[This is the online version of an article in the March 2011 issue of the Mainsheet, the monthly magazine of the Coastal Cruising Club of Australia]

We all know the role the weather plays in a successful cruise or passage. While we appreciate the weather forecasts provided by local Volunteer Marine Rescue units and the general media, the Internet provides direct access to a rich set of weather information for both casual and “serious” sailing adventures.

Modern forecasts are derived from complex prediction models run on some of the world’s largest computers. It is an unbelievably complex problem to forecast the weather more than a few days ahead and we still manage to complain! But the end result is that today we have a wealth of information available to us via the Web. Whether looking for explanations of a weather phenomenon, today’s weather, a seven day forecast, the expected sea state or precipitation – it’s there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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Last night I enjoyed doing a presentation to the CCCA. Over the coming week, in preparation for the seminars at RPAYC, I’ll have a chance to explore some aspects in more details. The presentation and links to sites that were mentioned are below.

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Skipr.net is providing infrastructure and integration software for the 2011 Pittwater to Coffs Harbour race. The RPAYC is installing Yellow Brick Satellite tracking systems on all participating yachts.

The race starts on 2nd January 2011 and you can follow progress of the yachts on the Pittwater to Coffs website.

We’re rolling out some new features today.
Rather than needing a username (and to remember it), we’re now doing log-ins with your email address. One thing less to remember.

Default Boat Page

And we’ve re-designed the boat pages, to provide a more compact layout, and importantly to allow for a picture and description of your boat.

The last 10 position reports now appear to the left of the map and the date display control is now above the map. [...]

This weekend we launched a re-design of the skipr.net website.  We’ve overhauled its user interface and laid the foundations for a range of new features to help cruising sailors and everyone else  interested in the tracking the movement of recreational vessels. This post describes a few of the new features. [...]

We’re doing a major revision of the skipr website and expect to bring it online later this week. At this stage, we’re expecting the site (including this blog) to be off the air for a few hours on Friday morning (23 July), while we bring the new site online.

We probably don’t spend enough time questioning the accuracy of our charts.

“How accurate are nautical charts? How much faith can be placed in them? Unfortunately, the answer is quite complex – far more complex than simply saying one chart is accurate whilst another is not. However, having the necessary skills should be essential for any mariner venturing into unfamiliar waters.”

That’s the beginning of a very useful paper by Mike Prince, the Director of charting at the Australian Hydrographic Service. Download it from the Hydrographic Office site.

I’ve been busy with some other projects, so part 4 of the AIS series (about full AIS transponders) is on hold – hopefully we’ll get back into it next week.

This week we’ll continue our discussion of Class B AIS systems, by looking at the clear trend to incorporate AIS receivers into other items of Marine Electronics.

As we saw last week, one way of simplifying the installation of an AIS receiver is to use an antenna splitter (aka multiplexer) to share the boat’s VHF radio antenna. Taking that concept further, VHF radio manufacturers are now starting to incorporate AIS receiver into the radio itself. An early example was the iCom IC-M505.

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You’re probably aware by now that the original (Class A) Automatic Identification System was designed for commercial shipping. Class B AIS was designed to be simpler (cheaper) to implement and to be suitable for recreational vessels. It is compatible with Class A systems and available either as “Receive Only” or as a “Transceiver”.

In this post we’ll described a range of options for “Receive Only” systems, typically the initial choice of most yachties.

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