![]() ![]() Or a bit of satellite with lots of chart. ![]() By moving the control right and left, we can have all chart, all satellite, or a mix…a bit of chart with lots of satellite. Using the slide control on the right side, under NOAA, we can mix the chart with the satellite hybrid view. We can compare the chart to Google Maps, and begin to notice a problem with the chart. The chart is of little help, but South Channel looks promising. The channel is well-marked and fairly deep, but even so, shifting sand bars make finding day anchorages a challenge. Our home port is Passe-A-Grille, Fla., just north of the entrance to Tampa Bay. Now, however, a company in France has taken nautical charts and Google Maps, and has created a clever and useful “mashup” that gives local knowledge an entirely new spin. Aids to navigation are too small to see in such images, and trying to align the image on the computer screen with our charts is both cumbersome and potentially dangerous. We’ve often looked at those crisp satellite images on Google Earth and wondered how to interpret what we see. What the mariner needs on approach to a new port is local knowledge. With shifting and shoaling channels, the challenge is more complex. We have GPS, radar, depth sounders, and chartplotters, but still, getting a mental picture of the harbor approach and anchorage takes patience and skill. As anyone who has ever sailed off the New Jersey shoreline can attest, after a while, every water tank looks the same. A tower here, a tank there, a jetty obscured in the haze and lights. To the editor: Most boaters have looked at a chart on approaching a new harbor and squinted a bit trying to visualize the few features shown shoreside.
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