Day 93 - Whither Now Offy?

We have a nickname for the chart plotter: we call it Iffy. It's a name Vi thought of when it gave us a burst of temperamental fits, shutting itself down periodically at inopportune moments. Today it was more aptly named Offy. It got us here, but in the middle of trying to plot tomorrow's route into Port McNeill, it would not cooperate. I tried all manner of fixes without luck. The problem just kept getting worse, crashing sooner and sooner, until it was crashing while reading the chart data.

That seemed like a clue, but I had already reseated the smart card that has the chart data. Then I removed the chart card and powered it up and it still reported the version number of the card. Ah haa! It doesn't read the chart card at power up if the data is already stored in memory. Maybe that data was corrupted. Powering it up without the card and then re-installing the card and powering it up again forced it to re-read the chart data and the problem went away. Fixed? I don't know because I don't really understand what corrupted the data in the first place, but it seems to be working for now. I guess we'll see.

If the plotter goes down permanently, we can still use the PC (or the handheld gps) to see where we are, but it won't have radar or AIS.

We're anchored in a small shallow passage between two islands tonight. Pearce Narrows Cove is less than ten miles from Port McNeill, where we'll meet Mary Lou and Knute in the morning, spending one night in the harbor. We'll spend four nights with them, traveling south through Johnstone Straight (on a spring tide, no less) before we pop out of Seymour Narrows, around the South End of Quadra Island, and into Desolation Sound on our way to Nanaimo. It is a leg I'm looking forward to.