Okay, so let me tell you about this huller skipper watch thing I messed around with a while back. Saw it advertised somewhere, maybe in one of those old boating magazines I still get for some reason. Sounded pretty neat, honestly. The idea was, it’s supposed to keep an eye on things down below, you know, hull integrity or water levels, something like that, automatically. Less crawling around for me, I thought.
So, I went ahead and ordered one. Took ages to arrive, typical. When it finally got here, the box looked like it had been used as a football. First red flag, maybe? Anyway, opened it up. The instructions… well, calling them instructions is generous. Looked like a bad translation, tiny diagrams. Spent a whole Saturday trying to figure out where the sensors were supposed to go on my old tub.
Getting it Hooked Up
This part was a real pain. Had to drill a couple of small holes, which I always hate doing. Ran the wires behind panels, trying to make it look tidy. The main unit, the “watch” part, mounts up near the helm. It’s got this little screen. Powered it up. It beeped, lights flashed. Looked impressive for about five minutes.
First trip out with it was… interesting. Every time we hit a slightly bigger wave, the damn thing would start screaming. False alarms, constantly. Scared the life out of my dog who likes to come aboard. I fiddled with the sensitivity settings, basically turned it down so low it probably wouldn’t have noticed if the boat actually split in half.
Then there were other issues:
- The battery life was terrible. Claimed months, lasted maybe two weeks.
- Sometimes the screen just went blank. Had to smack it, like an old TV.
- It definitely didn’t like saltwater spray. Started getting glitchy after one choppy afternoon.
I spent more time messing with the huller skipper watch than actually, you know, skippering or enjoying the boat. Trying to troubleshoot it, changing batteries, worrying if it was actually working or just pretending to. It became another chore, not a helper.
In the end? I ripped the whole thing out. Honestly, it was more trouble than it was worth. Patched up the holes I drilled. Went back to doing things the old way – using my own eyes and ears, regular checks. Sometimes these fancy gadgets just overcomplicate things. Maybe on a brand new, high-tech boat it works better, I don’t know. But for my setup, it was a bust. Just ended up being a frustrating experiment and a waste of a perfectly good Saturday.
