Claudia and I have had the opportuntiy of teaching "Cruise Planning" with the San Diego Sail and Power Squadron for the past few years. We really enjoy teaching this class. We average about twenty students in each class and teach for about twelve weeks during the winter. One thing we emphasize over and over to our prospective cruisers is "Practice, Practice, Practice"!
To that end we have recently purchased some electronic charts for our trip to Mexico. We used only paper charts for our cruise to Hawaii and Canada. So this is a new experience for us. We purchased and hand held Garmin GPS and linked it to our laptop computer. Also from Garmin we purchased Blue Charts which we loaded into our laptop computer we keep on board. By linking the two we see the nautical chart of where we are with the precise location of our vessel. WOW!!! We continue to be just amazed in this electronic world.
This is all good, but could we figure out how to work it all? We listened to our old adage-"Practice" and went out into the shallows of San Diego south bay. Here the water depths are commonly 1-3 feet at low tide. However, there is a narrow channel about 10 feet wide called Emory Channel that leads to Emory Cove at the extreme southwest end of San Diego Bay. The total distance of this channel is about 2 nautical miles.
We looked at the tide tables, worked out our positions, waypoints, courses, on paper charts and then on the electronic charts. We were ready! Off we went and had a wonderful time exploring the southern end of San Diego Bay. We stayed right in the middle of the channel, depth never more shallow than 7 feet. We made it there and back never touching the bottom.
Are we ready for Mexico? With a little more practice we maybe.
T&C
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