There have been several comments about Proteus being filmed in calm waters and inside the bay. This doesn’t mean that Proteus has never been outside the Golden Gate. In fact she has done over 3,000 miles of open ocean cruising, some of that in pretty nasty weather. She has even gone over the Columbia River shoals in Oregon without any trouble, to the great surprise of the locals.

As for flipping over, as a few of these readers seem to be concerned about, the answer is: any power boat can capsize. Sailing catamarans can and do capsize because of wind pressure on the sails and because the hulls tend to dig under the waves. WAM-V's are not sailboats, are very wide relative to conventional power catamarans and, because the hulls of a WAM-V are round and soft, they don’t “catch” under a wave. Instead they pop right out. If you have ever tried to flip over a rubber dinghy, you know what I’m talking about: they keep sliding out and insist on staying right side up.

WAM-Vs are ultra light vessels and in a heavy sea they behave more like a cork, sliding on top of waves as opposed to digging in.

This reporting was a great disappointment though. While it repeated claimed breakthroughs in wave handling adaptivity, video clip after clip showed the spider trolling around on smooth flat water.

I'll admit that this is true mariner tradition – boat photos, especially advertisements for boat sales – are notorious for showing boats racing along in solely flat water, as if that is the norm in the ocean or bay.

This news spot was the marine equivalent to a report on breakthrough snow traction technology featuring solely clips of a car driving around a parking lot in Arizona summer.

Why did I bother watching this? I am confident you could do better.