The Marine Electronics Hub
Boating and fishing journalists, photographers and videographers were recognized today during the annual breakfast meeting of Boating Writers International (BWI). This year’s BWI Awards (presented now for 31 years) attracted 76 participants submitting 248 entries. In addition to cash awards, 26 Certificates of Merit were presented. All submissions to the contest were published in 2023…
Things in Fort Myers are starting to get back to normal after hurricane Ian. For me, that means getting back out on the water and testing marine electronics. One of my first post-hurricane on-the-water tests will be comparing the current crop of solid-state, enclosed dome radar units. I’ve planned this comparison test for an embarrassingly long time. But I haven’t been able to figure out how to mount all three units on my 22-foot test boat.
Yes, there’s now a pedal-assisted hydrofoiling water bike. And it certainly deserves consideration as I contemplate new toys for the garage of my fantasy expedition megayacht. But while that research left me skeptical about how enjoyable the foiling ebike design really is, some related poking around the dynamic world of powered foiling boards — commonly called efoils — definitely perked up some deep winter hours…
How different are boats, boaters, how we boat, and where we boat? On the very day that Ben Stein despaired about Have Another Day’s South Florida air conditioning addiction, I proudly humped this old Cruisair AC unit off Gizmo with no replacement plans. The sense of accomplishment actually came from a challenging extraction process, and that may have been much harder without some particular hand tools…
You may realize that Amazon’s “smart assistant” Alexa is like Apple’s Siri, except that you can ask “her” questions through an Echo speaker instead of an iPhone. But did you know that some marine app developers have created Alexa skills as free and possibly useful features? The underlying technology is awesome, but you don’t have to know much to make it work…
Dear John, I gather you’re upset about the invoice to replace the oil pressure sender on your boat’s generator, although it was hard to understand the voice mail you left. It was almost like you were spitting into the phone. Just send me an email about it. It won’t seem as wet.
Regards, Bill…
Ben Stein is already in Miami working as an Innovations Award judge and I look forward to his reporting as I man the news desk here in Maine. Today, though, I’ll discuss some of the monitoring tools helping to keep Gizmo safe in winter conditions like the easterly gale that blew about ten inches of snow onto Camden last night…
If you ever messed with celestial navigation, you probably understand why even a perfectly installed sundial can be off by more than 15 minutes at some times of the year. But let’s recap on this shortest and darkest of days — in the Northern Hemisphere, that is — and I’ll also discuss how my old celestial nav skills recently helped with some very modern technology…
Yesterday was tough for Rhode Island independent gubernatorial candidate Joe Trillo. To me it already seemed like a poor idea to use his 65-foot yacht to campaign along the state’s summer beaches, especially with the huge banners and his “very, very big sound equipment” playing patriotic music. But then came the navigation issues…
I’m an information junkie; if some information is good, more is better. So, when traveling in unfamiliar waters I would like to know as much as possible. This data habit finds me with multiple plotters and a couple of iPad Minis at the helm when I’m underway. Sometimes my quest for information finds me refrigerating iPads.
