June 26, 2019
We received an email from our friend Susanne the other day. She’s at sea, heading from Hobart to South Africa with only a short stop in Noumea. (Yep, crazy, but she does that kind of thing all the time.) Her last adventure was to join the Longue Route rally/race to go almost one and a half times around the world (36,985 miles) in 280 days, non-stop and single handed.
In her email, she talked about an island ahead on her current course between New Caledonia and Australia, Sandy Island, that she spotted, almost by accident on her paper chart of the entire Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t on any of her other paper charts. She checked openCPN and it wasn’t there until she zoomed way in. Same on CMAPS on her chartplotter.
I got curious. Here’s what Google Earth shows…
It’s kind of there, I guess. Here’s ESRI ArcGIS Imagery…
Almost the same as Google Earth but darker. (I put the pin and label there.)
And here’s what Navionics shows (on SAS Planet)…
Nothing there. Again, I placed the pin and label.
There’s the same kind of situation at South Minerva Reef. I’ve been unable to find it on any of my satellite image sources, but at least it’s on Navionics charts.
My takeaway is to use every available source of information and even then, I guess we need to keep our eyes open and our fingers crossed!
Well, I guess there’s one other thing we do to avoid trouble like this. We use our radar 24/7 while at sea with a guard zone turned on. We only set the range to about 4 miles so it shows smaller targets well, but even at that, we’d have plenty of time to avoid Sandy Island. If it were a shoal, shallow enough to hit, chances are it’d have breaking waves on it that would show up on radar (at least, that’s my hope).
Yes, it does use power and even though the radar itself (Simrad 4G) only uses about an amp, the chartplotter it displays on uses more power. If it’s at all sunny, our solar panels keep up. If not, we have to run the engine a bit. It’s well worth it for us for the peace of mind this brings. -Rich
