Cruising Sailors Forum Archive
the North Equatorial Current between Testigos & the eastern islands
In Response To: Dan, finish the story! Why the discrepancy? Oh, ()
We were heading east from the Testigos in an effort to get to Martinique for New Year. We left with a couple of other boats. The Hylas 47 called and asked what our heading was. I looked at the compass and then the GPS,,,, HUH? I told him something's wrong. He said no, we entered the current.
That was a real eye opener. We were beating into an eastern swell and weren't going very fast forward but we were sure going sideways.
I realized that you don't go to Martinique directly from the Testigos. Trinidad would have been a better choice and then North. Too late to do that and we motorsailed into everything coming from the direction we wanted to go (15 knots of wind and 6 foot seas on the nose) 40 hours of hell.
Won't do that again.
Messages In This Thread
- Survey - who does route planning on their GPS as opposed to just using it for tracking position
- Well, in a way...
- I do...
- I use it the same way you do Tom
- I do what you are doing but I have a lot of waypoints.
- By GPS that would be the iPhone or iPad
- I use it to keep track of my position and onboard charts for route planning.
- I did in the Chesapeake, using downloads from
- Yes Somewhat
- I use mine mostly to give me boat speed and secondarily for position...
- Incidentally, I never set way points and don't have an auto pilot
- I once sailed (well, motored) from Boothbay to Salem in another Sabre w/o an AP. Not a lot of fun, IMHO.
- I like using waypoints.
- good point, sometimes you're not going where the boats pointing.
- Dan, finish the story! Why the discrepancy? Oh,
- the North Equatorial Current between Testigos & the eastern islands
- I'm almost never going where my bow is pointing.
- Dan, finish the story! Why the discrepancy? Oh,
- I use waypoints like bread crumbs. I go
- good point, sometimes you're not going where the boats pointing.
- I once sailed (well, motored) from Boothbay to Salem in another Sabre w/o an AP. Not a lot of fun, IMHO.
- Incidentally, I never set way points and don't have an auto pilot
- Depends
- What's a GPS? All I need is a stick and a piece of string to do my navigating. '-)
- I use paper charts, verify position with GPS, and mark 1 eyeballs
- Routes on GPS, no.
- I do pretty much the same
- I do route planning on my laptop.
- A couple other uses not mentioned
- Used iPad Navionics apps for route planning a lot this past year
- Just don't use it here!
- Navionics
- The San Blas isn't exactly well charted
- Same as you....
- Our Navionics Gold was fine in the San Blas.
- Same as you....
- Since pmnav12 is listening....
- Just don't use it here!