Quadra is an old boat trying to be up to date. She left port this season with several new gadgets aboard. Here’s a review of a few. Watch for more later.
AirMar. This is a pricey electronic weather center (about $1,000) that is easy to install and provides a lot of information –wind speed and direction (true and apparent), temperature, barometric pressure, wind chill, lat-long and etc.
I operate with one monitor that I use principally for navigation and there is no way I could find to display any AirMar information simultaneously with chart plotting. I need to switch back and forth between programs and that’s a nuisance.
AirMar delivers real time info and maintains a record of recent winds, temps and barometric pressure. All very useful
AirMar also should figure out how to display the most important weather data – wind speed and direction – in a small box that could be displayed in a corner of the nav screen. I would give it a couple of stars if it makes those improvements.
AIS. I installed an ICOM type B receiver because it is able to use an existing VHF antenna. I have no more room for antennas, nor do I have any space remaining for threading cables. ICOM instructions are precise and easy to understand. Installation was a bit of a struggle for me because of the need to run cables from its “black box” on the bridge to the lower helm station.
I needed to run GPS data in a pair of wires from the lower helm to the ICOM box on the bridge. Then another pair had to make the return trip to send vessel data to the plotter. I used a cable with a bundle of five conductors and had to find a way to run only one cable from one deck to another.
Once in place, the ICOM AIS worked well. In running the ocean coastline of Queen Charlotte Strait it quickly picked up and identified vessels equipped with data transmitters. It found little to display in cruising the Broughton archipelago simply because few larger craft use those waters.
I paid about $400 for it. Earlier I had used a $200 unit (on another boat) and it worked well, but required a separate antenna. If you’re interested in the ICOM, shop wisely because the price ranges widely among on-line and store-front retailers.
XM Radio. One of the best devices ever to come aboard. Ellen Kaiser, my cruising partner, is a baseball fan and we have been able to enjoy broadcasts of Seattle Mariners games all summer.
We tried to use the FM modulation system – in which the XM receiver transmits a radio signal to a “blank” channel on an FM receiver – and were disappointed. I have a Bose radio system on board and it is superb, but every FM channel it displays has some kind of a signal that interfered with XM reception. I then made a direct audio connection between XM and Bose and we were overwhelmed by the quality of the sound.
Once, in a confined harbor ringed by tall, sharply rising hills, we lost the satellite signal temporarily while neighboring boats did not. I think that was because I used a surface mount Terk antenna on the fly bridge while neighbors had their XM antennas standing higher on standard poles.
Satellite radio offers an interesting array of musical choices. Some are not of interest to me, but there are so many possible selections that there was no problem finding several that broadcast “my kind” of music. Classical offerings are thin. And needing to get news from the tabloid reporters at Fox, CNN and MSNBC sometimes is frustrating for me, a print journalist for more than 50 years. Once in a while, though, we found a news person who knew what his/her job was.
Losing the signal temporarily was not a huge loss. While we were “in the dark” behind the ring of hills, I switched on an IPOD that is loaded with the right kind of tunes.
5 Mile WiFi antenna. Another pricey gadget at about $400 – and it works. I’m not sure I need it, however, because of the rapidly improving quality of internet services along the northwest coast and the ability of contemporary PCs to pick up those signals without additional antennas.
I bought it because of disappointing experiences on the coast the last few years. Not all marinas provided internet service and some that did broadcast inadequate signals. I remember some marina and resort operators put LinkSys routers in a back room and expected them to reach hundreds of yards. I have one at home, and it’s fine there, but it is too much to ask one to blanket a harbor and serve dozen boats. Several times, I had to search out the router on shore and connect the computer to it with an ethernet cable.
Today, however, most of the small, remote marinas that cater to serious cruisers have improved stations that send a strong signal over the water. Nearly all are linked to satellites. Some more sophisticated computer users say marina systems may lack sufficient bandwidth for heavy use by a number of boaters or for programs such as video messaging with Skype, but they served me well for email, browsing and for sending these blogs and photos to PassageMaker Magazine.
Some charge (one marine resort asks $5 a day on the honor system) but most do not. In the larger ports along the coast I find commercial providers, whose fees ranges from $4 to $10 for 24 hours. Credit card required. Competition is tough, however, because many ports and small towns provide free internet service that is of equal quality.
I connected the 5 mile WiFi antenna (which contains a signal amplifier) directly to my dedicated ship’s desk-top computer. It usually will pick up a flock of signals. Most are secure and not available, while other signals often too feeble to use. Still, if service was available, the antenna would find it and I enjoyed using available, free service – but with a strong concern for privacy. The ship’s commuter does not have an internal WiFi antenna, so the good service of the 5 Mile device was welcome.
We travel with two personal computers on board. In previous years they struggled with weak wireless signals, provoking extreme frustration. This year, because of upgrades on shore, they worked as well as the costly 5 Mile system in nearly every harbor without need for expensive supplemental antennas.
Commercial operators that provide fee-based internet service in larger coastal harbors argue that powerful receiving antennas – sold by them – are necessary. I’m thinking that’s not necessarily the case.