Gear that Works and Boat Anchors

Captain Ed’s Law

Every piece of equipment has a God given right to fail.
The difference between good and bad equipment is how long it takes to fail.

Below you will find Captain Ed’s evaluation of gear used on MV Heather K. You can find out which products work and which products are full of hype. He hopes you will benefit from his experience. As always, Captain Ed looks forward to your comments. Please send them to crew@heatherk.com or include them when you sign our logbook.

Summary List 
(Please click on individual item to get further information)

  
General Comments on Things to Consider

 

RADAR

Radar is a must if cruising is done along a shore with restricted visibility such as fog or night .   When we came down the U.S. West Coast, we saw the coastline for less than three hours between Neah Bay, WA, and Santa Barbara, CA.   The rest of the time, including going underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, we could not see the coastline (or the Bridge) due to fog during  Aug/Sept of 1999.   We had 0.1 NM visibility from Brookings, OR., until we were inside the two parallel breakwaters at Humbolt Bay (we had lined the boat up between them on our radar).   Sailboats without radar were circling the whistle buoy at the entrance waiting to see visually and follow any boat with radar into the Bay.

GPS may be great to establish your position, but it wont see LARGE vessels (also known as BOSS, Big Old Steel Ships) that may be in your way.   Commercial boats engaged in fishing are busy doing other things so they too are not watching out for you, even when you are blasting your foghorn; furthermore, they have the right-of-way (Stand-on vessel in maritime law).   GPS can't help you see other vessels on a collision path with you.

GPS

GPS is highly desireable for cruisers, even if they are proficient in using a sextant and love to do nothing but plot their course.  You can't use a sextant if it's cloudy. It takes some time to take a sight and calculate your position. Then you better recheck your numbers to make sure you haven't made a mistake. As for loosing a GPS overboard, why lose the GPS in the cockpit and not apply the same rule to the sextant that's used along the rail? The military is going to turn off GPS in a war? In the Gulf War they improved GPS accuracy by turning off selective availability. Electronics can fail. OK, then buy several GPS units. For the cost of one sextant, you can buy 4-5 handheld GPS units.

If you enjoy using a sextant, by all means use it. I am not advocating doing something you enjoy doing. I prefer to use the GPS and avoid the hassle of using a sextant. I also believe the GPS is far more accurate, has a smaller probability of error, and allows me to determine my position anytime I want it, 24-hours per day. The Pardee's will disagree with me, and I respect their viewpoint.

I also believe that you should have at least one and preferably two handheld backups for your main GPS unit. The backup should have important waypoint stored so that they are readily available.  I carry a built-in unit for my main navigation and two handhelds.  They are cheap insurance.   Don't forget to carry at least two spare sets of batteries in your abandon ship bag.  You do have an abandon ship bag, don't you?