Offshore Sailing Safety Tips

Blue Water Sailing Magazine has some safety tips for boats that are going offshore regularly. They talk about, a.o., VHF radios and passive radar reflectors.
“A relatively easy upgrade to any boat’s VHF radio involves the coaxial cable that carries the signal to the masthead. It is not uncommon to find the cable is of the smallest size that will get the signal to the masthead, as that is the least expensive. There are four sizes of cable that are of interest to us for this application, RG-58U, RG-8X, RG-8U and Belden 9913 in order of ascending efficiency in signal transmission, and the cost per foot increases by nearly a factor of three from the least to the most efficient. Interestingly, that is about the same factor of signal strength increase that the best coax cable offers.”