Marine Technology - Ocean Navigator

Quantum sensor to pin down the wandering needle

The Earth’s magnetic field is an unquiet beast. Not only does it refuse to line up with the globe’s geographic pole, it changes its relationship to it, as evidenced by the yearly movement of the magnetic pole, which now is sliding across the Arctic Ocean toward Siberia. While magnetic compass-based navigation is less important than in the past, there are many devices, from autopilot units to GPS antennas to smart phones to aircraft and satellites that have magnetic sensors for determining direction and attitude control. An effort by U.S. and British government called the MagQuest Challenge seeks to improve geomagnetic…

View from a buoy

Access to weather forecasts has improved tremendously in recent years. Getting weather data in Grib format via satellite has made the process of voyage planning and in-passage weather adjustments vastly easier than in years past. What if you could know the situation ahead on your course while you were voyaging? Turns out that in many ocean areas that is actually possible via deep water buoys that collect a slew of data, including images of the surrounding sea state. And now a company in Canada is offering a product that further increases buoy awareness. There was a time when buoys were…

Liveaboard invents safer propane switch

A galley stove is standard equipment on a voyaging boat. The heating fuel for this stove is often propane, which is easy to handle and to use. For all its benefits, however, propane does have one property that makes it a potential fire or explosion danger: It is heavier than air, and gas from a leak will sink to the lowest point and accumulate. Any type of spark can set it off. It’s important to have a properly designed and maintained system that complies with ABYC standards to avert any problems. Tim Litvin, a sailor and inventor in San Diego,…

Artificial intelligence comes to the cockpit

Integrated performance systems that display inputs like wind direction, heading, depth, position, etc., have been available for decades. Most recently the multifunction display has become the go-to device for combining all that sensor data in one place. Now an Oxford, Nova Scotia-based company named iNav4U has released a product called Wayfinder that not only integrates the display of sensor information but goes a step further and uses rules-based artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the data and provide warnings and make recommendations to the vessel operators about how to proceed. Wayfinder was developed by Olivier Hendrikx, an experienced Swiss voyager who…

AIS everywhere

When a marine electronics concept achieves big success, it often migrates across multiple platforms and products until it becomes a nearly omnipresent part of the marine electronics environment. This happened with GPS and is now occurring with the automatic identification system (AIS). AIS is now embedded in multiple products and has grown far beyond its original implementation. In its fledgling years, GPS, for example, was confined to bulky, dedicated receiver boxes. The screen on early GPS receivers gave you a readout in latitude and longitude. You had to manually plot the numbers on your paper chart — imagine that! Early…

Celestial navigation simplified?

There have been many attempts over the decades to simplify celestial navigation. Now a new celestial nav simplification effort is about to launch called StarPoint. Still in the Kickstarter stage, StarPoint makes use of a small fixed optical device based on the Bris sextant originally developed by Swedish sailor Sven Yrvind. The StarPoint offering is more than merely a reselling of the Bris device, however. It’s a complete package that developer Brian Villmoare, assisted by fellow developer James Weisheit, has crafted to make celestial nav more accessible. Using the StarPoint system, users can get a lat/long fix with two sights…

Diesel genset design choices

A key electrical system component for many voyaging vessels is a diesel generator, commonly known as a genset. While gensets may seem, at first glance, just like diesel propulsion engines, they actually have unique operating parameters that differentiate them from an engine designed to turn a prop. Have recent trends in diesel propulsion engines — high RPM operation, common rail fuel systems and integrated circuit electronic control — found their way into the more specialized needs of gensets? A propulsion engine, of course, is called on to provide power across a range of throttle settings — because there are times, like…

Building electrical capacity

A defining feature of a luxury motor yacht is the efficiency and durability of its electrical systems. Whether at dockside, at anchor or offshore, crew and passengers need to know their vessel is capable of meeting their demands for safety and comfort around the clock. Emblematic of highly evolved offshore vessels meeting these demands are those produced by Nordhavn, a builder of high-end luxury motor yachts in Dana Point, California. Nordhavn yachts feature fuel-efficient propulsion plants, along with aggressive electrical generating and power storage systems, designed to take voyagers across the world’s oceans in comfort and safety. Electrically thinking Before…

Getting AC from the batteries

One of the more useful electronic devices on a cruising sailboat is an inverter. Simply put, inverters convert direct current (DC) battery energy into alternating current (AC) power. They can run much of our common household equipment like cooking appliances, power tools, TVs and electronic chargers. When there is no shore power or a generator available this is a great option. But there is much more to choosing, installing and using inverters.Let’s have a closer look. Basics Inverters are able to increase 12- or 24-volt DC energy into 120- or 240-volt AC silently and on demand. They can be made…

Using electronic charting tools

Modern electronic charting on multifunction displays is a powerful tool for the voyager — they can know position and other navigational info just by glancing at a screen. With position data provided by GPS, and with some installations buttressed by input from the Galileo, the European analog of GPS, electronic chart navigation is accurate and convenient. In certain situations, however, voyagers can improve their navigation awareness and avoid possible problems by using tools that are a part of the electronic chart toolkit, but which might be turned off. In order to declutter the screen and show those elements a mariner…