Take a look at the catamaran in today’s Photo of the Day and tell us what you think she was built for. If you’re like most people, you probably think she’s some kind of funky daysailor, and that the most ambitious trip her owner would contemplate would be a weekend to Catalina.

You may be right, but we have a strong suspicion that the cat in the photo is based on a century old 38-ft sacred design from Tikopia Island, and was recently built for long term world cruising. Before you fall over in fits of laughter, allow us to qualify that.  We think she was designed and built for long term world cruising by Southern Californian Glenn Tieman, who had previously cruised a 26-ft catamaran from California to Mexico to the South Pacific to Southeast Asia and the Philippines over a period of 10 years. And on $1 to $3 a day, all expenses included.

Tieman’s original cat was a Wharram Pahi 26 that he built for $3,000. When we last wrote about Tieman two years ago, he said that he’d just completed his new 38-ft cat which, because he used so much better and more expensive materials – strip-planked cedar and epoxy – cost a total of $14,000.

One of the things that makes us believe that this is Tieman’s latest cat is the outrigger canoe alongside the cat. During his last voyage, that’s all he used for a tender. He liked them because they could be made inexpensively from door skins, a little epoxy and "any old thing for an outrigger." He made his paddles from "a piece of plywood nailed to a 1′ x 2′." Because they were so cheap, he considered them all but disposable.

We’re going to try to track Tieman down, so we’ll let you know whether this is his cat or not, and what he’s up to.

Asking a dedicated Macintosh computer user to switch to a PC is about like asking an adolescent to eat a pound of brussel sprouts. So, for years now, when Mac-addicted would-be cruisers found out that they would have to buy a PC in order to use the popular Nobletec navigation software, some were nearly suicidal.

We’re happy to report that no lives need be lost over this issue any longer. While helping deliver his boat to Santa Barbara, we’ve learned from Cap’n Tom that Nobletec works wonderfully on the MacBook Pro laptops which use Intel chips.

Tom explained that you can partition these new Macs so that they will run either Mac or PC programs (such as Nobletec) and, according to one Nobletec technical advisor, the program actually runs smoother on the Mac machines due to their superior graphical capabilities. You do need to reboot the computer when you want to use it as a traditional Mac, but that’s the only minor downside we’ve experienced during the past few days of use. Instead of investing in a chartplotter, Cap’n Tom has his Mac interfaced with his autopilot and it follows predetermined routes flawlessly. Pretty cool, eh, Macheads?