DELTA CRUISE 07 - PLANNING
Before I start the narrative for the trip I made to the Northern California Delta June 28 - July 01, 2007 I thought you might be interested in what I did to plan the trip. On my web site (The-Sailors-Place.com) I have a Navigation Page that gives access to free downloads for NOAA charts and Chart Plotter - Planning software.
I downloaded charts for San Francisco Bay and everything up through the Delta. Along with that I have two planning tools on my computer: SeaClear II and the Maptech Chart Navigator Viewer. I used the Maptech software for planning the trip as it has some features that are not available with SeaClear II. The most valuable tool was the Route Plan page which allows you to have a print out of the route you set up. You can export the page to a spreadsheet - I use Quattro Pro but it works the same way for Excel - and determine what average speed would be required for a start and end time. You can also set a speed and get what time you will arrive at the destination based on a start time.
I printed out route plans (the last day route plan is at the head of this column) for each of the four days and found them to be really handy as a reference to see how I was progressing in real time versus what I thought would be the case when planning the trip. This was especially useful as I was going to two Marinas that had very shallow entrances and needed to arrive (or leave) when the tide was high enough.
I downloaded charts for San Francisco Bay and everything up through the Delta. Along with that I have two planning tools on my computer: SeaClear II and the Maptech Chart Navigator Viewer. I used the Maptech software for planning the trip as it has some features that are not available with SeaClear II. The most valuable tool was the Route Plan page which allows you to have a print out of the route you set up. You can export the page to a spreadsheet - I use Quattro Pro but it works the same way for Excel - and determine what average speed would be required for a start and end time. You can also set a speed and get what time you will arrive at the destination based on a start time.
I printed out route plans (the last day route plan is at the head of this column) for each of the four days and found them to be really handy as a reference to see how I was progressing in real time versus what I thought would be the case when planning the trip. This was especially useful as I was going to two Marinas that had very shallow entrances and needed to arrive (or leave) when the tide was high enough.
Because I needed to calculate tide heights to make sure my boat could get in to the Marina at a reasonable time I developed a "Half Tide Calculator" and a "Per Minute Calculator" to go along with it that figures tide increase or decrease by the minute. Usually figuring when the Half Tide time occurs is enough for arrival or departure planning. However, when Half Tide is less than your draft then you need to calculate when the tide is equal or a bit more than your draft. That is when the "Per Minute Calculator" comes in handy. You determine the depth you want (usually a bit more than your draft) and the "Per Minute Calculator" will give you the time for that depth. Links to the Quattro Pro and Excel versions of these calculators are on the Navigation Page in The-Sailors-Place for you to download.
posted by Roger @ 1:42 PM
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