When Peter Swanson called to say he'd just become PassageMaker's new editor-in-chief (which he'll be great at, I think), the conversation soon turned to our strong mutual interests in cruising, electronics and charts. That's how I finally learned that NOAA has started to remove the magenta chart lines that guide many users of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and that they may never be replaced. Peter wrote about the issue in August, and NOAA recently put up a notably well-crafted Federal Register article that seeks more comments from the public. That's where I learned that the brightly colored "recommended route lines" began on a 1913 chart series called the Inside Route Pilot -- fascinating sample above, full size here -- and that the lines haven't been comprehensively updated since the 1930's, when taxpayers spent a lot of money expanding the ICW (and creating jobs)...
That's Raymarine's Larry Rencken accepting the NMEA New Technology Award for the Evolution autopilot system from NMEA Director Bruce Angus (with NMEA Office Manager Cindy Love assisting). This was Evolution's second honor in two weeks -- congratulations! -- as it also shared the IBEX Innovation Award for electronics, as discussed on Panbo here. Whereas I was involved in that first contest and a close observer of the various NMEA Awards, I thought I'd explain how they work and also note the other winners. No awards process I know of is perfectly fair, but these are handled quite seriously and are worthy of attention, I think.
While Simrad may be the last of the Big Four to introduce a high-performance, multi-touch, glass bridge system, it seems like they've added at least one significant twist to the concept. The new NSO evo2 black box contains two independent main processors, which can drive two independent displays. The brochure claims that this architecture gives you "the freedom to view and control your onboard systems more easily while making every dual station installation or larger networked system simple and much more cost effective." It's a claim that I tentatively buy...
Yesterday Garmin big-footed into a new niche with new VIRB action cameras -- VIRB as in verb, as in action (I think). It's not a boat camera per se, but I expect that one will be useful and fun around a boat, and it's also another indication of the company's product 'ecosystem' strategy. Garmin was just getting into dedicated marine electronics when I began covering the subject in depth over a decade ago, but, nonetheless, the major players almost unanimously cited the big Kansas complex full of engineers (with its own factory in Taiwan) as their biggest competitive fear. I suspect it was capabilities like this that caused the concern. VIRB is not an assault on any marine companies, but CNet's sharp analysis is aptly titled "Garmin gets up in GoPro's grill with VIRB HD cameras"...
When I wrote about seeing the new Garmin 8000 Glass Helm series in Miami, several knowledgeable readers commented about how it (and the GMI 20 I'm testing) would be used as part of a complete Volvo Penta engine/helm package. They were right. Garmin announced the VP Glass Cockpit yesterday and it's already up in detail at Volvo Penta. The main features seem to be great nav screen integration with joystick, trim, and autopilot controls plus a single vendor for all, but is this also what we're going to see from all the glass bridge/helm/cockpit systems, and will it "trickle down"?
Intellian Technologies has come a long way since they first introduced their own brand of satellite TV antenna systems at the 2008 NMEA Conference, where I first met them. In fact, the company may well be the fastest growing in marine electronics, going from 77 employees in 2010 to 160 today. Intellian has also gone from supplying only the relatively modest end of the marine TV antenna market to all size vessels, broadband satellite communications definitely included. The company story is interesting on many levels, but there was a particularly telling moment as Global Marketing VP Paul Comyns (standing above) and CEO Eric Sung (to his left) addressed the group of American and European boating journalists that Intellian hosted in Korea.
I so appreciated getting to know Dr. Yung Ho Yu -- known around the world simply as Dr. Yung -- at the Korea Maritime University in Busan, and I think you will too once you realize how much he and his programs are doing to advance marine electronics and improve the standards that make them inter-operable. For starters, take a close look at the NMEA 2000 teaching lab surrounding the good Doctor. The twenty work stations are all gatewayed to an extensive N2K sensor network so that students can experience and even interact with the protocol right down to the bit level as the instructor demonstrates from his work station. I'd like to be wrong, but I doubt that there's a similarly powerful teaching and research tool anywhere else on the planet...
The original idea was to finish this entry during the Chicago stop of the very long journey seen on the nifty FlightTrack app screen above, but travel mistakes were made and O'Hara airport had less connectivity than one might presume in this day and age. Is anyone surprised to hear that the Tokyo and Seoul airports are much friendlier to the traveler trying to stay in touch? So, yes, I'm already in Korea and will soon begin a writer's tour that is being hosted by Intellian Technologies and that is intended in part to show us the state of recreational boating in this "technology-led" country...
As a privately held corporation Navico doesn't have to reveal anything about its financial state, but last week it issued a proud press release claiming a dramatic 15% sales increase in 2012, which resulted in revenues of 256 million dollars and EBITDA earnings of 41.4 million. And at the Las Palmas B&G event, the mother company added some claims about what their numbers meant versus the competition, as seen in the slide above. Is Navico painting a fair picture of where the recreational marine electronics market is at? Does it matter to consumers anyway?
I know several sailors who have installed Lowrance MFDs as an economical way to gain access to Navico's sailboat-friendly Broadband Radar, and the scheme made sense as there wasn't really all that much difference between the fishing-focused Lowrance systems and even the sailor-centric B&G Zeus versions of the Simrad NSE and NSS displays. But those (somewhat confusing) days may be over soon as one of several stories Navico presented to the boating press in Las Palmas was a simplification of its three-brand strategy. Now B&G intends to serve all sailors, from grand prix racers to weekend cruisers, and from premium to value-oriented budgets. Moreover, B&G demonstrated that it's fast putting together a suite of features that should appeal to every type of sailor...
When Peter Swanson called to say he'd just become PassageMaker's new editor-in-chief (which he'll be great at, I think), the conversation soon turned to our strong mutual interests in cruising, electronics and charts. That's how I finally learned that NOAA has started to remove the magenta chart lines that guide many users of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and that they may never be replaced. Peter wrote about the issue in August, and NOAA recently put up a notably well-crafted Federal Register article that seeks more comments from the public. That's where I learned that the brightly colored "recommended route lines" began on a 1913 chart series called the Inside Route Pilot -- fascinating sample above, full size here -- and that the lines haven't been comprehensively updated since the 1930's, when taxpayers spent a lot of money expanding the ICW (and creating jobs)...
