Some times . . . some times, the big guys listen to the little guys.
Here’s my story:
Rushing to prepare Quadra for a long trip to Southeast Alaska a year ago, I decided the helm station on the bridge needed upgrading. The depth sounder was a Ross flasher and although it still worked reliably it was 1980-vintage and needed occasional repair.
Another problem: I did not have a chart plotter on the bridge. That was a definite disadvantage because I favor steering from the bridge whenever weather permits and in close-quarters situations.
To take care of both shortcomings, I installed a Simrad CX33 plotter/depth sounder at the upper helm. My sea trial consisted of switching it on and watching the navigation chart appear on the plotter screen and for the depth sounder to tell me what I already knew -- the depth of the water in my moorage. Everything worked.
Using a Simrad data cable I linked the CX33 with the control head for a Simrad AP25 auto pilot at the lower helm. GPS data (position, speed, lat/long) from the bridge unit, along with depth and water temperature, could be viewed at the lower helm. I could feed GPS data to the auto pilot from the Simrad unit on the bridge or from the stand-alone Furuno GPS at the lower helm. Redundancy is nice.
The first evidence that the marriage of CX33 and AP25 was not total bliss appeared in the first hour of our trip north. Motoring from the relatively shallow water of Guemes Channel into the deeper Rosario Strait I noticed the AP25 struggling to keep up with the changing water depths. Those changes should appear instantaneously, but on the auto pilot monitor the depth indicator was clicking slowly – I could count as fast at it did – to display the true depth. It reminded me of a trip odometer on an old bicycle – when you turn the knob to reset it the numbers click past one by one.
This is not good when moving into deep water. But it could be simply awful as the water gets shallow. We weren’t turning back because of it, but we watched the numbers like a hawk looking for mice from a perch on a fence post. And we also consulted another old Ross sounder, this one at the lower helm, which I wisely had not removed.
A perfect example of what might have happened (but didn’t) came as we entered Khutze Inlet, a beautiful anchorage in northern British Columbia. We skirted a reef at the entry and then motored toward the head of the inlet, where a spectacular waterfall and a stream flow into the sea. The tide was high, and it looked like a tremendously safe anchorage, but we knew that at low tide hundreds of acres of mud would be exposed.
Watching depth info on the AP25, we motored slowly toward the falls. The sounder indicated 90 feet of water and then began counting slowly down . . . 89, 87, 85. I switched on the Ross sounder and it instantly flashed 8 feet. We stopped and backed easily into deeper water.
What, I wondered, would have happened to a boater unaware of this problem? The mud is deep, VHF reception is poor because of surrounding mountains and any kind of commercial assistance is scores of miles away. That boat might still be there, perhaps lying on its side and filled with water. Simrad’s liability, I thought, was huge.
Back home, I turned to Simrad. After a bunch of telephone conversations and email messages to ranking executives, technicians at the company’s Lynnwood, Washington service center linked an AP25 and a CX33 and developed a computer program that simulated significant depth changes. I was delighted when a technician told me I was right – the problem was for real.
The report, plus a recommendation for updating the auto pilot software to eliminate the problem, went off to company engineers in Europe. They, too, I learned later, simulated the problem and confirmed my findings. Simrad people were straight forward in agreeing the problem existed. No one ever suggested I was hallucinating.
I thought that, as a reward for alerting the company to a serious problem, a technician might come to the boat to make the software changes. But, no deal. If I wanted the AP25 fixed, I would deliver the control head to the Lynnwood shops and the software would be updated and the unit returned to me under warranty. Fortunately, the connecting cables are color coded and I pulled them free and handed the unit off to UPS.
On a bright spring day, Jerry Hudson and I took Quadra on a circumnavigation of Guemes Island. The water on the east side is shallow, only a few fathoms deep, but on the west side (in Bellingham Channel) the depth increases rapidly to about 60 fathoms.
After an hour or so of cruising and watching the AP25 control panel I had to agree with Simrad: the fix worked. It handled major changes in depth quickly and with ease. The annoying slow count apparently is gone for good.
After mooring, we stopped for a microbrew and fish and chips. It was a time to celebrate. Someone listened and followed through.