There is hardly a boat or yacht owner who has not experienced the following situation: you are sitting comfortably with your loved ones at dinner and memories of the recent summer holiday on deck come to mind. Almost automatically, the question suddenly pops into your head whether everything is okay with the boat in winter storage. A nightmare for every boat owner is to enter his jewel and be faced with unpleasant surprises such as a battery voltage that is too low or even a bilge that has filled up. Now you have two options in such a situation. Either you make your way to your boat now or you take advantage of today’s technological advancement of remote monitoring of a boat. You can also make use of the regular boat service provided by Merk & Merk Yacht Service.
But what is remote boat monitoring, what are the advantages and what is important if you want to monitor your boat remotely? That’s exactly what the experts from Merk & Merk will tell you in the following article.
Why a boat surveillance?
Many boats and yachts spend a long time in the marina. Each vessel is exposed to countless stresses and harsh conditions here. Corrosion, temperature drops below zero degrees or heavy rain, to name just a few challenges, can quickly lead to serious damage and consequential losses. Dangers and risks lurk everywhere on board, but also outside.
With remote boat monitoring, you save yourself the constant worry and drive to your gem to check up on it and keep an eye on numerous parameters in real time. Remotely monitoring your boat gives you peace of mind and allows you to intervene in time should something go wrong. You have invested a lot of money in your boat and certainly also built up an emotional bond, after all you spend many unforgettable moments here. Remote monitoring for your boat is therefore an ideal solution to reliably increase the protection of your valuable investment if you do not use your yacht for a longer period of time or are away for the winter break.
What should the boat be able to monitor?
A high-quality yacht monitoring system should have a number of functions that on the one hand make it easier for you to use and on the other hand ensure that you keep an eye on the most important values and parameters.
A battery sensor provides you with all the central information about the condition of your batteries when monitoring your boat remotely. This also includes the charging status so that you can avoid a deep discharge. For boat owners, it is disastrous if water enters the bilge of the boat. In that case, a bilge sensor of the boat monitoring system detects the intrusion in time and you can avoid a sinking by acting quickly. Most of these sensors can also warn of frost. Equally important in remote boat monitoring are smoke detectors and fire alarms, which will immediately alert you to smoke or high temperatures so you can react immediately to prevent anything worse from happening.
High-quality remote monitoring from the boat brings real-time condition monitoring, for example, where you can conveniently access all vessel data via a cloud on any mobile device or desktop from anywhere without any prior installation effort. When deciding on remote monitoring from a boat, it is important that you opt for a complete solution that provides you with a wide range of measurement data and indicators and presents them not only in the form of figures, but also graphically structured and clearly laid out.
Furthermore, with smart remote monitoring of your boat, you can not only monitor your vessel data remotely, but also take action yourself by accessing various devices directly from a distance. An example of this is switching on the interior lighting, which simulates that someone is on board and thus effectively deters burglars.
Another important aspect of remote monitoring from the boat is that you can evaluate all recorded data such as temperatures, battery levels or positions and have access to them for several years. In this way, you can cleverly manage maintenance and compare values more easily.
If a value is exceeded, reliable remote monitoring from the boat should inform you in a way that suits you without detours. In most cases, you have the option of being informed of a user warning by e-mail, SMS notification, push notification to a terminal or via voicemail. You can also connect your local yacht service provider through notifications and they can then respond immediately.
Part of your remote boat monitoring should ultimately include reliable location tracking. This is especially useful if you rent out your boat.
Are you interested in remote monitoring for your boat and want to keep an eye on your yacht at all times? Feel free to contact us about this. We can monitor your boat remotely with the innovative boat monitoring system and, if you wish, we can also look after it personally at any time as part of our yacht management service.