Category: Sailing

DIY Sailing
02/05/2026

How to Turn Your Boat Winch into an Electric Winch for Under $20 (Complete Guide: Maintenance, Repair & Upgrade)

Did you know you can have an electric winch on your boat for less than $20? In this article (and video), Iā€™ll show you step by step how to save over $2000 by converting any manual winch (sailing winch / capstan) into an electric one using a simple, cheap, and highly effective system. Youā€™ll also learn: šŸ‘‰ If you own a sailboat, this can save […]

Electronics Sailing Security Technology
15/03/2026

The cheapest AIS emitter on the market, for your boat

Hello sailors, Today weā€™re going to test the cheapest AIS transponder Iā€™ve been able to find ā€” and of course, itā€™s Chineseā€¦ very Chinese. Officially itā€™s marketed as a fishing net locator, specifically the ā€œSOCOTRAN Net Locatorā€, but weā€™ll see that in reality it is a perfectly functional AIS transponder. We will be able to program it with our boatā€™s identification information so that other […]

Electronics Sailing
06/03/2026

Navionics vs OpenCPN vs Orca: Which Is the Best Chartplotter App for Your Boat?

For many years, marine chartplotters have been expensive and fairly closed systems. Dedicated devices that can easily cost $700 to over $2000, and often become obsolete after only a few years. However, the evolution of smartphones and tablets has completely changed this landscape. Today it is possible to turn an Android phone or tablet into a fully capable marine chartplotter, with advanced charts, AIS, weather […]

Sailing Toys
20/07/2024

Electric outboard comparison

We test and compare the different electric outboard options on the market. In this episode we are going to see how much we can squeeze out of the different types of electric outboards available on the market, what we can expect from them: maximum speed, battery, thrustā€¦ We compare it with equivalent gasoline engines, to see What we can expect from them and we will […]

Electronics Sailing
18/02/2024

Raspberry Pi and IMU sensors

We return to the Raspberry Pi and we are going to see how to add additional sensors to it. Specifically, we are going to add an IMU, which connected by I2C and for less than 4 euros, will allow us to control aspects of our boat such as heel, trim or heading. This is the basis to be able to build an autopilot for our […]