This week on the SHIPSHAPE podcast, we spoke to the American sailor and ocean racer, Bruce Schwab. Having already circumnavigated the globe twice on his Open 60 racing yacht, Schwab is also the first American ever to have completed the Vendée Globe Race and is now helping to power the future through his company, OceanPlanet Energy. Covering topics such as hair-raising racing experiences, sailing anarchy, global warming and why winning isn’t everything – this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. 

Transcript ——-

T [00:00:00] Shiver me timbers. You’re listening to that shipshape podcast

 

Merrill [00:00:24] Today on the Shipshape podcast, we have Bruce Schwab. Bruce is the main partner of Ocean Planet Energy, the first American to complete the Vendee Globe. An energy geek, a guitarist, a cyclist. It’s going to be an interesting conversation. Our hosts today are myself, Merrill Charette adenoma live aboard on a Ta-Shing Tashiba 36 in Boston, Massachusetts. And t.

 

T [00:00:47] What’s up, guys, this is Talha. Joining from virginia. I’m aboard my Luhrs 40 foot power yacht and we have with us Bruce Schwab. And he’s basically a legend. He’s done a lot in the sailing world already. So welcome to the show, Bruce.

 

Bruce [00:01:06] Hey. Hey. Yeah. Glad to meet virtually.

 

T [00:01:10] Yeah. Where are you?

 

Bruce [00:01:11] I’m talk to you from Woolwich, Maine.

 

T [00:01:15] Nice to have you.

 

Bruce [00:01:16] And so we’re in a rebuilt former Grange Hall here where Ocean Planet Energy is based. That was restored by none other than Nigel Calder, one of our partners. And it’s a great place and a means a cool place to work on both because there’s plenty of on the boat to me. So it’s a good place to be.

 

Merrill [00:01:36] Well, you know, the core of who you are is certainly tied to sailing. So I have to ask, what does sailing mean to you?

 

Bruce [00:01:44] Oh, that’s a tough question. I was lucky that some of my cruising, I guess the trajectory that a lot of people’s lives would go through is they may do racing and and then eventually want to dream of cruising and go cruising. Well, my dad took myself and my two younger brothers out for a three year cruise when know, when we were young and I missed two years of school, I missed half of eighth grade, all the ninth grade and half a 10th grade, and I still managed to graduate from high school and time went. So I did a lot of cruising when I was young and I always dreamed of racing. Racing was what I wanted to do. And so my dad eventually bought a boat, this high performance boat. Well, another story that we can get into that that then I have years later and I want to be working on boats in in California and Washington and got into ocean racing and did a number of races to Hawaii. You know, the Trans PAC, PAC Cup, single handed trans PAC, lots of San Francisco Bay Area racing. I was involved in the singing and sailing society and racing crowd around there for many years while I worked as a yacht rigger, for the most part for almost 20 years in the Bay Area. Then I went off on the the tangent that got the most attention In 99 2000, I got the bug to try and race around the world.

 

T [00:03:00] What got you into that? What got you interested into that?

 

Bruce [00:03:04] Well, I you know, I was good at the short handed racing scene in the Bay Area one, the single handed trench pack. I won a lot of local races in the from the West Coast. And I thought, well, you know, I seem to be good at this. What should what should I do next? And I hadn’t not been a big fan of, gee, around the world of globe events, I sort of followed him, but I thought those people were crazy. Who would want to go for so far? But then I followed Brad and Lou did a great job in the around alone. I used to be the boss race and we ran one 9899. He’s a great job. And I met him and he sort of got got me going on the bug.

 

T [00:03:42] Yeah, but was it the fact the Americans weren’t winning or what? But you’re, like, super interested.

 

Bruce [00:03:46] Yeah, well, he he was an American that was winning. He started doing quite good. Yeah. I had followed Steve. Oh, gosh. I mean, for a guy, he acted quite well in the 94, 95, B or C. I remember his name in a minute here, mister. He did a great job. He had some great articles. So the Americans started doing well in the stuff I started following. It started thinking that that could be interesting and maybe I could be good at that. And then so I started getting some backing together and some folks who want to try and do it, and we want to build an ocean planet. The original plan of trying to be in the 2000 by baseball, that’s the one that MacArthur got second in let’s through it that that really raise the the awareness of it that was such a fantastic job in that race and and won it and so I went but I didn’t make it you know I wasn’t ready. It’s a good thing I didn’t go exceptional with it. I would have made it. But I made the 2223 around a one race.

 

T [00:04:41] Made it meaning you made it there.

 

Bruce [00:04:42] I mean, yeah, I managed to finish add to stopping ample time to fix the whole whole long story about, you know, breaking a new boat and getting used to it. So basically the around the long race was my training race for the one day and that qualified me who I tore the boat apart, worked on for a couple more years. And while I was in Maine, that’s where my first extended stint in Maine was a from 2003 2004 in Portland, Maine, rebuilding the boat. And then I went to France in 2004 in time for the start, and then four or five by the Globe. I managed to finish that, then become the first American to finish it. And you know, that whole. Whole thing is a long, long story that we could spend time going over how to paymaster, you know, raise and borrow and beg and do whatever it took.

 

T [00:05:33] And did you have like a day job in the background while you were doing all the fundraising and everything?

 

Bruce [00:05:38] I did in the beginning when I was still working a little bit, for instance, and doing a bit of side jobs and stuff. But basically for a few years there I was a professional beggar to try and raise the backing and support.

 

T [00:05:52] TIP How much did you need?

 

Bruce [00:05:55] Well, we had no idea where we could try to do it no matter where we got. But in the end, I raised over the whole period of time from starting on 2000 to the whole thing sure ended after the run the globe. So I was like five or six years. There is $1.7 million in Nice, but I spent more to build the boat and restoration of the world. We spent about 2.10 boy.

 

T [00:06:18] So still a loss.

 

Bruce [00:06:19] Oh, yeah, big time. And so in the end, as in, I’m not alone in these sailing financial stories. In the end, it didn’t turn out so well. I took the fall for the whole thing and a lot of credit card bills and stuff. And in 2008, along with a lot of other folks, you know, I had to take the fall for the foundation. And on the boat Foundation got dissolved and my debt was in my name. Let’s put it this way. A few credit card companies lost some money in that in the end.

 

T [00:06:45] Mm hmm. And to that end, there was a financial crisis anyway. Exactly.

 

Bruce [00:06:50] Yeah, we. We couldn’t sell the boat for very much at the time. We had to sell it. And, you know, there’s lots of selling stories that sort of end that way. But the end result was I want to pulling off what I want to do. And when I told everyone I was going to do, and that’s a key part of it. When you talk about, you know, how much money you’re going to need, you know, one of the things that I learned, if people believe in you and and this is the early days of, you know, crowdfunding and stuff, I mean, to raise that kind of money, it’s just amazing. It’s just it’s a it’s a blip in the space time continuum that even HeartWare donors, like nearly every state in the country, there’s like more than 2000 different people pitched in everywhere from, you know, major donors like Kevin and Shauna Flanagan of Oregon weren’t in the end putting it.

 

T [00:07:39] But that’s true, though. This is way before the days of like, you know, any of the Kickstarter is a go fund me or anything. So how have you doing this back then?

 

Bruce [00:07:46] Email. So I was writing stories. I was giving people updates, writing stories from, you know, sailing on the boat, the whole adventure where it was around combat scenes or, you know, doing a run wound or my qualifiers doing all that process. We had a had a great email following, and that was one of the things I would need to get going again for my new project. But we’ll get to that later. But the easy answer, the early days of crowdfunding, I was on the luckily on the forefront of that and that wave of getting people interested and just amazing. That was going to say is that when people believe in you and you meet them at boat shows and you meet them at fundraisers or you meet them online and they say, okay, I believe you’re going to do this. Let me write this check. And then you check for thousands of dollars when you get close to the event and you haven’t raised enough and you still need more, you still have to go. And you told people you were going to do it, you no matter what. And so you got to do it no matter what. And the chips fall where they may in the end.

 

T [00:08:44] How did you when you when you went out there, did you feel prepared? I’m like, how does one I didn’t prepare for, you know, the very.

 

Bruce [00:08:51] Well first thing you do is you do a race like they’re on loan first to break a bunch of stuff and get an idea of what you want to fix. And I did a lot of that, but I still was we were still redoing things up to the final days before the start of the voting. And if you follow, you know, many of the boats are there except for the very largest budget, most professional experience campaigns. Everyone’s working into the lap last minute, every one of them. We were putting on solar panels, I think, one night before the start of the race, not just just getting things done at the last minute. There were some rigging stuff that I had to. I mean, I think I in the early days of the race, I went in positive. We went to Cape Verde Islands or got we’re not really close, but just a little bit less wind. So I could spend more time out on the boom and redoing some roofing lines and other stuff to fix all along the way. And I had, you know, I had a great set of stories that were sending out on my email link for all this stuff for a while. It’s not online anymore, and I’ve been meaning to put all the stories back together and get them out there and or maybe even put them into a book. But I wrote a lot of great things that would be fun. There was on Sailing Anarchy. We had a great relationship with that crazy website Sailing Anarchy that they put in of all our stories, had a great following there and other venues and and you know, once you’re in the race, there’s lots of lots of exposure there. Maybe, you know, their stories would go out to different media, media formats. But in the end, I was I was doing fairly well in the race early on and then, you know, had various, you know, things to fix, like everyone. And just keep going. I mean, everyone has their problems. Conrad Humphreys had to replace his rudder. And, you know, everyone I think out of we had 21 boats start and 14 finished and actually was, I think, the highest percentage of finishers of all the vehicles that that one event. I think we had a pretty good track record because, well, as you know, not many boats never make it to the hill. It’s really hard to go all the way around the world, but stopping and not in pull it off.

 

T [00:10:54] It’s something about braking. Yeah.

 

Bruce [00:10:57] That you can fix.

 

Merrill [00:10:58] It was interesting. I was taking a look at the boat Ocean Planet, and it was unique and its creation and its design and your way of thinking with it. It was a wooden boat, right?

 

Bruce [00:11:09] Yes, It was cold, molded wood veneers over a foam course. It was a composite boat. There’s very light construction. It was very, very good construction. And the builder that did this to Creek Boat works in Portland, Oregon. It built a number of Tom Riley designs using that technique already. And it had been primitive and very fast, really economical, but effective way to build boats. It had plenty of, you know, carbon and Kevlar and other modern materials in it. So it was unique construction in many ways. The probably the most visible feature on it that was unusual was the freestanding rig. It was 85 foot tall and stayed mast. That would bend quite a bit, but that worked quite well. So it’s a very effective rig and, you know, took a lot of flak for it from naysayers who thought that was a very good idea. But I was one of the few people that never had to go up the rig the whole way around the world.

 

T [00:11:55] It just sort of says, understand this a little better. Well, describe that a little more for us.

 

Bruce [00:12:01] What what was a it was a braided carbon tube, essentially like a giant fishing pole is made by composite engineering in Massachusetts. Ted Van Dusen I don’t think he owns any more, but he was the guy that, you know, design that. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the time all they designed boats called the Wiley Cats. They were unstable cat rigs. They’re rip offs on the West Coast. And the advantage of of a rig that bends like that is it automatically flattens the sailboat very hard. They’re very hard to break. You think it’s going to break, but no, because it bends. It makes it very difficult to break. I sort of get different because it was it was a fracture rig. We still had headstones and we had big masthead speakers. There was an on stage master, no shrouds, this sort of running back and that was it.

 

T [00:12:44] So you sort of getting like nature to help you almost instead of working against you.

 

Bruce [00:12:49] Yeah, yeah. Let you start the reef. And a lot of it was, it was a good rig for getting around the world on a skinny boat like that. And also because the boat was so skinny, we didn’t have a very wide shroud base, which you have a white shroud base, you have more compression on the spa and what of having to be heavier because the compression. So in that particular boat case where it was rather slender, you know, the overall weight of the whole thing was pretty similar to what happened with the state rig. On the wider boats of the boats are the really wide decks, freighters that you see nowadays. Those that do those on stage would be would be a performance disadvantage. Heavier weight required that much higher riding moment on the new boat especially with the new foiling boats.

 

T [00:13:34] Yeah that’s I was going to say all the new designs of foils on them.

 

Bruce [00:13:37] Yeah. So it’s a whole different world now. But for when that boat was designed in 99 2000, it was a pretty advanced boat and worked quite well. And it helped me do what the main goal was, which was to be the first American to finish. And I would say that we if that boat, if we’d been a couple of years sooner and we had of course, always nice to say if we had more money, had better sail development out, I think the boat could’ve done quite well. The 2000 race, because they’re still ironing out the white boats and water ballast, getting keels that were still getting ironed out in Ocean Planet could have done really pretty well in 2000 if had been fully, fully realized. But that’s okay. You know, I managed to finish and, you know, for later. And for us.

 

Merrill [00:14:19] One of the questions I got is that, you know, it sounds like you’re the all-American man, right? You basically decided to get into the Van Dayglo. I you create the Made in America Foundation to pretty much like crowdfund on this. You know, no American has completed it. When you were out there, did you feel like America was with you, Right? Like, was that a driving force? Like, how did you think of that?

 

Bruce [00:14:47] Yeah, well, there’s a patriotic side to it, but definitely a responsibility side to it that all these people had put into it. And I didn’t want to screw it up for. For all you know, there’s so many volunteers work on the boat, you know, and single handed racing is anything but single handed as far as getting to the event. So many people involved and volunteers and workers to make it all happen. And someone is the designated driver. That was me. But you feel a responsibility to not screw it up. But I will point out that I had a great following in France with France and France, kids from schools that I saw before and after the race. We had a. Thing worked out. We had Americans American schools following. Not to the extent that that Rich Wilson did when he went after me four years later. He did a really great job. Bill got a really big education, fully accredited education program. He took it to the next level on that. But that was a big part of the to the inspiration of of knowing that there’s kids and people following the rules across the board. I was amazed to discover after the race for four years I’d run into people that followed it that they wouldn’t even have known and weird places. I’d be at a ski resort hanging out somewhere. Hey, you’re that guy. Did I bump your car in the parking lot? You know, you’re the guy that round the world thing. And then at one time, actually. The story. I’m thinking of the guy as a ski place. They’re like two guys are in, like, this room above the ski resort. One guy asked me that, Hey, you’re that guy. And the other guy goes, Yeah, there are the whole thing with you guys there. And both had followed it and it’s amazing, you know, nowhere near the water. And so the reach of the Vonn day, you know, afterwards just amazed me and was bigger than I even thought it was when I was doing it.

 

T [00:16:31] And you’d mentioned that like, Yeah, and like a third of the boat didn’t make it. Did you run into, like, crazy stuff? How did how did you make it?

 

Bruce [00:16:40] Oh, definitely. I mean, there’s no way you can go that far without having some pretty stressful moments. Mm hmm. I think some of the most stressful part for me was early on entering the so Southern Ocean early on, a very tight knit, high speed storm. There’s one stretch where I had to drive like half an eight and I didn’t trust the autopilot, just nervousness. And I think.

 

T [00:17:00] I we say like just to get a read in that would what were you interested in seeing 60. Not when they read. Not once.

 

Bruce [00:17:06] Oh, I don’t know. Not that much probably, you know, fifties.

 

T [00:17:11] Fifties, but still, you know, to most people.

 

Bruce [00:17:14] Let’s put this way. I mean, nowadays the boats are much faster and the 24 hour speed record likes like over 21 knots, average speed. But for me, there’s a six hour stretch where my average like 1780 knots, average speed. Wow. And that’s that was, you know, excessively exciting.

 

T [00:17:31] Yeah, Unheard of.

 

Bruce [00:17:34] For that time. And so boats could go pretty fast. That was faster than I wanted to go. But I was in a situation where I didn’t want to stop driving and had to just keep going and wait for it all the the wind And.

 

T [00:17:46] You had an out of pilot system or the autopilot system.

 

Bruce [00:17:48] We had a very had a very good, well-thought out steering in our power system. That was all pretty good. But you know how good it is. There’s you know, you don’t really want to know what the limits of it are strong. And it was much improved over they ran in the round alone had a couple bad crashes, one in the Southern Ocean where I broke the boom the second time. And and so it turned out that the compass that we used, I can I can only hear the Jericho was going to heal over so far before it would not work necessarily get knocked down by a wave the composite start putting out data there. I wouldn’t have any data to go on. It would get lost and useless to crash if you didn’t get it unhooked and start driving soon enough. Eventually we learned to put it on a gimbal so the team jumped in far and smart. So that was saying, you know, there’s all these things you learn in there aren’t alone.

 

T [00:18:40] Yeah. Necessity.

 

Bruce [00:18:42] So the body you know, the system was ironed out quite a bit. If that doesn’t mean you’re not, you know, nervous as hell in, in a big storm and there’s so far to go in, you know, it’s not stopping the around long years we had a few stops and you have to keep going And so, you know, there’s some stress just trying to make it to the end. I think psychologically, as it got toward the end of the line, I remember being just wondering if something was going to go wrong, you know, toward the last, you know, beating up the Atlantic, getting through the traffic and getting through your stuff in the case you get this course, you get to the end. The more suspicious I became with it, something was going to go wrong. And but in the end, they pull it all after I think psychologically toward the end know it’s just sort of, gee, what could go wrong? And, you know, if you’ve read all the the other books about the history of round the world racing like the Golden Globe race, where’s that one guy in the trimaran who made it almost to the end, not just in his timing fell apart. He almost made it. And in fact, he crossed his path. In effect, they got around the world and it fell apart. And those are great stories, by the way. I sort of got.

 

T [00:19:47] That suggestion even for your book. I love it. And then so but you’re obviously part of the whole technological thing is that you’re also not getting much sleep right now. How much are you sleeping at this time?

 

Bruce [00:19:57] I was sleep in 20 minute sessions. That was my pattern. Everyone has a different pattern of they do to you fall into if in conditions. I would do lots of the 20 minute sessions, you know, throughout at night. And we over I think would be pretty good. But there may be cases where it be several days you only get a couple. So, you know depends on the conditions and we definitely get the hang of trying to make it up or impossible I. Things go bad.

 

Merrill [00:20:24] I listened to some of your interviews from the van. They glow, and I guess the way your keel was shaped, it made this crazy sound. And our viewers will have to listen to a few of the videos that you have on YouTube.

 

Bruce [00:20:38] Some good ones out there. It’s how it would definitely howl at high speed, which is pretty common. Even the new boat, someone will do that. There’s somebody with the trailing edges on the foils that everyone’s always trying to. That’s a classic debate of what what you do at the trailing edges of your foils. Try and stop that infernal noise.

 

Merrill [00:20:56] But yeah, it was like loving it. It was such a terrifying noise. I’m like, Oh my God, that sounds just so ominous. Like this constant, like, hum. Oh, yeah.

 

Bruce [00:21:08] Yeah.

 

T [00:21:08] And literally means you’re going slow.

 

Bruce [00:21:12] You’re going fast. So certain planes like they were going fast and their sound. But at a certain point it just it does get a.

 

T [00:21:19] Little acoustic speedometer low.

 

Merrill [00:21:26] This is a this is a good spot to really try to figure out a little bit more about that, how you got into energy. You know, it seems like you went.

 

T [00:21:33] From where we met Before we go there, remember your original question was, Bruce, what is sailing? B And then we went down this whole giant story. So at the end of that, what is sailing to you?

 

Bruce [00:21:44] MM Well, for me it’s different for everybody. For me, it’s just it’s an application. Well, it’s a great mix of physical sensations, but especially on fast boats. I mean it’s like I really like sailing and fast boats physically tie into the. The feeling of the wind and the way the boat goes in the water. For me, that physical sensation in connection with the boat is really fun, especially after wincing and surfing that whole physical sensation. Something so much, so much fun. It’s like mountain biking, you know, great, great mountain road. So that and and that physical mixture with the mental part of it, there’s just so much data and started to absorb and and get and tie in to with the sail trim the angles.

 

T [00:22:30] It’s almost like becoming one with the boat.

 

Bruce [00:22:32] Yeah well the physicalness that becoming one of the physical part of it and then the mental numbers part of it, which is fun to to do in the a strategy of, of working wooden angles and analysis of it. It’s just so involving that it can be pretty addicting the whole the whole thing said about racing. I haven’t been doing so much of it in the past few years. I’ve obviously had my fill of trips around the world and six Hawaii races and for Trans Atlantic. And so I had, you know, quite enough sailing for a while. But I do want to do some more on in my my boat and probably the one that lived on when my dad had when I was in high school. That’s another story we can get into. I do want to do some more Hawaii races when we’re cruising, but I’m not going to go around the world again. Okay. You want to point out that I was the first American to officially finish, but I’m not the first American to do it. My plant should be recognized as the first American to try it in that he he he finished, but not officially because he had to get some help to was disqualified. But you know, he’s a great story. There’s a there’s a movie out at him called Coyote It’s crazy guy. And then before him, we should recognize Dodge Morgan, who is a guy who spent a lot of time in Maine, in New England, who did his own self-funded trip before the funding even existed. And he was really good and said a bunch of races on the boat that he had built for himself, American Promise. And that’s how I met him. He was on our board for a while, the foundation that it was a boat and he was a great advisor and great a great influence. What a character. So. So he passed away.

 

T [00:24:08] I bet. I bet you meet interesting people. I mean that like if you said you need to be a certain kind of crazy to even try it.

 

Bruce [00:24:14] Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of that. That the whole vortex of Ocean Planet, the boat in that program and the people that it brought in from all over the world, from France to New Zealand, in the around the world, I am around a lot of 27 countries and people from all over the U.S. from who come in and help on the boat, from wherever. That whole vortex and people have up is literally hundreds of people who are involved in in the whole program in one way or another. And all the donors, it was a big thing. I mean, they had a lot of gravity to it and stuff so that it was changed my life. And then it came out of that and I was a bit lost for a while with all the financial stuff that went on and focusing on what what to do with myself. But it turned out that I had become and this segway into.

 

T [00:25:00] This question exactly.

 

Bruce [00:25:01] What was is, is I became sort of an energy geek, as many people will do when you spend more time staring at the battery monitor, wondering if you have to recharge the batteries. And I was lucky that I had I was younger. I didn’t know deeply about electrical systems. I started that stuff and I was lucky that the place I work at. Since Marine in Alameda, California, had worked there for almost 20 years. A guy who’s in the same complex there, Lambda Marine, and he’s still a really, really highly recognized electrical installer in the area that he was my guru, electrical system. He set up Ocean Planet for me and said and he just said, you’re not going to go around the world. You know, I mean, let you go without having a good system on there. And so he designed a system and I spent my time learning what I had, what he had put together in there. And that was what my education was really.

 

T [00:25:53] And to back then to what sort of systemic document?

 

Bruce [00:25:56] Well, I was in back that was before the days of lithium batteries. We had gel batteries and we had a high power 24 volt alternator. So 24 of.

 

T [00:26:06] Those alternators were already making their way into. I thought that was a newer innovation.

 

Bruce [00:26:11] No, no. The hyper ultra has been around for quite some time, but the regulators were and we had for the time we had the most advanced Altair regulator you could get, this was back in with Apple Power was out in the CRV three The early days were smart voltage regulators. So I got to you know, I was up on the latest stuff at the time, thanks to my friend Lam who said all that and and the solar had lots of solar on there and solar controllers and good battery monitoring system to see all this stuff and be able to manage my loads and be able to make decisions and say, well, you know, I’m getting a little low, but in a couple of hours the sun’s going to be up. And the way the bolts healed here in the South Atlantic, I know that I’m going to get a pile of on this jive in the motor. I’m going to get a lot of power from the solar and I won’t have to charge, you know, if things go well. I went for three days once without charging at all with the engine is because I was able to work the solar and tie it into the collect as much energy as possible, which again, the Southern Ocean, there’s a lot more clouds and he had more to charge. But that managing, you know, the energy and the energy storage and use of it became a habit. And when I got another one of my Ocean Planet team members, a friend of mine at California, Greg Nelson, was getting into lithium batteries afterwards, and he and I started marketing some early forms of lithium batteries early in the game before we learned that more advanced electric control systems from BMS, we said you’re the to be a messenger, which means battery management system was an important part of lithium battery systems. So I learned pretty early on that first, I didn’t have any big fires or anything or burning boats down, but I learned that we needed more integrated systems and that’s what we do now. So I’ve sort of grown I’m not an electrical engineer, one of my employees, one of our partners, Julie Coughlin, she’s the metro engineer and of course, not too called her his partner. He’s he’s a legend in the business. I’m I’m just a sailor that has steered battery monitors a whole lot. But I got started with lithium batteries pretty early in the game.

 

T [00:28:17] And this is when they were still dangerous.

 

Bruce [00:28:19] Well, yeah, they could be. Yep. They definitely. And I’ve been able to stay up with all the systems. And what’s the right way to do lithium batteries is for large applications and there’s different horses for different courses. And that’s sort of our game here is doing the more high end Ocean Planet Energy, which are kind of named after the boat business there are now we are our bread and butter is the little bit larger integrated systems that are very powerful charging and large energy storage where people want to run, say, air conditioning all night long, which is something we never would do, or led batteries before.

 

T [00:28:57] You.

 

Bruce [00:28:58] And charge it all up in an hour and a half in the morning. It takes a whole lot of charging power. So having a system that can do that. But lithium batteries allows you to do that. But to have that to move that kind of energy around the partners all takes integration and control system that I didn’t know it when I was staring at that power monitor and had my CRV three regulator in 2002. I didn’t know that that was I was beginning my training systems now for for bigger boats on our market. Is it racing boats. Racing boats to have them.

 

T [00:29:37] Everyone’s on my feet, all the cruisers, it’s the crew and the.

 

Bruce [00:29:40] General to want to have they don’t want have a generator or at least limit the use of it and want to have some amenities on the boat need to they need to create the power and start to have those amenities. That’s so that’s the market We well.

 

Merrill [00:29:54] It sounds like you came in very early on to the whole kind of renewable energy charging systems on on yachts. How has it changed over the years that you’ve been in it? It obviously seems like a lot more people are getting into it and considering it, and especially with the fuel prices these days. Right.

 

Bruce [00:30:13] Exactly. Yeah. You you still can’t beat the energy density of fuel. The energy density of a fuel if working with the renewables teaches you anything. How amazing. Diesel is, you know. And but then now you recognize how amazing invaluable it is. How do you get the most possible out of every pint of that fuel? Now it’s more expensive. And then that can be done so much better than traditional. Traditional energy systems have traditional alternators that come stuck on an engine. If you’re going to charge with those, it’s incredibly inefficient for the amount, the cost per kilowatt hour to amortize. The wear and tear on the engine. The amount actually asked to burn, you know, the amount of time you have to run it. And there’s all these reasons.

 

T [00:31:01] Why do we have any numbers on that?

 

Bruce [00:31:02] Is it like, oh, Nigel has more plastic numbers on there? Nigel has got great articles on the cost per kilowatt hour of the energy, depending on where you get it from. You know, he does seminars and stories on the stuff. It’s a wealth of information. Yeah. If you’re able to load up your device, that’s whether it’s a generator or whether it’s an engine, if you’re able to load it up. So it’s charging, you know, close to what it can produce. It’s better to load them out than to run them and lightly load it. They’ll burn fuel when they’re running, whether the light will load it or not. So you want to load it up. It’s better for a diesel engine to do that. Then it becomes much more cost efficient, able to wring kilowatt out much more kilowatt hours out of those trucks of diesel and put them somewhere in the batteries. And so the ultimate what’s you asked what have changed over the years and the alternators and, you know, big alternatives have been around for many, many decades for different applications, but they’ve gotten more advanced and smaller for a given amount of power that they can do. Higher voltage systems are coming into play. We sell more 24 volt systems now than we do 12 volt ones, and we’re starting to sell more. 48 volt.

 

T [00:32:15] 14.

 

Bruce [00:32:16] Is actually 51 volt lithium systems and the amount of power you can get from the same size alternator, it’s almost twice as much for the same size alternators we’re being told about one. If you’ve got a feeling that same thing and it’s a little bit more load on it, but it’s just so much more efficient because it’s less amps for getting the amount of kilowatts. So the efficiency of of the units has improved the electric and the integrated. The smarts of everything has improved. Like I mentioned, those the smart water regulator that I had at the time, those are just the last couple of years. Companies like Wake Speed have been developing much more advanced auto regulators that communicate with the can bus data from the advanced battery beams, the brains of the batteries, and they’ve worked out the algorithms to communicate with, you know, Victor on batteries, lithium ion batteries, you know, other batteries out there in the market so that you can play these things together and you have much more controlled, graduated, powerful charging. If you’re going to be charging really fast, you just don’t want to be safe. You want to be you want you have to last a long time and you want to monitor battery temperature, not just voltage, you know, what’s the current watch, all these features. It’s a lot of data involved now. So it is it is complicated and there’s a lot of features to program and these things when you set them up. But when you get it all set up right, it’s amazing the amount of energy you can move around for sure.

 

T [00:33:39] And I definitely consider myself a big energy geek and just wanted to like get your opinion on, for example, solar specifically. Is it a huge fan of solar on boats? I think we need more solar on boats. What about like broader than that, though, in terms of energy, is this solar going to solve all the problems down boats as well?

 

Bruce [00:33:57] Solar is definitely the answer for cruising boats that are low energy loads. If you don’t have control trying to run air conditioning all night long and solar can. And with the advent of more efficient refrigeration, it’s one of the biggest loads I’m crazy about, sure, but they’ve got much more efficient. So with the advent of lithium batteries, which store battery better, store energy better, and the advent of more powerful solar panels, there’s more more power per square foot. In the advent of more efficient refrigeration, you can now run a decent fridge for the not that much solar. So how much solar you need? There’s more to be done to figure out what’s recommended amount to half. And then you need to have sun like and work on the range. So you solar is going to be the primary energy source on a lot of boats if the roads are too high. But you still need to have a backup system because you’re still going to need fuel when the sun doesn’t shiner when something happens. So a lot of boats, when they do an energy system upgrade, can address both the fuel efficiency charging and the solar at the same time. And that’s where they go to do a system refit. They’ll be upgrading your alternator that we get an alternative regulator pulley kit on the engine to work that alternator. They’ll get solar, the solar regulators, they’ll get a new battery monitoring system so you can monitor all the stuff and see what’s going on. So it’s common for this to happen all at once and you won’t be all integrated in your work together. And so that’s our game. Yeah. To kind of say, well, you can use this and this, talk to this, the that everything knows what’s going on. And then we create a system diagram so the installers actually have a plan that someone knows what, Here’s what we’re shooting for. This is where all the parts are going to be and this is how it’s all basically connected, how the networking works. You know, people need to know this has to be mess. The battery system needs to communicate with the regulator. How does that all plug together? Where’s the monitoring? And so we we do diagrams. It kind of shows you what plugs into what.

 

T [00:35:54] And obviously and this sounds super technical to lots of our listeners probably, but one way is obviously just to get Bruce’s company to figure everything out for you or do the way Bruce did. Right? You started off with like I sort of for the ten watt panel and I have a kilowatt on top, right start super small and just figure it out because like this yourself.

 

Bruce [00:36:13] It’s true. You have the time.

 

T [00:36:15] Yeah.

 

Merrill [00:36:16] Well, as soon as you brought up refrigeration, I was like, okay, now I see the connection. Lexi from both our and.

 

T [00:36:22] Mm hmm.

 

Bruce [00:36:23] Those guys are great. They’re really doing a great job with air conditioning and refrigeration, and they’re really big on efficient air conditioning. In fact, I think they have more data, real live data from testing as far as there’s all these metrics right now, the new metric, electric cars is miles per kilowatt hour. Forget about miles per gallon at most kilowatt hour. You know, so this but they have all these metrics on BTUs per kilowatt of electricity. So how much can your air conditioning system deliver for How much electricity is taken from your batteries when it’s 12 volt or 24 volt or 48 volt or running on AC when 24 to 40 or European to 30, it’s they’ve got a pretty good database, good knowledge of what’s the best air conditioning system, most efficient for your particular application, how big your boat is, how much are you handling. So they’re doing a great job. They’re doing insulation. That’s Lexie and Phil Gutowski at, but I actually work with them. We work with them a lot. We sell them alternator systems and, you know, batteries if they need it from us.

 

T [00:37:24] And we had the pleasure of interviewing them. They were one of our first shows, I think I listeners, some of them through very tough history shows, might remember Lexi, but he had so many cool ideas. And it’s funny, he I remember back he had said that a lot of them he was getting from not within the U.S. like he was going to Europe and these guys were doing these crazy new things and he was like, We need more of this there. And now he was just I think that’s huge. I think that’s part of the whole industry is sharing technology like that, you know, just making everybody be better.

 

Bruce [00:37:57] Yeah. And they weren’t afraid to go learn and travel to find out what the best stuff is. And yeah, right here in Maine, one of the big projects we’re doing at a great boatyard, great our boatyard, Harpswell, Maine. Here we have a boat with a 51 volt, big 51 volt lithium system that’s being charged with the integral, which is like the highest power alternators you can get. Nigel was involved in those. So this boat has a massive 51 volt system that’s got twin engines With with these integration, they can charge enormous power and they happen to have the thermodynamic the air conditioning system is not by boat or X, So it’s a this is a boat that they’ve done all these systems on. There were the Spokane have a pretty luxurious amenities for.

 

T [00:38:41] And no generator.

 

Bruce [00:38:42] And no generator but.

 

T [00:38:44] It’s a movement.

 

Merrill [00:38:45] So I got to hear your take on the age old question of, you know, solar versus when versus hydro or a combination of all three or nuclear.

 

T [00:38:56] Yeah.

 

Bruce [00:38:58] What we don’t have we aren’t selling nuclear reactors about yet. We don’t have.

 

T [00:39:01] Yet. Yeah.

 

Bruce [00:39:03] Yeah. Well did you want to buy an aircraft carrier. But the, the, the combination of of all this stuff is definitely improved in the integration of make it all work is definitely improved but solar can do quite a bit is for what the mix is. Depends on where you’re going to go. If you want to use Newfoundland and stuff where it’s foggy, a lot know maybe wind is a good thing to have or it’s windy a lot, but foggy in general. Wind is sort of fallen out of favor, a little bit in favor of more solar if you can fit it, but they do complement each other. The one tricky thing with wind is that they’re usually I’ll get with technical here, they’re usually permanent Magnet Motors. And so the controllers are different. In an alternator, you control the magnetism of the motor, the rotor in there with a regulator that controls how magnetized that rotor is, know it doesn’t want it to run. It turns off that magnetism, the surge of the voltage, feeding the rotor, and then it doesn’t do anything. It just spins. Well, it’s a permanent magnet motor coming in a wind generator. It goes to a different type of regulator. It can’t really turn it off.

 

T [00:40:05] Things have to go somewhere. Yeah, the electricity.

 

Bruce [00:40:08] Yeah. And with the have lithium batteries, lithium batteries have to be able to turn off the charge sources. So the integration of a list of wind, a wind energy system into a lithium. Gets a little bit more complicated because they’re harder to turn off.

 

T [00:40:26] And I’ve seen some people, again, other energy geeks sort of messing with the system where as soon as the batteries are charged to divert all the extra amperage into heating the water or something. Yeah, and.

 

Bruce [00:40:39] You can divert you can do that and you could I think some of the answers some folks are doing now said, Mm hmm. Rather than mess around with the complication of of trying to integrate the beams to control the wind and the related stuff they just directed to a LED battery and then using the a B charger for that was charged to move energy to the house battery in a controlled manner or divert it to a water heater or something the old fashioned way. So even with these supplies of lithium batteries, you’ve often been several LED batteries on board to do certain tasks and starting the engines. You don’t want that in the same circuits as your house loads and starting in the string bags don’t necessarily need to be that big. So, you know, like I say that it’s way better to stick with LED batteries for your starting and then charge those from the house pack, which is where the most the energy is. But you can use that to charge your house bags are for your power thruster and winless up in the front of the boat. That was probably just it might as well be a lead battery. It’s less expensive and then charge that from house spec as well. So picking the right, knowing the loads and picking the right batteries for those applications, choosing the right sources, depending on where you’re going to go, if you have enough room for solar. So most and how much when, how much room for solar are they going to use fuel? I would say this very is a very, very crude analogy trying to decide whether you should you go with like LED batteries or lithium batteries. If you can get enough solar, if you do your loads, your loads of low enough to where is you get refrigeration, you get a couple of little things that if you’re solar ginger enough on there to cover all your loads and and then a little bit extra so you know you can charge quickly after some cloudy days and stuff. LED batteries are going to be fine let berries last years and years if they just get charged often enough they don’t like sitting partially charged deteriorate. If you get off solar do that stick with led by as much solar energy. Yet if your loads are high enough and you have limited space for solar are just not enough to cover whatever your kind of loads are and you have to charge with fuel in there means you’re running an engine or a generator and you want to move energy into your batteries and you want to spend as little time doing it as possible. Then lithium batteries are going to make sense of what you have to charge with fuel. It takes so long to fully charge a led led battery that it’s very inefficient to charge from alternators to stuff for. You don’t want to run it for alternative low load for a couple of hours just to top usher your Barrett. So that’s it’s a very crude analogy but that’s basically a good rough rough set of parameters, right. If you can if you can cover your loads of solar, you’re going to be fine with it. And if you need to charge, sure, lithium is worth looking at.

 

T [00:43:10] And at the same time, I think now there’s also two little gizmos that let the batteries talk to each other better write different sort of chemistries as well.

 

Bruce [00:43:18] Well, that’s what we call to be chargers. I, I mentioned that earlier on explaining it sorry a B to B charge is essentially a DC DC converter that has a programable output from the source from the source battery. Its target battery output has a programable watch multi-stage charging, whereas the absorption voltage and flow voltage, it will probably properly maintain the battery that’s on the source side and it’ll turn off if the input voltage is too low. He can program all these things to where don’t turn on if you’re discharging the house back to low, just turn off and let the starting battery stay charge and the next time you’re charging a lot of it, turn on. So we use those a lot we TB chargers essentially need to be yeah better the battery it’s essentially a smart DC DC converter Victor and makes a bunch of those so.

 

T [00:44:06] Yeah that’s what I was thinking. I have a little bit of Tron Gizmo.

 

Bruce [00:44:08] Yeah. Sterling mark for four years on Victor On has taken over some of the market from the sterling power ones but sterling power still has some more powerful ones for sometimes with the with the battery want to charge takes more load it still uses sterling one.

 

T [00:44:23] Yeah I’m a huge fan of electrons transfer huge.

 

Bruce [00:44:27] Great product line and they’re always improving coming out with this stuff so we sell a lot of Victor and reflect on distributor here. So I work with him a lot.

 

Merrill [00:44:36] Well, it sounds like you’ve managed to put yourself in the right place in the right time multiple times. You know, like you grew up sailing in the seventies, right? A huge height of sailing. And now you were kind of a first mover in the renewable energy space when it comes to boats. So where do you think the industry is headed when it comes to renewables, non boats? What can we see in the next ten years, 20 years, 30 years?

 

Bruce [00:45:02] I think the system integration side of things will continue to evolve and you’re seeing a number of big players in the market work harder on that. By integration I mean plug and play communication between different devices and monitoring.

 

T [00:45:15] This is really almost like that, right? It’s almost like Lego eyewear, isn’t it?

 

Bruce [00:45:18] Yeah, but you have to make sure they have protocol. Those that are compatible, you know, like, you know, Victor on the dot, can they talk on their own? So you just can’t plug everything together. You certainly can’t plug your master. Volt can buy stuff into your vic John stuff. Expect them to get along because they these different protocols. So but I think that’s going to become the master. What’s been one of the on the forefront of doing cannabis communication for quite some time they were doing master bus cameras, communication with their devices before anyone else was. One mistake they’ve made is not working together with some of the other players in the market to they’ve been so closed about their system and they’re they never worked out a deal with wake speed. So you know you can’t you can’t it’s a difficult to get masterwork lithium battery to work with awake speed because they won’t disclose their protocol it on when he would know it so they’re they’re kind of missing out on some furniture but other manufacturers you know lithium Onyx and Victor on have been working closely with wake speed the work on the integration. Now you can get a picture on battery display. I mean, a lithium battery to display on a victor on monitoring system when you can get weight speed display on a victim monitoring system. Electrons been doing a great job with their Jets platform with their jets monitoring and the fact that you can tie that to VRM there you can view them remotely like we have clients who systems you can review remotely like wherever they are in that we can reprogram their stuff, you know, virtually from from the Internet, you know, if they’re connected at their on.

 

T [00:46:46] Line and and does this like die and Neymar type networks as.

 

Bruce [00:46:50] Well or normal type. Yeah well there’s different protocols. For instance in the Marine base you have 2000 or into K that’s very similar it can trust them in the in the RV industry of RV C that is very, very similar but they’re different different regions, different parameter group numbers and they’re not exactly the same, the same set of format, but they’re just different numbers. There were things, so getting those to integrate and talk to each other requires a little bit of stuff. So what’s going to improve is integration between these different platforms and gateways between them to make things more plug and play and a little bit more refined. And hopefully, you know, we’ve been on the cutting edge of this stuff and it’s been labor intensive and support intensive as some of these great features have come into play. But it’s not like everyone knows how to program this stuff. So there’s a million things to program. And so installers have been used to doing things the old way. You know, it’s a big challenge to learn something new and learn how to set all this stuff up. And I think there’s a big, big demand now for installers that are up on these new integration systems on there. And we’re not hiring keeping our I’m keeping my crew here, getting personnel that are growing with this stuff and learning it. That’s a challenge, getting young people into our industry that want to stick with it, that don’t get pulled off by other industries, then pay them more. Is is a real challenge.

 

Merrill [00:48:14] Well, here’s a question. You know, for a young person that’s thinking about coming into the industry, obviously there’s tons of opportunity in it. How would you recommend to them kind of navigate the the waters of getting into it?

 

Bruce [00:48:29] Well, the first thing you do is renounce books. I think that’s.

 

T [00:48:34] Great, but you’re going to have to have them on the show after all this.

 

Bruce [00:48:37] Their majors. Yeah, Yeah. But actually, you know what you should do first? Just one of the first things you saw on our website, on our support page. There’s a link to this boat, how to course.

 

T [00:48:49] Link for that in the description.

 

Bruce [00:48:52] Go to the support, how to you. There’s a link there. It goes to an online, a marine electrical systems course that Nigel developed with his partner John and some other guys in Europe. And it’s it’s a very thorough start to the very beginning electrical concepts and picture all the way through to calculating all your loads and what you need for charging and all that stuff. It’s very, very well done.

 

T [00:49:16] That’s huge. Thank you.

 

Bruce [00:49:18] And I think that’s worth doing. Whether you’re interested in being installer or just have your own boat and want to know how to check everything works.

 

T [00:49:26] Okay? And then just are you saying get your hands dirty after that?

 

Bruce [00:49:29] Yeah. We decide how much you want to do it, but you may, which I think a lot of people do this stuff so they know it and then they hire someone to do it because they, you know, they realize, well, this is a lot of work. Yeah, but at least they. They know what’s happening.

 

T [00:49:43] Mm hmm.

 

Merrill [00:49:44] So you you’re also big and kind of in like, the ocean space and, like, you know, all of that. So how do you see kind of the state of our oceans and in the energy scene in general, kind of outside of sailing or cruising or anything like that?

 

Bruce [00:50:02] Well, I think that it’s a little unrealistic to eradicate use of fossil fuels, especially in marine, because we have to do it, But at least we can become more efficient and use less of it and pollute a whole lot less. And having run into a lot of crud in the oceans, you know, pollution is. Something I’m personally aware of an island in which to take a little bit of a sidetrack here in this endless debate about whether global warming is caused by humans and, you know, really just camps from right and left on global warming and energy stuff. And I think that the whole thing is framed in the wrong way.

 

T [00:50:40] What do you mean in that?

 

Bruce [00:50:42] If you take a view from the site, the libertarian approach, the libertarian mindset in the protection of individual rights point of view, which some people identify with being anti anti climate supporting. But if you take that point of view that every individual needs to have their rights protected, that none of us really have the right to pollute and poison the air and property of other of our fellow citizens. And I think that from the purist, even from the conservative purist point of view, a clean energy systems is is should be a matter of principle, because you should not be your pickup truck shouldn’t be belching black smoke that that could make someone else sick. You’re it’s a violation of rights and I think the whole thing that’s what I really like. The focus in discussions when we start talking about climate change is in terms of pollution in poisons and then, you know, CO2 and, you know, gases like that, you know, do play a role and you can get into the metric. They can argue about that forever. But from from a standard standpoint of principle, I just think we need to have cleaner systems both on and off the water from the sense of just caring for our fellow citizens and the people that we live together with, you know, And it really makes a difference as a cyclist to swim in the rise of the road. I mean, there’s a real difference in the amount of junk I have to breathe from one car to the next, who they go by. And I know me from having spent much of my life in California. The emissions standards there are quite onerous expense to the cars, but you can ride a bike through downtown Oakland, California, through the midst of the barrio. And and it’s less dirty than it is to follow one pickup truck here in Maine. So, you know, so there’s emissions standards and stuff play a role and there’s a reason for them. And I don’t think it should be framed as a right versus left thing. Should we train as a as a as a pollution and individual protection of individuals thing? And I think that kind of argument anyway, I like to think that that argument would.

 

T [00:52:50] Would.

 

Bruce [00:52:51] Be more successful in getting people together on the whole environmental issues. Anyway, here’s my personal rant.

 

Merrill [00:52:58] Well, as we start to wrap this up, could you give one or two pieces of advice that you received along the way that has really kind of helped guide you?

 

Bruce [00:53:10] Oh, boy. That’s one many too many. Yeah. Though I remember one thing Dodge Morgan said when we were at one of the it was a fundraising function. He was speaking on our behalf. Governor McCain was there and he was he was speaking to everybody. And they turned over and looked at me and says, Bruce, I want you to know that winning isn’t everything. Wanting to is if I was a good one and love it. And I suppose another saying, I should point out that you had a great partner in my build up to the volunteer club who put up with my ceiling and years of involvement. The poor thing off. But the Funny globe, I ran off with a crazy French girl and the one bit of advice I’ll give people is that do not make relationship decisions after 110 days at sea. Hoo hoo hoo hoo.

 

T [00:54:07] That’s better. So anyway, I just. I just wanted play a little more of you. You had so much experience under your belt. At the very least, you’re. You’re now early sixties, I think. Right.

 

Bruce [00:54:18] Why did you try to stay? Trying to stay young?

 

T [00:54:22] Yeah. You don’t sound a day over 50. So how do you do it? What do you do?

 

Bruce [00:54:27] Well, that reminds me of a great quote by Gretchen Marx. But I won’t say in the interview here because you do have to cut it out. But I raced bikes. I ride bikes a lot and you workout to try and stay in shape. I’ve always been enjoyed athletic activities. I was a wrestler in high school and they’ve boxed for a while after after school, but I enjoyed bike, bike riding and recreation and for competition in the fall. The sport that I like to do here in New England is very popular. It’s called cyclocross, which is kind of a cross between mountain biking and road biking. And the bikes look like road bikes but have a little bit fatter tires and they race across grassy fields and into the woods. And you you carry the bike on your back, backpack up a hill or jump over barriers and slide around in the mud. It takes place in the fall and early winter. It’s you look it up on YouTube.

 

T [00:55:14] I’ll have to check that out for sure. It’s great.

 

Bruce [00:55:15] It’s great fun. People, the crowds rattle cowbells in heckles. The competitor. And we have killed each other in different categories by race. Masters Age created cyclocross in the fall, in the race in the 60 plus. They got into the Nationals a couple of times and I’ll be gunning for Nationals again this year. And so.

 

T [00:55:34] While.

 

Bruce [00:55:35] Every now and then I just like to see how how I can do competing against a bunch of other crazy old guys who are trying to trying to, you know, stay young and have fun. And it’s a ridiculous sport. But that’s the more that’s the best thing about it, right? It’s completely.

 

T [00:55:52] Innocent. You love it. And this band, you play the guitar as well as that have anything to do with keeping you young?

 

Bruce [00:55:58] Oh, maybe. My girlfriend Rosalee is a professional piano teacher and a great piano player, and I’ve been playing guitar since I was nine. While in the. I brought a little guitar along but was never played it but I little and I have I have a big collection of acoustic guitars and very good classes for this collection.

 

T [00:56:17] I mean.

 

Bruce [00:56:18] I’m like, there’s three main guitars I have now, like Bob Perry we were talking about before the show. He had piles of them, but I really do have eight. I do have eight bicycles, so I’m pretty eclectic bicycle. But my three, my three main guitars, I have a Guild 12 string and I have a very good customary classical and have an old My steel six string is from around 1890, so partly in my basement.

 

T [00:56:44] This is acoustic of.

 

Bruce [00:56:46] The acoustic guitar you have you ever heard of it? If any of you have ever heard of Leo Kottke, he’s probably my biggest influence, really. A number of little Kaki tunes. He’s an American artist from from.

 

T [00:56:59] Leacock, Leo.

 

Bruce [00:57:01] Leo, Leo, Clear, Leo and he is very influential. Mr. Master. Probably an American treasure, one of the greatest acoustic guitars ever. That’s I played him his tunes that play some original tunes, some other fingerpicking fingerstyle guitar, some ragtime blues.

 

T [00:57:18] Have you ever put out tracks or CD or anything?

 

Bruce [00:57:22] I didn’t put out a CD soon after the Vine Day. That was so a long time ago. I then I mixed up some six string bass stuff with my acoustic stuff, and I need to do some more recording. I’m hoping to get to that too.

 

T [00:57:36] Yeah.

 

Bruce [00:57:37] I play it by different tunes now than I did back then and we’ll see. I have some friends here in Maine with a very good recording studio and we hope to get around to that. You know, it’s just a business. And then, you know, I spread thin with my I still have a boat addiction. Aside from the bike racing and the guitar playing. I have the boat now that my dad bought when I was 16 years old that lived aboard.

 

T [00:58:04] And we’ve been waiting for this story. Right.

 

Bruce [00:58:06] And he he passed away a few years ago and I wound up with the boat named Improbable. This built 1970. It’s built New Zealand at a carry wood called molded to carry wood. And it was a famous race boat back in the day and revolutionary in its own way. And I probably just should have sold it. You think I would know better with all my years of playing on boats, but I just can’t resist doing all the stuff to it I always dreamed of doing since I was a kid. And so the bottom part and completely rebuilding it. Anyone wants to know just how bad I’ve gotten on all this. It go to Project improbable dot com.

 

T [00:58:45] Which.

 

Bruce [00:58:45] And there’s a video in there kind of explaining the whole thing and I have some content there showing my my overview of each area of renovation and working on you know the rudder, the mast and sales, the deck layout. I have an overview trying to explain. I still have to get more content up there explaining all the details of it. You know, everything. It’s been in my head for years. I did it all out there and explain what I’m doing and why. So I hope to get that boat and up and running in it within a couple of years and do another Hawaii race or to the Pacific Cup. I don’t think I need to. A single engine.

 

T [00:59:21] You’re going to race it again?

 

Bruce [00:59:23] Yep. I want to do the race or two to Hawaii. I do love a downwind downwind run and then cruise it to cruise around the northwest, get up to maybe bring it back from Hawaii to Alaska, pretty close to the northwest, people racing.

 

T [00:59:38] So that’s one of the future plans or the future plans. Do you have this.

 

Bruce [00:59:42] Get top ten cyclocross national sets? That’s one of my future feature.

 

T [00:59:46] All of that. Okay.

 

Bruce [00:59:47] We’ll see how that goes. Yeah, but, you know, cyclocross, it’s you know, it’s something to keep you healthy and something to do. I’m I’m never was that gifted to become a pro bike racer. I raced when I was young, you know, race road nationals, you know, back in the nineties they got clobbered. But we have a saying about cyclocross is cyclocross is not a matter of life or death. It’s more important than either 104 out. But that’s just a joke, right? I mean it’s just.

 

T [01:00:16] It’s.

 

Bruce [01:00:16] Necessary. Yeah.

 

T [01:00:17] To move and.

 

Bruce [01:00:19] Keep moving in there and. I always hope to improve my music, guitar playing and stuff, so.

 

T [01:00:26] But people are also writing.

 

Bruce [01:00:28] You know, I hope well, I hope you put one together that’s derived from all the stories that I wrote over the last few years. Yeah, and I have a lot of stories and updates and but, you know, as I look back, most of them were just were begging for money. But there’s still good stuff in there. And someone was going to help me write and put together a book on it and follow up with them and see if they mean.

 

T [01:00:51] Yeah, yeah, get an album out and get a book out. When the cyclo cross lads do.

 

Bruce [01:00:57] Yeah, there’s a lot going on, you know. So yeah, you can see I’m one of those guys that just, just kind of bouncing off the walls, doing lots different things, maybe try to be trying to do trying to do too much, but I can’t resist.

 

T [01:01:07] Well, I really want to for our listeners sort of draw that together, like maybe as a as a, as a lesson. What can people listening to this how do you stay so driven and so involved and 100% there for all of these things? You know, you’ve been playing guitar since nine years old and still playing and I bet you’re good. Yeah. So like, how do you stay that committed for that long? Your passions?

 

Bruce [01:01:28] Well, maybe it’s a fact that I’ve bounced around between different passions so much that each one of them still pretty new to me when I come back to it.

 

Merrill [01:01:36] I like that.

 

T [01:01:36] Very interesting. Yeah.

 

Bruce [01:01:38] Scattered enough to where if I get bored with one thing, I just go work on the other for a while. Then I turn around.

 

T [01:01:43] And you still love it. So you’re like, Yeah, I don’t do this till I get sick of it again. Yeah.

 

Bruce [01:01:49] Yeah, yeah. I just moves my nature to music and I have a short attention span. But on the other hand, I have my long term attention span is very good. I never I never would have pulled off the van if I just just didn’t keep hammering away at it with the long term goal was. Hmm.

 

T [01:02:07] And how do you stay aligned that way? How do you keep yourself focused on. Yeah, I remember when I was trying to get the best advice book I was just point about. So to be. Yeah.

 

Bruce [01:02:19] Well, you have to be willing to to change. I think that we have to plan to some extent, but you have to be willing to change your plans to achieve for your long term goals. And so you mean if you know what you want to do but are willing to adapt to get there? That is a key part of it. It’s like training is like training for any sport you have to prepare and training for, you know, programing, alternator regulators, you know, you have to start somewhere and just keep plugging away. Even if it seems daunting, you can do a little bit, walk away, come back to it. In my case, where, you know, some of the the technical stuff I’ve had to learn was by necessity. So I didn’t look like an idiot to my clients who want to buy the stuff for me and then have to learn about it. But fortunately for me, I like to start in my background in sailing. You know, it has helped me to appreciate how cool the stuff is and, you know, and that energy system is electrical. It’s like magic, what it allows you to do. And we take so much of it for granted that this stuff works in our houses, but you develop a real appreciation for the energy that we use in our houses and how it works. When you see how hard it is to keep similar systems running on a boat and we take a lot of energy wise, you’re taking a lot for granted over the years and with the cheap cost of fuel for years and the cheap grid energy we’ve had for years, it’s been sort of unrealistic. In some ways. It’s helped us build our economy. But energy is going to cost more, and it’s not because of people think it’s because of political reasons or because we just don’t want to drill, baby, drill. But it’s just plain cos a lot get this energy out of the world. And and I would say, you know, don’t fight efficiency. It’s cool stuff, you know, I mean it’s, I enjoy, I have electric cars, cheapest electric car I could get but I don’t, I love seeing how many miles per kilowatt hour I can get, you know. So it gave me a being efficient with energy. It’s not a bad thing to it’s a fun thing to get into and stretching your fuel supplies and having to carry less jerry cans out to your boat because you have an energy energy system that makes for a better lifestyle.

 

T [01:04:29] Mm hmm.

 

Merrill [01:04:30] Well, Bruce, this was such a fascinating episode. Where can people find more about you and read about you and what you’re doing with Ocean Planet?

 

Bruce [01:04:39] Well, Ocean Planet Energy is pretty easy to find at Ocean Planet Energy dot com. And you can read a little bit there about me and Nigel and Julie and Tom and Devin make my crew here and for my, you know, personal adventures I’ve always found improbable go to Project improbable dot com. I do have some videos up on YouTube. If you Google British guitar stuff, you find some stuff there. Some of those are almost like 15 years of the really old and I need to improve them, but they are what they are. I get some better ones up soon.

 

T [01:05:10] But there’s the most. Yeah, I go looking for it and thank you so much Bruce. That was very enlightening for everyone, I think.

 

Bruce [01:05:21] You guys in great nostalgia for me to walk through all these adventures. Yeah.

 

T [01:05:26] Yeah. And hopefully we were going to make our way through your team. Now they’ll sound like fun, guys.

 

Bruce [01:05:31] Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good group.

 

T [01:05:32] Neal, thank you so much again.

 

Bruce [01:05:35] All right. We’ll see you guys later.

 

T [01:05:37] Take care.

 

Speaker 4 [01:06:21] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to shipshape. Doc Pro. Doc Pro.