Know Where You're Going

Thanks to my wife, 'Boogaboo' is equipped with a shiny new chart plotting GPS. The unit is a Standard Horizon 180i. The unit has a reasonable detailed world background map pre-installed, but also accepts C-Map chart chips. I am running the C-Map MAX chip "Erie, Ontario And The Trent-Severn" which pretty much covers most of Ontario waters and extends into the U.S. to the New York & Ohio sides plus Detroit.

The extra detail provided with this chip allows boaters to navigate through waters such as Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron /Georgian Bay, most of the Rideau Canal & the entire Trent Severn Waterway / Lake Simcoe. The charts are presented in vector format, which means they are 'layered', with more detail included the closer in one zooms. Unlike raster charts, which are basically just scanned paper charts, zooming out in a given area gives a broader perspective without the clutter found on raster charts.

Equipped with an internal antenna, the unit is completely self contained, requiring only the 12 volt power connection to get up and running. In fact, as it was a Christmas present last year, I was so eager to play with it that I went to Canadian Tire on Boxing Day and got a cigarette lighter adapter so that I could hook it up to the car in the garage & play with it inside the house! An I did, with the help of about 30 feet speaker wire for the connection, I was 'on line' and entered my first way point -our house :-) Cool.

As Boogaboo only has a canvas top over the helm, the reception is 100 %, as seen in the accompanying photo. This one was taken the other day, when we were heading from Young's Point to Peterborough. The picture shows our position within the lock (#27, Young's Point), about two-thirds of the way in, on the north side - right where we we actually were. So, big deal? Uh, YES! I've heard from other GPS users that there is still some deviation purposefully built into the system to throw the terrorists off by a few feet. Ya, that bit of news and $5,000 will get some choice swamp land in Florida.

From what I've seen so far is that any deviation one might experience on their chartplotter stems more from inaccurate maps than from incorrect placement therein. Like the warning says at the startup of any of these units, one shouldn't rely solely on ENCs (Electronic Navigation Charts). Yes having up to date paper charts for backup and reference should go without saying. You never know when you might have them pesky gremlins take out the power to that GPS or make you loose the satellite signal.

Finally, the most important backup is your EYES. Better yet, my eyes :-( The pretty picture included here is of St. Peter's On The Rock church, on Stony Lake. This structure (built in 1914) is located on a small island - barely larger than the church itself - and is only accessible by water. Lovely, isn't' it? The only problem with this shot is that we shouldn't have been this close to take it from a 30' boat! All of the charts and electronic navigation accessories in the world aren't going to help when you get overconfident and don't pay close enough attention to where your are supposed to going.

Yes, I was the overconfident skipper in this scenario. After having successfully transiting the down bound journey through this area of water know as 'Hells Gate', I was more concerned with getting in close for a really good picture of the church that I didn't make sure I was where I thought I was on the chart. My only defense is that this was a couple of years ago, prior to getting the chartplotter. I know, that's not much of a defense . . .

Fortunately I was able to catch the fact that I was off course and, because the water was dead calm, I figured that I could simply retrace my steps out of there and back into the 'safe' waters. The problem was that the current drifted our wake off to one side. Guess what happened next? Yup. Clunk. More like Crrrrrrruuuuunnnch!!!! What a gut wrenching sound. I the way that sounded and felt, I was certain that the bottom of the boat had ripped out and we were mere minutes from sinking. I'm serious.

The end result of my indiscretion was no more than a little bit of skeg shaved off the outdrives over a little patch of slightly submerged ground called Sherin Shoal. I guess I was able to trim the drives up quick enough and we just skirted the edge of the shoal. I'll always feel like I left a little bit of me behind in Stony Lake.

One last note on this article. While I write this, we are on the down side of that very spot and will be passing by there in a couple of days on our way back home. . . . I'm so excited about that. But hey, I do have a chartplotter now.

And a greater respect for the marked channels ;-)