That’s going to be fun! As a famous ocean racing skipper was heard to say after nearly running aground on Cape Sable in the fog, “only your laundry knows for sure”. Murphy will make absolutely certain that all of this happens just as you are making an approach to a tricky harbour crawling with traffic…in the fog. The speedo/log, depth sounder, and wind instruments stop working.The autopilot stops working because it has no input from the compass.The multi function display in the cockpit that displays radar and AIS information goes black.There is no read out from the fluxgate compass.All of the devices that require a GPS position, including the plotter, stop working.What does that mean for a fully NMEA 2000 boat? And therein lies the problem that I have not seen one commentator mention: If there is a significant problem with the NMEA 2000 backbone, every piece of gear on the boat dependant on it stops working.
You see, the thing is that many devices use the NMEA backbone not only to communicate with other devices, but to communicate with their own sensors. You knew there was a “but” coming, right? Most every techy type in the marine journalism community has been waxing eloquent about how cool this is. For those of you who are not aware, NMEA is a standard backbone cabling system that allows you to connect every piece of electronic gear on your boat together, regardless of what company manufactured each piece. I was just reading an article on the NMEA 2000 marine network standard over at the excellent Ocean Navigator blog.
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