One of the great technological and human triumphs of our time has to be the offshore rescue system. Some details remain unclear -- like what sort of sailboat Gloria A Dios was, and what route owner/operator Dennis Clements attempted to single hand from Virginia to the Virgin Islands -- but we do know this: 90 minutes after the Elizabeth City, N.C., USCG got the distress signal from his ACR Satellite 2 EPIRB at 5 pm last Saturday night, an HC-130J Hercules aircraft was standing by over the boat 250 miles off Cape Hatteras in nasty full gale conditions. It was that crew who thermal imaged Glory To God (a sobbering film you can find at the bottom of this USCG page), and who dropped two life rafts when an extra big wave dismasted and then holed her...
Damn it! This morning the USCG, in classic gov speak, announced the publication of notice of intention to terminate Loran-C. There's a lot that's not mentioned in the release, but my sources say that Secretary Napolitano did indeed sign off on this, as discussed recently, and that what she actually certified is that the Loran-C infrastructure will not be needed in the future. Which means that eLoran in the USA, already 70% complete, will also be dismantled. But some say that there's still a chance of reversal, and a key person is Maine Senator Susan Collins. I'm going to write her today!
Pirates beware! The Furuno DRS25A Ultra HD radar and FLIR Voyager II thermal camera shown being installed on the stern of the Maersk Alabama are all about keeping a sharp watch for attackers in small boats. And there's another pair at the bow, along with dual monitoring stations within the ship, and lots of redundancy built in...
I previewed this on my Ft. Lauderdale Twitter feed (did that thing work for anyone?), and I remain enthusiastic. HUG stands for Hybrid Universal Guardian, which is quite a mouthful, but then again this puppy can do a lot for a boater...
A significant product introduction at the NMEA Conference was the FLIR First Mate, a hand held thermal camera that's truly designed for marine use and will list for a hair under $3,000. Mind you, it does not use light intensification technology, or a near IR illuminator, like most every other marine night vision monocular. This is the real thermal deal, able to see long wave infrared radiation that has nothing to do with visible, or near visible, light. Like the FLIR M-636 I've begun testing, it can see in total darkness, and even in broad daylight it often sees in a usefully different way than your eye. For instance, a MOB is going stand out like a light bulb regardless of water or skin color. FLIR being FLIR, they took us all out on San Carlos Bay with a boat load of First Mates and other thermal cams...
I first saw a working FLIR M-626L thermal camera in Miami last winter, and am keen to try it on my own boat in familiar territory. Obviously the shot above was taken from my mooring float before the daylight faded completely, but it does hint strongly at what I'll get at night. After all, the image seen on the Raymarine C140W above is all about heat, not light. Click on the photo and compare thermal to visible spectrum. (Note that I added the black marks at top to show the slightly-panned camera's field of view, and that everything is slightly widened because I used the Ray's widescreen aspect ratio to fill the screen.) See how 'hot' humans on the docks and even in the distant head-of-harbor park show up clearly, as does the south-facing brick wall of the library and the similarly heat-holding ledges up on Mt. Battie? When I get a chance to try the FLIR in pitch dark conditions, I hope to see lobster pot buoys -- the bane of night running around here -- pop out clearly. In the meantime, here are a couple of neat M-Series installation details...
When I first met Alltek Marine Electronics Corp. in late 2007, the team was working on a LifeTag-like MOB system (speaking of Raymarine). Well, now the AMEC MOB Dolphin is apparently ready to go, including FCC approval. The idea of plotting MOBs on an AMEC Camino 201 Class B AIS transponder seems to have gone by the wayside, but a single-hander can set up the system so that his/her connected AMEC AIS will send out an SRM message if the worst happens. I'm not sure how well that will work as Safety Related Messages seem to be a little used part of the AIS system. But the MOB Dolphin does come with an interesting-looking PC program for monitoring and managing the up-to-99 pendants it can handle...
I first got excited about RTEs (Radar Target Enhancers) in 2002 when the Sea-Me came out; in fact, it inspired one of my favorite PMY columns (in which you'll also learn why I want a whomping big horn on Gizmo). The Sea-Me went on to be quite a successful product, at least in the U.K., but now Echomax -- the Brits who already build a respected line of static radar reflectors -- has come out with its own Active-X RTE, and apparently it just plain kicks Sea-Me's butt...
If the remarkably small and inexpensive GPS-equipped Fast Find PLB also works very well, what does that mean? My guess is that it makes McMurdo king of the PLB hill, at least for a while, and that it will give pause to folks who are considering the Spot messenger at least in part as a safety device. And who's the guy we might trust most to judge Fast Find performance? That would be Doug Ritter, majordomo of Equipped.org, who has a long record of thoroughly testing safety devices. In fact, it was Ritter, and a large team he assembled, who painstakingly quantified GPS problems with an earlier McMurdo PLB in a test program that ultimately forced the company to recall and update the units...
