Velocitek Shift Compass
Velocitek, the company that brought us the Pro-Start and the SpeedPuck, has stepped into the digital compass market and stepped up our most important tactical tool. Inside the solar-powered Shift Compass is a nine-axis solid-state sensor that tracks the orientation of your boat in three dimensions, making for a more accurate and rapid reading. With 1.5-inch numbers on the clean display, bearings are easy to see. It’s not just a standard compass, either. You can quickly record port and starboard headings, with lifts and headers indicated on the display. There’s a countdown timer and only one button on the face to start, sync, and stop the function. It’s impossible to get it wrong. It has a red LED that reportedly can run 60 hours from a full charge.
One of the Shift’s early testers was 2013 J/24 World Champion skipper Tim Healy, who says he’s happy with the unit. “We used it for the first time at the worlds, and it was great. The J/24 class doesn’t allow you to save data, so we didn’t use the lift/header function, but it has a nice, big display so everyone on the boat could read it. It was overcast and rainy a lot of the days, and we had no problem with it holding a charge.”
$699, www.velocitek.com
