Try That With A Chip!
Published: Tuesday, June 22, 2021
By: Bob Bitchin
The changes in sailing and navigation are pretty hard to keep up with. I know that I get pretty confused and I go to all the boat shows, so I must be more up on this stuff than most of you. Right? So, if I’m as confused about this stuff as I am, you guys gotta be climbing the walls. I mean, what is the best form of navigational device? Is it the new Whazzoo 48-mile color radar with built-in chart plotter and overlay? Or perhaps it’s the new digitized plotters that show not only what a charts represents, but split the screen so you can see the bottom contour and sea-state all at one time?
I was sitting on the Lost Soul the other day, contemplating my navel or whatever it is we do when we are not trying to fix whatever has broken most recently. I was almost on the edge of boredom as I looked around the main salon. I walked over to the salon table and lifted the lid of the box I’d built to hold charts. I remembered when I’d built it.
We had just sailed back from Tonga and were getting ready to leave for Greece. I had all my chart tubes full of charts for the Pacific, and had no place to put my Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean charts. Then I got this hairbrained idea to build a chart box under the table. It actually turned out pretty well, better than I expected. I mounted one of those kewl gas operated goodies to lift the table-top, and even put a little light under it, so when you open the table you have light to see what’s there, just like on a refrigerator.
I sat down in front of the table and popped it open. All of a sudden, I was no longer bored. There, in front of me, were all the charts and guides that I’d used on my last major voyage. Right there on top was my favorite: the overall chart of the Eastern Pacific. I used this chart in 1991 when I sailed down to Puerto Vallarta on my initial shakedown cruise. Then again, in 1992, when Jody and I sailed south to Cabo San Lucas and on to the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, and Tahiti.
I followed the little Xs, each one marked with a date, and remembered why we had kinda zigged as we crossed the equator. That day was a short day, and the Xs were very close. That’s because we had stopped, right there in the middle of the ocean, for a Shellback Ceremony. All of a sudden I had this big grin on my face, remembering the day.
There were also a series of Xs going from Pago-Pago in American Samoa to Christmas island. The Xs were fairly uniform in distance, because the whole 990 mile voyage was against a 25-30 knot wind, and where it zigged a little was where the equatorial current and the counter-current were pretty close together.
Sitting there, I remembered the feeling we had inside when we finally spotted the island after almost eight days of being beaten up by the winds and seas. There were no Xs from the Tuamotus to Tahiti or Tahiti to Suverov or to Tonga and Samoa. We’d used smaller charts for that. This chart was just for the crossings.
There were three sets of Xs between Hawaii and California. That was from 1993, when we’d sailed home after Christmas, and our crossing to Hawaii in 2002. Then the other was our last crossing, just 8-10 months ago when we sailed back here. It was fun checking how close we came to crossing the same point in the ocean, but never quite actually crossing our own path.
And then it hit me. With all the fancy electronic garbage being thrust upon us, how am I going to get this feeling in the future? Looking at an electronic screen? I think not. No, the ring from the coffee cup on that paper chart is worth more to me than all the simplifications that the electronic stuff gives me. I even remember when it happened. We were four days out of Clarion Island, on our way to the Marquesas. We got side-slapped by a wave and it jarred my cup as I stood there checking our position early one morning… And the faded spot on the edge of the chart, where a wave dropped through the open hatch soaking part of it, as we were about halfway from Hawaii to Redondo. I didn’t find it until I came down to wake Jody for her watch. I remembered thinking we’d better get a new chart when we got home. But, we didn’t… and we won’t. Not as long as there is enough to still navigate by. And when we can’t use it anymore, I think I’ll frame the darn thing.
Try that with a “chip!”
A version of this article appeared in the Launch Issue (May/June) 2021 of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.
tags: Feel Good Story, Lifestyle
