Sailor

If you’ve just bought a new boat loaded with electronics, or if you’ve spent the offseason upgrading your old stand-alone components, plan to spend some time playing with the new gear before you find yourself needing to quickly access critical information. I recently got to sail the length of Baja, Mexico, on a new catamaran with a suite of just-installed electronics. It took nearly all 800 miles to figure out how to arrange screens, overlay data and find chart options within the numerous drill-down menus. Luckily, conditions were benign and navigation was straightforward, leaving plenty of watch hours to play with features.

—Mark Pillsbury editor-in-chief, Cruising World