Keep your cell phone stowed in a dry place and use Cobra's bouyant and waterproof cell phone surrogate instead. By mating an HH475 handheld VHF with a phone using Bluetooth technology, a boater can chat with callers anywhere up to 30 feet away from their phone, a distance well suited to most cruising vessels. Cobra's "Rewind-Say-Again" mode records and can replay up to 20 seconds of a call, a potentially life-saving feature. The HH475 also allows you to return the most recent call to your phone, and its noise-cancelling microphone actually improves the audio quality of a phone call. Cost is $180. Log on to www.cobra.com to learn more.
Satellite communications provider Inmarsat says it will release its first handset this June. Besides offering voice communications across the globe, the IsatPhone Pro will be Bluetooth capable for hands-free use and will provide voicemail, texting, and email messaging. It can be tethered to a laptop for emailing and browsing the web, albeit very slowly. The IsatPhone Pro can display position coordinates and include them in text messages. There's nothing official yet on pricing, but insiders say the cost may come in just under $1,000. The IsatPhone Pro will be available through Inmarsat distributors, including Global Satellite USA of Ft. Lauderdale. (Visit www.inmarsat.com or www.globalsatellite.us.)
C-Map cartography is back aboard Furuno chart plotters, thanks to an alliance between C-Map's parent company, Jeppesen, and the Japanese hardware manufacturer. Praised for its powerful features and ease of use, Furuno's NavNet 3D system will now have the added advantage of C-Map's trusted cartography, which, like Garmin, includes the Explorer Chart data for the Bahamas. In fact, the new U.S. East Coast and Bahamas charts were just released, to be followed shortly by updates for the coastal United States, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes and rivers, Canada, and Baja, Mexico. After that, well...the world. Besides charting data, selected Jeppesen "point of interest" information also will be available at the touch of a button. Existing Furuno customers can upgrade their software to use C-Map charting. Find out more at www.jeppesen.com/lightmarine or www.furunousa.com.
JUDGING INNOVATION
This year I was asked to be one of the judges for a contest organized by the National Marine Manufacturers Association to reward innovation. The award in the Consumer Electronics and Software category went to Standard Horizon (www.standardhorizon.com) for its GX2100 MATRIX VHF radio, which has a built-in AIS receiver and a small display that shows the nearest 10 target vessels. There was little disagreement among the judges, who were particularly impressed by the $400 price tag. Keep in mind what it costs these days just to buy a stand-alone AIS receiver.
Besides providing a graphical representation of your vessel and nearby AIS targets, the GX2100 lets you contact those vessels directly using DSC (digital selective calling) and sounds an alarm when an AIS-equipped ship approaches too close to you. The AIS and VHF function with a single VHF antenna. When connected to a GPS, the radio can function as a mini chart plotter, making it an excellent choice for big-boat tenders. Standard Horizon has hit a home run, and I expect that all VHF manufacturers will be releasing a similar product shortly.
The runner-up in the Electronics category was Simrad's NSE12 multifunction display. Parent company Navico may have phased out the Northstar chart plotter line, but the NSE series of multifunction displays incorporates elements of Northstar's widely admired "human-machine interface," which means the NSEs are dead simple to use. Another ease-of-use feature is an alphanumeric keypad, unusual nowadays. The NSEs are designed, of course, for imaging Navico's innovative Broadband Radar and StructureScan sonar readouts. They also incorporate a GPS and Nautic Insight cartography, and they accept Navionics cartography via an SD card. The die-cast aluminum housing is waterproof. The 12-inch model lists for $4,595, the 8-inch for $3,295 (visit www.simrad-yachting.com).
