Ironically, the marketing slogan for the Furuno NavNet 3D product line is, "The Wait is Over!" It ain't over. They've been demo'd and shown and talked about and marketed and blogged about since early last Fall.

But you still can't buy one.

True also of Raymarine's heralded new G-Series, which is "fast" in many ways – just not to market. So what's going on? Some more irony here. I've been wishing that the marine electronics industry would accelerate the pace of product development and start catching up to the consumer electronics marketplace.

And now, it appears they have; well, at least they've caught up to the consumer marketing piece of the consumer marketplace. Software and hardware companies alike have been guilty for years now of announcing cool new products, only to see consumers have to wait months – sometimes years, in the case of popular "Brand X" operating systems – for the stuff to make it onto the Big Box store shelves.

I guess we finally got what we wanted. Great new products, promoted just like they are in the broader consumer market. Some of the bigger retailers I checked with said they'd been told "maybe April" by Furuno and were expecting roughly the same timeframe for the new Raymarine gear.

In the meantime, you can still plunk down several thousand bucks for a NavNet 2 system; there are even rebates available for those (but they still cost several thousand dollars). I would wait a bit, though, if I was trying to outfit my boat right now. Let's see how long it really takes for the new stuff to appear. If it doesn't look like it's coming before you're ready to splash for the new season, don't worry; the old stuff will be even cheaper by then.

In any event, the wait is not over!