I thought I knew how to run this blog site, but I am unable to respond to comments.  This has happened to me on more than one occasion.  Duh

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Connecting a Chart Plotter, VHF, AIS Receiver and Tiller Pilot using the NMEA 0183 protocol

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NOTE: An updated version of this posting that includes an AIS transceiver is now available here. Ripple's complement of communication and navigational electronics now includes: Standard Horizon CP390i chart plotter  Digital Yacht AIS receiver   Raymarine ST2000  tiller pilot  Standard Horizon VHF/DSC radio These devices can all be networked, so installing them includes making decisions about whether and how to connect them.  As with most everything on a boat, there are tradeoffs.  The benefits of additional functionality are always at war with the unanticipated dangers of creeping elegance and the instability that arises from proliferating connections (natural failure points). My four devices, like most modern electronics, can talk to one another using the well-established NMEA 0183 protocol.  NMEA 0183 falls short of a full-blown network, but it meets the need for point-to-point connections such as are appropriate to my configuration..  The NMEA 2000 protocol provides
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Re-powering s/v Ripple

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My Summer, 2017 Adventure An irregular sound, a vibration untuned to the sum of your experience: this one was a momentary drop in RPM... 25, maybe 50 rpm. I bumped the throttle, right? Then it happened again, and denial shades into anxiety. The opening hours of a 6 week cruise: Seattle, up the inside passage, over the top of Vancouver Island and a leisurely meandering through the inlets that indent the west side. But this journey ended just as it began. A series of intricate diagnostic rationalizations, fuel filter and impeller changes availed us not at all. Lots of oil gone missing! Limping into Kingston Harbor, Ripple’s Yanmar 1GM10 turned the last of some 300,000,000 revolutions in my service. Broken-hearted 1GM10 Only slowly did I surrender the hope of rebuilding my faithful one-lunger.  As it happens, Yanmar does not make an oversized piston for the engine, as they enlarged the size of the cylinder when the 1GM transitioned to the 1GM10, and given that the
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Installing and Networking a Class B AIS Transceiver with a Chart Plotter and VHF Radio using NMEA 0183

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In 2015 I purchased an AIS receiver for a trip up the Inside Passage.  This posting is largely an upgrade of the  posting for that installation . I suspected at the time I might look back on purchasing only a receiver as a false economy, and that turned out to be the case. I want to be SEEN as well as to see others. This year  I purchased a Vesper XB 8000 AIS transceiver to replace the perfectly functional Digital Yacht AIS receiver that I had benefitted from over the previous three seasons.   My decision to go with Vesper was based on the reputation of their product and their customer service,  and also because the device makes the data on my network visible via a WiFi gateway.  This should make it easier to pull off tracking and route data, and to display AIS targets on tablet or phone as well as the chart plotter. The XB-8000 also provides an easily managed anchor alarm, accessible by tablet or smart phone.  I won't have to sit in the cockpit all night watching the chart plotte
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