M/Y Iron Lady

A few years back, I did a post on secure networks. The technology has changed and improved and Steve Dashew asked me to do a post on what I am using now. As boaters, we are frequently using public computers or open WiFi connections and security has the potential to be a real issue for us when we are opening personal, password protected accounts of all types. There are other issues – even at home using a national ISP that are bothersome.

Much of the traffic you send out over the internet is recorded by your ISP – so they know the websites you have visited. Further, much of what you send out when you visit a website is traceable to you – they know the IP address of your computer. Finally, when using public computers and WiFi, there are a variety of ways for folks to listen in to your transmission using keystroke loggers and the like to obtain user names and passwords. All of the above have always made me a bit nervous for obvious reasons.

Enter the Virtual Private Network but, more importantly what it does.

Basically, all of your internet traffic is encrypted and sent to a secure server. It effectively amounts to a secure tunnel thru the internet so all of your traffic is private and secure – even on open WiFI or monitored networks – in both directions.

Your traffic is them routed through the private network ensuring that your original IP address is kept private from the websites you visit. Thus your online identity is private.

There are a number of options out there to establish a VPN but I picked one called SurfEasy which charges roughly USD 70 per year for unlimited use. There are a number of additional features which made Surf Easy attractive.

First, their privacy policy states that they do not keep records of your browsing activities except “To respond to legal requests and prevent harm. SurfEasy may maintain usage for an individual user or account if there is a good faith belief that the response is required by law.”

Second, all passwords and bookmarks are stored locally on your password protected access key that you carry with you – not on SurfEasy’s servers.

Now on to how it works. SurfEasy comes in the form of a credit card with a USB key built in to it so it can easily be carried around in your wallet or purse with your other credit cards.

The ultrathin USB key is simply removed from the holder when it is needed.

The USB key is inserted in to any available USB slot on any computer. Here it is shown inserted in to the USB slot on my Mac keyboard.

The blue LED indicates it is operational.

No software needs to be installed on the computer – it is all stored aboard the USB key. To launch the service is a simple matter or clicking on the SurfEasy icon which appears when he USB key is inserted. There is a brief, one time set up procedure to go thru when the SurfEasy key is being activated for the first time to establish a user account and password for the USB key.

When the SurfEasy key is plugged in to a computer, a user password is required to activate the service. As the password is stored locally on the key, the only way to recover from a lost password is to download a recovery tool from SurfEasy and go thru the initial set up again – all data that was on the key is erased in this process.

Once the correct password is entered, SurfEasy launches a familiar Mozilla style browser.

Since all of the passwords are stored locally, I set up bookmarks in the toolbar for commonly accessed accounts – email, brokerage, and banking. Now only one password to remember – the one to launch SurfEasy. Further, since the passwords are all stored on the key, there is no danger of anyone getting them unless they have the password to your USB key.

Another important note. I have noticed no speed changes when using SurfEasy but speed does depend on the capacity of their servers, their locations and bandwidth as well as the number of users since all of your traffic is routed thru their serves. Currently they have servers in the US, UK, Singapore and Brazil and say they will add more as needed. The user can select the server to connect to from within SurfEasy toolbar. Speed also depends, of course, on things not related to SurfEasy since ultimate speed is limited to the slowest link in the communications chain between you and your destination URL.

I have been using it for several months and so far, it has worked exactly as advertised.

Thought it would be interesting to go back to some boat system details (Now I know some of you are yawning, but I like this stuff!). So here goes with a look at the raw water system.

First a few comments about below the water line hull penetrations. In short, it amounts to taking a very good hull and poking holes in it – not a good thing, so less is better then more. Further, where there are below waterline penetrations, they should be in locations that are easily accessed with appropriate means to shut them off. On some of the boats I have owned over the years, it was almost impossible get to some of the seacocks that isolate these penetrations. I remember one in particular where I had to crawl into a locker barely large enough to get my shoulders in, remove an access panel at the back and reach as far as I could to get to the seacock – needless to say that seacock didn’t get exercised very often.

Well the FPB 64 has exactly four below the water line penetrations. There are two in the forepeak – one for a salt water wash down and one for the forward blackwater tank discharge. Both have readily accessible quarter turn Marelon seacocks (very little risk of seizing) with nice big red handles. Remember – the forepeak is isolated from the rest of the boat by a water tight bulkhead as well.

The other two penetrations are in the engine room. One is for the aft backwater tank.

You can see the tank sitting to the right and behind the genset. The thru hull shut off is to the right of the tank.

The second is a sea chest which serves all the other salt water consumers in the engine room.

The sea chest is basically a pipe welded to an open hole in the bottom of the boat. It then extends up above the waterline and comes up adjacent to the workbench in the engine room. Note the clear plastic top so a quick look down confirms whether or not there is any debris in the pipe. Further note the small plug in the top. If we suck up a plastic bag in to the intake pipe and lose our raw water flow, it is a simple matter to remove the plug (as it is above the waterline) and run a broom handle down thru the hole to eject said bag from the intake pipe. Much better then having to dive the boat (which I have had to do in the middle of the Gulf Stream on one of my boats – fortunately it was a calm day).

From the sea chest, there are two pipes leading off horizontally to two massive intake strainers under the engine room floor boards.

Note the shut off valves before and after each one so they can be serviced while underway. There is so much capacity that we have never really had any plugging issues although I check them about once every week or two – it just takes a few minutes as the floor boards simply lift up out of the way.

From the strainers, the piping leads to a manifold which feeds all the raw water consumers – again under the engine room floor boards.

Note the the two clean out ports (caps) on top of the manifold. Can’t imagine that I will ever really need them but they are sure nice to have if I do.

Leading aft from the manifold you can see four ports with shut off valves and hose leading from there. One leads to the genset, one leads to water maker, one leads to the aft saltwater wash down and one under the manifold (which is not visible) leads to the engine. If you look carefully, you can see two little red wires above one of the manifold clean out ports – these are for a raw water flow sensor for the main engine which warns us of a water flow failure on the Maretron system at the helm station and flybridge. On many boats, there would also be a requirement for raw water cooling for the air-conditioning system but we use thru the hull cooling on Iron Lady – no salt water required. So the port labeled “Air Con” is actually a spare.

As in the forepeak, the engine room is isolated from the rest of the boat by a water tight bulkhead.

That about does it for the below the waterline penetrations. Should something really serious go wrong in this department (VERY hard to imagine), we also have a high capacity hydraulically driven crash pump in addition to our bilge pumps.

More about that in another post.