The Marine Electronics Hub
West Marine’s first ever Marine Electronics Expo will kick off in four states (NY, FL, CA, CT) on April 8th (thru 9th) and also online. Besides some deals on electronics gear, there will be live educational seminars from Icom, Shakespeare, Lowrance, Fusion, Uniden, Lowrance, Simrad, B&G, Spot, Delorme, and maybe more at the select stores…
(Bits are back, if you know what I mean.) I skim a lot of email newsletters but this recent Stephens Waring Yacht Design creation brought the process to a quiet halt. I clicked up this image as big as possible and became mesmerized, and it later turned out that even the newsletter text is only a sketch of the bigger story. Before we get into that, I suggest you get mesmerized, and I snagged even higher resolution images. Clicking them big may be slow, but you should be getting yourself stilled and ready to simpy wonder…
In today’s world of always-connected systems, I am surprised that there are not more vendors in the space of vessel monitoring. My adventures with remote monitoring systems started in the late 80’s in the information technology world, and then in earnest in 2008 with Boat Sense Systems, and continued along through many other ups and downs. In my view, there are currently two promising players in the market — Siren Marine & Boat Command. While searching for a system to keep my beautiful new Benetau 311 “Grace” safe, I chose to install and review the Boat Connect from Boat Command…
At long last an ACR Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) with a 10 year user replaceable battery! Moreover, the new GlobalFIX V4 is exceptionally compact and handsomely designed — which also may relate to its 2015 acquisition of Ocean Signal — and of course it includes standard EPIRB features. The $150 batteries aren’t cheap, but it may beat tossing a working GlobalFIX V4 that retails for $400 (manual activation, with automatic at $500).
The time has come. Actually, it was a specific day late last October when I Torqeedoed out to Gizmo only to find a dead ship. Not even a modest LED light nor the panel voltmeter would power up, and this dual Deka 8D house bank measured 5 volts at the studs. While I later figured out that only one had suffered a catastrophic malfunction, I’d already sensed that these AGM batteries were on borrowed time. They’d been on the boat at least a season when she became mine in early 2009, and at least occasionally mistreated since. But the real issue is what to do next…
Here’s some big news in the small world of marine electronics. Boeing company Jeppesen just sold its marine cartography division to a formerly unknown entity named Digital Marine Solutions (DMS) and it “will trade under the C-Map brand name” (as it did before Jeppesen came along and as many of us could never stop calling it). DMS belongs to the Nordic based Altor “family of private equity funds” which also owns the Navico family of Lowrance, B&G, Simrad, and GoFree brands. Interesting?
Shipping the first week of April for US$400 is a new heads-up display called the Garmin Nautix. A 1.1 oz “hands-free in-view display,” Nautix attaches to your sunglasses and shows NMEA 2000 data transmitted from certain Garmin multifunction displays (GPSMAP 7400/7600, 8400/8600 series) that support the company’s ANT wireless technology. Suitable for polarized or prescription lenses it includes an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust brightness…
For the past 7 years I’ve been a SAR volunteer in Unit 1 (Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver) of the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue (RCMSAR). My unit had 87 calls in 2015, making it the busiest volunteer marine SAR station in Canada. It’s a situation that motivates a tech enthusiast and advanced crew member like myself to think about better tools and procedures…
Being able to use your helm’s bright waterproof color screen to run your stereo system has to be one of the most appreciated benefits of multifunction display evolution and the NMEA 2000 network standard. Typically the stereo head unit is installed in the boat’s living area while one or more MFDs serve as remote controls in the cockpit, on the flybridge, etc. The interface can be a simple mute/volume/next menu bar leaving ample screen room for navigation or a screen window with more controls and info. Usually, you can also go full screen to easily browse a phone or iPod full of music, or access the stereo’s deeper settings better than you can on the head unit. And it costs next to nothing!…
Why is this guy grinning? At the end of the solid state radar #1 entry, I suggested that the Doppler target speed discrimination feature just introduced by Furuno and Garmin is truly game changing. Now I’ll try to break that down. While Doppler effect is a seasoned and fairly well known concept, I suspect that its sudden and intriguing arrival to marine electronics is going to effect change…
