Radar for SE USA, the Gulf, and Carribean

[chuckr]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

"similar comments" I all but quoted it

The thing about asking a forum question I've found is that people will get upset if you don't accept their answers as a must follow fact.

I sail in the NE USA and have gone up to foggy land (Maine) numerous times. Yet I would say you don't "need" to have radar for that no matter how "nice" it might be. Am I to believe that visibility in the SE USA, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean is typically worst that in Maine?

BTW Mr. (or Mrs ?) Lodesman I see you completely blew off the first part of my post you quoted in order to prove your valuable time to post your reply.

I was going to answer with some issues we have found helpful but with the above attitude it would be a waste of band width as the op seems to have his mind made up before posting -- oh well on to the next subject - good luck

[Dockhead]

If you're choosing weather and not sailing nights or long passages, you might need it less.

Besides the obvious fog and night uses, though, radar has a lot more uses --

* A powerful aid to watchkeeping offshore -- radar guard zones. Extremely valuable even in daylight and good viz.
* Determining range to something, useful for navigation and pilotage, even if the object is visible. Almost crucially important navigation tool.
* Collision avoidance -- not everything out there broadcasts AIS
* Tracking squalls

Radars have improved enormously in the last 10 - 15 years. In my experience, MARPA still doesn't work very well, but guard zones are now really useful, because false alarms are almost completely eliminated by DSP.

A couple more random points:

* Radar and AIS are not substitutes for each other.

* To learn to use radar well, you need to do more than just "play with it". It actually takes a fair amount of skill and knowledge to use radar to its full effect.

* Lodesman is an old professional mariner. If your purpose in starting this thread was to increase your knowledge, rather than just kill time at work (and I'm pretty sure I remember that you've quit already, so can't be that), this is someone worth listening to with particular care and attention.

[sailorboy1]

The subject is closed for me. Not many responses really had much to do with the original question, which doesn't surprise me as forums like to change questions into something "debatable". One post did help me decide and it wasn't really about the question at all. I find it interesting that on another thread where someone asked about electronics for basically the same area and that most of the replies are saying radar isn't needed.

Feel free to continue your debate. If it starts to bore people send me a PM and I'll try to stir it back up

[Ribbit]

I'm very pleased with this tablet for use in the cockpit:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

in one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

with Navionics running Government Charts to get me to the Caribbean, then Navionics Caribbean Charts (about $15 if I remember right) when I get there.

Down below I'm running OpenCPN on a cheap 15" Asus laptop with a GPS puck.

As the trip will be daysailing and taking it easy, if the conditions look like needing radar, I won't be sailing.

But before I leave the Caibbean, I'll be fitting radar. I might not bother with AIS at all (I'll qualify that as having had experiences related to me by people that became over reliant on it, and it causing a breakout of 'the sweats' as a result, due to very large vessels 'not' using AIS, but on about the same bearing of other vessels that were, but hidden by the closer larger vessel - but I may still get it).

Not long now to launch.