A-byss Understanding

When you get right down to it, there are only two types of boaters: those who admit they've run aground, and those who change the subject. Running aground is a fact of boating life, and it's usually the result of a bad-decision chain, a lack of accurate information, or both. No matter how it happens, the best you can hope for in a grounding situation is a rising tide and your keel on the sand instead of the hard.Your primary weapon against grounding is the digital depthsounder. Better still is the fishfinder, since it shows both instaneous depth and the depth's trend as a two-dimensional graph. Even so, this graph is historical information taken directly below the boat, and traditional fishfinders don't show what's ahead or off to the sides of the boat. But now a new software program can display--in 3-D detail like you've never seen before--a picture of what the sea floor would look like if somebody pulled the drain plug out of the ocean.

The program is called "3D-Sea Captain," and it's part of a new personal-computer (PC) package offered by Pinpoint Systems International. This system is not only valuable for grounding prevention and inshore navigation, but it's also helpful for identifying bottom structures where gamefish like to hide. I recently tested this system in the Chesapeake Bay to see if the program was for real or just another boating video game.

At the heart of the system is a full-function personal computer called the DVS-1000. Specially designed for boating, this rugged, water-resistant, aluminum-cased display features a truly daylight-readable 10.4-inch color TFT VGA monitor, an on/off/dim switch, and a three-button mouse control on its front panel. The DVS-1000 runs Windows 95-based software, and it proved to be a realistic answer to growing problem of, "How do I install a PC display at the helm?"

The unit is designed for flush or bracket-mounting, and undercover of the boat's hardtop it was easily readable at any angle to the sun. Our unit boasted an Intel Pentium 166 processor, 1.2-GB hard drive, 16MB RAM, and a parallel port that connects to an external floppy drive (standard equipment) or a CD-ROM drive (optional) for loading software. Other, more powerful configurations are available as well. In addition, the DVS-1000 has two data-input ports and one input/output port, and the functionality of those will become clear as you read on.

We began this test aboard a 42-foot Egg Harbor by firing up the DVS-1000 and opening the "3D-Sea Captain" software program. With GPS position data and B&G depth data being fed into the unit, the program started by showing our vessel on the east bank of the Wye River, Maryland, with a 3-D picture of the river's deep-water channel sloping off to our right. We were still tied to the dock, but I could already see where the deeps were off to my starboard side.

Though it's sold with the DVS-1000 package, the 3D-Sea Captain software was developed by Nautical Solutions International, and the company's chief 3-D cartographer Mark Pringle was along for my test ride. "This program has tremendous applications," said Pringle. "Divers want to see wreck data, mining companies are using it, the U.S. Navy wants to use it to map underwater mines, and recreational and commercial fishermen are using it to see underwater canyons and to track the edge of the continental shelf."

In its most basic form, the program displays a 3-D picture of the seascape and landscape around the boat (out to five miles), and then shows your vessel hovering at the surface. Pringle developed his 3-D "bathymetric" charts by consolidating data from NOAA hydrographic surveys and bathymetric charts, and then cross-checking his data against satellite images of the sea floor. The result is a 3-D grid, showing sandbars, drop-offs, islands, shorelines, and even the deepest ocean abysses out to 300 miles offshore. Pringle says he's now charted enough of the country's coastline so that, "Any chart that BSB/NOAA has, we have available in 3-D."

The 3D-Sea Captain program has seven different display windows, and you can scroll through them in succession. The primary window has a BSB/NOAA electronic chart in the upper left corner showing your vessel's position on the chart, with the 3-D bottom picture in the lower right. As your vessel appears to hover over the bottom, the program draws a "staff" or measuring line down to the bottom and indicates the current depth. This data is determined by comparing your GPS position to your location above the bathymetric chart. But when the unit is interfaced with a depthsounder, two staffs appear below the boat--one showing the charted depth at your location, the other showing actual depth--so it's easy to cross-check the two. For running narrow channels and fairways, I'd highly recommend differential GPS since uncorrected GPS can lead to wide discrepancies--both in your position on the chart and in the depth displayed from the bathymetric chart.

You can tilt the 3-D perspective view from horizontal to vertical or any angle in between. You can also add a marker plane at any depth as an alarm. In practice I found the program to be intuitive, and as we crossed a shallow sandbar I could actually see where the bottom dropped off so I knew which way to turn. For offshore work the program did a great job of showing a 3-D presentation of canyons and drop-offs, and that's key information for big-game fishermen.

Operation is almost self-explanatory, and there are no pull-down menus or "hidden" items to search for. The main screen has dedicated control keys for all of the program's operations, including tilt-and-pan of the perspective view, depth-marker settings, control of your past track, color preferences, and more. In addition, you can overlay and tilt a NOAA chart on top of the 3-D bathymetric chart, but I found this feature a bit confusing and it tended to "crash" the computer (Pringle says an upgrade to 32MB of RAM would solve the problem.) Even so, 3D-Sea Captain should not be confused with a charting program designed for creating waypoints and routes. That is handled by a separate Pinpoint program called "Sea Master Pilot" (included), and the DVS-1000 can be interfaced with your autopilot for hands-free driving to your next port of call.

So in one water-resistant, fixed-mounted unit you have a surface chart display and an underwater display all in one, with room left over to handle your own software programs. In addition, Pringle says the next version of the software called "3D-Sea Professional" will actually be able to identify fish species (not just targets) when interfaced with a fishfinder. So given all of this, if you still run aground using the Pinpoint System, you better be good at changing the subject.