No More "Seat of the Pants" Racing With This On Your Wrist

[senormechanico]

Yeah, pretty fancy but will it tell you when the steak is done, or when it's time to turn off the watermaker?

Marine Watch + GPS Navigator | Garmin quatix

Steve

[S/V Alchemy]

I wrote about this particular curiosity a little while back:

The world encompassed: One off the wrist: Garmin's new autopilot watch

I do not consider it a small advance in helming, but a great leap forward for Darwin. But then I am not ashamed to bungee the sheet to the tiller and call it self-steering.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

Yeah, pretty fancy but will it tell you when the steak is done, or when it's time to turn off the watermaker?

Marine Watch + GPS Navigator | Garmin quatix

Steve

You'll need the Pebble or MetaWatch watch for that or maybe the forthcoming iWatch, Garmins looks like an interesting product , pricy though.

Dave

[S/V Alchemy]

So this is actually of interest to people?

In your shoreside living room...sorry, "media center", which one assumes is neither in movement nor wet, what is the typical fate of the "remotes"?

I anticipate with interest the advent of "Google Glasses: Sailor's Edition". Running, naturally enough, on Android.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Cool watch, it would be fun to have to mess around with. I went to the site and looked it up, it reminded me of an uncle of mine who would go "fishing" on a little 19ft skiff with 2 VHS radios, 2 GPS chartplotters, 2 downriggers, underwater camera, etc. He loved playing with the electronics, not much fishing got done.

[msponer]

Oh, how cool. I love this. Thanks for posting it.

For the way we are, a watch would be more useful than having the usual second display at the wheel or in the cockpit. Those have not been reliable for me.

The main thing I'd want is to be able to see the depth on my wrist -- that'd be so nice for when we are coming into an anchorage and one of us is standing on the bow pulpit. Currently, the person at the helm knows the depth but can't see the bottom well, and the person at the bow can see into the water really well but, without the depth, has trouble calibrating the water color to a depth. So we have to yell back and forth a bit. It'd be so nice to just know the base depth precisely and be able to tell if the rock rising up is going to be anywhere close to the keel. In shallow, murky, anchorages I've used a lead line at the bow, just because it yields better situational awareness (and is less annoying) than yelling the depth back and forth over and over again.

The autopilot remote part might be nice for doing sail changes alone. Not that big of a deal, but it might eliminate unnecessary trips back to the cockpit to relieve pressure on the sails as you reef or raise a sail, especially when you are new to a boat and are not yet to the point you can reliably just set it at a good course to keep the main from flogging but not drawing so much that it's hard to reef, and thus have to go back to the cockpit and have it bear off or pinch more once you are halfway through.

I am some shade of a luddite -- I like simple. But, in a way, a watch is simpler than having a second repeater display for something that is already in the pilothouse or chart table.

[deckofficer]

I would spend $500 for this watch long before I would spend $20K for a Rolex. But since I'm retired I don't wear a watch. If this one drops to $200, I'd start wearing a watch again.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by S/V Alchemy

So this is actually of interest to people?

In your shoreside living room...sorry, "media center", which one assumes is neither in movement nor wet, what is the typical fate of the "remotes"?

I anticipate with interest the advent of "Google Glasses: Sailor's Edition". Running, naturally enough, on Android.

I think we are just on the cusp of a wave of "smart-watches" so in a few years we will all regard them as common place today as smart phones

In that respect Quatix is a strange anomaly for Garmin, its probably too soon in the tech curve, and in danger of being swept aside by the iWatch and associated "Android wrist thingy", strange very niche product.


Dave

[advocate777]

Yeah, it's all gonna be a wristwatch soon... Even the cell phones will be obsolete- everything will be on the wrist, phone, Internet, everything...and the it will project a hologram-like projection a few inches above and you will be able to type and do word processing and everything you can do on a regular computer now...within 5-10 years for the holograph projection thingie

[Lancerbye]

The Dick Tracy cartoons had all these things in them 60 years ago. What do you call a society that has watches smarter than the people wearing them?

[nimblemotors]

I haven't worn a watch in about 40 years. I can't even read my phone anymore without reading glasses, tiny is not a positive attribute. Computer screen glasses, now that might work.

[Navicula]

you are correct old man..........I too cannot read my Iphone without reading glasses.......LOL