Boating and Marine Reviews
Finally – after waiting 6 months for a haul out to get some top secret stuff installed on our test boat – we wanted to do another test at the same time.
As we are changing propellers from 3/3 bladed to 4/3 bladed Mercruiser propellers – we thought no better time than the present to do a 1:1 competition between two of the top contenders for propeller anti fouling – PropSpeed and PropGold.
So who will be the winner?
Continue reading PropSpeed vs PropGold – Today marks the start of the challenge
After a long delivery time – plus an additional one month “delay” from the UAE distributor
– our new Mercury Dynamic RIB 250 (Sold as Mercury Dynamic RIB 260 in the USA) – finally arrived.
One can say it is well packaged. The the local Mercury distributor decided to deliver it to me in the international shipping crate – with only one driver accompanying it.
With the crate I think the weight was above 100 kg – since it broke my little dolly certified for 140 kg.
The Mercury Dynamic RIB 250/260 is a inflatable dinghy with fibreglass bottom and rear end. So no wooden plates or air filled keel. It is about the same weight as other Dinghy’s the same size – but with fibreglass bottom we should have better performance and more precise steering. Continue reading Mercury Dynamic Rib 250 / 260 unboxing and First Looks
As you might remember – Garmin issued a recall for Garmin quatix watches during the
summer of 2013.
Well – FINALLY I got a “new” quatix – about 2 weeks ago. The new quatix watch works almost like the old one. But so far I have not burned my wrist 🙂 as the old one could.
But it seems like they have changed the GPS software – now the GPS has a heck of a lot of dampening – so GPS speed indication can take 30-60 seconds to show the speed you are really doing. That is COMPLETELY useless.
Sailing in a dinghy you need fast feedback on how fast you are going. You don’t have time to wait a minute or two before you are certain what your speed is. I rather have a battery life of 4 hours than any kind of speed dampening. I have looked through the manual and cannot find anywhere to disable speed dampening – so I guess that is a “factory feature”
Anyway – I still think the watch is mostly useless due to the small screen. Racing with it on in my dinghy is close to impossible. The numbers are too small – and you need too many button presses to make it useful. When you are busy handling multiple sails while steering – sailing single handed – there are no free hands to press a lot of buttons multiple times to get to the menu you need – or the display you need for that part.
So if you sail dinghy – you are better off using a dedicated sailing computer like Velocitek or the likes where the display is huge and crisp – and GPS speed is close to instant. But on a bigger cruiser / sail boat – results might be better. I might get a “NMEA 2000 -> ANT +” interface for it and try it out on my big boat at some point. But I’m not really “burning” to try it.
But on my wishlist would be a wireless ultrasonic solar powered Wind-dicator 🙂 that could talk to the sailing computer – and survive the dinghy being upside down from time to time. That would be neat!
So something like LCJ Capteurs CV7SFÂ but with Bluetooth LE AND ANT+ interface. ANT+ alone would not cut it for me as it is to proprietary and owned by Garmin.
Garmin announced the new Garmin Helm remote control App for iOS (iPhone/iPad) this
week. So far it only supports the new Garmin GPSMAP 8000 series via Wi-Fi. Later other GPSMAP models will be included. But since we have a Garmin GPSMAP 8008 on the test-bed, we decided to take the Garmin Helm app for a test-run.
As we don’t have a Garmin Wi-Fi access-point – we rigged up our own with a Cradlepoint MBR1400 router. Â We configured the CradlePoint so 2 of the Ethernet ports and one virtual Wi-Fi access-points is routed to Garmin normal B class (176.16.x.x/255.255.0.0) – then we plugged the Garmin 8008 into the CradlePoint router. Continue reading Garmin Helm iPad & iPhone App review
From the announcement in November 2012 – until delivery in mid June 2013 -finally I got
the Garmin 741xs. So was it worth the wait? And is it better than the Garmin GPSMAP 720/740?
The unit arrived Sunday afternoon – and was installed on the boat 3 hours later with NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183 connected, using my test setup with Tallonsocket and a RAM Mount. Continue reading Garmin GPSMAP 741xs unboxing & first looks
Got my new Garmin quatix yesterday – and here is a few pictures for those of you who wants to know what is in the box.
Continue reading Garmin quatix un-boxing an first impressions
This is just a quick “flash” 🙂
I updated my HDS G2 Touch – and all went well. GoFree works perfect like on my NSS8.
The first thing I tried 🙂 was of course Map sharing between NSS8 and HDS G2 Touch – and it works! Impressive and very nice!
Lets see if my problems with “device configuration resets” have been solved.
Update:
Well – Map sharing also works with Structure Scan Maps – my NSS8 has the Navionics maps – and the HDS G2 has my StrucureScan (now HD) maps. And the HDS happily shares those with the NSS – while getting Navionics Charts the other way. Neat – but it seems like I have to reboot after adding a new structure scan map to make it available to the NSS.
And it does seem like my twin engine device configuration stays in place – but too early to tell for certain.
In many marine discussion forums the are heated debates going on about the usage of tablets as the primary MFD (Multi Function Display)/Navigation device. Questions like “Why is there not sonar and radar for iPad/Android tablets. And why should I pay $3000 for a 10” Chart Plotter from Garmin, Raymarine, Lowrance or Simrad when I have a 10” Table for less than $1000. Click to read more for our take on the issue!
![Garmin quatix post “recall” follow up [update 2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.marine-review.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Garmin-quatix-box-1.jpg?resize=600%2C510)
