Category: seamanship
Northport Systems Announces Fugawi Marine 5
Northport Systems announced that its newest marine navigation software, Fugawi Marine 5, will be available at the end of March for new purchase and upgrade from Fugawi Marine ENC. According to the company, Fugawi Marine 5 takes advantage of the latest Windows technology, including a touch-screen control optimized for use with Win 7 and 8 [...]
ActiveCaptain Expands Dramatically with Routes and More Reviews
ActiveCaptain.com, the crowd-sourced database of local navigation and cruising knowledge, has been expanding its offerings over the last couple of months with some significant new capabilities. The two most important, in my view, involve route-sharing and an allied site devoted to captain reviews of boating-related services. Here’s a quick rundown on some of the new developments. [...]
When Chesapeake Bay Becomes a Hurricane Hole for a Ship
A fascinating blog entry yesterday on the Kadey-Krogen Yachts website recounts the Hurricane Irene experience of Chesapeake ship pilot Bill Band, father of Shannon Band, KKY’s marketing manager. Band was one of two pilots who took the 960-foot Carnival Pride out of the Port of Baltimore and into the Bay to ride out the hurricane. [...]
Expedition Medical Kits — For Journeys Long and Short
The Expedition Medical Chest series is unlike the cheap kits you get from the typical marine supply house, these kits are stocked with professional-grade supplies and tools to help you deal with health emergencies while at sea.
Time to Check Your Insurance for Hurricane Coverage
An updated 2011 Atlantic basin hurricane forecast from Colorado State University yesterday should serve as a reminder to all East Coast and Gulf Coast boaters to check their insurance policies for hurricane coverage. More importantly, now is the time to create your own “hurricane plan” — whether it is to move the boat, haul it, secure [...]
Maybe You Don’t Need 3G on Your iPad 2?
Brian Chen, at Wired, has a piece today that suggests a clever way to avoid having to pay the extra money for a 3G version of the iPad 2 just to get GPS and phone data network capability. The solution basically involves using your current Smartphone as a wireless hotspot. Here’s an excerpt of his [...]
Routes Function in ActiveCaptain Will Change the Game
I know that’s a bold statement, but when I can have access to a library that will eventually likely hold many thousands of already planned (by me AND other boaters) routes, and then someday soon use those routes with more ActiveCaptain technology to tell me what’s up ahead, I will be in a different place [...]
Vessel Assist San Diego Refloats Sunken Nordhavn 75 EYF
Vessel Assist San Diego routinely performs some pretty amazing salvage work, but refloating a 150-ton Nordhavn 75 EYF that sank in its slip in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, was an especially prodigious effort since it required driving all the proper salvage equipment 24 hours down the Mexican penninsula. You can read the full story [...]
Nobeltec: The Future Has No Dongle
I have seen the future of Nobeltec, and it has no. . . okay, okay, I couldn’t resist. But c’mon, let’s admit, that dongle was the only real thing we hated about Nobeltec navigation software. And yes, I know all the reasons they had for using it, but it really got in the way. And [...]
Fugawi Offers Avia Instrument Display Software
Fugawi announced today the availability of its new Avia Motor and Avia Sail instrument software. If you have NMEA 0183 or 2000 data streams, you can use this software to set up a nice monitor configuration that suits your preference. The software will read 0183 data via a standard serial port input, or using an [...]
New Website for C-Map by Jeppesen
Jeppesen, a Boeing company, said today it has launched a revamped website for its light marine business. The new look is clean and uncluttered and looks like it will be much easier to navigate. I’m a big fan of “white space” on websites. It allows your eye to quickly capture the most important information, and [...]
Rough Weather Video
Yeah, I know I really shouldn’t be doing this. Showing rough-weather videos to boating junkies is like feeding the bears at Yellowstone. It’s not good for them. They want more. They will go to YouTube and spend (waste) hours looking at rough-water videos, then bad weather videos, then tornado videos, then videos of that cool [...]
First Verizon iPad NOT for Boaters
I’ve been pretty happy over the last couple of years with the quality of signal that I get on Verizon’s networks in the United States. I have not, however, been happy with their equipment — in particular their use of the term “GPS” to describe the cellular- and WiFi-derived position reporting. It is most [...]
How to Mark Your Anchor Chain
This post is the result of an item on Jeffrey Siegel’s personal blog, Taking Paws, on which he and his wife Karen document their travels aboard aCappella, a 53′ RPH DeFever trawler. The subject of marking your anchor chain is a popular one on forums and discussion boards around the boating world, and one of the [...]
New Hope for Seasickness Prevention
NASA research provides hope for an effective, new preventive technique against seasickness.
Rescue Video – BoatU.S. EPIRB Rental Saves Three
Renting an EPIRB from BoatU.S. for the occasional offshore passage might just save your life; like it did for these three sailors off the coast of northern California. Check out the video for the dramatic Coast Guard rescue.
Maxi Speedboat First to Reach Bermuda
The 100-footer Maxi Speedbird beats all the other boats to Bermuda in the 2010 Newport Bermuda Race. We’ve got a nice video tour of Speedboat.
Newport Bermuda Race Nears Start
The 47th edition of the Newport to Bermuda race is now three days away from its June 18 start in Newport, Rhode Island. Follow with the iTrack service.
Are You Prepared for a Bad Hurricane Season?
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center this week said the hurricane outlook for the Atlantic Basin this year is for an “active to extremely active” season. While it’s always important to be prepared with a plan for how to deal with severe weather — not only at sea but while moored — the prospect of a worse-than-average [...]
Sea Sense Adds Trawler Training on Chesapeake
Sea Sense has added single-engine trawler training on Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis, MD. These new courses are both the traditional scheduled classes for women as well as customized instructional charters for couples, families, and groups. Training is conducted aboard a new, 47-foot Selene trawler, fully equipped from galley to flybridge with every modern amenity. You [...]
Writers on the Water
Okay, so it’s not quite as memorable (yet?) as “Riders on the Storm,” the 1971 hit by The Doors, but a new blog by writers Christine Kling and Mike Jastrzebski called Write on the Water, is a place to talk about the intersection of writing and living and working on the water. I was the guest [...]
Video Debut: The Underway Series from OceanLines, Episode 1
By way of introducing this new video series, let me re-state what will become obvious to you: I am a writer. And writers may have great ideas for video but viewers will likely suffer a bit while the writer learns to be a filmmaker. And with that ugly excuse for the quality of our first [...]
USCG Photo Contest Winners for 2009
Last month, the U.S. Coast Guard announced the winners of its “People’s Choice” photo contest, which we covered here. This month we have the winners of the in-house photo contest from the Coasties. These are great photos and although we’ve all seen similar photos before, we can’t seem to get enough of them. When you [...]
Video: Running a Rough Inlet
The video you see here was taken while departing the Fort Pierce, Florida, inlet, Friday, April 16. The tide was running out strongly and the wind and seas were running in just as strongly. The resulting washing-machine ride was rather sporty, although our Krogen 58′ handled it well. At one point, we realize we’ve forgotten [...]
Krogen 58′ Northbound: Part 2
It’s 2 p.m. on Friday and I’m stowing my camera gear carefully in the salon of this big yacht when I hear a sudden muted rumble from below decks. Our captain, Kadey-Krogen Project Manager Gregg Gandy, has started the John Deere diesels. We’re ready to depart our Jensen Beach, Florida, marina and head north to [...]
North From Florida on a Krogen 58′
I’m currently aboard a new Kadey-Krogen 58′ at the Four Fish Marina in Jensen Beach, Florida, making final preparations to head north to Annapolis with the boat. It’s a unique opportunity to give the current queen of the Kadey-Krogen fleet a thorough test in her natural offshore element. As soon as a new radar unit [...]
Fugawi Announces NavPlanner 2 and Updated Marine ENC
Fugawi recently announced the release of Navionics NavPlanner2, powered by Fugawi. The company also said it has released version 4.5.5 of its Fugawi Marine ENC. NavPlanner2 is an atlas of U.S. coastal waters, navigable waterways, and more than 12,000 inland lakes for use on a home computer for map viewing, searching, printing, waypoint planning and [...]
Will Your Liferaft Work When You Need It?
Last year’s “Baja Ha Ha,” the fleet cruise from San Diego to Mexico, provides yet another impetus for all ocean cruisers to reconsider their liferaft situation. You DO have one, right? And it HAS been maintained, inspected and re-certified, right? And you actually know what’s stored in it and how to use it, right? And [...]
Sushi Run Boats Prepare for 2010 Continuation
Ken Williams, who, with his wife Roberta, owns the Nordhavn 68 Sans Souci, reports that the 2010 cruising season for the boats of the Great Siberian Sushi Run (GSSR) is approaching. In an email today to followers of his blog, Williams reports that the boats, which traveled from Seattle, Washington to Osaka Japan last year, [...]
Second Great Technique for Dinghy Anchoring
Our recent piece by Jeff Siegel of ActiveCaptain about a novel dinghy anchoring technique stimulated quite a bit of discussion from readers and we even heard about another, possibly even better, technique from John Marshall, owner of the Nordhavn 55 Serendipity. Marshall discovered a particular product that makes the process of anchoring the dinghy off [...]
