I’ve been lucky to experience many kinds of boating over the years, but, man, I’ve missed a lot too. For instance, I know zip about the high end ski boats which might sport this Infinity 6000M system, made by Prospec and an entry in the MAATS Innovation contest. The watertight speakers can blast a 100 watts of music out to the skiers in the boat’s wake, but the driver can cut in with his mic as needed. This wouldn’t go over well on some quiet Maine lakes, and no one skiis on the cold salt water here, but imagine the big lake scenes in the really hot parts of the country. In fact, check out this New York Times piece on Party Cove, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, where 3,000 boats often “gather for weekends of sun-drenched, alcohol-fueled, sometimes X-rated revelry”. Yike. Google “Party Cove videos” for a peek at what the Times only hints at. Party Cove is definitely not On Golden Pond (which, by the way, is a wonderful play my wife opens in tonight at a local community theater…much more my speed, and maybe yours).
The heh, heh irony in the promo at right is that what really looks good is the little wireless fob tied to the pneumatic lady’s bikini sash. Right. But it does actually look good; Virtual Lifeline can supposedly be easily setup with any outboard or inboard engines so that they will shut down if anybody on board goes overboard. This product just won a safety Innovation Award at the MAATS show in Las Vegas. The electronics award was split between two products we’ve already talked about here—Navionics’ Platinum charts and Humminbird’s side scanning sonar. It’s not online but I just purloined a list of all the entries to the contest, and there are some neat items I had not heard of. More later.
There’s finally some good Web material up about Navionics Platinum charts. Not surprisingly it’s at Raymarine’s site, as the E Series will be the first to display it. Definitely check out the “Feature Tour”, whose Flash animation illustrates some of Platinum’s dynamic nature. Raymarine calls this all a “Preview”, with the actual chart cards and E Series software upgrade “Coming Soon”. My sense is that it will be quite soon, as I’m starting to see ads too. Plus I’ve been trying out beta versions for a while now, and the software seems darn solid to me. Raymarine understandably asked me not to comment on beta product, but hopefully that too will change soon. In the meantime, one word: outstanding!
Given that it’s notoriously hard to photograph a video screen, this is a fair image (bigger here) of what I was seeing yesterday in about 20’ of water using Splashcam’s Deep Blue camera. Plus I should note that Camden Harbor is a bit murky due to the river that dumps into it (and maybe some other dumping, like aboard visiting yachts). I could actually see that lobster trap somewhat better than the photo shows, and when I aimed straight down (with the camera surfaced, via a simple adjustment strap) starfish, shells and annoyed crabs were very sharp and colorful...and fun to see for the first time since I gave up diving. It was also simple as pie to hook Deep Blue to the Raymarine E120, which can handle 4 cameras. As you can see, you can even name the video inputs (as I’ve done with an interesting aft facing camera I’ll write about soon). Plus there are a lot of picture adjustments behind that “presentation” soft key. But dangling electronics in salt water is hard service. Deep Blue seems very well thought out and built, but the double O rings on one of its lights apparently failed in 50’, and the innards don’t look very happy today. In fact, it’s hard to blame on Splashcam as the design uses Pelican MityLite xenon flashlights rated to 250’, which seems like a smart idea (and Pelican offers a “forever” replacement policy). Another camera I took out didn’t work at all, but that’s another story.
Unfortunately Web posting at PMY has gotten a little slow lately—just so many minutes in the day—but my June Wifi column is now up. It includes a thumbnail of this picture above, which deserves more detail. That’s a gentleman named Park Walker who lives aboard a 41’ Little Harbor trawler with the fine name of Om Sweet Om. He’s had good luck using WiFi to do some technical consulting while cruising. "Without wireless I would be severely restricted in where and when I could roam. Now my clients ask 'Where are you today?'." The details of Park's sophisticated setup are worth knowing for those of us who’d like to do something similar:
I have a 9dBi omni-directional antenna mounted on my radar arch with 25ft of LMR400 cable running into the main cabin. The antenna cable is connected to a LinkSys WET11 wireless bridge. This is an 802.11b device that operates as a pass-thru client rather than a router. The ethernet interface is currently connected to the WAN port on a Netgear WGR614 which provides wireless service to the desktop computer and the laptops on-board.
The LinkSys box is what makes the connection to the available WiFi service. With the 9dBi antenna I have been able to connect to base stations with a clear line of sight up to about 1 mile from the boat. We used it extensively in the Abacos over a two month period roaming from Green Turtle to Little Harbor without ever being without a usable signal. I didn't go with a higher gain antenna as this one suited my needs, but the range can be increased to 5 or 6 miles using a 15dBi standard antenna and even more using amplification.
Running the connection from the LinkSys into the Netgear router provides NAT, DHCP and a firewall to the computers on-board. While in a marina I typically make the service available to neighboring boats who happen to find out that it's available, although I have started putting MAC address filtering in place to keep track of who is using it.
The original hi res picture, by the way, was taken by Park and send via WiFi.
This is the upper helm on a big Marlow Explorer being shown at the Miami Boat Show. Look how many brands are involved; Furuno NavNet, a Nauticomp montior for a PC system, Raymarine instruments, and Simrad autopilot—and that’s just the top half! And of course there is an even more elaborate helm below. The radar scanners indicate that Nobeltec Admiral is probably the main charting/radar system with NavNet for redundancy. I would guess that this is a tremendously powerful system overall, but what a stew of data interfacing to install, not to mention man/machine interfaces to learn. I don’t know much about Marlows, but my buddy Bill Pike—who may have tested more power yachts than any man alive—loves them (here and here).
And, yes, sharp-eyed readers, the yacht is the background is named “Lucky Sperm”. Ewwwww! Actually, another writer friend knows the owner of that boat, and thinks he’s just being damn honest about the source of his money.
This babe, the first of Inmarsat’s 4th generation satellite fleet, was launched in March and recently went into service over the Indian Ocean. That dish antenna is 9 meters across, the array of solar panels extend 45 meters. The flap at far left is a “sail”, able to “harness pressure exerted by particles from the Sun - the solar wind - to steer the I-4 and fine-tune its orbital position”. This bird is already improving existing Inmarsat service in its planet print, and is just about to really show its stuff in terms of high speed data. Tim Queeney at Ocean Navigator nicely lays out what this all means for actual boat communications here (not much yet, unless your ride is a megayacht).
It strikes me that with so many multifunction displays able to show video pretty darn well, a lot of boaters will be looking to upgrade their 12v helm stereo so it can play DVDs. Sound track on the stereo, picture on the bright display. Quarter screen underway in open waters, full screen on the hook. Why not, especially when you’ve already spent the big bucks on the MFD (an acronym I’m not quite comfortable with yet, but “plotter” doesn’t really cut it anymore). At any rate, there’s a lot of activity in “mobile video” because of the screens also appearing in cars, and yesterday I stumbled on this $125 add-on DVD/MP3/CDRW deck which even has a built-in TV tuner. It’s a Boss 3800T and I don’t know much more about it. There is, of course, some good dope on car video (and marine stereo) over at Crutchfield, which I’m exploring. No one’s talking about “marine mobile video” yet, but I’m sure someone out there is trying it, and I’d like hear from them.
I shot this picture last winter during a demo in the ICW near Ft. Lauderdale. What you see (bigger here) is the ultra low light (.00015 lux!) output of a Night Vision Technologies (NVTi) 3000 Series pan and tilt cabin top triple camera. What you couldn’t see with your plain eye was that day marker, not to mention the water surface, trees and other shore details. Regular eyesight was mainly screwed up by the bright shore lights. Had it been pitch black—or had I been looking for something with a distinct temperature signature, like a man overboard—I could have switched over to the thermal camera. In daylight I might be spying around using the color cam with 220x(!) total zoom ability. Since all three cameras pan and tilt together, it’s very easy to try the different imaging technologies on a given target. This is expensive, but effective, technology.
Above is a video camera designed to live on the outrigger of a sport fishing boat, ready to catch the action from a better angle than you normally see…i.e. better than the back side of a guy fighting a big one. Apparently it’s rugged enough to take the banging around and to be washed and waxed just like the rest of the boat. Veteran captain and video guy Mike Latham sells and installs packages of multiple cameras and recording decks which look very effective. He can even set up a little wireless controller that will turn everything on with a single button push.
OK, so I was nosing around Harkenstore.com looking for specs on some cam cleats I need for my Rhodes 18. Couldn’t help but check out the clearance section, and, wow, there beckon lots of the fine Italian boat shoes Harken started selling a few years back. I already have a pair of Torboles, which are very comfortable and beautifully made. Now I’m going to have a pair of the Rivas, right, marked way down to $40 with free ground shipping. They’re in most common sizes too, and Harken has printable shoe chart online. Thought you might want to know. Electronics later, hopefully.
I knew about “Easter Eggs”—little jokes or animations hidden behind odd key combinations in PC software, particularly games—but I just learned last week about pushing star69 on a Northstar. Apparently back in the Loran days, the key combo would display the message, “Help we’re prisoners in a Loran factory.” On the 6000i above, you get a full screen photo of the Northstar staff with a similar message taped to the factory windows. Are there other marine electronics out there with a sense of humor? By the way, the boat has four 6000i displays at one large helm, and you’ll hear more about the set up eventually.
Some 75 boats in tomorrow’s 97th running of the Mackinac race will be using a new FlagShip transponder supposedly built to very high standards. It’s quite compact (empty Bass Ale bottle for size reference only), operates on its own rechargeable battery, and will be sending location, speed and heading every hour. Once started, we’ll be able to track the race here. Interestingly, the FlagShip also “provides two-way communications”, though the press release is vague about how, and what can be done with it. Also interesting, the developer is a lady IT specialist who is a regular and successful captain in the race.
The animation above shows how AIS system data can be used to predict a vessel’s future track, even “bottom sweep”—in this case 2 minutes ahead of its actual position, speed, rate of turn, etc. It’s from AECDIS2000, a commercial grade PC software product developed by a Swedish company called Adveto, which has a long history with AIS. (Check out the interesting illustrations about how radar can misinterpret a target’s turn direction on Adveto’s AIS page). This software was pointed out to me by Fred Pot, who seems to be aware of numerous other AIS possibilites that most of us haven’t heard of yet. For instance, did you know that the system allows vessel traffic service (VTS) operations to transmit “ghost” AIS targets? In other words they can use ARPA radar to track a vessel that’s not AIS equipped—plus perhaps get its name, destination, etc. by VHF—and then send out AIS messages that let other boats in the vicinity “see” it. By the same token, some nations are apparently considering “virtual bouys” as a cost saving move. Instead of all that heavy hardware, an antenna ashore will simply broadcast an AIS message marking the position of the old entrance bouy. On the other hand, some are calling for actual bouys that transmit real time current and weather data. For example, there are critical passes along the inside passage to Alaska where even cruise ships have to wait for near slack current, but the actual time of slack can vary somewhat from the predictions. We’re just beginning to understand where AIS technology will lead.
I’ve been researching boat cameras and finding neat developements. One is the SeaMoon Passerelle, which sees 360 degrees at once. The screen image above shows the hind end of a big yacht in two 180 degree panoramas, no remote control panning needed. (Note that the boat is obviously in a yard; hence the vacuum cleaner and taped up glass doors). Below is a diagram of how it’s done without moving parts; two reflective surfaces (yellow) collect the 360 x 60 degree image for the CCD. SeaMoon seems to be a relatively new division of SeeNite, and its site is fairly minimal (lacking, for instance, these illustrations from the product brochure).
I’d appreciate any comments on unusual cameras and/or unusual ways to use them afloat.
Above is output from a free program developed in France called GPSActionRelay. It is written in Java, and will suppossedly run on any operating system. Features include replay of several boats in a regatta, polar diagrams, VMG, speed averages, etc. It looks pretty complicated but apparently is used by some sailing teams and a number of geeky windsurfers. I’d like to know what hardware they carry on their boards at 46.7 knots (yi!), but couldn’t find any information. A Garmin wearable Forerunner perhaps? And if so couldn’t heart rate be graphed to speed?
Last week I mentioned (relatively) inexpensive side scanning sonar, and here’s what I’m talking about. This 7” diagonal Humminbird 981c, which retails at about $1,650, is a conventional 750 watt dual frequency (50/200kHz) fishfinder that’s also able to scan sideways about 240’ out and 100’ down at 262kHz. The image on the screen (bigger here) is the left side of a scan, showing a submerged barge (distorted by the scanning dynamics) and a pile of dumped logs. You can see from the numbers that the depth was only 11’ and the scan is only looking out 30’, but there are more screen shots on Humminbird’s side scan page that show pretty good detail at somewhat greater range. Of course, these are all company images; has anyone out there tried one of these?
Good gracious, that’s IDEC’s engine lying in the rocks beneath her destroyed hull. It must have been hairy for Francis Joyon to wake from deep sleep and get off this boat in the pitch dark. Sea & See has amazing pictures of IDEC both just before her record transatlantic passage, and just after the post-finish-line accident. I don’t fully understand how Joyon’s off course alarm works—“I was using the autopilot, and I think it must have taken her off course, as happened once or twice during the record - but I wasn't going fast enough this time to be warned of the change”—but what an extraordinary shame (and ‘nuts’ to the few cynics who think he did it for insurance!).
Fred Pot showed me a really interesting new concept in target plotting that was developed at a Dutch maritime school. Currently many plotters/PCs and radars can automatically use ARPA and/or AIS info to calculate the CPA (Closest Point of Approach) and TCPA (Time of CPA) for vessels within range. Typically they flash a warning if a potential CPA drops below a preset threshold like 1 mile, meaning that you and the other vessel are going to pass that close if you both maintain current course and speed. This is all good—and beats the hell out of manual plotting—but still leaves the operator to figure out how to change course/speed to avoid tight CPAs, which can get especially complicated when there are multiple vessels involved. “Safe Pass” works a little like computerized weather routing, calculating various CPA/TCPA data versus possible changes in your course and then plotting potential safe, and dangerous, areas ahead. In the example above, bigger here, you are about to cross a shipping lane with two vessels crossing each way. Turning left will make things worse, but turning right between the red “danger clouds” will result in a safe passage (assuming the other vessels maintain course and speed). The concept seems to make a lot of sense, and has purportedly tested well in ship simulators (at that Dutch school), but so far no developer is yet working to make it available. I wonder why not?
This Friday’s gizmo is the big kahuna of all the portable power packs that can typically jump start a car (or boat), run 12v gadgets, inflate a tire, and more. Xantrex’s top-of-the-line 400R also includes a 400 watt inverter, an emergency light, and an AM/FM radio with alarm! Inside is a replaceable 20 amp hour AGM battery which seems to have guts (and contributes to a total unit weight of nearly 30 pounds). In my experience, the 400R powered quite a bit of reciprocal sanding, and then smartly alarmed and eventually cut out when the battery went too low, or if I bore down too hard. That’s a digital watt meter showing in the picture (bigger here); when the inverter is turned off, it can show percentage of charge. This thing is obviously designed for emergency backup during hurricanes and the like, but I found it darn useful around my little back field boat yard, and it might have a place on some cruising boats. It’s fairly well made, certainly better than other jump start packs I’ve had. Xantrex’s page on the 400R is here, and a fellow named Jack has written a lengthy and careful review here (he’s right that it takes a long time to recharge, but I thought the radio performed OK, at least a low volume).
I’ve gotten fascinated by side scanning sonar, largely because products are coming to market that are inexpensive and easy enough to interest sport fishermen and amateur Captain Cooks. I’ll have entries on those soon, but first let’s look at what can currently be done with commercial grade side scanning, usually done with a towfish. Above is the wreck of the 291’ SS Portland, which sank off Cape Cod with great loss of life during a blizzard on Nov. 26, 1898. The image, which is not a photo, was collected with a Klein 3000 towfish (below). In the larger version, fish are obvious near the bow, which, incidentally, is actually attached to the rest of the boat (the black area is typical side scan distortion created when the gear moves along the track shown as a line). Bigger images and a fascinating description of the Portland disaster are here, and lots more scans in Klein’s gallery section.
Above is the yacht Merrimac supposedly just days after fetching up on Sable Island’s notorious “swallowing sands” in 1999. The dramatic pictures (another here) started kicking around on the Web years ago, and I first saw them referenced in a snippy e-mail bemoaning the dangers of marine electronics. “A popular theory is that the autopilot was driven by the GPS and sailed a great-circle route, which took the Merrimac to more northerly latitude than intended.” I thought it was hokum at the time and wrote, “The implication seems to be that the operator of the boat was somehow gulled by his or her gizmos. I don’t think so. If the story is true that the crew hadn’t been checking their location on a chart, then the level of incompetence was profound. And traditional navigation can be done incompetently too (believe me, I know).” Now the current issue of BoatUS’s valuable publication Seaworthy (the “Marine Insurance and Damage Avoidance Report”) tells of a witness to the grounding who says the skipper had in fact plotted his Atlantic crossing on a paper chart and was right on course; the problem was that he used a hurricane plotting sheet that omitted Sable Island! In other words, what you see is the result of traditional navigation done badly.
By the way, I went looking for the obscure site where the pictures—even a graphic of the bogus great circle theory—used to live, and it’s long gone. BUT the amazing WaybackMachine has nine versions of the page as it evolved between 1/2002 and 10/2003. What a phenomenal resource.
It was an honor to be visited by Fred Pot last week. Fred is a Dutch marine engineer and consultant who’s been involved in AIS from the beginning. He currently lives on the West Coast, represents the U.S. on a couple of international working groups, and maintains www.uais.org. He’s also started a company, SeaCAS, that’s about to introduce the SafePassage AIS receiver he’s holding at right (with an appropriate background of Maine fog, bigger here). The whole deal is inside the fiberglass tube: a dual frequency receiver with an AIS tuned VHF antenna, and a 16 channel WAAS/EGNOS GPS with its antenna. The four wire cable can either attach via USB for data to a PC, and power from it, or it can go to a small interface box with a power feed and 38.4kb NMEA 0183 output to a plotter/radar or a mix of displays. It’s going to cost $1,250 when it ships in August, but obviously is easy to install and needs no accessories. Other features: a receiver sensitivity rated at -107dBm, the ability to pass along all AIS messages, and the incorporation of dGPS corrections when within AIS range of differential ground stations. I’ll try to post a note when there’s more information and live ordering at SeaCAS.com, and I’ll have more entries soon based what I learned from Fred about the state of Class B and some surprising ways AIS may get used.
PS Yacht AIS, mentioned earlier, has released a final version of its Professional level software and is also now offering it bundled with a dual frequency TrueHeading AIS receiver/GPS for 729 Euros (you’ll also need VHF and GPS antennas).
Update, 6/7: Fred reports that while he was travelling, his engineers were able to “vastly improve SafePassage’s sensitivity by changing its appearance”. The new design will still be all-in-one but with an exposed whip antenna on top of a shorter pipe. He promises a picture as soon as available.
I can’t tell much about what he’s using—a small Furuno radar, B&G instruments, some PC program (MaxSea?)—but I do know that Francis Joyon is half way across the Atlantic and looking good to get the single handed record (better than 7d 2h 34m 42s) aboard his 90’ tri IDEC. Yesterday, he set a new solo 24-hour speed record of 543 miles! His site seems to be French only, but has great pictures. The one above is captioned “Francis etudie la carte” and was taken by Jocelyn Bleriot. Team Ellen is understandably keeping close track of Francis (in French & English); if he makes a new record, Ellen will try to break it in September.
Update, 7/6: Joyon took 22.5 hours off the transatlantic record!
Update, 7/7: Damn! Joyon elected to sail on alone to France after the finish, over slept, and totally wrecked IDEC on the coast of Brittany. What a strange single-handed mirror to the national joy of England getting the Olympics, immediately followed by the horror of terrorist bombs.
Never mind that Yme covered this Friday’s (mega) gizmo early last year. LookSea is truly unique, little known, and, besides, it was developed right here in the great state of Maine. What you’re seeing—larger image here—are a fenced route and buoy icons precisely superimposed on the video flowing from a pan and tilt, high resolution, wide angle camera mounted on the cabin top. ARPA and AIS targets, charted obstructions, and whatever else you need (and only what you need) can also be geopositioned on the live video. This is damn tricky to pull off accurately, and if it wasn’t done really fast, it would literally make you sick. I saw it demoed in a bouncy little boat on a snotty night, and can tell you that it works beautifully (fat .pdf of my article available here). I second the claim that LookSea is the “only augmented reality marine navigational system available and represents a quantum leap in safety and situational awareness.” It’s darn expensive, but I figure it’s a harbinger of things to come. (LookSea now a good step-by-step demo and other materials here).
I’m a little concerned that readers who ordered the nifty Bridgenorth Bailer I touted a couple of weeks ago may not have gotten prompt service from the site listed. It turns out that boathookbailer.com is actually a U.S. distributer (there’s good news in this: the deal does include free shipping in the U.S.). At any rate, if you have any problems, here’s the Canadian manufacturer’s site, bridgenorthbailer.com, which is still somewhat under construction but has solid e-mail and toll free phone info, plus more dope on the product (including the compelling photo illustration above).
I’ve been lucky to experience many kinds of boating over the years, but, man, I’ve missed a lot too. For instance, I know zip about the high end ski boats which might sport this Infinity 6000M system, made by Prospec and an entry in the MAATS Innovation contest. The watertight speakers can blast a 100 watts of music out to the skiers in the boat’s wake, but the driver can cut in with his mic as needed. This wouldn’t go over well on some quiet Maine lakes, and no one skiis on the cold salt water here, but imagine the big lake scenes in the really hot parts of the country. In fact, check out this New York Times piece on Party Cove, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, where 3,000 boats often “gather for weekends of sun-drenched, alcohol-fueled, sometimes X-rated revelry”. Yike. Google “Party Cove videos” for a peek at what the Times only hints at. Party Cove is definitely not On Golden Pond (which, by the way, is a wonderful play my wife opens in tonight at a local community theater…much more my speed, and maybe yours).
The heh, heh irony in the promo at right is that what really looks good is the little wireless fob tied to the pneumatic lady’s bikini sash. Right. But it does actually look 
Plus I should note that Camden Harbor is a bit murky due to the river that dumps into it (and maybe some other dumping, like aboard visiting yachts). I could actually see that lobster trap somewhat better than the photo shows, and when I aimed straight down (with the camera surfaced, via a simple adjustment strap) starfish, shells and annoyed crabs were very sharp and colorful...and fun to see for the first time since I gave up diving. It was also simple as pie to hook Deep Blue to the Raymarine E120, which can handle 4 cameras. As you can see, you can even name the video inputs (as I’ve done with an interesting aft facing camera I’ll write about soon). Plus there are a lot of picture adjustments behind that “presentation” soft key. But dangling electronics in salt water is hard service. Deep Blue seems very well thought out and built, but the double O rings on one of its lights apparently failed in 50’, and the innards don’t look very happy today. In fact, it’s hard to blame on Splashcam as the design uses Pelican 
Raymarine instruments, and Simrad autopilot—and that’s just the top half! And of course there is an even more elaborate helm below. The radar scanners indicate that Nobeltec Admiral is probably the main charting/radar system with NavNet for redundancy. I would guess that this is a tremendously powerful system overall, but what a stew of data interfacing to install, not to mention man/machine interfaces to learn. I don’t know much about Marlows, but my buddy Bill Pike—who may have tested more power yachts than any man alive—loves them (
Had it been pitch black—or had I been looking for something with a distinct temperature signature, like a man overboard—I could have switched over to the thermal camera. In daylight I might be spying around using the color cam with 220x(!) total zoom ability. Since all three cameras pan and tilt together, it’s very easy to try the different imaging technologies on a given target. This is expensive, but effective, technology.
OK, so I was nosing around 
Some 75 boats in tomorrow’s 97th running of the 
It was an honor to be visited by Fred Pot last week. Fred is a Dutch marine engineer and consultant who’s been involved in AIS from the beginning. He currently lives on the West Coast, represents the U.S. on a couple of international working groups, and maintains 
