I sort of knew that "shootout" was a poor word choice -- implying the certainty of corpses and so forth -- and I'm officially dropping it from the Panbo title vocabulary; it's too hard to be that certain! A glaring example was omitting Furuno tide graphs from the MFD tide "shootout"; I knew better, really, but somehow briefly lumped tides and currents into the POI info that's so far missing from the NavNet 3D charts (but won't be once Active Captain and C-Map data is supported). In fact, you just click and spin the RotoKey to Tide Graph, click again, and you get the nice screen seen above of the nearest prediction station. But it's not perfect, and when it comes to current predictions, it looks like none of the MFDs are...
I may regret that title eventually, though I've just been cruising with four premium MFDs for two weeks, often using them seriously for four or five hours a day. But that doesn't mean I've learned every nuance of these complex beasts, or that I've developed strong preferences. Actually I have (mostly minor) complaints about every one of them!...even if they're all way better than the electronics I used around this coast 40, 30, 20, 10, even 5 years ago. I'm going to start with something fairly simple...
I'm always checking out antenna farms and when I just reviewed shots from the last couple of weeks, it was hard not to notice how Furuno dominated on the big boat end. Like the 108' Keewaydin above, sitting in Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island (the polar opposite of Jonesport, incidentally). There are good photos of the Keewaydin crossing the Atlantic at this blog. If you click on the image above you'll get enough detail that maybe someone can figure out what all those other mizzen and spreader gadgets are?
Jeffrey Siegel caused a minor ruckus when he titled an iphonesailing.net thread about ActiveCaptain "There's no reason to buy another guide book..." I'm a huge fan of AC, and I've watched Jeff's bold predictions come true one after another, but in this case I'd like to think he was just trying to provoke a constructive argument. I don't think AC or any other source of cruising info will ever do a complete job, and my goal is have as many sources as possible on tap. The snug little harbor I sit in right now is an excellent example...
The press release calls SiMON2 "the first alarm monitoring system for the new Apple iPad," which seems odd given what we've already seen from InteliSea. I think what Palladium Technologies was trying to say is that SiMON2 is the first such app designed exclusively for the iPad. It is not just an extension of a full bore PC-based megayacht system, like iSiMON or InteliSea, but rather a new iPad-centered monitoring system designed for "smaller" yachts...
Grahame Shannon, who's been discussed here as the developer of Avia Design software, recently put together a PC, comms, and sensor system -- details here -- meant to showcase his latest AviaSail program. Then he went racing across the Pacific with it, which turned out to be quite the test of gear, boat, and crew, documented here. Grahame kindly sent along this report:
