3 NEW ACCESSORIES AT METS: TRIM CONTROL, NEPTULINK AND SEA TAGS

This year, as usual, Mets has confirmed to be not only an ideal gathering place for the operators of the field but also an almost boundless showcase of new products and ideas.

Among them, we want to tell you three interesting accessories.

Let’s start from a French product, designed by the French sailor Michel Desjoyeayx and produced by Mer Agitée. Called Trim Control, they’re a sort of electronic tell-tales. They share the same function of their fabric equivalents, that is to inform you about the presence of a laminar or turbulent flow on your fore sail entrance border, but with the advantage of a display located just near the rudder. They fix to the sail thanks to an adhesive tape and they’re provided with a small transmitter and a battery, connected via WiFi to the on-board network. The message displayed is a simply binary one: laminar/turbulent.

Still in its experimental stage, the product promises an interesting professional use on mega yachts, where the processed data can be translated on the boat’s equipment and integrated in a more advanced detection system.

Then, there’s the French NeptuLink by Brest MVG. It’s a modem which amplifies the 4G signal’s range and makes it “reachable” by boats sailing up to 20 miles off coast.

Equipped with a double SIM card, it enjoys waterproof IP66 certification and surfs at 100 Mbps. It communicates with the antenna (2.9 kg) through WiFi or ethernet cable. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly affordable: € 2000.

Finally, Sea Tags is an interesting system to activate MOB (Man Over Board) automatically. It’s a bracelet (13 g) which constantly sends a message to the board (it’s compatible with all the main devices, tablets or phones through the specific app) which interrupts in case of contact with water. This way, the captain is first warned, than informed about the place where the accident occurred. Your smartphone will even display the route to get it.

With no GPS transmitter, it has a 100-metre-range (maximum distance between the bracelet and the on-board device), an internal battery (a led starts to flash if discharged) which lasts about 600 hours. The idea is not an absolute news but what is really interesting are both its simplicity and price: € 79,00