So this morning an acquaintance who sells and services laptops and peripherals to cruisers gives me a buzz. He’d rather not be identified (and don’t bother guessing, cause I know lots of guys like this), but he was some agitated: “This is a train wreck! This is going to shake up the whole marine PC world!” He was ranting about Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, and specifically the new “security feature” whereby it will not accept hardware drivers unless they are Microsoft Certified. Well, now, just yesterday I installed an older Deluo USB GPS on a tablet computer I’m trying, and I had to check a box saying that I understood that the driver is not Microsoft Certified, something I’ve done many times. Apparently this GPS will be useless with Vista, and a small company like Deluo will need to fork over $40,000 minimum to get that driver Certification. Interfacing is the soft, weak underbelly of marine computing, what with all sorts of little developers making sensors, multiplexers, SSB modems, sat. phone data connections, weatherfax demodulators, etc. etc. that wire into PCs, whereas most computer users only plug in a few items, all of which are manufactured in huge volume. And as of about today, you’ll have a hard time finding a new PC that isn’t running Vista, though even a fairly high profile device like the new Globalstar GSP 1700 sat phone, supposedly superior in all ways to its predecessors, is not “certified” for Vista hook-up, and hence data comms. That’s whats got my friend so riled up that he’s spending time at sites like BadVista.org, the folks who have been harassing MicroSoft’s Vista tour, often humorously (above). So I’m hoping that the many Panbo readers who develop and/or install marine PC apps will now speak up here about what’s working, and what isn’t.
As noted earlier today, the deal went down. Above is the scene this morning at C-Map USA’s Mashpee, Massachusetts, office as Operations Manager Chris Cox and General Manager Ken Cirillo unveil their new sign. Similar events took place at other C-Map offices around the world, and a press release went everywhere. The latter is a bit vague, but a Jeppesen spokesperson at the Denver headquarters gave me a little more color on what this acquisition may mean to marine electronics. The most specific item is that Jeppesen Marine’s recreational division, i.e. Nobeltec, will be integrating C-Map cartography into its products, though it may take six months or more, and the fate of Passport Charts is “yet to be determined”. Otherwise C-Map will be “business as usual”—i.e. same partners, sales outlets, and customer support facilities—at least during the six months it will take to integrate the company into Jeppesen. And the notion that C-Map’s hardware manufacturing facilities were not part of this deal, posted here back in August, was also confirmed. As for that distinctly non-marine logo, the spokesman said they are working on a new branding scheme, but it’s hard to give up the plane after such longterm success serving that market. In fact, Jeppesen supplies 80–85% of commercial aviation operators with not just cartography, but weather, routing, and other essential data. At one point, the company printed two billion sheets of paper per year (!), though now, of course, this data has largely gone digital. Jeppesen is obviously an aviation powerhouse (and so was C-Map in the marine world), which is why the ad they’ve been running in some of the commercial marine magazines—now modified for C-Map’s home page—has weight. It reads, “What happens when a company with more than 70 years of experience pioneering navigational and operational information management solutions for aviators enters the marine market?…The game changes.” But, despite the hints, I guess we’ll have to wait to see exactly how.
It’s a happy day for navigators when C-Map is running out of adjectives to describe how large an area is covered by its latest chart cards. The press release is not online yet (update), and C-Map’s Web chart catalog doesn’t yet show them, but last week the company announced that in 2007 Wide-size cards will cover about five times the area for the same price. That means, as shown right, that $199 will get you every chart from the Canadian border through the Bahamas and up the west coast of Florida, with all Max features like animated tides & currents, custom C-Marina charts (like below, which I like a lot), and photos of inlets/harbors. $249 MegaWide cards will also get super-sized, one purportedly covering the entire East Coast, Caribbean and the Gulf Coast. Another covers the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and all of South America, and a third covers the entire West Coast of Canada and the U.S. If you visit C-Map this morning you’ll see that the Jeppesen deal is now official, which I’ll have more on later today.
If you followed my PS’s to the ActiveCaptain entry, you know that the site got quite a drubbing on certain forums and newsgroups, much to the amazement of people like me who actually know AC’s proprietors. Oy! But those threads did lead me to check out some other sites that allow cruisers to create/review POIs for each other. I was somewhat familiar with Marinas.com, but didn’t realize that it has by far the best aerial photography of my homeport I’ve seen anywhere, in fact great photography of ports and lighthouses all over the planet. Registered users can write reviews of marinas but there’s no way to correct marina data, which is too bad as a lot of it is flawed. For instance, the flat statement that “The Camden Yacht Club is private, but may be able to offer reciprocal privileges to members of participating yacht clubs” is flat wrong; the Club is welcoming to all cruisers. SkipperGuide is quite the opposite of Marinas.com; it’s very light on content, so far, but users can potentially add almost anything they want, in “wiki” fashion (which it is). In fact, it’s possibly too ambitious; whereas SkipperGuide attempts to cover the whole world of cruising, starting without even a flawed database, it’s going to take a lot of user input to make it seem at all useful. Check out Annapolis, for instance. On the other hand, this site—like the interesting online waypoint, and more, manager POI66–integrates with Google Earth. Are there other sites like this? Will one become the “ebay/Amazon” of marine POI reviews?
My column about the sorry state of marine Points of Interest (POI) info is now out in the February issue of Power and Motoryacht (and now online). At the end of it I make note of a cool new Web service that was about to go live and that could go a long way toward solving the POI problem. Well, ActiveCaptain.com is really here, and it’s even better than the alpha version suggested. The site was created by the talented Jeff and Karen Siegel, and its goal is to let all of us contribute details of marina services and give them ratings. Other useful POIs, like anchorages, will be possible soon. The Web interface, using Yahoo maps and sat photos, is wicked slick, and totally free. And it will remain free, as the Siegel’s business plan is to develop and sell software that will enable mobile devices like cell phones to easily access ActiveCaptain, while leaving regular Web access free, even of advertising, so that hopefully a critical mass of “captains” will contribute to it. Smart! But there is an ironic twist to this story. My secondary objective with the POI column was to promote my home harbor of Camden, Maine, which has a largely undeserved reputation as a tough place to find a good and reasonable berth. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Jeff Siegel himself was the first person to rate a certain Camden marina and apparently it’s the only negative one he’s written so far! But that’s how it works when when conversations gets real. I’ve already detailed and rated Camden marinas myself (full size screen shot here), and am confident that even what’s there now, week one of ActiveCaptain.com, is more accurate than what you’ll find on any electronic chart or in any guide book. Now there’s probably another dreary winter weekend ahead, so take some time to register at ActiveCaptain and add your two cents about Camden or any other harbor you’re familiar with. The more, the better.
PS, 1/27: Oy, some of the cynics at rec.boats.electronics and rec.boats.cruising have gone paranoid about how ActiveCaptain’s sinister purpose is to “harvest” e-mail addresses. Ignore them! I am absolutely confident that the Siegels will not misuse anyone’s e-mail. By the way, much as I appreciate those newsgroups, they certainly can be sources of misinformation. Interestingly, the ringleader of this particular nonsense is a regular poster/windbag named “Larry”, whose asinine rants about NMEA 2000 already made Panbo. Always ignore Larry!
PS, 1/28: Oy again; the righteous moderators at SailNet even axed a simple announcement of ActiveCaptain. Isn’t it ironic that if the Siegles had included an obvious revenue source like Google ads on the site, these paranoids would probably be excited about it? Haven’t they noticed business models that include a significant ad-free element, like, say, GoogleEarth?
New England Wireless and Steam Museum, a must visit
Jan 25, 2007
Monday I had the great pleasure of touring the New England Wireless and Steam Museum with two of its founders, Nancy and Bob Merriam. I got there by tagging along with Jim Fullilove, editor of NMEA’s Marine Electronics Journal, and he was there to work on a story for the organization’s upcoming 50th anniversary. You see, Nancy and Bob were two of the dealer/installers who formed NMEA way back when. Hence the table full of early RDFs, AM radios, fathometers, and radars they’d pulled up from the Museum’s basement. The Merriams are a deep well of knowledge about that gear, and the early NMEA, but their real passion is the very dawn of marine electronics a century ago, and the museum reflects that. Below, for instance, is the very first wireless communications station—building and all, and in operational condition. Check the giant Morse key, capable of handling 20kw without a relay. What you can’t see in this photo is the intense blue sparks generated by the Massie spark transmitter upper left. The museum—which has all sorts of other early wireless artifacts, not to mention a major collection of working steam engines— is only open by appointment and best visited during the warmer months, but very much worth doing. Meanwhile this novice “sparkie” is very much sparkless, down with the flu while visiting New York City, and regular posts may not resume until next week.
Following my whining about the clumsy POI interfaces seen on many plotters and charting programs, Navionics sent up a powerful handheld they make (but would rather not advertise here, as it’s only available in Europe). They’re proud of how easily POIs can be found and browsed, and well they should be. There are at least two ways to get a list of local marinas, for instance, and the one below graphically points them out as you page through. Once selected, the particular marina's phone # goes into the title bar at top and right arrowing through the categories shows you what photos, Pilot book, or other info is available, and then you can drill down. When you get to, say, “other services” in the “info” section, nearby businesses with their own POI info are in blue and clickable. There are almost no dead ends, i.e. the interface doesn’t let you click for more information about something if there isn’t any (a gripe I have with Raymarine’s access to this same POI info). At any rate, Navionics made its point; a much better way to get at all this data is possible on even a small plotter. But that doesn’t make the data any more accurate. For instance, that’s not exactly where the Camden Yacht Club is (below). But some good news on that score is coming later this week. Posting will be jagged, though, as I’m on the road to points south (a little south).
Last Fall I tried Captn. Jack’s Garmin 76Cx bundle, and liked it a lot because it not only includes a Maptech Waterproof Chartbook of your choice, but comes with all the printed waypoints already programmed into the GPS. Turn it on, pick the desired waypoint from a list, and—bada bing—you have a solid connection between a traditional chart and electronic positioning. Given your distance and bearing to the waypoint, you can simply eyeball where you are, helped out by all the course lines Maptech lays out (bigger picture here), or you can use dividers and parallel rules for more accuracy. I think this is the nuts for beginners and traditionalists, not to mention small boat navigators and lazy old coots (like me). And whereas Chartbooks also come with a CD of digitized pages and a basic charting program, and you can get full detail charts for the 76Cx (or the larger Garmins in the other bundles), this kit gives you a couple of ways to grow. It’s also a good example of how a retailer can add serious value to some already good products. All of which is why this was one of my Sail magazine Freeman K. Pittman Award picks, just announced today. I notice that Motor Boating included it in their “Gear of Year” too. Now, wouldn’t it be cool if Maptech, and other chart/guide publishers, made their waypoint files available for anyone to download? And it might sell more printed products, so there’s some motivation!
I’m feeling so old today. First I saw this Casio Waveceptor watch going for $25 on Woot. Five times a day the thing listens to WWVB, the time signal station in Colorado, and adjusts itself to atomic precision. I remember in the 70’s laboriously tuning into that station and tracking errors in the various expensive chronometers on a whale research vessel where we were using celestial nav to map and stay safe on the big banks off the Dominican Republic. Then I hear that Darrell Lowrance has retired and a fellow young enough to be my kid has taken over as new CEO of Navico (Simrad, Lowrance, etc.). And early this week old time big yacht installer Larry Smith Electronics suddenly shut its doors. I suspect some sort of financial mismanagement was the cause, not lack of business. Meanwhile, this old guy’s phone is busy as companies prepare to strut their stuff in Miami.
The first LightShip I tested had rather stiff and ineffectual suction feet and kept falling off the south window I stuck it on so that its little solar panel would charge up its Ni-Cad battery (no doubt the winter chill coming through the glass didn’t help). Then one last fall killed it dead. But that’s how I found out that SolLight had upgraded the suction cups, and now test unit #2 is stuck firmly to my office window and working like a champ. You can switch between red and white LEDs, and there’s even a light-actuated off switch if you want to just leave the sucker on all the time. At $15 a piece, less in volume, I’ve got to believe that lots of LightShips are going to go boating. There’s more detail here and, by the way, the SolLight bottle lamp I tried almost two years ago is still working fine.
More thoughts on LifeTag, a battery issue for some
Jan 16, 2007
Panbo reader and offshore sailor Jon pointed out a possible downside to the Raymarine LifeTag MOB system that I hadn’t really picked up on (edited for brevity): “Curiously, this battery information [seen in the brochure crop above] is lacking from the installation and operating guides—I would want to know this before heading offshore on a two week passage. The system does warn you when the batteries go low, but unless you planned for it you would be unlikely to have the odd sized battery on board. Also, there is mention of the tags powering up/down automatically, but the information seems to suggest that the tags will only power down by shutting down the whole system [true]. OK for a daysail, but with that kind of battery life you would like to power down the tags for the off watch crew for example. The MOBi-lert system has a connected charging pod, when the tags are inserted in the pod the system recognizes where they are and puts them to sleep. On that system each tag is tracked individually, so you can check the status of each: #1 is charging, #2 is active, #3 has a low battery, #4 is overboard and so forth."
When I visited ACR last October, I got to write up the R&D department’s nifty GPS simulator but not the nifty new GPS-assisted PLB that was being tested in its “oven”. Well, now it’s official; the ResQFix got FCC approval today and will ship in February. ACR managed to make it 35% smaller and 25% lighter than its already compact and successful AquaFix GPS I/O model, plus goose up the 12 channel GPS to -136 dBm sensitivity for fast starts in bad places, and they’re bringing it to market for $750, less than the old I/O. You gotta like all that, not to mention its “full functional self-test of internal circuitry, battery voltage and power, 406 MHz transmission and GPS acquisition.” Here’s more detail at Landfall Navigation, and here’s a full picture with included float bag. It seems to me that the perfectly accessorized person overboard would have a proactive alarm system in one pocket, and a PLB like this in the other. Then a thoroughly equipped yacht could try to home in on his/her 121.5 MHz signal while the GPS and 406 MHz transmitter prepare SARSAT to send in the pros.
The Lowrance press release claims that “the iWAY 600c is the first portable navigation device to offer dual routing capability, allowing consumers to navigate both highways and waterways”, which I don’t understand as Garmin has done that nicely for some time. But that’s not to say that the 600c isn’t an interesting and unique portable-sized car/boat navigator. How’s about a 30 gig hard drive almost filled with U.S. and Canada road maps, hi res sat photo maps of metro areas, 5.5 million POIs, Lowrance’s own NauticPath U.S. charts (hopefully fixed), and some 3,000 Enhanced U.S. Lakes (there is a European model too). Which leaves 5 gigs free for MP3 tracks you can play using the unit’s built in “full spectrum FM modulator.” All is this displayed and controlled by a 5” VGA touch screen for $800 list with 12 and 110 power supplies, suction mount, and USB interface included. The 600c does come out of the automotive division—which is probably why I didn’t hear about it until now (thanks, Barry!)—and while the press release says “waterproof”, the spec page says “completely sealed to prevent internal corrosion.” At any rate, it’s supposed to ship in February and I’m on the test list.
Iris PC Radar is a relatively new product purportedly able to “interface as a slave or display-only with almost any radar antenna, and at present can control Raymarine, Kelvin Hughes and the Simrad/Koden/Anritsu family…soon to be more”. Moreover, “its 8-bit digitization gives far superior picture quality and sea clutter performance compared to ordinary boat radars”, and it incorporates a target tracker with AIS input and S-57 chart overlay (screen below, bigger here). Iris is currently marketed for harbor surveillance and is also integrated into the interesting monitoring and control system FT NavVision, but—head’s up, integraters and developers!—owner Ledwood Technology is “looking for partners to sell and continue to develop the radar.” My sense, by the way, is that 2007 is going to be a significant year for marine radar.
It’s just been announced that Raymarine and Remote Knowledge have inked a deal to develop a Ray branded communications product. Remote has been fairly quiet since I wrote up their initial RK3000 product back in my January, 2005, PMY column (this part below not online for reasons unknown), but—man-o-man—it’s not too hard to imagine how their CANbus/N2K and sat/cell comms technology could be married beautifully to Raymarine systems.
A comment in the Velocitek S10 entry reminded me of this DeLorme Blue Logger that I tested a couple of years ago. It’s a pretty powerful little gizmo for the money, but one thing I didn’t get into in the short review was the annoying file format it logs into. As I recall I had a devil of a time getting the data into non-DeLorme mapping programs, but that issue may now be easily solvable with some of the conversion programs we’ve discussed (though I haven’t checked). Apparently I also missed the fact that the real time Bluetooth NMEA 0183 output does not include the WAAS corrections, as discovered by a PMY reader. I don’t know why DeLorme did that, or if it’s still true.
As noted yesterday, the LifeTag man overboard system really shines when interfaced via SeaTalk to an appropriate plotter, like the E-Series shown above. The data here is being generated by NemaTalker down in the Panbo Test Facility (aka my basement shop), but the E doesn’t know it. It thinks we’re tootling along near Schoodic Point until I walk the LifeTag more than about 30’ away from the base station, or plunge it into a bucket of water. After a 10 second delay, the buzzers go off and the E goes into MOB mode, establishing a new GoTo and zooming in as far as it can to include both boat and man-in-a-bucket. Again the install was simple, three SeaTalk wires for power and data, no set up. And the manuals are good. Now, as noted in part one’s comments, LifeTag won’t help you home in on the victim, and frankly I was surprised by the figure Russ dug up of 95% success if a GPS MOB point is established. The mermaid id he referenced sounds interesting, and I know there are other intriguing products. But I don’t think any work so well on an integrated system basis…if you have compatible Raymarine gear (well, excepting NKE). It would be nice if there were effective NMEA 0183 and 2000 MOB messages and LifeTag used them. Do note, though, that Ray’s system does have a 12v output for triggering “appropriate emergency systems”, though I’m not sure what they are (anyone?).
I still maintain that shutting down the Loran system is a red herring, but the USCG has asked for comments on the subject, and hands are wringing. Here, for instance, is a short piece called “Loran’s Last Chance?” on AVweb. Follow the link where the author writes “The UK has a similar [Loran] system and is also pondering whether to keep it or not”. Not really, you’ll find; what the Brits are actually thinking about is building a new eLoran system!
Nonetheless, it seems prudent for any one who wants a redundant electronic positioning system—and you should!—to register their opinion. And the government has made it easy (though not so easy to give you full links). Here’s the drill: go to http://dms.dot.gov and do a simple search for docket item 24685. You should get to the screen above, which gives you access to the Notice itself plus the comments coming in. Unfortunately the TXT versions don’t word wrap, but the PDFs read fine. Try Robert Gardner’s for some good dope, and I’m hoping my own comment, submitted early this morning, will go up soon. Comment Submissions, button at top above, is a really easy form, and very little ID is required. (Nice work, DOT!)
For more info on Loran, the Wikipedia entry is excellent, and it also got me to an amazing PhD dissertation on the subject just completed by Wouter Pelgrum. He’s the guy who got dizzy on a Massachusetts clover leaf demonstrating how accurate even the somewhat improved current Loran system can be. Now, I’m going to do more testing on the Si-Tex eLoran, already looking good; you think about telling the USCG that we need this capability.
Raymarine introduced this LifeTag man overboard system last February, but then couldn’t actually start shipping it in the U.S. until November. These things happen, but it does tend to diminish a new product’s reputation. Well, I’ve been testing LifeTag, it works exactly as promised, and it deserves attention. One thing I particularly like is that—unlike some other safety gear, EPIRBs and life rafts come to mind—you don’t have to worry if it will function when you need it. LifeTag is what might be called an “alarm on failure” system; once on, the easy-to-tote tags regularly communicate (via ZigBee) with the base station, alarming if the connection breaks, or if just the tag breaks. The basic stand-alone system shown above was trivial to install and learn. The buzzer sounded if I wandered too far away or pushed the “help!” (or “wake up, matey”) button, plus you can disarm the alarm with the tag, and the multicolor LED tells you what’s going on. All nice, but even better is hooking LifeTag into a Raymarine SeaTalk network. More on that, and other considerations, tomorrow.
There’s no question that some boaters out there, even pros, are misusing electronics, which is why we have terms like “radar assisted collisions” and more recently “computer assisted groundings” spoken only half in jest. Now the January issue of Seaworthy magazine identifies a whole category of marine accidents they’re calling Electronically Aided Collisions or EACs. Seaworthy, aka “The BoatU.S. Marine Insurance and Damage Avoidance Report” is a terrific publication, I think. Using the vast boots-on-the-ground research conducted by BoatU.S. adjusters, the editors present the real hazards of our past time in a calm, useful manner. They have a sense of humor too, for instance titling a sidebar on a mast accident “It’s not the falling that hurts, it’s the stopping,” and including this quote in the EAC feature:
“My wife used to refer to the boat’s nav system as my $10,000 video game. After I bent both props and rudders on some rocks while I was showing her how the system worked, she started calling it my $20,000 video game.”
Two digits, two buttons, two modes…one purpose. The Velocitek S10 is a GPS that’s been waterproofed and simplified so that those crazies riding kite boards, hydrofoil moths, etc. can track speed and VMG. Either is displayed at a one second update rate. In speed mode the right button gives you absolute max, the left your 10 second max, while in VMG mode the same buttons set the up and downwind marks. The S10 can also log 10 hours of data at 2 second intervals for downloading ashore using the USB port inside the box. You can have your data in the GPX format—probably the most universal, and definitely compatible with the freeware program GPS Action Replay, which is especially designed for reviewing your day’s speed runs, even a whole race if everyone carries logging GPS’s. Or you can use the .kml format to overlay your track on Google Earth. That’s what excited our boy Ed about the Velocitek, but now—thanks, everyone—we know that he can get info from most any GPS to GE.
Panbo reader Ed is looking for a handheld GPS that will save tracks that he can overlay on Google Earth. I don’t know of any common handhelds that will produce .kml files directly (maybe you do?), but there sure are a lot of ways to make the conversion. Today I tried GPSBabel, which did a pretty good job of turning a Mapsource .gdb file full of waypoints, routes, and tracks into a file I could load into GE. Babel doesn’t know many of the more obscure marine GPS file formats, but it seems quite powerful and is freeware (donations encouraged). GPS Utility—also quite powerful (though $55 for a full version)—can import files from Furuno, Northstar, etc. Also, at least some charting programs, like Coastal Explorer, can import data from a Garmin and export it to Google. Any other ideas for Ed?
If you make wireless sensors so tough they can be dragged around attached to trawler nets, a good way to market that quality is to have brawny fishermen chuck them as far as possible. That’s just what Simrad does every year in Norway, and apparently it’s so much fun that they’ve introduced the competition to the U.S. (above). It’s pretty amazing what the whole Catch Monitoring system can do—showing a skipper how his gear is setting, what temp water it’s in and when it touches bottom, and how many fish are in it. Makes you wonder what this technology could do on the yachting side? But mind you that this is Simrad the commercial fishing company, not the spun-off Simrad Yachting, which is now under the Navico corporate umbrella.
If I were at the New York Boat Show this week, I’d check out the headset systems being shown by the relatively new company Piratecom. Their wired gear doesn’t solve the roving deck hand problem, but looks like it can do most anything a captain and crew seated on a loud boat would want…like up to five headsets noise cancelling both ways, triple audio inputs plus a cell phone connection (some exceptions) to the skipper’s set, and an intercom. There’s also a “Captain Isolate” switch such that he/she can speak to the crew but they can’t speak back, useful for cell calls or, you know, just noise-cancelled peace.
I’m pleased to report—at least in part because of discussions here—that EasyAIS has rewritten its Web pages to clearly explain how its multiplexing receiver functions within the Class A and B System, particularly in relationship to more expensive full duplex receivers. In fact, they’ve put together the most thorough analysis I know of on the Web (go to home page, click on “AIS Capability). Besides laying out position reporting intervals in time and distance for various possible target vessels, they point up some other factors that suggest “additional uncertainty of class B reception, independent of the used receiver type.” EasyAIS concludes that both multiplex and duplex receivers “show satisfactory results for all class A scenarios,” but when “looking for fast class B targets, both concepts show weak points, as the information update rate is low.” One can argue that multiplexers are weaker in this regard, but the point is that users need to get educated about AIS target intervals as Class B becomes an actuality, and hats off to EasyAIS for now contributing to that education. (And Panbo rocks again!)
OK, back to work! Today we need to help the captain of a smallish ferry find the right gear so he can talk to his two deck hands “easily, wireless, hands-free and with all 3 connected and able to communicate with each other for docking, emergencies etc.” despite the fact that they work in an environment which includes “crowded decks, loud background noise in terms of voices, engine, wind etc.” Now, besides the popular Mariner 500 Headset above (too funky for commercial use methinks), I once tested a pair of these Eartec TD900s, which sound good, are full duplex and very easy to use. You can add a third set but then one becomes a sort of master, and besides they’re not waterproof and seem a dite expensive. So what other choices are out there? What do they use on megayachts? Do some VOX headsets (attached to VHF, UHF or FRS handheld radios) work well enough for a noisy boat?
Well, I’ll be damned. Apparently Garmin is also introducing a touch-screen version of the 4000 Series, already hot stuff on several counts. At METS I think I mumbled something about how the new large-label interface would work nicely with touch, but no one even hinted that it was imminent. In fact, there’s nothing on Garmin’s site about 5xxx, but a Google search on “Garmin 5212” finds a number of stores taking preorders, including Tiger GPS above (which also has a useful run down on all the new models). Garmin is clearly not messing around in 2007. (Big thanks to Eric for this tip.)
It’s a happy day for navigators when C-Map is running out of adjectives to describe how large an area is covered by its latest chart cards. The press release is not online yet (
I’m feeling so old today. First I saw this Casio Waveceptor watch going for 
OK, back to work! Today we need to help the captain of 
ne, wind etc.” Now, besides the popular 