The Marine Installer's Rant

Thing are going to be messed up for a while some rearranging is going on. The older material is being cleaned up. There will be three archi...

Just a short note. I've been busy with a novel and screenplay writing project that's nearing completion. When I'm wrapped up th...

It's exactly what it looks like, a field. A neutral place generally free of magnetic sources. I say this because there is no place on ...

Can boat batteries shock you? The answer is yes and I can in an empirical way say this is the truth. The way you can test this is on a sti...

It never ceases to amaze me why people supposedly skilled in the art of building boats can do such stupid things. It could be in their min...

Rule number one: When you buy a four-foot open array radar, it ain't four feet. It's something else, and it's almost always lo...

Sometimes things in my truck look like garbage and there usually is some there. But often it's part of my tool kit. No it's not as...

The DirecTV receiver failed. It was one of two on the boat. It was connected to a ten year old KVH satellite dome that was always on. Here...

I am often bemused by things I see on TV especially funky boating related content. Louis C.K. showed a photo he took of his chart plotter ...

I'm fairly sure this is R2D2's great grandfather and the image is iconic. It's circa about 1995. For those that are math chal...

A couple of wires got swapped around during a new gear install and the subsequent damage was north of $7000. You had to look closely at th...

The life of a boat delivery captain is more often than not a easy or glamorous job. They can delivery new boats, not so new boats, and boa...

It's time to get tutored again by Garmin to keep my certification valid. The last time was in Ft Lauderdale a couple of years ago. Thi...

What do you mean your chart plotter is growing ferns and has bugs in it? Are you serious? You really are? Okay I'll come over and take...

I assiduously avoid politics on the The Rant, and I'm not changing this stance now. Even being careful a story that is patently fictio...

Most of my autopilot installs I just grind out. Do the plumbing and contain the oily mess. Punch holes in the dash for control displays. ...

I really don't enjoy the big three long weekends. Memorial day, the 4th of July and Labor day are in my view the three worst times of ...

It's a great transducer. It was carefully and properly installed. The only problem is it doesn't work if the boat is moving faste...

It ostensibly was an easy install. Stick a weather receiver on the hardtop, a quick and easy pull into the console and plug the little be...

How quickly is technology advancing? The answer is exponentially. I used Gorp as an example paddling across a river on a floating log aro...

It was a bemusing and somewhat vexing problem that at first blush was all caused by a watch. It's 5ish in the afternoon on a Saturda...

I've been dealing with marine electronics for a long time and now recognize when death is close at hand. More likely it's emulatin...

Hello, my name is Bill and I was once a pontoon boat hater. In days of yore they were ugly. Floating boxes largely devoid of hydrodynamic ...