Is your boat ocean ready? Part III: Electronics

Barry Henson continues the story of how he upgraded his Hallberg Rassy 45', Walkabout II, from a coastal cruiser to a blue water cruiser to cross the Atlantic.

In my two previous Ocean Ready articles I wrote about how we, my crew and I (as this was very much a joint effort), upgraded my electrical, water, sail and safety systems to prepare Walkabout II for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC). In this article I’m going to explain how we upgraded our navigation systems.

What we had to begin with

When I bought Walkabout II she was equipped with a Magnavox MX200 GPS with repeaters at the nav station and in the cockpit, a Raymarine 420D chart plotter in the cockpit and a Furuno 1830 24 mile radar. All of the above was functional, but nearly as old as Moses (more on this later).

I should also point out that I have a sextant onboard with the appropriate references and paper charts covering both my passage and likely destinations, including ports of refuge. I like to use paper charts to plan my passage. I also plot my position and do log entries at regular intervals so I have a hard copy record of my passage should my electronics ever go to God, or should the US military in their wisdom (now there’s an oxymoron) shut down the GPS system.

With all of this onboard I clearly had the capability to make this passage without upgrading my systems. That was not the issue. The issues can be summed up in three words: reliability, serviceability and cost.

Time (and electronics) march on

Anyone even remotely computer-literate understands that the development of electronic products happens at a mind-boggling pace. Marine electronics companies are introducing new model products around every five years or so. That means that my 420D chart plotter is three generations old in terms of the product line, which made getting service and charts an issue.

Three years ago when I decided to cruise the eastern Med, I had a difficult time sourcing the correct charts for my chart plotter. Not only were they difficult to obtain, they were significantly more expensive than current model chart software that offered significantly more functionality. Furthermore, when an error code appeared on my chart plotter, I found there were very few technicians left who had been trained on that model.

The writing was on the wall. Even if I didn’t use the chart plotter on the Atlantic passage, which was fine with me because there’s nothing even remotely rocky between the Canaries and the Caribbean, once I got to the Caribbean I would have to invest a thousand dollars or more to buy charts for an obsolete chart plotter that wouldn’t bring $50 on EBay!

The choice was simple: buy a new chart plotter now or buy a new one in the Caribbean. I chose to upgrade now.

Looking at the available choices I chose the Garmin 5012 touch screen chart plotter. It offered an excellent combination of functionality, ease of use, viewability (daytime and nighttime) and easy chart updates. One of the things that convinced me to go with the Garmin was one of the results presented in the chart plotter gear test we did for Australian Yachting (see the September/October 2009 issue). In those tests Andrew Bray counted how many commands it took to execute a group of common requests, like plotting a waypoint, and the Garmin 5012 came up trumps. In other words, it could do the things you need to do faster, with fewer steps or commands, and in my book, the simpler, the better.

While the Magnavox MX200 GPS and Furuno 1830 radar were both outdated as well, they didn’t require expensive software upgrades and they both still functioned reliably, so I decided to keep them until they go to god of their own accord. Normally I would try to avoid running a piece of gear to failure but with electronics, failure can be impossible to predict. Often electronic equipment will function fine right up to the day you turn it on and it doesn’t work, so deciding when to replace out-dated but functioning electronics is a hard call.

I did invest in one more bit of electronics and that was an AIS transceiver. AIS (Automatic Identification System) technology allows you to transmit your identify, position, speed and course to other AIS-equipped vessels and to receive the same from them. The AIS system not only displays this information on a screen, but it charts their closest point of approach and alerts you if there is a risk of collision.

The other thing I like about AIS is that it can be linked to your DSC VHF radio, allowing you to simply ‘point’ to the ship you want to call and your VHF places a DSC call directly to that ship, very similar to dialing their phone number. By calling them directly they are much more likely to respond than if you hail them on channel 16.

The other thing I like about AIS – in addition to not being run down by a huge freighter – is that it allowed me to minimise the use of my radar. In crowded waterways such as the Med, I often used my radar to identify and track targets. The problem with this was power usage. My radar system uses a fair few Amps when transmitting, thus I wanted to minimise its use to keep my electrical draw down. My new AIS transceiver did this collision-avoidance job with a fraction of the electrical draw.

I chose the Simrad AI50. It is a multi-function class B transponder system that does everything I need at a very attractive price.

With the chart plotter and AIS sorted, the last item on my to-do list was weather routing. Whilst I can read a synoptic chart, experienced meteorologists have both expertise and a range of expert software programs they can use to weigh different scenarios and predict with a reasonable level of accuracy what weather systems are going to do.

Accordingly I contacted Commander Weather, a US-based weather routing service that did the weather routing for Dame Ellen MacArthur on her round-the-world record trip. The way they work is fairly simple. You give them the details of your size, average cruising speed, departure date and destination, and they route your boat to keep you away from the bad stuff and in good winds. Each email contains a synopsis of the weather systems that will affect you, expected conditions and a suggested route, including waypoints.

Weather conditions for the ARC are often affected by the location of the Azores High. The high moves around in the Atlantic, but generally speaking when it’s near the Azores the ARC generally gets better trade winds. The big question for ARC participants is how far south of the Canaries do they need to sail to pick up reliable trade winds, with the old adage being ‘sail south til the butter melts’.

Leaving Gran Canaria, Commander Weather advised us to sail south-east, rather than south, advising that we would pick up the trades early and be able to sail a more direct route, still somewhat south of the rhumb line but a lot shorter than the traditional southern route.

I have to admit that as the bulk of the fleet headed south I did have my doubts, but over the ensuing days the waypoints given to me by Commander Weather appeared to be spot on. Those boats that headed south never encountered stronger trade winds and many of them ended up sailing 200-300 additional miles to no benefit. Weather routing does work.

With my navigation, collision avoidance and weather routing sorted I felt much better prepared for the ARC. Confidence is a funny thing. Over-confidence in a skipper is foolhardy and the lack of confidence in a skipper is detrimental and infectious. For me, knowing that I had done all I could across all our systems - safety, navigation, electrical use and generation, sails, water generation, etc - to be prepared for our ocean crossing gave me the confidence to approach the ARC without trepidation and with all the excitement that a new venture brings.

Footnote: If you missed the first two parts to this article, you can find them at www.mysailing.com.au.