January 14, 2018
Now that we’re settled down in Tauranga, I can knock off a few pending projects. One of them is finishing a video about making satellite maps for our new EVO3 chartplotters. Another is more raving about our new ForwardScan Sonar.
On the way to Tauranga, we did a little sightseeing by boat in the Cathedral Cove area. We’d hoped to anchor there for a night but the swell rolling in had other ideas. It had already been a long day and I didn’t like the idea of backtracking to get out to continue down the coast. I saw a possible way out at the southeast end of the area, but it looked dodgy.
The aforementioned satellite charts didn’t help here much either…
I wouldn’t have tried this path before but now we have ForwardScan sonar. Piece of cake! I could go slow and always turn around or back out if it got too shallow ahead.
And it did turn out to be a piece of cake. We never saw less than about 30 feet of water. I don’t think many sail boats take this path. A man on a jet ski stopped to watch and once we were through, gave us a big two-handed thumbs up. An approaching sail boat diverted to see what we were doing. After much contemplation, he also tried this route.
I’ve said this a couple times before on our blog but I’ll say it again: I don’t know how we did without this. It would have made the things we’ve done in the tropics so much easier! My hair might not be as gray now.
I will say this, just in case I talk anyone into installing this tech: it produces an image that you have to interpret. It’s not an absolute picture of the bottom ahead of your boat but rather data that can be interpreted to show what’s ahead. That said, It’s a brilliant display and I got used to it very quickly but I do feel that this warning is in order. We’ve posted a couple of videos so you can see what I mean…
Simrad Ruined our Fun
Simrad ForwardScan vs. Bombie
-Rich
