A satcom snapshot
In the past 20 years satellite communications has grown from a novelty item for voyagers to something more like standard equipment for the voyaging boat. Between fixed terminal satcom options and handheld…
Marine Technology
Heavy year for keel maker
With seven employees, the closing of Broomfield & Son, Inc., in Providence, R.I., in March 2020 didn’t make a splash on the…
Mind your stitches
When sails fail due to sunlight damage, what parts of sails are most likely to fail? We asked a…
No. 18665 is the first to go
An obscure press release from NOAA on February 26, 2021, made an announcement about the availability of a…
Don’t scrimp when it comes to the crimp
I’m often asked by my power voyaging clients, “What do I need to know about making good crimp connections?” Fortunately, not very much. Material selection High quality solderless or “crimp” connectors start with high quality materials. When a connector…
Special Section: Marine Electronics
If you are planning an offshore cruise under sail, you need access to as much vessel data as possible in one single place. A multifunction chartplotter display is the nerve center of the modern offshore cruising vessel, bringing together chart…
Protecting your boat from overcharging
Earlier this year, I finally upgraded from lead acid batteries to lithium iron phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries on my Valiant 40, Brick House. I’d researched for at least a year and South Africa, with its great tech base and good exchange…
Marine Electronics: Marine Power Inverters
An essential component of any offshore cruising yacht’s electrical system is an inverter, which converts 12V DC into 110V or 220V…
DYI electronic navigation
Navigation software for viewing electronic charts, voyage planning and in-voyage navigation has come a long way from the early days of raster images on a computer monitor. Navigation software packages are offered by an assortment of companies as either…
Optimizing Alternative Energy
A successful ocean voyage depends largely on the way we manage energy on our vessels, be it from the wind, the sun, the ocean, the auxiliary engine or a separate generator. As offshore sailors, our goal is to gain…
Affordable Instrument Packages
When looking for instrument displays to receive data from the various navigation, communication and security devices on our vessels, many…
A digital sextant
Sextants are wonderfully analog optical devices. A sextant user from the 1850s would have little problem using a modern sextant. Now a company in South Korea has begun offering something it calls the Korea Digital Sextant (KDS) that digitalizes…
Iris Innovations Launches New CMAC Range of On-Board Camera and Alarm Management Systems
The app allows users to upload their own deck plans and photos and configure them with icons to represent the position of cameras, alarms and preset ‘hotspots’ which, when selected, send cameras automatically to favorite pre-configured…
GDS Ltd. Appointed Exclusive Distributor and Sales Agent for Barnacle Systems
Devon, United Kingdom – Global Distribution Solutions (GDS Ltd.), a team of experienced and dedicated marine industry sales, distribution and channel management professionals, announced today it has been appointed…
BioBase by C-MAP Launches New Subscription Model
Egersund, Norway – C-MAP®, a leader in digital marine cartography and cloud-based mapping, announced today it has opened its BioBase™ EcoSound™ platform to include free subscriptions to qualifying organizations. Owned by Navico and operated through C-MAP, BioBase is a platform for aquatic…
Wireless cellphone chargers
Charging a cellphone, for most of us, requires jamming a tiny electrical contact into the base of our phones and hoping the…
USNO online Nautical Almanac gets cloned
In the past year, the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO), the primary source for the Nautical Almanac in the U.S.,…
Battery types
Wet cells: The de facto standard for high capacity batteries in boats for many years has been the basic wet cell lead-acid battery. These are somewhat simple in design. Plates are submerged in a liquid acid electrolyte contained in a…
Battery survey
What type of battery setup might make sense for your voyaging needs? We reached out to a selection of active liveaboard voyagers to get a sense of what they are using to power their vessels. Here are their answers to…
Alarms, getting to know them better
Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared in the Ocean Cruising Club’s monthly bulletin (oceancruisingclub.org). This Maretron screen is from a sophisticated vessel monitoring setup. Green shows normal ranges, yellow indicates borderline and red signals an alarm…
Marine Electronics, September 2020
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.
Satellite TV for cruisers
If you love watching television, you can still enjoy this pastime after you have sailed off for open water.
Graphic depth sounders for cruisers
An important function of a chartplotter aboard today’s cruising yacht is its sonar bottom-scanning system.
Selecting the right VHF antenna
A flash of white light broke the darkness as Saltaire motor-bashed into a light gale late one night in the Bay of Panama.
