Part 5 of 5! (finally the last Lessons Learned post of this series)
So when I installed a new Raymarine chartplotter last year it immediately made our functioning radar into a big round brick attached to the mast. I knew this before the installation and I put a new radar on the list of things we needed to purchase before we retire but not high on the priority list. The crossing in January made us reconsider this.
When we left New Year's Eve on the crossing from Shell Point to St. Petersburg, fog wasn't a big concern. The night was nice and we did notice that it was getting foggy as sunrise approached. Sondra had the watch at this time and when I came up she was operating the boat in very think fog trying to avoid crab pots that were appearing quickly at the bow. It was our intention to keep 3-hour watches even after the sun came up but at that point it was all hands on deck to watch for pots. We did not expect to need both of us on watch and for the next few hours we dodged pots with both of us on the lookout. Each of us stuck our head out outside of the cockpit enclosure, one on port and one on starboard, shouting out when a pot was at the bow and yanking on the helm to narrowly miss the pot. We decided to cut the trip a little short and duck in behind Anclote Key for the evening instead of pressing on a few more hours to Clearwater in the thick fog.
Dodging random crab pots offshore in the fog
Now a radar would not really help with crab pots too much but it would have helped with our real concern: Other boats and land. As we were making our way to Anclote Key after lunchtime the fog didn't lift so we couldn't see the land that we knew was there and we couldn't see boats that we could hear. Even though we had a chartplotter and AIS, having a working radar would allow us to confirm that the land is where the chartpotter show it was would have given us a piece of mind. Also, since many boats do not carry AIS a radar would of allowed us to see and avoid them. We had and used an airhorn but not knowing that a boat might be barreling towards us was a bit unnerving. Also, knowing land and shallows was just a few hundred feet to the west but we could only see a fraction of that was a bit stressful.
Fortunately our chartpotter was accurate and the fog lifted for a few minutes just in time for us the anchor in our chosen spot at around 3:30 in the afternoon. Once anchored, the fog immediately dropped back onto us and we spent a few hours listening to boats pass unseen.
This experience caused me to bump the radar up the list and within a few weeks after getting to St. Pete we have a shiny new one to replace the brick.
Jimmy installs a new radar on Utopia
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