Trust Boat Bits to take a fresh look at an old subject, with a boater’s priorities in mind. This time, it’s cargo-carrying aboard a bicycle:

I'm old enough to remember the Walkman Revolution. It seemed like all of a sudden you could jog around the neighborhood listening to whatever you wanted, all courtesy a cassette deck and a pair of small headphones. Actually, the current iPod Revolution looks, well, pretty much the same.

Except that the iPod holds several hundred (or is it thousand?) cassettes-worth of music, and it's a lot smaller, and it runs a lot longer before it needs a recharge. Still, the same problem emerges: What if you want to share your music?

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest ones. Especially when they utilize materials you already have aboard the boat in your time of need.

Another great tip from MadMariner’s “Tips you can use”department:

Heck, they just won the NMMA Innovation Awards at the big MAATS show in Orlando. Panbo’s Ben Ellison was one of the judges, and he’s written about several of the winners.

These additional screen shots go along with the press release I published earlier.

OK, I’ll admit I haven’t been keeping up with this technology likeBen Ellison has, but this just looks cool. Being a certifiable geek, I’m interested in learning more about this.

[I've written about Cobra's handheld marine VHF radios before. They offer a combination of features I like, and with this announcement, you can add "won't sink" to that list. Here's the press release. —Tim]

Thanks to BitterEnd for the heads-up on this item from yesterday’s Notice

This strays a little off-topic for Navagear, but it’s pretty dang cool. I still have hopes that fuel cell technology will make a big splash for sailboats and other displacement-type vessels with low horsepower-to-displacement ratios.