We had stopped to snorkel at Cayo Sal in Cuba, and I grabbed my mask and fins to check on the anchor. This weather-beaten, low-lying island was a great example of sketchy charts and missing markers. Within feet of our hook were the remains of a 60-foot mast with the rigging wire still attached. I swam farther and found odd bits of fiberglass and then finally a rusty submerged metal boat that was clearly from a different wreck at a different time. None of this was on the charts, and there were no markers at the surface to warn of these underwater hazards. The only cruising guide had been written years before, so it was little help.
It’s not just Cuba where you can get in trouble relying on only one source of information, and that starts the self-doubt. Do you put your faith in what you see from deck or what your charts and instruments say? Do you take the cruising guide as gospel? Do you follow another boat thinking if they can get through, you can too?
On a charter in Belize where the waters are shallow and full of coral heads, we followed the charts closely and still had moments where the bottom came up alarmingly although the plotter had us in clear water. We had more than a few moments when I sucked in my stomach as if that were going to shorten our draft.
On a delivery from Guadeloupe to Grenada in the Caribbean, the plotter on the boat wasn’t properly calibrated. It took me two days to figure out just how far off it was. Finally, when we crossed from St. Lucia to the Grenadines, I plotted our course directly over the middle of the island of St. Vincent. I trusted what we saw more than the charts, and 12 hours later, we arrived safely at Bequia below St. Vincent on a perfect line. That meant that the plotter was 30 degrees off. Now I understood why this same plotter showed us in a safe spot coming into Martinique after dark although we were yards away from audible surf. The morning was a revelation when we realized how far over we had anchored.
“Get your eyes out of the boat” is my go-to when I see anyone glued to the instruments, because not everything shows up on the displays even if there’s radar, which most charter boats don’t carry anyway. But some people struggle with interpreting multiple sources of information, and I once had a charterer tell me with great pride that he could sail anywhere in the world never taking his eyes off his iPad.
Of course, what you see can be scary too. We were headed for O’Brien’s Cay and the “Aquarium” in the Exumas chain of the Bahamas. The guide described a narrow transit and the charts on my phone showed a deep channel about the width of our cat. We threaded the needle between a rock awash and a chunk of coral, both of which looked like they would graze our hulls. The crew was on the foredeck so focused they even forgot to take out their phones for a video. I trusted the charts and we made it through unscathed, but it sure looked iffy for a while.
In the fantasy bubble of perfect charts, calibrated plotters, updated cruising guides, and good visibility, staying safe is easy. The real world has different ideas, so you need to know what to trust. Is it the plotter on the boat? The charts on your phone? The guide the base gave you? The boat in front of you? Your eyes? Your ears?
The answer is all of them, but none of them completely. In the end it comes down to your experience and your gut. That human intelligence is what all the rest of the sources don’t have—which is why you’re the captain.
March 2024