Saguday is going to become a survey vessel

Saguday

Saguday

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Finally got round to signing up with the TeamSurv project - a neat way of getting hydrographic surveying done on the back of small craft sailing. You use either software on a PC or a hardware data logger to monitor your GPS position and depth data as you career randomly around the ocean and then upload the logs from time to time onto their website. They aggregate all the data form all the boats taking part and build up hopefully more accurate charts in areas outside the normal survey areas. This is an EU-funded pilot project and the UK East Coast is one of the test areas.

More info here: Teamsurv

I think it's really cool.

Anyone else joined up?
 
I had a chat with them a few months ago but eventually decided not to fiddle with my boat's wiring this year - however I might do it next season if they still have spare dataloggers.
 
Only seems to need +12V, Gnd and some NMEA wires dangling from somewhere so didn;t look too onerous. They have a limited number of dataloggers for loan so best be quick if you're interested.

I'd have thought Tillergirl would be interested in this, since he has a penchant for pootling around very shallow places seeing how much water he hasn't got :)
 
Umm, yes. I have been in touch and I must admit I haven't sent any data yet. I don't have one of their loggers as I have some software on this laptop which already does that. They also provide software if you can import NMEA data into the laptop. I do need to tidy up my files for them and I promise myself to get round to it but I am in the middle of a chartlet of the Nass - why I'm not sure, three quarters of the way through one of Lawling Creek, need to redo my one of the Ray Sand using better Lat/Long ratios (the old one is square). You prompt me to make sure I sort my files out when I get back on Tuesday.

I am a little intrigued about how they are going to reduce all this data to a Chart Datum. I know the plan is to start using predicted data and then go onto actual (You can rest assured that I have been using actual data for my chartlets - makes a difference of less than an enormous 2 to 3 inches in most occasions!) Having done it for rather small areas has opened my eyes to the enormity of the work, particularly in the Thames Estuary. It's not too bad when you are doing say a point across the Sunk Sand, a relatively narrow geographic area. For example when I got to the Barrow No what ever it was and when back over the sands towards the Black Deep, it was small enough an area to assume that I could use one interpolation on Sheerness that could be applied for the whole area and I just had to adjust the height of tide for the time it took me to go back and forth. But that journey includes data from Mersea Quarters, out into the Blackwater, down to and across the Spitway, across the Swin, round the East Barrow and across the Barrow Deep as well as the sands. Applying height of tide corrections for that whole journey strikes me as quite a challenge! And an impressive thing to do.

There is at least one other ECF forumite sending data - the forumite who has been working on the Gunfleet wind farm, forgive me, can't remember his name.
 
Presumably the GPS data will include time of day so they can do the tidal corrections so I suspect it's only a matter of having enough processing, the project would presumably have enough resources to access some big machines to do all the calculations.

I'll see if Tim Thornton at Teamsurv would be willing to chime in and explain a bit more about it here.

i thought more ECF-ers would have gone for this, it seems it can only benefit us in the long term if it is successful.
 
I'm sure Tim will - he's associated with YM as an expert. Yes the NMEA has a time/date string and you have no problem there but if you are interpolating height of tide say at the Nass Hole that's one coefficient. You can pick a spot and do something pretty accurate there and repeat the process at say the Spitway. The difference won't be great but not only is the coefficient different (I suspect coefficient is not the right word) but there is also the time difference. I know it's only a matter of getting the maths right to work out the gradual difference in the coefficient between the Nass Hole and the Spitway but you have to continue that adjustment throughout the estuary. On a dark winter's night I might try an amateur go at that. It would save me a lot of time to have pre-planned the tidal height reduction for the places I am planning to prod around in next year.

Perhaps I should ask the forum for suggestions where I should prod around. Err no on second thoughts I'll put that another way.....
 
Yes, Roger, that's not a bad idea - if I can get the right weather. I do much the same. On a calm day the tide rips on the flood can be interesting.

Talking of the weather, I assume I am going to freeze on Monday evening?
 
4 to 5 degs! That's a 24 degree drop! Gorgious Force 3 blowing offshore here, small light fluffy clouds, hot sun and the threat of some 'Loco-Choco' cocktails later this morning from Sahil. A catamaran has just jogged past the outside of the reef, the inshore fishermen are poling around the lagoon bring up their fish traps and an MSC container ship has just headed off north-west towards the pirate zone. She'll be turning off her AIS any time now. SWMBO is laid out like a ham salad trying to become beef salad by tonight. The restaurant manager said last night 'no more bills for you' which at the price of wine here and SWMBO's capacity is rather welcome......
 
tillergirl said:
4 to 5 degs! That's a 24 degree drop! Gorgious Force 3 blowing offshore here, small light fluffy clouds, hot sun and the threat of some 'Loco-Choco' cocktails later this morning from Sahil. A catamaran has just jogged past the outside of the reef, the inshore fishermen are poling around the lagoon bring up their fish traps and an MSC container ship has just headed off north-west towards the pirate zone. She'll be turning off her AIS any time now. SWMBO is laid out like a ham salad trying to become beef salad by tonight. The restaurant manager said last night 'no more bills for you' which at the price of wine here and SWMBO's capacity is rather welcome......
Click to expand...
Funny how you can REALLY go off people, just like that......
 
Not wanting to rain on well motivated projects, but I am really struggling to understand how this project can produce much of use. Surely what they'll end up with is a series of lines of data (often following similar / same tracks since we often follow channels and bouys) and I don't see how this can be used/interpolated to produce much of value by way of a chart. It's very different from the openstreetmap initiative, which is primarily interested in roads since (almost by definition) the openstreetmap project is only interested in a tiny fraction of the area of a map's coverage.

How will the very thin lines of data ever be accurate over larger areas?
 
TeamSurv loggers

Cantata said:
I had a chat with them a few months ago but eventually decided not to fiddle with my boat's wiring this year - however I might do it next season if they still have spare dataloggers.
Click to expand...

Yes, we've still got plenty of loggers.
You can see how to wire in to varioous instruments under the Info menu, and we've just uploaded a video on the installation process.

It would be good to have more East coast sailors participate, so we can build a similar coverage to what we are getting in the South.
Tim
 
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