The Marine Electronics Hub
Newport, R.I. – The Sailing Museum announced today it will officially open its doors to the public on May 10th, 2022. Located on the waterfront of downtown Newport in the historic Armory Building built in 1894, the museum...
We’re proud to announce the arrival of our latest product, the DataHub by PredictWind. This small but powerful GPS Tracker is custom designed from the ground up, with extra features to make your coastal or offshore tracking, data, and communications easier than ever…
Airmar trail blazed the NMEA 2000 “smart” sensor about fifteen years ago, building a microprocessor right into a transducer so that a single rugged N2K cable can both power the sensor and deliver Depth, Speed, and Water Temperature to almost any display, regardless of brand. And while the company deservedly dominates the world of water-related smart sensors today, they were a tad slow to adopt the now-common technique of including a Bluetooth app for the detailed calibration that many of the display manufacturers fail to provide. But after initial testing, I think that the relatively new DST810 Smart Multisensor is a thoroughly modern N2K device…
RaceSense is such a novel concept that it’s hard to understand at a glance. While that screen looks like a virtual sail racing app that you play with your fingertips, what’s actually virtual are the folks normally needed to run a real event — plus their boats, the marks, the horn, etc. Instead, Vakaros Atlas 2 tablet-style instruments on each of the real sailboats form a meshed wireless network, and a built-in feature called RaceSense uses distributed artificial intelligence to create the course, call penalties, and name winners. Wow…
The next America’s Cup will be held in 2024 at a location still undecided, but the defender Emirates Team New Zealand and the official challenger INEOS Britannia just announced the Protocol which controls almost every other aspect of the race series. And while there are numerous changes that should make the actual sailing competition even more exciting, it also includes a rather amazing powerboat provision…
When I got serious about sailing and seamanship fifty years ago, I read all sorts of offshore cruising and racing accounts, particularly interested in the problems that came up and the solutions found. It seemed valuable to learn that, say, a well-found 46-foot ketch could pitchpole stern-over-bow in certain situations and how the crew survived. But eventually I realized that there was a whole niche of especially extreme ocean voyaging that was almost never discussed, except maybe quietly in remote harbors or jail cells…
A+T Instruments, the fast growing high-end instrumentation company, are now shipping the first full Ethernet network-based performance instrument system on the market. A single Ethernet cable around the boat links all components. The ATP2 processor is designed for distributed applications using an Ethernet bus. The processor is shown above and has…
“Another interesting bluewater cruising boat smartly visiting Camden in October,” I thought to myself, “but what’s up with that giant VSAT dome?” Yes, I failed to recognize one of the world’s most famous cruising boats until I ran into an excited passenger schooner captain/friend waiting for the Delos crew to come ashore. But many more boaters than I envision Delos perpetually adventuring to exotic Pacific locales; for example, check this 2014 Episode #22 video that’s drawn 4.3 million YouTube views…
The product name “OSCAR” is an acronym for the very valuable, though challenging, collision avoidance work attempted by the multi-camera masthead pod above, along with its processing unit and display apps. Which is Optical System Cognition And Ranging. But the developers also anticipated the usage I’ve noticed in videos showing extreme offshore racing sailors using the system: The skippers tend to call the system “Oscar” like he’s an extra crewman they’re really glad to have on board…
Great to see an AIS MOB device helping with the amazing rescue of Vendée Globe solo racer Kevin Escoffier early this morning (Universal Time). At 14:00 UTC yesterday afternoon, he’d had to transition from surfing his foiling IMOCA 60 PRB at 25+ knots in 10-13 foot seas about 840 miles southwest of Cape Town — 3rd in what was then a 32-boat fleet — to grabbing a survival suit and jumping into his liferaft, all in about two minutes. Yike!…
