Jere Lull wrote:

In article ,
Rosalie B. wrote:

I also have computer charts for these areas, which I do not print out,
but use with a GPS in the cockpit. They show me where I am, and have
the advantage that even if the buoy's are renumbered, I can still see
where I am. If buoy #36 is next to my boat, but the chart says it is
buoy #24, that's OK - I still know where I am.

*SOME*times! A few times before GPS, we did some long time-and-distance
runs where both 24 and 36 *could* have been at the far end. Navigating
further without knowing for sure would have been .... "interesting".

One time we were shooting for #1 on Onancoke, which was listed having a
bell.

We fetched a #1 with no bell after 4 boisterous hours.

Where the heck WERE we?

The next hour or so was more stressful than the previous 4 over open
water because I had to depend upon my having done things right, not my
usual first assumption.

Turned out that the bell had been removed the previous week, while we
were cruising, so there's no way we could have gotten the update.

That's where computer charts would help. Because if the little boat
on the screen was next to that buoy on the screen, then you would know
you were in the right place - bell or no bell.

In 2000, the first time we went down the ICW, we came into the
Piankatank River, and anchored in Fishing Bay behind Stove Point
Neck. This is a popular anchorage, with room for a lot of boats
without them having to be too close together and has good protection
from the north, east and west. When we went in, we could not find a
number of the marks, and when we left the next morning the CG boat was
replacing some of them.

We met a guy who was there the day before us who didn't have computer
charts and he had run aground a couple of places. Even though we had
never been there before, we knew where we were close enough that we
could avoid that.


grandma Rosalie