Thursday, November 19, NAS Jax

I have been remarkably productive the last few days.  This said by the man (the family in Trevor and Spencer’s opinion) that has made procrastination an art form.)

Yesterday I did my laundry and realized what a difference water quality makes.  The Jacksonville water must be very soft.  My clothing has not been this soft and smell this good in a long time.

But more to the point I finally got the radar display/chart plotter mounted at the helm and hooked up.  I will no longer need to run down inside the cabin to look at the chart plotter and then run back up to the helm to steer.  It would have been really nice to have when I was navigating some of the more shallow parts of the Intracostal.  I also removed the flaky AM/FM radio and replaced it with a new radio.  I now have more music choices that I know what to do with: XM Satellite (which also and more importantly provides my real time weather data), AM/FM and IPOD.  At the moment I am listening to Sinatra.  It takes me back to great steaks and cold Grey Goose at Mo’s.  Apparently I have a dedicated channel for Jimmy Buffett (Margarita of course.)  It looks like I will luck out and there will only be one Christmas channel.  I never listen to FM after Thanksgiving; every station is playing Christmas songs.  To make if more complicated the channels seem to change over time.  For example tonight there are all sorts of news channels (e.g. CNN, Fox, CNBC) that I have never seen in the channel guide before.  And just to keep me up with Nigel I can listen to the BBC World service!  There is even a POTUS channel.  It is obviously a political channel but I don’t know who is behind it.  And finally, for Ace, the Metropolitan Opera channel.  Reboot has it all.

I still need to get the radar head attached both to the mast and the electronics before I venture too far.  My friends on GypsySails had to stand off the St. Mary’s River this morning for several hours until the fog cleared.  That of course is the proper procedure but I would not like to have to do that without know who else was around me also standing off.

I was surprised to find that I could mount the AIS, GPS, and XM/Weather antennas inside Reboot.  This has made for a much cleaner implementation with no apparent loss of function.  I have subsequently had a conversation with the manufacturer of my AIS unit who has told me that the AIS GPS antenna can also be mounted inside.  Reboot now has four fixed mount GPS antennas and three handhelds.  I am reminded that the first GPS I purchased (but fortunately did not pay for, it was a project for my employer of the time) cost $1200.  Now a GPS chipset with WAAS is about $3.95 and a USB hockey puck GPS with the latest technology costs under $50.