I finally got an opportunity to confirm that my recently installed Raymarine Ray49 DSC-enabled, two-way-NMEA, VHF radio is working correctly. For those just joining us, you can read about my first impressions of the radio itself and my crazy NMEA wiring scheme.

A hard-fought match between my father and me.

The folks at Blue Highway Games sold me a new game recently, and now that I’ve conducted thorough play-testing aboard Two Lucky Fish, I give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up!

See, the website is http://getstorganized.com/, so if I’ve understood this correctly, we’re being implored to get…you know…”storganized”.

During my recent voyage to Friday Harbor, it seemed to me that I needed a tide table several times a day, during various discussions and, of course, while underway. It’s no problem underway…I keep a little tide book at the helm.

But once I was out of the boat, talking with other skippers or planning a passage over lunch, I missed that little tide book. I don’t dare remove it from the boat, though…there’s just too much chance it won’t get back.

If only I had tide tables on my phone…

Behold the Nantucket Bagg. It’s a “multi-purpose tool bag that’s reversible and convertible.” I saw these over at Fisheries Supply the other day, and I’m impressed.

Normally I try to include illustrative photographs demonstrating some compelling aspect of my topic for the day. This time, I’m just TOO EMBARASSED to show you my trim tabs.

Suffice to say that they look like a hands-on exhibit at the aquarium.

So one of these days Real Soon Now, I’m going to pull this boat out of the water and clean up those trim tabs.

I got my Raymarine Ray49 DSC VHF radio wired up. The NMEA routing got too complicated for me to keep track of it in my head, so I had to draw a diagram.

I’ve written recently (here and here) about the Picquic screwdrivers. Here’s one I hadn’t expected.

The Ray49 is Raymarine’s new compact DSC-enabled VHF radio. I wanted one because I want position data received over DSC to appear on my chartplotter, and my current Ray54 can’t generate outgoing NMEA data.