|
By Ben Ellison — Fall
2004
What the Siegels did add to the helm is the GPS-equipped Palm Pilot on the left side of the photo. In fact, Jeffrey is the freelance (a cappella) programmer who created the Maptech Outdoor Navigator (ON) charting program that’s running on the Palm, and he is naturally bullish about the value of PDAs for cruising. Beyond simply having ON as a redundant plotter, he and Karen often use it and its suction-cup mount in their tender. They also find that access to two entirely different electronic chart formats is useful, especially in the Bahamas, where official chart data or its vector clones is quite weak. Jeffrey also uses his Palm to manage maintenance schedules, parts numbers, and more. He has developed a system for moving routes created in ON, often while ashore or in his bunk, into the Raymarine system (a feature possibly coming to the new edition of ON).
The most noteworthy gear on aCappella
is probably a homely looking, four-foot, omni-directional 12-dbA WiFi
antenna bungee-corded to a rail. Jeffrey ferreted it out from an industrial
communications company (www.hyperlinktech.com)
with hopes of optimizing the fast wireless Internet connections being
offered by an increasing number of marinas. In actuality, aCappella
found connections (even while anchored) an astounding 90 percent of the
time in the Abacos, 70 percent in Florida, and usually free, compliments
of waterfront households or businesses willing to share their internal
WiFi networks.
Jeffrey hopes someone will develop a WiFi antenna and cabling system better suited to boats, and I agree! He’s also working on a camera system (not a Raymarine feature yet) to help with docking, and on what he calls “an intelligent anchor alarm” involving a SeaTalk link to a stateroom PDA. I look forward to hearing about these and whatever else the Siegels find to keep aCappella singing during their next roundtrip this winter.
Good Gizmo
One of the Siegels’ favorite gadgets is a Raytek MiniTemp infrared
thermometer. They use it primarily during engine-room checks to scan things
like exhaust manifolds and alternators for anomalies, but they’ve
also “raygunned” wiring for bad connections and their dog
Tucker when he seemed peaked. The $79 MT2 model from Raytek
(800-866-5478, www.raytek.com)
measures 0°F to 500°F over a six-inch target at its maximum three-foot
range; a model with laser sighting is also available.
»Noteworthy Gear
Raymarine 631 Plotter, L760 Fishfinder, RL80CRC Radar/Plotter, ST7001+ Autopilot, and ST60 Tridata; ICOM M127 VHF, 402 VHF, and 702 SSB; Sharp Aquos flat-panel TV; KVH Trac 4 Satellite TV
<< Next page << Part 1: aCappella’s radar, with its four-foot, 4-kw open-array scanner, is especially valued. Page
1,
2
|
