While French instrument and autopilot maker NKE, has been making a wireless remote to control their autopilots for some time now, B&G has recently introduced a nice looking product that includes autopilot remote control, repeated instrument displays, a fluxgate sighting compass, and even an LED flashlight. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to steer the boat while you’re in the middle of reefing, or check instruments from your bunk? Currently it is shown as compatible with the expensive Hydra and Hercules lines of of instruments, not the newer, less expensive, and more attractive H1000 series. Too bad. Closer inspection of the brochure photography reveals that the RemoteVision actually has a Simrad logo it…stay tuned for more hard hitting investigation…

In the last several years, the toxicity of antifouling paints has been shown to damage the marine environment significantly. Governments, led by the European Union, have begun to outlaw the worst offenders, such as tributyl tin (TBT), and now even copper compounds. Surprisingly, the U.S. lags in this area, though TBT is no longer widely available. While many sailors are great lovers of the natural world, when barnacles, tubeworms and weeds start to cover the hull, the first impulse seems to be to wish for the good old days when TBT would keep the bottom clean for four years straight. Never mind that these compounds have been implicated in the decline of New England’s shellfish beds for starters.

How has the market responded to the problem? Rather shoddily in my opinion. Ablative paints, which continually shed a little of their surface are one example. If anything, an even larger amount of toxic material is released by these paints. Marinas in the Pacific Northwest are now forbidding scrubbing the bottom of a boat with an ablative paint because of the buildup of poisonous particles.

Another approach has been the introduction of strong biocide paint additives like Irgarol, which was accumulating so rapidly in environment that the European Union has been moving to ban it, too. There’s hope, though, in the form of innovations such as Epaint’s EP2000, which was developed with support from the Coast Guard (a major consumer of bottom paints). EP2000 slowly releases hydrogen peroxide, which decays harmlessly into water, and has shown to be as effective as the antifouling industry leaders in testing by Practical Sailor. What’s more, EP2000 is a waterborne formulation with no VOCs, and is much safer to apply than traditional bottom paints. Epaint has developed a number of variations, including one for metal boats—particularly pertinent as the current generation of copper-based paints create corrosion problems when applied to aluminum and steel. It’s great news the companies like Epaint are actually innovating in this area. I’m looking forward to trying it out on my boat.

I needed to replace the anchor/tri-color combination light at the top of Sweet Destiny’s mast, as the old Aquasignal had obviously been broken once before and repaired with 5200, making it impossible to remove without breaking it again. I had heard about LED anchor lights being a great way to save some amps, but Deep Creek, an early innovator in this area, has left the market. A company called OGM has picked up the mantle and developed a great product line. I ordered one of their combination lights, and was pleasantly surprised both by how small, and how dazzlingly bright it is. The design is wonderfully simple, with just one LED each for red and green, and three white ones—one in each of the tricolor’s orientations. While sailing, the red, green, and aft white LEDs blaze. While at anchor, red and green are switched off, and the three white LEDs cover the full circle. Hooked up to a 12 volt power supply at home, I was impressed that it really threw it’s colors around the room. The model I got also includes a photocell to automatically turn off the anchor light during the day. Recommended!

In contrast with the dearth of Mac navigation applications, there is a rich selection of products for the PC, some of them extraordinarily full-featured. The downside of the feature contest, however, is often cluttered and confusing user-interfaces. It can be frustrating, if not downright dangerous to have an important navigation tool adding confusion and cognitive overload. So, I’m delighted to find a navigation program that sets the bar for good user-interface design: Coastal Explorer from Rose Point Navigation. The interface is elegantly simple, focusing on what’s important, i.e. great charts and easy routing. The new NOAA vector charts (all of which can be downloaded for free) are beautifully rendered with just the right colors and familiar symbols. A mouse click on a symbol brings up a description of the nav aid or hazard in an information panel to the side. Even the Coast Pilot is integrated into this handy side panel. The routing tool is intuitive and nicely designed, with each click placing a waypoint and drawing a range and bearing line (the range and bearing values are drawn alongside the line) that tracks the mouse position until the next click places another waypoint. You can also easily add individual waypoints, bearing lines, and vessel exclusion zones to the charts. And reversing a route to make your way home is just a menu selection away.

Another favorite feature is an on-the-water mode, where pressing a single key changes to a full-screen display with big, easy-to-click buttons for the functions that are most important for actual navigation. A side panel displays a beautiful navigation compass, as well as repeated instrument data (if connected), and crucial route information. With a waterproof touch screen at the helm, this would be superior to any chartplotter on the market.

There is a free trial version of Rose Point Coastal Explorer that can be downloaded and works for 10 days after installation. Well worth a look as a first navigation program, or a welcome change from some of the ponderously complex products out there.

Another acronym to learn to love: Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP). It’s the next big thing in the telecommunications industry, and could be useful to voyagers as well. The idea is actually very simple: phone calls get routed over the internet instead of the long-distance lines owned by traditional telephone companies. The idea of long-distance makes little sense on the internet, i.e. an email from Mongolia really costs no more or less than one from Saskatoon. Once a call is on the net, it makes no difference how far it has to go. Consequently the cost of making a call from the other side of the world should be no more than ringing up your next-door-neighbor. In practice, it’s more complicated than this, however.

(more…)

The MaxPower fuel cell mentioned earlier seems to be the same as this one from the Fuel Cell Store, which also carries the methanol fuel cartridges. At $94 for four 2.5 liter cartridges, it comes to about $36/gallon, and there’s a $25 hazardous material shipping charge on top of that. From the specs, that would work out to 7 cents/amp hour. Let’s contrast that to a 160 amp DC genset, sipping 0.2 gallons/hour. Assuming diesel at $2.50/gallon comes to about .3 cents/amp hour. With fuel costs running 23x higher than diesel, you pay a price to be an early adopter with this technology. It’s not clear at this point whether the MaxPower units require a special grade of fuel, but wholesale prices on methanol seem to be in the $2-3/gallon range, so costs might fall in line.

What the heck is Pactor? What does a satphone cost? How do I receive weatherfax? Make sure to check out the Resources: Articles area for outstanding answers to questions like these. They also carry what appear to be the Sumicom micro PCs mentioned here. Very useful site and good products to match.

Link: Marine Computer Systems

It would seem that the choices for full-featured navigation software for the Mac have been shrinking over the past few years. For, example Maxsea and Maptech have both dropped Mac support, and Navimaq is currently off the market. The fact of the matter is that there is just not a large customer base for navigation software, and the companies making these products are in an arms race to add features. Building software is expensive, and building a cross-platform product, i.e. Mac and PC is almost as much trouble as building two completely separate products. Counting the beans quickly demonstrates that the estimated 2% to 8% of the market that owns Macs may not justify doubling the cost of producing a product, especially for these relatively small software companies. Nonetheless, there are a few choices still out there for Mac users—just don’t expect to be able to do high-end stuff like radar overlays or 3d bathymetry. Some users may have success running PC software with VirtualPC, but compatibility and hardware configuration issues may be an issue.

Here’s a short list of Mac nav products still on the market:

• GPSNavX
• GPSy
• Navimaq (not currently shipping)
• MacGPS Pro

The devastating tsunamis in the Indian Ocean have been sad and sobering news. Apparently many cruisers anchored out in the effected areas were practically unscathed, while boats at nearby docks were wrecked, as tsunamis do not build in height until they reach shallower waters. In the open ocean they are practically undetectable. By contrast, rogue waves are breaking walls of water that are thought to reach even a hundred feet in height at sea. The Pardeys describe an encounter with such a wave off the coast of Africa, which tumbled their boat end-for-end. For decades scientists have been skeptical of sea-farers’ reports of “monster waves,” but recent research by the European Space Agency has definitively identified a number of these massive wave events. This has significant implications for the design of ships, as even large tankers and cruise ships have suffered grave damage from encounters with rogue waves. Believe-it-or-not, two ships are lost to “bad weather” every week!

Any lessons for cruisers in this? You might want to avoid some of the notorious areas like the Aghulas Current and even gales in the Gulf Stream.

Link: European Space Agency