Chalk up one more on my bucket list- ICW Trip

quote:
Originally posted by PascalG

I found att coverage to be pretty good except a few short dead spot in GA and around the alligator river and canal in NC, across the Annemarie and close to coinjock. I doubt Vz will be much different,

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VZW is ahead of AT&T with 4G MACRO builds other than that they share many of the same rural towers. AT&T's interim 3.5G data product UMTS/HSPA+ (technically a version of LTE) service is pretty good.
Bill
 
Billy- It's not a Wilson Cradle. The Cell Ranger is just an antenna/amplifier/repeater with a 6' cable that plugs into a cigarette lighter.
 
Would double-up Pascal's recommendation of Active Captain. Making our 8th transit (in Charleston tonight) & the ICW continues to get worse. Active Captain is now ESSENTIAL! Almost every day, we see boats aground in the trouble areas - sometimes seeing them plow at 8 knots right into them- the sudden lurch! Charts in some areas are completely wrong, buoys added, removed, magenta lines going on the wrong sides & of course major shoaling. There are areas that if you knew to hug the red or green side you were o.k., but there are now areas (like just north of Charlestown) where there is only 3 1/2' at mean low water no matter how you do it! Fortunately Georgia & SC have 7' - 8' tides, so with proper knowledge you can time passages well. We rarely see less than 8', but only because we plan & follow along with Active Captain. Still can't believe the number of people blindly going along & thinking all they need is their chart plotter.

But it's a fantastic trip! While we go outside on some legs, I still haven't tired of the scenery, dolphins, manatees, bald eagles & just life on the waterway.

Russ
s/v Ortolan
www.esc-pod.com
 
I just looked at the Cell Ranger product I don't think it will help you with LTE data at all. Then again in the South VZW is currently using the 700Mhz band for data exclusively. The 700Mhz band propagates excellent compared to the PCS or AWS bands which is where most carriers other than AT&T and VZW put all their LTE data.
Bill
 
Interesting. Didn't think that voice and data would be carried over different frequency bands. My backup to internet access is a good book that I'm also bringing :-).
 
quote:
Originally posted by jmicklov

Interesting. Didn't think that voice and data would be carried over different frequency bands. My backup to internet access is a good book that I'm also bringing :-).

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Now THAT's the right attitude! During the daylight hours, you will probably be engaged in the journey and the surroundings anyway. And if anchored out away from the city, the sky on a clear night is amazing.

I found Cruisersnet to be much easier to use than Active Captain for ICW updates. Never relied on the magenta line other than as a guide the first trip or two as to where to turn into a new channel.
 
I am constantly amazed by the people who still seem to think the magenta line is anything but a very rough guide as to were the channel goes.
 
quote:
Originally posted by jmicklov

Interesting. Didn't think that voice and data would be carried over different frequency bands. My backup to internet access is a good book that I'm also bringing :-).

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The 700Mhz band is the only band being used for 4G LTE data broadcast by VZW and AT&T in the areas you will be traveling along at the current time.
This will change as both carriers need to off load data traffic in congested areas. The AWS bands are the next bands targeted to broadcast and carry LTE traffic as the LTE networks mature.
Bill
 
quote:
Originally posted by caltexfla

quote:
Originally posted by jmicklov

Interesting. Didn't think that voice and data would be carried over different frequency bands. My backup to internet access is a good book that I'm also bringing :-).

Click to expand...


Now THAT's the right attitude! During the daylight hours, you will probably be engaged in the journey and the surroundings anyway. And if anchored out away from the city, the sky on a clear night is amazing.

I found Cruisersnet to be much easier to use than Active Captain for ICW updates. Never relied on the magenta line other than as a guide the first trip or two as to where to turn into a new channel.

Click to expand...

I would be tempted to bring my walk and drive test platform and map the 4G signal levels along the way (the ICW) and submit it to the carriers.
But I'm kinda nuts when it comes to LTE and the migration path that the major carriers are taking George. Sprint has started to deploy 1X Advanced and 1 carrier of LTE in the old/ rebanded new IDEN 800Mhz band. Don't look for their speeds to increase because they can only deploy a 5Mhz/5mHZ LTE FDD carrier in the old iDEN SMR band.
Bill
 
Thanks again for all the great feedback!

The April issue of Soundings Magazine had a good article about the Magenta Line not being the end-all. I have already bookmarked Cruise net's website. Agree- it is easy to follow. Hope to put it to good use during the journey.
 
Be sure to load the Companion part of Active Captain. I have found that it is very handy to have in the ICW area we cruise all the time from Myrtle Beach to Jacksonville. Even as many times as we have been in a waterway I have found the Companion feature to be very nice to warn me of an upcoming hazard. The charts are worthless in the Companion but that is not the point of the Companion, use your GPS and chartplotter for the charts.
 
Thanks Neal. I'm going to check to see if he's got that portion loaded. We also have 2 chart-plotters on board.
 
I'm leaving tomorrow morning from Charleston SC up the ICW to cruise the Chesapeake Bay. If you see HIGH COTTON give me a shout.

I have a Verizon hot spot and had coverage from here to FL a couple years ago.
 
cruisers.net is a good resource, but ActiveCaptain is more "active" - updated frequently by fellow cruisers. While you have to sift a bit thru the comments (some people might have been off-course or mistaken) it's definitely a fluid situation at some of the worst areas.

While I understand that the magenta line isn't a line to follow without question, there is NO excuse for the places where it goes COMPLETELY out of the channel or COMPLETELY on the wrong side of buoys. There are also many known areas that most chartplotters will show you COMPLETELY on land in order to be in the actual deep water. Hour after hour, it does take a bit of concentration to stay in the deep water!
 
I don't know, the magenta line was around long before there were any such things as GPS and electronic chart plotters. I don't think whom ever created it ever imagined anybody would be trying to follow along it exactly with a little electronically generated representation of their vessel. And there has been talk of doing away with it altogether. At least on the NOAA charts.

So it goes on the wrong side of a marker or two and slips out of the channel from time to time. It's a frickin guide line for crying out loud. If anybody is foolish enough to follow it like it represents reality, well then they're.....foolish. :-)

If you want some current and accurate depth data, check out the data provided by the ARGUS Project.

"ARGUS is the most scientifically rigorous of the crowdsourcers, although NOAA ultimately decided it was not yet rigorous enough to incorporate into its survey program. ARGUS data showing shallowing depths on the ICW and other waterways can be found on the EarthNC online chart app and the Salty Southeast Cruisers Net, which overlays color-coded depth indicators on ICW charts."

`
 
Here is an interesting magenta line story. This guy claims to have had two retired USCG officers on board as crew when this took place:

"Then a curious thing happened. Within moments of leaving the swing bridge behind, we were hard aground, stopped dead in our tracks. We then noticed we were in good company. A large sportfishing yacht lay a hundred yards out of the channel; it had been traveling fast when it ran out of water. This made no sense. We were more or less on the magenta line, and I'd been through this area dozens of times before, although not recently on a boat that drew four-and-a-half feet.

Our collective situational awareness had been on autopilot for days as we'd dutifully followed the magenta line. Now, after grounding, we took a closer look at the plotter and iPad and paper chart. What we saw only confused us more. The magenta line squirreled around buoys in a way that had us wondering if the rules of the road had suddenly switched directions. There was something wrong."

Something wrong!? There sure was. And this would be it IMO: "Our collective situational awareness had been on autopilot for days as we'd dutifully followed the magenta line." That and the fact that neither the author nor apparently the two retired CG officers knew that following the magenta line isn't an exact science.

Scary.
 
quote:
Originally posted by rawidman

I'm leaving tomorrow morning from Charleston SC up the ICW to cruise the Chesapeake Bay. If you see HIGH COTTON give me a shout.

I have a Verizon hot spot and had coverage from here to FL a couple years ago.

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Have a safe trip and an enjoyable one, Ron. I'm not sure how long or if you will be traveling to the upper portion of the Chesapeake? Perhaps we might get together. I would like to see what you have done to your trawler and meet you.
Bill
 
Figured I'd give you a quick update on our trip. We actually made it with no problems. Active Captain saved our butts, along with 'Situational Awareness' when it came to following the Magenta Line. We were tuned in to many shoaling conditions and managed to avoid them. The Magenta Line, if we truly followed it, would have had us navigating in marshes and swamps, as well as on the wrong side of some daymarks.
We saw two groundings in our journey. A sailboat grounded just below Fernandina Beach (FL) marina. We barely made it through here ourselves. Then another one in the Alligator River. We saw the notice of heaving shoaling in Active Captain and were following a Sport Fisherman who was well ahead of us and then realized he had run out of water. Luckily, the wind direction blew him into deeper water.

We used that little cell phone booster antenna and had continuous coverage except for one place.

We had a great trip, saw a lot of things including dolphins. Not to mention the culmination last Wednesday, heading to the Severn River from the Chesapeake, Annapolis had their graduation ceremony so we anchored nearby and saw the Blue Angels demonstration- WOW. Final destination was just an hour from there.
 
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