Marlow Explorer helm, high end stew

This is the upper helm on a big Marlow Explorer being shown at the Miami Boat Show. Look how many brands are involved; Furuno NavNet, a Nauticomp montior for a PC system, Raymarine instruments, and Simrad autopilot—and that’s just the top half! And of course there is an even more elaborate helm below. The radar scanners indicate that Nobeltec Admiral is probably the main charting/radar system with NavNet for redundancy. I would guess that this is a tremendously powerful system overall, but what a stew of data interfacing to install, not to mention man/machine interfaces to learn. I don’t know much about Marlows, but my buddy Bill Pike—who may have tested more power yachts than any man alive—loves them (here and here).

And, yes, sharp-eyed readers, the yacht is the background is named “Lucky Sperm”. Ewwwww! Actually, another writer friend knows the owner of that boat, and thinks he’s just being damn honest about the source of his money.