Magma Kettle barbecues are nearly ubiquitous throughout North American cruising grounds. I've owned one for a couple cruising seasons now, and I've learned a lot about the ups and downs of these units.

Let me say right off that this grill has enhanced our cruising experience more than any other single improvement. Moving cooking operations out to the cockpit removes the steam, splatter, and spills from the cabin entirely.

Even more significant, though, is the elimination of the bottleneck at the cabin door, which is where the galley is. The rest of the crew can come and go as they please while I cook astern. It sounds silly, but cooking out back seems to make the boat physically larger. On a 22 foot boat, a change like this is almost as good as buying a boat three feet longer.

To be precise, I've got a Magma Marine Kettle 2 combination stove and gas grill in the "original" (smaller) size. I use it as a stove more often than I use it as a barbecue, and as such I have some tips that are worth sharing.

Check out the results of MadMariner’s recent boater survey. The topic: How do we decide how much technology we need? Which technologies are boaters most excited about? What most often keeps us from buying new marine technology?

“New gadget makes grilling easy, green!”

Wait, what?!

I’m intrigued by the Left Coast Simple Stereo, which I learned about thanks to Boat Bits

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This one should be especially interesting. I encourage all of my talented Navagear readers to complete the survey. Did I mention there are prizes? 

Navionics Platinum: I'd say it was the "gold standard" in electronic charts, but that would be confusing, since Navionics Gold is a notch below Platinum.

In a world dominated by coverage of the latest and greatest, though, it's often difficult to figure out whether or not you can really benefit from the newest innovations, especially when it comes to marine electronics.

My 5-year-old Raymarine C-80 chartplotter, for instance, works just fine. I'm not ready to replace it, even though I know there are lots of great features on the newer multi-function displays.

Still, I probably should replace my five-year old chart card. The manufacturers encourage you to update your charts every two years or so. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, most of us use our charts (paper and digital) for a lot longer than that.

Captain Richard Rodriguez has an interesting tale to tell over at his BitterEnd blog.

With apologies to They Might Be Giants, and in appreciation of their 1990 song “Particle Man“:

We’ve mentioned Steve Roberts before. I’m fond of calling him “the original over-gadgeted technomad”, and he doesn’t seem to mind.