Hi Mark,

Interesting, I didn't know about that one - it's been years since I ran anything other than a Raymarine pilot...

I thought I had speculated about his loss of monitoring his XTE in the original thread below, but looks like I only did so over on Sailnet... (grin)

My best guess is that he had a route plotted/saved through there, and may have started running it out of Camden in TRACK mode, which would have compensated for set and drift, and kept him on a safe course clear of any dangers...

However, one of the quirks of Raymarine's TRACK mode, is the awkwardness when it comes to dodging something, (Of course, it's highly likely I simply don't know how to use it to its optimum, being a practitioner of the School of Never RTFM) But if I'm in TRACK mode - which I generally try to avoid doing, as I feel it can often be a poor practice - the easiest thing to do is to simply quit that mode, go to STANDBY, hand steer around the lobster pot or whatever, and then resume with Tracking... Problem is, if you're deviated even slightly from your intended track, without re-setting the XTE anew, the first response of the pilot when engaged will often be a violent correction simply to get the boat back on the original track as quickly as possible...

One of the things I could imagine happening, is the guy dodging some pots, and then re-engaging the pilot again... But, by only putting it back on AUTO, when his mindset was still that he was TRACKing... With the possibility that the ebb out of the bay was just beginning, now having the pilot simply steering a compass course without correcting for set and drift might have allowed him to be carried down onto the ledge...

I'm not suggesting that this is what happened, only that it's the SORT of thing that might have happened, where only a momentary lapse in concentration can make all the difference...

Best regards,

Jon