Keeping your boat secure is always a challenge. Video security is hard to do because of bandwidth and cost. Arlo cameras have solved this for my sailboat, providing high quality video day or night, low bandwidth use, and easy to install and stow while underway.
Seattle and Elliott Bay is a busy marine location, and I am always looking for a better AIS system so that others can see me clearly. AMEC has released the B600 AIS Class B transponder with more than double the transmit power, and fast 5 second updates.
My helm station has always been an area of continued improvement. When I first bought Grace in 2015, she had no chart plotter or other instruments – only older Raymarine ST series depth and wind instruments.
Raymarine continues to release updates to Lighthouse 3 on a fairly aggressive schedule. The latest is version 3.2 which includes support for three things I was very interested in – Navionics dock-to-dock autorouting, Fusion audio support, and upgrading other Raymarine devices.
T-Mobile changed the unlimited benefit while roaming - the monthly data allowance has shrunk, and the speeds have dropped from LTE to 3G once you hit that limit. Boaters will be affected who use T-Mobile, as I do, out on the water.
One of the most hated bits of the boat is the head. Every boat I have owned has had a unique set of steps required to make sure things “work out” for everyone involved. I replaced the head with a Raritan SeaEra electric model. The crew absolutely loves it, and considers it the best upgrade.
Raymarine released LightHouse 3.1 with a number of new improvements and fixes. I installed it a few days after it was released, and tested it out. I found a number of really nice things that were added, specifically around the auto pilot integration, and some work left to do.
Attaching things to random places on the boat seems like a common occurrence, and sometimes hard to do. I stumbled across Fix Clips and I don’t need anything else.
Time to haul and paint and complete some other projects. Chart plotter installed along with a new Doyle sail cover.
Raymarine Axiom and Lighthouse 3 review and first impressions. A fantastic upgrade to Raymarine's software, with excellent hardware supporting it. Still some work to do with the software.
My sailboat network is quite extensive, and I made a lot of changes in 2017 including a radar arch, new instruments, updates to connectors and more.
First long trip of the year included testing out a lot of new gear, as well as a scary 12 knot passage through Cattle Pass. All turned out well, and a visit to the San Juans was just what we needed.
