Transit Time? NY-FL

[scoobert]

Originally Posted by SailFastTri

Scoob -- Glad you made it, especially considering the fog.

No doubt the crew and the dog needed to get ashore, but most sailors consider it unwise to enter unfamiliar harbors during reduced visibility (e.g fog, after dark, heavy rain/snow). Much better to hold off entering until improved visibility makes it safer.

Missing the entrance to Sunset Marina is an example of things gone wrong due to the visibility issue. Contrary to your statement, it is on the NOAA charts. This time you're OK but it could have endangered the crew and cost you the boat.

BTW you wrote at one time that you'd never get AIS. I bet you would have liked to have it in that dense fog.

Seas were starting to pickup, and it was slackwater.
Option b was waiting 8 hours in the ocean waves for it to come back to slack.
Ais would have not helped at all. All the boats in the chanel were small, and fishing. We did a securta call before going in.

The channel was not on our 4 year old gps charts. After i missed it i navigated by google earth, lol.

[SailFastTri]

Originally Posted by scoobert

Seas were starting to pickup, and it was slackwater.
Option b was waiting 8 hours in the ocean waves for it to come back to slack.
Ais would have not helped at all. All the boats in the chanel were small, and fishing. We did a securta call before going in.

The channel was not on our 4 year old gps charts. After i missed it i navigated by google earth, lol.

Sounds like you're coping just fine. I don't know what your chart plotter is, but if it takes add-on chips such as Navionics you'd find it a worthwhile investment if you're going to use that for blind navigation. (There's a West Marine pretty close to the marina right there in Ocean City. Their price is $199 for the entire US and Bahamas, and when you register your chart chip with Navionics you can get free updates via download for a year. They'll price-match if you want to save $10.) Stuff moves. Channels and buoys move.

[scuba0_1]

Originally Posted by scoobert

Seas were starting to pickup, and it was slackwater.
Option b was waiting 8 hours in the ocean waves for it to come back to slack.
Ais would have not helped at all. All the boats in the chanel were small, and fishing. We did a securta call before going in.

The channel was not on our 4 year old gps charts. After i missed it i navigated by google earth, lol.

I'm guessing your assuming that since you couldn't see. 4 year old chars are old I'm sure a lot of things have changed since the large weather systems have gone through there.

[scuba0_1]

Saw your blog.. keep updating with pics..

[The Garbone]

Scoob, consider getting an iPad or iPhone if you do not already have. Isailor is free and the entire east coast can be downloaded for a reasonable fee. Once paid for all updates are free. Also get OpenCpn and a USB GPS for you laptop. The software and charts are free and you can keep them up to date for free. Another good app is Charts & Tides. It give pretty decent chart and current tables as well as has an Active Captain layer that can be updated before you leave and is pretty good for missing markers, shoaling, anchorages and marinas. I usually flip between the isailor and charts and tides. 4 year old maps, not a good thing.

[SailFastTri]

Originally Posted by SailFastTri

Sounds like you're coping just fine. I don't know what your chart plotter is, but if it takes add-on chips such as Navionics you'd find it a worthwhile investment if you're going to use that for blind navigation. (There's a West Marine pretty close to the marina right there in Ocean City. Their price is $199 for the entire US and Bahamas, and when you register your chart chip with Navionics you can get free updates via download for a year. They'll price-match if you want to save $10.) Stuff moves. Channels and buoys move.

Also, I've found that WM is very service-oriented. If you speak to the store manager on the phone and say you're cruising (no car), they'll usually deliver your order right to the dock. (I don't work for WM or Navionics, and have no business interest).

[Sand crab]

Originally Posted by SailFastTri

Missing the entrance to Sunset Marina is an example of things gone wrong due to the visibility issue. Contrary to your statement, it is on the NOAA charts

It's right here. Use the inset in the upper left hand corner.
Chart 12211

[SailFastTri]

Originally Posted by scuba0_1

I'm guessing your assuming that since you couldn't see. 4 year old chars are old I'm sure a lot of things have changed since the large weather systems have gone through there.

Two hurricanes named Irene and Sandy, and a bunch of major Nor-Easters. What could change?

On the plus side, he did check Google Earth, though perhaps after he entered and realized he was lost?

[Sand crab]

Here.

[Cuttyhunk]

I know someone else mentioned it, but if your wifi is good right now, download ActiveCaptain. I found it to be a godsend this past May when we brought our (new to us) boat home to Rhode Island from Edgewater, MD. It's free. It has the charts, plus markers with all sorts of useful info. The initial download takes a long time, so you really can't do it on cellular.

The reviews from other boaters of anchorages and marinas are really helpful. We had a couple of occasions where we needed to bail somewhere and were able to research which inlets had wicked currents and which would be relatively easy.

Try it, you will like it! And no flack from anyone -- you just read what others wrote, and then you can add your experience to help the next people (like whatever diver you used in Barnegat!) To make it work on ipad or iphone, you will have to buy an app…active captain itself uses Flash.

[Sand crab]

Sunset Marina on Google Earth.

[scuba0_1]

actually they just added active captain to Android , download it from the store and then you have to download the maps you want to use, works great... once I figured out how to download the maps

[hellosailor]

scoobert-
N 39.13.4
W 74.31.7

That's not a position, that's a landmine. You will find that GPSes and other instruments can all be set to display positions as DD MM SS or DD.MM.mm. The convention among sailors is degrees (two decimal places for latitude, but ALWAYS THREE for longitude, to ensure the two can never be confused) minutes seconds, which is often indicated as DD MM SS.

But the convention among others, or to modern standards, has also been DD MM.mm meaning degrees, minutes, and decimal minutes. So when you write six numbers with just decimal points--that's what it means, and the position can put you miles off from what you mean to say. I couldn't figure out why my first GPS was always off, until I found it was using DDMMmm.

Just to make things worse, the ISO standard for engineering and surveying is now a very logical and simple DD.dddd which is degrees and decimal degrees (to four or five decimals, I forget which) no minutes or seconds at all to create conversion errors at all. Anathema to sailors, but that's the new world order for "positioning" as a whole, even if mariners aren't using it to any great extent yet.

[DeepFrz]

I have Active Captain but the chart doesn't show the marina. Actually the charts in Active Captain are not good for navigation. Is there a way to upgrade them?

I also have OpenCPN with updated charts so I can switch and compare.

[Sand crab]

Interesting. If you switch back and forth between the different tabs on AC the marina is not there on the nautical or the (road) map tabs but it is there on the hybrid and satellite view. They get their charts from Polar Navy. Where do they get them from?
Polar Navy - Marine Navigation Software