I had posted some features of the hotly anticipated-NavNet 3D system due to be introduced at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show. Furuno came down on me hard for "breaking" the news about these features without their permission. Nice. They asked me to pull the piece, which I did for purely personal relationship issues with some people there.

There are a lot of boats built overseas, in Taiwan and China for example, that make their way to their happy new owners in the U.S. It's a pretty long process from when the sale is made by the dealer to the time the boat arrives here. For the more popular semi-custom/production boats like Ocean Alexander or Nordhavn it can be 8-months to a year or so before the boat arrives.

I went to an introduction/technical seminar on KVH's new V7 system yesterday. The system is a satellite internet solution with a 24-inch dish and basic underdeck hardware that connects to a wireless router. From there, you can have about 10 computers - wired or wireless - on the network and surfing the web at very good speeds.

C-Map has some interesting things going on as their transition to Jeppesen takes them into some natural collaborations.

First, Nobeltec is working on incorporating C-Map Max Pro into the venerable Visual Navigation Suite. Max Pro is the current charting interface for the Northstar 8000 series, but Nobeltec will really get Pro into the public eye.

I was recently on a family trip to Barra de Navidad, Mexico aboard our old Stephens, Morningstar, when I encountered a problem. The Laker game was on and the televsion was off, at least as far as English-language programming was concerned. The solution came in the form of a little gem called a Slingbox.

KVH, a great and innovative manufacturer of satellite TV and communications systems, just reported double digit growth for their latest quarter. Apparently they didn't get the memo that all press releases have to predict the end of the marine business as we know it.

Dustan McCoy, the Chairman of Brunswick, the largest boat company on the planet, just went public again with a doom and gloom scenario for the State of the Boat Business. He keeps one-upping himself with each statement about how bad things are. I know he has an obligation to Wall Street, but this is getting ridiculous.

I just put the new Garmin 5212 up on the bench and had some time to play around with it.