I had to learn the hard way. One day I was getting into Saint John in heavy
fog. I was in between two containers' ships. Everything was going well when
suddenly my VHF stopped and my navigational equipment became erratic. I
finally made it to the reversing falls and had to wait for the next slack
time. When I got home I evaluated the situation and came to the following
conclusions:
In coastal areas where there is much heavy fog the situation is quite
different.
The wet saline atmosphere penetrates electronic equipment. Also the
temperature variation between nights and days produce high humidity. This
promotes corrosion and builds up on contacts, cards and chips. The ambient
environment in a home does not vary as much so high quality seal is not
that important. On a sailboat the ambient environment is not the same.
When buying electronics for your sailboat It's more prudent to get
electronics build to Mil Standards or its equilvalent.
This standard calls for superior sealing and the ambient air to be extracted
from the equipment and replaced with nitrogen. As an example Magellan GPS
are using IEC-529 IPX7 specifications for waterproof standard.


"wblakesx" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hmmm

I was thinking more of salt air causing damage...