In August 2020, I was invited to deliver a Fountaine Pajot Saba 50 catamaran from Fort Lauderdale to Newport. After meeting the owner (a relatively inexperienced offshore sailor), looking the boat over, and meeting the other 2 crew members (French, husband and wife), I decided to take the job
Sailing Good Vibrations up the Gulf Stream seemed like a great chance to get back to the legendary music of The Beach Boys
So, I created a playlist of classic Beach Boys tunes, looking forward to sharing my love of Bryan Wilson’s genius with Bill, the owner and the French couple. After all, surely only a Beach Boys fan would name their boat after that classic tune?
36 hours into the passage, Bill and I were on deck together and I said “shall I put on Good Vibrations and a few other classic Beach Boys tunes?”
“Beach Boys tunes?” replied a puzzled Bill
“Yeah, you know, Good Vibrations” I said
Bill responded “I don’t know what you’re talking about”
“You did name the boat after the tune?” I asked
“No” said Bill categorically
“So where does the boat name come from?” I inquired
Bill then explained…
As a career US Navy man, he was a submariner specializing in monitoring the things that spin - drive shafts on engines and the like. When something gets out of true, the vibrations can cause damage to the mechanics - the Vibration Engineer takes care of this
So, Bill ends his Navy career and finds himself with a niche consulting gig running vibration engineering seminars around the country for anyone who cares to listen
He was approached by a couple of tech wiz kids from California who had an idea for a product that would monitor vibrations in commercial applications. They had the tech know-how and finance but needed a subject matter expert, which is where Bill came in
The product was ingenious - a tiny vibration sensor with a wifi link that signals when vibrations might be going off true. Put these devices everywhere there might be something that could go wrong, and the diagnostic alerts will direct the maintenance staff to the area before anything gets bad - classic preventative maintenance
So, they cut a deal - Bill provides technical advice on things vibrational, and additionally gets 20% off the top for any sales that he introduces
This arrangement is working fine when Bill gets a call from one of his former seminar attendees who explains that he has a vibration issue in his job at a warehouse in Joliet, Illinois
Bill goes to visit the warehouse and its full of stuff moving around, with thousands of little wheels spinning underneath the moving products inside this palace of conveyors
Bill’s ex-student explained that as maintenance manager, any conveyor that breaks down has the potential to cause the whole distribution center to grind to a halt - a major problem for the ‘on time every time’ delivery ethos, and certainly not career enhancing for the maintenance manager
Bill explained that the vibration sensors strategically placed will provide key early warnings of potential issues in the conveyor system and provide essential preventative maintenance diagnostic data
“Lets do a pilot right away” says the maintenance manager
The pilot was a roaring success, and rapidly extended to the entire distribution center
A major South American river lent its name to the customer, and after the Joliet project it was extended…
…to ALL distribution centers worldwide
All of a sudden the startup was having to produce literally millions of these tiny wifi enabled vibration sensors, and Bill is regularly receiving huge commission checks
What was he going to do with all this money ?
Well, as a country music fan, Bill had this Chris Janson hit on heavy rotation
So, Bill bought his boat, and named it after the wealth created by the little wifi sensor that made sure that the vibrations were good
However, on the two 1,000nm+ passages I made on this vessel, my musical desires were satisfied (with the help of my headphones) by the late, great Bryan Wilson’s masterpiece