Sam’s Log – July 15th, 2025
23 years ago, I was running one of my Sockeye 42 vessels (the John D. Bosler) from my home in Olympia, Washinton to Ketchikan, Alaska. Onboard I had my youngest son, Mackenzie, Dan Evangelista and guest of Dan’s. We had worked our way to the northern tip of Vancouver Island and were headed across the Queen Charlotte Straits. We had started early in the morning hoping for calm sea conditions as all four of us crowded in the pilothouse nervously watching the water. I was dreading the 45-mile, 8-hour crossing and what the open sea might throw at us. On the dash was a gleaming display of charts on a bright and easy to read Ocean PC that the owner, Doug Trumbull, had me install when we built the boat the previous year.
I had use electronic devices for navigation before, but those were either orange or green lit screens, tiny in size, terrible in resolution, giving the user a facsimile of where they were in relation to the myriad of islands and inlets on the Inside Passage. They were useful but nothing of any detail that would truly keep you safe or allow accurate navigation. The Ocean P.C. was another thing altogether. It had electronic versions of the navigation charts that, up to that time, were only available on large paper sheets and this was my first experience with this new version of navigating.
I had run the Bosler up from Olympia, and by this time had enough days on the water to truly trust the Charting of the Ocean P.C. and I have to say that it was a pleasure to use. Bright, detailed, and beguiling in its ability to coax the Captain away from paper charts of the old days and into the then new world of electronic navigational data. Still not a complete convert, I had a paper chart on my lap. I maintained my position on the paper with where the Ocean P.C. said we were in real life. Every 15 minutes or so I would reposition the pointer to our new progressing waypoint.
About halfway through the crossing large rollers came in from the ocean to our port. They were negotiable and I should say considerable but nothing that the boat couldn’t handle. I had really just allowed myself to start to relax from the early anxiousness of the crossing. Then the screen went black on the Ocean P.C.
Black was not good, and absolutely unexpected. I instantly had the slight feeling that we were all going to die and didn’t and couldn’t go into detailed diagnosis of the problem as I was running the boat and didn’t particularly want to relinquish the helm to someone that didn’t have much experience in these waters. What had caused the screen to die would have to wait as my real concern was did the power interruption have some other ramification to the boat. Perhaps it was electrical with the most sensitive systems of the boat failing first and then creeping up the totem of options to the engine itself which would leave us without power in the very worst part of the Inside Passage.
A quick engine check and even less time spent staring at the electrical panel helped assure me that we were going to keep the boat running through the Queen Charlotte crossing.
But what I didn’t and couldn’t be prepared for was the startling disconcertedness of switching my brain from one form of navigation to another. I had been staring at that bright Ocean P.C. screen for days and had truly wrapped my brain around the accuracy and infallibility of the darn thing. Now I was relegated to the paper chart, lucky that it was out and, on my lap, with a pointer showing me that last position within a few minutes.
It took altogether about a day to truly get my head back to the old, trusted and imminently more infallible paper chart navigation system. The Ocean P.C. stayed black screened for the rest of the trip, the cause for the dead-sticking of it was that the next batch of charts was not downloaded for the balance of the trip to Ketchikan, something that was noted to me by the owner when I called him at our first stop after the incident.
Why tell this story on our epic trip through the Northwest Passage? Well last night our Captain stayed up all night trying to download the latest updates to our electronic charting system, most of the night without success. It was only about 4:30 in the morning when he started to have some success with it all, showing remarkable patience and perseverance the entire night and we left the dock where we were rafted to a fishing boat at 5am. More to come on this story in Scott’s next logbook entry.
As for me, “Puffin” my current ‘steed of the water,’ has full paper charts on her and I am re-reminded to keep those out, organized, and quickly at hand.
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