SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I went to the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Michigan, to see how cadets prepare for careers as deck and engineering officers. One of the highlights was spending a day in the academy's ship-simulator room, where wall-size screens fanned out about 180 degrees. There was a helm station as well as a chart table for the cadets to plot courses.The cadets let me have the wheel as instructors in another room had fun changing up weather scenarios, traffic patterns and even the waterways our virtual ship was traveling across, all in the name of honing navigation and situational-awareness skills. The exercise was humbling and exciting as I developed some sense of what it feels like to manage a massive ship. I did not perform flawlessly, but the cadets did. I left thinking how great it is for these future mariners that we have technology to simulate a real-world life on the water. Similar technology is now found in the recreational-boating world and is helping create better boating technologies for all of us. During the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Brunswick Corp., which announced several technology initiatives aimed at improving the on-water experience, displayed its future helm. This tech puts Brunswick's engineers inside a boat and immerses them, virtual-reality style (no goggles required), on a particular waterway. The virtual world enables the engineers to test technologies such as the company's auto-docking system. In a vast oversimplification, the helmsman approaches a marina, selects a slip and presses auto-dock, and the boat leverages all its situational-awareness tools and propulsion to dock itself. Autonomous docking has already made the leap from future helm to reality, but the virtual world is where the tech is born, and it impresses.Brunswick subsidiary Mercury Marine also debuted the 750 W Avator 7.5e electric outboard, which reportedly delivers the same output as a 3.5 hp four-stroke, and is aimed at tenders, kayaks and the like. (A 20e and 35e are on the way.) Then there is the lithium-ion Fathom e-power from Navico Group. It lets boaters power all onboard systems sans generator. The pace of evolving technologies in the marine space is ever quickening, but the wonderful irony is that the impact of these technologies in the real world helps boaters slow down, relax and have a memorable day on the water.
展开▼
