. Coast Guard boats and aircraft are conducting a rescue operation off Boynton Inlet, where as many as 28 people were reportedly in the ocean after their boat capsized. The passengers may have been in the water since 2 a.m., the Coast Guard said. Three people are confirmed dead. The Coast Guard is pulling people out of the water and will bring them to shore. Almost half the people on board the capsized boat have been located in the waters near Boynton Beach. Eight were responsive and considered rescued, said Lt. Matthew J. Moorlag, Coast Guard spokesman. Five were unresponsive though Moorlag said Coast Guard officials do not determine if they have died. At least two Good Samaritans were helping search. One of them found three of the people on board. The Coast Guard is searching the area with two helicopters, an airjet, an 87-foot patrol boat and several small boats. Moorlag did not know the ages of those on board but said they were Haitian and Bahamian. The survivors said there were 28 people on the vessel. One person was flown to the hospital, possible Bethesda Memorial Hospital in Boynton Beach. Shortly after 2:30 p.m. rescue workers at the Boynton Beach inlet began moving their rescue support operation to Phil Foster Park in Riviera Beach on the advice of the Coast Guard. Fire-rescue workers from four departments -- Boynton Beach, Lake Worth, Palm Beach and Palm Beach County -- will set up a triage treatment area to help survivors. The boat capsized 15 miles out. Don DeLucia, spokesman for county fire-rescue, said he expected the victims would be brought in by about 3 p.m. The call came into the Coast Guard at about 1:30 p.m. It has launched a full-scale search from the air and sea, he said. Rescue crews from the Coast Guard's Lake Worth station and from Miami were on their way, Petty Officer Barry Bena said. It was unclear where the boat came from or where it was headed when it overturned in the ocean, Bena said. About 28 Coast Guard personnel were on their way to scene, Bena said. Two small boats were dispatched from the Coast Guard Station at Lake Worth Inlet, a helicopter and jet were sent from Coast Guard Air Station Miami and the cutter Cormorant also was en route from Miami. Shortly before 2:30 p.m., the trauma team at Delray Medical Center was on standby. Officials at the hosptial, which has one of the county's two trauma centers, expected to receive the most severely injured. "We're just waiting to see who needs our help," hospital spokeswoman Shelly Weiss said.

My kind of submarine: Sorry... the meds made me do it.

Hey, at least you're consistent!

Technical question: Do all of these units operate on the same frequency, or is it more like garage door openers with a huge range of freqs? What I'm picturing is if a bunch of people in the same area have Autotethers, will THEIR units activate if YOU are the one in trouble/out of range ?? I have to agree with Ludicrous about the belt loop aspect; belt clips on cellphones, Leatherman tools, etc. always seem to fail me at the worst possible time. I guess my "love handles" tend to push clips off my belts.

Name dropper! Need a wider shot to show the GPS, gauges, brand of cigar on the dash, etc....

You forgot.... I GOTTA GO POTTY !!!

Apparently they haven't pinpointed the cause yet, but they seem to suspect the generator. Here's the latest from the Tampa Tribune: It's 'as bad as I've ever seen a vessel' By KEITH MORELLI and HOWARD ALTMAN kmorelli@tampatrib.com haltman@tampatrib.com Published: May 10, 2009 Updated: 05/10/2009 12:22 am TAMPA - Bud Wendel took his family out to the tiny spit of sand that rises out of the swells of Tampa Bay on Saturday afternoon for a day in the sun and swimming. And he was enjoying the sights and sounds of Pine Key Island, a spot many know as Beer Can Island. There were scores of boaters anchored offshore. People were swimming and sprawled out on the tiny beach. Then came the boom, "like a cannon going off," said Wendel, a staff sergeant with the Air Force stationed at MacDill Air Force Base. A 33-foot Sea Ray cabin cruiser had blown up. Seven people, including a child, were seriously injured, officials later would say. Three of them suffered potentially life-threatening injuries. "Next thing we know," Wendel said, "we see black smoke billowing up from across the island, about 100 yards west of us. It was a huge explosion, the boat just blew up." Wendel's military training took over. He and his brother-in-law and father-in-law ran across the island to the opposite shore and saw the cabin cruiser, about 100 yards off the shoreline, engulfed in flames. "That's when you heard the people screaming," he said. "There were still people on the boat after the explosion." He said witnesses yelled to the survivors still on the burning vessel to jump and swim to shore. Some swam to shore on their own, while others, more critically injured, had to be pulled in, he said. One man had a compound fracture of his leg. "It was hanging by a thread," Wendel said. "I was trying to hold the guy's leg together." One woman pulled ashore had a severely lacerated foot. The owner of the boat was identified as George Meyers, according to Gary Morse of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Salvage attempt planned for today The vessel set out Saturday morning from the Apollo Beach area and anchored off the island by midmorning. The explosion was in the aft of the boat, Morse said. Eleven people were onboard when it blew up. Three were off the boat, wading in water about 30 feet away. Six children were below deck watching a movie on a television set in the forward part of the vessel, he said. One of those children was seriously injured and remained hospitalized Saturday night. Salvagers will try to raise the vessel this morning and bring it to the commission's headquarters on Gandy Boulevard, where it will be examined by investigators. The salvage won't be easy, Morse said, as the vessel appears to have broken up. "It's in as bad a shape as I've ever seen a vessel after explosion and fire," he said. Three of the severely hurt suffered potentially life-threatening injuries, according to Hillsborough County Fire Rescue shift commander Craig Lynn. Five of the seven had "systemic traumatic injuries," he said. The seriously injured patients were taken by helicopter to Tampa General Hospital. An additional five children had minor injuries and were taken by boat to Williams Park in Gibsonton for evaluation, officials said. Those patients were taken by ambulance to local hospitals. In all, 13 patients were transported to local hospitals, Lynn said, including a woman on the island who suffered a medical condition after the explosion. She was taken to Brandon Regional Hospital, Lynn said. A Coast Guard helicopter rescued six people in two separate trips, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Robert Simpson. "They all had various injuries," he said, "including broken bones and burns." Medical helicopters from Tampa General assisted with the rescue. By 9 p.m., six people - five adults and one child - remained hospitalized, officials said. Boater appeared to be experienced The people on the boat were extended family, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Maj. Dennis Post at a news conference, and were Hillsborough County residents. He said that investigators are just beginning their probe into what caused the explosion and while a preliminary report may be completed in a few days, a detailed report with conclusions as to what exactly happened may not be completed for two months. Post said a generator was in operation at the time, and he speculated that perhaps fumes from that built up in the bilge area. Without proper ventilation, that could result in an explosion. "We will leave that up to the fire marshals to determine," he said. The vessel was anchored properly about 100 feet from the shore of Beer Can Island, a popular destination for weekend boaters in Tampa Bay. The size of the boat and the way it was anchored suggested the boater was experienced, Post said. The vessel was not over its capacity, he said. "It's not unusual to have that many people on a boat that size," he said. "That was a good vessel. We're not sure if it was a mechanical failure or an operator failure. It's too early to tell." 'These people are lucky to be alive' Eddy Brown of Valrico was among the hundreds enjoying a day on the water. "We had just backed in, set the anchors and were just settling down and I looked toward the island," he said. "Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the explosion. I looked and the whole back end of the boat was blown off, kind of like a bomb. People were flying through the air. Parts of the boat were flying through the air. It was kind of like a movie." Brown said that after the explosion, he saw children on the bow. A lot of boaters had responded to calls for help, he said, and were helping them off the boat. At the Williams Park boat ramp, about a half-dozen injured people arrived by boat and were taken away by three ambulances. A half-dozen people arrived at Tampa General by helicopter around 1:30 p.m. Wendel said there were plenty of witnesses on the island who had medical experience, either with the military or otherwise. "We kept talking to the people," Wendel said, "telling them to stick with us." "They were in shock," he said. The man with the broken leg kept asking, "'What happened? What happened?'" Wendel said. "These people are lucky to be alive. "All we could do then was to wait on the medivacs to get there." Wendel said he often goes boating in the Bay, but has never witnessed a scene like Saturday. "Only in training," he said. "We practice this in military exercises and the training just kicked in."

7 flown from island near Tampa after boat explodes Others hurt on Beer Can Island in Tampa Bay By Anika Myers Palm Sentinel Staff Writer 2:44 PM EDT, May 9, 2009 TAMPA A boat explosion and fire in Tampa Bay near Apollo Beach has injured several people. The explosion happened near Beer Can Island earlier today. Paramedics treated six adults and a child for serious injuries, and all were flown by helicopter to Tampa General Hospital for additional treatment, according to a report from Tampa Fire Rescue. Five other children were treated for less serious injuries, transported by rescue boat to Williams Park for observation and then to the hospital. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also is investigating.

Story's been updated; happy ending COLLIER COUNTY: A 75-year-old missing boater was located by a Coast Guard helicopter. The helicopter spotted his boat in the water near Everglades City around 10:15 p.m. Thursday night.

Yeah, I think I've heard of that place. That was me in the boat that crossed their wake. I was just minding my own business, doing a little trolling at a leisurely 135 mph when that #$%&@ little gecko came flying by me. Spilled my beer all over the dash! And where he's saying "I got no steering" ? That would be me, too. After he spilled my beer, I launched a handful of 8 oz egg sinkers and scored a direct hit on the rudder. They haven't been back since. I've been working on a gas turbine outboard out in the garage. It uses methane. My consumption of burritos and beer has gone up twenty-fold.

That'll buff out. What the video DOESN'T show is that it was probably a Philly cop who threw the bottle!

I surrender. Ain't no way I can top that one.

Wow, Chris! Only 15 more years and you can get your very own AARP card! And, Gus............ well, never mind. Happy Birthday, guys! Hope you both have a great day.

Gus, just FYI... I just clicked on the Yachtworld link in your post and got this: This boat can no longer be found in our database. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, please send the URL of the previous page to webmaster@yachtworld.com along with an explanation. Thank you. Looks like it might now be off the market?? I don't blame you at all for withdrawing your offer, judging from what you and the surveyor found. Sounds like the boat was just too much of a "project boat". Good luck with your ongoing search.

"One more and I'm halfway to becoming a man."

Is it actually soaking through the canvas, or perhaps just around the stitching? I had good results with a brush-on fabric waterproofing solution on one of my prior boats where water would soak through the material. It was a thin, clear liquid with a strong solvent smell and came in an orange gallon can - - for the life of me, I can't remember the name of the stuff. I brushed on one coat, let it dry overnight and hit it with a second coat the next day. Never had another leak. If it's just coming in around the stitching, most camping stores (and probably Wally World) sell a seam sealer meant for tents; it basically plugs the needle holes and stops leaks there.

Da-dum-duuummmm! I am Captain Chaos! And this, this is my faithful companion, Cato... Say hello, Cato! Still one of my favorite movies. Dom Deluise was one funny guy. Not much of his style of humor around these days, unfortunately.