ACR’s ResQFix Personal Locator Beacon is 35 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than its previous AquaFix model and yet purportedly performs better.

This is not so trivial when you consider that this six-inch-high unit is meant to acquire a fast GPS fix in tough conditions (like from its float bag next to you in a rough sea), transmit that position and your ID via 406 MHz to the search-and-res­cue satellite system, and also send out a 121.5-MHz signal that rescuers can home in on (note that your own yacht could use that homing signal too).

My confidence in this complicated technology was bolstered when I visited ACR’s factory last year and saw both its elaborate GPS simulation facility, used to fine-tune the Pill’s receiver, and its extensive testing routines. The $750 ResQFix, which uses a five-year lithium battery and is waterproof to 33 feet, also has its two circuitry, battery pow­er/voltage, and GPS acquisition testing built in. Note that PLBs like this are also carried by small aircraft pilots and others who venture into wilderness, watery or otherwise.

Heavy ground tackle makes for sound sleeping, but when it’s time to weigh anchor, it can be a pain unless you have a windlass to do the heavy lifting. Fortunately for our lower backs, there are windlasses sized to fit any boat and no reason not to have one aboard as an unpaid hand.

When properly installed, a windlass requires minimal maintenance.Here’s what you need to know.

First, rinse the windlass thoroughly after every voyage to wash off the salt, let it dry, and cover it. (Many anchor lockers are now equipped with the quick-connect-type freshwater connections for rinsing.) Use the windlass frequently to keep the innards lubricated; crank it over for a few turns at least every couple of weeks. If the windlass sits idle, the oil will drop off the internal gears, some of which are steel and prone to rust. Since the windlass is ex­posed to lots of salt spray, rain, and dampness from wet anchor rods, unpro­tected steel will soon be rusty steel. While you’re at it, manipulate any movable parts—clutches, brakes, chain stoppers, etc. “Use it or lose it” is applicable to windlasses, ton.

At the beginning of the season, disassemble, clean, and lubricate the windlass according to the directions in the manual. This doesn’t require major surgery, just basic field-snipping that anyone can do. Use the type of grease recommended by the manufacturer, being careful to keep friction clutches and brakes lobe-free. Repeat the process at lay-up or at no less than six-month in­tervals if you use your boat year-round.

Look around the fastenings for signs of leakage, which can lead to water intrusion into cored decks, an expensive and frustrating condition to repair. Check below decks as well, where water drips leave rust stains even on stainless steel fas­tenings. Misuse of the windlass, e.g., using it to absorb the strains of anchoring rather than transferring the rode to a mooring cleat (or nylon snubbed in the case of chain), can overstress the fastenings, break the bedding, and let water in. Don’t ignore leaks.

Inspect all electrical connections for problems. Connections should be clean, corrosion free (corrosion looks like the white deposits you often find on your car’s battery cables), and devoid of burned areas that can result from arcing. If nec­essary, remove the leads (shutoff the power first—there are a lot of amps here), clean the terminals and posts, and re­connect.

Coat the connec­tions with grease, and re-cov­er them with the boots. Look at the motor casing, too; it’s usually painted steel, and if the paint’s nicked, it’ll rust. Touch up the paint be­fore it gets worse.

Also, check the footswitch­es on the foredeck. The hinged caps should open and close easily and have a firm, tight fit for preventing accidental activations. Be­cause the rubber can be damaged by exposure to UV rays, the diaphragms on the switches should be doused with 303 Protectant or another UV shield. The switches can also be silicone-sealed around their edges. Finally, when you use the windlass, don’t make it do all the work. Motor toward the anchor so there’s minimal strain on the rode.

If the anchor doesn’t break out easily, belay the rode and pop it free with the engine, then use the windlass to lift it back aboard. Your windlass will last longer and be happier if you don’t overstress it.

The big consumer electronics company Cobra has gotten serious a­bout marine VHF, introducing both this feature-packed handheld and a Class D DSC fixed radio. For instance, the $170 HH425 and the $190 F80 are each sub­mersible and backed by three-year warranties.

Both also offer a “rewind, play again” feature that space shots like me will find handy—a built-in memory chip records the last 20 seconds of whatever breaks squelch on the channel (s) you’re monitoring, giving you a second chance to catch a call.

The 425 also includes a full 5-watt GMRS (a.k.a. “family radio”) transceiver, along with goodies like privacy codes, individual caller rings, and VOX (hands-free) operation. That means that with a couple of inexpensive GIVIRS handsets, perhaps from market leader Cobra, you’ll have a sophisticated communications network for use around a ma­rina and beyond (unlike VHF, GMRS is land legal).

You can even set up the 425 to scan both selected VHF and GMRS channels simultaneously, though a little man­ual investigation is required. In fact, most of the 425′s features do entail some oper­ational complexity, plus I found its ergonomics clunkier than more conventional handhelds, like the Icom M34.

1. Hailing and Communication With Another Boat

Correct hailing procedure is to state the name of the boat you are hailing (usually on channel 16), then the name of your boat, followed by “over.”

“Over” tells the other party you have finished speaking. This is impor­tant because if both radio operators transmit at the same time, neither will be heard. Only one party can speak at a time. Any other words—”yoo hoo” or “Is anybody out there?” – constitute incorrect procedure.

Once you’ve established contact, switch to a working channel. Once you’ve switched to a working channel, say the name of the boat you are hailing followed by the name of your boat. At the end of your conversation, say your boat name and “out” or “out, (your boat’s name), returning to 16.”

2. Digital Selective Calling (DSC)

DSC is a semi-automated method of establishing a ra­dio call simply by pushing the distress button.

When the DSC button is activated, the radio automatically sends a distress call with GPS position (when a GPS is connected to the transceiver) and the nature of the distress to the Coast Guard and other vessels within range of the transmission.

It then scans the appropri­ate channels for a response. DSC also allows users to immediately receive distress, urgent, safety, routine, position requests, and group calls from other DSC­ equipped transceivers within range. Every radio equipped with DSC must have a Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number assigned to it.

A ra­dio’s MMSI is a unique nine-digit number (similar to a telephone number) that must be programmed into the radio and registered to operate the DSC functions.

3. To Make a DSC Distress Call

A)  Lift the protective cover over the distress button and press and hold the button until the radio’s display shows that the call has been sent.

B)  Once the mes­sage has been sent, the transceiver will sound an au­dible distress alarm.

C)  The transceiver will automati­cally monitor channel 70 for a DSC acknowledgment and will also receive calls on channel 16.

D)  If no DSC acknowledgment is received, the transceiver will repeat the distress call at four-minute intervals until acknowledgment is received.

F)  When the DSC acknowledgment signal is received, an alarm sounds, channel 16 is automatically selected, and the radio’s LCD screen shows the MMSI of the responding trans­ceiver.

E)  If the Distress button was pushed in error, many radios will cancel a distress call when the Clr and then Ent buttons are pushed.

Perhaps you’ve noticed, as I have, that one of the features particularly intrig­uing to many electronics shoppers these days are those slick virtual engine-gauge screens you can pull up on many a multifunction display (MFD). Never mind for a moment that most of those MFDs can’t yet connect to many engine models; instead, imagine how those screens would look if you ran a company that makes umpteen real ma­rine engine gauges every year.

Many of its current gauges—there are some 10,000 models if you count all the available colors and the various brand names they’re sold un­der—feature a little data LCD in addi­tion to a traditional pin and dial. Moreover, the company’s MG2000 sys­tem includes a powerful microprocessor that’s built into a gauge: like casing and able to talk with all sorts of engine con­trol modules (ECMs), then mix the data with other inputs to do calculations like fuel flow, and finally rebroadcast every­thing to a network of less-intelligent gauges.

Which is how I came to be sitting in an I860′s building checking out an elabo­rate, do-everything, touch-screen graph­ical user interface (GUI). ‘Maestro earned its name because this PC-based system is intended to let its user conduct most every imaginable helm function. Picture not just full virtual engine gaug­es and charting with radar overlay and fish finder, but also quad cameras, con­trol of and other equipment, even e-mail and Web browsing. The Maestro project is ambitious, but there are nu­merous reasons to believe that.

Thus Maestro looks and feels a lot like Maptech‘s current fourth-generation i3 system, not to men­tion the Sea Ray -Navigator it also pro­duces. That’s good, as over the years Maptech has come a long Way toward making fingertip navigation elegantly easy. And I say that based not just on the demo, but also some real finger-on time trying Maestro‘s prototype software loaded into a touch-screen tablet com­puter.

In tall-windowed rooms first used by those uniform seam­stresses, I saw everything from metal lathes and dial printers to circuit board populators, all in action. And it’s ISO 9001 and Gold U.S. military supplier certifica­tions suggest it knows how to make things well.

At any rate, the hardware side of Mae­stro looks good. A custom aluminum casing means the separate processing unit stays cool without fans, and all sorts of connectivity is built in, including a Wi­Fi radio and a PCMCIA slot meant for a high-speed cellular data card. The $8,000 base system includes one sun­light-viewable 12-inch touch screen but will support a second touch screen as well as output via S-video to an onboard TV screen.

The compa­ny claims that its smart products like the MG2000 and Maestro can understand not just ECMs that speak in NMEA 2000, SmartCraft, and J1939 but also J1587, ALDL, and ISO 9141 K-Line. Frankly, I’d never heard of the latter three before, and I think that a number of marine electronics developers are just learning about them, too.

And Maestro is not only significant new product. Antares is a 3.8-inch color dis­play that will bring much of this same digital engine infor­mation to small boats, includ­ing fuel management and even remote control of Jensen Marine stereos. It will first be seen as an OEM product, but expects to re­tail it for retrofits eventually.

Meanwhile, the company has also been developing a series of WatchDog communications products, and the latest 750 model is turning heads. While currently targeted at commercial fisheries, its ability to combine Iridium satellite, GSM cellular, and GPS to provide reliable yet reason­ably priced global tracking, monitoring, and messaging has attracted the interest of serious cruisers.

So, should you happen to boat up the Thames this summer, look for that old factory clinging to the western hank about ten miles north of Long Island Sound?  ’While many of the big marine- electronics brands we all know are con­glomerating (Northstar and Navman recently joined Simrad and Lowrance under the Navico umbrella, for exam­ple), a new one may be coming to life in the little Yankee town of Uncasville.

A portable oil-changer is basically a five- gallon plastic bucket with a pump mounted on top; the pump sucks up old lube oil through a cocktail-straw-size tube via the dipstick hole and dumps it into the pail.

I used one of these for a couple of years on my GM-powered Hatteras, and it worked fine, albeit slowly—very slowly. If you’re talking twin engines plus gears, plus a genset, pack a lunch when you change your oil, because you’re going to be there a while.

A better solution is to invest in a built-in oil-change system, comprising a reversible electric pump and a manifold of valves plumbed to your engine crankcases, trans­missions, and genset. You pump the used oil into a container, and then move the exhaust hose into a five-gallon pail of fresh oil (where it now becomes the supply hose), re­verse the pump, and refill. The oil is quickly pumped out and in via the oil pan drain, rather than through the dipstick tube. You’ll also have to find a place to dispose of the old oil properly—ask your marina manager or even your dockmates for their advice.

Reverse, X-Change-R, and Jabsco sell oil- change systems to suit multi-engine setups. Installation is straightforward, but drains each engine before pulling the oil-pan plug, or you’ll have an EPA-size cleanup job. I’d bite the bullet and pay the yard—its mechanics are skinnier.