The Marine Electronics Hub
The just-announced SailRacer inkDisplay seems impressive. For about $360 you get a sunlight readable 6-inch Android wireless tablet so waterproof that it can purportedly run in that aquarium forever. In fact, the video shows...
If you’re looking for a real getaway this morning, or even just an online distraction, FastSeas.com can help. It’s also a testament to how much goodness a smart boater/coder can create for his or her fellow mariners these days. And while FastSeas is primarily an online weather routing service for sailors embarking on ocean passages, it’s easy and flexible enough that even a coastal power cruiser can benefit…
Xavier Righetti and Julien Pilet pose in their first METS stand with the three tangible elements of Anemomind. The white box contains a fast GPS receiver plus barometric pressure and 9-axis inertial motion sensors, as well as NMEA 0183/2000 ports, WiFi, Bluetooth, and lots of computing power. The connected app delivers wind, boat speed, and percentage of target speed attained, and it also passes the data along with notes and photos to the Anemomind cloud for near realtime race analysis. That’s all good, but the special sauce is less tangible…
When pretending to sail, I go for high performance. That’s why the screen above seems to show Gizmo exceeding true wind speed while extremely close hauled. But pretending is also why I can’t truly review the new sailing features that came to all current Raymarine multifunction displays last May, thanks to a free LightHouse 14 operating system update. Additionally, most of the features described in the press release are about racing, which I did little of even when I was sailing a lot. But let’s walk through the new Raymarine MFD capabilities anyway, and hopefully we’ll hear from sailors who’ve actually used these tools or the similar ones offered by B&G and Garmin…
While I haven’t done much racing, I do know that the prestart manuevering can be quite challenging if not downright scary. It’s hard enough to time a sailboat to be at the right place at the right moment going maximum speed in the right direction, but you must also avoid collisions with the competition trying to make the same perfect moves. Some sailors are shy about racing because the starts can be nerve wracking, and one nice aspect of the Garmin Start Guidance software coming out in 2015 is the fact that it’s simply software built into a regular multifunction display. Now that I’ve seen more about how it works, I’ll bet that many experienced racers will also want this edge…
