Limits To Complexity

by Colin April 1, 2008
The new and the old both have their places

We are now at the final stage of selecting our navigation systems, and as new products are being launched all of the time, have decided to wait until the last minute before committing.

AIS—See And Be Seen

by Colin May 1, 2009
How can we be sure they'll see us?

One thing that most sailors dread is poor visibility. Throw in high levels of shipping traffic and you have a perfect recipe for sleepless nights.

Navigation System—Plotter Or Computer

by John March 25, 2010
iPhone with marine charting

Our comparatively late adoption of electronic navigation (summer 2008) was, for more than any other reason, due to the difficulty we had in making the decision between a dedicated chart plotter and a computer running a navigation program. Either way, we had specific selection criteria that had to be met before we would switch to [...]

Navigation System—What We Bought

by John March 30, 2010
Dell computer

In the last post in this series we wrote about the criteria we used in choosing an electronic navigation system for Morgan’s Cloud. In this post we will write about the systems we looked at and what we finally bought. Plotters We started off looking at large screen plotters and because we have had such [...]

Visiting The Gizmo Guru

by John April 22, 2010
Ben Ellison of Panbo

Last weekend we had a pleasant break from our re-power project while visiting some good friends in Camden, Maine and giving a slide-show to some members of the Ocean Cruising Club. While there, our friends suggested that we visit Ben Ellison, author of Panbo, the popular blog on marine electronics, on his aptly named motor [...]

Broadband Radar, A New Way Of Seeing?

by Colin September 25, 2010
FogbankIslasCies1036TwoMoons645_thumb.jpg

Sailing down the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal is generally pretty easy going– reliable northerlies make for steady downwind progress. The only concerns are the swell (which can close some ports), and the fog, which can be a real pain. Along the northern part of this coast, on most days we could see a [...]

Chart Plotters And Autopilots, Never The Twain Should Meet

by John December 17, 2010
JHH5_103669_thumb.jpg

On Morgan’s Cloud we don’t hand steer much: approaching and leaving a wharf, anchoring and hauling the anchor, transiting an intricate channel, or in the presence of a lot of other boat traffic; that’s about it. We find that by using our autopilot we are left with more time and focus to navigate, keep a [...]

Priorities In Preparation—Part 2

by John March 30, 2011
JHH5-14748_thumb.jpg

In Part 1 I asked the question: “who contributed more to a safe and seamanlike voyage over three days recently, Phyllis who rebuilt the mast winches and went through our medical kit, or me who installed a new AIS transponder and nearly lost his mind doing it?”.

AIS Part 2

by Colin July 17, 2011
AIS ooutput on chart plotter

I’ve written before on the potential benefits of AIS for small craft, and having used it far more since then, it’s time for an update. After being initially impressed with it, and the capabilities it offers beyond radar, has it lived up to that first impression? A good test was when we recently crossed to [...]