Presents for an Old Salt – Its Christmas time, but all that glistens is not necessarily gold. If you’re looking for that something special for a loved one or that hard to find gift for the avid boater in your life, well look no further than Island Marine Outfitters this festive period. They have just introduced a superb range of Weems and Plath brass clocks, barometers, tide clocks, boat vases and lamps.

And, if brass isn’t your thing, take a look at their leather bound logbooks, maintenance logs and cruising logs, along with binoculars, chart magnifiers and other navigation equipment.  All logbooks are available with a leather cover that features a reversible brass plate ready for engraving.

Weems and Plath has been making the finest quality brass instruments since 1928, when two great companies joined forces to market a high quality range of brass navigational instruments.

Most tools developed by Weems were developed in an era before computers as we know them today. The tools developed by Weems and Plath simplified and automated the problems of navigation so that anyone with a high school education could master basic celestial navigation.

Captain Weems was a great adventurer who was heavily involved in the underwater mapping of Port Royal in Jamaica as well as, at the ripe old age of 71, being instrumental in developing the book “Space Navigation,” having invented a lightweight transparent sphere through which the space navigator could look at earth and observe the planet against a backdrop of navigation stars.

Carl Plath had been manufacturing commercial sextants and magnetic compasses by hand up until 1899, until his son, Theodor, became a partner within the business.  By this time it was no longer efficient to produce sextants using the old circular dividing machine which Carl had purchased in 1865. Theodor assisted with the development of a new, electrically operated dividing machine which saved hours of manual labour and improved the accuracy of the sextants that were produced. The world renowned C-Plath sextants were manufactured on this machine until World War II.  In 1913 his company was the first to install a gyrocompass on a commercial vehicle.

All Weems and Plath brass has an ultra hard finish that stands up to the Caribbean outdoors: no tarnish, no corrosion, no need to polish.  All clocks and barometers are also weatherproof, featuring silicone ‘o’ rings behind the beveled crystal face plate.

Gimbaled or wooden stands are also available to showcase your clock or barometer, and if you need to affix your items to the bulkhead, then Weems and Plath have though of that, too, with their slide and lock mounting systems.