Ben Stein

Rarely do I have the opportunity to review a truly new chart plotter. For as long as I have been reviewing equipment, chart plotters come from Furuno, Garmin, Navico, or Raymarine. So, it is pretty exciting for me to get my hands on a truly new line of chart plotters. Although NextFour's Q Experience is new to me and Panbo readers, Q is not as new as you might think. The company just marked ten years of building chart plotters designed to feel as natural as a smartphone. Panboat has spent the past several weeks running around with a dual-display unit suction-cupped to the helm, and I'm ready to share my early impressions. Is Q really as natural to use as your phone? Let's find out.

A Hollywood life of abundance, anxiety, and the terrifying power of an empty bank account.

A Father's Day reflection on Herbert Stein, memory, and the quiet shaping of a son's life.

A s I contemplate the end of my life, which has to come sooner or later, I try to share with my friends the smartest, most useful thoughts that have come my way in the past 81 years.

Victron makes an impressive line of electrical products for boats, RVs and off-grid systems. They offer a similarly broad — and maybe even dizzying — array of connectivity options. But, despite those options, there is a big gap between a simple Victron setup with just a few devices connected to your cell phone via Bluetooth and a full-blown GX system with a Cerbo, Ekrano, or other control hardware. Digital Yacht aims to fill that void with the veLink, a Victron Bluetooth to NMEA 2000 converter.

I n early January 1963, Hugh Gaitskell, a fairly conservative Labourite MP, considered a likely future PM, came down with severe chest pains and shortness of breath. A few days earlier, he had complained of a sharp pain in his back while walking in a crowd in London.

It's been more than a year since I last wrote about Starlink. You might assume that silence means nothing has changed. You'd be wrong. Maybe I've just run out of clichés for how the pace of change never slows with Starlink — but regardless, the changes keep coming, and they're often frustrating for the nomadic subscribers who've come to rely on it for connectivity. Changes include new equipment, price hikes, international roaming tweaks, and new ID requirements.

Restrictions on an old opium-based medicine have deprived chronic pain sufferers of an effective treatment.

Collaboration delivers industry's first Apple CarPlay & Android Auto with on-water navigation straight from the factory.

I sat down to write my initial review and findings of Safiery's 48-volt, solid state lithium ion battery . But, before I get into the meat of the battery's performance, I feel I need to dive into solid state lithium batteries in general as well as the differences among the products available in the marketplace today. So, what follows will be a primer on the technology in general and why we likely all care about the development of solid-state batteries. Following this entry, I'll share my experience with Safiery's battery.