It just so happens that everyone should rush out to grab the March issue of Good Old Boat . . . coming to a newsstand near you (it's currently at the printers).
Van Taiariol, who owns Borel Manufacturing, has written a clever article about how you can give your boat its own cell phone and enable it to send you a text message when something goes wrong: "Help! I'm sinking!" or something along those lines.
Van says if you can solder two wires together and know how to download something from the Internet, you can make this thing for less than $100.
Full disclosure: I am senior editor at Good Old Boat (otherwise, how would I know what's coming up?).
Borel Manufacturing always has an ad in the display classifieds. My only connection to Van is that I edited his article. While doing so I almost rushed out to buy the bits . . . then remembered I don't have a boat.