Electronics
the surface of the water. The fact
that thousands of containers fall off
cargo ships each year is worrisome
to passagemakers. Containers tend to
float awash; that is, without any of their
structure clearly visible on the surface,
especially at night.
One of the clear benefits of a Big
Four forward-looking sonar is the fact
that it would be part of an integrated
system, with more options to leverage
sonar data compared to a stand-alone
unit from Garmin-Interphase (so far)
or its British competitor EchoPilot. For
example, ForwardScan images can be
viewed on smartphones and viewed
and operated from tablets on vessels
equipped with the Simrad GoFree Wi-
Fi module. If ForwardScan works as
advertised, Navico will benefit in the
marketplace from having two unique
technologies useful to cruisers, the other
being Broadband Radar.
The retail price of a ForwardScan
transducer has not been determined
at the time of publication. Visit www.
simrad-yachting.com.
3. THE NAVIONICS INITIATIVE:
AN ICW MAGENTA LINE RE-DO
Navionics, a leading electronic
cartography company that has embraced
crowdsourcing, wants to recruit cruisers
Steamboat Channel on the ICW after
Navionics has applied enhancements using
research from recreational boaters.
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