Before the vacation, the last time I was on a real boat was, er, a long time ago. After making that crack earlier about our "what island is this!?!" navigation method, I thought I'd say that today's sailing with electronics and GPS mapping is pretty much like being in a 747 compared to the Wright Brothers' plane we used to get down to the BVI from North Carolina. Who needs telltales when you have the wind direction displayed in front of you at all times? The autopilot was of course coupled to the navigation system. You could tell it to keep the wind at a certain angle, steer to a set mark, or steer a compass course. Need to adjust course by 1 degree or 10 degrees? Why turn the wheel when you can press a button and have the autopilot do it? Worried about the shallow spots in an anchorage? Just press a button and the shallow spots near you are displayed with your position relative to them. Course made good vs. course steered -- constantly displayed on the map in front of you. Concerned your anchor might drag while you're sleeping? No worries, an alarm will ring if the depth changes too much too fast.
It was impressive and made me feel old. It was like meeting someone 25 years later who you only saw as a baby. Shocking.
There were a few other things that were surprising to me, too. Everyone uses a sail cover that stays on around the boom all the time. They lower the sail into it, and if they are worried about weather or want to look more shipshape, they tie it up over the top of the sail. Back when I was sailing... gad, don't get me started. It was a bit weird to see boats sailing with this big canvas bag flapping around the bottom of the sails, but it was definitely convenient and a great idea.
Also, few boats worry about that pesky anchoring stuff because every anchorage is festooned with mooring balls. Grab the line and tie up, that's all there is to it. Someone comes by and charges you $25 to stay overnight. It certainly lowers the barrier of entry for bareboating and eliminates a source of worry when you're surrounded by bareboaters. By the same token, it makes cruising in the BVI feel a lot more like tent camping than cruising.
1 comment:
As the COG Chief Operating Geek of the family, any technology that makes you feel old will probably make the rest of us seem ancient. I do have that very cool new GPS for my bike. It is an amazing wealth of information, however, it isn't up to course correction or compensating for lactic acid build up or plain old poor training. I guess that's still in beta.
Post a Comment