When at anchor and on board, do you leave instruments on or off

Minn said:
Old habits die hard, with me. I have had to be reminded to use the GPS, let alone the AIS, the radar, etc.

But one old habit really sticks with me - I keep a torch handy, no matter what.
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I agree. We all know exactly where the torches are kept (really easy to hand in an open fronted locker by the radar screen above the chart table and close to the companionway) and they are always working with good batteries.
 
Iain C said:
Depends on the conditions surely? A quiet night in no breeze, turn them off. A bouncy one, I'll leave the plotter on because it will network to my iPad and give me heading, depth, wind, tide, position etc to the comfort of under my duvet.
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As Iain, generally off unless some cause to be more cautious.

Only dragged once in ten years during the night. That was when wind increased and swung. The (Rocna) anchor, which had seemed to hold fine in reverse, was actually in strong weed (no visibility of bottom surface so couldn’t tell) which gave way in the night.
Zero noise of anchor dragging, but anchor alarm woke us just in time to get engine on and hold position off a (now) lee shore whilst we got sorted out to lift anchor and navigate out of rocky unlit bay.
 
john_morris_uk said:
I agree. We all know exactly where the torches are kept (really easy to hand in an open fronted locker by the radar screen above the chart table and close to the companionway) and they are always working with good batteries.
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As a slight thread drift. I have LED Lenser torches located at strategic points on my boat.

I had problems with the push button switch on one of them which is used most often. To their credit LED Lenser honoured the slightly-out-of-date warranty and replaced the switch/battery unit FOC.

However, I was advised to remove the batteries if the torch was stored for any period of time as this apparently affected the switch (which has 3 functions: on [bright] - on [1/2 power] - off).

Not exactly convenient if needed in an emergency! Needless to say I leave the batteries in and take my chances.

PS: re the OP - I switch everything off - 2 second job to switch on.
 
tudorsailor said:
When anchoring and staying on board, I leave instruments on. I power down the radar and put the plotter on standby to reduce power consumption. I do this is case something unexpected happens during the night such as increased wind and dragging. Also I can see on the plotter if my position is changing.
I know others simply turn everything off.

Am I being overly cautious?

TudorSailor
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Why would you think that that is overly cautious? What would you do if the anchor was dragging in the middle of the night, and you needed to thread your way out of a rocky anchorage with different hazards in it? BT, DT.

I can't imagine why anyone would shut their instruments down at anchor. Being at anchor is much closer to being underway, than it is to being tied up in a marina berth. I always leave everything on, including radar, and the key in the ignition and the covers off the helm. Always.

Some people have written that they shut everything down, because it only takes two seconds to get everything running again. I might give a different answer if that were the case for me, but it's a lot more than two seconds or even two minutes on my boat, to get the plotters booted up and all the systems working, working through the CYA legal screens on the plotters you have to accept, etc.

I have not dragged anchor much in the last 10 years, but I've had enough experience with middle of the night anchor dragging or other sudden emergencies at anchor, not to want to risk having to faff with this, before I can see where I am in relation to hazards, and what is the depth and so forth.
 
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No particular scheme, but usually:
Radar powered down except when in use
Plotter often turned off when in port since its wifi tends to take over the IPad. Often on for planning.
Instruments all on one switch. Often left on in port so that current wind can be recorded on the repeater. Always off at night
Radio, sometimes left on to pick up forecasts and generally keep an eye on things
AIS class B, wired to battery and often left on in error
 
Dockhead said:
Why would you think that that is overly cautious? What would you do if the anchor was dragging in the middle of the night, and you needed to thread your way out of a rocky anchorage with different hazards in it? BT, DT.

I can't imagine why anyone would shut their instruments down at anchor. Being at anchor is much closer to being underway, than it is to being tied up in a marina berth. I always leave everything on, including radar, and the key in the ignition and the covers off the helm. Always.

Some people have written that they shut everything down, because it only takes two seconds to get everything running again. I might give a different answer if that were the case for me, but it's a lot more than two seconds or even two minutes on my boat, to get the plotters booted up and all the systems working, working through the CYA legal screens on the plotters you have to accept, etc.

I have not dragged anchor much in the last 10 years, but I've had enough experience with middle of the night anchor dragging or other sudden emergencies at anchor, not to want to risk having to faff with this, before I can see where I am in relation to hazards, and what is the depth and so forth.
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Context is everything. Choosing your anchorage is another....

If I was anchored in some bay with tortuously fiendish pilotage in through rocks that needs me to be glued to a plotter to extract myself and with a forecast that was anything but gentle or calm I would be wondering what I was doing there. On the occasions that it seemed seamanlike and prudent to anchor in such a place, I can see the virtues of leaving the instruments and MSD on.

However. 99% of the time, one anchors in a place where the pilotage is more accurately done by eyeball, and if there are no lit navigation marks then you have some sort of a backup plan for getting out of there in an emergency using conventional pilotage techniques. The echo sounder doesn't need time to warm up, and the magnetic compass should be swung, accurate and working and the compass light will come on instantly.

It strikes me that there is a hidden message in some of the replies on this thread about how completely addicted people are to driving their boat round the screen on the plotter. This is a GUARANTEED way to run aground or hit something in some parts of there world where people will discover that the charting of objects relative to each other is fairly good, but the absolute positioning is sometimes awry and not all objects are charted anyway. Transits, bearings and echo sounder don't lie. I have a plotter and I love it, but it's at the chart table... It makes me pilot the boat by looking up and out.
 
Dockhead said:
Why would you think that that is overly cautious? What would you do if the anchor was dragging in the middle of the night, and you needed to thread your way out of a rocky anchorage with different hazards in it? BT, DT.

I can't imagine why anyone would shut their instruments down at anchor. Being at anchor is much closer to being underway, than it is to being tied up in a marina berth. I always leave everything on, including radar, and the key in the ignition and the covers off the helm. Always.

Some people have written that they shut everything down, because it only takes two seconds to get everything running again. I might give a different answer if that were the case for me, but it's a lot more than two seconds or even two minutes on my boat, to get the plotters booted up and all the systems working, working through the CYA legal screens on the plotters you have to accept, etc.

I have not dragged anchor much in the last 10 years, but I've had enough experience with middle of the night anchor dragging or other sudden emergencies at anchor, not to want to risk having to faff with this, before I can see where I am in relation to hazards, and what is the depth and so forth.
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I can only hope you use similar powers of risk analysis to ensure you have all your house lights on every night, keys in front door and in car (unlocked of course) in case of fire or alien attack.

Seriously though, it sounds like you need to change your instruments to something more practical for boating use - it should be a question of flicking a switch for everything necessary to be on before you reach the wheel.
 
When chartering, my typical practice has been to turn off the plotter and leave wind instruments and radio on during the evening, just to be aware of things. Then switch them off overnight.
 
RupertW said:
I can only hope you use similar powers of risk analysis to ensure you have all your house lights on every night, keys in front door and in car (unlocked of course) in case of fire or alien attack.

Seriously though, it sounds like you need to change your instruments to something more practical for boating use - it should be a question of flicking a switch for everything necessary to be on before you reach the wheel.
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The likelihood of fire at home is much less than sudden bad weather when at anchor. However I do keep a torch in reach of my bed at home in case of power cut. I do lock the front door but leave the key in the lock so that if there were a fire, I would not have to look for the key and then unlock.
Hard to change instruments to all being on with a flick of a swtich. In particular the Multifunction Display is only 2 years old and will not complete the boot without accepting the CYA terms.
TS
 
john_morris_uk said:
Context is everything. Choosing your anchorage is another....

If I was anchored in some bay with tortuously fiendish pilotage in through rocks that needs me to be glued to a plotter to extract myself and with a forecast that was anything but gentle or calm I would be wondering what I was doing there. On the occasions that it seemed seamanlike and prudent to anchor in such a place, I can see the virtues of leaving the instruments and MSD on.

However. 99% of the time, one anchors in a place where the pilotage is more accurately done by eyeball, and if there are no lit navigation marks then you have some sort of a backup plan for getting out of there in an emergency using conventional pilotage techniques. The echo sounder doesn't need time to warm up, and the magnetic compass should be swung, accurate and working and the compass light will come on instantly.

It strikes me that there is a hidden message in some of the replies on this thread about how completely addicted people are to driving their boat round the screen on the plotter. This is a GUARANTEED way to run aground or hit something in some parts of there world where people will discover that the charting of objects relative to each other is fairly good, but the absolute positioning is sometimes awry and not all objects are charted anyway. Transits, bearings and echo sounder don't lie. I have a plotter and I love it, but it's at the chart table... It makes me pilot the boat by looking up and out.
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I agree that being dependent on chart plotters and lacking ability to use transients or other traditional methods of pilotage is unseamanlike.

But I think that's irrelevant to the question. In an emergency, you want the fastest and most clear and unambiguous picture of your position relative to shoals and rocks you can possibly have. Seconds may count -- you will likely not have time to look at a chart, or do anything else. A chart plotter is simply the killer app for this, no matter how well you know other methods. This is the time more than any other that you want your chart plotter warmed up and showing you the way to safety at a glance, without referring to charts or figuring out transients or taking any bearings or peering into the darkness trying to find landmarks or navigation marks. You very well may simply not have time for any of that.

I have only dragged anchor in the night ONCE in the last 10 years (it was on Gotland, a couple of years ago, on a solid rock bottom). But I had enough experience with squalls blowing up or wind shifts and anchors not holding in the middle of the night, in previous decades, to be unwilling to give up any advantage I might possibly have in such a crisis, in the unlikely event it might occur. Others will make their own choices, of course.
 
Off. My renewable power sources are not yet as I intend them to be so why would I waste power? I do often switch the depth sounder on just before high and low water to check how far off my calculations were. The socially responsible attitude of being available to up anchor at any point to assist in a mayday operation is overshadowed by a desire not to have an evening troubled by radio checks and fisherfolk chatting, so shamefully the VHF is off too.
 
We live on the hook for 6 months a year. Our biggest problem is generating enough power to keep the domestic services running, so our instruments are switched off as soon as we’ve closed the log on dropping the anchor. If there’s any concern about the weather, then we’ll set the Anchor! app on the iPhone to give us warning of a dragging anchor.
Getting the instruments and plotter running again is a single switch down below, a button push on the chart table plotter and similar for the one at the helm. By the time the anchor is ready to be winched in, the plotter will have woken itself up, I’ll have accepted the T&Cs and it’ll offer is a helping hand but the depth gauge will already be awake and functioning...

We’ve extracted ourselves from a nasty incident in Frikes where a sudden southerly thunderstorm saw our anchor drag with lines ashore, leaving us no time to react before the rudder was grinding the rocks. Nevertheless, by the time I’d got the engine running and the Admiral was ready to recover the anchor, the plotter was also fully functional. You just have to build in turning the instruments on into the drill for anchor dragging. It doesn’t add enough time to make any significant difference but does give you the ability to navigate as soon as the anchor has been recovered.

All that said, when we wind up sitting out a significant storm (say sustained winds of over F8) then we will typically mount an anchor watch with the engine running, all instruments turned on, anchor prepared to lift (locker lid open, fuel cans secured outside locker etc) and someone awake in the saloon monitoring the instruments and our position and the off watch person fully dressed. Only happen once every couple of years and usually over fairly quickly as the storm centre passses overhead.
 
Dockhead said:
I agree that being dependent on chart plotters and lacking ability to use transients or other traditional methods of pilotage is unseamanlike.

But I think that's irrelevant to the question. In an emergency, you want the fastest and most clear and unambiguous picture of your position relative to shoals and rocks you can possibly have. Seconds may count -- you will likely not have time to look at a chart, or do anything else. A chart plotter is simply the killer app for this, no matter how well you know other methods. This is the time more than any other that you want your chart plotter warmed up and showing you the way to safety at a glance, without referring to charts or figuring out transients or taking any bearings or peering into the darkness trying to find landmarks or navigation marks. You very well may simply not have time for any of that.

I have only dragged anchor in the night ONCE in the last 10 years (it was on Gotland, a couple of years ago, on a solid rock bottom). But I had enough experience with squalls blowing up or wind shifts and anchors not holding in the middle of the night, in previous decades, to be unwilling to give up any advantage I might possibly have in such a crisis, in the unlikely event it might occur. Others will make their own choices, of course.
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I think we assess risks and risk mitigation differently.
 
Anchor in prudent location. Everything switched off. If conditions require it then an anchor alarm. Before dark note a compass course to safe water. Deploy LED anchor light. Plenty of chain. Long Nylon snubber. No dodgy swivels. NG anchor. Sleep well.
 
Always turn off plotter and radio. Whether I leave the basic instruments on depends on the situation - sometimes I anchor in places that are a bit on the shallow side, or I worry that shallows are nearby and I might swing into them, then I leave the instruments on, turn the Navtex if it wasn't on already, and set it to a mode that displays depth and wind speed in large numbers in the cabin. (If it's windy then I'm curious to know the numbers, but any actual action is going to be based more on feel.) If the anchorage is spacious and deep, as is more usual, then I generally turn the instruments off as the wind display has a tiny hum that gets noticeable when having that last look up at the stars in a quiet cockpit.

The AIS display has an anchor-watch mode and I usually turn that on - more for its record of how the boat has moved (it regularly draws a dot in the current position, which build up overnight into a smear showing where the boat has been) than because I'm concerned about dragging. The alarm is quite feeble and is unlikely to wake me anyway.

If I were to depart suddenly in the middle of the night, all the kit is turned on by one row of switches at the chart table - operational stuff is at the top of the switch panel, domestic along the bottom - and it all comes on without further prodding in a lot less time than it would take me to get the boat under way and needing to use it. The plotter does display an annoying legal banner along the bottom until you dismiss it, but the chart is still visible above that. The nav light switch (rotary for different signals - power, sail, etc) is in the cockpit and the compass light comes on when any of the under-way modes are selected.

Pete
 
I'm a nosy git and have the radio on most of the time just to see what's happening. With a wide band general coverage receiver, I often keep an eye on Channel zero - was interesting to hear the Coast Guard managing the search for that guy that jumped off the IoW ferry a couple of weeks ago.

Other instruments, probably switched off unless there is a non-trivial risk of dragging or grounding as the tide falls.
 
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