I relayed in December 2018 an excellent issue published on the blog of our friends at Geogarage, who make a permanent duty of a press review of the best foreign articles concerning cartography, meteorology, and more generally all subjects related to maritime navigation. Here is a translation freely adapted and commented on in French. Read more …
Category : Tutorials
How to…
Weather4D and SailGrib improve the AIS network
Numerous AIS tracking networks broadcast over the internet are available. Among the best known : Marine Traffic, Vessel Finder, SiiTech, LocateEverything, and many others. One of these networks particularly stands out, AISHub, an AIS NMEA data sharing center, which offers developers an API allowing the integration of its network into applications, and therefore display of AIS targets received over the Internet directly into the application. Featured from the beginning in Weather4D Routing & Navigation, this system has made it possible to envisage new and particularly innovative services. Read more …
The new AIS class B+ transponders explained
The new AIS AIT5000 transponder (from Digital Yacht) increases transmission rate depending on ship speed.
A new generation of transponder (¹) AIS Class B+ claims to make pleasure boats more visible. Here's how… Read more …
MacENC and GPSNavX disappear forever [Update]
Since 30 th 2018 (*), I already had information regarding discontinuation by NAVX Studio LLC of the development of two historical applications created by Richard Ray : GPSNavX and MacENC. The buyers of these applications and iNavX had clearly announced focuse only to the development of iNavX, on iOS and Android. It is likely that applications on Mac were no longer profitable, especially with the loss of Navionics maps for MacENC. Read more …
VMG / VMC – for dummies
Navigation apps are full of acronyms. This coded and abstruse language was originally developed for electronic navigation instruments, GPS mapping and other chartplotters. These acronyms, in the form of three letters most often, are the contraction of terms defining specific navigation data and according functions. This facilitates on-screen display taking few space. If some of these acronyms are relatively well assimilated by the boater, as SOG for Speed Over Ground (speed over the bottom), you can quickly access subtleties that are not always mastered as COG for Course Over Ground, meaning "route runned on the ground", that the word "Course" in English can mean "Route" or "Heading" according to the context. Read more …
Apple iBooks becomes “Books” [Update]
With the arrival of iOS 12 and MacOS 10.14 "Mojave" the Apple iBooks app disappears to make way for "Books". The user interface is completely changed, and for authors, a conformity of the works is imposed. The application wins certainly not in ergonomics, we feel a desire to put commercial emphasis on the books in the interface, and Access to updates gets complicated.
Man Over Board
Credit: SNSM Bandol
Sailors have always been haunted by falling into the sea. 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 an opportunity to systematically practice this maneuver, under sail, striving to come "die" heave to windward of the unfortunate, fortunately materialized by a buoy moored in a bucket as drift anchor. But that was not the real problem. It was above all not to lose sight of the crew, because come back to its fall position "reckoning" was virtually mission impossible. And still today, with our sophisticated electronic means, It's not as easy as you might think… Read more …
Weather4D – User Guides updated
Christmas comes soon, and Apple Books Store will close its doors for the holidays. Publishers are required to send their books according to a set schedule. So I updated the user guides in advance in French and in English for all three versions Lite, Routing and Routing & Navigation.
You will be able to discover in preview the latest news to be published around the Paris Nautic boat show. Read more …
Transas iSailor becomes Wärtsilä iSailor [Update]
It had to happen one day ! iSailor users will be disappointed… in May 2018, Transas was acquired by the Finnish group Wärtsilä Corporation, a global leader in smart technologies and solutions for the marine and energy markets. As part of the integration into the Wärtsilä brand, Transas iSailor undergoes a relooking process that you will notice during the next release. Transas iSailor becomes Wärtsilä iSailor. Read more …
Fugawi charts service is discontinued [Update]
It's official, the 30 November 2018, Johnson Outdoors, recent purchaser of Fugawi (*), decided to put an end to its activities. After discontinuing the distribution of their PC navigation software in August 2017, having closed the online nautical equipment sales store last spring, it is the turn of the download charts server to disappear. Read more …