This last week I took Grace out on the water twice after a ton of winter projects. The first time was a beautiful, warm day with wind and real sailing. The second time was the rainiest April day on record in 22 years in Seattle, and turned out quite a bit different.

For the last year or so, I have wanted to build a community focused on marine electronics, networking and technology

Raymarine continues their updates for Lighthouse with version 3.4 which includes a number of new features, bug fixes, and features that we had in version II. The most exciting addition is apps for Netflix, Spotify and Theyr, and the promise of even more in the future.

For almost two years I have been testing, re-testing, and re-wiring my setup on Grace in an effort to find the best LTE antenna configuration.

Connecting marine electronics together is an important goal for modern boaters. The Nemo gateway from Rose Point is an easy way to connect everything together, while also easily providing high quality, frequent data to a number of sources.

Raymarine continue to come out with updates to Lighthouse v3 that include new features and bring forward items from v2. Version 3.3 was released a few weeks ago, and includes support for older eS and gS series MFDs, Navionics Plotter Sync, and new features around radar and sonar.

I made a decision to have a single battery bank for both my house and starting needs on Grace. I use a NOCO Genius Boost jump starter to ensure I won't end up dead in the water. It gives me around 20 chances to start even if my entire battery bank is dead.

I redesigned my nav and electrical panel, and finally got the parts to put it all together. A fun and beautiful project!

The Stainless Lobster Fridge Optimizer still remains one of my favorite additions, mainly because of the massive power savings and visibility. Recently, the folks at Stainless Lobster released new firmware that supports output of stats via the USB port and is compatible with SignalK.

My navigation and electrical panel has been in need of an update for a while. In addition, I have never liked the electrical circuit layout, and am out of DC circuits. I have a general design of what I would like, but still have not settled on a final solution for the electrical panel.

I am always on the look out for ways to make my instruments more reliable. I came across the Raymarine ITC-5. It seemed perfect to help increase the quality of my network while replacing some old pieces.

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.