|
Ideal Marine
Electronics, from the readers of http://www.panbo.com/
"Good" category: About a 30’ cruising sail or powerboat doing short hops
along coast with the occasional overnight trips; budget/value is important.
**********************************************************
3/19/07
Richard Stephens of Memory-Map,
Inc., Corsair 28 Trimaran
Of course, my answer to your survey is biased by
commercial interest, but here it is anyway!
I don't have much experience with power boats, but I know with sailboats, it
is important to consider power consumption: If you are running a computer or
high-end plotter, it is going to draw up to about 5 Amps. So to run it
continuously, you need 120 Ahrs. Allowing for 50% discharge, that requires
240 Ahrs of battery capacity (which weighs ~150lb).
Then you also have to provide a means to charge the battery, eg, two 100W solar panels. All this
is just to run the plotter, and is in addition to the other power/charging
requirements of the boat.
So, your options are:
- sail with the plotter mostly turned off
- run the motor a lot
- plug in to shore power
The other big issue is the investment in charts. Now the US charts are
freely available, are you willing to be locked in to expensive, proprietary,
out-of-date cartography? This is why I like to navigate with a Windows Mobile
PDA: It gives all the advantages of computer navigation in a low-power,
portable device. So...here is the gear I have on my boat (Corsair 28
Trimaran) for navigation, communication and entertainment.
Navigation / AIS
iPaq 4700 PDA
Otterbox 1900
SiRF III GPS
"Mouse"
NASA AIS receiver
ConnectBlue Bluetooth
serial adaptor
Communication
GlobalSat phone with
Sea-Tech Marine Kit
Standard Horizon VHF with RAM mic
Stand-alone backup navigation,
near-shore communication
Eten X500 cell phone
with built-in GPS
Otterbox 1600
Garmin Foretrex 201
(wrist GPS)
Other:
Pentax Optio W20 waterproof camera
Navman speed/depth/wind instruments
Bluetooth keyboard (for typing emails)
Cheap computer speakers
Software for PDAs:
Memory-Map Professional nav software
Memory-Map add-ons for AIS and remote tracking
Memory-Map Weather Radar
SPB Imageer image editor
Windows Mobile standard web browser and email
Battery & charging
80 Ahr battery
2 UniSolar 11W flex
panels
10A charger from outboard
Total cost, probably around $4000 (of which ~$1500 is the sat phone)
Total weight, around 85lb, of which 60lb is the battery.
**********************************************************
3/13/07
Big Max in Germany:
Tridata Instrument – log,
sounder, temperature
Handheld GPS with or without maps ( eg. Garmin )
Laptop ( e.g. Tablet PC or UMPC )
+ charting SW ( e.g. Maptech )
+ electronic charts ( mainly raster charts, now free of
charge for the US
waters )
+ AIS-Receiver ( some kind of life insurance, if sailing
in busy waters )
**********************************************************
3/9/07
John Williams, 1981
C&C 34 Scamper,
already noted on
Panbo for its economical style.
My nav station focuses around a computer connected to the
internet via a cellular connection (not WiFi). The computer has a GPS
card, ECS, and AIS
(EIEIO).
Planning and large-scale navigation is great on the computer. AIS is a
whole lot of fun but not absolutely necessary. In the open ocean, with
the
receiving antenna 50' above the water, AIS has pretty astounding range so it
starts to fall into the planning category.
Internet connectivity gives allows for all sorts of weather radar, data-buoy
info, communications, satellite imagery, you name it. I have had very
good
luck with a Cingular GPRS connection all through Puget Sound and Canada. This
is not for offshore.
A nice item at the nav station is a recording barometer to keep an eye on
local weather trends and for a backup or cross-check to the computer. A
fixed mount VHF is also good at the nav station.
If you are at the helm, vs. keeping watch under autopilot, you likely need
tools to augment what you see. For small-scale navigation a chart-plotter
GPS, with an efficient user interface, is good. I'm using an ancient
Garmin 76 but almost anything can work. AIS would be good here too but
I've not seen a reasonable way to do this. I'm sure it will happen
soon.
I often keep a Garmin eTrex Vista
in my pocket for a quick check if I'm being too lazy to get up and walk to
the helm or the nav station. A handheld VHF is
also at the helm but if I see a ship and want to make sure he knows I'll keep
out of his way I'll go below to the fixed VHF. More power and a quieter
environment make for more reliable communications.
I also just added a MicroLog battery monitor.
It monitors charge and discharge current separately. I can see
that the solar panels are putting in 2 amps while the autopilot is taking out
1.5 amps. Pretty useful for budgeting what I need to turn off and what
I can leave on.
Obviously you need backups for all of this but that's getting outside the
scope. Keep up the great work!
**********************************************************
Raul, 28' flybridge Bayliner:
In my boat's case there are more goodies on the lower helm
because I run the boat from there in rainy or foggy weather.
Incidentally, on the upper left coast boats my size are routinely used
for overnight trips, so I'm not sure why the 30' boat in your example should
not be for overnight stays.
When I bought the boat (used) I was on a budget, so I couldn't afford
networked electronics. My suite consists of:
Fly bridge:
Navman 5600 GPS/Plotter, Furuno 4100 fishfinder, Standard Horizon remote
mike.
Lower helm:
Navman 5600 GPS Plotter with NEMA depth from upper fishfinder, JRC 1500 Radar
with NEMA waypoint from lower GPS, Standard Horizon Quantum VHF with NEMA
position from lower GPS, Uniden VHF with NEMA position from upper GPS, KVH
Electronic compass, laptop with C- map PC Planner software (not used real
time; used to plan and upload routes).
The nice thing about my setup is that I have communications and Navigation
redundancy.
[ Home ]
|