[C38] radar

[Charles]

Ke n,
Cruising the Great Lakes means you are routinely in shipping lanes in 
all sorts of weather.  These ships are moving 3-4 times faster than you 
are and while they are supposed to be watching their radar and radio.... 
my experience is that I would not rely on that.  I installed the Furuno 
1715 radar before starting out on a 2 1/2 month cruise last spring.  
This was one of the better decisions I have made regarding safe 
navigation.   I remember crossing Lake Huron, starting out on a sunny 
day with very positive weather forecasts saying any bad weather would be 
well to the south...  Three hours out with spinnaker flying, a cloud 
front lying right on the water hit us.  It was quite bizarre as 
everything on the boat was condensing (even on our stocking caps), while 
you could see clear sky perhaps 200 feet above us.  visibility went 
immediately down to 50-100 feet.  Then the wind and waves started 
building (20-30 knots and 6-8 feet from the stern).  Spinnaker is down 
with double reefed main and perhaps 50% of furling headsail out as we 
are surfing some of the waves with no visibility.  We are of course in 
the main shipping lanes....  We "saw" at least three large objects I 
assume were freighters go by us on the radar, but was not able to make 
radio contact.  We had to steer clear of one of them with only radar for 
eyes.  Then we began to run out of lake as we approached the islands and 
reefs of Georgian Bay with building seas, which made things even more 
interesting!  The channel on the charts said we had about a 1/4 mile to 
shoot for between the reefs and it was well buoyed, but we couldn't see 
more than 100 feet.   But the radar showed the buoys quite clearly and 
between it and the chart plotter, I felt confident we could do this.   
About a mile from land, the cloud just ended and we were in clear sky!  
Imagine shooting through a cloud wall with high winds pushing you at 
hull speed and the wall just ends!  I won't forget this I can assure you.
While we could have avoided the shore by turning around and fighting the 
storm, we could not have seen the shipping.  Radar is a must for those 
of us who sail the shipping lanes.
Two installation issues.  Most radars come with a 10 meter cable, which 
is will work if you are going to mount the radome on a separate pole aft 
or to the backstay.  I chose to get the 20 meter cable, which allowed me 
to mount the radome above the masthead steaming light on the mast, with 
the screen mounted on the pedestal guard as Joe suggests (see pictures). 
I chose this location over the two other options because I think it 
gives me a better chance to pick up objects close to the water such as 
navigation buoys.  Second is I ran the rather substantial radar cable to 
the pedastal through the port lazarette by drilling a hole just below 
the cover.  There is only 3-4 inches between the guard and the 
lazarette, which makes this an easy and safe location to get to the 
pedestal (see picture).  Can't imagine how difficult it would be to get 
this cable through the pedestal guard tubing!

Hope this helps!
Charles Finn
Mighty Quinn #114
Great Lakes

Kenneth M. Sutto wrote:
>   I was at the Seattle Boat show this past weekend looking  at radar 
> units for the boat. There is alot to choose from and my biggest 
> question is where to mount the radar screen. If anyone has radar on 
> their boat where did you mount the screen for best use? Also any input 
> on what brands will help. A fellow down at the marina told me today 
> that one company makes a remote screen you can keep in the cockpit. It 
> plugs into the  back of the unit and a cable can be run out on 
> deck with a readout. Does anyone have knowledge of this brand of radar?
>  
>   Ken    "Sundancer"
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Windows Live™: E-mail. Chat. Share. Get more ways to connect. See how 
> it works. 
> <http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_allup_howitworks_012009> 
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Listserve mailing list
> Listserve at catalina38.org
> http://catalina38.org/mailman/listinfo/listserve_catalina38.org
>   

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: radar cable.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 530262 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://catalina38.org/pipermail/listserve_catalina38.org/attachments/20090126/2de4d787/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: radar mount.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 232455 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://catalina38.org/pipermail/listserve_catalina38.org/attachments/20090126/2de4d787/attachment-0004.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: radome mount.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 228032 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://catalina38.org/pipermail/listserve_catalina38.org/attachments/20090126/2de4d787/attachment-0005.jpg>