I’m pretty excited, because I’ve a couple of new toys coming my way.
One is the Maritech Virtual Lifeline. It’s a man-overboard alarm that shuts down the engine. I’ve written about this sort of thing before, both at MadMariner and here at Navagear.
Over the summer, I used a competing product—the Autotether—extensively, and determined that it was not the best solution for me. It works exactly as advertised, don’t get me wrong. But on my boat, the way it works is less than ideal. I’ll explain my reasoning, and assess the new arrival to see how it measures up.
The other new toy is a Shine Micro AIS-BX, a Class B AIS transceiver. Once it’s installed, not only will I be able to see all the big vessels on my chartplotter, but they will be able to see me.
That’s the theory, anyway, although my friend Fred Pot makes a good case as to why we really shouldn’t expect much of a safety improvement from Class B AIS.
Anybody who’s been reading Navagear for any length of time probably knows I’m enchanted with AIS. Suffice to say that I’m looking forward to being probably the SMALLEST vessel in Puget Sound equipped with full transmit-and-receive AIS.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be documenting the installation and testing process for both of these units. Stay tuned!
