The Marine Electronics Hub
I first learned about Max Marine Electronics when Max himself served with me on an awards judging panel at the National Marine Electronics Association’s annual meeting a few years ago. Since hearing about his operations, I’ve been planning to visit the facility and see how they refurbish and sell used marine electronics. It took a while, but I recently made my way to Pompano Beach and spent the day with Max at his eponymous company.
It’s been just over six months since Ian ravaged Southwest Florida and, with it, the life my family and I built in Fort Myers. Ian sunk our home on the water, Have Another Day, and destroyed the marina we’d called home for three and a half years. Our lives have continued. We are settled in our house, we’ve found a place to keep our center console, Panbo(at), and overall we don’t have much to complain about, but boy do we miss living on the water.
Ben Stein and his family evacuated from Fort Myers on Tuesday night, that’s the great news. But at about 7 pm last night their beloved boat and home on the water Have Another Day sank in her slip at a well-engineered marina 14 miles up the Caloosahatchee River as Ben watched the aft bilge pump try to keep up via remote monitoring. Here in Maine I’m near tears at their loss…
Several years ago we launched a new Panbo site based on all new software, but we did leave behind the old classifieds section. It’s been on my todo list since then to launch something new — and Ben Ellison has been persistently urging me to as well — so I’m here to tell you I’ve finally done it. The Panbo Classifieds forum is our fifth major forum category and available at the bottom of the forum list.
Our most recent podcast episode is a little different. Instead of sitting down with a product representative, I sat down with my colleague and mentor Ben Ellison. When I first started in the marine...
Episode 2 of the Panbo Podcast is available. I sat down with Chris Ponnwitz from Mack Boring to talk about ePropulsion’s line of electric motors and batteries. The timing is good because Ben E....
Pardon the alliteration, but I’m pretty excited to debut the Panbo Podcast. This occasional series will feature conversations with important members of the marine electronics industry. Our first episode is a conversation with Vesper’s CTO, Carl Omundsen, about the launch of Vesper’s Cortex VHF radio, AIS transceiver, and boat monitoring product.
There’s been a lot written recently about the strength of the boat and RV markets. I’ve struggled at times to understand why, especially with the uncertainty looming around all of us. But, I also understand the escape that a recreational vessel or vehicle can bring. In fact, I understand it so well that my wife Laura and I decided to add an RV to our fleet of mobile residences — the fleet now sits at two with the RV.
Over the next four weeks I’m teaching a marine electronics seminar. The course covers the basics of electronics and outfitting a boat for cruising. We will touch on installed equipment, safety gear, mobile apps,...
Holy cow! While the timing is weird, the current Wall Street Journal features a lovely portrait of the Ben and Laura Stein family aboard Have Another Day in Fort Myers. And although the headline writers got a little carried away — yesterday, for instance (and ugh), Ben was replacing the vacuum head system duck valves in his “luxury watercraft” — Panbo readers may enjoy a peek at Stein life beyond all the electronics…
