On September 7, 2018, the 170-foot steel-hull Ice Angel was cruising the waters of Prince Christian Sound off Greenland’s southern coast. Its speed was 14.5 knots when it struck an uncharted underwater rock. The yacht’s four guests and 15 crew were safe, but the yacht sustained significant damage, leaking oil into the pristine waters.

If the available hydrographic information—Greenland Chart 1103—had detailed this feature, the accident likely never would have happened. But believe it or not, Chart 1103 was made in 1927. It is considered to be of “reconnaissance nature,” meaning that its white areas—those without detailed soundings—cannot be trusted for safe passage.

Unfortunately, Chart 1103 isn’t unique. Humanity has piloted unmanned vehicles on Mars, but we’ve only mapped about a quarter of the world’s seafloor. The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, with help from international partners, aims to change this via community-generated bathymetric data. The partners range from government agencies (including official hydrographic offices) to nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, and universities. They also include private companies such as FarSounder, the Rhode Island-based manufacturer of 3D forward-looking sonar.

Seabed 2030 was founded in 2017 as a collaboration between The Nippon Foundation, a Tokyo-based international nonprofit organization, and GEBCO (that’s General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans), a joint program of the International Hydrographic Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

Back then, just 6 percent of the world’s oceans had been mapped to what Seabed 2030 terms “adequate” resolution. Seven years on, this metric approaches 25 percent.

“The primary mission is to deliver the first global map of the entire seafloor,” says Jamie McMichael-Phillips, Seabed 2030’s project director. He says that in some cases, this new data is replacing soundings that were collected using lead lines and sextants. “Without accurate maps of the global seabed, a full understanding of the ocean’s physical, biogeochemical and geological parameters is impossible to achieve.”

Seabed 2030’s 3D gridded bathymetric maps will help to further scientific understanding of complex natural processes, including ocean circulation and sediment transportation. The maps and data will also enable better weather forecasts, and more accurate climate models and tsunami warnings.

“Tsunami height is strongly determined by the shape of the seafloor in the run-up to landfall,” McMichael-Phillips says.

Seabed 2030’s map also promises to help businesses in areas such as natural-resources management (say, fisheries) and transoceanic communications and pipelines.

“Seabed 2030 receives generous donations of data from a growing global community of seafarers, nation-states, industry, academic researchers, philanthropic explorers and volunteers,” McMichael-Phillips says. He adds that while most bathymetric data is derived from sonar logs, Seabed 2030 accepts data collected via aircraft, unmanned vessels and satellites.

Anyone can contribute data, but Seabed 2030 maintains a group of partners—including FarSounder—that share a higher level of trust. Matthew Zimmerman, FarSounder’s CEO, says the company has been contributing bathymetric data to the International Hydrographic Organization since 2018 and became a Seabed 2030 partner last fall.

“I’m not a scientist. I’m an engineer,” he says. “I really like being able to enable science with the tools that my team and I develop.”

While any echo sounder can measure distance, not all information is created equally, he adds: “The sensor isn’t the problem, but the metadata is. It’s really hard to make charting decisions based on poor metadata.”

FarSounder documents the exact locations to within a few centimeters of a forward-looking sonar transducer, a third-party echo-sounder transducer, and GPS antenna(s) of every vessel where FarSounder equipment is installed.

“The metadata quality of our contributions is far superior to most crowdsourced contributions,” Zimmerman says.

In addition to becoming a Seabed 2030 partner, FarSounder recently won a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. FarSounder is using these funds to create a cloud-sharing service for sharing anonymous bathymetric data (read: depth at a location in time) from participating FarSounder customers with Seabed 2030. If the data meets the project’s technical requirements and needs, Seabed 2030 can stitch it into the GEBCO world map.

Notably, Seabed 2030’s definition of “adequate” bathymetric resolution hinges on water depth. For depths down to 4,921 feet, Seabed 2030 aims for “100-meter resolution,” meaning at least one sounding in an area that measures 328-by-328 feet. For depths from 4,921 feet to 9,843 feet, this will be 200-meter resolution; for the nearly 73 percent of the seafloor that measures between 9,843 and 18,865 feet down, resolution requirements dip to 400-meter resolution. And for the deepest soundings—say, the 2.7 percent of the seafloor between 18,865 and 36,090 feet—the metric drops to 800-meter resolution.

It’s also important to understand that Seabed 2030 is creating a macro-level seafloor map, not cartography.

“One-hundred-meter resolution isn’t that helpful from a navigational point of view,” Zimmerman says. “It’s certainly helpful for understanding our world from a global science point of view, but it’s not navigation-quality information.”

FarSounder’s systems provide real-time sonar imagery forward of a vessel’s bow. They also build and store a high-resolution bathymetry map of everywhere the vessel has sailed. This local history map resides on the vessel’s FarSounder bridge computer, but it can be shared anonymously with the FarSounder community via the company’s optional fleet-sharing program whenever connectivity exists.

This is where things get interesting for participating FarSounder customers who opt in. “We needed to find a way to motivate our users to contribute, as well as being able to pass this on to the [Seabed 2030] community,” Zimmerman says. The solution was to create two classes of data for customers who opt into the company’s fleet-sharing program.

“Our customers get the full-resolution data as part of the service, but we’re contributing a slightly lower-resolution data [to Seabed 2030],” Zimmerman says. “The high-res maps from the FarSounder sonar, the highest resolution, that’s staying just with the FarSounder customers who are part of this fleet-sharing service.”

Given that FarSounder customers often buy this equipment to ply seldom-seen waters, participation confers membership into a kind of sonic explorers club. “We have pretty good coverage in areas that don’t have good chart data,” Zimmerman says. “We really want to encourage our customers to contribute so that they can also reap the benefit.”

FarSounder might someday monetize this data, but this isn’t the current model. “FarSounder is in the business of selling sonars,” Zimmerman says. “We’re in a unique position where we can participate, we can make contributions, and we don’t need to worry about supporting our company financially through the data transactions because we do that through our hardware sales.”

The net result is a win-win-win: Seabed 2030 receives high-quality data from a trusted partner, the general public and scientific community benefit from the free and downloadable GEBCO world map, and participating FarSounder customers get higher-resolution data.

Still, scale and time emerge as question marks.

“Even with everybody doing all of the mapping they possibly could, we’re not going to meet the Seabed 2030 goals of mapping the world’s oceans, certainly not by 2030, likely not even in the next 70 years,” Zimmerman says.

Seabed 2030’s team acknowledges this, but with a caveat: “A combination of a large fleet of conventionally crewed vessels and robot boats in larger numbers would be a game-changer,” McMichael-Phillips says.

In the meantime, Seabed 2030 is already providing the world with higher-resolution, large-scale seafloor bathymetric data than has ever existed. As for Chart 1103, Seabed 2030 will eventually help fill in the white areas. Cruisers everywhere are encouraged to consider joining FarSounder’s participating community.

Seafloor Scans

FarSounder’s Expedition Sourced Ocean Data Collection Program provides external USB drives that collect raw sonar data. This project requires significant back-end processing work for FarSounder. It’s run on an invitation-only basis, based on sailing itineraries. This high-quality data contributes to FarSounder’s fleet-sharing program.

The post Mapping The World’s Oceans appeared first on Yachting.

Few mousetraps better lend themselves to innovation than boats, and countless brilliant minds have devoted rich careers to making boating better, safer and more enjoyable. Each year, Yachting hails some of the most beyond-the-box thinkers with its annual celebration of innovation. Meet the Class of 2023.

Donald L. Blount 

As a boy in Roanoke, Virginia, Donald Blount dreamed of designing steam locomotives. He enrolled in Virginia Tech’s engineering department in 1954, but while he was there, Norfolk and Western Railway switched to diesel engines. Blount instead landed an internship at David Taylor Model Basin, one of the world’s largest ship-design test facilities, with ties to the U.S. military. Rather than returning to college, he accepted a full-time, non- degree technical position there in 1956.

By 1959, Blount had tested into a job as a naval architect. By 1963, he had completed his mechanical-engineering degree at The George Washington University. He spent the next 27 years researching and directing programs centering around emerging hydrodynamic technologies for the U.S. Navy.

In 1988, he founded Donald L. Blount and Associates, which provided naval-architecture and marine-engineering consulting services relating to specialized, high-speed motorized vessels. Some of the best-known yachts he was involved with include the 222-foot Fincantieri Destriero, which plied the Atlantic at a pace of 53.09 knots in 1991, and the 136-foot Izar Fortuna, which clocked 68 knots during sea trials.

Gibbs & Cox acquired DLBA in 2015, the same year Blount was recognized with a medal from the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. He died last July at age 87.

Evoy and Flux Marine 

Electric propulsion is making inroads, and two companies on opposite shores of the Atlantic have been developing this power solution for outboards.

Evoy is based in Florø, Norway. The father-and-son team of Gunnar and Leif Stavøstrand started the company in 2018. Evoy’s Polarcirkel 860 demo boat launched in summer 2019. By that fall, its 400 hp inboard electric motor raised international eyebrows by hitting 55 knots. Evoy’s first products reached consumers in 2020, and the company now produces inboard and outboard motors. It also produces high-performance, liquid-cooled batteries that are available in 63, 126 or 189 kWh packs. The latter two are available in 120-plus, 200-plus, 300-plus and 400-plus hp packages that can power vessels ranging from 15-foot skiffs to performance-minded 50-footers.

Flux Marine, based in Bristol, Rhode Island, was founded by Ben Sorkin, Daylin Frantin and Jon Lord. The idea to build electric outboards came from an engineering project that Sorkin started at Princeton University (Class of 2017). The three earned grants, including from The National Science Foundation, and investors that allowed them to turn concept into consumer product.

The company currently offers three outboard motors, available in 15, 40 and 70 hp models. Alternatively, customers can purchase boat packages that sport up to 100 hp and deliver up to 75 nautical miles of range.

FarSounder 

While mariners have long enjoyed the ability to scan horizons with radar and probe the depths with sonar, the civilian marine world had a serious blind spot in front of the bow. This started changing in 2001, when University of Rhode Island professor James Miller and Matthew Zimmerman, then a student of ocean engineering, started exploring ways of using sonar to prevent accidents. The two proved their concept with a model of a forward-looking sonar in 2002, and then spent two years refining and developing it before offering FarSounder’s first commercial product in 2004.

The FS-3 had a maximum range of about 1,000 feet, a 90-degree field of view and a two-second refresh rate. Today, FarSounder offers three products—the Argos 350, Argos 500 and Argos 1000—with ranges of around 1,150 feet to 3,280 feet, fields of view of 60 to 120 degrees, and refresh rates of roughly one to three times per second.

These products allow mariners to thread carefully past Caribbean coral heads, negotiate poorly charted anchorages, tiptoe past high-latitude ice and more. FarSounder’s forward-looking-sonar systems have become go-to equipment for many expedition-grade yachts.

Today, FarSounder is also working on software that lets customers create their own 3D cartography. 

Gary Burrell and Min Kao 

Theirs is a classic story of foresight. In the early 1980s, Gary Burrell, an electrical engineer, was working at King Radio Corp. in Olathe, Kansas. He headhunted Min Kao, a younger electrical engineer who had been working for a defense contractor. The U.S. government was then building what would become the Global Positioning System, and after 1983’s Korean Air Lines Flight 007 disaster, President Reagan signed legislation making GPS publicly available.

Burrell and Kao saw the potential of civilian GPS and founded ProNav in 1989. They rebranded to Garmin in 1991. Their timing was impeccable: The GPS100 hit chandlery shelves in 1990. Four years later, Garmin delivered the first combined chart plotter and sonar, and the first color GPS chart plotter.

As the market shifted, so did the company. In the late 1990s, Garmin began making a GPS-based navigation system for cars, culminating in the Nüvi systems of the mid-2000s. In 2013, the company introduced GPS-based smartwatches.

And the company continued investing heavily in marine electronics.Garmin’s current product portfolio includes onboard audio, multibeam sonars, 24-inch touchscreen multifunction displays, radars with Doppler technology, and more.

Scout Boats 

Boatbuilder Steve Potts joined the marine industry when he was 14 years old, starting on the ladder’s lowliest rung. He scaled his way to plant manager at American Sail before starting his own company in 1988. His first creation was a 14-footer based on a classic 1960s boat called the Scout that he had worked on.

Potts’ first keel-up design was a simple, capable fishing boat with a high level of finish. Potts began gaining traction with dealers in the Carolinas, but then Hurricane Hugo demolished his manufacturing operations in 1989, forcing him to rebuild from the ground up.

It paid off: Scout has become an innovator in top-quality center consoles and has obtained several patents. Scout’s innovations include a reverse-shoebox hull/deck design, which purportedly prevents water ingress at the hull/deck joint; and the Air Assist, NuV3 and Scout Stepped Hull Technology hull forms. Patents include the company’s T-Top/Glass Enclosure, which increases helm visibility; there’s also a patent-pending Electronically Actuated Articulating Rocket Launcher, which raises or lowers the boat’s hardtop-mounted rocket launchers; and the anchor camera.

Scout currently builds center consoles from 17 to 53 feet length overall.

Silent-Yachts 

Heike and Michael Köhler know life offshore. That happens when you amass 75,000-plus nautical miles over some 6,000 days of cruising. One major conclusion they derived was that boaters needed a better, cleaner way of locomoting and generating DC power than by burning fossil fuels.

The couple spent 2004 to 2009 experimenting with and evaluating a range of alternative power sources that would generate self-renewable propulsion and onboard electricity. In 2009, the duo built the Solarwave 46, which was the world’s first electric-powered bluewater catamaran that could produce sustainable juice via solar panels. A vigorous shakedown was required, so the Köhlers spent the next five years cruising and proving the concept.

Once convinced, they founded Silent-Yachts. The company launched the Silent 64 in 2016. In 2018, that boat crossed the Atlantic in 16 days at a steady and emissions-free rate of 6 knots.

Today, Silent-Yachts offers all-electric yachts from 60 to 120 feet length overall, an 82-foot hybrid catamaran and a 13-foot electric tender. Additionally, the company collaborated with Ed-TEC to create the Silent Speed 28, which reportedly delivers 60-plus-knot speeds with innovative features such as foils controlled by artificial intelligence.

Silent-Yachts is also working to create Silent-Resorts, a Bahamas destination that will cater to electric vessels.

Future Potential

Sampriti Bhattacharyya, Reo Baird and America’s Cup-winning naval architect Paul Bieker are advancing the concept of vessel hydrofoils with the Navier 27. This all-electric foiling powerboat has a reported range of up to 75 nautical miles at 20 knots, with autonomous navigation capabilities. The Navier team is helping to change hydrofoils from being thought of as oddball America’s Cup stuff into being nearly mainstream technology that should increase efficiency.

The post Boating’s Brilliant Innovators appeared first on Yachting.

Recent years have seen an uptick in the number of yachts and adventurous cruisers plying high-latitude waters from Alaska to Antarctica. While stunningly beautiful and largely void of other yachts and people, these regions require different kinds of electronics than a cruise to the Caribbean or a transatlantic passage.

Here’s a look at some systems yachtsmen might want to consider when planning a high-latitude cruise.

FarSounder Argos 350

Icebergs and their broken-off bergy bits are some of the greatest dangers that high-latitude cruisers face. FarSounder’s Argos 350 forward-looking sonar (call for pricing) is designed to spot these dangers for yachts that are 60 to 130-plus feet length overall, providing 1,150 feet of range at 18 knots in open waters.

The system employs a multibeam transducer, a power module, cabling, a processor and proprietary software, and it can be installed during construction or refitting. Once networked, the system delivers imagery to the yacht’s Ethernet network, allowing the imagery to be viewed on compatible screens.

Argos 350 systems provide detailed bottom mapping at a range of up to eight times the water depth, and they can detect objects in the water column out to their maximum 1,150-foot range. The system collects and processes its sonar returns in three dimensions, allowing it to compensate for pitch and roll. Additionally, the system employs color coding to alert users of dense objects, and to indicate depth or signal strength (users can switch between views).

Should the system detect a threat, it delivers audible and/or visual warnings based on a user’s parameters.

To minimize threats even further, anyone operating near ice should dramatically cut the yacht’s speed. While the system delivers 1,150 feet of range at 18 knots, the reality is that at 18 knots, a yacht covers 1,150 feet in 38 seconds. At 5 knots, users have two minutes and 16 seconds of reaction time. Provided that prudent seamanship is exercised, an Argos 350 should allow a yacht to ply truly spectacular waters.

FLIR M364C

Adventure cruising requires sharp eyes, but human eyes simply can’t detect minute thermal differences between an object and its background. This is what FLIR’s thermal-imaging cameras are designed to do. FLIR’s recreational marine cameras range from $3,500 to $180,000, and the M364C ($20,500) is ideally suited to high-latitude cruising.

The gyrostabilized, dual-payload M364C can pan through 360 degrees and tilt through plus or minus 90 degrees. It has a high-definition, Sony-built daylight camera with a 30x optical zoom and 12x digital zoom. All up, this equates to a 360x zoom.

But it’s the unit’s thermal-imaging camera that’s best suited for detecting ice, other vessels and marine life. This camera has a FLIR-built Boson 640 thermal-imaging core that delivers 640-by-512-pixel image resolution, a 24-by-18-degree field of view and an 8x digital zoom.

Additionally, this camera sports FLIR’s Color Thermal Vision and Multispectral Dynamic Imaging (MSX) technologies. CTV blends imagery from the daylight and thermal-imaging cameras and overlays it with color to enhance object identification. MSX adds details that make faint edges look crisp. So the skipper can see, say, a distant bergy bit or a menacing polar bear.

BSB Marine Oscar

BSB Marine developed its Oscar collision-avoidance system for offshore sailors, and then it created Oscar Custom Power for motoryachts.

The optical-based system ($70,000) consists of a vision unit that is mounted aloft and a belowdecks central processing unit. The VU consists of three FLIR-built, 640-by-512 thermal-imaging cameras that deliver 123-degree horizontal and 32-degree vertical fields of view, as well as 3,040 feet of range. The CPU is a black-box computer that analyzes the cameras’ video streams to detect objects in near real time. The system also includes an app that delivers a visual reference and AIS-type information (such as speed and bearing) on the target, and that can reside on a personal computer, wireless device or multifunction display.

The CPU uses artificial intelligence to compare all detected objects with its stored database of 55 million-plus images (including icebergs viewed from myriad angles and in varied sea states). Oscar then automatically adjusts the yacht’s autopilot if it “sees” a navigational danger, and it can simultaneously evade several targets.

As with the other technologies discussed here, slower speeds buy operators more reaction time, which is key for negotiating ice-choked waters.

Furuno Ice Radar

If high-latitude aspirations involve wending through pack ice, then Furuno’s ice-detection radar is worth exploring. The system uses a Furuno X-band navigation radar ($11,000 to $40,000) and a FICE-100 module ($40,000). The FICE-100′s processor leverages the X-band radar’s raw data to create highly detailed composite radar imagery of the surrounding ice pack at a range of 3 to 6 nautical miles.

The FICE-100 concentrates its processing power on returns from the lower portion of the radar’s transmitted vertical beam, then lowers the signal’s noise floor. The resulting imagery captures fine details that would otherwise be lost. Moreover, the system creates its composite imagery using as many as 100 radar sweeps (older sweeps are usurped by newer ones), a process that can take four minutes and 16 seconds to build out initially. Furuno’s X-band radars operate at 24 rpm.

While the system was designed for commercial ships, it can be fitted aboard expedition-grade yachts that have the belowdecks space to accommodate the X-band radar’s dedicated display and the FICE-100. The system’s digital-video-cable outputs allow users to look at navigational radar imagery on a networked Furuno multifunction display and at ice-detecting imagery on the dedicated display.

Lars Thrane LT-3100S

VSAT antennas provide fast satellite communications, but they’re beholden to coverage maps that sometimes exclude the high latitudes. Global Maritime Distress and Safety System terminals provide a safety net via satellite by transmitting emergency signals—including the vessel’s name and location—to, and enabling two-way voice calls with, a terrestrially based Rescue Coordination Center.

Lars Thrane’s LT-3100S terminal (call for pricing) operates on Iridium’s network of 66 cross-linked low-Earth-orbit satellites. The system leverages Iridium’s Short Burst Data messaging service to transmit small, low-bandwidth data packets while providing a dedicated voice channel. For mariners, this means global access to text messages, email, GRIB weather files, official maritime safety information, and emergency and nonemergency voice calls.

While the LT-3100S delivers significantly slower data-transfer rates than VSAT (read: no Zoom meetings), it’s fast enough to let users make affordable nonemergency voice calls and send and receive critical information. Better still, users can access itinerary-specific information from Iridium’s global partner network (things such as ice-pack reports from Iridium’s Russian partners) or—should troubles arise—transmit a distress signal and call an RCC.

Garmin InReach

For yachtsmen who want to send two-way emergency communications and nonemergency text communications, share a location, and get marine-weather updates—but who don’t want the complication of a GMDSS terminal—Garmin’s InReach satellite communicators ($350 to $650) could be the ticket. While InReach doesn’t offer the same capabilities as a GMDSS terminal, these pocket-size devices work globally via Iridium’s satellite network with an airtime subscription, and they allow users to post messages to social media platforms. The InReach devices also can be paired with smartphones, and friends and family can ping an InReach device for its location information.

Furuno SCX-20/SCX-21

Magnetic compasses have guided mariners for centuries, but as the devices approach the Earth’s magnetic poles, their magnetic declination increases, making them unusable. Alternatively, satellite compasses harness satellite signals to determine heading information.

Furuno’s NMEA 2000-certified SCX-20 and NMEA 0183-compatible SCX-21 (each $1,200) have four global-navigation-satellite-system antennas that allow the compasses to generate highly accurate heading, pitch, roll and heave data, even in heavy seas or when the compasses can only receive GNSS information from a single satellite (say, because of signal blockage from a mountain or an iceberg). These compasses can share the information with networked instruments and systems such as autopilots, chart plotters and radars using their NMEA 0183/2000 connectivity.

EPIRBs and PLBs with Return Link Service

Vessel-registered EPIRBs and individually registered personal locator beacons have saved countless lives, but historically, distressed mariners couldn’t be sure their emergency signals reached the rescuing authorities.

Next-generation devices allow COSPAS-SARSAT to send a Return Link Service confirmation to the beacon. While the Return Link Service is operational, EPIRBs and PLBs enabled with the technology aren’t yet widely available; yachtsmen can find them in the United Kingdom, France, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway.

The post High-Latitude Cruising Technology appeared first on Yachting.

The Argos 350 forward-looking sonar guides yachts safely through unknown waters and risky environments. Yachting Editor-in-Chief Patrick Sciacca sits down with FarSounder to discuss the technology and how it can benefit yacht owners.

The Argos 350 Forward Looking Sonar system is the ideal solution for mid-sized vessels ranging from 18 – 40+ meters (60 – 130+ feet).

Specifications include:

• More compact and lighter transducer
• Ability to detect objects in water column up to 350 meters ahead
• Operational speeds up to 18 knots
• Two installation types – easy fixed installation or hoist installation in 10-inch diameter sea chest

To learn more about the Argos 350 forward-looking sonar, visit FarSounder’s website.

The post Virtual Q&A: FarSounder Argos 350 Forward-Looking Sonar appeared first on Yachting.

My first trip through deception pass unfurled at almost 40 knots and likely shaved off some years of my life. This aptly named pass separates the northern reaches of Washington state’s Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island’s southern shores and is home to underwater rocks, strong currents and an often-piping wind. Fortunately, our skipper threaded the needle just so, but this didn’t stop me from silently wishing for a powerful forward-looking sonar that would buy him significantly better situational awareness and greater reaction time than our bow-mounted lookout (me) could afford.

Now, nine years later, FarSounder’s Argos 350 system stands ready to help yachtsmen thread all sorts of nautical needles (but still not at 40 knots).

The desire to peer beneath the waves ahead of one’s vessel is ancient and obvious, and it’s one that modern technology is enabling. Much like a regular sonar, forward-looking sonar transmits acoustic energy (pings) through the water, except the transducers face forward. Given the nature of sound propagation, these pings also reflect off the ocean’s bottom, giving users information about objects in the water column and about the upcoming seafloor.

FarSounder has long offered forward-looking-sonar products, but its Argos 350 system brings exploration-level sonar to the leisure-marine market. It gives owners of displacement and semidisplacement yachts from about 60 to 130 feet length overall greater situational awareness and collision-avoidance information. It works at a range of up to 1,150 feet and at speeds up to 18 knots in open waters.

The Argos 350 system (call for pricing) employs a transducer module, a power module, custom and Ethernet cabling, a processing computer, and FarSounder’s SonaSoft software. The gear delivers FLS imagery to the yacht’s Ethernet network, allowing it to be viewed on third-party-compatible displays. Additionally, FarSounder’s software-developer kit allows some third-party equipment, such as an autopilot, to leverage the information.

Like all FLS, the Argos 350 has range that’s limited by the laws of physics when it comes to bottom mapping, however, these limitations are fewer when it comes to detecting water-column dangers.

“Our systems see eight times the water depth in front of the vessel—and often more—for bottom mapping, but they can also see out to the system’s full range for detecting obstacles in the water column,” says Cheryl M. Zimmerman, FarSounder’s CEO. “It’s able to show the distance to the obstacle, but not its depth, until the yacht comes into the bottom-mapping range. Our system ensonifies the whole volume and then reflects these soundings back to the transducer module via thousands of beams, and [they are] then sent to the processing computer.”

To skirt range-limiting issues such as signal interference, shallow-water operation, surface effects and vessel motion, Argos systems’ hardware and software collect and process FLS data in three dimensions.

“Without 3D capability, FLS are unable to easily compensate for roll and pitch without large amounts of expensive hardware,” Zimmerman says. “Even then, 2D roll-and-pitch compensation is marginal at best. FarSounder’s technology is capable of compensating for roll and pitch entirely in software in conjunction with an advanced sensor. All Argos systems have fast refresh rates and deliver a wide field of view with every single ping, and each deal with multipath and water-depth challenges.”

Once installed, the Argos 350 system delivers a 90-degree field of view out to 1,150 feet and typically displays this information as a split screen, with one side showing the vessel and its FLS cone overlaid atop cartography. The other side depicts a large 3D rendering and a smaller 2D rendering of the same scene. Additionally, the system displays heading, GPS data, and course- and speed-over-ground information.

And should an Argos system detect a threat, it’s not reticent.

“There’s an audible and/or visual alarm system that is user-defined,” Zimmerman says, adding that users can set warning parameters such as maximum and minimum ranges and depths. “One important parameter involves setting the sensitivity of the system alarm, with the user determining how many pings should be detected before setting off the alarm, in order to minimize false alarms.”

The system uses color coding to draw a user’s attention to loud—or dense—objects. “We offer both color coding that’s matched to signal strength, which refers to how ‘loud’ an object is, as well as color coding that’s mapped to depth,” Zimmerman says. “A multicolor, uniform luminance gradient color map is used to indicate depth, while an orange-copper color map is used to indicate signal level. The operator can switch between signal strength and depth, depending on their needs.”

This setup gives navigators an at-a-glance way to differentiate between the seafloor and dangerous water-column targets and—for gunkholing or exploration—a way to determine if there’s enough water to safely proceed.

Conveniently, the setup also helps to determine where to throw hooks, both large and small. “For finding a good anchorage, you may want to look at the signal strength in order to determine the bottom composition,” Zimmerman says. Anglers can also leverage this information to identify fish habitats.

An Argos 350 system does have limitations. Given that the maximum range for full bottom mapping and FLS capabilities is 1,150 feet, or approximately one-fifth of a nautical mile, and given that the maximum safe navigable speed in open water is 18 knots, an Argos 350 system will provide up to 38 seconds of warning at 18 knots before a vessel strikes calamity.

Granted, 38 seconds isn’t much time to let a skipper react, but the cost-free solution to that problem involves throttle discretion.

“In areas of ice and other potential hazards, I would advise a [to] yacht slow down and operate in a cautious manner,” Zimmerman says. At 12 knots, a yacht would ply the same waters in 57 seconds, while cutting speed to 5 knots would deliver 2 minutes, 16 seconds of reaction time.

So, while a yet-to-be-invented Argos 350 system would have quelled my fears the first time I transited Deception Pass, our skipper still would have needed to exercise some throttle discretion to leverage the safety margin the system affords.

And that latter bit, of course, is a whole different story.

New Electronics

OceanLED’s E7 (call for pricing) underwater light kicks out up to 11,000 lumens and comes in two color schemes: midnight blue/ultra-white or multicolor. E7 lights have a 90-degree top beam and 20-degree side beam, and are available with 10- to 50-degree angle options. Additional features include strobe-light mode, dynamic-audio mode, a rectangular beam pattern and multiple controller types. Check it out, at oceanled.com.

Garmin’s line of GPSMap Plus multifunction displays are available with 7-, 9- and 12-inch screens ($900 to $2,900) and have full navigational capabilities. They also have much deeper engine integration than standard MFDs thanks to J1939 connectivity. GPSMap Plus MFDs also deliver Garmin’s OneHelm compatibility, which brings control of third-party systems onto the MFD’s user-friendly interface. Check it out, at garmin.com.

Navigating on a personal computer requires a gateway device so the PC can access a yacht’s NMEA 0183 and/or NMEA 2000 networks. Yacht Devices’ NMEA 2000 Ethernet Gateway ($190) gives third-party navigation and routing-software access to, for example, AIS data. It’s easily configured and updated via a built-in web server. Ethernet connectivity ensures compatibility with NMEA’s OneNet protocol. Check it out, at yachtd.com.

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Farsounder SonaSoft 3.0

FarSounder has launched SonaSoft 3.0, an upgrade that improves the 3-D display of real-time, forward-looking sonar.

SonaSoft 3.0 enhances target persistence through new image-stabilization techniques, updates color mapping by fusing depth- and signal-level information, improves auto-squelch mode, expands charter overlay including full 3-D images and allows 1-to-1 scaling of 3-D images.

“I’m proud that FarSounder’s development team has once again redefined the performance standard for 3-D sonars,” Matthew Zimmerman, vice president of engineering, stated in a press release. “With the launch of SonaSoft 3.0, we continue our commitment to making it even easier for vessel operators to understand what is underwater, ahead of their vessels.”

More details along with registration for the update are at www.farsounder.com.

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