Smart Watches

[Paul White]

The recent release of the Apple Watch has led to enormous interest in Smart Watches and yet only Garmin has a product that is useable for sailing applications.

However, there are issues with using a Watch on a Weta for more than the start when sailing single-handed and that’s because it’s difficult to keep your eye on the boat and your surrounds while looking down at your wrist.

Much better to have something mounted on the mast which is closer to your line of sight and then control it from your watch so you don’t have to keep moving to the mast to make changes to the display.

This is the benefit of the Pebble Smart Watch which has a sunlight-readable E-ink display, is waterproof to 50m and runs for a week on a single charge. There are stand-alone yacht timer programs available for it  – or you can combine it with iRegatta which enables you to use the watch to control the iRegatta App on a phone or tablet which you can mount on the mast.

The Esa Watch has been developed for sailing using software by the developer of the phone App of the same name. It has most of the functions of Apps like iRegatta but on a small screen on your wrist. While I can appreciate the work that has gone into the development to my mind a watch screen is too small for the reasons given above. And also a phone has so many other uses apart from navigation.

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