Mercury News

Mercury Marine launches 1st Mate, marine industry’s first engine integrated Man overboard and proximity based theft deterrent system

Brunswick Marine in EMEA launches a new product called 1st Mate for the European market at boot Düsseldorf.

1st Mate from Mercury and Quicksilver is the world's first engine-integrated man overboard and proximity-based theft deterrent system. Utilizing a highly styled wearable for up to 8 people, 1st Mate turns the engine off or sounds an alarm during a man overboard event (MOB), and optionally sends notifications to emergency contacts. If the proximity of the fob is not in range, the system disables or puts engine in guardian mode. All these functions are covering boaters most important needs, namely safety and security.

1st Mate is composed out of an intelligent hub, a set of wearable products and a mobile‑device app that integrate with a boat's propulsion systems to provide potentially lifesaving safety features and to help secure property. Its three main features are; man‑overboard monitoring and warning system, distress‑calling capability, and deterrence against theft of the boat and/or its engine(s).

The three main features of this product work in the following ways:

• Man overboard monitoring and warning system

This system protects a boat's captain and up to seven passengers.

If the system detects that the captain has fallen overboard, the device sends alerts to the system's hub, its app and all the passengers' wearable devices. The system cuts the engines and sends specific instructions to the passengers' cell phones via the app. The instructions guide the passengers through restarting the engines and safely steering the boat back to the location of the man-overboard event.

If a passenger falls overboard, the system likewise sends alerts to the captain and other passengers. The captain receives heading instructions to return the boat to the location of the man-overboard event.

• Distress messaging

If a boat's captain is alone and the system detects that the captain has fallen overboard, it sends a distress message to a list of emergency contacts that the captain had entered into the app. The distress message includes the GPS location and the time and date of the man-overboard event. This function is also useful in instances where the captain is not alone and falls overboard, but the passengers for whatever reason are unable to return the boat to the location of the man-overboard event or are unable to pull the captain aboard.

• Theft deterrence

Some of the system's theft-deterrence capabilities vary according to the boat's engine technologies. In all cases, the system provides engine-locking functions. For boats powered by Mercury outboards with Mercury SmartCraft technology, the system not only requires an "unlock" command from the captain's app or wearable device to operate the engines, but also requires engines that have been removed from the boat to detect a "handshake" from the system before they can be restarted.