I spent a lot of time planning, dreaming and contemplating starting my Great Loop journey. A few folks even thought I had enough education and just needed to get after it and get some on board experience. I thought I had planned and prepared well so imagine my surprise when 5 minutes into my trip my ancient chart plotter indicated “No Fix”. Essentially my plotter had no idea where the boat was, with no position fix. If a chart plotter doesn’t know where it is, it can’t help tell you where to go. No problem, I had triple redundancy with an IPAD and IPhone running AquaMaps a state of the art navigation APP. Except when I left land my IPAD also had no GPS. Although I had bought the IPAD specifically for navigation I bought the WRONG one. Drat. Fortunately, I was in very familiar waters and my IPhone continued working. Thanks to a run to Sandusky and more support from my home port crew, the right IPAD was procured. Whew, still need to get the plotter fixed but not so urgent. Learning stuff every day!
WanderlustandWhimSea 