Sailing to the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean 1500

The Boat (continued)

Here are a few more pictures of Night Heron:

The helm while underway; the autopilot is steering. In the right-hand picture, the big rectangular box on the pedestal holds one of the Furuno Navnet chartplotters; the other chartplotter is below at the nav station. The smaller box above the chartplotter holds the electronic readout for wind speed/direction plus the controls for the bow thruster. On the right side of this box is the remote controller for the VHF (including microphone/speaker); the VHF has a full set of controls below, too. Just to the right of the compass you can see the handheld controller for the Simrad autopilot.

This is the nav station, which is in the forward starboard corner of the saloon. Hanging on the wall facing us is the second Furuno Navnet chartplotter; it's off because we're still in the slip. The chartplotter is on a pivoting arm that swings out over the tabletop. To the left of the chartplotter is the ICOM SSB (top) and Furuno VHF (bottom). Jeff uses a laptop computer to run the Furuno MaxSea navigation software package; after working out a route he can upload the information from MaxSea to the Navnet network. Actually, the computer in the picture runs Microsoft Vista, and Vista drivers aren't available yet for the Navnet interface. Therefore, he has a second smaller laptop, not in the picture, that runs the MaxSea navigation software using Windows XP. The XP system communicates with the network just fine.

In the next section, we'll visit Portsmouth, Virginia, and Tidewater Marina, where Night Heron was berthed.

Internet Links For This Section

• Night Heron - informative site maintained by a previous owner of Night Heron (note that there have been a number of changes to the boat since this web site was written)
• Ted Brewer Yacht Design - the web site of the man who designed Night Heron