Courtesy of Maretron

 
According to Anderson, wind blowing in the direction of flight of a pulse increases the speed of the pulse by the amount of the windspeed. "Measuring the time of flight in both directions between a pair of transducers allows the speed of sound to be cancelled out of the calculation, making the wind speed computation independent of air temperature and relative humidity."

Alex Agnew navigated the Swan 40 Chase in the 2006 Newport Bermuda Race using the system. He did the installation himself, although he'd never done that type of installation before. "I was emboldened to install it myself because of the simplicity and logic of the system," says Agnew. "We installed two Maretron screens, one above the companionway, and one down below in the nav station. It took me about twenty-five minutes to hook up the first sensor (at the top of the rig), ten minutes for the second, and five seconds for the third."

In addition to using the Maretron displays for monitoring windshifts, Agnew integrated the wind data into his laptop, which was running Nobeltec navigational software, and MaxSea tactical software from Furuno. This required a converter that translated the NMEA 200 data into NMEA 0183 data, but once that was up and running, everything worked fine, and according to Agnew, the data the routing software got from the windspeed/direction center was perfect.

Another owner using a Maretron unit is Ray Peterson on his Swan 46 Cygne. Peterson has done the last two Bermuda Races and a lot of buoy racing with the WSO 100 sensor since installing it in 2006. "My boat had 20-year old B&G and I wanted to update," says Peterson. "One of the reasons I chose Maretron was the fact that it was running on NMEA 2000. When I bought the system, NMEA 2000 wasn't all that popular, but I didn't want to get stuck in somebody's dedicated network, plus it was very easy to install. I also liked the fact that there were no moving parts in the masthead system. The final reason was price; the system I purchased was much more affordable, especially because you don't always have to replace moving parts."

Peterson installed the masthead system himself but had a dealer run the wiring. He says it was a relatively simple install for them, and took less than a day, and that included the masthead wiring and a depth sounder.
Like Agnew, Peterson uses MaxSea routing software. "I wanted to go with the NMEA 2000 because electronics are always changing, and you don't always want everything from the same manufacturer. We hooked it up, plugged it in, and the software saw the data and started working instantly. I was surprised. There was not one hitch then, and there haven't been any since."

Peterson has been pleased with the accuracy of the unit even during some hard-core conditions he experienced last summer. "We got caught in a squall," says Peterson. "We had 50 to 60 knots of wind and everything worked well."