t’s easy to forget how primitive recreational boating was when Soundings was founded 60 years ago. Today, marine VHF radios are everywhere, but until the 1960s, when it came to marine communication, recreational boaters had very few options. For thousands of years sailors relied on speaking trumpets to amplify their voices. In 480 BC, the Athenian Thermistocles used one to direct his 37 oar-driven boats to defeat 1,200 Persian ships, but that trumpet only worked in close proximity to other vessels. By the early 18th century, flags were being used to communicate ship-to-ship, and in 1836 morse code allowed the use of blinker lamps to communicate line-of-sight messages. But over the horizon, the only means of communication was to fire a cannon. It was Guglielmo Marconi who changed that when he developed wireless communication around the turn of the
