A couple weeks ago I wrote about a new gee-whiz iPhone app that turns your Apple cell phone into a miniature handheld plotter—and I hypothesized about the trouble that could get you into if you started multitasking while navigating. Now sailors have another tempting application to bring out the best (or worst) from their favorite high-tech gadget. Your iPhone now can become a windspeed instrument as well! Some very clever engineer types realized that the intensity of wind blowing into the microphone of an iPhone (that roaring static we hear when people call us from their boats) could be calibrated to reveal the speed of said wind. The harder the blow, the more intense the sound—and the higher the wind gauge needle moves. How cool is that! According to reviews, it really works. Learn more about it here.
A lot of racing or serious cruisers already have wind instruments on their boats, and various handheld wind meters have been available a long time. (I used one a lot long ago on my first boat—until a gale blew it out of my hand and it went overboard.) But for those without such instruments, here’s a nifty new excuse to buy that iPhone you’ve been longing for.
So now you can alternate among phone calls, music, course plotting, and decision making about reefing or furling. Just don’t switch away from your iNavigation plotter screen too often to check the wind, or you may run into that rock after all!
Photo © goingApps
Comments
Looks like a nice app, haven’t tried it yet. I just wish the makers of it would stop scraping my email address from wind-sport-related websites and spamming me about it.
Makers should stop spamming on wind sport related websites. App is not working very well on the new iPhone4. I heard some nice things about Wind Sensor app, I will try that.