Want more width on the screens at your boat’s helm? Simrad Yachting’s new NSX Ultrawide might be the marine display to check out at the boat shows this year.

Simrad unveiled the NSX Ultrawide in early January, saying it is up to 63 percent wider than previous NSX displays—with the goal being to have the equivalent of dual screens in one place, without all the muss and fuss that usually comes with installing multiple screens at a boat’s helm.

“With a showstopping aesthetic and enhanced functionality, the NSX Ultrawide is setting a new standard in the marketplace, and we are proud to pave the way,” Kevin Steinbraker, vice president and general manager, digital systems of Navico Group, stated in a press release. “Whether in their cars, computer monitor at work, or the TVs in their homes, consumers have grown accustomed to and love the benefits of ultra-wide screens. Now they can have those same experiences at the helm with immersive graphics and flexible viewing splits.”

The NSX Ultrawide is available in 12- and 15-inch screen sizes. Simrad says it’s versatile enough for small to midsize center consoles, surf and wake boats, and cruisers. Multiple NSX Ultrawide displays can be combined at a single helm station, for boaters who want to see even more data and information all in one location.

The latest C-Map Discover X charts are optimized for NSX, which includes this new Ultrawide display. The high-pixel density of the Ultrawide display shows super–sharp resolution, according to Simrad, giving users unprecedented levels of detail. For avid anglers, extra detail can be added with an upgrade to Reveal X, which has shaded relief and satellite imagery.

The X-Gen charts also have features such as the new C-Map Safety Alerts, which are built to automatically alert users to hazards up ahead, ranging from shallow waters to buoys.

Additionally, in what Simrad says is an industry first, the C-Map X-Chart Manager lets users manage C-Map chart updates and upgrades directly from their device, with the ability to choose custom areas for a near-instant download.

Do most people prefer bigger displays? The National Institutes of Health sure thinks so. It cites a study on its website that says the answer is yes, at least when it comes to screen sizes on smartphones. Researchers found that a large screen, compared to a small screen, promotes perceived ease of use.

Take the next step: visit simrad-yachting.com

The post Simrad Unveils NSX Ultrawide appeared first on Yachting.

The SS Pacific, a 223-foot side-wheel steamer, departed Victoria, British Columbia, on November 4, 1875, bound for San Francisco. Its cargo included gold and coal, the latter from a mine operated by the ship’s owners, as well as 275-plus passengers and 50-plus crewmembers.

Pacific encountered heavy weather as it steamed west out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then south past Washington’s Cape Flattery.

The crew aboard the northbound Orpheus, a 200-foot square-rigger, mistook Pacific’s masthead light for the Cape Flattery Lighthouse. The ships collided, damaging Orpheus’ rigging and—it’s believed—opening planks on Pacific’s hull. Frigid seawater likely swamped the hot boilers, triggering an explosion.

Some 325 souls were lost on that storm-tossed night. Only two people survived, making it one of the West Coast’s worst maritime disasters. Also, because Orpheus was navigationally blind, Pacific’s final resting spot was unknown.

In 1980, Jeff Hummel, then a student at the University of Washington, and Matt McCauley, Hummel’s high school buddy, recovered a World War II-era warplane from Seattle’s Lake Washington. They were sued, but they won the case and all salvage rights.

This is when Hummel heard about another group that was searching for Pacific, which he had known about, piquing his interest. “They eventually quit,” he says, adding that he thought it was a good project. “I just kept doing it.”

A marine-industry career—Nobeltec (now TimeZero), then Rose Point Navigation Systems—followed, but Hummel’s interest in the long-lost Pacific endured. In 2004, he purchased SeaBlazer, an 80-foot Desco trawler that he refitted to search for Pacific, and he again partnered with McCauley. The two founded the nonprofit Northwest Shipwreck Alliance and Rockfish Inc., their for-profit commercial salvage operation.

While numerous expeditions had searched for Pacific since 1985, Hummel says that Rockfish’s approach hinged on careful use of technology—including expertise in modifying off-the-shelf sonar equipment and building remotely operated vehicles—and key pieces of physical evidence.

Generations of commercial fishermen have scoured the waters off Cape Flattery, and they occasionally net artifacts, including chamber pots and coal. “The coal was really the key,” Hummel says, adding that because Pacific’s owners also operated a coal mine, he was able to send a sample to a laboratory to test against coal from the mine.

They matched.

The Rockfish team leveraged this information, coupled with fishermen’s GPS data, to reduce the search area from 338 square miles to just 2 square miles. While this was a huge reduction, technical sonar-imaging work remained. “It was an area that was difficult to search,” Hummel says.

That’s where technology, including their custom-built sonar, came into the picture.

“We made our own transducers,” Hummel says, explaining that the team purchased off-the-shelf Simrad StructureScan transducers, chemically dissolved their potted encapsulating material, removed the piezoceramic elements and microprocessors, and then rebuilt them using “magic concrete” as the replacement encapsulating material. The result, he says, is transducers that can withstand far greater water-depth pressures than the originals.

The next step involved fitting these bespoke transducers into a towfish, which the team flew about 35 feet above the seafloor.

“We also developed our own robotics equipment,” Hummel says. This included two remotely operated vehicles—dubbed Falkor and Draco—that are equipped with Blueprint Subsea-built Oculus multibeam imaging sonars and that are capable of operating at depths down to 3,240 feet. “It’s kind of like having a radar on the robot,” Hummel says, adding that the ROVs were designed around these instruments. “We can find a beer bottle 100 feet away and drive the robot straight to it.”

The team also built a camera sled, which provides seafloor optics and collects artifacts via its rake.

The team leveraged ReefMaster software, plus SeaBlazer’s Garmin echo sounder, to create their own bathymetric charts. Critically, this software also allowed the team to create a points-of-interest database in real time as they scanned the bottom, so they could later revisit and evaluate.

This is how, after 12 search expeditions between 2017 and 2022, the Rockfish team identified their sunken needle in July 2022.

The first job was to comb the search area for points of interest using the towed sonar array. “It took a lot of convincing,” Hummel says of their first look at the wreck. “It wasn’t obvious at all.”

The image that convinced them that they had located their needle was of two circular seafloor depressions. These indents matched the 24-foot diameters of Pacific’s paddle wheels. “You’re not going to find two identical things on the bottom of the ocean,” Hummel says. “It has to be man-made.”

The team returned to the site aboard SeaBlazer, this time with two camera sleds and the ROVs. Once they ensured that the area was free of ROV-threatening snags, they dispatched Falkor to reimage the wreck with its Oculus sonar and to measure the hull’s timber spacing. “That matched up exactly to the timber spacing on Pacific,” Hummel says.

Finally, the team employed Falkor’s grabber arm to retrieve a piece of worm-eaten hull wood, and the camera sled’s rake to collect a chunk of a firebrick.

The team presented their findings and were granted salvage rights in November. Weather permitting, they’re planning numerous salvage expeditions this year.

Finding a long-lost ship isn’t a cheap venture, even if the incentives for finding it—including the gold that’s believed to have been aboard—are handsome. “So far, we have spent $2.1 million,” Hummel says. “We believe it will be a profitable venture. … The value of the wreck is substantial.”

Precious cargo will be sold, with funding being shared among Rockfish’s owners and Pacific’s underwriters. All salvaged cultural artifacts and personal belongings will be donated to a museum that the Northwest Shipwreck Alliance hopes to build in the Puget Sound area.

While Hummel may point to Rockfish’s use of digital and analog evidence as keys to finding Pacific, ultimately, the discovery also required a 40-plus-year friendship between two high school buddies who refused to give up.  

The post Using Innovative Electronics to Find ‘Pacific’ appeared first on Yachting.

Black cables of different lengths hang from tines, awaiting testing. Each cable is fitted with connectors that align with hardware from all the marine-electronics manufacturers. If all goes well with the tests, then packaging and shipping are next.

While it’s odd to see just-minted cabling for Furuno, Garmin, Humminbird, Raymarine and Simrad on the same factory floor, that’s how this place works. Since its founding in 1982, Airmar Technology Corp. has ensured that its transducers play nicely with third-party fish finders, sonars and multifunction displays. As Craig Cushman, Airmar’s director of marketing, explains by analogy: “We don’t build marine electronics. We build high-end speakers.”

In 1982, engineer Steve Boucher founded Airmar in Milford, New Hampshire, with the goal of innovating and manufacturing better acoustic-sensing transducers. The company’s first product was a transom-mounted transducer that worked with a variety of fish finders. Today, Airmar makes everything from proximity sensors to acoustic rain sensors to flow sensors to high-end chirp transducers. The common denominator in all this product diversity is Airmar’s expertise in sonar and ultrasonic-sensing technologies. The company is the leading global manufacturer of high-end transducers.

Since its founding, Airmar has produced both branded and white-label products for third-party companies. This arrangement has freed marine-electronics manufacturers to pursue their own areas of expertise, and has let Airmar form close-knit partnerships to produce transducers that are critical to many big players’ products.

Just as Airmar grew its product portfolio from a humble, transom-hung transducer to sensors that now govern bottling plants and Chicago city buses, the business has also grown to include multiple other companies. These include Marport, which manufactures sensors, echo sounders, current profilers and sonars for the commercial-fishing market; Gemeco and Airmar EMEA, both distribution companies; and a defense-contracting operation. Roughly 60 percent of Airmar’s annual revenue flows from the recreational-marine market; the other 40 percent, including some defense contracting, provides stability in other markets. Airmar is supported by 435 global employees, including some who report to offices in France, Iceland and South Africa, while 275 to 300 employees work at (or remotely from) the company’s New Hampshire headquarters.

I visited that headquarters, which is sizable with three buildings. Cushman and Susan Leuci, Airmar’s media-relations specialist, started my tour by showing me a few pieces of Airmar-built equipment, including two small paddle wheels.

“That’s our new Gen2 paddle wheel,” Cushman says, adding that it delivers accurate speed-over-water metrics at boat speeds as skinny as 0.3 knots. “A young engineer and University of New Hampshire graduate spent three years perfecting that design.”

The wheel has a precise, asymmetrical shape, and a large surface area relative to its size. There’s little room for marine growth to accumulate compared with previous offerings.

“We made that here,” Cushman says, adding that while Airmar’s injection-molding machines can rapidly fabricate components, manufacturing here is still largely a manual process. “We’re not feeding components into a machine. It’s a manual, hands-on job. A lot of craftsmanship goes into these transducers.”

Downstairs on the factory floor, in the engineering lab, new designs are being fabricated before testing commences in the adjoining research-and-development room, which is populated with racks of testing equipment and multiple freshwater tanks. Inside one tank, a wooden structure hangs vertically in the water column. The wood is cut at different and diverging angles, which allows Airmar to test for sonar-wave reflexivity. Nearby, there’s a bench with fish finders from all the major brands. Cushman explains that Airmar tests new transducers on all platforms, just like a high-end speaker company might test its creations on receivers from all the major brands.

“We’re a technology-development company, not a boating company,” Cushman says. “We attract people because of the technology, not necessarily because it goes on a boat.”

Around the R&D room, there’s equipment for hot-and-cold cycling, drop testing and atmospheric-pressure testing. No amount of pounding into offshore seaways will approximate the level of torture that Airmar conjures here.

On the main factory floor are more tank-testing facilities and multishelf wheeled carts full of transducers ready for packaging and shipping. Their housings might be bronze, molded plastic, stainless steel or urethane, but inside, each contains at least one carefully potted piezoceramic element.

“Everything is 100 percent American-manufactured,” Cushman says. “We have some circuit boards made in Canada, but everything is assembled here, in the USA, in New Hampshire.”

Cushman leads me past the area where employees batch-test incoming componentry, before taking me into the room where other employees pour encapsulating material into transducer bodies. He says that while all Airmar employees receive months of instruction and on-the-job training, encapsulation work requires special experience to ensure that air bubbles and other contaminants don’t become suspended in the matrix.

“We have decades of research into materials that perform better in certain ways,” Cushman says, adding that a big part of Airmar’s quality comes from knowing which materials will direct the highest percentage of acoustic energy into the water column by eliminating unwanted noise.

We pass keg-like barrels filled with water and through-hull transducers, clamps and wires (and occasional rubber duckies). Rows of three-story carts hold bronze through-hull transducers, their pipe stems forming a miniature copper-colored forest.

At the ultrasonic-weather-station department, several wind tunnels occupy an end of the factory floor. They can produce winds up to 100 knots. The fans are silent as we walk by, but an engineer is preparing to test an Airmar-built weather station with an ultrasonic anemometer.

Across the street, in Airmar’s newer building, the company produces high-volume, lower-cost transducers and plastic parts, and assembles wire kits. Entire pallets of wire, wound around massive wooden spools, are ready to be cut and fitted with Airmar-built third-party connectors. “Every transducer build needs miles of cables,” Cushman says.

I couldn’t help but notice, in Cushman’s office, a half-hull of Reliance, the Nathanael Greene Herreshoff-designed behemoth that successfully defended the 1903 America’s Cup. Equipment from different marine-electronics companies is on a nearby bookshelf. Much like how Reliance dominated its field of play in its day, Airmar dominates the high-end transducer business.

The real winners, of course, are yachtsmen worldwide.

Military Service

While Airmar’s transducers detect fish, the U.S. Navy stalks submarines. MSI Transducers builds bespoke and semi-bespoke transducers for commercial and defense use. Airmar acquired MSI in 2016 and introduced high-volume manufacturing. This arrangement helps MSI be cost-competitive and gives Airmar access to next-generation technologies.

The post Behind the Scenes with Airmar Technology Corp. appeared first on Yachting.

Clear above, visibility unlimited. These glorious conditions greeted us as Simrad ambassador Mark Maus drove us down Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s Stranahan River aboard his Yellowfin 36 center-console. However, it was impossible to miss the half-dozen container ships anchored a few miles offshore. We entered open waters, and Maus turned to port, paralleling the ships and spinning his Simrad Halo 3004 open-array radar. I stared at the 19-inch Simrad NSO evo3S multifunction display. The ships were there, of course, but the radar was also painting targets behind these giant metal walls. I studied the screen and compared it with the actual horizon. Moments later, a distant sailboat passed behind a ship and heaved into view, confirming the Halo 3004’s impressive returns.

Pulse-compression radars arrived in 2015, and Doppler processing arrived in 2016. Today, pulse-compression and Doppler are the industry standards. While other manufacturers build more powerful open-array radars, Simrad’s Halo 2000 and Halo 3000 radars deliver more power on target than the company’s previous-generation offerings while adding proprietary features and, for serious anglers who can accommodate a Halo 3000, Simrad’s Bird+ mode.

Halo 2000 radars are available in three sizes. As their monikers portend, Halo 2003 radars ($6,400) employ 3-foot arrays, Halo 2004 systems ($6,900) leverage 4-foot arrays, and Halo 2006 radars ($7,500) have 6-foot arrays. Halo 3000 radars are available in two sizes: Halo 3004 ($8,500), which has a 4-foot array, and Halo 3006 ($9,000), which features a 6-foot array.

All Halo 2000 radars transmit at 50 watts, while Halo 3000 radars transmit at 130 watts. The Halo 2000 radars can detect targets up to 72 nautical miles away, while Halo 3000 models deliver a maximum range of 96 nautical miles. They each have a minimum range of 20 feet. Both radars spin at variable speeds, ranging from 16 to 48 rpm. Spin rate is governed by the radar’s current operating mode, with closer-range operations requiring faster rotations than longer-range operations.

“Under the hood, everything is new,” says Laurie Bates, product director of digital systems at Navico Group, about Halo 2000 and 3000 radars, adding that this is the first major platform upgrade to Simrad’s open-array radar systems since 2015. That said, Simrad released its radome-enclosed Halo20 and Halo20+ radars, which transmit at 20 and 25 watts, respectively, in 2019, and Halo 2000 and Halo 3000 use this architecture. “We improved everything,” Bates says, adding that this includes new RF bricks, motors, gear boxes and drivetrains.

While their antenna arrays and transmitted power differ, Simrad’s Halo 2000 and Halo 3000 radars offer identical feature lists, with one significant exception: Bird+ mode (more on that later). These shared features include ZoneTrack, which Bates says is effectively a zone-based automatic-radar-plotting aid (ARPA) that automatically detects and tracks up to 50 targets within its two user-designated zones (that means users can set and define the scope shape and position of their two ZoneTrack zones); VelocityTrack, which is Simrad’s proprietary Doppler processing feature; and Dangerous Target Alerts, which identifies targets on collision courses and provides their relative range, bearing and heading.

Additionally, Halo 2000 and Halo 3000 radars support Target Tracking, where the radar concurrently seeks—and tracks—targets over short, medium and long ranges while recording a history of each target; and Watch Target, which allows a user to manually select onscreen targets for the radar to track. Both radars also feature preset user modes (read Bird, Harbor, Offshore and Weather) that electronically optimize the system’s settings to best match the vessel’s operating environment.

Halo 2000 and Halo 3000 radars also deliver dual ranges and the ability to generate synthetic Target Trails, the latter of which graphically depicts the target’s historical radar pings as onscreen trails. These trails, Bates says, provide the skipper with improved situational awareness. “Target Trails gives users confidence to see what [onscreen targets] are doing,” he says, adding that ferries or ships tend to sail in straight, shortest-course lines, while recreational vessels (say, racing sailboats) tend to move more sporadically. “You can see if [the target] is professionally or amateur-operated,” he says.

While Halo 2000 and Halo 3000 share many features—and they’re both bundled inside IP67-rated housings that can operate in winds up to 80 knots—Halo 3000 also comes with Simrad’s all-new Bird+ mode, which uses the radar’s 130 watts to locate flyers up to 8 nautical miles away.

“We actually deliberately reduce the range resolution,” Bates says of Bird+ mode, adding that Halo 3000 radars leverage a series of “range buckets.” “We enlarge the size of those [buckets] so we can try to capture a flock of birds, so [there is] a larger number of weak targets within each given range bucket.”

If this sounds counterintuitive, keep reading: “Having reduced range resolution, typically in a radar, this would be bad,” Bates continues. “But in this case, we want to do that to help us find birds.” Because of this, he says, Halo 3000 offers one range (not two) when operating in Bird+ mode. “In Bird+ mode, we’re very much saying, ‘Right now, the user has decided that they are very focused on finding birds,’ so we’re going to stop the radar from being distracted by any other mode or any other use case, and we’re 100 percent focused on tuning it for birds.”

In this mode, Dangerous Target Alerts, VelocityTrack and manual-target acquisition still work; however, Bates is clear that when operating in Bird+ mode, Halo 3000 has gone fishing.

Bates also says that the Halo 2000 radar can be fitted aboard vessels ranging from center-consoles to superyachts, while Halo 3000 will work well aboard everything from large center-consoles to larger sport-fishing battlewagons.

As for peering behind ships, Bates says no one can escape the laws of physics. “It’s always going to be challenging to see behind something very large,” he says. Good results, he explains, are “more closely linked to the [post-] processing and the actual pulse scheme that we employ, as opposed to pure [transmitting] power.”

Given the impressive features and the power ratings that are found aboard both new Halos, it’s evident that  Simrad has charted a smart course of investing in its newest radars’ RF energy, both pre- and post-transmission.

Target Practice

Recognizing birds onscreen isn’t always easy. If this sounds familiar, Simrad’s expert suggests buying a few packs of chum and deploying it on a beach in the late afternoon. Then, position your vessel nearby and study your screen. This helps build your visual reference library.

The post Full Vision with New Halo Radars appeared first on Yachting.

Welcome to the third-annual Best Elex Awards, which honor innovative marine electronics and technology products that have been reviewed and approved by the editorial team behind the four leading titles in marine media: Boating, Yachting, Cruising World and Salt Water Sportsman. At the first of the year, the nominees were evaluated by our team of eight judges, including the editors-in-chief and electronics editors of the aforementioned brands. In the end, seven products set themselves apart. And the winners are:

• Editors’ Choice: KVH TracNet
• Leading Edge Technology: Simrad Halo 2000/3000
• Best in Navigation: Garmin Navionics+
• Best Integrated System: Lowrance HDS Pro w/ Active Imaging/ActiveTarget 2
• Most Innovative for Fishing: Furuno TZtouch3 w/ CHIRP Side-Scan Technology
• Best in Sonar: Garmin LiveScope XR
• Best in Entertainment: Kicker KMXL

Editors’ Choice: KVH TracNet Hybrid Antennas

What the Judges Said: “The most impressive feature is the antennas’ ability to seamlessly jump between cellular, Wi-Fi and VSAT networks, all with the lowest-cost routing and user experience in mind.” —David Schmidt, electronics editor, Yachting

Two of our eight judges gave KVH’s TracNet system perfect scores. And what’s not to like? This new system for onboard connectivity just might be as seamless as the internet setup in your home. And it doesn’t require an assortment of disparate parts, complicated connections and multiple bills. TracNet combines satellite, cellular and Wi-Fi under one dome. The system features automatic switching to keep boats connected using the best communication option at all times—without the need for hands-on tuning. The H30 ($18,995), H60 ($27,995) and H90 ($44,995) antennas match boats of 30, 60 and 90 feet, respectively. Paired to a belowdecks unit using an Ethernet power-over-coaxial cable, the H90 can deliver VSAT download speeds as fast as 40 Mbps (with Elite service). Boaters can also expect support for 5G/LTE cellular service where available, as well as the ability to add user-supplied SIM cards for local service. TracNet connects to shore-based Wi-Fi using an integrated bridge for additional speed.

Leading Edge Technology: Simrad Halo 2000/3000

What the Judges Said: “Veteran anglers have long sworn by power-hungry magnetron radars, scorning the advent of pulse-compression radars, for finding flocks of seabirds. But now there’s a pulse-compression radar that may change some minds.” —Jim Hendricks, electronics editor, Salt Water Sportsman and Boating

All the judges commented on the Simrad Halo 3000 Bird+ mode, labeling it innovative and a problem solver. In that mode, the open-array radar focuses all its juice toward finding birds for fishermen. It can reach out to 8 nautical miles, while other pulse-compression units might see flyers at 3 miles. Halo 3000 is available in 4- and 6-foot arrays, and delivers 130 watts for seeing out to 96 nautical miles. Its smaller sister, Halo 2000, is available in 3-, 4- and 6-foot arrays, and offers 50 watts of power for visibility to 72 nautical miles. Both arrays are equipped with ZoneTrack, which allows captains to track up to 50 vessels. Dangerous Target Alerts highlight the range, bearing and heading of other vessels. VelocityTrack shows color-coded targets to help identify threats. Halo 2000 starts at $6,399; the 3000 starts at $8,499.

Best in Navigation: Garmin Navionics+

What the Judges Said: “The big excitement for me is that Garmin has finally combined two excellent products into a single, intuitive interface. Throw in automatic daily updates, and the end user is the real winner here.” —Andrew Parkinson, editor-in-chief, Cruising World

When Garmin purchased marine-chart powerhouse Navionics about six years ago, boaters loved the idea of the two joining forces and the prospect of new navigational tools. And while the evolution took a little time, the process has come full circle with Garmin Navionics+. The all-in-one mapping solution features advanced autorouting, depth-range shading, vibrant colors, a streamlined interface, combined coastal and inland content plus a one-year subscription to daily chart updates through the ActiveCaptain app. Boaters can upgrade to Garmin Navionics Vision+ to add high-resolution relief shading, high-res satellite imagery, aerial photos and more. The charts come preloaded on a variety of new Garmin chart plotters and can be purchased online. Starting prices range from $149.99 to $249.99.

Best Integrated System: Lowrance HDS Pro w/Active Imaging/ActiveTarget 2

What the Judges Said: “HDS Pro delivers full ­networking with bow-to-stern boat control as well as compatibility with Lowrance’s latest live sonar—ActiveTarget 2—and the second generation of Active Imaging. That’s a lot of capability in one package.” —Chris Woodward, editor, Best Marine Electronics and Technology

How many features can you fit into one new multifunction display? If you ask Lowrance, the list appears to be near endless. With its latest system, Lowrance launches the HDS Pro line of multifunction displays, as well as increases the functionality of its side- and down-scan imaging and live sonar. The 1 kW-capable HDS Pro units also deliver full control of trolling motors, autopilots, engines, radar, communications and Power-Pole shallow-water anchors. The MFDs are available with 9-, 10-, 12- or 16-inch SolarMAX IPS HD touchscreens and cost $2,199 to $4,999. The ActiveTarget 2 Live Sonar module and transducer cost $1,649; the module alone costs $799, and the transducer alone costs $1,099. Active Imaging 3-in-1 transducers for Lowrance Ghost trolling motors or transoms cost $399 to $449.

Most Innovative for Fishing: Furuno TZtouch3 w/Chirp Side-Scan Technology

What the Judges Said: “Low-frequency side-scan sonar opens this more-traditional freshwater and inshore-­saltwater product category to offshore fishermen, enabling them to spot fish hundreds of feet away.” —Randy Vance, editor-at-large, Fishing and Marine Group

Side-scan sonar helps anglers see under docks and into submerged trees and weeds, right? Yes, but that’s not all it can do, and offshore fishermen have long wanted a piece of the action. With Furuno’s latest software update, TZtouch3 users can see structure and fish 750 feet or more off each side of their vessels. Cruisers too can leverage that to find a safe path through coral reefs. To reach that distance, Furuno scans the water at a lower frequency (220 to 240 kHz) than other side-scan sonar brands. While lower-frequency chirps don’t deliver the same crisp returns as higher-frequency transmissions, this new technology aids anglers hoping to find new bottom structure, and yachtsman and sailors hoping to avoid hazards. The software update is free; the transducer costs $900.

Best in Sonar: Garmin LiveScope XR

What the Judges Said: “Everyone likes a product that can address multiple tasks well, and Garmin’s LiveScope XR does just that. With a single transducer, the user has the ability to adjust the system to see forward, out to the sides or directly beneath a vessel’s hull.” —Patrick Sciacca, editor-in-chief, Yachting

Like side-scan sonar, live sonar initially catered to freshwater and inshore boaters and anglers. But with LiveScope XR, Garmin delivers real-time videolike sonar from lakes out to blue water. In fresh water, LiveScope XR can see up to 500 feet in front of or below the boat; in salt water, that range is 350 feet. The system offers image clarity at close and long ranges simultaneously. The LVS62 transducer can be pointed forward or down manually or turned sideways with the included Perspective Mode Mount. The system includes a GLS 10 black box that mounts beneath a console. With a free software update, the transducer (sold separately) can be added to an existing LiveScope black box. The full system costs $2,999.99; the LVS62 alone costs $2,499.99.

Best in Entertainment: Kicker KMXL

What the Judges Said: “Kicker is truly working hard to deliver great sound in the audio-unfriendly environment that is a boat.” —Kevin Falvey, editor-in-chief, Boating

Innovative was the adjective most commonly used by our judges to describe Kicker’s latest speakers. The company’s tangential center-cone geometry—also dubbed horn-loaded technology—makes waves among wakeboarders who use uber-powerful tower speakers to push sound to the cockpit and to the rider. But the new Kicker KMXL speakers deliver that same technology to every boater. Kicker says the new coaxials—in 6 ½- and 8-inch sizes as well as 6 by 9 inches—deliver increased performance with optimal sensitivity, power handling and sonic accuracy. The speakers cost $649.99 to $869.99 per pair.

The post Best Marine Electronics and Technology Awards 2023 appeared first on Yachting.

Brunswick Corp. says it saw record-breaking sales for some of its brands at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.

According to the company, Sea Ray reported a 33 percent increase in revenue compared to the 2021 show and a 17 percent increase in overall units from last year; Boston Whaler and Bayliner also had strong sales, as Whaler displayed a recyclable fiberglass boat; Mercury Marine accounted for more than half of all outboard engines at the show; and Navico Group saw a 20 percent increase in electronics market share during the show.

“Fort Lauderdale is the unofficial kickoff to the U.S. fall boat show calendar and serves as a barometer for our brands to gauge dealer sentiment, consumer interest and product trends,” Dave Foulkes, Brunswick Corporation CEO, stated in a press release.

What boats and products made their debuts from the Brunswick Corp. family of brands? The Sea Ray 260 outboard, Boston Whaler 280 Dauntless, and Simrad HALO 2000 and 3000 radars.

Where to learn more: visit brunswick.com

The post Brunswick Corp. Reports Record Fort Lauderdale Sales appeared first on Yachting.

When it comes to situational awareness, John Ellis understands the value of a bird’s-eye view. While he uses Dragon, his Furuno-equipped Nordhavn 68, for sport fishing, diving and extended Pacific Ocean cruising, he often uses an inexpensive DJI unmanned aerial vehicle to gain perspective. “I can use it for backing into slips,” he says, adding that he also flies the UAV to count whale sharks or locate birds offshore. The key to making the UAV effective, he says, involves networking one of his yacht’s four 24-inch pilothouse displays with Apple TV. Then, the UAV wirelessly shares its data with Ellis’ iPhone, which in turn pushes this imagery to the Apple TV and the networked display. “You can’t see this without a drone,” he says.

While contemporary marine-electronics manufacturers have done an admirable job of making their user interfaces intuitive and user-friendly, a simple truth remains: Mariners who use their electronics on a daily or near-daily basis often discover little tricks that simplify onboard operations.

Yachting spoke with brand ambassadors from Furuno, Garmin, Raymarine and Simrad to learn more about how they use their instruments and screens, with the goal of reeling in some wisdom to improve your summer cruise. 

Screens 

All experts agree that more glass is unquestionably better.

“It helps with the fish finder—you can see more detail,” says Capt. Deane Lambros, who works aboard Canyon Runner, a commercially operated, Simrad-equipped Viking 48 Convertible. Lambros typically runs four screens on Canyon Runner’s two 16-inch helm displays: radar, chart plotter, a FLIR thermal-imaging camera feed, and a fourth screen that displays either NMEA 2000 data or side-scanning sonar.

Capt. Tom Petersen takes a different approach aboard Valkyrie, his Sea Ray L650 Fly with Raymarine equipment including dual 16-inch multifunction displays at the helm and another two 16-inch MFDs on the flybridge. “On the left, I have Navionics [cartography] running on my chart plotter, which gives me a lot of data on the display,” he says. “On the right, I run radar in dual-screen mode, with one side set to harbor mode with a 1.5-mile range, while the other side is in coastal mode with the range set to 3 to 6 nautical miles out. This is enough range at 25 knots to maneuver out of the way.”

Others prefer simpler data management. “My digital space has been the same for 20 years,” Ellis says. He displays the most pertinent data—his chart plotter and either radar (nighttime) or sonar (daytime)—on his two 24-inch center displays, with less-critical data on his two 24-inch outer screens. “In a moment of high tension, I don’t want to wonder where things are. I keep the on-screen information very simple, but I can drill down to get a cornucopia.”

On the sailing side, Nigel Craine runs a 12-inch MFD and three instrument displays at the cockpit helm of Eponine, his Garmin-equipped Beneteau Oceanis 311, plus a 7-inch MFD and a second VHF radio at his belowdecks nav station. While Crane typically sets his cockpit displays to show windspeed, GPS-based boatspeed and depth, automatic identification system data also plays a big role.

“Using the AIS with speed-direction vectors switched on is a great help in ascertaining which vessels need to be kept an extra watch on,” he says.

Radars

“Radar is the real world,” Petersen says, adding that it will do more than any other instrument “if you’re willing to use it.”

This requires practice. “Go out on a clear day, and use your radar to spot targets,” Lambros suggests, adding that he typically runs his Simrad radar in dual-range mode (3 and 6 nautical miles, respectively). “Don’t wait until you need it—get a sense of what the picture looks like.”

Contemporary digital radars typically have Doppler processing; however, our experts were more focused on automatic radar plotting aid (ARPA) or mini automatic radar plotting aid (MARPA) tools. These tools can automatically or manually acquire and track specific targets.

“There is nothing better,” Ellis says about the ARPA features on his dual Furuno radars. “If I see a mark without AIS, I give a long press to both radars” to capture the ARPA target.

Radars can overlay their imagery atop cartography, but not everyone uses this feature. “We tend not to use the overlay but rather split the screen,” Craine says, explaining that he runs radar on one side of his screen(s) and a chart plotter—set to head-up perspective and similar ranges—on the other. “This gives a nice, clear picture and allows easy comparison.”

Then there’s disaster avoidance. “At anchor, I always leave my radar running for 10 to 15 minutes,” Petersen says. “I set my radar tracks, and I zoom in close. If I’m anchored squarely, I’ll see squiggly lines, but if I see a long, straight line, I know I’m dragging.”

Sounders

“If I only had two pieces of electronics, it would be GPS and sonar,” Ellis says, explaining that he regularly takes Dragon “closer to shore than you want to be.” He accomplishes this with his Furuno multibeam and searchlight sonars, which he uses out of the box, even for advanced missions such as solo diving El Bajo seamount in the Gulf of California.

“I ran over it 12 times and created my own bathymetry,” Ellis says, adding that he used the resulting high-resolution shaded relief chart to precisely drop anchor on the mount’s summit before swimming the chain.

Lambros, who fishes around 180 days annually aboard Canyon Runner, has a similar approach. “I mostly use it in auto-mode, with maybe a couple of clicks of gain up or down,” he says. He typically runs his sonar display in split-screen mode, with 75 percent of the glass devoted to the sounder’s high-frequency returns (read: depths to 100 feet) while the remaining screen space displays the transducer’s low-frequency findings (read: depths to 900 feet).

Thermal-Imaging Cameras

“It’s a fun one to have,” Petersen says about his FLIR M364C LR. “Just don’t sit and look at it the whole time. If it’s not stabilized, it’ll make you seasick. … It’s good at looking for specific things.”

Lambros agrees. “I use it for getting in and out of the inlet,” he says. “It’s a great secondary line of sight.”

Finally, Petersen suggests spec’ing a FLIR AX8 camera, which delivers live video and automated alarms if, perchance, in the engine room, something starts running too hot or too cold.

Macro-Thinking

While multifunction displays are great for tackling onboard operations, route planning is sometimes easier on a computer. One solution involves employing a Windows-based PC that’s running navigation software such as TimeZero. This setup allows operators to explore routing options on the PC without accidentally interfering with their navigation or instrumentation.

The post Optimizing Onboard Electronics appeared first on Yachting.

July 2019: A pick-and-place machine delicately but quickly tattoos microchips onto printed circuit boards at Navico’s production facility in Ensenada, Mexico. The machine looks like a miniaturized rotary cannon, with a mission to complete upward of 10,000 boards per day for B&G, Lowrance and Simrad products.

Standing there, I couldn’t discern what brand of equipment each batch of boards was destined for. While this reflects the integral role the boards play in marine electronics, it also reflects how deeply integrated these previously independent brands have become since they merged under a single roof.

October 2021: Brunswick Corp. announces that it has completed the acquisition of Navico in a $1.05 billion deal—rolling B&G, Lowrance and Simrad into Brunswick’s Advanced Systems Group.

It’s yet another new day for these brands—and for the whole marine-electronics landscape. While B&G, Lowrance and Simrad have all previously experienced acquisitions and reorganizations, Brunswick’s acquisition is poised to usher in a new era of integration among marine electronics, systems and yachts while allowing the brands to continue evolving under their existing leadership.

Brunswick consists of more than 60 brands that conduct business in four market segments. The company, which was founded in 1845 to build billiard tables, has been steadily increasing its marine interests since 1960. Brunswick’s other acquisitions include Bayliner, Boston Whaler and Sea Ray, and its portfolio includes Mastervolt, CZone, C-Map, Protector and Mercury’s four propulsion brands.

The addition of Navico “was a strategic acquisition for Brunswick to support their ACES strategy, which is really the future of a truly integrated boat system,” says Knut Frostad, Navico’s CEO, referring to Brunswick’s plan for autonomy, connectivity, electrification and shared access. “It helps Brunswick evolve that strategy and was the missing piece in the puzzle to offer an integrated, bow-to-stern solution.”

The acquisition also brings the Navico brands closer to their marine-industry roots. “We’ve obviously been owned in the past by financial investors, who have a different objective,” says Frostad, an accomplished sailor who served on Navico’s board for 14 years before being named CEO in 2019. “Now we’re owned by someone really strategic who understands the business.”

Brunswick’s investment in Navico goes much deeper than shared cultures, he adds.

“Electronics is obviously having more and more tentacles around the boat and is integrating with more elements of the boat,” Frostad says. “We have the opportunity to offer an integrated solution—much quicker and much better—because now we’re under the same roof with companies that offer these products on the same boats.”

The sailing-focused B&G brand may initially seem like a strange bedfellow in a corporation with a predominantly power-focused portfolio; however, Frostad says Brunswick sees sailing as a growth area.

“We’re using B&G today to develop some very interesting technologies that can be used in other parts of the marine industry, such as autopilots, where [competitive] sailing is very, very advanced compared to powerboats,” he says.

Smart autonomous or semi-autonomous vessels may be coming in the future. But for now, B&G, Lowrance and Simrad brand identities will remain, and Navico-branded equipment will be spec’d on Brunswick-built boats if Navico offers the best technical solution. Otherwise, Brunswick-owned boatbuilders are free to spec third-party equipment.

One example of third-party partnerships is DockSense (see Yachting, June 2019), a collaboration among Raymarine, Boston Whaler and Mercury that delivered the world’s first integrated smart docking-assist product.

Frostad envisions a similar future for Navico. “It’s really about coming up with an offering that’s outstanding in the industry, that’s the right offering and the right product and the right services at the right time,” he says.

In addition to harboring shared aspirations for creating connected vessels, Brunswick and Navico share other core values too. “I’ve taken Navico on a sustainability journey that’s very ambitious and that goes very deep into what sustainable boating is in the future,” Frostad says. “Brunswick has really mirrored that strategy. … Now we have multiple touch points for the same customers. That enables us to have a bigger footprint on the boat, but we can also collaborate on offering a better service.”

Moving forward, B&G, Lowrance and Simrad customers can expect further integration of their electronics and the rest of their yacht in ways that are intended to make boating better, safer and more sustainable. Much like the factory-line integration that I witnessed in Ensenada, in time, boaters aren’t likely to know exactly where their equipment’s innovations stem from, only that these advances enhance the boating experience.

A Company is Born

The histories are rich: In 1947, Willy Christian Simonsen founded Simonsen Radio in Oslo, Norway. Simrad Yachting was purchased by the Kongsberg Group in 1996; in 2003, Simrad Yachting acquired B&G, the sailing-instrument manufacturer. In 2003, the Kongsberg Group sold Simrad Yachting to Altor Equity Partners, a Swedish private-equity firm. In 2005, Altor purchased Lowrance, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based firm. Navico was created in 2006 when Altor merged the three.

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In Dr. No, the 1962 film based on Ian Fleming’s sixth novel about British spy James Bond, actor Desmond Llewelyn made the British secret-service armorer code-named “Q” famous. Q maintained the airs of a refined British butler while furnishing Agent 007 with innovative, stealthy and game-saving gadgets and weapons. All the bagpipe flamethrowers, cigarette darts and other inventions helped foster expectations for tradecraft devices that stretched the envelope.

If these expectations for constantly improving tech sound a bit like a computer geek’s enthusiasm for the latest operating-system update, you’re en route to understanding the Q Experience’s philosophy toward branded and white-label multifunction displays.

The first multifunction displays arrived in the mid-2000s, offering boaters the ability to control and display cartography and networked instrumentation on a single screen. As the technology matured and onboard networking improved, yachtsmen could soon overlay informational layers atop third-party applications (such as radar over cartography), control third-party instruments (including thermal-imaging cameras), collect and share bathymetric data, and in some cases, stream Netflix or control third-party drones.

Today’s marine marketplace has four established MFD manufacturers—Garmin, Furuno, Navico (parent company of Simrad and Lowrance) and Raymarine. The Q Experience, which draws its name from the Bond films, aspires to add its name to the list with from-the-ground-up hardware and a bespoke operating system that delivers integration, an automotive-style user interface, built-in entertainment, an anti-theft alarm, constant connectivity and a dedicated app.

Niklas Öhman and Johan Wessberg founded the Q Experience in Finland in 2015 following a conversation with a major European boatbuilder. The conversation unexpectedly veered toward MFDs, and the boatbuilders pondered how chart plotters might be done differently. Further conversations ensued, and Öhman and Wessberg agreed to create and build a ground-up MFD.

The result was the Q Display 1 series (Q1), which had a Linux-based operating system and was available in two screen sizes. Other features included two CAN buses, NMEA 2000 compatibility, radio, Bluetooth connectivity and a Wi-Fi hotspot.

“Our user interface’s logic is a mix between Apple’s iOS and Android. It shouldn’t take more than three screen taps to access any application,” says Öhman.

One small but telling example of the Q Experience’s smart user interface is the MFD’s menu page, says Patrik Gustafsson, the company’s product and sales manager. “If there’s no networked fish finder, you won’t see [one listed] in the menu,” he says.

Like other marine-electronics manufacturers, the Q Experience team uses automatic, over-the-air updates for software and operating systems. What’s different is the nature of the Q Experience’s updates. “Every year, [our customers] get a new plotter,” says Öhman, adding that the company releases updates during shoulder seasons, not midsummer. “If you look at our [user interface] from 2016 and now, they’re totally different.”

The Q Experience released its second-generation Q Display 2 series (Q2) in November 2020. It’s available in three screen sizes (10-inch, 16-inch and the double-wide 2-by-10-inch) and builds on the Q1’s capabilities. For example, while the Q2 has Q Experience software, N2K compatibility and optically bonded IPS screens, it also has a cleaner, more customizable user interface; faster (and dedicated) data and graphics processors; a more accurate GPS; two Ethernet ports; Navionics cartography; a built-in cellular modem; and a built-in amplifier for streaming music.

Q2 displays also use Q Experience’s mobile app, letting users monitor battery, bilge and fuel levels, receive warning messages from the boat, interact with the system’s built-in Q Boat Guard anti-theft alarm, and use an embedded N2K switch to control onboard systems via a mobile device. Q2 displays are always on, connected and gathering big data to share with the Q Experience and its partners, who refine the user experience.

Q2s are designed to operate much like automotive infotainment systems. “Navigation has to be easy, like in cars,” Gustafsson says, citing features such as the MFD’s dashboard, digital gauges and integrated (and customizable) widgets.

The Q2’s N2K switch gives users control of up to 20 networked devices; however, owners can add blocks (increments of 20), allowing operators to control more of their vessel using the Q mobile app. “We haven’t integrated with CZone or EmpirBus” digital-switching systems, he says. “We’ll keep our own switch for now.”

The Q mobile app also delivers vessel security via the Q2’s geofence-based Q Boat Guard anti-theft alarm, alerting owners if a boat escapes its slip. The system also allows users to watch their boat’s real-time use and share trip details with social media platforms.

The Q Experience has always sold Q1 displays as Q-branded products to consumers—or as OEM-level equipment to boatbuilders—and is following this same branded/white-label model with the Q2. “You don’t know the manufacturer of the display in [a] car because it’s a white-label product,” Öhman says. “We focus on branding [for] the boat’s manufacturer.”

The Q Experience has gained market interest, especially among Northern European boatbuilders. “In the Nordic countries, we have 35 to 40 percent of the [market] share of new boats,” Gustafsson says. “The volume is in powerboats, but I have one on my sailboat.”

While this is good news for the Q Experience, headwinds still exist for US customers. The Q2 employs an embedded cellular modem, which necessitates approval by the Federal Communications Commission. That approval is reportedly forthcoming, after which the Q Experience will need to establish US sales and support teams.

Still, if you like the idea of a Euro-built MFD that’s different from the other tech on your dock, check out the Q Experience. The eye-pleasing system might lack bagpipe flamethrowers and cigarette darts, but it includes the promise of a constantly evolving operating system and an ever-smoother user interface.  

The post The Q Experience Enters MFD Market appeared first on Yachting.

If you’ve ever negotiated pea-soup fog while boating, then you’re familiar with the interior of the proverbial pingpong ball. Orientation becomes confusing, and it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re heading north when your bearing is actually 180 degrees. This, of course, is the time when compasses shine.

But what if you’re cruising to the high latitudes, where your magnetic compass is no longer accurate? What if an absentminded crewmember put a toolbox full of ferrous metal in the wrong spot? Given that magnetic compasses are typically accurate to plus or minus 2 degrees, cross-track error can amount to a measurable fuel-dock bill over the course of a lengthy passage.

Fortunately, today’s satellite compasses can help, while bolstering the performance of other networked electronics.

The evolution of electronic heading sensors for the recreational-boating market began with fluxgate compasses. While reliable and capable of exporting their data as network-friendly electronic signals, fluxgate compasses sometimes struggled in heavy seas (read: gimbal lock) and had relatively sluggish reporting rates. GPS receivers can calculate course-over-ground information, provided that the boat is moving, but COG isn’t the same as heading information. Early satellite compasses followed, but they were expensive. Nine-axis, or solid-state, compasses came after that. They were affordable, fast, and generally accurate to (ballpark) 2 degrees.

Contemporary satellite compasses can provide highly accurate and reliable heading and navigational data, even when stationary. They aren’t affected by magnetic interference or declination issues, and they don’t require calibration (see sidebar). Today’s satellite compasses also are far less expensive and more accurate than earlier models.

Satellite compasses are fit inside relatively small, lightweight and weatherproof boxes that contain at least two global navigation satellite system or GPS receivers and a processor. GNSS includes several constellations, including GPS (the United States), Glonass (Russia), BeiDou (China) and Galileo (the European Union). The combination gives individual GNSS compasses ample signals to fix on, irrespective of their latitude and longitude.

Modern satellite compasses also typically include an attitude-and-heading reference system—or an inertial measurement unit that provides roll, pitch and yaw data—and allows the compass to filter vessel motion (either from heavy seas or fast rates of turn) from its data stream. Satellite compasses typically export their data—including position, COG, speed over ground and ROT, plus roll, pitch and yaw—as NMEA 2000 (and sometimes NMEA 0183) sentences.

Eric Kunz, Furuno’s senior product manager, explains that a GNSS satellite sends out signals for the satellite compass to receive. The compass “then determines the timing differences between when the signal arrives at its different antennas, even though they are very close to each other.” The timing differences are then used to determine heading.

While all satellite compasses employ the same physics, there are some design and operational considerations. For example, Garmin- and Simrad-built satellite compasses use two in-line GNSS receivers, while Furuno’s newest-generation satellite compasses—the SCX20 (NMEA 2000-friendly) and SCX21 (NMEA 0183-friendly)—each have four multi-GNSS receivers. Each Furuno compass retails for $1,395.

“Multipath interference can confuse satellite compasses,” says Kunz, referring to incoming GNSS signals bouncing off a yacht’s superstructure before reaching the receivers. “That’s why we have four antennas.” The new models each have six ways to calculate heading and rule out multipath issues, reportedly delivering heading information that can be accurate to half a degree.

Another difference between satellite compasses is based on the frequency bands a satellite compass receives, says Ryan Schmitz, Garmin’s design engineering manager.

Furuno and Simrad compasses operate on the L1 frequency band, while Garmin’s MSC 10 compass ($1,100) employs multiband receivers that leverage the L1 and L5 bands. “Because the MSC 10 uses two frequencies, it has additional information to use in its algorithms,” Schmitz says, adding that the extra calculations yield heading information that’s accurate to 2 degrees.

Cost is another concern, and GPS-only satellite compasses sometimes offer a more affordable option. Simrad manufactures the HS60 ($1,000), which supports GPS signals, and the HS75 ($2,250), which supports GNSS signals.

“The HS60 is a fantastic option for the smaller-powerboat owners who are using autopilot and/or radar,” says Mat Hooper, Simrad’s product director. “The HS75 suits the needs of larger vessels, where longer-range navigation requires as-accurate-as-possible information.” According to Simrad, the HS60 and HS75 deliver heading information that’s accurate to 2 degrees and 0.75 degrees, respectively.

Technical details aside, satellite compasses deliver significant upsides. Satellite-compass-equipped boats “use less fuel on point-to-point trips, either hand-steering or on autopilot, because they have a heading system with almost no error,” Kunz says.

Hooper agrees, adding that a heading sensor is critical to having all features available on networked systems. “It’s used to orient a chart on your multifunction display, provide steering data for an autopilot and enable advanced radar features like Doppler processing,” he says.

Schmitz also points to advanced radar features—including radar overlay atop cartography as well as target tracking—as examples where accurate heading-sensor information is critical.

Another key benefit is that satellite compasses use GNSS/GPS signals—not the Earth’s magnetic field—to derive their heading information. “With today’s vessels being fitted with more and more electrical equipment, finding a magnetically clean area to fit a traditional magnetic compass is increasingly difficult,” Hooper says.

The drawback list for satellite compasses is sparse. There’s expense, but prices have dropped precipitously. And for anyone planning longer passages, these costs can be amortized via fuel savings over time.

So, if you’re interested in bolstering your helm’s precision, consider upgrading to a satellite compass. You’ll be darn glad you did the next time a landlubber unwittingly parks a toolbox next to your ship’s compass.  

The post Satellite Compasses Help Keep a Steady Course appeared first on Yachting.