Heck, let’s make this Jeffrey Siegel day at Panbo. You see what I didn’t mention below is that Siegel is also the developer of Maptech’s Outdoor Navigator, an excellent PDA (Palm and PPC) charting program that I wrote about back in early 2002 and which has recently evolved in very interesting ways. I thought it was a pretty good deal at $100 with a year access to all the U.S. charts or topos you wanted to download, but now ON costs a mere $20 and you can keep downloading maps as long as you own the PDA it’s registered to. ON also now works on "Smartphones" using Microsoft's cell operating system. The phones from Audiovox, Motorola, and others do not have touch screens, so all ON's controls have been neatly moved to the keypad. Jeff, who naturally is cruising with all versions of his creation, notes that the lack of a touchscreen is one reason why his smartphone has an extra long battery life. He also notes how useful ON is just as a chart reference tool, no messing with a GPS, especially as Maptech corrects the charts on their servers every month. The whole ON story is here.
I was talking to the anchorage in Key West again last night, only this time I was using the remarkable over-the-Internet phone service Skype. I just had to dig out an old computer headset/mic, download Skype’s easy software, and I was registered, tested, and ready to make calls in minutes. Now I feel like the last geek on earth to discover Skype (free PC to PC calls, modest charges to SkypeOut to actual phones)—there are 2.5 million users online as I type this!
What got my attention was learning from Jeffrey Siegel that cruisers are happily using Skype in places like the Bahamas where WiFi Internet connections are fairly common, but cell phone service expensive and/or complicated. Jeff is a terrific resource; for instance, he’s currently cruising the East Coast with high power WiFi gear and two cell phones with different services and data plans, and he’s sharing his findings with mutts like me, not to mention the denizens of the Trawlers & Trawlering E-Mail List. Jeff and Karen make their home port (below) near me in Maine and I profiled them for the first issue of Voyaging last fall. I’ve been researching marine WiFi recently and Jeff has been a big help, including my experience with real off-the-boat Skype last night. I thank him.
Another item in the May PMY is my test of WeatherWave, a neat service that delivers NOAA alerts to your cell phone and also lets you dial up specific forecasts and buoy reports. I note that it will work on any phone because its servers convert NOAA text to voice. That’s in contrast to Ekkosoft’s MarineWeather, another clever service that translates NOAA alerts and forecasts into informative graphics (right). You do need to be using Verizon Wireless on a handset that supports “Get It Now” applications, but I was very impressed with the results when I tried it. Both services can get a boater just what they need from NOAA’s vast weather resources…without having to wait through a long and tedious VHF loop.
Last night my May PMY electronics column went up on the magazine’s Web site, one of the first up for this issue for some reason (probably random). I don’t think there’s another boating magazine on the planet that publishes so much of its content to the Web so quickly, not to mention so well. I’m one writer who really appreciates it (there are some freelancers who fear that Web publishing will lead to theft of their work, but that’s another subject).
At any rate, the column is about the U.S. Coast Guard’s new search and rescue communications system, called Rescue 21. It’s going to be extremely powerful, but has suffered recent delays, which come on top of previous delays. Naming it after a century—instead of a year like NMEA 2000, also powerful but also slow to really happen—was a good idea.
Yes, those two guys in a Santana 22 were damned surprised to find themselves surfing a big wave under San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge, and no doubt the real surfer in the water was surprised to see them. What happened next is unforgettable, as are the series of photos (this included) taken by Wayne Lambright and generously served on his site (specific picture link here). Sail’s Kimball Livingston has also done a terrific writeup of the incident, including after words from the two crew, who were shaken up but not seriously injured.
Apparently Lambright’s site has almost been overpowered by umpteen Web surfers wanting to see his photos since the April 2 incident, so please be patient and also support his real work if possible. And, yes, this entry is off topic, but interesting, right?
The author Thomas Friedman is making waves with his notion that our world has gotten so small that it seems flat again. I certainly see it in my little marine electronics world. One day I’m watching AIS equipped ships in Amsterdam Harbor, another I’m following scullers as they glide by a marina in Vancouver, Canada. All from my desk in Maine. And when I say “following”, I mean I’m actually operating a pan, tilt, and zoom camera with my Web browser. The camera is mounted in the cockpit of a test vessel belonging to a company called EyeOnBoard, which is using marina WiFi to give yacht owners (and its own 24/7 response center) amazing Web access to their vessels. The cameras are cool, but more important are all the sensors distributed around the boat. Take a look at this screen in the live demo (which understandably does not include the camera control). EyeOnBoard customers also benefit from the monitoring, and WiFi Internet access, when they’re aboard.
The evidence is piling up, so to speak. Last night I spoke with a friend anchored off Key West who said he and his very able 53’ trawler were delayed there by heavy seas. Now I’m listening to a guy on CNN describing how his cruise ship honeymoon in the Bahamas got messed up (the on deck Jacuzzis got washed away, amongst other problems), and the damage done to another ship off Georgia is all over the news. “When the wave passed -- some estimates have it higher than 60 feet -- two windows on decks nine and 10 of the 15-story ship were blown out, 62 cabins sustained water damage and four people were treated for cuts and bruises aboard the ship.”
I went over to NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center to see what happened (above), and discovered that the site now has a nice “looping” function for reviewing forecast and analysis graphics.
This is the first NMEA 0183 multiplexor I know of that can automatically switch to a back up input for any one of three reasons — “a failure to send any NMEA data, an invalid NMEA sentence checksum, or if the validity flag(s) contained within the NMEA sentence indicate that this data is not valid and should only be used with caution (for GPS and Depth data)”. In other words, you could have 4 GPSs (or, more likely 2 GPSs and 2 sounders) feeding the best available data to, say, a plotter and a PC…no manual backup switches needed. Very slick. Actisense’s site has lots of good information on the NSW-1, and it’s available for 260 pounds from at least one English online retailer (the U.S. distributor is Gem Electronics, 843–394–3565).
ACR sent out a press alert about the first rescue credited to its relatively new GPS equipped Personal Locator Beacon. I can’t find any other Web references to the incident, which involved a pair of divers off Bradenton, Florida, but it certainly sounds like ACR and the whole SARSAT system have something to brag about. The little beacon was set off “around 7pm”, seen by a GOES Satellite at 6:58pm, sent up a GPS fix at 7:01pm (presumably from a cold start), and a Coast Guard 41 footer had steamed 10 plus miles to the scene by 8:10pm. It wasn’t until 7:47 that the LEOSAR satellites could resolve the beacon’s location by the standard Doppler method, a delay that might have cost a life in this case. Hat’s off to ACR’s apparently speedy GPS PLB technology and to the fast SARSAT dispatch system! Here’s an article I wrote about SARSAT last year, ACR’s AquaFix site, and an early look at these units by Doug Ritter at the Equipped to Survive Foundation (which will hopefully conduct a thorough test of current PLBs soon).
Writing the entry below I realized that there doesn’t seem to be a picture of the sailboat WeatherStation model on the Web, and there should be! Astute observers will note that a French company, LCJ Capteurs, has offered a CV3F ultrasonic wind sensor for some time. In fact, Airmar licensed this solid-state design, and then reportedly improved it—adding a little heater to protect against extreme ice/snow interference and an inclinometer to correct for heeling errors. The developers at Airmar also threw in a fluxgate compass for true wind direction calculation, and even an LED lit Windex indicator for sailors who like to sometimes look aloft instead of at a screen (and/or like having a non electronic back up). The WeatherStation, which will cost about $1,000, can also sense air temperature, barometric pressure, and more, and can supposedly collect some history on its own. The intriguing device manages to squeeze all this info into one cable and the NMEA 0183 protocol, but a coming NMEA 2000 model will be better at data distribution. No instrument or display manufacturer has yet announced a product that will make the most of this sensor, but no doubt several are working on it. Airmar has not posted any product specs on its site yet, or I couldn’t find it!
Heck, let’s make this Jeffrey Siegel day at Panbo. You see what I didn’t mention below is that Siegel is also the developer of Maptech’s Outdoor Navigator, an excellent PDA (Palm and PPC) charting program that I wrote about back in early 2002 and which has recently evolved in very interesting ways. I thought it was a pretty good deal at $100 with a year access to all the U.S. charts or topos you wanted to download, but now ON costs a mere $20 and you can keep downloading maps as long as you own the PDA it’s registered to. ON also now works on "Smartphones" using Microsoft's cell operating system. The phones from Audiovox, Motorola, and others do not have touch screens, so all ON's controls have been neatly moved to the keypad. Jeff, who naturally is cruising with all versions of his creation, notes that the lack of a touchscreen is one reason why his smartphone has an extra long battery life. He also notes how useful ON is just as a chart reference tool, no messing with a GPS, especially as Maptech corrects the charts on their servers every month. The whole ON story is here.
Another item in the May PMY is my 
Yes, those two guys in a Santana 22 were damned surprised to find themselves surfing a big wave under San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge, and no doubt the real surfer in the water was surprised to see them. What happened next is unforgettable, as are the series of photos (this included) taken by Wayne Lambright and generously served on his 
The evidence is piling up, so to speak. Last night I spoke with a friend anchored off Key West who said he and his very able 53’ trawler were delayed there by heavy seas. Now I’m listening to a guy on CNN describing how his cruise ship honeymoon in the Bahamas got messed up (the on deck Jacuzzis got washed away, amongst other problems), and the damage done to another ship off Georgia is all over the 
This is the first NMEA 0183 multiplexor I know of that can automatically switch to a back up input for any one of three reasons — “a failure to send any NMEA data, an invalid NMEA sentence checksum, or if the validity flag(s) contained within the NMEA sentence indicate that this data is not valid and should only be used with caution (for GPS and Depth data)”. In other words, you could have 4 GPSs (or, more likely 2 GPSs and 2 sounders) feeding the best available data to, say, a plotter and a PC…no manual backup switches needed. Very slick. Actisense’s site has lots of good information on the 
ACR sent out a press 
Writing the entry