Nerdiness Quotient: 7/10 OpenCPN is installen on a Macbook Pro used as the onboard navigation and planning pc. The MaxSea navigation software has been used for many years and works very well, especially in conjunction with Furuno equipment. One ‘weakness’ of the program is that updating maps is quite expensive. OpenCPN is significantly cheaper in this respect. It was therefore nice to be able to update the relevant charts on the navigation PC for this season's trip. O-chart had very good charts for Iceland and Greenland, among other areas, at very reasonable prices compared to Maxsea and Navionics/Garmin.

Nerdiness Quotient: 5/10 Navigating the open seas demands an acute awareness of the ever-changing weather conditions. Among the arsenal of tools used by sailors and meteorologists alike, marine barometers stand out as indispensable instruments for forecasting weather patterns at sea. A barometer is important for weather prediction as they show how the atmosphere is changing. A drop in pressure often signals a storm, while a rise may signal fair weather. The Steamrock SB-42 digital barometer detects and records changes in atmospheric pressure. It displays current atmospheric pressure, a graph showing changes in that pressure over 84 hours, and a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) symbol depicting changes over three hours. Beneath that symbol is a numeric value representing net value changes over the three hours.

Nerdiness Quotient: 5/10 Up to now, only the autopilot display and controls were at the helmsman's place. A plotter box had to be made and assembled so the chart plotter could be placed there. Read more...