Small Boat Ownership - Small Boat Electronics
When I bought my first boat in 1973, at that time I was amongst a tiny minority to have VHF radio, which was a pretty big investment. Not only did it cost more then than it does now, but other than the Coastguard, there was virtually no one else to talk to. As I had an open boat, mine was a hand held set with a maximum output of 5 watts which I later linked up to a big stand up aerial to improve its range when I had the cuddy fitted. I also had a Seafarer echo sounder which you read by looking for the flashing light on the calibrated circular dial. And when they first came out, I bought a Navstar navigator which again cost more than today's GPS, despite being prone to all vagaries of Decca such as interference from bad weather and atmospheric conditions, not to mention beacon problems, as it got its lat-long positions by detecting and converting Decca signals. With such a wealth of equipment, I was well and truly up there is the big league. Prior to that, I had nothing but an open displacement boat with a 9.9 hp outboard.
How things have changed – and not necessarily in all cases for the better. GPS, VHF and quality sounders are now the rule rather than the exception, making it possible to navigate and pin point marks with near perfect accuracy. But for all our earlier hit and miss navigation, we had bigger fish and better catches then than today, though that's another story. Today's marine electronics are dinghy compatible, affordable and reliable to the point where there is no excuse for not finding your way about with accuracy and in safety, unless of course you have a battery failure or don't bother to read the instructions properly. Power failures can happen to anyone, which is why it is important not to put all your eggs in one basket both by having two batteries on board - one for the outboard and a second for the electronics, or by thinking you no longer need to carry a magnetic compass. As for reading the instructions, don't expect any help here. With so many different sets and functions, it's a case of keep on playing till you get it right.
Of the three basic electronic instruments (VHF, GPS, & Sounder),VHF radio is probably the most straight forward and user friendly, though recently there have been some quite profound changes. If all you ever do is chat to your mates, then it remains business as usual. It’s contact with the emergency services where the changes should really be noticed. Well, that was the plan. In 2005, Digital Selective Calling (DSC) officially took over from the use of Channel 16 for contacting the emergency services. In truth both the old and the new systems now run side by side, though DSC will always be given priority. What should happen is that calls previously made on Channel 16 should now be DSC calls on Channel 70, which, as previously, are then dealt with on a working channel unless they are an emergency. All radio’s manufactured after January 2001 should have the DSC Channel 70 function. In a mayday situation when the distress button is pressed, an alarm will sound at the Coastguard HQ giving this call priority over those coming in on the old Channel 16 system, though these will still be answered if there is an operative available. DSC distress calls also alarm in DSC radio sets aboard other boats in your vicinity. On top of this, if you have gone through the MMSI license registration, your details will come up the Coastguard’s screen, in addition to which, if your radio is interfaced with your GPS, so too will your exact emergency position. Dinghy anglers are best served by a D-class DSC VHF compliant set.
As hinted at earlier, one of the things you will become aware of when playing with the GPS, is that you no longer need a magnetic compass to get around. If you go to the right page, directional information can be read straight from the screen. This however doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have access to one, even if its only a simple pocket compass left in one of the boats lockers. Equally important is knowing how to use it. You should have at least some idea of the bearings back to base. Sods law dictates that if the GPS power does go down, so too it will the radio, and probably in either of thick fog or out of sight of land. Then it’s down to the compass to get you back. Another useful feature is Speed Over Ground (SOG) which by referencing the time taken to pass between positional distances from satellite coordinates, in effect gives the boat a speedometer. Route planning is one further very useful feature. Obviously, different sets work in different ways. But you will be able to put reference marks on the electronic chart then using the cross hairs facility save their bearings as part of a staged process allowing you to sail to each as a progression to take you around some particular obstacle or headland when visibility is restricted.
But it’s as an A to B navigational tool that most of us buy GPS. And what a navigational tool. Since the US military removed the accuracy scrambler in May 2000, accuracy levels have improved to around 20 metres, though you can get it down to a metre if you invest in differential GPS which uses a corrected signal. When we find good fish marks, their coordinates can be stored as way-points to be returned to. But there are other equally important way-points that should also be stored. For example, I have to contend with the head of a sewer pipe which, because it shows about half a mile off on a dropping tide, is a potential collision hazard. So in fog, we first head to a way point to the seaward side of it before putting the launch site way point in. Just because straight-line travel is a possibility at sea doesn’t necessarily always make it a wise option. Buoys either indicating specific features, or marking navigable channels are also useful sets of numbers to have in. Potentially the biggest draw back with GPS is over dependence on what is just a machine. A reliable machine perhaps, but a piece of kit that still needs back up either as previously discussed or if you are flushed, with a hand held pocket GPS.
You don't even need to have admiralty charts these days, though as ever, a paper chart will come in as a navigational back up as well as containing more specific information such as substrate types that could enable you to find fish. But for purely navigational purposes, GPS charts are good enough. All the important features should be on them. If you want to know the coordinates for a mark or an obstacle, use the cross hairs to pin point it and request the reading which can be set as a go to way point, or simply stored for the future. In addition to this, you can also mark either obstacles or fish holding areas on the chart yourself as reminders for the future then call them up. But as I keep on saying, machines can go wrong. So back up you favourite fishing marks from time to time in a note book in case you ever need to do a reinstall.
A good stand-alone sounder can also be an asset. Expensive as they were to run, some of the old paper sounders were absolutely brilliant, particularly over wrecks. It depends on the type of features you are looking for, and more in particular their size. Small targets, particularly if they don't offer much physically to distinguish themselves from their surroundings, may well take some finding. For general areas and larger targets, a combined GPS, chart plotter and sounder can be just what the doctor ordered. We've had a Lowrance X-15 on board ever since it came on the market quite a few years ago, and have never needed anything else. This offers all the usual GPS facilities plus an echo sounder, both of which can be viewed either separately or together on a split screen. We use it for finding everything from compact shallow water holding areas to deep-water wrecks. The only problem we have had, and one of our own making, was the total destruction of the externally fitted dual frequency transducer mounted on the transom. A submerged boulder at an unfamiliar launch site removed its head. Forced to replace it quickly, we temporarily fitted a borrowed single frequency 200 KHz version which has somehow become permanent. This works fine down to around 200 feet, and in deeper water at low speeds, but does not have the ability to keep pace with the returning echo's at speed. In deeper water 50 KHz is required. A dual frequency transducer with auto change is even better still.
Our X-15 is the black and white version which has given amazing service with much more to come I hope. We have thought of switching to colour and even upgrading to one of the many more up to date models produced by a number of companies. But I sometimes wonder if this isn't simply a case of gadget complexity for its own sake. Some of the really expensive colour sets, particularly colour sounders, do differentiate substrates and fish far better than B&W. But to get that degree of quality usually means looking at the commercial fishing electronics market. Black and white should still give excellent results, particularly if the set has manual facilities for set up and adjustment, though there will be a learning element to getting the best set up if you do stray away from the auto function. Tuning down the sensitivity of the set to cut out things like surface clutter and debris in the water also reduces accuracy of bottom determination. This was also the case with paper sounders which were far superior to LCD, and I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't put the Lowrance paper sounder back on for specific jobs. You might also find the zoom facility helpful at times, particularly in deeper water, though as with digital zoom on camera's, while expanding the pixels does bring things nearer, some of the detail will ultimately be lost.
Breaking or damaging an externally mounted transducer that is not in the folded up position is not that rare when open shore launching, particularly where there are rocks on the beach and lumpy shoreline conditions on the day. Prior to the X-15, I'd always fitted my transducers inside the floor well of the boat. I once managed to borrow an identical spare for one of my previous sets. As my own transducer was fitted inside the boat, with the aid of a large rubber sucker, I temporarily fixed the spare to the transom and compared the results. One problem with external fitting is getting the fixing position absolutely right. You need to avoid turbulence from the outboard, while at the same time ensuring the transducer is suitably submerged at all times. I'm sure someone will criticize the following comment, but I personally could see no difference between the two. So as internal fitting is safer and easier, I would have absolutely no qualms about keeping the transducer inside. The base of the floor well is the ideal location because in most boats this has a single skin of fibre glass which is the hull itself. You cannot have air pockets, cavities or metal fittings such as keel bands beneath the signal. A good bedding of silicone sealant in one of the corners of the well is all it takes.
Its not until you set out to find a precise small target on the grey sameness of the open sea that you truly realise how featureless that vast expanse of water you are sailing on actually is. Triangulating land marks will give you an approximate position, though quite often when you sail another 50 yards, they can still look as right as they did before. GPS backed up by a sounder offers it to you on a plate – providing you have coordinates to feed the machine with. Small targets can mean anything from a tiny piece of reef, a bank or a deep hole, to a wreck. The problem is not however confined to locating small fish holding marks. Setting yourself up to fish them properly is equally important. Hardest of all to locate and position over is in my opinion a wreck. Miss the target by as little as 20 yards and it might just as well be 20 miles. So what I’d like to do is take wreck location and positioning as a worst case scenario with any lessons learned carrying over to the other targets. Unlike natural features, wreck marks and details can be bought from the Wrecks section of the Hydrographic Department of the MOD at Taunton in Somerset. These fall under the sub-headings of Surveyed, Precisely Known, Position Approximate, and Position Doubtful. It costs around £20 for 5 marks, plus £3 each for any extras thereafter. Other potential sources include commercial fishermen who’ve lost gear on them, and going out looking from positions taken from either GPS charts, or lifted directly from Admiralty charts.
We used to have to make decimalisation corrections to the MOD coordinates, but now thankfully, that has all been done by them. However, receiving the coordinates on a piece of paper is one thing, putting a boat over the exact spot is another, primarily because many of these marks are not that precise. You still have to go out there and find them, which can be a long, expensive, frustrating, and at times demoralising job. The key to getting it right is an organised systematic approach. We used to head out to quoted coordinates and put down a buoy. We would then work a widening spiral search pattern around the buoy before moving it and repeating the same over and over again so that our many spiral searches themselves formed part of a greater spiral pattern. Not that easy to do with the old Navstar. We would work out the buoying coordinates from dots placed on a chart. Now of course all of this can be seen on a GPS chart. But you still need to put the spade work in, unless of course someone hand feeds you the numbers. I know that catching fish is what it’s all about, and that its nice to be handed the numbers of a good mark. But the difference between finding it yourself and being spoon fed equates to the difference between a charter skipper putting you over fish and catching from your own boat. On a charter boat, the skipper deserves at least half of the credit, and probably more.
Finding a wreck for the first time can require a lot of effort. But with the return accuracy of GPS, going back to fish it again and again is something of a doddle. Well finding it again should be. Positioning over it to fish will change on a day to day basis with the weather and the tides. There are two ways to position over and fish a wreck. Either you drift it, which most people do, or you put down the anchor. If you follow a few simple guide-lines, drift fishing should be fairly straight forward and is good for free swimming fish such as pollack, coalfish and cod. On a really slow drift you can also pick up ling if you put fish baits down. But bait fishing is better done with the hand brake on, something a lot of people are loath to try. To an extent I can understand why. Species mix is more limited comprising mainly conger, ling, and depending on location, if you scale down far enough, maybe some bream. There is also a risk of anchor loss, and the time spent in the prime position is limited due to the fact that most anchoring is done around the slack periods, or on the smaller tides when fluctuating flow rates and wind cutting across the tide can play their part in quickly taking you off the target.
Charter boats usually like to work alone and a good skipper should due to the amount of time spent fishing have far greater expertise than dinghy anglers at anchoring wrecks. Though I have anchored wrecks on my own, in my experience it is easier and safer to fish offshore wrecks in the company of another small boat. What we used to do was plot the lie of the wreck in the tide, then one boat would move uptide of it to a distance calculated to give a nice angle to the rope to assist the anchor to grip and keep it out of trouble. That boat would then pay back on the rope to the best position it could find to hit the wreck with the baits, bearing in mind that towards slack water the gear isn’t going to get washed that far astern on the boat. The second boat would then do an echo sounding run around the anchored boat checking its position with wind and tide thrown into the equation. Boat number two would then put down his anchor is what quite often turned out to be a far better position. Boat number one meanwhile would be getting his anchor up, then after a quick final check on the sounder, re-position to settle up along side the other boat and both would start fishing the wreck.
On a flat calm day you are going to maintain your position in the right spot for longer than on a breezy day, particularly is the wind is cutting at some angle across the tide. Towards slack water, and possibly right through on a really small tide, the run may not be sufficient to out do the breeze, so the boat is more easily pushed out of position. As the tide eases further, the degree of movement off target will increase. Even without any breeze, off target drifting will still occur as the new tide begins to pick up strength in the opposite direction. So catching fish at anchor over a wreck is never going to be as easy as drifting it. But if you want to put big baits right into the thick of it for conger and ling, then anchor it you must. On the plus side, as the boat does start to swing off target dragging the baits off the wreck, bonus species start to come into the reckoning. Depending on how a particular wreck lies in the tide and whether or not it has settled out over sand, scours and sand build ups can occur around the outer edges of the hull. Clean ground species such as tope, rays and turbot suddenly can then enter the frame. Indeed, some of the biggest turbot ever taken were caught accidentally by wreck anglers.
Drifting a wreck, while easier on paper, can still present problems caused by wind and tide. The first thing to do upon arrival over a wreck is either get a feel for, or re-acquaint yourself with its position in the tide. A wreck lying across the tide will be an easier target to hit, but for shorter duration than if the same hulk is lying along the tide. Position the boat a short distance uptide of the structure, then put down a grapnel anchor with a marker buoy attached. We use a piece of solid bar with bendable quarter inch stainless steel prongs welded to it. These can usually be ripped free of the wreck later if they snag. Go for a light gauge rope such as 6 mm draw cord to cut the tide. The buoy can be anything that floats, so long as it is easily visible when you’ve drifted clear of the wreck. The buoy should also have a rope tail tied to it with one or two smaller floats attached to show you the direction of the tide. The boat is then taken uptide of the wreck on a line that will see it pass parallel to the line of floats on the tail rope. With a good chart plotter you can note your start points and drift line so that any run that is more productive than the others can be easily repeated by returning to exactly the same starting point.
One final point worth making, and this goes for all aspects of fishing where positioning is being frustrated by either lack of tide and too much cross tide breeze, or by wind pushing a drift along too quickly, is that a drogue can help correct this. Freshwater trout anglers use drogues a lot to combat fast drift, though they don’t have both the tide and the wind to contend with. You can buy drogues from the game fishing department at most good tackle shops. Alternatively, make one from a four foot square of tarpaulin or similar with a length of 6mm draw card fixed to each corner. The ropes from mine are about 5 feet long, but really, length is not important, providing they are all the same and there is hole in the middle of the sheet to allow some water through. Mine are attached to a link in the end of a short length of chain for weight, with a single length of rope from it. In the tide or on the drift, this creates a parachute which opens up under the water to slow the drift down, or catch the tide at anchor to straighten the boats line by combating some of the effects of any breeze blowing across it. But for safety reasons, you must connect the drogue line to the stern. When tied to the side of the boat, the pressure of the drogue can stop the boat from rolling properly in a swell with potentially dangerous consequences.