Opinion: On a boat or in an automobile (and probably in other situations as well) the comfort and convenience that can forestall fatigue and facilitate quick action translate fairly directly into safety. Several of these items serve this principle.
Spring 2000 - Note that rules for regular marine VHF do not permit any transmission from shore (by those of us who would have had ordinary licenses). Boat to boat, boat to dinghy, steering station to bow, and even boat to shore are all permitted, but not from shore to anywhere.
Canada may have changed their licensing rules lately.
Magazines have run very helpful articles in the last couple of years, and member Cheri Crane wrote a good piece for our use. When I have tracked it down, I'll include it here.
January 2001 - Last summer I bought an inexpensive Humminbird hand-held VHF radio. I thought I would like it, and I do. (This is about the type, not necessarily the brand, which seems quite acceptable.)
To conserve battery power, I leave it off most of the time, relying upon my fixed-mount unit for standby service. My main VHF is mounted near the forward bulkhead in the salon, with a remote speaker near the main companionway so that it can be heard from the cockpit. Using that radio while singlehanding is awkward, to say the least.
Now, I keep the hand-held, power OFF, in the cockpit with me. When I hear a call, I can power it up and use it for my reply or to listen to an exchange, following the other stations when they switch to a working channel. Although it's important to keep it away from the main radio's speaker while transmitting on the same channel, I find it to be a very handy addition to my boat's stable of radios (Fixed VHF, FRS, CB, anchoring headset). Since I strongly believe that convenience translates fairly directly to safety, I count this expenditure as a well-spent $99.
Marine VHF radios are wisely equipped with a switch for selecting high or low transmit power.
Last summer as we sailed in Elliott Bay we had to hear some guy requesting a slip assignment from Port Ludlow, which is many miles away. He may have been calling from somewhere near us, but since we hear this sort of thing all the time, I doubt it. I imagine that he was probably just off Ludow's marina, using high power for a one-half-mile call. (We didn't hear Ludlow's reply, which seems to indicate that Ludlow was properly answering him using low power.)
The first attempt to contact any station you can see should always be on LOW power, as should the first reply. Use LOW power to contact a marina for a slip assignment. Use LOW power until it's apparent that HIGH power is needed. Please.
Not all of our comms options involve either radios or boats. Telephone features & computers intersect to help us keep in touch, too. Read about our contact options: Contact Info.
At my house, cellular signal is fairly poor; at times it's practically non-existent. Occasionally my three-day battery is nearly dead in the middle of the first day, and the phone fails to receive incoming calls even before that. In rustic off-highway campgrounds the same is frequently true; sometimes callular is just impossible. It turns out that this is less about available power (in the telephone) than about antenna efficiency. The small antenna in/on the instrument is compromised toward the convenience of small size; bigger would have been better.
Fortunately, many telephones support external antennas. Some have special proprietary connectors at their bases, and some have more normal coaxial connector ports. Mine has a regular coaxial connector hidden behind a rubber plug near where its extendable antenna meets the body of the instrument.
The antennas discussed here are normal non-amplified antennas. Amplified antennas, which are connected to separate power supplies and are of two general types (directly connected and repeating) definitely work. They are too expensive for most of us to consider.
At the end, I will briefly consider two booster technologies that are (or have been) common, but which do not actually work.
I have largely solved my reception problems by using a big Wilson "trucker's" antenna that connects to my phone via a 20-foot coaxial cable off a short pigtail adapter in the instrument's antenna port. (Any such external antenna will consist of two parts, because the antenna will have one of a small number of fairly standard connectors on it, while telephones have a nearly infinite number of special antenna ports. My matched antenna and adapter came from a local CB shop. Because truckers increasingly rely upon cellular telephones, your local shop surely has these, too.
During a recent camping rendezvous, after observing that cellular reception using only the phone's built-in (extendable) antenna wasn't going to work, I connected this antenna and made and received a number of "loud and clear" calls despite apparently having only a single "bar" of signal strength.
The total package is big. The black vertical rod below the ground-plane spikes is just a mast, there for elevation. At its base is a set of threads used to fasten it to a mounting bracket (as to the truck's mirror brackets, etc.). Only the top is actual antenna. A smaller magnetic-mount version might be handier for carrying around, but it really does need to be stuck to a metal plane. I have been told that a ferrous metal pie tin (upside-down) with a flat bottom of at least 8" diameter would do it. (Boaters, note: These are very powerful magnets.)
I expect that my (non-mag-mount) oversized antenna would be helpful on board my boat, too, where I occasionally spend the bulk of a cruising day (or all of multiple days) at or beyond the fringes of usable range. I haven't decided about how to mount it, though. It does need to be as vertical as possible, probably right-side-up; I may just hang it from my flag halyard.
These large antennae work (to improve signal lock) not by using more power from the phone's transceiver, but by being many times more efficient than the small (compromised) internal antenna. They end up saving power, because marginal reception drains a battery faster than good reception even when the phone is not in use (i.e., even while on stand-by). The phone is in constant contact with the cellular network, and the strength of its transmissions is proportional to the distance from the nearest tower; a more efficient antenna helps to extend the phone's battery-day and to make calls possible from fringe areas.
It is counter-intuitive. "That giant antenna connected to that tiny
phone?" It works because the phone's internal antenna is a badly
compromised system engineered to work as well as can be expected for
its small size; the larger antenna is carefully engineered for
efficiency, period.
The downside is of course that the phone is no longer quite as
portable as it was. Small price, though, in circumstances where the
antenna permits calls that otherwise would have been difficult or impossible. (I once carried it all through
a campground looking for additional signal. I needn't have bothered,
entertaining though it was to onlookers, because the single "bar" of reception turned out to be
enough, even among the trees.)
Update 04 June 2006: I have inquired about using a simple piece of wire as an antenna, and have been assured that this is (a) possible, and (b) not quite as easy as it sounds. For maximum efficiency, this piece of wire, mounted on a length of coaxial antenna cable, would need to be measured very precisely to the proper length for the particular frequency/ies used by the telephone. Even so, I was told, having this piece of wire very, very close to the proper measurement would probably result in an antenna considerably more "powerful" than the phone's internal antenna, so I intend to look into this issue further.
If this is an issue in which you, too, are interested, get in touch with me.
22 June 2006: The simple wire antenna has turned out to be not so simple. In principle, it works, but there are subleties in antennas that become hard to deal with when moving from "everyday" Ham-type stuff to extremely high-frequency cell-phone stuff. After getting a number of responses grouped around "Huh?", no further investigations into this solution are anticipated.
22 June 2006: I have just learned of smaller antenna (ARC Freedom Antenna, from Radio Shack and other sources), and preliminary observations are positive. (An additional "bar" of service inside my house, where signal lock is unreliable.) I expect to be able to recommend it.
The advantage the Freedom antenna has is that it is far smaller and more portable than the Wilson trucker unit, which is, after all, intended to be carried around on a giant truck. The Freedom is an odd-looking little black plastic tombstone-shaped thing small enough to be carried in a pack, with only about 36" of cable on it (including the 16" adapter cable). Its kit includes a desktop stand and a pair of small suction cups for sticking it to the inside of a piece of glass (auto or house).
Three notes:
(1) The Freedom is for indoor use only (i.e., is not weatherproof) and has only a relatively short coaxial cable, anyway; it lives just an arm's length away from the telephone itself.
(2) Freedom is probably less efficient ("less powerful") than the big Wilson trucker.
(3) The connector of the Radio Shack version of this device is different from that on the Freedom brand and the Wilson, which is more generic; Radio Shack requires a different pigtail "adapter" (the phone's special cable) (which they sell, unless your phone is "odd"). For this reason, I would have bought the Freedom-branded version had it been more readily available. The pigtail adapter for Freedom could be obtained from Wilson if Freedom doesn't carry it. Mixing Freedom and Radio Shack cable parts won't work without a minor special effort.
Connector types (summary):
Note that there are short and inexpensive adapters from one type to the other, in case the phone's pigtail connector turns out be be of a different type from the type on the antenna.The adapter is far less expensive than a second phone cable would be. I have antennas of both types, so I have one of these adapters.
Because it is so much more portable/packable than the Wilson trucker antenna, I expect to use the ARC Freedom antenna while boating, camping, and traveling by car or train--any time I am out where signal is weak. I will perform tests while camping to verify that it's actually suitable for that use.
The Wilson is fairly amazing, but if the Freedom is even as good as better than nothing, it will likely seem mostly good enough, most of the time.
Later - Initial impression:
The Freedom antenna does provide a more stable signal "lock" here at my home. I have not yet done as much testing as I had hoped to do before posting this, but I think I like it. I am not going to toss the receipt just yet, but I will take the Freedom antenna cruising in the belief that it does provide a better signal lock than the phone's internal antenna. Its cable is too short for hauling it up the flag halyard of my small sailboat (Ruby), but in a pinch I can hang it from the split backstay, roughly three feet higher than my head. Elevation is desirable, and somewhat higher-than-normal gain may help, too. 28 June 2006
Update:
I now have more experience--enough to declare this new antenna, the Freedom, a great success. I don't have the instruments needed for quantifying either the actual advantage over the phone's own antenna or its disadvantage compared to the big, no-compromise, trucker's antenna, but it appears to more or less completely solve the reception problem I have at home, and improves reception in fringe areas, too.
Had I known of this antenna earlier, I might have bought it first and only; as it has worked out, however, I don't mind having the big antenna "permanently" leaning against the window in my office, with the smaller one free to travel within the house (or patio) or away from it.
In short: The ARC Freedom antenna is recommended.
10 August 2006
Update 2: A friend has bought this antenna to help with reception in his home, a marginal area, and declares it a great success.
X - The little "antenna booster" stickers one is supposed to put into the battery compartment of a cell-phone probably do not work. You can find testimonials to how amazing they are, but even if some small number of observations seem to support them, it's very likely that the natural fluctuations in signal reception are what the reporters are observing. Nothing I have heard about in antenna theory predicts that they would have any reliably beneficial effect, high-tech appearance notwithstanding.
X - Another proposed helper was a passive (i.e., unpowered) repeater intended to solve the problem of getting signal into and out of an automobile. (All of that glass and metal can degrade reception markedly.) These consisted of a pair of antennae that were to be adhered to the inside and outside of a car windshield. The theory (simplified here) was that the inside antenna would gather signal power, send it through the glass to the outside antenna, which would rebroadcast it. I am not positive that this cannot work, but there was a fair amount of skepticism out there, and it may be useful to note that these gadgets are no longer readily available. (Specifically: the unpowered wireless repeater. A window antenna that cables directly to the phone will work.)
To be clear: I am not a radio expert. I have picked up a little from reading and from speaking with radio experts, technicians, and ham operators. If you have repeatable experience that differs from that reported above, by all means share it.
A $2 fix for poor cell-phone reception would be wildly popular.
10 August 2006
Once you have your cell-phone reception issue resolved, note that many phones can be cabled up to computers (or paired with them using Bluetooth) and used as cellular modems for connecting with your ISP; in this way a boater or traveler can surf the Web, send and retrieve e-mail, etc., even when Wi-Fi is not available (assuming your ISP isn't Cable, which often doesn't have dialup capability at all).
I have done this from campgrounds. 03 June 2006
In Washington state we have a law proscribing hand-held use of cellphones while driving; hands-free use is still permitted. Many modern telephones can dial by voice command--a great convenience--and auto-answer is common, so legally answering calls and even initiating them while under way are still possible.
There are two general ways of legally telephoning while driving.
1. Use a cabled headset or earpiece.
Some instruments can be set to automatically switch on auto-answer when the earpiece is connected, which would mean that the user would put the phone on the seat (or on a dashboard gripper--at least a clip--don't just leave it loose there, which is dangerous in itself) and connect the earpiece. If a phone supports voice-dialing, the user would have only to push a button on the telephone and speak the command. If not, pulling over for dialing is the legal and prudent thing to do.
If auto-answer, accept incoming calls by simply putting the earpiece in place and speaking. At the end of the call, merely put down the earpiece.
Even if your phone cannot do automatic things, a cabled headset is quite handy and does satisfy the law.
2. Use a Bluetooth earpiece.
Some are better than others; make some test calls, and return a unit if your contacts complain that they cannot understand you. After experiments with lesser units, I spent a bit over a hundred dollars, and I have not regretted the expenditure. (It can be used with my next phone, too.) Look for noise cancellation and for a comfortable and secure fit; you want to be able to forget that it's there.
With this system, simply power up the earpiece (which will have been paired with the phone immediately after purchase) to establish a connection with the phone. While the two are in contact, voice-dialing would be initiated by pressing a button on the earpiece (or on the phone, or a number can be dialed in the usual way; except for the talking part, entirely given to the earpiece, all phone functions are normal). For incoming calls, the phone will ring normally, but also a sound will come through the earpiece. Auto-answer would be possible, but it's easy enough to just press a button on the earpiece to make or end a connection.
I often use this even when I am not driving.
I am quite fond of the Jawbone earpiece, although the little bits that actually fit into the ear are not very good. On advice from others, I replaced them with Jabra ear "gels"; I am very satisfied with this arrangement. It's an excellent earpiece that sounds good at both ends (both clear and loud), and can retain contact with the phone from 20' or more if necessary.
Either way--wired or wireless--there is no good reason beyond personal choice for being out of touch (or out of compliance with law and good sense).
29 August 2008
For [however many] years, automatic-inflating PFDs (SOSpenders, etc.) have not been U.S. Coast Guard approved, which has meant that they do not count against the required number of personal floatation devices to be aboard any vessel (or dinghy). The upshot of that was that to be "legal", one wore his automatic vest but also had on board one of those cheap orange collars.
Recently, the CG has approved a new type of automatic PFD.
It looks like those that several of us already have, but (according to what I have heard) it has something redundant in it. This type costs somewhat more than the old automatic kind, but it's still not the most expensive thing on a boat.
Probably a good idea.
01 May 2000 - It was announced today that the U.S. Government will "permanently" switch off the signal degradation feature of the military's Global Positioning System. Apparently they have decided that switching it back off as needed isn't so difficult after all (on the theory that if our enemies were to use it for navigation and targeting the reduced accuracy would hurt them more than it would us, since we know how to work around the degradation).
The increase in accuracy resulting from this decision has been characterized as "tenfold". Good news for boaters who prefer to glance up from their instrumentation as infrequently as possible.
01/01/01 - Self-tailing winches are extremely nice, but because they tend to be built out of lots of small expensive bits stacked cleverly inside big expensive bits, they can seem somewhat difficult to come by if they didn't arrive with your boat. Fortunately, there is another way.
Winchers (a brand name), blue rubber rings that fit atop plain winches, offer about 98% of the functionality at about 2% of the cost of real mechanical self-tailers. After having eyed them for several years, I moved against the advice of the experts at the chandleries, who were doubtful (to put it mildly) about the idea that anything so simple and cheap could do what was wanted..
Ha! I was right, and they were wrong!
About ten minutes after installing them on Ruby's winches (both primaries and halyards), I wished that I had had them on the winches of my Ranger 20. They work as expected (or better than expected, depending on your viewpoint), automatically tailing as you grind one-handed, and then continuing to grip the line when you rest. For additional security, the line can be "cleated" by pressing it into the circumferential slot above the drum, but this is only occasionally necessary.
I put one onto the winch I use for raising my anchor, too, because I found that grinding up a hundred feet of rode while tailing and holding on was pretty awkward. Now, pretty handy!
The anchor-raising problem was the thing that motivated me to act, but it helped that I saw some on a very salty-looking cruising boat and asked the owners how they liked them. They told me that the set I was looking at was about fifteen years old and that they were very pleased.
The key is to have the drum completely filled with wraps of line, something that we don't normally do either with plain winches or with mechanical self-tailers. This is what presses the top wrap against the underside of the Wincher, gripping it while static and causing it to be peeled off during grinding. In light air, the crew can even sheet in by simply pulling, just as we would do without the Wincher. To ease the sheet, remove the top wrap or two and do what would normally be done (according to the situation).
I also recommend double-checking the sizing and then taking their advice about the use of soap to facilitate installation. I don't recall if heating them is in the instructions, but I very briefly "boiled" mine to soften them on a cool day. (And use liquid soap as a lubricant for installation. I tried going without, and I got hurt.) I further recommend winch covers (one size oversized) to keep the sun off the Winchers most of the time.
If you doubt, buy them from somewhere such as West Marine, which would accept their return if (a) you weren't convinced, and (b) you could figure out how to remove them. Cutting may be required; ask your retailer before acting.
They aren't perfect. I would not depend upon them to suspend a friend in a bosun's chair. They can slip, especially when wet, although either cleating or using the little track in the edge of the Wincher will prevent most problems once trimming is complete. Although there is plenty of doubt in discussion forums online, in practice they mostly do what self-tailers are expected to do, and so Cindy & I (and now, some other Ranger club members, too) are absolutely sold on these as an inexpensive alternative to mechanical self-tailers--as an enhancement to convenience and therefore to safety on the boat. I very highly recommend them.
UPDATE: There is a mechanical add-on converter for some winches; I have not investigated it yet, except to learn that it's not exactly inexpensive, but I thought it was interesting: WinchMate. 29 August 2008
The cockpit of a small boat can be an inhospitable place to a person who likes back support. In many boats, even boats of some size, the cockpit may have only a couple of relaxing positions in which to sit. A couple of years ago, we found what we consider to be the nearly ideal solution to that problem:
Crazy Creek Chair, Longback version (i.e., tall back); from REI and other retailers:
We prefer this brand over some less expensive chairs because it seems very well designed and made. The foam, although thinner than that in some other chairs of apparently similar design, is denser and has much more body. The four battens are well placed and strong. Outside wear points at the _bottom_ ends of the battens are reinforced. All in all, very good quality, quite substantial-feeling.
We prefer the tall-back version because the higher back is far more comfortable than the regular version, which cut us uncomfortably just below the shoulder blades.
For us, this combination of brand & style (model) was well worth the additional money.
What we have in these chairs is a way of adding seating options to the boat: In cockpit or salon, on foredeck or cabin top, it is now possible to truly relax facing in virtually any direction, without caring about whether there is something nearby against which to lean back. That whole issue of cockpit coaming height and shape is now moot. Perfect back support everywhere!
My favorite position while the boat is moving along fairly levelly is to be seated facing directly forward, feet up on the seat, arm on the tiller. Ruby has no stern rail to lean against, so the chair provides the backrest for lounging while under way. Another occupant of the cockpit can be similarly seated, or can face directly backward, or athwartship with feet on the opposite side, or diagonally with feet on Ruby's low companionway sill, etc.
We wish we had known about these while we had the Ranger 20.
Send your additions, corrections, or comments to Mark.
August 2008