Georgetown, Bahamas
03 February 2013
I was reminded of something that all sailors should keep in mind but in this day and age can easily become forgotten, or worse ignored.
One of the reference books I am reading is a book by Bruce Van Sant. It outlines the do’s & don’ts of navigating eastward through the Bahamas, against the easterly trade winds and onward to the Caribbean chain of islands. I decided I would check out a location just a few miles east of Georgetown that Bruce suggested would be a good staging location to anchor just the day before leaving Georgetown. We wanted to up anchor anyway since we had been in this certain spot for some time and wanted to get closer to some friends on the north side. We’d also would get a short sail in as a bonus.
As we approached the suggested anchorage we found a rather large catamaran hung up on rocks in a narrow cut just north of the island we considered anchoring at. There was a dingy leaving the yacht which we assumed where people abandoning the boat. There was also a person on the deck working with a second dingy trying to run anchor lines out the front in an attempt to kedge off (pull off) the catamaran from the rocks. Not knowing if we had just stumbled on a recent grounding we hung by in case we could be of some help by anchoring in a safe area and riding our dingy over. It turned out that the grounding had happened the day before and the people on the boat were from the salvage company...our help was not needed so we lifted sail and went on our way.
I wondered how the captain had thought he could run through that narrow cut that, according to our Explorer paper charts, is full of rocks and only approx 3.9’ an LW. It was only when I then compared the paper charts with our Navionics electronic chart, which we run on our chart plotter, did I realize the problem. The Navionics chart plotter showed a magenta line (recommended route) running straight through where the cat was grounded. Apparently the yacht, which had an experienced crew, had sailed from France and was attempting to navigate the cut from the outside.
Apparently Navionics chart chips, I have been told, do not use the information from the Explorer charts which are considered to be the most reliable source for the Bahamas area. There are other electronic charts such as Garmin that do use the Explorer charts as their base information and therefore, for the Bahamas area, are considered by most as more reliable than Navionics.
A long story I know but in the end I realized that relying on the single source of an electronic chart plotter could be disastrous. Needless to say we have now downloaded the Garmin electronic charts as a backup to our Navionics chart plotter which we will use to cross reference in any close situations.