A Visit to FURUNO ELECTRIC CO. LTD.

May 20th. We paid a courtesy visit to Furuno Electric Co. Ltd. this morning. Furuno Electric Co. Ltd. is one of the official sponsors for this blind sailing project. We have something similar to a car navigation system aboard the Aeolus called the NavNet Touch. Instead of road maps it displays nautical charts on the screen. It also displays important information such as the heading direction, speed, wind direction and wind speed at all times. We connect this to an iPad Mini via internal LAN which lets it read the information out to me. The application used on the iPad is called Sail Sound which was developed by a team at Osaka Electro-Communication University. NavNet Touch has other many other functions too. The most important function of them all is the radar information. As long as we have this, even when we can't physically see what's ahead for example due to thick fog or something, we can see the obstacles in the water like a ship or buoy on the radar which will allow us to avoid collisions. Shinbo-san said that he had a scary experience when he was sailing on his yacht which wasn't equipped with a radar where suddenly he wasn't able to see anything ahead and had to cautiously steer his yacht back to port. He said that experience made him fully realize the importance of a radar. This radar has an alarm built in and we can set the distance of how far the obstacle should be when the alarm goes off.  I plan to set it for 5 miles when it's my watch. Inside the Osaka Bay, there are so many tankers, cargo vessels and fishing boats that the alarm will probably be sounding non-stop so it won't help me but once we're out in the open Pacific, we may or may not see one vessel a day. Once the alarm goes off, we will use the international VHF radio to inform them which way the Aeolus is heading and we should be able to avoid a collision. If we don't get a response from them, then I will need Shinbo-san to watch the screen. I hope one of these days, the radar will also come with audio capabilities. I think this would be an important function not only for the blind but for people who can see as well. 6 executive directors including one of the founders of the company came to meet us. The founder, Furuno-san is from Kuchinose, Nagasaki told me he had been to my hometown of Uchibukashi quite often to sell fish finders which made me very happy and gave me an extra boost of energy. I promise to utilize the NavNet Touch to it's fullest potential for a safe voyage across the Pacific.

Originally posted by Hiro in Japanese on 5/20/2013
Translated by SWIS Project