This year’s Safety Equipment innovation award winner at the Tampa, Florida IBEX conference went to Vesper Marine’s deckWatch app. The Auckland, New Zealand firm says it offers the app free to users of its smartAIS transponders.
Currently available for Android Wear 2 smartwatches, the system serves as a secondary source of anchor position, collision and MOB alerts, as well as NMEA 2000 and 0183 navigational data. These include boat speed, position, depth, course and speed over ground, heading and water temperature.
The watch-app combination puts both routine data and emergency warnings on the boater’s wrist, making critical information available anywhere on the vessel, without need for a phone or tablet. For example, when anchoring, the user taps the anchor icon on the watch. If the anchor drags beyond a preset radius, an alarm sounds and the icon turns red.
