Geez, anyone know where the “Big Belly Reduction” Tool is in PhotoShop? Also, what’s the drill when your full res photo reveals a half-naked Florida boat guy? At any rate, here’s another FLIBS product intro, this one splendidly orchestrated by Raymarine’s well oiled marketing machine. Simultaneous to this “VIP preview” event in a nicely shaded and catered boat shed, Raymarine “insiders” got the news via HTML e-mail (you can be an insider too). In fact, there’s no need for me to repeat the awesome specs on the new 17” and 19”, nine-input monitors, nor mention the spectacular prices. But I will point out how neatly they can work with an E-Series VGA Out port (pictured) or a PC running RayTech 6.0, though apparently you can’t do both with the same cool dedicated keyboard. They look similar but one is SeaTalk2 and the other is USB. And I’ll add that a trustworthy Raymarine Product Manager told me that he’s seen these puppies in direct sunlight head-to-head with the competition and with an E-120, and “they rock”.
If you’re now lusting after a thermal camera, you might consider the interesting idea of combining one with a searchlight. If you were on passage at night, you’d leave the thermal going and if you spotted something indistinct on the water (mind you, this camera, and the Flir, only output 320 x 240 pixels, which is higher res than many thermals), you could just hit it with the light, which would already be pointing at it. Ditto for some thief sneaking up a banana republic pier, especially effective as this baby packs 15 million candlepower and its Xenon beam size can be remotely controlled. The Carlisle & Finch NightFinder debuted at Ft. Lauderdale and is not on the company’s site just yet, but I recall that it costs something like a good used car. Hey, I was in the superyacht tent. I’m home again, with a zillion possible Panbo’s in hand, but also knackered and on deadline…so that’s it for today.
I always enjoy poking around the megayacht tent at FLIBS; it’s full of gorgeous booths, boat models, and some awesome electronics. Palladium Technology is in the latter category, and it seems like every year it comes up with an interesting addition to its PC/Ethernet based SiMON monitoring system. This year it’s integrating in an elaborate, but simple to work, entertainment system, which I’ll write about when I get more info and better images. In the meantime check out that trackball the company came up with. It's translucent, and colored LEDs underneath are used to indicate alarm states. When everything is cool, it glows green. But if some system moves into warning territory (whose very sophisticated parameters you can set in SiMON), it goes to yellow. Finally, if alarm status is reached it throbs red. It strikes me as way better than an audio alarm on the bridge, neat looking, and an idea that could come down to us little people.
That’s your thermal image, bigger here, of the Electronics Tent at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS)…all hot faces and legs. When you watch it live, it’s the ears in particular that pop out, the lack of insulating fat combined with the camera’s fairly high resolution I guess. And, yes, laddies, this technology will sort of see through clothing. A thermal camera images differences in temperature, so warm underwear under cool outerwear sometimes makes an impression (as I once had fun writing about). More important, really, is that most anything floating in the ocean, like say a container or an unlit daybeacon, is warmer than the water around it and thus will show up in a thermal image no matter how dark the night. A man overboard’s head, or a thief on a dark pier, stand out like light bulbs! At any rate, Flir Systems, which calls itself the “world leader” in this niche, is doing a masterful job of marketing its new recreational marine level products at this show, even though it doesn’t have a booth. The live image and cameras, like that ThermoVision Mariner model on top of the Northstar kiosk, are everywhere. Thermal cameras have been around a long time, but mostly in very expensive packages like the NVTi 5000, which is also on display here (and every bit as beautiful as I imagined). The real Flir news is that rugged, well supported thermal cameras have now become merely expensive; the company is even showing a fixed unit that only costs about $5,000. Why? Economies of manufacturing scale. Inside the marinized case is the exact same camera that BMW is putting on 70,000 bumpers per year. Cool! or how about: Thermal!
Hey, (brag, brag), who got to be the only unSimrad guy at the dealer/installer GB60 preview (and more here) at Simrad’s Dania Beach office today? I not only learned a LOT about the system, but it was illuminating to hear the feedback from the gents who are going to sell and install these mega systems. I can’t say much more now, as I agreed to certain “off the record” rules, but one thing for sure: the resemblance between GB60 and Nobeltec Admiral is more superficial than I had presumed. Simrad has already done a lot to mold the code into its own more purposeful (Nordic?), and perhaps more stable, vision of an ECS, and plans to add more of its own exclusive features, and simplicities (minus features?), in future releases. Meanwhile, the hardware platform is as powerful as possible, and the worldwide support plan is awesome. I wasn’t surprised to learn that GB60 Product Manager Tim Ryder, with me above, also seems to manage Simrad’s ECDIS…err, make that PLECDIS for “Paper Less”…product. Tomorrow: the actual Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show (if I can still type).
I’m still on the road, friends, now in Ft. Lauderdale, and this afternoon I got an eye-opening tour of ACR’s production and R&D facility. I saw a lot of impressive stuff in terms of engineering, testing, production techniques, and new products (that I can’t write about just yet), and was particularly intrigued with that somewhat odd looking box above. It is a Spirent GNSS simulator, able to mimic the entire constellation of GPS satellites. The Windows control application below lets the tester see exactly what the GPS receiver in the “oven” should be receiving, then stress it by degrading the simulated system, even introducing extreme meteorological conditions. Given that ACR is challenged to build GPS units that start cold in very unfriendly environments, this has got to be great tool toward improved performance.
Well, I attended most of the 3.5 hour GMDSS Task Force meeting at NMEA—with USCG, FCC, and other relevant parties present—but I still don’t know exactly when Class B AIS will actually be on the market, especially here in the U.S.A. But I did for the first time put my hands on one, and, surprise, it came from a company I had never heard of. The SevenStar Electronics SeaTraceR Class B AIS is based on a transceiver developed by Software Radio. The engineer who was toting it around said that is has received IEC approval and will soon be on the market for around $1,000. It is set up to connect to a PC with a small program that allows entering the MMSI just one time, either by a dealer or user (one of the issues yet undecided). An interesting feature I did not know about is that SRM Sent LED. Apparently the Class B standard includes the ability to send some sort of distress text message, using a ‘panic’ button connected to the unit. The SeaTraceR can supposedly be reprogrammed so that the button instead activates a Quiet Mode—receiving, but not transmitting—which is an option some users really want. More on AIS soon.
Look how NMEA 2000 can make a guy grin. That’s Kevin Binnie, Systems Product Manager at Xantrex Technology, showing how his MS2000 Inverter/Charger can gateway to NK2 and hence display its operating status to other displays (here Teleflex and Maretron). The hair dryer let him apply a load so us gawkers could see some action, which was instantaneous. Behind Kevin is Bill Remster of Blue Water Data, who showed me his neat PC program that can read and log raw 2000 data. One thing he does with it is engine warranty “start ups” in which he goes aboard a new boat, hooks into 2000 power plants like Yanmar's, and records all sorts of engine data at various RPMs, including speed and pitch using 2000 sensors he brings along. Neato.
Also shown at the NMEA Conference was the first generator whose ECM outputs NMEA 2000, which means that installing control panels anywhere is simply a matter of T-ing into the boat’s backbone. The generator also provides power to the backbone, eliminating another cable, and generator status can be viewed on other NK2 displays as all the messages are standard (remember, a certain number of proprietary messages are allowed). Westerbeke (no information on its site yet, but some here) will eventually offer this option on all its generators. Yes!
“Such is the upsurge in demand for systems integration that any embedded system needs to communicate with both PCs and other equipment via open protocols such as the standard NMEA 0183 and/or the updated but slow-to-arrive NMEA 2000. So far, Simrad has stuck with the tried and tested NMEA 0183 protocol, although Raymarine offers both.”
That is SO wrong! I first saw Simrad’s very sophisticated NMEA 2000 support here at the NMEA conference two years ago. And that’s just one mistake in an IBI News feature on marine electronics (Aug-Sept issue) full of mistakes. I’ve ranted about this sort of thing before, but I don’t think I should stop. Can the media do worse than misinforming the trade (in this case) and public about issues they are already confused about? Now Simrad and all the other companies that have chosen to brand NMEA 2000 with their own name (SimNet) deserve some blame, but the media should be working hard to get the facts right. How about getting someone to do a technical edit, or even let the subject companies check the piece? IBI is often very interesting, by the way, as in yesterday’s rather gossipy bit about the state of Navman/BNT. Hopefully I’ll learn more about that story today, as well as see lots of new gear at the NMEA trade exhibit. Stay tuned.
A Panbo reader (thanks, Mark!) alerted me to yesterday’s collision on the Mississippi, in which the 712’ Greek freighter Zagora, coming down river with a load of soy beans, apparently T-boned the anchored 737’ Panamanian freighter Torm Anholt. Mark wrote, “It is amazing that yet again two ships of this size are able to hit each other. And to think one of them was anchored. How is it that small vessels are not plowed under more frequently? Looking forward to class B AIS transponders.” I’m looking forward to Class B too, but we should all be very careful not to over estimate its value. Interestingly, another Panbo reader (thanks, Kurt!) linked me to a page of presentations given at the recent AIS/06 conference. There’s a lot of interesting material there, which I’ve only skipped through, but of particular note is the first day presentation by Dr. Andy Norris. One of his conclusions is that “Class B users must not assume that their AIS signal will be visible on any ship.” More on Dr. Norris’s work to come. And some day the National Transportation Safety Board will issue a report on the Zagora/Torm Anholt collision. NTSB reports don’t seem quite as detailed as the MAIB work I’ve referenced before, but it will be interesting to see what happened on the big River yesterday afternoon.
Man, that’s a long time in planes! I’m back in Maine, briefly, and experimenting with Google Earth to scrap book my trip. Here’s the full screen image, but it would be far better to open Google Earth and zoom around with me. 1 marks the touristy V&A waterfront, said to be the most visited spot in all Africa, and still worth visiting. Naturally that’s the hang out of the hot daysailing cats—Fuji and GQ—as well as visiting yachts. If you zoom in close you can see the canal that leads to the big hall (2) where the Boat Show was held and I met the Whisper builders. Pan further west to the commissioning docks (3), where the Magnum 32’ was parked. You’ll also see a line of cats getting ready for their long delivery trips. It’s said that in the wee hours of almost every night another big multihull is trailered through the streets of Cape Town. Finally, just for fun, the 4’s show where an elevated highway was once going to bypass down town, but one property owner held out, and now it will never be finished. “This is Africa!” my hosts explained. Speaking of GE, MacENC can now neatly export tracks, waypoints and routes to it, as shown below and bigger here. And recall that Vessel Tracker can plot live AIS targets on it, and Just Magic has created all sorts of interesting mashups. Now we just need a reasonable way to get broadband underway. That’s the sort of surprise I’m hoping for at NMEA (Thursday) or Ft. Lauderdale.
This is the helm of a Robertson and Caine Leopard 46, sometimes thought of as the Moorings Leopard 46 since this huge charter company is the builder’s main client. R&C is the biggest boat shop in South Africa, 14 hulls under construction when I toured the other day, one being launched every six days (the pressure was palpable). The boat above was just commissioned and may already have left on a 7,000 mile delivery to a Moorings base in the Caribbean. The electronics surprised me in two ways: * The plotter is the same damn Raymarine RC425 I was disappointed to find on an older Moorings Leopard 42 last winter. I didn’t even think this unit was still available. I guess its presence speaks to how easy it is to navigate where this boat charters, and how unwilling the actual owner is to put better gear in the hands of charterers. * But that doesn’t explain the TackTick wireless and solar powered instruments (bigger helm shot here). Apparently the Moorings has specified these on all new boats, and no one could tell me why. I think TackTick gear is very cool, but am really surprised that the Moorings would want to deal with another supplier, and more expensive gear at that. Anyone know the story? Long distance deliveries, by the way, are part of South Africa’s boatbuilding success. The young man on the bow above has logged 35,000 miles already this year, and the hand on the wheel belongs to R&C’s delivery manager who’s talking daily via Iridium to at least two vessels bound to the Caribbean, West coast of Mexico, Med, Australia, somewhere. It’s quite possible for owners to join these trips. In fact, Admiral Yachts, which specializes in cruising cats for Americans, includes with every boat sale a pair of plane tickets to Cape Town, two weeks in seaside apartment while your boat gets launched, and then the services of a pro delivery captain/instructor to get you to the Caribbean. That’s the story in the photograph below, bigger here, as Harlin and Brenda Allen watch their Admiralty 38 Banana Split leave the factory. Look for them in Trinidad in about six weeks. It was a pleasure meeting them, and we all enjoyed the South African expression for “wide load”. Aren’t all boats Abnormal Loads?
I must admit I drooled a bit over this nav station/office on board a St Francis 50 cruising cat. Wouldn’t that be the spot to test electronics and write Panbo? Of course I’d do a few things a little differently. For instance, while using the VGA-out function of the helm’s Raymarine E-80 to repeat its image on the PC monitor (more visible in the bigger picture here ) is helpful, and would be even more so with a remote Raymarine keyboard, I’d prefer RayTech 6.0 with an Ethernet relationship to the E so I could work fairly independently of the helmsman and also check alternative charts. I’d also put the switch panel elsewhere and fit the vertical surfaces of this station with easily replaced black panels. I may be a bit peculiar in terms of changing electronics, but I think every nav station should be built for easy upgrading. At any rate, the St Francis 50 was impressive for many well thought out cruising details, but the Crazy Frenchman and I declined a test sail, probably quite tame, in favor of a sunset blast on a red hot Safari 50 (perhaps the one and only) that’s gone into the Cape Town daysailing trade. The picture below isn’t great, but it tells some of the story. Even weighted down with over 25 people—not regular charterers, but guests of boat sponsor Peroni beer—the damn thing still went 19+ knots in the 20+ Southeasterly they love here. And who wouldn’t; the seas were so flat that bottles and even stem ware is staying put. And note that this is another all Raymarine catamaran. Actually what you laddies might be noticing is: fast boat, lots of good beer, and a lightly clad hostess. Indeed, check out GQ Cruises next time you’re in South Africa.
Notice the two throttle/shifts (bigger shot here); one controls a small Vetus diesel, the other an electric motor, both turning the same shaft. I didn’t get all the technical details or the performance numbers—this area outside the Cape Town Boat Show was noisy with cars and water taxis—but I did get the sweet story behind the boat. The gentleman shown, who spoke much more quietly than your average salesman, is in fact an instructor at the Whisper Boat Building Academy, which was recently started to teach deaf youngsters the skills need to join the region’s very active boat building industry. So the hybrid launch is a project boat, whose sales help finance the school, and the two young men below are two of its proud builders.
It is famously hard to photograph rough seas, and this (bigger here) is a good example. Only a bit of spray and Mark Delaney’s two-handed grip on the grab rails suggests that his Two Oceans Magnum 32’ sport fishing cat is slamming along at 20 knots across steep and confused five footers piling up just outside Cape Town Harbor. That crazy Frenchman is my new good buddy Laurent Fournier, the only other writer on this press tour, and it was his idea to test this boat in less than smooth conditions. We got way more than we bargained on, but it certainly confirmed the contention that South Africans tend to build serious boats because they boat in serious waters. Elsewhere in the world this test would likely have been postponed but Mark had no qualms about subjecting his boat to some real pain. In the process he proved beyond doubt that the hull he and his father Rod developed leans nicely into fast curves—unlike many power cats, which lean unnervingly outward—and also has enough reserve bouyancy forward to resist burying its bows even while surfing in extremis. The Delaneys favor Furuno electronics, both here and aboard a crackerjack Two Oceans cruising cat I toured. The latter even has a Furuno autopilot, the first I’ve seen on a sailboat (excellent preformance reports Rod). The Magnum also had the all-in-one DVD player below, from a Australian company called Majestic I’d never heard of. Mark says they hold up, and that’s saying something. It turns out that further up the African coast, where tuna are plentiful but harbors are not, Magnums and similarly tough boats are beach launched through surf using big wheeled tractors and special trailers. Serious about fishing too!
Well, I’d figured that posting might suffer, but I had no idea how long a two day plane trip and a miserable hotel WiFi voucher card system could knock me off line (why is it so easy to serve Internet via WiFi, so hard to charge for it?). If you’re reading this, then I’ve figured a way to update Panbo via the hotel’s “business center”, and we’re back in business. Which starts with my first boat ride in the southern hemisphere. While the electronics—Raymarine ST60 wind, depth, speed and a JRC 1500 radar—weren’t exotic in the least, the boat was. Fuji Cat is a Scape Yachts 39’ multihull purpose built for day sail chartering. Hence the “bug eye” hard dodger—odd looking, but very effective off Cape Town where the ocean is wide open and cold, and the weather changes fast—plus the on-center helm with all sheets led to it under the platform, and thus out of finger pinch range. The hulls are fairly narrow, construction fairly light, and Fuji acclerated quite nicely even with about dozen bodies on board. There’s a “sport cruiser” model that’s clocked runs in the high 20’s, and can fly a hull if you’re up to it. Meanwhile I’ve been to the Cape Town Boat Show, and am getting a feel for how vigorous the boat building business is here. In more general sense, things are sometimes oddly familiar, other times a bit different. I just heard “Sweet Home Alabama” playing on an FM station, but that plate on Fuji’s snack bar features “South African sushi”—the local joke name for beef (I think) jerky.
When I wrote about lightning a few years ago, I interviewed Dr. Ewen Thomson, then an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Florida and more-or-less the go-to guy when it came to this scary and mysterious phenomenon. Thomson was impressive, and I’ve been looking forward to the protection system he was working on as a side line to his teaching and research. Well, the time has come. Marine Lightning Protection Inc. is up and running and will be showing a complete system aboard the Mirage Great Harbour 47 at Powerboat Show in Annapolis.
The system works by creating, in effect, a "Faraday cage" around the boat and its occupants (illustrated below). It is named after inventor Michael Faraday who in 1836 discovered that an enclosure of conducting materials shielded its contents from electrical effects, and could be used to ptotect against lightning.
Thomson’s “Siedarcs” have also been installed on two sail boats— the mighty Maximus and the prototype of a Radford performance cruiser: “If lightning can be thought of as having a preference,” Thomson said, “that preference is to escape from a vessel at or near the waterline. By yielding to lightning's natural tendencies, our system can minimize dangerous sideflashes. The development of the Siedarc is one of the revolutionary features of our system."
Dear readers, it’s time for another entry (also here and here) on the state of Panbo:
* If you’ve been accessing this blog with an RSS reader, instead of going directly to the site, you may be annoyed because I recently changed the feed from full on to just summaries. I’m sorry about that, but it’s part of a transition meant to generate some income for improving the site, and also for the efforts of yours truly (direct contributions are also welcome).
* In that regard, Panbo will soon have a major sponsor (whose identity will be no surprise), as well as some small banner space for “Friends of Panbo” sub sponsors. Please e-mail me if your organization is interested, and hasn’t already been in touch. No worries, though, Panbo will not get plastered with ads; and, hopefully, you’ll see improvements like full length reviews and forums in due time.
* Finally, I’m just about to embark on a rigorous travel schedule—a press tour of Cape Town, South Africa, boatbuilders and boat show; the NMEA Conference in Naples, Florida; the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show (aka FLIBS); and METS in Amsterdam. Posting will necessarily be choppy, but, by golly, I should get a good look at what’s new in electronics, not mention some insight into how they’re used on the other side of the planet.
PS. Please note that using a feed reader will still keep you informed about the when and what of new entries; you’ll just have to click over to www.Panbo.com to read the whole thing.
PPS. I hauled my boats last week, and turned on the house heat today. Ralph, is now serviced and sitting on a refurbished trailer ready for another happy owner (major electronics shown below excepted).
some awesome electronics. 
an impression (as I once had 
Xantrex Technology, showing how his 
