The best way to ­explain running a flats skiff at high speed in shallow water is that it’s akin to flying a helicopter at treetop level. The operator must understand that if you hit anything solid, bad things will happen. OK, maybe it’s a bit more stressful for the guy in the helicopter. But grounding your boat at high speed can cause catastrophic mechanical damage and potentially leave you stranded in the backcountry, not to mention the environmentally damaging prop scars you’ll leave behind.

The most important key to avoiding such disaster is simple: Stay alert and aware. According to the United States Coast Guard, the No. 1 cause of all boating accidents, grounding included, is operator inattention. When you’re running a flats skiff, you need to maintain 100 percent, complete focus. On top of that, use these tips to make sure the cruise goes smooth.

Color Changes Signal Different Water Depths

Look for—and avoid—color changes. Deeper waters usually appear darker, while sandy shoals are lighter in color, but dark spots can also be deceptive because they can be caused by grass flats or weed beds. When you know there’s plenty of water under the keel, the best move is to avoid visible color changes entirely.

Use a Chart Plotter to Track Your Route

Aways keep your chart-plotter track active, and follow your own breadcrumb trail back to the dock. Chances are you created a route you now know is safe to follow home. But there’s a caveat: This is only a sure thing if the tide’s been rising or static since you traveled that path. Pay attention to the changing tides, or you won’t know if that route is really safe; it might not be if the tide is low, or lower, compared with when you headed out.

Wear Sunglasses When Running a Flats Skiff

Wear a pair of light-appropriate polarized sunglasses. Dark lenses are great for bright, sunny days, but in low light or hazy conditions, they can be overwhelming. Yellow lenses improve contrast in low light and will help you spot color changes in the water.

Don’t Run Over Unfamiliar Shallows

Take the long way home. Instead of trimming to the hilt and hanging on tight as you scream across a flat, simply go around it. Head out to those channel markers, even if it adds a couple of minutes to your trip.

Use a Push Pole or Trolling Motor to Get to Deeper Water

When in doubt, shut down, tilt the engine up, and pole or walk your boat to deeper water rather than pushing it. Anchor up for a time and wait out the tides if they’re too low—you might come across some gamefish exiting the flat too. It might take you a bit longer to get where you’re going, but it’ll be a lot faster than if you wipe out your lower unit.

The post How to Run Safely in Shallow Water appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Accurate heading information is critical to electronic navigation. While electronic and fluxgate compasses work fine, they’re typically only accurate to 1 to 3 degrees and are subject to polar and magnetic interference.

Instead of using magnetic fields to sense their orientation, satellite compasses employ multiple antennas to determine minute time-stamp differences from received Global Navigation Satellite System transmissions. This information is then used to calculate heading.

Furuno’s SCX-20 (NMEA 2000-compatible) and SCX-21 (NMEA 0183-compatible) compasses leverage four internal antennas to determine heading information to 0.5 degrees while eliminating the signal-reception issues that sometimes plagued previous-generation satellite compasses.

I talked with Eric Kunz, Furuno’s senior product manager, to learn more.

Q: What technology enables a satellite compass to work?

A: GNSS satellites send out a radio-frequency signal that’s received by the compass. The compass can detect partial wavelengths of the signal, and it determines the timing differences between when the signal arrives at its different antennas. The compass knows where its antennas are, and it knows where the satellites are, so it can calculate the timing difference, which is something like a billionth of a second. This allows it to determine heading.

Only two of its antennas need to receive the signal to determine heading.

Local obstructions used to be satellite compasses’ Achilles’ heel. If the compass wasn’t mounted high enough, the signal would bounce off superstructure and cause multipath interference. That’s why we use four antennas in the SCX-20/21—it creates a multiplying effect and gives us six ways to calculate heading because of the baselines between antennas.

Q: What makes the SCX-20/21 an improvement over Furuno’s previous-generation SC30?

A: It has four antennas—the SC30 has two. It also uses all solid-state componentry, which optimizes efficiency.

The SC30 cost $2,495, but the SCX-20/21 is $1,195, so it delivers lower cost and greater precision.

Q: What are its biggest benefits?

A: Heading accuracy. You use less fuel when traveling point to point, both hand steering and using the autopilot, because you’ve got a heading system with almost no error. This information can be applied to all navigation, from autopilots to radar, to chart display and sonar. They all need accurate heading information.

It also provides speed and course information, and its six-axis inertial measurement unit delivers pitch, roll, yaw and heave information. It can determine what direction the boat is pointing when it’s motionless.

Read Next: Furuno SCX-20/SCX-21 Satellite Compasses

Q: Does someone need a Furuno helm to leverage an SCX-20/21?

A: No, there’s no issue with it on an NMEA 0183 or N2K network with our competitors’ products.

Q: Who are Furuno’s target customers for the SCX-20/21?

A: The fact that the price is so reasonable means that you can put it on any kind of boat bigger than 20 feet, where you want accurate heading information.

Q: Anything else?

A: The SCX-20/21 is small—9.8-by-7.6-by-2.9 inches and weighs 2.2 pounds—and can be pole- or flush-mounted. Also, you don’t need to swing an SCX-20/21—just align it once and you’re done.

If every boat had one, it would save millions of dollars per year in fuel.

The post How Much Can a Satellite Compass Improve Your Navigation? appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Not only do rapid-fire digital innovations give us ever-cooler electronics hardware, but they also create new software programs we never even knew we needed. Witness the rise of alternative charts — such as those by CMOR, Standard and Isla — right now geared toward specialty needs such as inshore marsh navigation and finding offshore structure.

“With the ­technological advances in the past five years, you don’t need a supercomputer to process all this chart data,” Raymarine marketing manager Jim McGowan says. “So it’s possible for a small startup to gain access to NOAA data, see what else is available, and then figure out a niche for the needs in the market.”

When Raymarine launched its LightHouse charts in 2012, the company put together a development kit so any entity offering electronic mapping could design its products to work with Raymarine systems. Other major marine-­electronics ­manufacturers planned similarly, and even added new features to their own products, creating better contours and providing community as well as professional-guide input.

Standard Mapping
Standard Mapping, for instance — a company based out of Louisiana that first made custom paper charts more than 30 years ago — works with Raymarine, Simrad, Lowrance and Garmin units. “We’re very connected to local marinas and professional guides,” founder Glenn Schurr says. “We’re getting the knowledge that the fisherman needs so we can put that into a card.”

Schurr started his charting career in the early 1980s while working for a defense contractor. An avid fisherman, he wanted more information about his favorite hot spots. That led him to locate multiple sources for aerial imagery, which he turned into printed maps.

Now his company provides electronic charts with high-resolution aerial imagery for all Gulf Coast states as well as all of Florida. Most of the time, Standard employs low-tide imagery; the company also enhances underwater structure so it appears on the charts. “You can find something as small as a rocking chair in the marsh in Louisiana,” he says.

Standard also provides enforcement lines for regulatory boundaries as well as safe routes for bisecting shallow regions. “We pay a guide to run those routes,” Schurr says. “A lot of expense and time goes into that.”

The aerial images simply overlay onto Standard’s government- and private-sourced ­navigational charts, so anglers need only the single chip. When fishing offshore, anglers don’t need aerial imagery, so Standard provides navaid and structure information along with bathymetry.

The company generally updates aerial images twice a year. Anglers who purchase a card — ranging in price from $149 to $499, depending on the region and level of detail — qualify for free updates for a year and pay $50 for each subsequent refresh.

CMOR Mapping
CMOR sought to fill a niche for ­saltwater anglers and scuba divers seeking highly detailed ocean-bottom and structure views. “We bridged the gap between commercially available multibeam data done by government and agencies, and developed processes to take large amounts of data, preserve the resolution, and make it available,” says Erik Anderson, CMOR co-founder.

Anderson, an ocean engineer with a master’s degree in marine science for mapping the seafloor, first began pulling together data for the South Florida region. CMOR released its first retail charts in 2017. Now the company also offers coverage at the Gulf’s Middle Grounds as well as throughout the western Gulf and much of the southeast and northeast coasts. Anderson expects to add California charts this year.

A quick look at coverage areas on the company’s website does show some gaps between locations. Anderson explains that rather than interpolate data — making assumptions based on surrounding results — CMOR offers true results from actual, collected data.

Read Next: CMOR Mapping Charts

CMOR uses NOAA raster charts in the background on all of its chips. Anglers can overlay any vector data, including their own waypoints (as well as buoys and tides), to see what they’ve been fishing over and what might be next to where they’ve fished. Some anglers split their display screen and run a CMOR chip on one side and a Navionics or C-MAP chip on the other.

“You can go to a new area — say the Marquesas, or someplace you’ve never been before. Traditionally you’d call around to get some spots or find a published reef or wreck. Now you can put in CMOR, and instantly pan over and find ledges and reefs. You can find deep-drop spots within seconds of loading the card. It takes things to a whole new level,” Anderson says.

The highest resolution the company offers is 50 centimeters (about 20 inches). “Anything that size, we’ll see it,” Anderson says. Resolution changes based on depth, with shallower-water spots rendered in the best detail.

Compatible with Lowrance, Simrad, Raymarine, Mercury Vessel View and just recently Furuno, Anderson confirmed, CMOR chips cost $700. Periodic updates start at $100.

Editor’s note: Garmin/Navionics and Simrad/C-Map have just added shaded-relief detail to their charts based on data similar to what CMOR uses.

Isla Mapping
Florida’s miles of marsh and wetlands constantly change; ever-varying tides alter water depths throughout the day. NOAA data can’t always accommodate the many variables found inshore. That’s why Glenn Housman made it his mission to provide inshore anglers with better chart detail.

Housman launched his first Florida Marine Tracks charts in 2013. Today, he offers north and south Florida charts, Louisiana coastal charts, and offshore multibeam sonar charts for Gulf and East Coast waters. “Markers in the Everglades were always missing from the charts I’d use. All the local posts and buoys — missing,” Housman says. “What people would do and still do is over time, they figure things out and add waypoints to their [NOAA-based] charts. And they’d keep their saved tracks so they could see where they’ve run before.”

When Housman entered the chart market, he says he wanted to improve the aerial imagery: “I wanted pictures so good, you could zoom in to 50 feet, and it would be clear. I wanted them everywhere in the state, and I wanted them bright and adjusted so you could see sandbars underwater,” he says.

He also sought to improve chart accuracy, adding arbitrary objects such as stakes and concrete poles and abutments. “We did it by hand,” he says, explaining that he and others physically visited the locations and documented them.

Finally, he wanted to add tracks. “I wanted tens of thousands of miles of tracks so no matter where you were and where you wanted to go, there’d be a track,” he says. “I endeavored to measure all of the shortcuts. I did it myself. I did this over the years. I had a personal passion for it.”

Isla charts currently work with Simrad and Lowrance displays, and cost $449 to $649.

The post Alternative Charts Can Add Navigation and Contour Data appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

I still remember that unsettling advice delivered 35 years ago from our skipper Ed Pitts as he pointed his 25-foot single-outboard HydraSports center console toward the wave-swept inlet to California’s Oceanside Harbor.

It was my first such experience. A big storm raged hundreds of miles away. We had enjoyed pleasant weather while fishing, but the distant tempest generated an onslaught of combers that began pounding the coast at the same time as our afternoon return.

Lack of recent channel dredging resulted in a bar that thrust the big, long-period swells into steep, mountainous waves. They curled, broke and boomed like thunder at the narrow entrance.

We weren’t alone. A fleet of boats hovered outside the harbor mouth, assessing the situation. But for us, it was worse. A propeller with a worn hub had started to slip on the way home but seemed to regain its ­precarious grip. For now.

Despite the complication — and after a bit of ­deliberation — Pitts decided to head in. We donned life jackets, and with his advice still ringing in my ears, I secured a white-knuckle grip on the console grab rail. He eased the throttle ahead and accelerated toward the harbor mouth.

Our timing was bad. Almost immediately, a racing wall of water rose up from astern. It would surely overtake us. Pitts reacted swiftly, bringing the 25-footer about to ascend the face of the swell before it broke. Once on the backside, he quickly spun around and followed the big wave home.

Inside the harbor, bobbing in the froth left by the crashing seas, we heaved a collective sigh of relief. We would live to fish another day.

An ironic truth of saltwater fishing holds that some of the roughest water often erupts just as you’re departing from or returning to port. From inlets along the south shore of New York’s Long Island to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and cuts along Florida’s east coast to the harbors of the Pacific Coast, boating anglers face some of the world’s most challenging sea conditions.

It’s not just waves. A combination of factors turns inlets nasty. A powerful outgoing tide streaming through a narrow channel and a strong onshore wind can pile up seas. Combine these two factors with shoaling and shifting channels, and you have waves that are not only steep, but also packed tightly and breaking. In places such as North Carolina’s Oregon Inlet, treacherous water can stretch for a mile or more. Not fun.

Seek Advice

Before you tackle a dicey inlet, research the conditions, says boating angler Brendan Strum of Manteo, North Carolina, who’s run in and out of Hatteras and Oregon inlets for more than 30 years, chasing bluefin tuna, mahi, marlin, wahoo and other species. While Strum now runs a Regulator 31 with twin Yamaha 300 outboards, much of his experience running inlets came aboard a Regulator 25 with twin Yamaha 200s.

“Talk to other people, especially if you have not been out for a week or more,” Strum implores. “Our inlets change from day to day, so I always call guys I know to get the latest information.”

Expanding your base of fishing friends and sharing information ranks as one of the most important facets of inlet safety. “Never assume you’re an expert, no matter how much experience you have,” advises Strum, who confesses to being nervous every time he crosses the bar at Oregon Inlet. “You need to listen to others who’ve run the inlets in the past day or two.”

Read Next: Six Tips for Fishing Safely Near Breakers

If you are unfamiliar with an inlet, consider hiring a guide with strong knowledge of the inlet to show you the way. Use your chart plotter to record the track. Keep in mind, however, that the safest course can change quickly.

Stay posted on the latest weather conditions and tides, using online resources such as Buoy Weather and NOAA marine weather, checking not only for your departure time, but also for your anticipated return time.

Study the Conditions

“A strong outgoing tide is always cause for concern,” says Capt. Eric Davis of Vero Beach, Florida. Davis guides anglers aboard his Pathfinder 2500 powered by a Yamaha 350. He regularly runs in and out of Fort Pierce, Sebastian and St. Lucie (aka Stuart) inlets. “When the wind pushes waves against an out-flowing current, it can make things dangerous, especially when coming in,” Davis points out.

Take some time to assess the inlet before making your run. Study the cycle of waves; there is often a rhythm to them. Long-period swells, for instance, often roll through in sets, with a slight lull in between.

Obviously, you want to cross where the waves are smaller. For this reason, Davis often avoids the deepest water in the middle of the channel when there is a strong outgoing tide. “The middle of the channel is usually where the current is strongest,” he says. “Hang to the side, where the waves are often smaller and tend not to break as much, but also avoid any potentially dangerous shoals.”

This advice applies to smaller boats, such as Davis’ Pathfinder 2500 bay boat, which don’t draw a lot of water. Larger, deep-draft ­sport-fishers, by necessity, need to stay in the middle of the channel to avoid grounding. Bigger boats are also better at handling larger waves.

To find the smoothest line, Davis recommends running on the downwind side of the main channel when you’re outside the protection of the jetties, using the south side when the wind is out of north/northeast and the north side when the wind is from the south/southeast.

Wait It Out

Waiting a few hours for a slack tide can make the difference between a calm crossing and a calamitous one. “An incoming or slack tide tends to flatten out the waves in inlets such as Jupiter and Stuart,” Davis has discovered. This can mean cooling your heels for as long as five hours. If you’re coming back in the afternoon, that’s a long wait.

Another option is to run to another, more-user-friendly inlet. Though it will take time and you’ll burn more fuel, increased safety and peace of mind can make the extra miles worthwhile.

On days when the inlet is raging, let prudent seamanship prevail. “If it’s questionable, don’t go out,” Strum says. Your crew might be disappointed, but as the captain, it’s your job to make sure everyone stays safe.

Size and Power

The size of your boat counts. The last thing you want is a boat that’s too small to handle steep seas, Davis says. “You need to know the limitations of your boat ahead of time,” he adds. “You don’t want to be challenging steep 6- to 8-foot waves in a 20-footer.”

Having a high horsepower-to-weight ratio can also help keep you safe, Davis says. Power becomes especially important when trying to stay ahead of a breaking wave while returning. (See sidebar for tips on how to handle the boat in a rough inlet.)

Negotiating a rough inlet turns far more ­difficult when you can’t see clearly. Strum’s advice is to wait until daylight before you head out, and return before nightfall. If there’s heavy fog or torrential rain, wait until it clears before crossing the bar.

Low visibility also heightens the risk of collision with a jetty, breakwall, buoy or other vessels. More than one boat has run into a rock jetty while negotiating an inlet at night or in fog. If you must run an inlet in these conditions, use your radar and chart plotter to avoid collisions.

Inlets serve as gateways to many great fishing adventures. With these tips, a seaworthy vessel, sufficient power and a good measure of prudent seamanship, you will be able to meet the challenge of rough inlets, and cross over the bar to find fish and return safely time and again.

Precautionary Steps

When challenging a nasty inlet, make sure everyone dons a life jacket and knows to secure themselves for a run fraught with lumps, bumps and spray, Strum says. Brief everyone on what to do should catastrophe strike. Batten down any loose gear before making your run. Get all crew­members on deck and, if possible, have them seated. They need to stay out of the cabin or other enclosure.

If you must remain in an enclosed space such as a pilothouse, wear an inflatable life jacket with a pull tab only — not one with an auto-inflation feature. This helps ensure your escape in the event of a capsizing. It is the same reason passenger-airline crews instruct you not to inflate your life jacket inside the plane. If water rushes into the cabin (be it airplane or boat), it will pin to the ceiling anyone wearing an inflated life jacket.

Ideally, all crewmembers should have a PLB (personal location beacon) attached to their life jackets. Also, be ready to deploy the EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) quickly, especially if it requires manual activation.

Radio the U.S. Coast Guard or harbor patrol ahead of time if you are experiencing engine problems or other issues that might impair your ability to safely return. Authorities might choose to stand by to lend assistance in the event of an emergency.

Read Next: Ditch Bags: A Critical Element of Safe Boating

Running a Rough Inlet

Look for the safest line through the waves. Gaps in the froth indicate areas of relatively calm water. When heading out, maintain enough speed to keep the bow high. If you go too slow, the bow will drop and you will nose into the oncoming waves. If you go too fast, you’ll get beat up.

Head into the waves and do not slow down, even if you take water over the bow. Maintaining your speed forces any shipped water astern and out the scuppers. If you slow down, the water will surge forward and push the bow down, possibly resulting in a ­catastrophic swamping and rollover.

When returning, retract the trim tabs and maintain sufficient throttle to keep the boat running straight and in a position on the backside of a wave. Match the wave’s speed so the boat stays about midway between the face of the wave behind you and the crest of the one ahead.

By all means, avoid overtaking the wave ahead and surfing down its face. This can lead to catastrophic pitch-poling (flipping stern over bow). Also, don’t let a wave overtake you from astern because this can swamp your boat or cause it to broach (rolling over as the breaking wave catches the boat from behind and shoves it sideways) — or both. Stay in the trough.

Keep your eyes peeled and your head on a swivel in these situations to monitor waves behind and in front of you, as well as anything on either side. Some inlets are plagued by confused seas — so-called potato patches — that can buffet a boat from side to side, as well as fore and aft. If you see a wave suddenly break contrary to the pattern, try to dodge it or adjust your running angle to mitigate its impact.

Treacherous Inlets

Here is a sample of U.S. inlets that often become decidedly dicey.

Sebastian, Florida
“Sebastian is one of the worst — not the one where you want to test your boating skills.”
—Capt. Eric Davis, Vero Backcountry Fishing

St. Lucie, Florida
“The St. Lucie Inlet has a reputation for being one of the most treacherous in Florida.”
—Florida Oceanographic Institute

Jupiter, Florida
“The most dangerous inlet in Palm Beach County.”
—Palm Beach Post

Boynton Beach, Florida
“You’d better have the right boat and know what you’re doing.”
—Capt. Chip Sheehan, Chips Ahoy Charters

Oregon Inlet, North Carolina
“I’m nervous every single time I run the inlet.”
—Brendan Strum, Manteo, North Carolina

Indian River, Delaware
“Indian River Inlet is extremely dangerous.”
—U.S. Coast Guard Station Indian River Facebook post

Moriches Bay, New York
“Strong currents can mix with brisk winds to create a melee of waves, eddies and exposed shoals.”
—marinas.com

Chatham, Massachusetts
“… the channel is narrow, and there are shifting sandbars that make it plenty hairy in an east wind.”
—Bob McNally, fishing writer

Columbia River Bar, Oregon/Washington border
This one is a doozy, “recognized as one of the most dangerous and challenging navigated stretches of water in the world.”
—columbiariverpilots.com

Nehalem Bay Bar, Oregon All of Oregon’s inlets are dicey, but Nehalem is among the worst. “The entrance to Nehalem Bay at times becomes very rough and dangerous to cross.”
—oregonfishinginfo.com

Golden Gate, California
“The Golden Gate [at the entrance to San Francisco Bay] can be a very dangerous place for small boats due to the strong tides and large swells.”
—BoatUS

The post A Guide to Running Rough Ocean Inlets appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Simrad has added the GO12 XSE (starting at $2,149) and GO7 XSR (starting at $649) units to its GO stand-alone chart-plotter series. These multitouch displays also come with built-in sonar, and they network with 3G, 4G and Halo radar systems, StructureScan HD and chirp sonar modules, autopilots, and SonicHub 2 systems. They come with internal GPS receivers and connect to NMEA 2000 sensors. Numerous options for cartography are available, including C-Map and Navionics products. GO7, GO9 and GO12 stand-alones now feature an unlockable add-on called VelocityTrack for Halo radar systems. The feature allows boaters to determine whether a target is closing, diverging or stationary.

The post Simrad GO12 XSE and GO7 XSR appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Lowrance has expanded its HDS Carbon series with a new 16-inch multifunction display that features SolarMAX HD technology and four-panel split capability. The new MFD is visible in all conditions with ultrawide viewing angles, courtesy of in-plane switching technology; it offers 1,920-by-1,080-pixel HD resolution. The HDS Carbon 16 allows anglers to view and control two independent, live sonar sources from a single display. It comes with Bluetooth control of shallow-water anchors and Bluetooth audio streaming from a SonicHub 2 system. It features a 10-hertz internal GPS antenna and is compatible with multiple mapping options. Units start at $4,999 without a transducer.

The post Lowrance HDS Carbon 16 Multifunction Display appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Axiom Pro builds on the Axiom platform, which rolled out this past February. The Pro versions add in-plane switching technology to the display screens, which makes them even more clearly visible from all angles, even through polarized eye-protection devices.

Pro versions feature HybridTouch controls — multitouch touchscreens plus a rotary knob and a few buttons, whereas original Axioms provide full-touchscreen control. Both models offer RealVision 3D technology, which is enhanced by an AHRS — attitude and heading reference system — sensor and new software capabilities in LightHouse 3.1 (due out by late July).

Using RealVision 3D and a new GPS trails function, anglers can build a more complete picture of a piece of structure by circling that area. The quad-core processing computer in the units stores up to 10 minutes of data.

Axiom Pros also come with two ports on the back of the unit for running two distinct transducers. They’re available in 9-, 12- and 16-inch versions with 1 kW of power, while the Axioms come in 7-, 9- and 12-inch sizes and operate at 600 watts.

Axioms range in price from $649.99 to $3,349.99; Pros start at $2,549.99 and will be available starting in late August.

The post Raymarine Expands Axiom Lineup with New Pro Displays appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Raymarine introduced its new Axiom multifunction displays at February’s Miami International Boat Show. The units — with 7-, 9-, or 12-inch displays — include built-in RealVision 3D sonar, powered by what I found to be a super-intuitive operating system (LightHouse 3). Axioms also feature a speedy quad-core processor and an embedded attitude and heading reference system to stabilize imagery and alleviate issues caused by pitch, roll and slow vessel movement. Axioms pair with an all-in-one down, side, conical and 3-D transducer (available in through-hull and transom-mount), and range in price from $649.99 to $3,349.99.

The post Raymarine Axiom Multifunction Displays appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

With a reported 30 percent of electronic navigation occurring on smartphones and tablets, it’s no surprise that companies like Seapilot, a leading manufacturer of Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), GPS compasses and app navigation continue to raise the bar with increasing functionality. Seapilot’s new premium subscription service for its Navigation app includes automatic updates of preferred chart data, social-boating functions, updated real-time weather forecasts and routing (GRIB), and NMEA connectivity for instrument data.

“We put navigation technologies, AIS boat tracking and up-to-date nautical charts on your mobile device in a user-friendly way,” says Anders Bergstrom, executive chairman for True Heading AB, the Swedish parent company of Seapilot. “The Seapilot Navigation app makes coastal areas safer through accurate readings of where you are and where you’re heading.”

In-App Weather Data

The social-boating Facebook integration allows users to see friends that have attached their accounts to an AIS target. Anglers can search for friends’ boats or find them through a menu where connected friends are displayed — a unique way to potentially track tournament partners or buddies.

Users can access AIS and GPS information from a GPS compass through NMEA over Wi-Fi. Depth data is also available for Android users. The app is capable of displaying current position, course and speed for AIS targets and in-app weather data. With autonomous navigation, charts are downloaded directly to a device; Internet access is not necessary while on the water. The app allows anglers to set routes and waypoints, mark objects and assess bearing and range between plotted points and the vessel.

The Seapilot Navigation app is a free download for Apple and Android. The premium service is available for an annual subscription for $39.99 (Apple iTunes) and $37.00 (Google Play).

The post Navigation App with AIS and Premium Service Launched appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The latest addition to the GO series multifunction displays, Simrad’s GO9 XSE offers multitouch controls on a 9-inch screen. The unit is also compatible with Simrad Broadband 3G/4G radar systems, SiriusXM weather and music, and comes with an internal 10 Hz GPS receiver, StructureScan HD and chirp sonar, among other features. Connect GO9 XSE to NMEA 2000 equipment aboard to display engine information. Prices start at $1,049 without a transducer.

The post Simrad GO9 XSE Multifunction Display appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.