Three members of BWI selected the winner of the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) Technology Award for 2011 presented at the International Marine Electronics Conference & Expo held in early October. From a field of 13 entries they chose Digital Yacht Ltd.’s BOATraNET, a wireless server for onboard navigation networks, based on innovation, benefit to boaters, practicality, and value. Ben Ellison, who writes the marine electronics blog Panbo, served as BWI Awards Chairman at the NMEA event. He was joined in judging by Tim Queeney, editor of Ocean Navigator and Ocean Voyager magazines, and Bill Bishop, who writes the blog The Marine Installer’s Rant.
Said Ellison, “We saw many amazing technologies that will be making boating better for years. But one product seemed to define a new category in marine electronics. It’s a small power-efficient server designed to deliver information and services to any platform on a boat with WiFi and a browser or app that understands HTML5. It can, for instance, store and serve a yacht’s entire set of owner’s manuals. It can also control multiple media being output from the server to a marine stereo or serve the same media to the individual device in the boater’s hand.”
Also presented at the annual conference and expo were the NMEA Product and Manufacturer of the Year Awards for 2011. For this series of awards, marine electronics dealers from around the country select winners in several categories through a mail-in voting process. For details, go to www.nmea.org/Assets/2011-nmea-awards.pdf.