Suddenly Blind - Part II

Dense fog. Intermittent rain. A strong breeze. And a following sea, maybe four to five feet at times. Lousy weather for boating, you say? Normally, that’d be true, but we were not on a pleasure cruise. We were on a 38-footer off the western coast of Norway conducting a full-blown electronics test, and for our purposes, the weather could not have been better.

So what brought this on? Eight years ago I wrote an article called “Suddenly Blind,” in which we tested the accuracy of electronics by covering the windshield of a cruiser and running her “blind” on a clear day some 30 miles from Stamford, Connecticut, to New York’s Statue of Liberty. While that was a controlled simulation, this time we decided to raise the stakes. Along the North Sea coastline there were no safety nets, we didn’t need a windshield cover, and frankly, we couldn’t have stopped the test even if we wanted to. We were relying completely on an integrated electronics package from Simrad, and we laid out a 25-mile course from Egersund to Jossingfjord, Norway in order to test them. Along the way, we’d encounter trawlers, fish-processing ships, narrow winding channels, a labyrinth of small, rocky islands, and the odd sailboat dumb enough to be out there on a day like this. The idea was to avoid all these obstacles and get to the fjord unscathed, but whether we could do it remained to be seen.

Before we began our journey, I toured Simrad’s Robertson plant in Egursund, Norway, and got the straight story on the company’s many brand-name products. Simrad originally made its mark by manufacturing hydro-acoustic electronics, primarily for the fishing and offshore-commercial industries. But in 1993 the company decided to expand into the yacht market with a full array of marine electronics. It began by acquiring Robertson, a world-renowned manufacturer of autopilots. The following year it bought the Danish company Shipmate, which manufactures products as diverse as GPS receivers, chart plotters, professional track plotters, and high-end dual-station VHF radios.

To round out its line, Simrad added radars by acquiring Anritsu, and today, the entire group is known as Simrad Electronics. While these acquisitions caused some confusion in the marketplace, now the names “Robertson,” “Shipmate,” and “Anritsu” are actually brand names of Simrad, and all yacht products you’ll see from here on out will be part of Simrad’s MarineLine of electronics. The new products’ cases have all been redesigned to resemble each other in form and in function, so a full Simrad bridge will be cosmetically appealing as well as fully integrated. Cosmetics aside, it was the functionality and integration I wanted to check, and so with the tour behind us we slipped off into the fog and eased the throttles ahead.

Robertson’s 38-foot test boat Roberta was well equipped for the challenge, and aboard were Simrad’s marketing manager Petter JØrgensen, Shipmate’s product manager Odin Sletten, and Simrad’s project manager Paul Comyns. At the lower helm station, the company’s new color CE32 DGPS/chart/echosounder handled the navigation by showing our depth and position on a C-MAP electronic chart, while at the same time feeding steering commands to the Robertson AP22 autopilot. Meanwhile, Anritsu’s RA772 “3-D” radar was aboard for collision avoidance in the fog. All of these electronics were interfaced together, and shared information without a hitch.

As we left the confines of the harbor and the fog closed in, we immediately went to the radar to survey the situation. On the three-mile range with the 3-D presentation turned on, the radar showed a small group of islands just ahead and a large vessel approaching our starboard bow. This traffic was to be expected, given that Egursund is a fish-processing port. According to the radar we passed within a quarter-mile of each other, but the only part of the ship we saw was its wake.

Turning now to navigation, we went right to the CE32 and checked our route. With its 5.5-inch color display housed in a rugged aluminum case, the CE32 is a DGPS/chart display/fishfinder all rolled into one. Daylight visibility under cover is excellent, and it boasts a huge lineup of features: storage for 999 waypoints and 30 routes, nine different plot tracks, 15 marker symbols, an eight-channel differential GPS receiver, a dual-frequency (50- and 200-kHz) fishfinder with a depth range to 2,000 feet, and even U.S tide tables stored in memory.

The CE32 uses C-MAP’s C-Cards to store electronic-chart data, and the unit has arguably the best chart-storage system of any plotter on the market today. Unlike some plotters which require you to remove a rubber gasket and insert a chart cartridge, the CE32 has a splashproof drawer on the front of the unit that pops out with the push of a button. Simply insert the C-Card, close the drawer, and a color C-MAP chart appears on the screen, along with your position centered on the chart.

As we began our journey, JØrgensen pointed out some of the unit’s new and unique features. While the CE32 can zoom in and out like any other chart display, it also has a unique “Instant Zoom” feature. Simply push any of the numeric keys (1 through 9) and the zoom level will jump to a pre-set zoom distance and redraw the chart in less than 4 seconds. This is very helpful when you want to zoom quickly from close-in range (like when you’re sneaking your way through a rocky channel), out to a greater range to get your next course to steer. I give Simrad’s engineers high marks for this innovation.

Another handy feature is the one-touch GO TO button. This lets you move the cursor to any spot on the chart, touch one button, and instantly activate that spot as your next waypoint. We used this many times as we modified our original route to avoid other vessels and to cruise down a narrow, rock-lined channel that was only 1/3-mile wide in places. Better still, a single button-push authorized each course change to the autopilot, and the AP22 swung us onto our new heading and kept us there, even in moderate following seas. While the AP22 also has its own controls like a knob for powersteering, arrow keys for left/right steering, and a DODGE button to quickly avoid obstacles, we never had to use them since we issued all of our course changes directly from the CE32’s screen.

You control most of the CE32’s functions from one of six menus, each with its own set of submenus. To create a serpentine route of 15 waypoints, it took me 4 minutes and 19 seconds—about average for a route of this length and complexity. While it was a simple matter to create the route, it was not so easy to go back into the storage areas and recall waypoints or the route-table data. On the CE32, routes and legs are designated with numbers like “02.09,” which means route #2, leg #9. I found it somewhat difficult to manipulate the cursor through this system and select the information I wanted, but overall the route table was complete with lat/lons of each waypoint, range and bearings, and a running total distance of the whole route. It was also a simple matter to move waypoints and edit routes right on the chart display.

Over on the fishfinder side, I appreciated the unit’s split-screen presentation with full depth range plus bottom zoom, and the unit never lost track of the bottom, even in a fjord which was more than 280 feet deep!

Finally, I had two chances to test the radar—once in Norway, and once again in Norwalk, Connecticut. My detailed test in Norwalk showed that while the Anritsu 772UA is absolutely

packed with high-end radar features—such as a log receiver for magnifying targets, semi-3D for viewing targets in rain and sea clutter, and a true motion mode that fixes the position of land and buoys—it really is a small-boat radar. The reason is its range is limited to 24 miles, and its small radome lacks the target discrimination needed for larger-boat applications. Still, I liked the fact it