Panbo

12/06/2025

Garmin Marine introduced the GPSMap 15x3 ultrawide chartplotters today. Nice to see a second entrant into this category. It certainly seems likely we will see more non-traditional sizes. The ultrawides pair very nicely with clean, all glass helms

Ultrawide and simplified to deliver a more streamlined and immersive experience at the helm OLATHE, Kan./June 12, 2025/PR Newswire – Garmin (NYSE: GRMN), the world’s largest and most innovative marine electronics manufacturer, today announced...

10/06/2025

WIF-Pro alerts boaters to trouble with water in their fuel. It's a well designed system that helps boaters avoid bigger trouble.

-Ben S.

WIF-Pro is my favorite kind of company to cover, a relatively new startup with a fresh take on an old problem. I first learned about and met WIF-Pro's founder, Brian Benedict, at IBEX 2023. Brian, a mortgage banker by day and water in fuel alerter by night, founded WIF-Pro because of his own experie...

16/05/2025

Things have been quieter than I would like on Panbo and will continue to be for a bit...

-Ben S.

Last Thursday wasn’t a great day for me. In the midst of a few other tasks, I decided to run down to Panboat and complete the physical install of a Simrad NSS4 so I...

16/04/2025

Sad for me personally and the whole rec marine industry ~ Ben E

Carl Cramer Obituary

01/04/2025

Digital Yacht's NjordLINK feeds their Njord Cloud data from your boat's NMEA 2000 network. With free access to basic data and apps providing data analysis, plus developer access to create your own apps, it's an interesting solution. Take a look.

-Ben S.

Digital Yacht’s NjordLINK cloud monitoring solution offers low cost, remote access to data from your boat’s NMEA 2000 network

26/03/2025

Starlink's service offerings are often confusing. They've just made a new round of changes. Initially, part of that round of changes was understood to include eliminating priority data for offshore use on the Roam plan. Good news! I was able to confirm with Starlink that Roam will retain opt-in data! My most recent entry covers all the drama.

-Ben S.

I've run out of ways to say that Starlink changes things a lot. My most frequent refrain about SpaceX's low earth orbit satellite internet offering is the only constant is change. For a while, it looked like they were going to make a liar out of me. We haven't seen much change recently. But fear not...

03/03/2025

I wrote about Revatek's Altion alternator regulators shortly after IBEX last year. I caught up with Greg Revelle, founder of Revatek, at the Miami International Boat Show. Greg provided a concise introduction to the Altion regulators. Revatek just announced two way communications with Victron GX devices, an exciting advance. Check out Greg's intro below:

-Ben S.

Revatek's Greg Revelle introduces and explains the benefits of their Altion and Altion Max advanced alternator regulators. Read more at https://panbo.com/ibe...

03/03/2025

Simrad Yachting introduced the NSS 4 at this year's Miami International Boat Show. The NSS 4 brings Navico's Neon operating system to Simrad's flagship chart plotter. Early impressions from the show are that the NSS 4 delivers a flagship experience with a fast and elegant interface.

-Ben S.

P.S. - I'm trying something new with videos of company representatives introducing their products. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the format

It's been three years since Simrad introduced the NSX at the 2022 Miami International Boat Show. That chart plotter was the first to run Simrad parent Navico's new Neon operating system. At the time, I expected that Simrad would introduce new models across their line running the Neon. Although that....

11/12/2024

I just wrapped up testing a Wattcycle Power 100 amp hour, 12 volt battery. It has been a while since I tested a value battery, but I have to say, I'm impressed by the performance of this one.

Now, if only it didn't use open the charge MOSFETs when charged.

https://panbo.com/watt-cycle-lifepo4-value-battery-with-a-punch/

-Ben S.

Panbo's review of Watt Cycle's 100 amp-hour 12 volt LiFePO4 battery with Bluetooth communications and low temperature cutoff

11/12/2024

Time for a little Victron Energy B.V. testing.

04/12/2024

A dinghy for a 28-foot can be challenging to make work. But, ePropulsion's eLite, Scanstrut's Atmos, and a West Marine PRU-3 rollup dinghy made it work and work well for me and my family.

https://panbo.com/small-boat-tender-perfection-dinghying-with-epropulsion-scanstrut-and-west-marine/
-Ben S.

It has been two and a half years since my family and I travelled by water. Since losing Have Another Day to Hurricane Ian, we have lacked a boat for that sort of cruising....

19/11/2024

Great to see new DAME juror Ben Stein on stage this morning at Metstrade (from my hideout in Maine), and also sweet that this retired juror was not forgotten... ~ Ben E

TUDelft School for Industrial Design Engineering senior lecturer, Arjen Jansen, presented the globally recognised DAME Design Awards 2024 to the TeamO Offshore 150N Hi-Lift Lifejacket & Harness in front of a large audience of leading marine professionals at the METSTRADE Breakfast Briefing this morn...