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The system comes with a guide, though it's easy to install and use.
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For many years I had shillied and shallied…shall I or shall I not? To radar or not to radar. Then in the tenth year of my ownership of my beloved Seaforth Star I said yes! So in the early days of 1998 I had dialogue with and negotiated a fair deal with the Furuno agents in the north of our island.
The result was by craning in time, April, I had bought and fitted a Furuno model 1621 radar set, scanner sitting proudly atop the mizzen mast. The fitting was surprisingly easy - had to be for me - with all the cables and connectors ready to be assemble following the clear and uncomplicated instructions. The scanner cable was clipped to the mast with nylon clips that were fastened with stainless steel self tapping screws, fed through a deck gland into the aft cabin (after removing the headlining), across the deckhead ands down the port forward corner of the bulkhead into the port cockpit locker. For'ard then through the locker clear of all obstructions finishing up on the shelf by the steering position, snug and dry inside the wheelshelter. This is where the display unit is fitted. The electrical feed cable went through a gland here, over the main cabin headlining to the junction box.
The model 1621 gives a sixteen nautical mile max range starting at 0.25nm with ten ranges in between, guard zone, watchman, and the facility to interface with electronic navaids to provide the usual navigational data as supplied by GPS etc.
The main reason for my eventual decision to fit radar was to achieve some peace of mind in fog, and when approaching a coast in thick weather, especially at night. Many's the time I have crawled through a pea souper with the brimstone of anxiety at the back of my throat. I also make regular night passages and radar keeps us informed of shipping within a sixteen mile radius and just what they are doing. Checking out a collision course is simplicity itself.
In the late summer of '99 there was a perfect opportunity to make use of the set for the purpose of which I had fitted it. Fog. We made an overnight passage from Port St. Mary, Isle of Man, down to Holyhead in North Wales, spent a day there then crossed the Irish Sea to Howth just north of Dublin where we spent a couple of enjoyable days. The next leg of the trip was to Ardglass in Northern Ireland, a distance of fifty four nautical miles.
I had promised crew Alan that this would be particularly enjoyable, a trip up the Irish coast with beautiful scenery. The day of departure dawned…with thick fog! The forecast gave patchy fog, clearing later, and I reasoned that maybe offshore it would be clearer. What a hope.
Mile after mile it persisted. Occasionally we would kid ourselves it was thinning, and maybe it was, but down it came again holding visibility down to 100 to 200 meters. Now this is when my new piece of kit came into it's own. I had a complete picture of my surroundings - and peace of mind. Just the odd contact came up on the screen but we could see what they were doing so presented no danger.
Eventually St. Johns Point came up on the display, and between radar and GPS, and chart of course, I shaped an oblique course to close in on the coast. A few minutes of staring then the steep-to cliffs just south of the harbour loomed out of the fog about 150 metres on the port bow. It was then just a matter of keeping the land in sight and in a few minutes we were in the harbour entrance.
Alan was disappointed at missing the scenery along the coast, after all, a wavy line on a radar screen is not quite the same.
Many thanks to RAdio Detection And Ranging.
