Boating for Dummies 101: Part 3 – Where Has Your Boat Been

by Doug Ross | Jul 30, 2016 | Articles, Trailers and Towing

By Dom Appay (June 2016)

When you buy a second hand boat it comes with a history. Ours has just given up its past thanks to its 2010 Lowrance Plotter/fish finder’s waypoint data. I was amazed to see where this 5m boat has gone!

I punched in each of the 32 waypoint coordinates from the Lowrance into Google Maps search box on my iPad, eg S7 4.183, E153 8.169. I made each a favourite (stars on map) to get the image (below right).

1 Home boat ramp: Spinnaker Sound Marina.

2. Boat’s been 19km offshore from Pelican Waters,

3. 17km offshore past the 35 fathom reef to a mark called “Pearlies “, out opposite South Passage Bar & 41km from Raby Bay!

The boat’s last owner took it miles!

Navionics Webapp Community Edits

As a Bonus while doing this mapping I found the online Navionics Webapp Community edits where boaties enter their favourite fishing spots, etc.
My old plotter’s Navionics card won’t show them though, so how to display them?

Solution: I used the Measure Tool from a fixed mark to get a distance and heading to the fishing spot and took a screen shot for my smartphone (or printed it out on paper).

I put this into my plotter to get an approximate location. Then I adjusted the cursor until it matched the Webapp screenshot using the nearest depth line, wreck location, etc to get the coordinates.

Happy fishing!

Next time: More Grotty Bits on your trailer boat