Suffolk Yacht Harbour to Ramsgate on Sunday

[tillergirl]

I was using the latest chart on the Garmin Chartplotter.

I crossed at 51'45N 01.28E the chart showed LAT of 2.9M , I was about 2 hours before LW and got down to 0.1 on the depth, was about to abort the crossing and retrack when it started getting deeper.

Oh, cutting across the Great Sunk at the Sunk Head. Not wishing to be hurtful but the latest charts are no good for that. Nobody (apart from me) has surveyed those sands for public use for years and I haven't done the Great Sunk (nor will do as it is not difficult to give it an offing). Long Sand Head is different, there are frequent updates on that and I think the Black Deep PHB is the most moved buoy on the East Coast apart from the old Deben and Ore stuff.

Thanks for the info.

 

[jimi]

Yes,point taken. There were a couple of ships coming down side by side and I thought I'd cut left a bit to keep well clear and the chart seemed to suggest it would be OK with the Cardinal not too far away. Will treat depths with considerably more caution in the future.

 

[tillergirl]

Yes,point taken. There were a couple of ships coming down side by side and I thought I'd cut left a bit to keep well clear and the chart seemed to suggest it would be OK with the Cardinal not too far away. Will treat depths with considerably more caution in the future.

Very wise to keep out of the way. How do chart plotters cope with annotated corrections. For example down by the SW Sunk, there is 3.7m shown on the current chart but there was a NtM some 2/3 years back as a result of Mystique's experience inserting 'Less water reported 2011'. Would that be annotated on your chart plotter?

 

[jimi]

Very wise to keep out of the way. How do chart plotters cope with annotated corrections. For example down by the SW Sunk, there is 3.7m shown on the current chart but there was a NtM some 2/3 years back as a result of Mystique's experience inserting 'Less water reported 2011'. Would that be annotated on your chart plotter?

Yes it is, there an Information triangle to click and it says exactly that. To be honest, I've got the paper charts as well and they conveyed the same info. The message I'm getting is that east coast charts are subject to Jack Sparrow's pirate rules .. ie gives guidance but beware! I was aware of that anyway so was proceeding with caution, the bit I found unexpected was the rapid decrease in depth when it was charted to be rapidly increasing, there seemed to be a distinct ridge on the west side of the shoal area. It went from 4m to just over 2m very quickly and then to 6m and increased rapidly.

 

[Bru]

Would it be worth reporting this to the UKHO? Likely they'll then add "less water reported" via an NTM which could save future skippers from a nervous moment!

 

[tillergirl]

Would it be worth reporting this to the UKHO? Likely they'll then add "less water reported" via an NTM which could save future skippers from a nervous moment!

Can do it here:

http://www.ukho.gov.uk/ProductsandServices/MartimeSafety/Pages/Hydrographic-Notes.aspx