Appeared in spring 2017, the Nomad from Digital Yacht was the first, and the only one, portable AIS transponder. I carried out a detailed test the following summer, reported on this blog (¹). It had been feared that this excellent device would be discontinued, because it has been unavailable for several months, but not at all ! Right now it is reborn in a new and improved version : Nomad-2. Read more …
Category : Security
R-Mode, future alternative to Positioning System
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) (Global Navigation Satellite System), have become the primary source of Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT1) for ships and marine operations. GNSS is also used for the automatic identification system (AIS2). Unfortunately, GNSS is recognized to be vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, intentional or not, that may result in the loss of positioning information, or, still worse, inaccurate positioning information. Read more …
Sargassum, North Atlantic Calamity
In this period of great departures to the southern islands before joining the West Indies, It seems useful to me to relaunch this article that went unnoticed in the middle of summer.
Sargassum (Sargassum) are brown algae that grow in the Sargasso Sea, off Florida and the Bahamas, from which they get their name. Some floating species then drift in a long belt that sometimes extends thousands of kilometers on the surface of the sea according to ocean currents and winds.. Many browsers have accidentally rubbed shoulders with it. Read more …
XB-8000 new transponder AIS WiFi for mobile devices [Update]
Vesper Marine, company established in 2007 in Auckland (New Zealand), specializes in the design of devices for AIS data broadcasting. Their latest product, XB-8000, is a Class B AIS transponder certified NMEA2000® compact, low consumption, responding to the yachting market and small business units. It has essentially been designed with a view to WiFi transmission to navigation applications developed on tablets and smartphones.
[Updated] After the acquisition of Vesper Marine by Garmin, this device is discontinued since February 2023. The brand name is also removed.
COLREGS: Still Fit for Purpose ? [Update]
We can only observe, for three decades, the phenomenal increase in global maritime commercial traffic, the recent increase in maritime drones, for scientific and various research purposes, automated and remotely submarines civilian, military, and even for traffickers usage, and soon the inevitable coming into service of fully unmanneded merchant ships. This evolution is directly linked to the multiplication of satellites communication and positioning means allowing remote control of mobiles at sea.
Even with containment during the Covid-19 pandemic, maritime traffic never stops. Marine Traffic view
Cyber attacks and boating
Garmin was the victim of a cyber attack that started on 23 last July and lasted several days. The resulting outage disrupted many of its online services.
Navionics customers could no longer access the Navionics server through their login credentials. L’application Navionics Boating, the chart installer and the Navionics chart viewer were all impacted. products could no longer be purchased directly from the Navionics website. Chartplotters could still be used as stand-alone devices during this Garmin failure, but the maps could no longer be downloaded or updated. Read more …
Nautical documents on electronic media [Update]
(Article original 27 June 2018)
Since the publication of the division D240 replaced, applicable from 6 May 2019 (see my previous article), It is now official that the mandatory nautical documents can be embedded in digital form.
[Update on 24/08/2020]
The accuracy of GPS [brief summer]
I'm always being asked - and have been for ages - how much confidence we can put in the GPS on our tablets and smartphones. At the risk of repeating myself, I persist in asserting that our mobile devices are provided with the most accurate GPS receivers that can be found in civilian use, especially for pleasure boating. Read more …
Are electronic charts prescribed in France ? [Update]
This question comes back to me from time to time, and as no one is supposed to ignore the law, I feel obliged to make my contribution to the edification of the crowds (boating) providing a collective response.
Manual or electronic navigation, which to choose ?
Man Over Board
Credit: SNSM Bandol
At all times the sailors had the fear of the sea fall. Even with a trained crew, the operation of recovering a crew water fallen is risky, Already with the engine, even more with the sail. During my training years in Glénans Sailing School, each boarding was the opportunity to train consistently with this maneuver, sailing, striving to come "die" heave to windward of the unfortunate, fortunately materialized by a buoy moored in a bucket as drift anchor. But the real problem was not there. It was above all not to lose sight of the crew, because come back to its fall position "reckoning" was virtually mission impossible. And today, with our sophisticated electronic means, it's not as easy as it sounds good… Read more …