"Ted" wrote in news:zN40g.2472$An2.2251
@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net:

I was making the point that GPS navigation does not require buoys.

AT some point in the future, when the wireless technology exists where
your chartplotter will connect with the mapping agency for all the
updates, every time you turn it on (sort of like Windows Update does when
you turn your laptop on)...at that point, I would agree. But, alas, that
is far into the future as boating crawls along at a technology snails
pace.

The boys went out in the bouy tender, last Friday, and moved that bouy
out 300' farther into what USED to be the channel, before the tide
decided to make a low tide beach out of it for the kids to enjoy. This
marks the now 300' narrower channel so you don't run "Titanic" aground,
creating your own hazard to navigation.

The bouy gives immediate data to the more competent sailors. "Stay on
THAT side of me, or your gonna spend the night.", he says to me by mental
telepathy. Just as soon as the bouy boys left it in its new position,
all mariners, even those not really mariners, had its instructions to
stay clear on THAT side of it.

Your chartplotter/GPS has data in it that's at least 3 years old, by the
time the bouy's new position grinds its way through, first, the
government bureaucracy, gets printed up in a Notice to Mariners, gets
picked up by the mapping company, gets plotted on the appropriate chart,
gets charted into a C-Map ROM....then, after 2 years of procrastination
on your part trying NOT to spend all that money they want for an upgrade
to the old C-Map ROM you're using now, gets bought by you and actually
shows up in the new position on your display.

Of course, during those 3 years, the bouy boys have moved the damned bouy
12 more times as the tide keeps making changes to the low tide beach the
kids are enjoying, there at Dead Man's Bend. ANY data now available
about Dead Man's Bend on ANY C-Map chart is REAL OLD AND ALWAYS OUT OF
DATE! That's not true of that bouy you show so much disdain for. Its
warning is as instantaneous as it takes the bouy boys to move it.

Please don't tell me you navigate narrow channels with GPS chartplotters.
If you do, I wanna be FAR away from you....there in the dark. Don't
forget to leave the anchor light on when, not if, you're aground to warn
the rest of us.

Now, at some point, technology will overcome the resistance maritime
interests have to its capabilities. Just like AIS is doing now, 10 years
after a ham radio operator invented APRS, there'll come a time when the
gears will grind out a wireless data link, running right off that bouy's
batteries, maybe, but certainly from the shore station wireless data
link. Your chartplotter won't have a $400 CDROM or a $300 chart plug.
It'll have a $400 SUBSCRIPTION, which will, like Norton Internet
Security, allow you to connect to the planet's nav data clearinghouse
server, very profitably run by some overpriced contractor selling you
data your taxes created...you know, like weather data is. Before you go
to the boat, even, you can logon the laptop, or that new wireless-
equipped GPS handheld and they will automatically call the server,
updating their hard drive databases of every shoal on the planet. Your
boat's chart will look exactly like the master chart the bouy boys
updated from THEIR wireless computer aboard the bouy tender, probably
before the bouy anchor touched bottom again.

When you turn on the boat's fancy new GPS chart plotter, it'll spin up
its hard drive, logon to the nav data server, and upgrade itself with all
the latest charts, before you get the AC power cord wound up around the
dock post so you can go sailing. By the time you leave the dock, your
charts will be their charts....not their charts from 3 years ago.

Until that time....PLEASE, stay on THAT side of the bouy, not what's on
your screen!