In Fort Lauderdale, Raymarine once again did a great job with sea trials, offering rides aboard a center console equipped with a new A70D chartplotter/fishfinder and SmartPilot X-5 Sport, and the same big G-packing fly bridge yacht they used last year, only now with STX and Super HD radar. While there’s certainly been a lag between the STX pilot introduction and actual shipping products, the series does look good. The new ST70 control head (above) is sexy and gives access to new features like fishing patterns, but some users will appreciate the ability to use older Ray control heads as well, or instead of. In fact, the STX family seems remarkably flexible in terms of boat type and system integration.
Here’s Russ and Fay enjoying the christening of New Morning last August (as did I). They’re now beyond the Gulf Stream en route to Bermuda. It would be nice if they posted a new entry on their blog (via Iridium/XGate, I think) and/or fired off a Spot OK message (which I get a copy of, and also gets plotted on their share page), but I’m confident that all is well.
This old-man-on-a-megayacht shot seems right for my birthday (62!), and also says a lot about what Simrad is up to. The 142’ Richmond Lady sports a passel of Simrad gear, including two GB60 systems with six 19” displays. There’s a lot of detail on this Richmond Yacht page, and you can check out the bigger photo (thanks to Ron Ballanti). Though it’s not online yet, the GB60 will soon be upgraded to the GB65, which will include MAX Pro cartography and support for GRIB files and Navico's Sirius Weather Module (which will pop up in several Navico brands).
Garmin had a working GPSMap 640 at FLIBS, and I found a couple of nice surprises on it. One is that it does AIS plotting, which wasn’t even mentioned on the press release. More important really is the improved touch screen interface. Notice the status labels on the big buttons above; in cases where the only choice is on/off, like Tide/Currents, just tapping the button changes the status. Which beats the hell out of the norm on most Garmin marine units, i.e. tap (or soft key, or Enter) for another screen, choose between on or off, go back to original screen. On the 640, it’s one tap instead of three (or four, if you don’t have touch or soft keys).
Everywhere I wandered at FLIBS, there was someone fooling with, or showing off, their iPhone. And that includes me, sort of, as I’m now the very enthusiastic owner of an iPod Touch. I’ve always stubbornly resisted the Mac/iPod/Jobs fervor/hype—in fact, this is my first ever Apple product—but, wow, today my propeller beanie is tipped toward Cupertino. Plenty of smart marine developers have also noticed the slick capabilities of the iPhone/Touch apps platform. Being demoed above, for instance, is MySiMON, an extension of Palladium Technology’s megayacht monitoring and control system. The link will give you a sense of how useful this could be to a Touch-toting crew within a yacht’s WiFi network, but picture too an owner able to network with SiMON via iPhone and his yacht’s satellite communications system. So many possibilities…
Yup, at not much bigger than a Halloween goody bucket, the new TracVision M1 means upstart Intellian’s “world’s smallest in-motion marine satellite TV antenna” claim didn’t go unchallenged for very long. As to which one really is the smallest, that seems to depend on how you evaluate weight versus size. The M1, for instance, is only 7.5 pounds and can purportedly install on a conventional VHF antenna mount. The M1 also comes with KVH’s combo 12v controller/Direct TV receiver, which should make for a compact and easy install, but if you want HD channels, Intellian’s i1 let’s you use a Dish or ExpressVu receiver that can. The same goes for King Control’s new model of the VuQube, the fully stabilized 4000, also introduced at this show. Of course none of these sat TV systems have accumulated much user time, and it’s not easy to stay locked on a satellite with a small dish in a bouncing boat.
. I’ve always stubbornly resisted the Mac/iPod/Jobs fervor/hype—in fact, this is my first ever Apple product—but, wow, today my propeller beanie is tipped toward Cupertino. Plenty of smart marine developers have also noticed the slick capabilities of the iPhone/Touch apps platform. Being demoed above, for instance, is 