A new Simrad AIS Tranceiver is installed on Sea Eagle
Sea Eagle did manage to get out and enjoy the sunshine over Super Bowl weekend with an overnight trip to meet some friends. However, with the bitter cold winter weather (9° F this week), I have been working inside the boat far more than outside.
I installed a new AIS trasceiver (Simrad) and really enjoyed being able to to see the commercial vessels and having them see me while cruising through dense fog on Sunday morning. I noticed a crewboat heading to a break bulk carrier that actually altered his course based on the AIS information that I was broadcasting.
The Simrad unit is much nicer than the old no-name AIS receiver that came with the boat. The old unit was only set up to communicate via 4800 Baud (NMEA 0183), which meant targets never had names and would drop off the Nobeltec display for ten minutes at a time. The new unit is hooked up via a simple USB cable and is set for High Speed (NMEA 0183), so displays near real time data, including names, positions, speed vectors, turning, etc. It makes running in the fog much less stressful!
Other recent projects have included complete dis-assembly of the Racor Fuel Filters, cleaning the asphaltenes that precipitated on the water separator and re-assembly with new gaskets, o-rings and filters.
High-Speed Wireless Internet Access was also installed using the free Click! Network Cable that is available at the dock. It makes getting work done on the boat much easier when manuals are just a click away!