stevem.net

For a while I have been planning a new system on my sailboat for navigation.  I started out back in 2007 with a Garmin GPSMAP 5208 which worked great at the time.  It was a touch screen system, and a bit on the small size for the display.   Over time I found many errors with the charts, problems with it keeping up with the amount of AIS targets I had (the fan would spin up and the UI would slow to a crawl) plus a few other things.

I have been watching the developments of broadband radar via panbo.com and other places online, and wanted to add that to my boat for safety reasons.  After a lot of research, I choose the Simrad NSE12 multi function display, and BR24 radar.

One of the reasons I’m writing my thoughts up here is that while there is a lot of info on manufacturer’s sites, they don’t let you delve deeper into their products without (a) buying them, (b) seeing them at a store, or (c) reading their entire manuals.  And what most of us care about, the user interface, isn’t something you can see except for (a) and (b) which are either short term (a) or a purchase.  I’ve taken a bunch of screen shots and written up my thoughts to help anyone else interested in Simrad’s stuff…

Click on any of my pictures for a larger version on my Flickr site, or you can see the whole set of pictures on the NSE12 here.

Background

I already had a Simrad TP32 tiller pilot, and a Brookhouse NMEA multiplexer (more on this soon), Icom M504 DSC capable radio, plus Tactick wind, compass, and depth instruments, so integrating these were a priority.  Having the Simrad TP32 made the choice even nicer because it can interface with the NSE12 over a SimNet connection.

I considered Raymarine, Garmin and Simrad before choosing, and Simrad was the only one who had a broadband radar that had been around longer than the others, and had a very well designed interface on the MFD to charts, radar and all of the components.  Some of the other vendors had broadband-like radar, or MFDs that would support something similar, but they hadn’t been around as long, or had similar interface problems that I had found in the Garmin that I was trying to avoid.  They also didn’t have the depth of features, nor the Navionics charts, which ended up playing a bigger part in my decision than I thought it would.

Why did I choose an MFD over running something like Coastal Explorer on a laptop?  Well, I do run Coastal Explorer on a laptop, and use it a lot for planning and investigation, since it’s much easier to do that at home than on the boat.  The concern with using something like CE as a primary navigation aid is the PC itself. Having a deep PC background myself, and watching simple non-marinized components degrade after a winter of disuse, and looking at the exorbitant prices for a marine PC, I chose the MFD route.  I think in 2-3 years PC components and cases will have gotten to the stage where MFDs will have a lot of serious competition.  For now, I wanted something that was completely protected from the elements, took a small amount of power, and offered something as close as possible to a PC experience as possible.

In a week or so, I’ll write up an experiment I did with a semi-marinized PC and Coastal Explorer with a Planar touch screen.  Not quite ready for prime-time yet!

My configuration

I have an NSE12 connected via NMEA0183 @ 38400 baud to a Brookhouse NMEA AIS multiplexer.  Connected to the multiplexer as well is my Icom 504 radio, Tactick NMEA gateway, Simrad TP32 tiller pilot, and ACR Nauticast Class-B AIS transponder.

Connected directly to the NSE12 is the BR24 radar, which I mounted on a Scanstrut self-leveling pole (more on that in the future) along with the add-on GPS extender for the Simrad GS15 GPS Antenna.  The TP32 and GS15 are connected to my SimNet, which is also connected to the NSE12.

NSE12 screen, case and user interface

The NSE12 is very well built – the case feels like you could hit it with a sledge hammer and it would still work.  The cabling and all other aspects of the outside are similar to many of the other MFD’s.  The control interface is well designed and easy to use, and backlit very well in all conditions I’ve used it in.

What is really amazing is the screen – it’s so crisp and clear from all angles, and can be adjusted a wide range of brightness.  The other fun thing is that the NSE12 draws between .2 and .3 AMPS less than my smaller Garmin GPSMAP 5208!  Most of this I assume is due to the LED backlit screen on the NSE12.

Touch or No Touch?

I really liked the touch screen interface with the Garmin, and in choosing the Simrad NSE12, I gave that up.  The best part of that interface was to move around on the chart and find a new point of interest or AIS ship.  Navigating menus via the touch interface always had it’s problems/challenges.  There were drop down or scroll bars that were extremely hard to use, if not impossible.  And if it happened to be cold outside, you had to lose one of the gloves to get it to work.  Many people have asked if rain was a problem – I didn’t see too much of a problem with the water, but it was down below in a sheltered location.

Simrad did an excellent job of providing controls to the user – there’s a scroll wheel that you can click with as well as scroll, a directional pad, and an in-out button.  I use the directional pad most of the time to move the cursor around.  It’s still new to me and I’m not anywhere near as good as I was with touch, but I am sure I will get there.  There’s also a numeric keypad, which at first glance seemed a bit dated.  After having used it a number of times to enter waypoint names, navigate quick menus, and the like, I can say it’s a step up from the on screen keyboards or messy scroll keyboards that other solutions have.  It works similar to cell phone text entry, and is pretty fast for entering names and letters.

I really like the menu system that Simrad has put together.  Things are ordered logically, and organized in large blocks – I hate user interfaces that hide everything that isn’t relevant, or require many clicks to get to what you want to see.  Simrad has simplified some things, but generally speaking the menus contain everything you could want to change or see in one place.  And navigating with the click wheel is a breeze.

Night mode

Night mode on the NSE12 is one highlight in their design.  Not only does the chart or other object change colors that are more conducive to night navigation, but the unit’s backlit keys change to red as well.  The only odd thing is the gradiated colors at the top of the instrument panel which you can see in the screen shot below.  I like the colors they’ve chosen for the maps more than the Garmin and Raymarine interfaces I’ve seen.  They’re easy to read in low light, and easy to identify the same key areas as the daylight lighting.  In many other MFD’s, night light is a lot of red text and colors, which are hard for me to see.

The most disappointing thing with night mode, and for that matter, the general mode is that it is not auto sensing or driven based off of GPS time, as far as I have seen.  Both Raymarine and Garmin did this in past systems, and I found it to be a nice convenience.  Whether it simply switched to night mode at the right time, or changed the brightness on the screen based on ambient light.  That feature seems to be missing from Simrad.

Charts

The charts on the NSE12 really shine.  I purchased the Navionics Platinum Plus charts for the Puget Sound area, and have been very impressed with their level of detail.  It was a bit hard to find the option to enable them at first, but once turned on, they are easy to use and fast.

This choice turned out to be one of the cornerstones in my overall selection of MFD solution.  I had seen Navionics charts a few years ago, but there wasn’t anything that, to me, set them apart from what I had with g2 Vision from Garmin, or some of the options that Raymarine offered.  In the last year I had a lot of time to research and see Navionics charts and was truly impressed.

Speed is one of the areas that Simrad’s marketing talks a lot about – how fast redraws are with chart options enabled.  I’ve done a lot of testing on this, as it was one of my bigger complaints about the Garmin technology. According to various sources, Simrad has a 1.6Ghz CPU in the NSE12 allowing for the graphics speed.  I would imagine it’s an Atom-based CPU or other low power consuming chip.

In my screen shot below, I have the charts in 2D mode with all of the options turned on.  Redraw zooming in and out is nearly instantaneous.  I have never seen an MFD keep up that fast.  I use Coastal Explorer on a laptop for trip planning, and it has problems zooming as fast as the NSE, and it’s on a pretty fast system with beefy graphics hardware.

Enabling 3D mode slows things down, but only a small amount.  3D mode to me is a nice-to-have, but so far it hasn’t solved any urgent problems I’ve had.  It’s very interesting to see some of the places you frequent in 3D mode and fly through them – a completely different perspective as you can see from the screen shot.

Photo charts are even better.  The digital imagery they used here is very clear and crisp, and scales very well when zooming in and out.  You can see the detail in the screen shot below of the Ballard Locks.

Again, moving around and zooming with photo charts is pretty fast – the photos do take a bit longer than anything else to show up if you are panning.  If you’re zooming, it’s near instant.

Where things start to slow down is when you turn 3D chart mode and photos on at the same time.  Part of this in my case was because the photos didn’t exist in all areas, but much of it is the system having to render not only 3D charts, but find and render the photos in pseudo-3D as well.  I don’t think it’s a showstopper at all – after all, I am asking for it to do the hardest thing it can while tracking 100+ AIS targets and dealing with all of the other things going on.

Overall, the charts functionality is what you would expect from a top end MFD, and faster than any other system I’ve seen out there.

Utilities

One of the areas that I think Simrad doesn’t talk about a lot is in their utilities and pages areas.  Here you can do things like have a display of instruments, navigation headings and XTE stuff, as well as manage your saved files, screen shots (yes!) and do the usual sun/moon/tides interactions.  I think these interfaces are surprisingly well done – most of these on MFDs are after thoughts and scattered all over the UI.  In Simrad’s case, they are centralized and easy to use.  You can see screen shots of tides and other interfaces in my Flickr set on the NSE12.

Alarms

One area in particular that shines for Simrad is in their alarms management page.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hunted around in an MFD interface to disable an alarm that was going off over and over (AIS targets are a big one) and found it buried in some sub-screen.  In Simrad’s case, they give them all to you on one page – extremely convenient and fast to figure out.

Radar

A lot of reviews have been written on the BR24 broadband radar – I won’t re-hash all of that here.  I am still impressed with it’s clarity and ability to pick out really small objects with high degrees of accuracy.

In the screen to the left you can see nearby buoys right outside of the marina entrance which are only about 3-5 feet tall and pretty narrow – the BR24 found them though…  Not to mention the detail it shows of the marina and boats themselves.

I haven’t yet found out how to customize the list of vessels on this page, and in many cases it seems to be pretty random what shows up on it – for instance, it’s showing three vessels that are between 6 and 10 NM away from me, when there are clearly marked AIS targets that are much closer than that.

The controls on the radar page are, as many other reviews highlight, very well done.  Being able to use the click scroll wheel to change the gain, sea clutter, and rain clutter is very well thought out.

I also appreciate the ability to change the colors used for the screen – I’ve tried the yellow and green options (instead of red) and they can be useful in certain circumstances.

There are a number of other great settings and details here in the radar menus – maybe sometime in the future once I learn more about them, I’ll post here.

One of the features I really like is being able to overlay the radar data on top of a chart.  You can really begin to see the power of the whole MFD solution when using it this way.

In the screen shot to the right, you can see the AIS vessel leaving the marina, and the radar echo that is quite a ways ahead of where AIS is reporting it.  You can also see the buoys I mentioned further up in the channel, and many other landmarks that the BR24 is picking out.  Seeing it overlaid on the chart is extremely helpful.

For the ultimate in all features enabled, here’s 3D charts, photo overlay (land only) and radar overlay.

AIS

The NSE12 has good AIS support.  It doesn’t seem to lag or slow down like my Garmin did the moment it starts to discover more than 15 AIS targets.  I am not particularly fond of the large triangle shapes, and bold for dangerous targets.  I liked the Garmin shapes and colors better, but I assume this may be refined in newer versions of software.  There’s a lot of configurability here that I didn’t see in Garmin or Raymarine in terms of how long you wanted the line out in front of the AIS target, and alarms settings as well.

One of the more annoying things that always seems to happen with any AIS solution is the alarms for the AIS enabled boats in the marina that are not moving.  They all pop up in the first couple of minutes of powering on.  I am not sure if there is anything that could be done about that – i.e. see if they aren’t moving and not alarm, but I bet that would be a bad thing if there was a dangerous target that wasn’t moving

On first startup the NSE is very quick to acquire all of the targets, and the screens for viewing the data on a vessel are very complete.  Alarms themselves are well organized and clear when they occur.

Data Panel

One nice touch is the ability to customize the data panel at the top of each screen.  You can see that I have something different on the chart screen, versus the chart+radar screen, versus the radar screen.  You can add just about any of the data you would think is relevant, and have two bars stacked like I do, or have a rotating bar.  I really like vendors who choose to do things this way and give the power to the people who are using it, rather than fixed options that might contain 80% of what you want.

The other nice thing is the status icons at the top right hand – they show the radar status (standby/transmit), GPS status, and if there are any outstanding alarms.  It’s very easy to see the status of your entire system at a quick glance.

Boot up time

Out of everything, this might be one of the biggest drawbacks from any of the new MFDs.  The NSE12 takes a good 2 minutes to boot from the time you turn it on.  I don’t think there’s much that can be done to change this.  If you have flaky power, or if when you start your engine, things drop below normal voltages (you really should fix that – I did 2 years ago) then you might not like any of the newer MFDs.

Power consumption

Power consumption on a sailboat is always important, and was one of my design concerns as well.  The final system, with all of the instruments on, including the NSE12, draws about 2 AMPS.  If I fire up the radar, I go up to about 3 AMPS, which is unheard of for radar power draw.  If the tiller pilot is really working, and I’ve got all of these  components up and running, I might get to 5 AMPS.  That’s within the tolerances of what I set for a goal on power usage.  Of course, I could shut off the radar, turn down the screen brightness on the NSE12, or even put it in standby (this saves about an amp).  I could even shut it all off, and just use tiller pilot and solar charged Tactick instruments at about an amp of usage.

Several of the other MFDs I looked at drew considerably more – especially those with similar screen sizes.  Many of those are tailored towards power boats and video displays that suck a lot of power.

Integration with other instruments

This turned out to be far more complicated than it should have been.  The TP32 was easy – SimNet found it instantly, and it worked.  Same with the new GPS antenna that I bought with the system.  The NMEA0183 stuff was far more difficult.

I’ve used NMEA0183 stuff for years, and had several multiplexers that help with this.  In this case, the NSE12 only has one input/output port for NMEA0183, and for some reason, even though I had turned off many of the sentences from being transmitted from the NSE, it was still sending them.  This created a headache for about 2 hours until I powered everything off and back on again, and magically things began to work.  I will be writing up more of this in a separate post on integrating with the Brookhouse NMEA multiplexer I have.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m very happy with my new system.  I think the NSE12 has been very well designed from top to bottom, and has enough flexibility for end users, as well as a platform for Simrad to improve upon going forward.  There are some areas that could use some improvement, but nothing that prevents me from using all functionality in a way that improves my voyage.  Combine that with top notch charts, and an amazing new radar technology, and I feel that I have far more information at hand when navigating that will keep me safer on the water.

steve Sailing BR24, chartplotter, NSE12, radar, Simrad

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had to climb the mast of my sailboat to get at some things that were broken, and also to install a new system to control my mainsail.  I’m afraid of heights, and so doing this was no small task.

A few years ago I bought a system that ran up the track in the mast and it had foot loops in it.  It came with a belt to hold you around the mast as you went up, sort of line a lineman’s toolbelt.  It really didn’t work all that well.  The foot loops were amazingly uncomfortable – very little support in them.  Your feet would get stuck in them since they flexed so much, and that wasn’t a good thing since you would be fighting getting your foot in and out of the loop.  Add to that the somewhat supportive belt, but still requires another rope connected to it for you to go up.

A friend of mine tried to go up, and he’s not afraid of heights, and he didn’t want to go all the way up on this thing.  I made it up to the first set of spreaders on my boat, and gave up.

About 6 months ago, I saw an ad in some sailing magazine for a product called the ATN Topclimber.  It is a different concept – rig a static line, attach this enhanced bosun’s chair and foot loops to it, and up you go.  Oh, and it can be run by a single person, instead of having someone hoist you up, etc.   Obviously the more folks, the safer, but if I had something I needed to do and didn’t want to coordinate a whole party of folks…

I ended up purchasing one, along with a good length of high quality line as recommended (1/2″).  Many folks recommend just going out and purchasing climbing equipment, as it’s likely cheaper, and very similar.  I opted to purchase this since it was designed for this purpose to begin with, and didn’t have lots of extra stuff to contend with or learn.  It also packs up very small in an included bag, which happens to also turn into a bag to carry items up with you.

I’m happy to say I’ve been up the mast a number of times, and even all the way to the top, which I never thought I’d get to.  It’s so easy to just work your way up, and at least for folks who are afraid of heights like me, I found that looking out, and not down, while you’re going up, makes it much easier.  It also, in some weird way, is much more comforting to not be attached directly to the mast itself – having the static line very tight is key.  I’ve also found that having the static line angled away from the mast is key so you don’t bump into it on the way up.  Plan your angle to come within 1 foot of where you want to stop to work.

The other big benefit of this system is being able to go up on your own, say in an emergency.  I don’t know if I would do that, especially in a dire emergency.  I’m not one to be hanging around on the mast with a big storm going, unless it’s that or death I guess…  Regardless, it’s compact enough that you could take it on a trip away from your normal marina, and if something happened, like a lost halyard or clipped VHF antenna, you could go up and take care of business without having to wait to go back to the dock.

It’s still somewhat disconcerting to be at the top of the mast, but it’s much safer feeling being strapped totally into the chair, and having the foot straps that you can push off of as well to gain more strength/force, as well as move around.

The only thing I think could be improved are the instructions.  The only details are a single laminated card, and the pictures are very hard to see and understand.  It’s a pretty obvious setup, and I didn’t have any problems, but it would be nice to see the pictures larger.

Overall, I’m extremely happy and I think it’s well worth the money.  I saved already having to pay some local marine folks to climb my mast and fix three things!

steve Sailing atn topclimber, mast

In the last two weeks I’ve been out on the water twice, once only for a short sail (about 2 hours) and today for about 4.  Last week it never got above 40 degrees, and there was ice on the deck when I left.  Today it was a little warmer, but still only got up to 50 degrees.  As I always do when I’m sailing, I used my SPOT Satellite Tracker to send notes to my crew on shore to let them know I was OK – and also so I could get a neato map like below.

My Tacktick wind instrument isn’t working, and I’m working to get it repaired, so I ended up having to spend a lot more time paying attention to the wind and steering more manually, which is fine with me, at least every once in a while.  At one point there were some sustained winds of at least 25kts for about 45 minutes – very fun!

The new Nauticast AIS transponder is working great – I removed my SR 162 AIS receiver and took it home (more on this later) and directly wired the Nauticast into my chartplotter and multiplexer a few days ago.  I’m hoping others are seeing me too – the whole reason for broadcasting it in the first place.

Hopefully I’ll get some more chances to sail even in these cold months!

steve Sailing satellite messeng, SPOT, tacktick

The final piece of my navigation and safety additions to my sailboat finally came in – an AIS Class B transponder.  I chose the ACR Nauticast-B kit which includes a bunch of different things.  This post contains a lot of information on unboxing and initial playing of the unit.

I sail primarily near Elliott Bay in Puget Sound, Seattle, WA.  My sailboat currently has an AIS receiver that I have had for over a year, and it has proven well worth the investment.  I have it connected to my Garmin GPSMAP 5208 chartplotter, and shows a lot of details on ships moving around me.  Elliott Bay is very busy – two major ferry routes terminate here, and there are countless cargo ships and cruise liners moving around.  Case in point is a screen shot from last year where everyone was after me…

I wanted to go to the next level and have the ability to broadcast my location out via AIS-B so that those folks who choose to listen will see me.  I like sailing in Puget Sound, and I think that this will be a key safety system in making sure others see me ahead of time as well.

I purchased the unit through Milltech Marine – great folks with a lot of expertise in this area, and right in my backyard on Bainbridge Island.  They processed the necessary paperwork, which included getting details on my boat, measurements where the GPS antenna will be installed, and of course my existing MMSI number.

The Box

The unit came in a long box with the following items:

• VHF antenna, mounting, cables
• GPS antenna, mounting, cables
• CDs of software
• Manuals
• Nauticast unit
• Cable from Nauticast to GPS, VHF, etc.

One thing of note – I explored whether I could use my existing VHF splitter and antenna for this, but Doug at Milltech recommended that I not do that.  There was a different setup I could put together, which I still may end up needing to do, but the preferred way is for the unit to have it’s own dedicated VHF antenna.  Keep in mind that the system will be broadcasting your location and vessel details constantly, and sometimes frequently depending on your speed, etc.  Sharing your existing VHF antenna could be problematic if you need to, say, make a VHF call for some reason.

The Antennas

The VHF antenna looks to be decent quality.  It’s an AIS branded antenna, whatever that means.  You can see a picture of the label here.  It comes with a decent length of cable, and molded ends on both ends.  That’s going to be a bit of an issue when snaking it through the various places and out aboveboards.  It’ll likely get cut and have to be re-ended.  It would have been nice had it come with a spare end, uncrimped and unconnected.   I’d guess the antenna is about 3′ tall.  It doesn’t come with a wealth of mounting options, but the base has the necessary holes and bracket to be mounted just about any way you’d like.

The GPS antenna is an ACR branded model and comes with a Glomex mount base.  The same goes here for both the cable and the base – the cable has the end on it, and the base has little mounting options included other than a flat surface.

The Transponder

The transponder itself looks very well made – rugged and water proof with easy to see indicator lights, and cable connections.  It has good lockdown screw holes around the unit, and is nicely compact so it can fit in some out of the way location.

There are three connectors – one for VHF, one for GPS, and one large one for the interface cable.   The interface cable fits very snugly, and has very long screw-downs, along with a very tight waterproof seal.  The cable itself has connections to power, RS432, RS232, and for a switch.  You can see a picture of the cable here.

Testing a little

After unboxing, I wanted to give it a test at home.  I connected everything together, put the GPS and VHF outside, and powered up the unit.  I had loaded the Link2AIS software provided by ACR, and connected things via the RS232 serial interface, and waited for a bit while the unit acquired GPS satellites.

I was using my new Dell Mini 9 that I plan on having on the sailboat as my primary computer given it’s low power consumption and lack of moving parts.  The Dell doesn’t have a serial port, but I had a Keyspan USB-serial adapter.  Milltech sells these as well.

The system came up pretty quickly, and using the Link2AIS software I was able to see vessels near me pretty quickly.

There are a lot of really nicely thought out options in Link2AIS for configuring the unit, but the majority of it is not useful for actual route planning or looking at AIS targets.  It’s a pretty basic application from that perspective.  You can see some additional screen shots of the setup screens and positioning information in my set on Flickr.

What I really wanted to play around with was Coastal Explorer, the navigation software I use.  I fired it up, told it to discover my GPS, and it found the unit immediately.  A few minutes later, I had a whole host of targets on the screen just as you would expect:

I waited about 15 minutes, but I was never able to find my vessel on any of the online, web-based AIS tracking sites.  I’m not sure if that’s because I was not waiting long enough, on land (!), or because those sites only show AIS class A transponders.  I think I can assume that I’m showing up on everyone else’s receivers based on the fact that the transmit light on the unit was going quite frequently, and the software indicated that it was working OK, and had my MMSI and all the appropriate details.

I suppose one way to test would be to use my existing AIS receiver and see if I appear on my chartplotter!  I guess I will have to wait until I install it to find out for sure…

Overall Impressions

The unit is very well built, and included are the basic pieces to get you up and running.  The software is solid, and has all of the features, and then some, to configure, maintain, and troubleshoot any problems you might have.  The documentation is complete, thorough and very well written.

References:

• Entire set of unboxing photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spmitchell/sets/72157611876841582/
• Milltech Marine: http://www.milltechmarine.com/AIS-300.htm
• ACR Nauticast: http://www.nauticast.com/index.php?id=333

steve Electronics, Navigation, Sailing acr nauticast, AIS, class b ais

Yesterday I was out sailing with a friend in Elliott Bay, well I guess we weren’t really sailing because there was no wind….  anyhow, we were trying to figure out what to do next, and hadn’t planned on being out very long.

We’d seen one of the smaller Coast Guard boats running around near us for a while, and when it came straight towards us, I figured something was going on.

Sure enough, they politely asked if we had been boarded and inspected recently by the Coast Guard, to which I replied that we hadn’t.  They then asked, again very politely, if they could do so.  It didn’t really seem like a question that had an answer other than “sure”, so that’s what I said.  They asked permission to come aboard, and two of them transferred, rather adeftly, to my boat to start the inspection.

They looked at life jackets, bilges, wastewater pumpouts, toilets, fire extinguishers, flares, and engine compartments.  They found a couple of things wrong, but since it was an inspection, they just asked me to fix them.  I suppose they could have fined me, but they were extremely nice and courteous.

We both asked some questions of them, about the process and regulations, and about their fast boat and strange weapons that they were more than happy to explain.

Overall, it was a very pleasant experience, and at no time did I feel uncomfortable or anything at all.  They were so super polite and efficient, and very courteous, as well as even a bit joking at the end.  I’m glad they try to make it as stress-free as possible.

I’ll be changing my fire extinguishers and zip-tying my pumpout valves here in the next few days just in case they decide to check up on me, and because it’s apparently the law.

The only bad thing was that as a result of being below during very barfy waves, I got really motion sick and we had to abandon sailing about an hour afterward, and I barely made it to the dock.  I was shot the rest of the day…

steve Sailing boarding, coast guard, inspection, Sailing

I’ve had a SPOT Satellite Messenger for about 6 months and really like it.  I use it primarily when I sail to keep my friends updated on where I am, and if I’m safe.

I have always been a little annoyed that the only ways they could keep track of my course were to save the individual SMS’es or emails that were sent, or I had to give them my password to my private online account at the SPOT home page.

Recently, the folks at SPOT came out with the SPOT Shared Page to solve this problem.  It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it’s far better than the previous solutions.  The page contains a list of the last 24 hours worth of messenger check-ins on the left, and a Google Maps layout of the track on the right.  You can click on the track to see more details.

Seems to be pretty reliable – does seem to be browser picky right now – Firefox doesn’t seem to work sometimes, and Safari doesn’t work at all.  There are some annoying formatting issues as well as images that are missing in some areas.   Hopefully they’ll spruce some of this up as more folks find it – it is in beta as far as I understand it.

Here’s an example:

A larger version of the image is available here.

steve Electronics SPOT, spot satellite messenger, spot shared page

Above is a screen shot from my chart plotter at the end of the day when I was sailing/motoring back into Elliott Bay here in Seattle. The larger boat icon in the center with the compass wind indicator around it is me, the rest of the smaller boats with red lines emanating out of them are all of the AIS targets my system is warning me about.

I had 3 Washington State Ferries closing in on my area – two car ferries and one fast passenger ferry, one tour boat, and eventually 2 tugs, one of which was going faster than I was, and on a similar course. AIS here only showed 2 of the three ferries, the tour boat, and the tug.

I couldn’t take any more pictures of the system becaue I had to pay attention at that point, but it was pretty nice to be able to sit in the cockpit hatchway and glance down to see what else was coming around the point behind the bluff.

I still haven’t figured out a great way to use the notification system within the Garmin unit for AIS. It goes off far too much and alerts when there are boats nearby on AIS sitting still. Other programs that are software based have more granularity and allow you to only fire off an alert when specific conditions are met, such as intercept within a certain amount of minutes. I’m hoping Garmin will get to that soon.

steve Electronics, Navigation AIS, garmin gpsmap 5208

 

I’m always looking for a good pump, since the nature of having a boat is having to stave off water being in the boat at some point.  I have a couple of manual bilge pumps, and of course a couple of powered ones permanently installed in the right places.  But you can always use something more portable. 

While doing some random searches, I stumbled across a great idea from the folks at Rule – the iL500 Portable Pump.  It’s a portable pump that is submersible, can be used in-line, has battery clamps for quick use, comes with hose and a nozzle for spraydowns, and can be used for both water and diesel.

I think it’s a great pump to have around when you happen to be away from the dock and need to get water out of somewhere hard to reach, or if you want to use the included nozzle to spray down an area – my boat’s not big enough to rank a dedicated spraydown system.  

They also built it so you could use it in-line – connect a section of hose before the pump, and down inside, say, a tank or hard to reach area, and then the other side of the pump would be plumbed into wherever you wanted to transfer the liquid.  

The included roll-flat hose, and convenient spray nozzle that clamps down on the flat hose are a nice convenience, as is the strainer for the non-in-line configuration.  It would be nice if they had a kit or option to replace the battery terminal clamps with a standard 12VDC cigarette adapter for safer connections, and without having to find your battery terminals.  You could always chop the cable and do that yourself I suppose.

I found it online at West Marine, but it’s only sold in the “kit” version which includes all of the extras above.  You can find it elsewhere as well, but I order so much from them it was more convenient to get it in the weekly shipment

I’ll let you know how it works in a few days…

steve Cleaning, Sailing iL500, rule iL500, rule slimline

How many heaters have you gone through?

I use a West Marine 1500W cabin heater, the ones you can buy for around $70 that sit on the floor, to keep the boat heated in winter.  I leave a door open to the engine compartment, and it also basically heats the rest of the boat without a problem.  However, the last 3 years in a row, I end up having to buy a new heater.  One year, I had to buy two.  The problem is they’re really cheap, and then the other issue I believe is the water and marine environment.

I found two major manufacturers out there who make bilge heaters, which is really what I care about.  The best one with the smallest footprint appears to be Xtreme Heaters.  I’m considering the 750W model, even though my boat isn’t that large, I’d prefer that it kept the majority of the entire boat warm no matter what.

I don’t like the temporary ones on the floor because of the potential for fire, movement, and because they seem to fail really easily.

I’d like to get one of these bilge heaters, and I know I have the room, but I would also like something that gives the rest of the cabin a little bit more heat – the bilge heaters I’ve found only kick in at 40 degrees, and then off at 55 maximum.  Not a really warm temperature if you happen to be working on the boat in an evening.  Of course, I know I could use one of the portable units when I’m on the boat, but if I’m wiring in something new, why can’t it heat the entire boat?

I can’t find anything but the bilge heaters that seem to have a decent enough warranty and design that they would last in a marine environment…

I suppose I could just install two of them, but again, it’s still only going to get to 55 degrees at the most.  

What I really would like to find is a marine grade heater that runs off of AC power and is simple to mount and install.

steve Sailing

My previous engine had a meltdown before I had it removed, and that included dumping a huge quantity of watery oil into my bilge.  Ever since then, oil makes it’s reappearance almost weekly within the bilge.  I suppose I will never get rid of it completely…

I’ve tried all sorts of things, from absorbent pads, to simply sucking it out with a high volume pump, and disposing of it appropriately.  Nothing seems to work that well, at least not until I found BioSok.

It’s some sort of powdery looking chemical that reacts to oil and fuel, and pulls it into it, then uses some microbes to eat off the oil.  I ended up buying two of the cloth socks, and one small bin of powder.  I used the powder directly throughout the bilge on the surface to get the oil that had been in there for a while since the repower.  I have the socks standing by to be used once the initial cleaning is done.

So far, the powder has been in the bilge about a month, and it has turned a nasty dark brown color.  I don’t see any oil in the water, or on any other surfaces of the bilge, which is good.  I guess that means it’s doing it’s thing.  At this point, I think I leave it for a while so the microbes can eat, or I could dispose of it appropriately somewhere.  The stuff is the consistency of chocolate fudge – I’m sure it doesn’t taste as good though.

I’m hoping in a few weeks things will dissipate more, and if not, I’ll clean it all out.  At that point, I’ll drop one of those socks into the bilge in case there’s any other problems during the season.

So far, these things look pretty convenient, and environmentally friendly.

steve Cleaning, Engine biosok