Marine Technology

Receiving weather GRIB files offshore has become much easier through the easy access offered by handheld satellite phones. No longer do you need to install a huge satellite dome on your vessel to receive this critical data while under way.

If you love watching television, you can still enjoy this pastime after you have sailed off for open water.

An important function of a chartplotter aboard today’s cruising yacht is its sonar bottom-scanning system.

A flash of white light broke the darkness as Saltaire motor-bashed into a light gale late one night in the Bay of Panama.

Since emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRBs) made their debut as an aid for tracking crashed U.S. military aircraft in the 1950s, this technology has steadily evolved into more compact, highly accurate, life-saving devices priced well within the budget of any serious cruising sailor.

The race to combine a wide assortment of technology in small, hand-held wearable devices has recently yielded a new animal: the GPS-capable smartwatch.

AIS, GPS and a VHF radio with DSC are all must-haves on the modern cruising yacht. Now imagine having all of these features in one device.

Traditional depth sounders seem to get short shrift in dockside conversation these days, owing of course to the proliferation of multifunction chartplotters and the array of information they offer to cruisers with fingertip ease.

The proliferation of electronic navigation, communication, power and security systems on modern yachts demands a dependable means of diagnosing these systems when they fail or fall short in performance.

Most cruising sailors demand state-of-the-art electronic navigation systems for their vessels, but many skippers also like to preserve a traditional look in the displays they install in the cockpit.

As much as we love the water, the very thing we fear most with our personal electronics is an unintended dive into the briny deep.

Many cruisers are seeing their legacy permanent-mount GPS units gradually fade, wither and succumb to an ignominious death.

Long jaunts ashore drain personal electronics of battery power, potentially leaving us without the use of a cellphone, portable GPS, hand-held VHF radio and other personal electronics.

The navigation station in today’s offshore sailing vessel is bound to be equipped with a chartplotter linked to GPS, AIS, a radar, a depth sounder and other inputs.

Ham radio continues to be the choice of many offshore voyagers who prefer the independence and adaptability offered by this traditional mode of communication.

Installing a security system on your floating palace can involve something as simple as placing a couple of sensors for the main and forward hatches, or it can expand to a CPU-controlled network of a dozen or more touch screens and over a hundred wireless sensors distributed throughout your vessel.

Ensuring the security of a cruising boat in your home marina usually involves nothing more than clamping a padlock on the companionway, checking the dock lines and leaving the rest to marina security.

Many sailors transitioning into offshore cruising still opt for the versatility of ham radio to communicate with other vessels and to take advantage of SailMail or Winlink with a Pactor modem.

Serious cruisers have depended on amateur ham single sideband radio (SSB) since the early 1960s.

The days of cutting holes in bulkheads and running stereo speaker wires behind and around a maze of built-in furniture and appliances throughout the cabin are gradually coming to an end — at least at the humbler end of the cruiser spectrum.

Battery charge is one critically important function that appears to have been left out of the race to integrate monitoring on today’s pleasure craft.

Worldwide access to full-service broadband phone and Internet communications is gradually coming down in price as it grows in dependability and popularity.

Satellite technology in telephone communications has evolved into an option that is virtually de rigueur on the contemporary cruising yacht.