Panbo

Lowrance NauticPath, the rock problem

I’ve done more testing of the Lowrance ExplorerC handheld, and still like it a lot, but there are some real issues with the NauticPath charts. The main one is the absence of “obstructions that sometimes cover/uncover”, i.e. the damn rocks marked with asterisks on the paper chart below! Compare the two charts—soundings, bathy lines, high and low tide shore lines are all exactly the same…but rocks that may be just below the surface at any tide have vanished from the NauticPath (though I’m quite sure they were in the original Transas chart database). Those asterisk symbols are critical information, and they seem to be missing from NauticPath wherever I look around the country. The same is true on the LCX-111C downstairs, with a different copy of NauticPath on its hard drive, though on that machine the aids to navigation do not show double as they do on the Explorer (above). At any rate, I dare say the folks at Lowrance may be a little distracted right now, but I am going ask if they intend to put the rocks back in NauticPath.

Simrad buys Lowrance, very, very interesting

Weird! I was just writing an entry giving Lowrance some grief about their NauticPath charts, when a stock trading friend of mine called. “What the hell is going on with Lowrance?” says he (as I had once suggested LEIX as a possibly good investment). After a few minutes a release came up on Business Wire, excerpted here:

Simrad Yachting AS and Lowrance Electronics, Inc. (Nasdaq:LEIX) announced today that Simrad Yachting has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Lowrance for $37 per share… Darrell Lowrance, the current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lowrance who founded the company in 1957 and is still its largest shareholder, will become the Chief Executive Officer of the combined company. Jan Berner, the current Chief Executive Officer of Simrad Yachting, will become Deputy Chief Executive Officer and lead the integration work.

Wow, Simrad and Lowrance are quite the combination…I’m still reeling over the implications. One thing I’m feeling very good about is the big kit of Lowrance gear that arrived for testing last week. I’ve been thinking for some time that Lowrance deserves more attention in the saltwater, bigger boat world, but my timing is really, really lucky. I also I think my buddy owes me a nice dinner out.

Weekend special: memorable boat names

Imagine the VHF calls! “This IS M/V Emergency Mental Services. How can we be of help?” This beaut is the yard boat of the very good humored Westerly Marina in Ossining, NY, seen on my Hudson cruise last fall. On closer inspection you’ll see that Marine Response Unit No. 10 probably once worked at Emergency Enviromental Services. Meanwhile, up the river in Newburgh, is a boat I would not like to vocalize on the radio. Just too stupid:

Octoplex, using a computer to turn on a light bulb?

If you checked out Octoplex yesterday you know it can do all sorts of fancy power management and monitoring tasks, but the more cynical might note that there’s a lot of electronic complications between you the boater and relatively simple tasks like turning on the lights! It’s smart then that Moritz Aerospace is pretty paranoid about what could go wrong with a system like this. Hence:

* OctoPlex uses not one but two of the DeviceNet physical networks specified by NMEA 2000 (shown above, and bigger here). This is rugged, heavily shielded cabling, and this also means that there are two CAN processors in each network node. OctoPlex uses the primary network all for itself and the secondary one to connect to other NMEA 2000 systems, but if the primary fails, the secondary can fill in. Both networks are constantly monitored.

* Even if both network lines completely fail, all active AC and DC breakers stay on and continue to protect their circuits. The DC breakers actually have redundant back up power supplies. The AC breakers, by the way, are actually manual ones actuated by solenoids because it’s not yet practical to do AC with a MOSFET.

* If a DC electronic circuit breaker should fail in the ‘on’ position—that is, ZAP, be delivering current after you turned it off—the system will know it and blow a secondary fuse.

That’s a lot of built-in protection and part of why OctoPlex is an expensive system meant for big boats like the Vikings and Hargraves it will first be seen on. But, geez, look at how conventional boat wiring is evolving, seen below on a medium size Hinckley. That’s some beautiful work, bigger here , but imagine the amount of labor involved. Imagine how hard it is to modify or trouble shoot! We are ready for an entirely new way to manage boat electricity, aren’t we?

OctoPlex, the three cable boat, and NMEA 2000

I mentioned OctoPlex when it received a special mention at METS; now I’m trying to write a column about it and the whole coming revolution in marine power systems. It’s not coming easily, I’m way past deadline, and so this will be short! Here’s the deal: electronic circuit breakers combined with data networks like NMEA 2000 mean the end of conventional circuit breaker panels. The concept is often called “distributed power” but Nigel Calder also uses “the three cable boat” in a series of articles he’s done recently in Professional Boatbuilder, Sail, and Yachting Monthly (none, unfortunately, online, but look down this page for Nigel’s pithy answer to the question “should I try this now”)). In its simplest form plus and minus cables carry power around the boat, teeing off wherever needed to an electronic circuit breaker (ECB) which is controlled by the third (data) cable. ECBs are also known as MOSFETs and they’re complicated animals, but have features like the ability to constantly measure voltage and amperage and even modulate amperage (i.e. dim light circuits). Combine those features with networked, microprocessor-based switching—and, hey, you might as well throw in tank, bilge, etc. monitoring since you’ve already got the network and screens—and you start getting something as powerful as OctoPlex. Check out a much larger version of the schematic here. This system can automatically shed power loads, protect individual circuits against brown out, setup custom dimming programs, tell you if a nav light blows out, and so forth…sky’s the limit. But can things go badly wrong on the three cable boat? Hell, yes! Which is why OctoPlex is redundant every which way. More on that later.

Maximus, just what will 6 mill get you?

The listing is a little coy, but that’s definitely the mighty Maximus on the block for maximum millions. The equipment lists are interesting, but there are several items I can’t figure out, like:

Load Cell Pin Safe Ltd, 1 system
Falcon 16 emergency system Furuno, 1 
Man-overboard alert system Marine Alert, 1

Anyone? They also don’t list what software’s on the two laptops.

Lowrance NauticPath charts, and holy cow handheld

Above is the NauticPath version of Abaco (right around Whale Cay), not any better detailed than the boat’s older Navionics charts, but a bit easier to understand in color, even on a handheld. NauticPath uses the same Transas chart database that Garmin BlueCharts and Nobeltec Passport charts are based on, but both of the latter have upgraded to private data for the Bahamas. Still, Lowrance’s charts are useful, and an incredible value. You see the little $109 NauticPath chip in this handheld includes not just the Bahamas but the entire U.S. coast including AK, HI, and the Great Lakes. That really got the attention of my two shipmates, each of whom had a Garmin 76C. Which, of course, is a very good handheld, but charts for it have gotten quite expensive compared to Lowrance and others like Navionics Silver. (I wonder if Garmin will lower BlueChart prices for existing models?)

Lowrance’s handheld (bigger here) is a hell of a deal too. This is the new Expedition C, $309 retail with a 2.8” transflective screen and built-in electronic compass and barometric altimeter (with weather predictions). It will even play MP3 music files, though I don’t think you can do that and still use the NauticPath SD card as there is only one card slot. The screen is quite readable in all conditions, though I wish there was more than one level of backlighting to save batteries, and night vision, when it’s really dark. The unit is fast and its WAAS GPS performance is extraordinary, able to quickly and easily acquire a 3D position with just a plane window sky view. In short, about $400 gets you a pocket plotter ready to use anywhere in the U.S. and Bahamas. Amazing.

The charter cat's electronics, a little annoying

Here’s a closer view (bigger here) of the nav electronics at the “tank commander” helm of the Moorings 4200 charter cat. Frankly I was surprised that an expensive boat just a few years old only had a small grayscale plotter. The Raymarine RC425 seemed especially antiquated in Abaco, where the charts are tricky. I don’t think it was very quick to start with; today it seems positively sluggish. Plus it uses Navionics’ ‘Classic’ electronic chart format which was soon superseded by the better looking (even in monochrome) Gold format. Plus Navionics has recently added detailed private cartography to its Bahamas data (as has just about every chart vendor). Bottom line: almost all of the electronic charts I brought along were far more informative than the boat’s own.

The instruments and autopilot haven’t aged like the plotter, of course, but the speedo was also annoying. The paddle wheel was mounted in the starboard hull and only seemed close to accurate (compared to COG) on a  a port tack. For instance, above we were actually doing about 7.5 knots on this starboard tack broad reach (pleasant!). The windward hull wasn’t out of the water, not even close, but I guess the hydrodynamics change quite a bit from tack to tack, making for an impossible to calibrate situation, which of course screws up the ST60’s ability to calculate true wind. Is this common on multihulls? By the way, there was an interesting discussion a while back at rec.boats.electronics about the ST60’s inability to use COG to calculate true wind.

Hmmm…reading the above I sound sour today. Truth is I’m happy to be back in Maine, even with snow coming down, but I am behind work wise. Back at it.

Panbo in Abaco, technical difficulties

Geez, do I regret bragging about how wired I am here in the Bahamas. It’s not the WiFi, which so far is omnipresent in the mooring fields. It’s the fact that the 12v power supply for my laptop decided to pack up, and this vessel has neither inverter or generator to run the 110 supply I also brought. I’m down to 43% here, and will lose my PC until I can get ashore again. So you’ll understand if I’m short. Above is the helm of our catamaran, which is off center and raised up above the huge cockpit. You have fairly narrow vantage point—like a tank commander—and can’t see the sails well at all, but it does make sense overall. The boat goes pretty good. Later!

Ben's big catamaran adventure

Well, would you believe that I’m writing this from the cockpit of the Leopard 42’ catamaran above, riding on a mooring at Great Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas? Uploading to Panbo via an ISP that’s nicely blanketed the cruising harbors in WiFi? Ha ha! Oh there was the hellish getting here, which included a pre dawn Sunday drive through a sleet storm and idiot me forgetting his passport, which caused a lay over in a grungy Ft. Lauderdale Econolodge, then USAir temporarily ‘misplacing’ the passport my dear wife had driven to Portland and put on a plane. Ah, but did I mention that I’m sitting in shorts and a t-shirt as the sun comes up? So the deal here is that I am attending an Offshore Sailing School Catamaran Live Aboard Cruising Course on behalf of Sail magazine. There’s one other student and an instructor, both fine guys, and I’m excited about sailing one of these beasts. I also brought along a lot of different electronic charts of this area to try out and compare. So, more later…if and when we stop in right place WiFi wise.

Run silent, run deep... for generations

Above, and bigger here , is a ward room scene aboard the USS Salt Lake City last Sunday. It’s messy because the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (quite a visit in itself) had already strung work lights in preparation for shutting down all the sub’s power systems. In the shot, Rich is telling the current captain, Cmdr. Tracy Howard, how in the 80’s there was a pull down screen where the big plasma display is now, and they played 8mm films from a projector in the pantry. It was just a cool coincidence that the junior officers happened to be playing that old b&w WWII sub movie as the ‘elders’ conferred.

All week I’ve been thinking about that sub, and what it must be like to crew one. Rich tells me that, even on a big one like this, there’s so much engineering that not every crewman gets a private berth (which are, ahem, kind of squeezed together anyway). I even rented a documentary, Submarine: Steel Boats: Iron Men ;(excellent), to get some more feel for it. It is crowded living. While sub technology may be amazing—this one went 21 years on one charge of fuel—even more so are the skillful, gentle men who run them.

The very unhappy customer, a phenom

Mike Slinn’s weblog sounds like a tabloid:  “The dangerous secret about Raymarine radars that the manufacturer doesn’t want you to know.” Well, I read all the correspondence Mike posted and don’t understand at all how he’s come to the conclusions he has. It looks to me like various Raymarine people responded to all his issues—even though some are just RTFM (read the blanking manual) simple—and meanwhile Mike apparently hasn’t even taken their advice to update his firmware and check his power supply. I also question his concept of using this dinky radar, or any radar, to “catch up on sleep without compromising safety”. So what do you all think of Mike’s gripes, which he’s posting all over (like here, here, here, and here), and has anyone heard of another boat with this problem of a constantly resetting Raymarine radar scanner? 

By the way, Mike is certainly not the first really, really unhappy marine electronics customer I’ve come across. Supposedly one went so far as to hire a plane to tow a derogatory banner over the Miami Boat Show a few years ago! Is this a particularly strong phenomenon in the world of boats? I think so, but not because marine electronics (or boats) are particularly poor…but because we care about them so much.

AIS targets on a PDA?, yes indeed!

It makes more sense than you might think! That’s because so few plotters can yet display AIS targets, and a PC that can is often down below, too far from the helm for effective target tracking. Memory Map's PocketAIS will give a user audible collision danger alerts and/or sorted tables based on CPA or TCPA, as well as color coded target icons…all the normal AIS safety tools. And it could conceivably do all this wirelessly, as developer Richard Stephens often uses his creation, except that the nifty Bluetooth enabled NMEA mulplexers don’t yet do AIS speed (ShipModul is reportedly working on it).  

Meanwhile Panbo friend Terry Sargent has been sailing around Malaysia some more, and has once again documented an interesting AIS encounter, this time while using MaxSea and Yacht-AIS software. 

Ben's big submarine adventure

So I was excited just to get aboard the USS Salt Lake City; I can barely imagine what it was like for the 125 guys (+/-) who just cruised this technological marvel from San Diego, CA, to Portsmouth, NH, via the North Pole. Or what it was like for my dear brother-in-law, Richard Itkin, to be out there with the Russians back in the 80’s when he was the vessel’s first captain. You see my sub visit was a family event, and a sentimental one at that. Rich was on that conning tower above with his teenage son and daughter when the boat launched in 1982. What a kick then to show the controls to his 3 grandsons as the boat heads into retirement in 2006! The youngest, by the way (and bigger picture here ), is in the middle Diving Officer’s seat while the twins are in the Planesman’s (port) and Helmsman’s seats. Unfortunately, in terms of a technology tour, most all of the sub’s systems were shut down as it’s being prepared for reactor extraction. But suffice it to say that there are lots of places on the boat where the instrumentation is as dense as in this photo. Most of the gear is quite sub specific, but the Garmin plotter wasn’t the only COTS surprise. For instance, there was also Furuno sonar gear aboard, used during the last trip to look up at the ice, and judge its thickness. The USS Salt Lake City was able to find a thin spot and break through for a brief look at the North Pole. (Which makes Rich jealous; I would be too).

COTS yes, Garmin on a Sub

I knew the Navy used some regular marine electronics and even has an appropriate acronym—COTS, for Commercial Off The Shelf—but I was still amazed to see a Garmin 2006 tucked amongst the massive jumble of gear in the control room of a 360’ U.S. nuclear attack submarine. And what the hell was I doing on a submarine yesterday? More later.

FreeNavCharts.com, hype alert!

Oy, while I’m sleeping, a comments war breaks out over cheap charts (here and here). The main issue seems to be whether or not Maptech and NOAA’s free download sites are offering the same sets of raster charts, and therefore whether or not the various repackaging operations are offering the same chart DVDs. I don’t yet know the truth, but I am very dubious that Maptech is serving up a 1,000 more charts than NOAA is. Especially since the main source of this info seems to be a dubious site called FreeNavCharts.com. FreeNavCharts is offering a good service, and has lots of correct info about electronic charts, but, man, is it hyped up! Does a simple region of raster charts really have a retail value of $249.95, as suggested above? Hell no! Even when Maptech did sell $250 Digital ChartKit regions—before NOAA changed its chart policies—the package included much, much more than just the raster charts. And I’m afraid it gets worse at FreeNavCharts:

“It's interesting to note that Maptech still sells the BSB-3 charts in a collection called Chart Navigator Pro for $499.95. The 'Chart Navigator Pro' collection includes 13 DVDs. While this sounds like a lot larger collection, they fail to tell you that all of the BSB charts on the 13 DVDs could easily fit on a single DVD! They are packaged with 13 individual DVDs to liquidate leftover inventory of Regional Collections.”

I have one of the very first copies of Chart Navigator Pro (CNP) and can tell you that the charts are updated into November 2005. In other words, the “liquidate leftover inventory” line is pure bullshit. Moreover, I just opened a random CNP DVD—St. Augustine to Crystal River, Florida—and here’s what’s on it besides for the RNCs and ENCs: 1.2 GB of 3D bathymetric data, 688 MB of topo maps, 1.7 GB of photo maps, 70 MB of panoramic photos, plus tide tables, pilot books, and lots of POI’s. Of course CNP also comes with a copy of Coastal Explorer software, which makes accessing all this data very easy (and also makes FreeNavCharts’s much hyped index meaningless).

Bottom line: FreeNavCharts—like ChartsDVD.com, and I’m sure there will be lots more—is just packaging and selling stuff that anyone can download. The true retail value of the disks is quite low. Yes, repackaging is a perfectly honorable service because the downloading is a pain, but confusing consumers with hype—and especially with lies about another company’s products—is dishonorable. Here’s hoping the FreeNavCharts.com cleans up its act.

PS 1/7: As suspected, the 1,016 RNCs listed by NOAA are the same as the 2,077 RNCs listed by Maptech; it’s just a matter of whether you list, say, a 4 page small craft chart as 1 or 4 charts. My source here is Jack Webb, proprietor of FreeNavCharts, who plans to change his site to reflect this reality. Thanks, Jack!

Computer charting this and that, #1

* Panbo reader Dan Hinckley has put together a thorough and useful review of his experience running both GPSNavX and MacENC on a Mac mini, which is where the screen shot above came from.

* A couple of readers have pointed out www.chartsdvd.com, which is the work of a sailing couple living in San Francisco. They’re offering all of NOAA’s free raster and vector charts on one DVD for $30, shipping included, nice and simple.

* At the other extreme of computer charting is WECDIS, the Warfare version of Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems. Slowly but surely the world’s navies are dumping paper charts in favor of WECDIS, or similar systems with different acronyms. The company supplying the British Royal Navy and hoping to get the U.S. business is OSI.

Clean my screen, seriously

I don’t know anything about OptiMax, right, except that it popped up in our Google Ads when I wrote about touch screens. But I’m curious because I think screen cleaning is a serious subject! Last fall, when I borrowed PMY’s Luhrs to go up the Hudson, one of the twin Raymarine C-120’s at the helm had a really messed up screen, obviously the result of someone rubbing on the wrong fluid or with the wrong cloth. I’ve heard of Furuno NavNet screens being ruined with Windex glass cleaner. The point is that many modern marine electronics screens are surfaced with anti-glare coatings that are susceptible to damage. So how should we get the darn things clean?  What do you use? Is it true that paper towels can scratch some displays? Have you ever checked your manual on this subject? Seriously, manufacturers and users, please tell us what works, and what’s dangerous.  

Northstar 8000i, the touch screen

Touch screen does seem like “the natural interface” (as I just read at some promotional site), but there are two gripes about using it on the water: one, the technology can reduce precious screen brightness 10–20%, and, two, it’s hard to use when a boat starts bouncing around. Northstar has addressed both issues:

* The 8000i uses an unusual infrared touch screen technology; LEDs and photo cells hidden in the bezel create a invisible light grid which your fingertip interrupts. It seemed to work quite nicely during my demo and it doesn’t reduce screen brightness at all. Supposedly even gloved fingers and sticky fish scales won’t phase it. By the way, in the picture above (bigger here), the 8000i is zooming out by tapping a desired new center spot (red target) and dragging a box from lower right to upper left to define the zoom level. Left to right zooms in, the shaded borders let you pan, and all those touch keys can be hidden with the upper right ‘min’ button.

* But there are also zoom ‘in’ and ‘out’ buttons built right into the 12” 8000i, or you can plug in the dedicated key board seen in the system diagram with the 15” model, or you can use any other USB keyboard or pointing device. Interface flexibility!

This 12” unit, incidently, contains a 1.2 GHz processor and a 35 gig hard drive in addition to what seemed like a very bright screen, and it’s completely sealed. Yet, after a couple of hours of use, its relatively shallow aluminum back casing was barely warm, which I thought impressive, and a sign of durability.

Northstar 8000i, the architecture

The 8000i has a lot of sizzle, and some interesting new charts, but let’s start coverage with a system overview (bigger here):

* The sunlight viewable multifunction displays are Windows PCs; the 12” is self contained while the 15” is broken into monitor, processor, and keyboard modules. (Both units are also touch screen, but more on that later).

* This is a ‘masterless’ network, meaning that sounder, radar, cameras, and even the various sensor networks go directly to an Ethernet hub. If one PC is shut down, or craps out, it should not affect what the others can do. Several manufacturers have network black box sounders, and a couple have Ethernet radars, but this is the first time I’ve seen network cameras or a Network Interface Bridge (USB, SmartCraft, and NMEA 0183, with—hooray!—NMEA 2000 coming in the fall).

* The only exception to this ‘masterless’ design is that only one processor can be an entertainment server, burning CDs and DVDs with the built in ‘jukebox’ software. But then any display can play from the music and movie library at will, audio going to a nearby stereo and video either playing right on the 8000i screen or on a TV.

* All the parts shown, and the necessary cabling, are supposedly waterproof and marine tough.

Yes, it’s expensive—the 12” retails at $7,000–-but the 8000i looks like a smartly designed system, with a lot of redundancy, power, flexibility, and pizazz built in. More details to come.