Rude Awakening
personal electronic-navigation arsenal consists of a 5-inch Garmin GPS and Navionics on my girlfriend’s pink iPad; surely a trip with the guru of marine electronics aboard a boat with, again, four freakin’ radars, would afford me an education not offered in any class.
So with light winds and calm seas, we logged 46 miles on our first evening from Essex to Point Judith’s Harbor of Refuge. My first experience taking the wheel with MFDs from Garmin, Raymarine, Furuno, and Simrad staring up at me created a bit of information overload. A 3-foot chop on our beam wasn’t the best way to start the next morning’s stint of cruising, but the weather wasn’t the only thing not cooperating; we were dealing with electronic difficulties as well. Our Raymarine compass had apparently become detached from its mount, causing our heading info to go haywire. The good news was that Gizmo boasts multiple redundancies for every system and our Simrad plotter (running off a separate electronic compass) was picking up our heading just fine. There is a lesson here: Even on a floating laboratory like Gizmo, things happen and backups need to be ready to be called into the game.
Like the eye of a storm, the Cape Cod Canal provided a calm and peaceful middle of our day. Navigating from the flying bridge, I sat with the warm sun on my face as bridges, fishermen, and other boats passed by. Intent on making lunch, Ben stepped away from the helm to go below and suggested I plot the next leg of our course from the canal mouth to Scituate, Massachusetts.
“I didn’t plot that part yet, but it’s super simple,” said Ellison as he retreated from the bridge.
“Plot the course, OK, got it,” I responded, as the fleet of MFDs looked up at me. I started with the Furuno MFD at the far left, quickly grew discouraged, and moved on to the Raymarine display. I got closer that time but couldn’t immediately locate Scituate. This game continued until I got to the Garmin MFD to the far right. Garmin is the brand I use on my boat.
“Come on ol’ buddy, don’t let me down now,” I whispered, hoping that a little importuning would help. It didn’t. This brings me to lesson number two of the trip: The best marine electronic units that money can buy are only as helpful as your working knowledge of each unit. After a few minutes I did get the Garmin course set and shortly after, successfully set a course on the Furuno display. I promised myself I’d spend more time with the other MFDs when conditions improved.
After leaving the canal, we began dealing with steep following seas and wind gusts of 34 knots that had us surfing and swerving our way up the Massachusetts coast. After a few hours of rocking and rolling Ellison made the (smart) decision to grab a mooring at the Plymouth Yacht Club in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for the night. The timing was right; after we got settled within the protected confines of the harbor we witnessed wind gusts well over 45 knots.
A short walk from the marina took us past the fabled Plymouth Rock (the alleged location of the pilgrims’ landing in America).