Real Boating Experiences In Fog, Darkness, And Gps Errors. Trust Your Instruments And Your Eyes.

Trust your instruments, but use your eyes too.
Some time long ago I read that you should trust your instruments, and I"m reminded of the time in the Strait of Juan de Fuca we were running before large swells and constantly being overrun after speeding down the face. The fog was pea soup and after each swell we were knocked off course by as much as 90 degrees, one time in particular we ended up doing a 360 to get back on course. Being blind in the fog we trusted our compass and gps that day to make it safely through. Old movies about the Bermuda Triangle sometimes depict an airplane pilot or ship captain calling mayday because he is lost and his compass is spinning in circles. On this same trip we were getting very close to shore but the persistent fog denied us a clear view. Our gps showed us to be about 100 yards on shore, but our eyes and brains insisted we were floating in the water, how can you trust your instrument when you can see it"s lying to you? Moments later a house appeared confirming I"m not sure what. On another trip on another boat in clear beautiful weather we were approaching what we thought was Sidney Spit Park (Sidney Island) just off shore from Sidney British Columbia. Never having been there before, we were using the boats chart plotter to guide us. About mile off shore I decided something wasn"t right, the island didn"t have a obvious spit, and the shore facility and docks looked much too extravagant and vacant to be what I thought was a popular park. There was very little wind or current and no swell so I thought let"s just drift while we plot our longitude and latitude on an old fashioned paper chart rolled up and stashed away just for this moment. A few minutes later, using degrees, minutes and seconds, the kids and I placed an X marks our spot right in front of Forest Island, not Sidney Island as we thought. Oops we adjusted our heading and found our night"s anchorage in short order. A few years earlier on yet another boat we were on our way from Coupeville to Oak Harbor for fuel. We were early in the morning, running very slowly, everyone was still in their berths, I was lounging with my coffee not paying any attention except to my depth sounder when we gently ran aground on a mud flat. I can"t believe it, were in 30 feet of water, but when I looked over the side I could see we were in 3 feet of water. When I had turned on the depth sounder earlier I had mistakenly enabled the simulation mode, I wasn"t even aware it had a simulation mode. Apparently it was simulating a great trip with lots of water under us. One last quick story, many years ago on the Columbia River we were running in the dark and had sighted in on a light on shore that we were using as a range marker. We were heading right for this light when it appeared to be getting closer fast and quickly gaining in elevation. We turned and ran for shallow water near shore as the biggest Honda car carrier in the northwest swept past us. What I have learned is to trust your instruments, use your eyes, and pay attention. Failure to follow any of the three may result in undesired consequences.
John
excerpt from www.TripalkUSA.com