The crew of Indiscretion has fully embraced the Apple ecosystem. It doesn’t seem very long ago that the Mac was the underdog, but now, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, Apple TV’s, and even the underwhelming HomePod have found their way into our lives. We use this technology in the pilothouse for music, audiobooks, our maintenance tracking system, backup navigation and our ship’s log.
Indiscretion has a Bose sound system that pipes music through zones in the salon and in the pilothouse, but it was limited to CDs or a subscription-based SiriusXM radio for music. We remedied this by installing a Bluetooth transmitter inside the media cabinet in the salon that allowed a paired iPhone or iPad to stream whatever we wanted throughout the boat or in a particular zone. This worked pretty well, but we ran into issues when the paired device moved too far away from the Bluetooth transmitter. Or, when I would watch a video on my iPad while lounging in the salon, only to have the sound came blaring out of the pilothouse speakers.
We had some empty space on the port side pilothouse dash, so we decided to replace the SiriusXM radio with a dedicated pilothouse iPad. This was the first time I made a significant modification to our electronics or dash layout. Unlike a car, the console of a Nordhavn trawler is meant to be easily customized. The dash consists of three adjoining plywood panels that can accommodate just about any layout you might want. If a complete revamp with new electronics is warranted, new dash panels can be designed online so that the cutouts for the new instruments are already in place. In the case of installing this iPad, the procedure was pretty easy.
Here’s the port side dash where the original SiriusXM radio was installed.
I measured and an iPad Mini in portrait orientation would fit perfectly in its place. I bought a nearly-new one with enough internal storage to house our entire music collection for $200 on eBay. I found a very clever 3D-printed mount with an incorporated power cord on ETSY for $40 that plugs into a 12 volt accessory plug behind the dash.
Installation was straight forward. I removed the SiriusXM radio, drilled a small hold to feed the power cable through the dash panel, and installed the mount. Here’s the dash with the finished installation:
I am happy with how this turned out. This dedicated iPad has our entire music library downloaded, so we have ample music no matter how far from internet service we stray. “Hey Siri” makes selecting music easy and fun. We have a few other music and audiobook apps for longer passages. I installed the Navionics boating app which serves as our route planner and backup chart plotter, even without internet. All our manuals and ship’s records are accessible through the fantastic DevonThink app. I’ve even customized the iPad ’s wallpaper to provide key specifications of indiscretion when we’re hailing marinas on VHF.
With screens now on all three dash panels, I feel I’m one step closer to the bridge of my own private starship. Now, I just need to automate our ship’s log system to accept voice recording and transcription. And work on my best Captain Kirk impersonation.
