Communication icon

Sailor

Electronics aboard ordinary cruising sailboats traditionally span basic marine navigation and communication electronics found at the helm and nav station. Around the turn of the century, each unit had its own readout or screen. Today, however, multifunction devices (MFDs) can pool information from a number of onboard systems to put vital information right at the helmsman’s fingertips, and it can be displayed onscreen in a number of user-preferred configurations. Data can also be duplicated across multiple screens, making the job of navigating underway or in tight-quarter situations easier now than ever before.

—Andrew Parkinson, editor-in-chief, Cruising World