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Randy Chapman sails in Verakai, which is a nicely equipped, brand-new Sailtime Hunter 36. It’s got a great GPS-chart plotter and a fine radar. In fact, the radar is more capable than the gear I used on Nimitz. Of course, my Nimitz experience is more than 20 years behind the transom, but it still amazes me how we can afford a scope that computes target speed, heading AND closest point of approach.
When the fog socks in, as it has several times in the Ventura/Channel Islands area in the last month, all that gear goes from nice-to-have to essential.
Randy gives us an excellent account of his adventures and some serious lessons learned.
Thought I’d send a couple of pics from last months journey to Fry’s. We had a great
sail across the channel on a 12 knot NE wind until we got just about to Grace when it died and the
fog settled-in. Visibility kept dropping until it was 0/0 about half way across the shipping
channel. 
I had a really good lesson in scanning between radar, charts, depth gauge back to radar,
marking targets, chart – well you get the idea.
What was interesting was the number of things that don’t show up on radar – like 20’ to 30’ fishing boats cutting across our bow! Anyway we made our way towards Pelican’s and got within 200 yards of the anchorage entrance, at least according to the chart/radar. It got really “interesting” when we were less than an 1/8 mile from the largest island
off the CA coast and couldn’t see it!
I learned that I could really trust the instrumentation because once we could barley make out land (rocks), we were actually entering the mouth of the anchorage. All of a sudden there were a number of boats right in front of us and we made a quick u-turn and got the heck out of there.
Lesson learned – boats do not show-up on radar at close range in small anchorages. I guess they tend to get lost in the “land clutter”. Anyway I decided to head west in hope that the fog would lift as the day wore-on and we could find a less crowded spot. As we were heading up the island, the fog suddenly lifted, the sun came out and we found ourselves staring
directly into an empty anchorage at Fry’s!
See Frys Cruising Guide for more info
