Got a thoughtful comment today on my “AIS Class B Naysayers, Unite!” from back in November. In his comment, Commercial mariner Al Murray shares his point of view on navigational safety, and he makes several good points.

Here is my reply to Mr. Murray:

The thing is, I doubt we actually disagree on very much here. All that you’ve said supports the core argument: Class B AIS should not be relied upon to “get us noticed” on the bridges of big ships. It’s still our responsibility to stay out of your way. I’ve always been very consistent about that.

I think my “toy” remarks struck a nerve, but if Fred Pot is right, Class B won’t ever be anything BUT a toy! All I’m saying is that I want to get it on board EVEN THOUGH it might not enhance vessel safety right out of the box. I want to “play” with it.

I come from the tech industry, where “playing” with new technology means “install it, run it, see what breaks, see what works, but make sure it doesn’t endanger anything we care about!”

In other words, I want to get it running and then NOT rely on it to keep my vessel safe. I’ll continue to operate my boat as if I were completely invisible to you. “Playing”, in this sense, is the first step down the path toward “adopting”.

The Big Seattle Boat Show!

(Come on, everybody, sing with me! Sing! SING!!)

It opens tomorrow, the 24th, which is also “Women’s Day” at the boat show. All women get in free, but only if you print out the page on the website and bring it with you. Please make a note of that requirement.

Actually, I’m really interested in this, and not just in a prurient way.

Will Women’s Day affect the demographic distribution of boat show attendees in a noticeable way? We’ll see.

Also, they’ve scheduled some women-focussed seminars for Thursday, starting at 2 pm on the Blue Stage (on the Club level). Some great topics there, and lots of familiar names among the presenters.

I plan to spend part of the day at the show tomorrow, and might even try to do some “live” blog coverage directly from the boat show. Stay tuned…

Remember CaptainWiki and ActiveCaptain? No?

I’m not surprised.

We wrote about them a couple times last year, here and here. We expressed enthusiasm and support for them both, and may the best Wiki win.

Both show signs of progress, and I continue to believe that at some point in the future we’ll wonder how we got along without this kind of reference.

But so far, this is not the case. Since we wrote last, they’ve both failed to

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Although in many parts of the northern hemisphere it’s what we call the “off-season”, now’s a good time to renew whatever annual moorage passes or permits you normally pay for. You never know…you might end up staying overnight at one of these facilities this winter or early spring, and without your permit you’ll have to pay full price!

For me, this means it’s time to renew my Washington State Parks Annual Moorage Permit. At $3.50 per foot per year, the break-even point is just seven nights tied up to a float at any Washington State Park.

Will I stay a minimum of seven nights? (more…)

Peter James over at Ask JackRabbit has a report on some General Motors-style consolidation taking place amongst the many marine electronics brands now owned by Navico.

Sorry, who?

“If you haven’t heard of Navico, it’s the company that now owns these brands: Eagle, Lowrance, Simrad, B&G, Northstar and Navman. Plus MX Marine which makes equipment for the commercial market.”

Oh, those guys! Them I’ve heard of.

Turns out they’re planning to aggregate manufacturing for all these brands in three locations: Mexico, New Zealand, and Norway. If I were running the company, I’d probably do the same thing.

“Though the brands will remain distinct, and be targeted at different market segments, the parts used within the various devices made under those brands will be shared to gain economies of scale.”

That sounds right. Good for Navico!

But here’s where it gets interesting: (more…)

Recently, I posted a picture of my four-year-old daughter fishing from a dock in Ballard. One reader left this comment:

please consider always having small kids wear life vest when at docks or near boats.

The reader makes a good point. The Coast Guard reports that 90% of drowning victims are not wearing PFDs, which really emphasizes the necessity for each of us to carefully consider the PFD guidelines we’ll use aboard our boats. What’s your PFD protocol?

In response to the reader’s comment, let me clarify that actually, I have considered always having small kids wear life vests when at docks or near boats. I’ve considered it carefully. I’ve also considered always having adults wear life vests when at docks or near boats.

But I have concluded that it’s much more reasonable to (more…)

OK, remember my efforts to mount my Magma Kettle 2 barbecue/stove onto a Scotty downrigger mounting plate? I contacted Magma, and heard back from Lezlye in Customer Service right away. They’re a helpful bunch. Here’s part of their response:

I have reviewed both your email and article with our engineering department and they feel that the rod on our A10-120 mount is bent just about to its limit and any further bending at the original bend point would certainly weaken it, if not break it. However, you may add more angle by

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I never did any ocean racing, but even so, this video reminds me why I won’t work the foredeck anymore.

You might need to adjust your volume down a bit. Thanks to Bitter End for this.

Not that I spend a lot of waking OR sleeping hours dreaming about handheld VHF radios, mind you. Still, this thing is pretty dang cool.

Behold the Standard Horizon HX850S VHF/GPS DSC Floating Submersible Radio. I’d link to the manufacturer’s site, but there isn’t any info about this model up there yet?!

Apparently, there’s actually a good reason for this. After berating Standard-Horizon for their lack of a press release about this new product, Panbo learned that Standard-Horizon is still awaiting final FCC certification for the product. Oh golly, not another cool product in limbo because of the FCC!!

Deep breath. Relax. I’m sure this is just routine. I’ll stop badgering the FCC. For the moment.

The point is that this new radio is exactly the sort of product I really appreciate: (more…)

I was going to write something clever about beating this dead Class B AIS horse, but dagnabbit, this horse ain’t dead! More accurate might be to say that it’s stillborn, so far, at least in the United States.

That’s sure the impression one gets from Ben Ellison’s Class B Call-To-Action over at Panbo. Be sure to read the comments, too.

I don’t claim to know for an absolute fact that Class B AIS will produce for smaller vessels the significant safety enhancements that Class A certainly has for large vessels. But it might. Maybe not during its first year. Maybe not in three or four or five years.

But at some point, AIS or something similar is going to prove beneficial for small boats in crowded waterways. This I believe. At some later point, perhaps a decade or two from now, recreational boaters are going to consider AIS, or some similar offspring technology, as essential to safe navigation as GPS.

But you can’t get that ball rolling if you don’t let it out of the starting gate. Wow, I’ve really mixed up my metaphors again.