Navigation

Lessons from attending a seminar with Terry Sparks author of Radar Made Simple for Cruisers

I don't know why Seapilot is selling the Compact at half price -- and all its Class B AIS transponders, too -- but maybe it's because many boaters don't yet realize how much a GPS (GNSS) compass like this can do.

Yup, you're going to be able to easily collect soundings as you cruise, if you want, you can watch the resulting high def sonar chart materialize in your wake.

My expectations for the recently announced On The Water ChartGuides were high, but darn if checking out a whole 120 page review copy didn't blow me away.

NOAA’s quest to better understand the world’s seafloor continues, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has committed two of its ships to collect and update chart data in the Arctic.

Cruising guide and PassageMaker 'Frugal Fav' authors, Mark & Diana Doyle, have published their new, two-volume “ChartGuide” series including over 3,000 guidance notes and annotations for the Intracoastal Waterway.

Social Studies: In these days of oversharing, boaters now have a way to get the best, most up-to-date charts by joining the “in” crowd.

This is the story of Monty and Sara Lewis, authors of the Explorer Chartbooks of the Bahamas. For the past 17 years, they have been supplying fellow cruisers with essential intelligence, gathered aboard their 1978 Mainship 34 Saranade.

Take a stroll down the memory lane of navigation. Many years ago, during what often seems like another lifetime, it was my job as a U.S. Merchant Marine officer to shoot a couple sun sights a day with a sextant, weather permitting. The task was a pleasure, really. It called for a set of physical skills that a guy like me could first learn, then practice, and then finally master in an almost artsy, albeit seriously practical way.

In an effort to combat noise pollution, the U.S. Coast Guard is replacing many of its fixed sound signals with foghorns that mariners themselves activate. Each new Notice to Mariners lists additional foghorns that are being converted to MRASS, which stands for Mariner Radio Activated Sound Signal.

There are two categories of boaters: those who plan, and those who don’t. Electronic voyage-planning software can mean fuel savings, safer cruising, and more fun—so why don’t you use it?