Read the entire piece over at MadMariner. It will show up here in a couple of weeks.

Remember how I trashed the AquaLuma underwater lights last month? Boy, did that post get the comments going! Ben Ellison over at Panbo even  jumped into the fray, and for his troubles, he got buried in comments too.

What a time we had.

Anyhoo, my main argument was that drilling unnecessary holes into one’s hull seems…unnecessary. (Full disclosure: I may have used slightly stronger language than that.)

So imagine my skepticism upon receiving a new press release from the same folks. Aqualuma has a line of underwater lights designed to mount on the upper side of your trim tabs, for boats with trim tabs. The press release is included below.

But hey, my skepticism quickly evaporated. Trim-tab mounted underwater lights, eh? That’s pretty dang cool, if you ask me! No new holes in the boat!

Plus, and this could be very interesting to experiment with, you wouldn’t have to mount these to trim tabs at all. You could mount them to any immersable flat surface. You could fabricate a boathook-mount for them that you could deploy temporarily off the bow for checking on the anchor, or hang off the side for squid-jigging from the cockpit.

I’m not redacting my comments about the thru-hull variety, by any means. But this product I can support. Here’s the press release:

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Here’s another one of those Puget Sound Maritime items that, previously, you would have spotted here at Navagear.

While driving through Ballard the other day, I was somewhat shocked to see that Seaview Boatyard East was full of boats!

I thought we had a big recession on. What gives?

Click over to read the post at PugetSoundMaritime.com.

Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen posted “200th blog posting” yesterday, underscoring his commitment to using web-based technology in support of the Coast Guard’s mission, internally and externally:

This is our 200th blog posting, coming just over six months since we launched this site. We have really enjoyed the dialogue and appreciate all of the apparent interest and growing readership (though we could always use more comments). As you hopefully know, iCommandant is just the tip of the iceberg for the Coast Guard’s effort to leverage social media for the benefit of our mission execution and support, including our external communication and internal coordination. Since we initiated this effort, Team Coast Guard has stepped out aggressively to meet my intent. With social media really being about building networks, I thought I’d mark this milestone blog by sharing those sites that I read, both officially and unofficially. (This is not all inclusive, but a pretty good representation of some of the stuff I follow and/or find interesting).

Click through to read the entire list.

Suffice to say that I’m tickled to see both Navagear and Puget Sound Maritime represented in that list. I follow the readership figures closely, but Google Analytics doesn’t tell you what portion of your readers are influential movers and shakers!

Raymarine’s first Class B AIS unit, the AIS500, is nearly ready to ship. Ben Ellison discusses some of its features over at Panbo; as usual, his report is well worth a look.

But I’ve got something to say about it, too.

Specifically, I want to address my own “pet peeve”: How to get all the data traffic where it needs to go with a C-series multifunction display possessing only one NMEA 0183 port!

This is tricky if you want two-way data traffic with your DSC-capable VHF radio, because those units require 4800-baud (low-speed) NMEA, while AIS (any AIS, including receive-only units, from any manufacturer) requires a 38,400-baud NMEA connection. But you’ve only got one port on the back of your chartplotter, so you’re stuck!

So it would appear.

I’ve got two words for you: Multi. Plexer. Oh wait, that’s one word. Multiplexer. Sorry.

A multiplexer will solve the problem, but I don’t want another box in the limited space aboard my little boat, and I don’t want to spend $300 if I can avoid it. So I’ve made it my goal to make it all work without incorporating a multiplexer.

I’ve written a lot about this over the past couple years. Click here to find some of those posts.

Anyhoo, the manual for the AIS500 makes it explicit that there is some minimal multiplexing built-in:

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An excellent write-up by Ryan Erickson over at the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog. This is must-read material for anybody carrying an EPIRB aboard.

Have you ever wondered exactly how one actually gets rescued after they pull the trigger on their 406mhz Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRB)? Or what about if you happen to be that unlucky soul who didn’t register their EPIRB?

Well I thought I would run down the quick and dirty of what happens when the Search and Rescue system is activated by the use of an EPIRB.

Click through to read the entire thing. The Unofficial Coast Guard Blog is a tremendous resource, but I can’t emphasize enough how valuable pieces like this one, in particular, can be.

Mr. Erickson has the experience to know what he’s talking about, but since the blog remains “unofficial”, he isn’t obliged to stick to the official party line. You get the whole story. So read it.

I’m sad, because I wrote several articles for Pacific Yachting PNW, and was sort of hoping to write a few more! In fact, the current (spring 2009) issue has an article I wrote starting on page 48.

Marty McOmber at Three Sheets Northwest has the story:

Seattle’s Pacific Yachting PNW—the American arm of a popular Canadian boating magazine—is publishing its final local issue this month, another sign of the economic troubles gripping the region’s maritime community.

Canada’s Pacific Yachting has been a staple of the B.C. boating community for four decades. Two years ago, the magazine’s publisher launched Pacific Yachting PNW to build on its already strong reputation and attempt to capture a bigger share of readers and advertisers south of the Canadian border.

But the publication isn’t disappearing entirely from Washington. Instead, OP Publishing, which owns both magazines, will send American subscribers the Canadian version of Pacific Yachting, but with a dedicated local news section covering Puget Sound and surrounding waters.

Click over to read the whole story.

Our partners over at MadMariner have cooked up another contest, and I’m interested in the results.

Not the “who won?” results so much, although I’m sure the winner will be thrilled. Rather, I’m interested in the data gathered during the contest. I like data.

See, the contest is a survey designed to assess how people REALLY use their boats. I know that I’m a little surprised at my own usage patterns. I’ll discuss that more in the future; I don’t want to bias the survey results by sharing too much now. This is science, dangit!

Here’s the announcement from Glen Justice:

With the boating season starting and outfitting work underway, some of us at Mad Mariner started thinking: how do we really use our boats?

Thus this month’s contest was born: a 20-question survey designed to figure out what most of us actually do on the water every season. Not those blue water dreams (though they are important), but the boating we engage in right now.

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[Hey, I nearly forgot to remind readers to see if they can get a fuel tax refund! Oh well, better late than never. —Tim]

Boat owners learn to accept the many innovative and unexpected ways devised to extract money from their wallets. It’s just part of the deal. But they may not know how to react when confronted with an opportunity to get some of that money back; particularly money from the government. In other words, tax money.

I know, it seems unlikely. But it’s true. Maybe you already knew about this, but it was news to me when it was explained by one of my fellow tenants at the marina. It turns out that in many states, boaters can apply for a refund of a portion of the taxes they pay on fuel. The justification: those taxes are for road and highway infrastructure, which boats don’t use.

So which states offer the refund? BoatUS’s Government Affairs Department keeps track of this sort of thing. They have an entire page devoted to the state fuel tax refund. The bad news is that only ten states are listed: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska (they have navigable water in Nebraska?!), North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

“Save your receipts!” was the advice I received. Um…OK. I save receipts anyway, at least for a few weeks, but now I’ll start stowing them in a special fuel receipt envelope. At the end of the year, I’ll fill out a form and send them all in to the appropriate agency. Then…just sit back and wait for my rebate check to arrive.

OK, it may not be a lot. But if it takes me two hours of effort over the course of the year, and it nets me $100 or so… Well, let’s just say that it’s a better return on investment than fishing!

[Here's my MadMariner feature from two weeks ago. —Tim]

When I wrote my roundup of man-overboard alarms for MadMariner last spring, it became obvious which system fit my particular requirements best. I operate a small powerboat, inshore, often alone or with young children aboard. The most problematic overboard scenario I need to prepare for is the one in which I fall in the water and the boat keeps going without me, with nobody aboard to stop it.

The most immediate need, in this scenario, is to stop the boat. Luckily, this can be accomplished automatically with some of the overboard alarms I surveyed, including Maritech’s Virtual Lifeline.

In operation, it’s quite simple: When a crewmember wearing one of the small sensor/transmitters falls into the water, the Virtual Lifeline immediately sounds an alarm and stops the boat. If the remaining crew determine that they need to restart the engine to recover the victim, they press the “Rescue Mode On” button and restart the engine in the normal way. If not, the boat just bobs around where it stopped, drifting slowly down-current or down-wind.

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