Check out the results of MadMariner’s recent boater survey. The topic: How do we decide how much technology we need? Which technologies are boaters most excited about? What most often keeps us from buying new marine technology?

And perhaps most intriguing: Which technologies will make the greatest improvement to boating in the next 10 years?

I find the results “fascinating”, but I’m not sure I can make my eyebrows move quite like Spock’s.

Glen Justice has the summary which accompanies the results:

Dana Vincent’s 25-foot Cape Dory has sailed on blue water with a minimum of high-tech gadgetry onboard: a chartplotter, SSB radio and handheld VHF and GPS units. “I find most marine technology is too expensive for me and for the size of my boat,” he says, “Yet, we’ve sailed to Alaska and Mexico without a lot of it.”

 

Mark Carlson, an angler from Illinois, takes a different approach. His freshwater fishing excursions are assisted by some of the latest equipment available: “I use a networked Simrad and a Pinpoint bow mount (trolling engine) as well as MaxSea bathymetric data to maximize my fishing efforts,” he says. “I also use a phased-array, forward-looking sonar system.”

How we choose and use technology has become a huge part of boating, as the industry continues to offer advances in navigation, communication, propulsion and other technologies that were unimaginable to most of us even a decade ago.