Windvane Report

Peter Foerthmann has been the first port of call for bluewater sailors seeking advice in steering matters for decades. His unrivalled expertise - the product of a lifetime developing and manufacturing windvane self-steering systems and contemplating their every complexity - continues to draw enquiries from all over the world. Now available in six languages, his specialist books present the state of the art and provide reassurance - should any be needed - that the fundamental rules of physics still apply in a world increasingly dominated by bits and bytes. This book recounts both the author's personal history of almost half a century in the windvane self-steering segment of the international marine industry and the story of how a business that once built everything by hand has managed to transform itself into what must surely be one of the smallest high-tech engineering companies in existence. The Windvane Report shares the milestones of the author's progress over the decades and recounts some of the remarkable disputes that have erupted in the sector as well as discussing and comparing important technical developments in the field. A roller-coaster ride through the highs and lows of a life on and by the water, this book offers the reader a wide-ranging insight into how Windpilot and the man behind it came to be what they are today.

Peter Foerthmann has spent his life in the service of Aeolus, the Keeper of the Winds. He learned to harness the power of the wind first as a sailor and then as the man behind the Windpilot windvane self-steering company. The winds of fortune have by turns favoured (his serendipitous meeting with Windpilot founder John Adam, for example) and tormented (numerous legal entanglements being the most prominent example) him without ever managing to blow him entirely off course - a course that stretches to the horizon and beyond, where sailing dreams become reality (at least for those with the right transom ornament). This book presents the recollections of a self-taught original who, heedless of convention and rely-ing strictly on his own internal compass, has developed a unique understanding of social interaction among sailors, who have rewarded him in turn by spreading the word about his products effectively enough to make Windpilot the world market leader for windvane self-steering systems. Building up the company and developing a product that enables sailors the world over to enjoy long passages freed from the need to steer continuously has given Peter an all but unparalleled insight into blue-water sailing and an expertise in various related areas that he has shared in several highly regarded specialist publications. A compulsive writer, Peter takes as much pleasure in choosing his words as he does in telling his story, the story of how he swapped a boat for the idea that became his life, how he went from a tra-ditional workshop-based operation building everything by hand to what must surely be one of the world's smallest state-of-the-art industrial manufacturing companies and, most importantly of all for him, how he has managed to defend and maintain his independence both commercially and socially by sticking to his principles - fairness, respect, empathy - and learning, not without incident, to choose his friends wisely. Above all, this is the story of half a century in the windvane self-steering business, a story that - Aeolus willing - still has a long way to run.

1861-1891 include meteorological reports.

The report describes and illustrates eight developments that are believed to embody interesting and unusual solutions to current problems in their fields. The results discussed are a viscous damped wind vane, a nonskid road or runway, a regrooved pneumatic tire with removable inserts, a device for radially positioning a rotating wheel, a method for fabricating precision waveguide sections, a distortion-cancelling loudspeaker system, a cryogenic fluid density measurement system, and a controlled-atmosphere weathering device.