Adrena insight

Sometimes there’s no need to upgrade the instruments you have on board because there are tools that allow you to use the existing information more e ectively.

Honed and widely used on the racing circuit, Adrena software also exists in a cruising version for your laptop - called Octopus. It combines a core weather routeing capability with various handy tools, including mooring assistance, graphically displaying the conditions to be expected in a given anchorage, plus the rise and fall of the tide. Weather forecasting is available to download as a GRIB file up to 16 days ahead and there are a host of useful safety tools, such as AIS, MOB alarm and anchor drag alarm. Octopus will also help you develop accurate polars for the boat using real navigational data and give you insight into the boat’s sailing performance. It is available without any charting at all, but with a C-Map basemap, the system costs €349. In racing format, prices start at €779. adrena-software.com intuitive. Instead of identifying a threatening vessel on a collision course, manually extracting its MMSI number and then transferring that to the VHF for a direct call, you can simply tap the icon of the o ending craft and call it directly.

Vesper Marine’s Cortex goes further, with its smartAIS system, which automatically alerts you to an MOB situation when it detects an activated AIS beacon. Cortex also o ers a remote monitoring solution for the boat.

You can set an anchor alarm and monitor it from afar. Not only that, but you can also get updates of key instrument data – although there is a subscription charge for this.

Icom’s new IC-M510 gives you an AIS radar on its colour TFT display, but also allows you to use up to three smartphones as dedicated handsets - even calling between them as an intercom. It costs £624 plus £240 for NMEA2000 interface.