Navionics 2008, cruising with Giuseppe
Yesterday I got to spend a few hours on a Navionics test boat tooling around Bass River, Cape Cod (unfortunately damnable cars and planes were also involved in the trip). A few of us boating writers got to fool with eight chart plotters, and see first hand what Navionics is up to for 2008 (very cool, but I can’t write about it just yet). Another highlight was spending time with company founder Giuseppe Carnevali. This is not the first demo cruise I’ve taken with this gentleman and I’ve come to appreciate his fathomless enthusiasm for cartography, the technologies that make it better, and boating. He’s been a creative force in marine electronics since he and Fosco Bianchetti developed the first vector charts in the early 80’s. Yesterday it occurred to me that with Bianchetti selling C-Map and Darrell Lowrance finally retired, Giuseppe is one of the last of his generation still pushing this field forward. And he’s going strong.
My boss David Pedrick related this story this morning, and I thought it would interest the readers:
He was talking about 12m Americas Cup history and mentioned that Courageous,I believe in 1977, although it may have been 1973, had the first onboard computer, which was a state of the art super-mini-computer contained in a large waterproof container and cooled via a bilge water heat exchanger. The waterproofness was a very good thing as Couragous almost sank a couple of times. The system was set up by Dick McCurdy who was working for Kenyon who at the time was the who’s who in knotmeters. Kenyon didn’t follow the marine electronics biz much further, but Dick did, eventually founding Ockam instruments. The story gets better, when in 1980 Dick offered the same system basically for free to Blackhauler and Jobson on Defender who declined, not wanting to be bothered with “numbers”. In 1984 McCurdy joined the Liberty Team and together with Lex Brinko, an MIT Grad, URI oceanographer, and computer/radio nut set up a ham installation onbaord Liberty and beamed data real time to the Pedrick Office in the JT’s Chandlery building in downtown Newport. The data was collected and anaylized and then presented to the sailors as soon as they got in from sailing for a quick de-brief.
Amazing to me considering the state of wireless communications in 1984 was the DynaTAC8000X, the famous 2 lb brick phone costing almost $4000, and made famous to my generation by Zak Morris on “Saved by the Bell”.
I believe Dick is still running Ockam.
The LCD of my Navico DL 200 knotmeter is fading. The transducer and the electronics work fine. The unit is out of production so it will be a long shot I ever find parts. Any suggestions ?
Bob posted:
The LCD of my Navico DL 200 knotmeter is fading. The transducer and the electronics work fine. The unit is out of production so it will be a long shot I ever find parts. Any suggestions ?
Bob:
I got the same problem. I disassemble the unit and find a kind of plastic film over the display that was burnt by the sunlight but was clear by the borders so when I move the film the digits appear clear. Somebody know where to buy that plastic film? It seems to me it polarizes the light. When you put one side of the film towards the display you can see the digits white on a black background and when you put the other side of the film towards the disply, the digita are black over a white background
Bob or Jaime Illmer
Do you either of you still have your Navico DL 200. I am looking for a transducer for it. If you do and want to sell it please reply to this forum and I will post my e-mail for you to contact me
Thanks
Glenn.
Just like Glenn i’m also looking for a replacement transducer for a navico dl 200. So if anybody can help me please let me know.
Bastiaan