Tuesday, February 24, 2009

AIS, This and That

I installed our new ACR Nauticast B AIS-300 over the weekend. The GPS cable is run to Laz aft, but not yet up the Radar post and VHF antenna is sitting in the cabin irradiating my head instead of at the masthead, but the unit works great just as we saw coming back from Bermuda with Ben (Panbo Article). The screen shot (click for larger view) is how the targets are displayed in Expedition. You can see the two Narragansett Bay Pilot boats across the Harbor and a CG boat out in the mouth of the bay. Our new version of The Cap'n is on its way and I am excited to see how it displays the targets.

Other weekend projects (after building an oven on Friday night) included relocating the Raymarine Life Tag base unit to the pilothouse for better coverage of the cockpit (it used to false alarm a bit too much when located at the Nav Station) as well as re-installation of the Water-maker pump after Ocean-Options replaced the pump and I re-painted the motor. The watermaker is now making almost 30 gal/hr where it was only making 15 gal/hr before the pump replacement.

One and two half jobs checked off the list....eventually I will get there.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Graham. Nice site! Can you get yur AIS to show course vector lines for targets? That way giving you a nice graphic of CPA and hence any risk of collision. Pardon my ignorance on this stuff we haven't purchased one yet but plan to in the next couple of months. Good luck with on-going prep for the big trip! Cheers! Sandy W.

Gram said...

Thanks Sandy,

It all comes down to which program you use to view the AIS data. Some are certainly better than others.

We can discuss AIS and other things over dinner in Jackson Hole in a few weeks.